Every once in a while I like to take stock of my web habits and see where I’m really spending my time. I test out new sites and services at a pretty brisk pace, dropping the majority in a vicious selection process. The survivors aren’t necessarily the best, but they’re where I spend my time, and it’s worth reflecting on why:
- Tumblr. Three complimentary reasons why the Tumblr dashboard is now my most frequented page. It’s a simple and eloquent way to post what I want to share; the people I follow are a creative and fascinating group that churn up a constant river of interesting content; and the social connections and “stickiness” have been enhanced with every version upgrade. My web home.
- Netvibes. My preferred feed reader and content aggregator. I have a front page with email accounts, weather, calendar, and Red Sox schedule (only the most important stuff!), tabs for news, companies, individuals, business, tech, photo, music, video/film, and extras. This is my newsstand, where I drink from the firehose of the Internet.
- Yahoo Fantasy. During baseball and football seasons, I’m checking these pages several times a day.
- Flickr. Constant stream of quality image candy and feedback on my photos. The only web service I’ve paid an annual fee for the past few years without blinking.
- Sons of Sam Horn. Red Sox fan message board. Yes, I have a Sox problem.
- Gmail. I connect to my accounts via IMAP through mail.app, the iPhone, and Netvibes, but primarily through the web interface through the Fluid site specific browser. I have a lot of filters and labels set up so the only things that hit the inbox are what I need to pay attention to.
- Facebook. Primarily to keep track of far-flung friends that have accumulated along the way.
- Twitter. Increasingly interesting as the filters improve and I hook in more services as notifications. Loving Nambu on the Mac and iPhone, also Tumblr as a Twitter client.
- Hulu. Great quality, presentation, stability. What web video should be. If the dinosaurs can’t see that, I’ll just go back to a homerolled broadcasting solution of RSS torrent feeds of XVID videos and they’ll lose what ad dollars they’ve got going with Hulu.
- Lifehacker. My favorite blog, now and forever.
