how do you waste your time online?
by Eli
the other day while hanging out at the boys (the chapel), i removed myself from the conversation in the living room to check my email and such on brandon’s computer. at some point during my aloofitity (ha) meredith asked me how much longer i was gonna be, and drew replied for me, “He’ll probably be a while, i mean, he’s got at least 12 sites that he needs to check.” i’m not sure where drew got that number, but it got me thinking.
what sites do i a make a point in checking? unfortunately that answer is not as simple as we’d like, due mainly to the wonderous joys of RSS. What is RSS you ask? It is something that allows you to subscribe to different types of information, on many different types of websites, and get that information in a very easy way. for the windows users there is RssReader.com among others, and for the mac users there is Net News Wire. it makes checking all those sites much easier by putting all the information into one place and notifying you when new information is present (instead of hunting for it everytime). i love it.
but according to drew, news aggregators and mail aggregators are too efficient. he doesn’t understand why i check all my email addresses through the Mac OS “Mail” application. it obviously takes less time than checking each one individually through a browser, and that gives me “less” to do online according to drew. see, drew is hunting for things to do online and has chosen the path of most resistance simply because he likes the idea of doing things online but just can’t find enough of it. i on the other hand, am trying to spend less time online and these sorts of things help me out.
but let’s say for the sake of argument that i didn’t have my rss reader or mail application handy. what sites would i visit, and how would i spend my time online? let’s brake it down.
obviously, i’d check my email. that makes sense. the email that i’d check is basically my gmail accounts, of which i have two: personal and business. so, that takes a few minutes; i have to login and out of each account and such. not that big of a time waster.
after the email is out of the way, i might check my ebay account if i’m selling/sold or buying/bought something recently. that takes a just a few minutes and i’m off again to the next task.
from this point on, i’m basically checking blogs and news sites. my list of the necessities is not very long, but they are sites that i really enjoy reading, and think that the rest of you would enjoy them as well (maybe). i have decided not to include our personal blogs (you know who you are: nate, brandon, andy, etc) because we all check those. anyhoo, here we go (in no particular order, and not totally inclusive either):
Signal vs. Noise
the company blog of the oh-so-wonderful 37signals. these guys are great. they have created some amazing software, an amazing framework, and have some wonderful insights into design, creativity, and life in general. a great read and not just for web design nerds.
Clusterfuck Nation
the official blog of Jim Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. he’s been writing about the US situation in the world for some time now, and although his blog can get a bit repetitive and over the top sometimes, it’s still a really good read.
Econbrowser
the personal blog of James D. Hamilton, a Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego. he’s a pretty realistic economics kind of guy and certainly doesn’t rely on the “free” market to save us all. sometimes a little to econ techy for me, but when he pulls through it’s great.
Kottke.org
jason kottke is one the most famous bloggers of all time. he’s been doing it for over 8 years, and this past year he had a fund drive to raise money so that he could blog full time and made just shy of $40,000 in 3 weeks (amazing!). he’s got GREAT links, too.
Daring Fireball
more specifically a MAC centered blog, John Gruber is funny and intelligent. he does thorough work and gives off the impression that he truely loves doing what he does (blogging, basically). he had a fund drive just like kottke, but it wasn’t as successful despite the fact that i gave him money. and i got a tshirt out of it too. either way, if you have any experience with Mac OS interface design, you’ll appreciate this article as some of his best work.
there’s plenty more where that came from, and if you want it you can have it.
The internet is an interesting thing to me. As much as I enjoy the idea of all this information at my fingertips, I really only like information that is vitally important to me, which is why my list of websites is only about six sites long. Those sites include all the places that I might personally recieve messages from others and the blogs of my close friends. Other than that, I use the internet for things that occur to me on a moment-to-moment basis. I’m only hunting for things that would directly apply to me, so I can’t really lament my lack of internet involvement. The internet interacts with me in about six places, and that’s really all I need. Would I like to get more messages from people that would necessitate the use of a few more webistes? Sure, but I would never go out hunting for things to read online. If I’m in a reading mood, I’ll pick up a book or one of our many magazines. I can’t stand reading at a computer. So it doesn’t look like my list of online activities will grow any longer unless I decide to add my own content to the internet. It’s sad, in a way, because I think I’d really like to be able to enjoy computers, and learning to use them better is, in fact, a goal of mine for the near future, but it will be a struggle. I just wish I cared about them more.
p.s. I dont think anyone believes that you are trying to spend less time online. We’ll just pretend that you meant you had a passion for efficiency, and I promise I won’t call you a filthy liar.
I wouldn’t even know how to begin wasting my ‘item’ online. What the hell does that even mean?
again, drew and his amazingly insitful prose. wonderful. i have no idea what brandon is talking about.
Besides the blogs of my friends (tttw.com, loam.com, abri.com, tf=lv.com, etc) I always check http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa, and once a week I check out homestarrunner.com. And craigslist/ebay/gmail are dailies as well.