Writing the Internet January 18, 2005 Lauren If you could suggest up to five notable websites or blogs for an unsavvy web user, what would those websites be?
Hmmmm… http://www.zmag.org http://www.feministblogs.org http://www.blackcommentator.com http://www.indymedia.org http://www.rabble.ca Those are just of the top of my head, but I think they’re a good start.
http://www.weblogs.com – recently updated weblogs – for the random factor. http://www.metafilter.com – not quite as annoying as /. or kuro5hin, though almost http://www.boingboing.net – to stimulate curiosity but i would have to say above all http://www.cursor.org is pretty close to “required”. cursor got me to all of the blogs i blogroll now, pretty much, either directly or indirectly. oh, and homestarrunner! for the strongbad emails.
http://snopes.com I always make my first-year students do an assignment there, if only to cut down on the circulation of that damn email about tampons and asbestos. 🙂
[Voluntarily limiting to English-language sites:] 1) Feminist Blogs 2) Intelligence Report (SPLC) 3) nologo.org 4) Swift (James Randi’s Weekly Commentary) 5) Snopes (gotta agree with Kim Wells here, though Snopes-worship is as bad as any alienation).
Blogdex – Buzz index. Del.icio.us – Social bookmarks. Flickr – Social photos. Technorati – Social blogging. BoingBoing – I’m a believer too. 5 is a magick number.
Mouse Words! Kidding. I think Snopes is a good idea for that very reason, but folk stories and urban legends are a weird fascination of mine. I’d say Salon, too. What are you trying to sell this person on?
Google news. When you bring it up you see many more stories than other news sites. Also, you can click to get all the stories on a particular subject. You can also key word search.
Keep in mind that Google news is still a beta. As such, it can eventually be fooled by spoof websites, like when it announced that Bush’d been arrested in Canada. I use its triple Chinese version all the time, though, and I keep hoping they’ll put up a Greek one as well.
A good music site is http://www.wendywoo.com/ A good Tai Chi site is http://www.csd.net/%7Ebfaigao/home/index.html A good first novelist site is http://bartyates.com/ A good visual artist site is http://www.16.ocn.ne.jp/~ai-k/
http://merlehaggard.com/ http://somethwingawful.com/ Sorry, I think I’ve reached the end of this so-called Internet.
two good sites on Iraq: Baghdad Burning – Girl Blog from Iraq http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ Empire Notes – Rahul Mahujan http://www.empirenotes.org/
and i also must plug my pal Jessamyn, who was blogging before the (unfortunate) word “blog” even existed… http://www.jessamyn.com she also runs one of the best library blogs on the web http://www.librarian.net/
My five would be: http://www.soapboxblog.com/stars/ http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/blaugustine.html http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/ http://www.oldgreypoet.com/ http://www.pureland.blogspot.com/ This is assuming that I cannot nominate either myself or feministe or my wife.
I third Snopes. The Wayback Machine: It archives web sites that either have been taken down or are no longer at the given web address and you can’t find the new site. I use this all the time. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php Babelfish: Language translator http://world.altavista.com/ Google – Usenet: Searchable database that tracks Usenet posts back to 1981. http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search Vmyths: The truth about computer virus myths. http://www.vmyths.com/ Symantec Security Response – virus hoax page http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html (I recommend the entire site, because it also deals with real viruses.)