my favorite sites

I consider myself to be fairly mediocre as far as my knowledge of the web and all of the cool sites it has to offer. Yet I’m constantly meeting people who don’t know even some of the simple basics that make surfing the web easier. And so, with that in mind, I thought it might be helpful to start a thread to share our favourite/most helpful sites. Please add your own!

Bloglines.com – I’m still meeting people who check blogs, one at a time, to see if they’ve been updated. Wow. That would take me a half hour just to check. Bloglines is a programme that allows you to enter all of the blogs that you read. You then simply log onto your bloglines account and it lets you know if any of them have been updated. There are quite a few other versions of this service, but bloglines is free and I like it best.

Lifehacker.com – Lifehacker is a site that keeps you up to date on everything that is cool and helpful about the web. There are a lot of similar sites out there, but these guys truly seem to only post great tools rather than anything they happen to stumble upon. It’s updated all throughout the day so, if you miss a day, you’ll have a lot of new ideas and gadgets to catch up on. I’ve only discovered this site recently, but it has easily become my favourite site.

Skype.com – I’ve become a Skype geek. In the short time that I’ve been signed up on the service, I’ve managed to catch up with friends I’ve not spoken to in years. Skype allows you to make calls over the internet for free. It also allows you to make calls from your computer to a landline or mobile phone for a nominal fee. It also allows you to purchase a phone number, anywhere in the world where you have friends/family, so that they can call your computer for free. Not only does it keep a list of all your contacts but, like a chat service, also lets you know when they are available. And if you keep your computer on all day, it works just like any telephone in that, when your friends call you, your computer rings and you simply answer the call. I’m liking this service so much that I’m seriously considering getting rid of my landline phone all together. I could use it to make calls, purchase a U.S. number, a UK number, and still save hundreds of pounds a year on calls. I’ll let you know at the end of July.

Music – I use so many music sites that I couldn’t possibly write about each one. But here are the ones I use the most: Pandora, last.fm, napster (now a legal service), itunes (kill me), all tunes, mp3sugar, mp3search.ru, rolling stone, and I’m currently checking out emusic. I’d also like to share a short excerpt on Y! Unlimited. Like Napster, Yahoo offers a music service called Y! Unlimited that allows you to purchase a monthly subscription and listen to any album for free. Napster’s subscription service costs $10 a month but Yahoo’s service only cost $5. In addition, while tracks on Napster and iTunes will cost you 99 cents, they’re only 79 cents on Yahoo. Yahoo’s service still has some glitches in it, but for checking out new music, it’s definitely the most affordable way to go. Many of you ask me how I listen to so much new music each month. This is how I do it. And, since I still have a U.S. credit card, I listen to the U.S. version of the service which is a bit cheaper than the UK version.

That’s it for me. How about you?