A guide to the freaking internet (Part I+II)
I had a conversation about the whys and why-bothers of blogging with my dad and step-mum (they don’t get it) – so this post’s for them.
Amusingly, he related an anecdote of when he tried to explain to my grandmother what an email was..
“It’s like a telegram” he said.
“Where does it go?”
“Down the telephone wire”
“How does it fit” (tricky one)
“The same way you fit your head down the line when you have a conversation” I suggested.
“How do you finish it?”
OK, you got me there.
Anyway, I was asked to recommend a couple of favourite blogs.. so here goes:
PostSecret for its often incredibly moving anonymous confessions on a postcard. BoingBoing, just because I so enjoy the way it entertains, but deals with significant issues at the same time – a great combination, if an acquired taste.
I mentioned the idea that blogging can be like the comment section of the newspaper (my favourite bit incidentally) – you simply read the journalists you like or find stimulating, and ignore or give short shrift to those you don’t.
The rule is simple – if you aren’t interested in what a blog has to say, move on. Life is too short. But as with anything in life, if a friend has recommended it to you, give it a go!
Part II
So then you get into a really interesting area.. whose recommendations do you trust, and whose do you jettison?
The answer is simple, you go with those people with whom you share tastes. And here we are in luck, because recently a whole raft of ‘recommendation engines’ have been created. My fave is del.icio.us which allows you to save your favourite web pages, along with tags to describe them. From there it’s easy to browse your, or anyone else’s favourites; by tags, or in their collection’s entirety.
(Favourites are are also sometimes known as bookmarks, in a nod to their analogue, well, analogue.) Del.icio.us, digg, and reddit are three of the most well known such sites.
Search engines (such as Google) often rank sites on the number of links that point to them, giving the top spots in a search result to those that have the most. Each time someone creates a favourite, by doing so they create a link.
And that is how the users of the web are helping to map and chart it, as we surf.
Lastly, and going with the wisdom of the crowd for a moment, there is a great site to see what is most popular over the entire web at any one moment: popurls, which aggregates and presents the top ten pages from a variety of sites, including many of those mentioned in this article. Have a quick look there and you’re sure to find some fascinating, wierd or informative web pages.
So you found a great site.. all you need to do now is recommend it to others
photo courtesy of Telstar Logistics on Flickr (which happens to be the best photo-sharing site)
all very true, the only thing i’d add is that perhaps it is good to read points of view we don’t agree with. it challenges our views and i’ve often found it also reaffirms them!
for instance one place i worked years ago there was always a Daily Mail around – i made a point of reading this racist small minded bigotry most days… just found it an interesting exercise…
Nick, I absolutely agree, that’s the kind of thing I’d include in ‘stimulating’.
I know that for many people, confronted with the vast ocean of information that is available these days, the selective process is key.
Eg ignoring a troll on a message board, or deleting spam without reading it.
Have you had useful insights from your research?