My life on the Web

I spend way too much time on the internet. But I have no regrets. I love the good ‘ol WWW. It keeps me informed, entertained and connected.

I always start my day with Yahoo and spend a considerable amount of time on the website throughout the day. Don’t get me wrong here. I love Google but nothing beats Yahoo’s news aggregation capabilities. Over the years I have gotten extremely comfortable with browsing through the various ‘categories’ within Yahoo – news, sports, music, movies, tech, games, finance etc. and even the sub-categories within them such as baseball, basketball & others under sports. It would reasonable to say that I am addicted to Yahoo. Compulsively checking my Yahoo Mail every 15 minutes only amplifies the addiction.

Even though Yahoo is my first net love, I am a Google-whore when it comes to searching the web. I actually barely ever go to google.com to do a search. The mini search box, conveniently located on the top right of the browser in both IE and FrFx, serves the purpose. It also gives me the option of doing a Yahoo search or an Ask.com search. But experience has told me google is better as far as internet search goes and will stay that way for quite a while.

While Google has expanded to other tech areas, its core business – internet search – is suffering from a lack of innovation vigor. Though their search engine stands unrivaled now, it might be sooner than later that a new search engine will trump them. Mahalo.com is a new search engine that looks promising. Of course let’s not forget that Wikipedia is still out there and widely used.

The other Google product that takes up a big chunk of my day is Gmail. I am not sure if I spend more time on Yahoo Mail or Gmail. I got gmail coz well everyone else has it. But my gmail is set to direct all emails to my Yahoo Mail. I log onto Gmail mainly to chat via the web version of gtalk – which also links up with my aim account. I think that is an absolutely bad-ass feature and could be made a badder-ass one by linking it up with my Yahoo messenger, MSN Live messenger, Twitter account and Facebook friends. I am sure someone at Google thought about it but was too busy writing an application to measure how long his tossed phone would remain in the air.

Let’s not even get started on how much time I spent on Twitter and Facebook. Fortunately my visits to these 2 sites are sporadic (though nauseatingly frequent) and usually last less than a minute which also happens to be my average attention span. It is only if a friend has uploaded an encyclopedia of pictures or if I have to upload one such encyclopedia, I spend around 5-10 minutes on Facebook. As for twitter, I just wish it did not crash so often. If cocaine is the crown-jewel of all drugs, twitter is the cocaine of social-networking. There is now even a novel in twitter for all to follow (and read).

Another website that eats up my day is the New York Times. I am not sure when, why or how my fascination for the NYTimes started but I read it daily (on the web that is). The best part is reading Thomas Friedman’s columns. He says it like it should be said. And now it even boasts a Nobel laureate in Paul Krugman among its impressive herd of columnists. However, if and when Obama gets elected president Krugman is most likely to get a White House call-up. It’s going to be hard for him to say no to such an opportunity and keep teaching in Princeton + write for the NYTimes + blog. A very cool aspect of NYTimes is the humor section. Snippets of late night monologues and other funnies – are actually really funny for a change. The wesite also has all the regular coverage you’d expect – technology, business, US, World, Sports. Its coverage of Arts (Books, Music, Movies, TV & Theater) and Style (Food, Fashion & others) are exemplary to say the least.

OK. I realize that I hyperlinked the crap out of the above paragraph. So I am gonna do the rest in a much more organized format:

1. Other new-sites I follow:
a. Nepalnews.com
I was brought up in Nepal. This site provides the news from Nepal as it happens and to some extent it is free of bias.
b. Indiatimes.com
I live in Mumbai (India) right now and it is nice (and scary) to keep tabs on the resident nation’s happenings.
c. Wall Street Journal
Just coz it makes me look busy and smart. It does a good job of news coverage as well. However, I am dedicated to the NYTimes and do not approve of WSJ’s pay format.

2. TechCrunch (and almost everything they link to):
I need my daily dose of TechCrunch complete with Michael Arlington humor and the most engaging comments community I have ever come across (rivaled only by that of the NYTimes). If you do not know what TechCrunch is, you gotta be living underneath a rock. Arlington is one of the most influential people in the world right now – despite the fact he is not mentioned in Forbe’s filthy rich people’s list.

3. Trusted Reviews, Engadget & Gizmodo:
They all review gadgets and it is difficult for me to just pick one. Besides it is nice to get different points of views for a gadget before you even think about buying it, right?

4. The Sartorialist Blog
Yes it is about fashion and following it does not make a guy gay. Some amazing photography from fashion focused cities around the world and probably the most 'simplistically innovative' (now I am just making up phrases) blog to come out of web 2.0

5. Soccernet
I follow soccer (football). I love the game. I have sworn life-long allegiance to Manchester United. All other clubs are mere mortals undeserving of any honors.

6. 61
I stumbled across this while searching for new independent music (Amie Street is also a good place to find independent music). The 61 empowers to all aspiring musicians across the globe. And the built-in game format of bumping songs and leveling-up is simply amazing.

7. Post-Secret blog
Reading other people’s secret is quite gratifying. Who would have thought? This is a great blog.

Sites I wish I had the time to follow:
1. StereoGum & IGIF: Both are music blogs and have great stuff in them.
2. Bookslut, somanybooksblog & Goodreads: The first one is sorta like a magazine for avid readers while the second is probably the best blog on books and reading. Goodreads is a social-network for readers.
3. There are many more but I am tired of typing and sick of linking.

Before I end this just a word on how I actually manage to go through the above websites. Typing the web address on the address bar is an extinct method. Adding websites to your favorites list shows that you got used to the web before the 2.0 revolution and are stuck there. I use Netvibes right now to aggregate all these websites and blogs on one platform. My Yahoo, iGoogle and Pageflakes offer similar services but I have gotten too comfortable with Netvibes to sleep with the enemy at this point. Though if Netvibes doesn’t come up with a new killer feature (maybe integrating all my instant messengers or something like creating my own web portal where I post news, pictures and videos about me), I might switch to one of the other three for a month or so and then move on to another platform. Who cares about brand loyalty? It is all for free after all -and if it were not free, I would not use it.

PS: One last attemp to self-advertise - I read these blogs that I maintain by myself or with someone else:

1. Views Through A Spyglass: After much exprimenting, I have decided to dedicate this blog to social commentary mainly dealing with conflict and development issues.
2. Sparks On Glass: Anand (fellow blogger) and I recently started this and you might be reading this on SOG itself if not TTAS.
3. Also Anand wanted to get featured here. So here is his blog - Mind Sparks