StumbleUpon

This is definitely my favorite new Web 2.0 app.  If you aren't familiar with StumbleUpon, it's a Web toolbar that sends you to random sites that have been rated (by simple thumbs up or thumbs down) by other users of the service (there are over two million of them, so they've rated loads of sites.  You just click the "stumble" button and off you go!  You tweak your preferences by ticking off your interests from independent film to mythology to daytrading.  It's quite addictive.  You can rate any page you visit just by clicking thumbs up or thumbs down (not the most definitive rating system, but it's what makes the service work).  I invited a bunch of people to join (sorry if you weren't interested but I get excited about stuff like this, I had to share....I hope you're enjoying it if you were one of the folks who did sign up!).  Definitely one of the most formidable threats to procrastinators on the Internet radar.

I've "stumbled upon" a whole bunch of neat sites so far (you can see them here)  The second page it sent me to was this flash game called Double Wire.  Beware....AMAZINGLY addictive!  It's sort of like experiencing life as a drunken Spiderman with spaghetti limbs.  Lots of fun.  It's incredible that games like this work so well....I could play any number of overproduced and underwhelming games for a NextGen console, but a ridiculously simple game like Double Wire can keep me coming back for weeks.  Don't underestimate good design, I guess.  No matter how simple it is.

I really love things like StumbleUpon.  There's such an incredible amount of stuff on the Web.  A lot of it is garbage, but some of it is lots of fun, or amazingly useful, or reveals things and interests that you never even knew about.  Or just plain weird!  You'd never know that any of it was out there without innovative services like StumbleUpon.  Like the ambient music guide that I found.  I've been interested in ambient music since I picked up my first Aphex Twin album three years ago, but it's a bit of an intimidating genre to tackle.  It's hardly a pop radio smash machine, so if you want to hear new stuff you have to do some searching.  I wouldn't have thought to search for something like that.  And the only reason this stuff works is because people use it and build extensive libraries of what they do and don't like.  It becomes more and more effective the more people sign up.  It is an incredible social system, make no mistake about it.

Oh Internet....