Download Squad

Way back when they published books about good Web sites, we Internet pioneers who were around when it was decided that an "@" symbol should separate the username from the TLD used to have a line of yellow sticky notes on our monitors to note the entire URL for Yahoo when it was at Stanford and required our paying fealty to a Sumo wrestler. Surfing, a quaint but archaic term, was how we found Web sites. Click on one, then click another. Use the back button to go home. It's impossible to really surf anymore; there are a gazillion Web sites and what with pop-ups and other drekky code impeding our way, there's no going home again.

With TMI overload, we need to tiptoe through the Web sites with more focus yet not lose the joy of discovery, because that's why the Web was born. Enter StumbleUpon, a social site determined to help you discover pre-reviewed sites that pique your interest. The model is friendly and the toolbar non-malicious. (I keep it turned off when working because the siren song of discovery outweighs my willpower.)

The Web is fairly female-brained IMO in that women can often start a conversation, travel in several seemingly unrelated directions (click links), converse where they are (view Web pages), and journey backward through the conversation to the starting point (back button). Some of us are comfortable using our mental dropdown lists to jump several topics backward without rehashing the entire exchange. StumbleUpon is conducive to taking a break; it's like visiting or make new friends.

Case in point: a new Photoshop tutorial site? I found one in undiscovered country and added it to my StumbleUpon favs. With some careful keywording and reviewed pages, I'm not wasting time clicking on pay site links from (the) Google, stupid sites, or sites that pop up garbage. Fairly Flickr-like, I can invite friends (although I never upload my contacts anywhere) with a couple of keystrokes. If you have friends, you can visit what they visited if they care to share.

Think of it as a personality test. Look at my tag cloud – it's pretty easy to analyze me as a geek, isn't it?

Firefox has a plugin that lets you "channel surf" what Stumblers call the best-reviewed sites on the Web. Should you aspire to the title, you can become a Top Stumbler. Wikipedia defines StumbleUpon as a commercial web discovery service that integrates peer and social networking principles with one-click blogging.

The downside? As with all social networking sites, someone has to pay the bill. Expect targeted advertising on fewer than 2% of your page views. As of July, 2006, there were 1,000,000 registered stumblers and bloggers can use these tips to increase their StumbleUpon referrers and generate increased blog hits.

A temporary gold star to Stumblers who review sites so I can save time between that work stuff.