Oct 25

Lisa has thrown down the gauntlet, suggesting that we (the people whose blogs she reads) make an effort to post about 10 things on a topic every week.

This week is 10 Favorite Websites. For me, this changes a lot depending on what I’m obsessing over.

1. Universal Hub: Adam, the webmaster, combs a ton of RSS feeds looking for interesting, breaking, quirky stories about Boston. It’s the first place I check when something breaks because it gives me what people are saying, not just the quick hit blurb the mainstream news has. There’s a real community feel there that makes it more personal than going to boston.com or WBZ’s website which, most of the time, doesn’t even have the story up right away. I also enjoy his snarky headlines/comments on some of the stories.

2. Facebook: Enough said. I can’t get enough of finding out when my friends are making dinner or going out or using the bathroom!

3. Twitter: Like Lisa, I was suspicious of Twitter. It seemed pointless. But now, especially with the search feature, I’m a convert. Plus it’s nice to have somewhere to make a note of odd things I might encounter but don’t know who to tell, like the man riding a unicycle like a road bike a few weeks ago.

4. Center Field: A fantastic Sox blog with a plethora of Pedroia-related posts. That gets an A+ in my book.

5. Call of the Green Monster: He’s been on hiatus since August but it’s still full of side-splitting baseball-related (okay, mostly Sox-related) parody stories. I was going to link my favorite post but I couldn’t pick one, so go read all of them.

6. GMail: I love love love GMail because I was able to link it to my home email, allowing me to check all my email accounts in one place AND not have to deal with my hosting provider’s crappy webmail anymore. The search function is phenomenal. And it has gchat.

7. Goodreads: I’m not as active on Goodreads anymore but I do go back from time to time. I love being able to go back and see what I’ve read or what I thought about a certain book.

(this is getting hard)

8. Pandora: Streaming radio that plays songs based on a particular artist. I’ve had great luck finding songs this way.

9. Extra Bases: Boston.com’s Red Sox blog.

10. Group Recipes: They call it a Food Social Network but I call it a damn fine way to store recipes, and find new ones. The best part is the tag system, which is true of so much of the internet. You can search by flavor, season, cuisine, anything.