[Download Show #10 as MP3]
Ten Future Classics YouTube MySpace Facebook del.icio.us The Huffington Post digg Clipmarks Pandora Internet Radio
www.youtube.com
The video revolution is here, and it is low-res. Who knew the next big thing would be a hodgepodge of homemade hip-hop videos, snippets of The Daily Show, and grainy webcam clips of bored students in their dorm rooms? YouTube lets average Web surfers play virtual voyeur or upload their own videos of family vacations, baby's first steps, or anything else. Will anybody watch them? Does it matter?
www.myspace.com
Can we possibly compile a list of Web sites without including MySpace? We tried to, but its skyrocketing traffic and the fact that it now has more than 100 million profiles indicate that it belongs on a list of the Web's elite sites. Go online and find out what your kids are talking about and staring at all day.
www.facebook.com
Unless you're in school, you've likely never heard of Facebook (we have interns to keep us informed). But it's the social-networking service you'll wish you'd had when you were a student. Upload a profile and class schedule, and link up with others in your school, your grade, even your classes, whether it's to copy notes or throw a party.
del.icio.us
del.icio.us, which lets you tag and share your favorite sites and pages, could've become just another quirky Web 2.0 service. But the bloggers got on board with the project, adding del.icio.us integration to their blog posts, and Yahoo! scooped up the suddenly hot com-pany. We don't expect this one to fade away any time soon.
www.huffingtonpost.com
The site of blogger-come-lately Arianna Huffington combines Drudge-Report-style headlines, Salon-style opining, and a dash of celebrity to create a political blog that sits somewhere between the established mainstream media and the screeching far-left and far-right political blogs.
www.digg.com
The premise is simple: Visitors vote on what stories they like or find useful, and the stories getting the most votes, or "digs," automatically float up to the top of the page. Yet despite (or maybe because of) its simplicity, Digg has shot up over the past year to become a bright star in the blogosphere, a juggernaut in the tech world, and has spawned its own movement of "digg clone" copycat sites. Can the wisdom of crowds usurp the media's traditional editorial control?
www.clipmarks.com
Clipmarks combines elements of del.icio.us and digg, letting users clip their favorite portions of Web pages, share them with the community, and vote on the best. Even if you're not submitting, though, browsing through the most popular clips is a good way to stay informed about the most recent happenings on the Internet.
www.pandora.com
The genius of the Pandora Internet Radio service isn't in how it plays music, it's in how it selects the music to play. Part of the Music Genome Project, Pandora specializes in play-ing music that will appeal to your tastes, making music discovery fun, automated, and free. Select an artist or song that you're in the mood for, and Pandora will build a radio playlist around it with complementary songs.
Computer History Museum
www.computerhistory.org
The Computer History Museum is the pre-eminent virtual museum of The Information Age, with exhibits on topics such as visible storage and the history of microprocessors, and a reading room where you can learn more.
LiveJournal
www.livejournal.com
How many times have you thought "if only I could divulge my deepest thoughts and feel-ings to the Web at large"? LiveJournal makes it possible by acting as a sort of blog aggre-gator and host. We have to wonder if anyone actually reads the 11 million journals posted on the site, but people sure are writing them.
Ten Underground Sites You Don't Want To Miss
1. TechCrunch
www.techcrunch.com
By Jennifer L. DeLeo
TechCrunch has news and reviews of Internet sites and services that you may not find anywhere else. Edited by Michael Arrington, the site keeps up with beta software, new Internet start-ups, and the whole Web 2.0 movement. Also, click the Jobs tab to go to CrunchBoard, a new job board exclusively for Web heads.
2. ajaxWrite
www.ajaxwrite.com
By Kyle Monson
It's a Web-based word processor that's free and that works (but only in Firefox).
3. Concise Freeware
www.concisefreeware.com
By Kyle Monson
If you're on the prowl for software, especially the kind you don't have to pay for, check out Concise Freeware, with its enormous collection of Firefox plug-ins, old PC games, and utilities.
4. GetJar
www.getjar.com
By Jennifer L. DeLeo
The best things in the mobile world are free! Well, at least on GetJar.com. Browse or search the site's list of free software by title, device, or platform. We found the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary for Java and Arcade Park for Palm. Add your reviews or become a beta tester. And if you think your phone's too old or cheap to run cool apps, you might be surprised by what's out there. One note of caution: Some parts of the site may not be safe for work, as the site hawks mobile porn apps alongside all-ages fare.
5. TweakGuides.com
www.tweakguides.com
By Errol Pierre-Louis
If your system needs a tune-up, TweakGuides.com is the place to go. The site has guides to optimizing individual games, browsers, and drivers, as well as a TweakingCompanion for getting the best performance out of Windows XP.
6. GmailTips
www.gmailtips.com
By Kyle Monson
This exhaustive Gmail tips site has all sorts of hints and tricks to help you get the most out of the free mail service. The site is run by Jim of Jim's Tips, and if it doesn't quench your thirst for shortcuts, go to his main page (www.jimstips.com) for more mobile- and Web-application tricks.
7. iLounge
www.ilounge.com
By Errol Pierre-Louis
As the homepage suggests, iLounge is the place to go for "all things iPod, iTunes, and beyond." This site is a repository of iPod-related news and information: reviews, previews, feature articles, and even tutorials. iLounge also offers an iPod Book 2.2 guide, 202 pages of comprehensive iPod information, as a free download.
8. Photonhead
www.photonhead.com
By Tony Hoffman
Filled with tips, tricks, and tutorials, Photonhead is a great resource for newbies and not-so-newbies to digital photography. Photonhead covers choosing a camera, taking photos, and photo editing, and has a cool "SimCam," which lets you adjust shutter speed, aperture, and ISO on a test image and see the results as if it were a real camera. Look elsewhere for camera and software reviews, though, as the ones on the site are ancient.
9. TechieDiva
www.techiediva.blogs.com
By Jennifer L. DeLeo
TechieDiva fills a void in the gadget blog arena by writing about technology for women. Here, females can satisfy their tech tastebuds with news and reviews on fashionable cell phones, laptop bags, Swarovski jeweled desk accessories, and more. Sign up for the newsletter to be included in giveaways automatically.
10. Sperling's Best Places
www.bestplaces.net
By Kyle Monson
Ever wondered how your town's crime rate compares with the national average? Or how much is spent per student in the city you're thinking of moving to? Get these and other answers at Sperling's Best Places. Just punch in a town name or ZIP code and get all kinds of information such as the median cost of a home, average household size, or even the most popular religions in the area.
Derek's Pick For Most Interesting Site Of the Year
Prosper
www.prosper.com
By Kyle Monson
Whether you're looking for money to pay off high-interest credit cards or you have some spare change that you'd like to collect interest on, the P2P lending model of Prosper is an intriguing one. Act as banker or borrower, depending on your needs, and the site lets you join up with other lenders to diversify your loans and diversify your risk.
Koby's Pick For Most Interesting Site Of the Year
Lifehacker
www.lifehacker.com
Editor: Gina Trapani
When it comes to life, sometimes hacking it is the best option. When it comes to hacking life, no one helps you better than the people at Lifehacker. Covering a wide range of topics from personal finance, to scheduling, to even better note taking, Lifehacker can help you find ways to do things better and more efficient. Articles range from helping the novice lifehacker to the ones that have been doing it for years. Lifehacker is in everyone of my RSS readers so that I do not miss a single article.
25 Worst Websites of the Year
25. Rentmychest.com
Look up the word hunk in any dictionary, and you will not find a picture of a bare-chested Chris Pirillo, the guy behind download sites such as lockergnome.com. But you used to be able to find several such pictures at this site, where the pasty, paunchy Pirillo auctioned off messages, written on his chest with magic marker, for $20 a pop. These days the marker-based messages are gone, replaced by a single background image that I wish I hadn't seen and a bunch of linked keywords. Believe it or not, the keywords are actually more expensive, starting at $200. Look, Chris may know his downloads, but please, somebody buy this man a gym membership.
24. IKissYou.org
For a brief period in 1999, an accordion-playing Turk named Mahir Cagri was the most famous man on the Net, which really says more about us than it does about this mostly harmless Web destination. His site, which featured personal photos, charmingly fractured English, and the phrase "Welcome to my home page...I Kiss You!!!" became a minor Web sensation, for reasons that are now entirely obscure. Mahir's legacy lives on in Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" character, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the Turk.
23. InmatesForYou.com
This site helps you find that special someone, even if you have to wait 13 years for her parole to come up.
22. Digital Entertainment Network (den.com)
This DEN of iniquity blew through more than $100 million before it shuttered its doors in January 2002. A sex scandal involving the site's CEO didn't help matters.
21. Golden Palace Casino
Web sites used to do just about anything to make headlines, and Golden Palace's ad campaigns took that idea just about as far as it could go. From buying the "Holy Toast"--the grilled cheese sandwich that looks like the Virgin Mary--to buying William Shatner's kidney stone, no promotional gimmick is too cheesy for this online casino.
20. Hotmail.com
In the mid to late nineties, Hotmail was a virtual Switzerland for spammers, who operated with impunity across the free e-mail service. Hotmail account holders were routinely buried in a blizzard of junk--in part because new subscribers were automatically added to a public directory of e-mail addresses, making them easy pickings for spam harvesters. A massive "dictionary attack" on the site's user base in August 2002 didn't help matters. Later that year Microsoft finally began implementing serious antispam measures, but by then many subscribers had already had their fill of canned luncheon meat.
19. WebVan
The big daddy of dot bombs, WebVan ripped through $1.2 billion of investment capital before checking out for the final time in July 2001. The costs of building a national network of grocery distribution centers proved too great for the online grocer. It's a classic example of a great idea without a viable business model. The only reason it's not higher on our list is that its delivery service was actually pretty good, while it lasted.
18. Beenz.com and Flooz.com (tie)
These ambitious schemes to float a Web-based e-currency both sank like a rock in August 2001. The sites hoped wary Netizens would rather trade credits for goods online than use credit cards, but consumers said No Sale. The biggest difference between the two? Flooz featured Whoopi Goldberg as spokesperson. Her career hasn't been the same since, either.
17. Boo.com
This symbol of dot-com excess burned through cash so fast you'd think its executives worked for the federal government. The fashion retail site featured a 3D avatar named Miss Boo, but the real stars of Boo were its founders, who spent money like it was going out of style--$120 million in six months on lavish apartments and expensive gifts, as well as a site that was too unwieldy for the largely dial-up world of 2000. Amazingly, Boo.com is scheduled for a comeback later this year under new owners. Be afraid, be very afraid.
16. Microsoft Windows Update
Microsoft could have escaped our notice if we didn't have to visit this cryptic and difficult-to-use site so often. It's the only reason to ever use Internet Explorer--and then simply because Microsoft's update site won't work with any other browser. But it's not reason enough.
15. Neuticles.com
Are your pets embarrassed about being neutered? Their four-legged friends need never know, thanks to Neuticles--implants that restore the look if not the function of their recently removed body parts. In an especially nice touch, the site opens with a flash animation of a bouncing ball (naturally). Yes, these cosmetic cojones are no joke; prices start at $73 a pair. Not to be confused with BumperNuts, which provide a similar service for your car.
14. BidForSurgery.com
Sadly, this site is exactly what it says it is. Think Priceline for face-lifts and tummy tucks. No, we are not joking.
13. Whitehouse.com
Not the virtual home of our president--that's Whitehouse.gov--Whitehouse.com began life during the Clinton era as a site devoted to political discourse. In September 1998 it helped distribute the Starr Report, but by then it had also become the most notoriously named porn site on the Web--featuring, among other things, a White House Intern of the Month. Today the site hosts a white-pages listing.
12. The Dancing Baby
Both strangely amusing and deeply disturbing, the famous dancing toddler boogied its way across the Internet and into the spotlight, appearing on both Ally McBeal and a Blockbuster video commercial during the mid-nineties. There are now dozens of variations on thousands of sites. If you're looking for the parties responsible for giving birth to this phenomenon, blame its parents at Burning Pixel Productions.
11. Rabies for Kids
Here's what happens when good intentions meet really bad design. Published by the Viral and Rickettsial Zoonoses Branch of the Centers for Disease Control, the Rabies for Kids site is an orgy of graphical offal. You'll be foaming at the mouth long before you reach the "Activities" section, which features a photo of a dog's brain being sliced with a scalpel.
10. MyLackey.com
This Seattle-based site offered to walk your dog, pick up your dry cleaning, and do all other manner of scut jobs for a fee. (Isn't that what kids and younger siblings are for?) The dot com contracted with local service providers for the dirty work, but apparently applied the "lackey" notion to its own employees as well. An infamous memo from cofounder Brendon Barnicle berated the company's 65 employees for not putting in 11-hour days, making MyLackey a symbol of the dot-com work ethic. Sixteen months after it began, the last lackey still standing closed the doors and shut off the lights.
9. Hamsterdance.com
Quite possibly the most irritating site on earth. Earplugs recommended.
8. BonziBuddy
This animated purple gibbon called itself "your best friend on the Internet," but many who downloaded this free program weren't feeling too friendly afterward. Buddy could tell jokes, recite your e-mail, manage your schedule, download files, and more. But the grape ape also tracked users' surfing habits, hijacked home pages, and installed several of his adware buddies. Depending on your browser settings, merely visiting Bonzi's Web site or clicking a banner ad could install Buddy on your machine. In 2002 annoyed Netizens had enough of this monkey business and sued Bonzi for deceptive advertising. By 2005 Buddy was history.
7. Pets.com
Who let this dog out? Back in the heady days of 1999 it must have seemed perfectly normal to spend $175 million making a sock puppet famous. But the notion of saving some coin on kibbles and kitty litter never caught on with consumers, and by November 2000 Pets.com had been euthanized--going from IPO to liquidation in just nine months. Before it got sent to the pound, however, the dot com filed suit against Triumph the Comic Insult Dog for allegedly defaming its moth-friendly mascot. Apparently, even sock puppets have feelings.
6. Pixelon.com
More dot con than dot com, this streaming media company boasted of a revolutionary new technology that would deliver high-quality audio and video over the Net. But Pixelon CEO and founder "Michael Fenne" was in reality a grifter named David Kim Stanley, who spent the majority of investors' money--some $16 million--on a launch party in Las Vegas featuring Tony Bennett, KISS, and The Who. Prior to starting Pixelon, Stanley had pleaded guilty to swindling friends and neighbors out of $1.5 million; he was on the lam and living out of the back of his car when he founded the company. Pixelon's revolutionary new streaming technology was equally spurious.
5. AllAdvantage
This site had the brilliant idea of paying people 50 cents an hour to surf and watch banner ads all day, plus another 10 cents per hour for every friend they convinced to sign up. All users had to do was install a "Viewbar" that displayed ads and clocked how much time they spent online. Stunningly, the company managed to raise $135 million in venture capital and convince 2 million users to sign up before it folded in February 2001. For some reason, advertisers failed to see any advantage in trying to reach the $4-a-day demographic. Go figure.
4. CD Universe
In December 1999 a Russian hacker named Maxim broke into the music retailer's site, stole 350,000 credit card numbers, and then demanded $100,000 ransom. When CD Universe refused to pay, Maxim posted 25,000 of the numbers to a Web site. At the time CD Universe was owned by eUniverse, which combined its site and its customer database on an unprotected server. "Basically, they put the candy jar in plain sight and left the cover off," says current CD Universe owner Chuck Beilman. "It was only a matter of time until someone stole the candy." CD Universe's customer database is now separate from the Web site, encrypted, and protected by a firewall.
3. Cartoonnetwok.com
No that's not a typo; it's "typosquatting," where a site owner deliberately registers a misspelling of a popular domain in the hopes of attracting the actual site's traffic. Cartoonnetwok was one of some 5500 deceptive domains owned by John Zuccarini, d/b/a/ "Cupcake Confidential." But that wasn't Zuccarini's only nasty bit of business. FTC investigators visiting one of his sites found their screens filled with 29 new browser windows for instant credit, online psychics, gambling, and porn sites. When they hit the Back button, another 7 windows opened--a technique known as "mousetrapping." Worse, many of Zuccarani's typosquatting sites were aimed at children. In 2003 Zuccarini pleaded guilty to violating the Truth in Domain Names Act and was sentenced to 2.5 years in the federal pen.
2. CyberRebate
The phrase "the check's in the mail" took on new meaning with this dot com. CyberRebate offered to refund 100 percent of what you paid for electronic goods, provided you a) paid up to 10 times their normal retail value, and b) let CyberRebate hold onto your money for at least 10 weeks. The site banked on people simply forgetting to apply for the refund. Unfortunately for CyberRebate, not enough of them did. The company filed for bankruptcy in May 2001 owing $60 million in refunds. Aggrieved customers had to settle for roughly 9 cents on the dollar.
1. MySpace.com
Yes, we know. With more than 90 million users, MySpace is now more popular than Elvis, "American Idol," and ice cream. But the Web's most visited destination is also its most poorly designed and counterproductive.
The ease with which anyone of any age can create a page, upload photos, share deeply personal details of their lives, and make new "friends" quickly turned MySpace into a one-stop shopping mall for online predators. That in turn has made the site an easy target for politicians who pander for votes by playing on parental fears. In an era when the basic tenets of the Net are under attack by both Ma Bell and Uncle Sam, MySpace is a headache we don't need.
But let's put all that aside for a moment. Graphically, many MySpace pages look like a teenager's bedroom after a tornado--a swirl of clashing backgrounds, boxes stacked inside other boxes, massive photos, and sonic disturbance. Try loading a few of those pages at once and watch what happens to your CPU. Watch out for spyware, too, since it turns out that MySpace has become a popular distribution vector for drive-by downloads and other exploits. And in a place where "U are soooooooo hot!!!" passes for wit, MySpace isn't doing much to elevate the level of social discourse.
In response to a public backlash and some well-publicized lawsuits, MySpace has begun modifying its policies--for example, limiting adults' ability to contact minors. That's hardly enough. Requiring some kind of authentication from MySpacers--or their parents--to validate their ages and identities would go a long way toward scaring off the creeps and making the site a kinder, gentler social network.
Is MySpace totally bad? Not at all. Have we grown out of MySpace a bit? Yeah, probably. Even though we still use it occasionally, its our opinion that the Web's most popular site needs a serious security reboot. And probably a makeover. Until then, MySpace won't ever be OurSpace.Some Extra Sites We Didn't Have Time To Mention
The Memory Hole
www.thememoryhole.org
By Kyle Monson
The Memory Hole exists to bring hidden, lost, or forgotten info to light by way of posting documents on its home page. Check out reports such as the one detailing Pfizer's efforts to create chemical and biological weapons for the U.S. government in the 1960s, or another from the 1950s on evidence of ESP in animals. There's plenty of content on the site, so you're sure to find something that piques your curiosity.
Britney's Guide to Semiconductor Physics (I did mention this one, but not fully)
www.britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
By Tony Hoffman
Not all geeks are gawky, nor beauties brainless, but who'd have guessed that Britney Spears is a semiconductor-
physics whiz? At least that's the improbable premise of this site, which intersperses playful photos of her—such as one in which she's in a bathtub full of diamonds (which the caption compares to semiconductor crystals)—within an equation-dense hard-core physics text. Whether you're cribbing for your Ph.D. in laser dynamics, have a thing for that gal from Louisiana, or just enjoy a good reality warp, it's worth checking out.
Gullible.info
www.gullible.info
By Kyle Monson
Head to Gullible.info for your daily dose of, er, trivia. The factoids are brilliant, but are they real? The site never divulges, but its name is Gullible.info—you tell us.
FindSounds
www.findsounds.com
By Rachel Florman
You've got your choice of search engines if you're looking online for articles. Photos and graphics are easy enough to find with Google or Yahoo Images. But what if you're looking for sounds? Let's say you need to find the hoot of a barn owl or the grind of a jackhammer. FindSounds is designed for just that kind of search. Scouring the Web for AIFF, AU, and WAV files, the site provides a list of search results. Click on the speaker icon to hear the sound, or choose the Sounds Like icon to get a new list, with sounds that are related to the one you've chosen.
Expert Village
www.expertvillage.com
By Kyle Monson
Expert Village is a repository of all sorts of useful (or useless) info, put together by experts, freelance writers, and even a video team. Get help fixing your leaky faucet, watch a video on kickboxing technique, or become a better soccer dribbler.
Special thanks to Pushmonkey for providing Auld Lang Syne, which we made an edited version out of.
