The Webby Awards and Web Sites I Actually Use

The Webby awards (http://www.webbyawards.com/) came out yesterday and after wading through the 70+ categories I thought I would list the places I actually spend my time on the Internet. In 1999 or 2000 I put up a list of my bookmarks from the version of Netscape I was using at the time. (http://www2.flooby.com/lot49/bookmark.htm) It’s kind of interesting looking at the list and seeing both what I had bookmarked and how many of the sites are even around.

Let’s see… The first thing I do when I get online is to check my e-mail. I’m using hotmail but with the live.com URL so I go to http://mail.live.com/ to get my mail. I also have an account at Yahoo that I use for some online stuff. I set up the My Yahoo page (http://my.yahoo.com/) and it’s where I get most of my TV listings. There’s also mail, news, weather and comics but it’s the TV listings that keep me coming back to this page.

My girl friend Kim uses AOL Instant Messenger (so I do too) and the AOL news round-up (http://www.aol.com/) auto-loads every time AIM is started. They seem to do a good job of hitting many headlines I’m interested in. But that’s not the only source for news I go to. I like CNN (http://www.cnn.com/), MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/), NPR (http://www.npr.com/) – which won a webby this year, and Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/). I also like sites like Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/) and Fact Check (http://www.factcheck.org/) but don’t really hang out there. I usually watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC but only seem to catch Jon Stewart on-line (http://www.thedailyshow.com/).

I spend way too much time on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/) but since I’m taking a break from all of the games, that time has gone down considerably.

When I need to look something up I almost always hit Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) and there’s nothing like Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/)when the ol’ BS detector goes off about something.

I like YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) in fact I’m listening to a playlist of Orbital songs right now. I like that it has a wide variety of content. I’ve listened to (usually minimized at work) everything from Avenue Q, Jesus Christ Superstar, Old Punk and even old Hoho the clown clips.

I’m going to see if I can’t wrap this up and list in no particular order:

• http://www.movies.com/ (the first place I look for movie times)
• http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ (I’m addicted to this radio show and even went to a TAL live event)
• http://www.kuow.org/ (Seattle’s public radio station I listen to all of the time)
• http://www.kexp.org/ (Seattle’s best alternative station. I’m not listening to KUOW then its probably KEXP)
• http://www.hulu.com/ (I always miss the broadcast versions of Caprica, and Modern Family so I catch them here)
• http://www.cbs.com/ (This is where I watch Survivor)
• http://www.nbc.com/ (This is where I watch Heroes)
• http://www.blogger.com/ (I’ve had a blog since 2000 – the one you’re reading now, go check out the archives.)
• http://www.runescape.com/ (Duncan started playing this MMORPG years ago and I started playing to monitor his activity and do something with him. Now he’s moved on and Calvin plays. He’s not as devoted to the game as Duncan was but the sweet spot for the game seems to be 4th to 6th grade)
• http://thismodernworld.com/ -- Great Snarky Liberal web comic.
• http://www.tmcm.com/ – Too Much Coffee Man (I have a tattoo of this character on my left arm. This is a sarcastic comic that has gone through many changes. The full archives are on the web site so you can waste hours catching up.)

That’s me on the web. There are other sites I go to for work but most of those involve systems, networks, SANs, XenServer, Citrix and other IT geeky subjects. I won’t list them here.