Random Access - Friday, October 29, 1999My favorite sites
by Chris Gulker
According to the Internet Domain Survey ( www.isc.org/ds/new-survey.html ), there were about 19 million hosts advertised in the global domain name system in July of 1997. Two years later, that count had risen to more than 56 million. A ‘host’, by the way, is a computer connected to the Internet.
In the same year, 1997, the folks at Alexa Internet, developers of the multi-terabyte Internet Archive, estimated that there were one million Web sites, residing on some 450,000 servers. If the sites have kept pace with the number of connected computers, then there may be something like 3 million Web sites today (and that number may be low).
Yikes… and sometimes I feel like I must be missing all the good ones.
Sure, I’ve stumbled over a few really good ones: www.cowsonparade.org, for example, where you can find pictures of the 304 art cows that were set loose in the City of Chicago this summer. But, with 3 million of ‘em out there, I’m sure I’m missing something.
After all, even if I looked at 100 Web sites a night, it would take take 82 years to look at ‘em all. And, of course, by 82 years from now, there’d be a hundred zillion new ones to investigate, and I’d just be finishing up looking at 82-year-old Web pages. I wonder what version Web browser I’d be using in 2081: Netscape 1,267.5? Of course, I’d likely still be waiting for Windows 2000 to ship.
I can’t even get through the search engine pages for a given topic. Hotbot reports 285,430 matches for "Really good Web pages" and, interestingly, Excite returns 7,201,665 hits on "Only the best Web pages". Worse and worse.
So, it’s tough to go public with my favs. I just know that somewhere, someone is going to be snickering, "Oh, what a geek, he doesn’t even know about www.reallycool.com!" ( www.reallycool.com happens to be a Linux site, but it hasn’t been updated since March 20).
Sigh. Well, like many Net surfers, I tend to put sites into personal categories. Two big ones for me are "useful" and "fun", and I really like useful sites that are also fun. Many so-called Weblogs fall into this category.
Weblogs are the name applied to personal Web sites that usually take the form of a running, chronological commentary with lots of links to other sites. Two of my favorites include Dave Winer’s Scripting News ( www.scriptingnews.com ), where technologist Dave offers a never-ending stream of informed (and occasional spectacularly uninformed) and generally outrageous opinions, and Slashdot ( slashdot.org ) where, led by Commander Taco, Linux is daily raised from mere operating system to an overarching philosophy of cosmic proportions.
I also like the personal sites offered by James Gleick, ( www.around.com ) a writer ("Faster" and "Chaos: Making a New Science") and entrepreneur, and Heidi Roizen, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist ( www.roizen.com ) who lists the promising early-stage startups she’s working with.
Orther useful favorites are news sites and search engines, the better to stay informed, and sites that actually do stuff, like banking and trading stocks, the better to prop up the ever-teetering Gulker financial ‘empire’.
As much as I enjoy reading real newspapers, online access to the content is a great tool and very handy when you want to call a colleague’s attention to an article by email — just send ‘em the URL.
I include with the news sites traditional sources like The Independent’s newly re-designed Web site ( www.independent.co.uk ), the New York Times ( www.nytimes.com ), the Wall Street Journal ( www.wsj.com ) and The San Jose Mercury News SiliconValley.com ( www.siliconvalley.com ). CNN’s site ( www.cnn.com ) is good for breaking news — that’s where I went when I first heard that Princess Diana had been in an accident.
For tech news I go most often to Wired News ( www.wired.com ) which does a good job of providing context and background, even for breaking stories. Cnet’s a staple ( www.cnet.com ) as are the magazines and news services that feed ZDNet ( www.zdnet.com ).
Of course, a good, customizable portal page with attached search engine is a great resource. I like Excite’s offering ( www.excite.com ), especially for their news trackers that constantly scour the news sites for my topics of interest, along with the usual stocks, weather and other info-amenities. I also like the HotBot ( www.hotbot.com ) standalone search engine.
Finally, I use E*Trade ( www.etrade.com ) and Wells Fargo Bank ( www.wellsfargo.com ), mainly because I had accounts with both for one reason or another. Some of the pure Internet Banks — and their good interest rates — are starting to get my attention. US banking deregulation promises to bring some very interesting financial services to the Web.
Fun sites are just that — amusing or pleasantly surprising. Besides Cows on Parade, I love the serendipitous sites that show up when you’re looking for something else. For example, Ian Shuttleworth’s Nudist Pages ("Best viewed totally nude" - www.edenbs.demon.co.uk ) showed up when I searched for "only the Best Web pages". I find myself missing the famous Useless Web Machines home page, which listed every refrigerator, CD Player and coffee pot that had been hotwired to the Net.
And lastly, speaking of useless, I really like my own Web site ( www.gulker.com ) mainly because I have so much fun working on it.
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