MacMost Now 17: Finding Cool Web Sites

Gary Rosenzweig shows you some places where you can find cool Web sites. Suggestions include Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us and the net@nite podcast. Also, the free online games at http://gamescene.com.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hello, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now. Well, it's that weird time of year again. You know that week, the end of the year between Christmas and New Years, there's not too many people in the office, or maybe you're at home but not particularly on vacation any where. And you know, you spend a lot of time, "working". Well, if you're "working" like I am, then you are surfing the internet, and maybe looking for some cool stuff, like things you haven't seen before. 
Here are a couple sites that I go to when I want to see something new. One site I like to go to is Stumble Upon. You'll find it at stumbleupon.com. Now, the thing about stumbleupon is, it's kinda not so much a guide as it is something you just go to, to randomly look at a site. To sign up for it, you probably want to use Firefox, not Safari. Unfortunately there's no toolbar support in Safari and Stumbleupon relies heavily on its toolbar. But even in Safari, like I am right now, you can do actually quite a lot with stumbleupon. If you have a site you can sign up, and then basically click on the websites link, then it will show you some popular sites. On the right side, there's a whole list of topics. You can click on Mac for instance, and see some Mac sites right there. And you can further look into things like Mac Os and see people who like Mac Os and see what they are linking to. So with some poking around you can find some interesting things. If you have the toolbar installed in Firefox, you can simply hit the stumbleupon button and it will take you to the site that fits your interests. And if you select Mac as one of your interests, and it will probably take you to a Mac site. 
Another site that kinda does the same thing is, del.icio.us. You spell this del (dot) icio (dot) us. In the other words it is a dot us domain, rather than a dot com domain. With some clever letters in front of it. But anyway, once you get there, you bookmark it, and you won't have to worry about that again. At del.icio.us, uhh, you can basically view what others have bookmarked, and just like with stumbleupon you can search for things that have to do with Mac Os. And come up with some neat little things that have to do with Macs or any other topic you are looking for. 
Now I find a lot of cool sites, especially web 2.0 sites, by not going anywhere, but by listening to a pod cast. Podcast.net@nite has host, Leo Laporte, and Amber MacArthur and they talk mostly about web 2.0 cool sites. Basically they just list a lot of sites and usually there's something there I'm interested in. I actually find it quite useful to keep a piece of paper next to me in the car, when I am listening to this podcasters so I can quickly jot down a web address that they mentioned or you can just go to their site which is at twit.tv/natn, in other words 'n' at 'n'. And see what they've listed in that episode. But its worthwhile to listen to it. It will get you interested in some sites that you may not have checked out otherwise. 
And if you like web 2.0 stuff, there's a site called go2web20.net. That's the number two and the number twenty in there, and this site just basically has a whole list of logos of cool web 2.0 sites. So you might just want to check it out and just click randomly on some, just to discover something new. 
If finding cool websites is a little bit to close to actual work, another thing you can do is go to a game site like gamescene.com and play some free web games. Gamescene of course is made by us, right here at MacMost. That's what we do when we are not making these podcasts.
That's all for now. I'm collecting questions for future episodes where I'll do some Q and A. So if you have any questions, send them to questions at MacMost.com. Till the next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 17: Finding Cool Web Sites

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