My excited statement every few weeks: “Have you seen <insert the new hotness website here>? It’s great!”
Friend/co-worker response “Dude, where have you been? That’s been around for months now.”
Each time this scene plays out the same way. So. it goes without saying that the qualifiers for this list is not necessarily ‘new,’ just ‘new to me.’
In no particular order whatsoever, I am going to list off 5 sites that have made the first few months of 2011 on the web more fun for me than it was for you.
1. StumbleUpon
This handy button has tamed my Digg and Reddit traffic tremendously. What is it, you ask? StumbleUpon is a discovery search engine that finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and social networking principles.
2. Rdio
Tired of Pandora or LastFM repeating songs from one of your favorite niche genres too much? Rdio offers users the option to play…anything, within their catalog (which is currently over 7 million tracks and counting). Created by the founders of Skype, this service has taken over my listening life. Once again I am hearing a whole album rather than just jumping around track by track. Genius.
3. FootyTube
Ok, this one is a bit subjective based on your interest in soccer, but hey, it’s a really great place to kill some time, watching soccer. Like the name describes, it’s a YouTube for soccer nuts that airs the most complete and well-rounded coverage and highlights of matches. One nutmeg, however, is the recently adopted 20 second advertisements, every 5 minutes of viewing time. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one 60 second commercial at the start, but to interrupt the match to talk about Airwic every five minutes gets annoying.
4. Smashing Magazine
I’m not even a designer, a developer, or anything close, but man, I love this site. Smashing is a blog that offers advice to folks with Adobe CS5, at least that’s the only category I care about. After Photoshop Magazine was discontinued, I get all my (geek out/fail at multiple tutorials) Adobe time that I want from this epic site. The writers are smart and helpful and the tutorials are fun and relevant.
5. Tumblr
WordPress may yank this post due to me loving Tumblr, but it’s true.
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes, and audio quickly and easily to free personal blogs. Offering all the tools you’d expect from a high-quality blogging site in combination with an extremely clean interface and template designs. I’ve noticed that Tumblr is extremely image driven which distinctively sets it apart. So don’t worry, WP does handle text much better, so it really depends on where your interests lie that minute.
That’ll round up the sites that have sucked the majority of my ‘fun’ browser time in the first 3 months of 2011.
Okay, I’m gonna press the stumble button now and get outta here.
wsOUTLOOK 