Hitting the Links
I’ve joked in the past about the time I waste on my PC. I’m not going to say I’ve gotten any better at that, especially since I recently resumed my foolhardy quest to play all 32,000 variations of FreeCell. (I’m up to 322. Please send food.) That said, I really wouldn’t call a lot of my time online a waste. I thought it might be worthwhile to take a tour through my bookmarks and discuss some of the resources I use on the web. This list is by no means exhaustive.
Yahoo!: I use my customized Yahoo page as my home page. I can get the headlines from any number of news services, including Reuters, the AP, and ABC News, along with a weather report for Philadelphia, video and DVD release info, and scores for professional and college sports teams. I track my investment portfolio here — and boy, hasn’t that been fun the last two years! Last but not least, I can add up to three daily comic strips to the page. Right now I have Doonesbury, Fox Trot and Non Sequitur.
Philly.com: The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News have their websites here. I’m less than thrilled with the recent redesign, which seems to be consistent throughout Knight Ridder/RealCities sites. But I read my hometown papers for free on days when I don’t buy a Daily News for the subway, so I can’t argue. The last year I lived in New York, this link to home was a life saver.
Google: Search engine of the gods. Now it even has a comprehensive database of Usenet postings. I rarely bother with the Yahoo! Search feature on my home page, because it usually sends me here anyway.
TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com: I am something of a financial news junkie, and this is probably my favorite site for such info. TheStreet is primarily a straight news site, but it also has a decent personal finance section, with a lot of mutual fund-related interviews and information, plus tax tips and other information. There’s also some commentary, although the bulk of that is found on the subscription-based RealMoney. I know I have nowhere near the right psychological or intellectual profile to do the kind of stock trading that is the focus of RealMoney, but I find the window to the minds of the people that do to be fascinating. Plus, technology columnist Jim Seymour often has some nifty nuggets on personal tech.
I used to read The Motley Fool, but they made their message board subscription-based, and I decided that was money I could spend better elsewhere. Without that, there wasn’t much reason to visit the Fool, because I’ve found that their staff writers make too many mistakes and don’t really offer much in the way of useful analysis — the best stuff was contributed by the message board posters. (In fact, the Not News forums were in large part inspired by the Fool community.) I’ve also made use of the personal finance tools at Quicken.com, but I don’t spend as much time there as I used to. When I finish my Ph.D. and get a job, that’ll probably change as I have to make decisions about retirement planning, home purchasing, and so on.
CNN.com: I supplement the headlines from my home page here, and catch the occasional editorial, analysis, or review as well. It’s a good spot for breaking news, and their sports section — with writers from Sports Illustrated — is pretty good. Ah, corporate synergy at work!
ESPN.com: On the other hand, I satisfy 75% of my sports info cravings here, especially during baseball season. Columnist Rob Neyer has an almost-daily column that’s a must-read for me. Neyer is a ‘sabermetrician,’ someone who does a lot of statistical research and analysis on baseball. As a result, he tends to challenge the conventional wisdom much of the time, to the consternation of traditionalists. And you know how much I enjoy challenging tradition based on empirical research. ESPN also lured Jayson Stark away from the Philadelphia Inquirer; Stark is probably the first sportswriter I knew by name, and I’ve loved his sense of humor and the absurd since I was nine. The site does quite well with sports other than baseball, of course, and I like the irreverent humor present in their ‘Page 2‘ section.
The Digital Bits: If I want info or reviews on upcoming DVDs, I go here. End of story. (Except for the moment, because they’re changing servers.)
The Brunching Shuttlecocks: This site doesn’t update as often as I wish it did, but when it does it’s usually funny. Some very intelligent satire along with some silly but fun stuff. And I usually enjoy the Self-Made Critic‘s move reviews.
Salon: I paid for a premium membership to the site, but I admit I don’t go there as often as I probably should. They have some very nice A&E and political reporting and analysis, even if I don’t always agree with their outlook. (I find this to be more an issue with the A&E reviews than the political stuff, but that may be because I’m more selective in the political analysis I read.) I have to give the site credit for making me aware of Arianna Huffington’s latest writings; I find her current not-Republican-but-not-really-Democrat-either outlook to be rather thought provoking, and she has the guts to say when she has rethought her position on an issue.
Amazon: Not only are we an Amazon affiliate, not only are they a great resource for comparison shopping, and not only is the free-shipping-on-orders-over-99-bucks offer too good to pass up, but their Look Inside feature has been a life saver. I was doing some bibliographic research for my dissertation proposal, and none of the research databases I access through the library page at Temple University (which is itself normally quite helpful) were giving me the info I needed. I was able to look up a couple of current books in the field and read some of the opening chapters, plus check out the indexes. Very cool feature.
Comics Newsarama: One of the better daily sources for news and features on the comic book industry. For reviews, I check out Randy Lander and Don MacPherson’s The Fourth Rail and Paul O’Brien’s The X-Axis every week. For general discussion, the occasional hot tip, and hobnobbing with folks in the biz, I hang out at the Warren Ellis Forum. (Editor’s Note: Some links in this section have been altered/removed as out of date.)
The Weather Channel: Yeah, it’s wrong more often than not, it seems, but it’s still nice to get some idea of what’s on the way, and this way I don’t have to watch local TV news.
TheLogBook.com: I write for this site fairly regularly, and its webmaster Earl Green is a contributor here. So if you like anything either of us have to say, you should check it out.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.