Published by Simon on 18 Feb 2008 at 01:25 am
StumbleUpon
According to NetCraft as of January 2008 there are over 155.5 million web sites out here on the Internet.
Hmm, that’s a lot of web sites. Don’t know about you but, if I’m looking for something specific, using Google and following links on relevant web-sites seems to get me the information I need. But what about something new and interesting? I can remember sitting in front of a search engine thinking ‘I fancy seeing what’s out there, I just want to be entertained - but what the hell am I going to type in? Arrrgh! This is already taking too much thought.’
Then came the answer: StumbleUpon. Just download a free toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer, hit a button and you’re presented with a random web site. But it’s actually rather more clever than that. You can choose from categories of interest for the types of site you would like to visit - the sites have been recommended by other ‘Stumblers’, currently about 4.5 million of them. Give a site the ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ and StumbleUpon refines the offerings it serves you. Press a button, what you see doesn’t grab you? Press the button and move on. Stop when you find something of interest. No thinking required! Oh, joy!
Usual warnings
Don’t just download anything from the Internet unless you’re sure it’s safe. You will see that StumbleUpon has lots of awards and is recommended by IE add-ons. It is also a recommended add-on for Firefox
Make sure your computer is adequately protected - you will be visiting a lot of web sites. Check out my posting, Essential Security .
MAKE COFFEE - it could be a late night!
One Response to “StumbleUpon”
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Rod on 10 Mar 2008 at 5:39 pm #
Simon, you seem to like looking at various sites - what about coming & editing one relevant to the Quantocks? You’ve probably heard about Wikipedia the encyclopedia that anyone can edit - well did you know that it has a growing article on the Quantock Hills at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantock_Hills if you spot anything that is wrong or that you can improve just click on the “edit this page” tab & put it right. I bet you could do that with some of the other sites you visit.