Tour of the Internets

Here's a work in progress. Next semester I am giving my students a tour of the internet early in our digital citizenship course. Please feel free to make suggestions in the comments.

General Resources for starting a blog-type thingie

• Rands in Repose: Weblog Writing, The Comments Controversy, Writers and Editors
• Epic Fu: "How to make a kick-ass web show"
• Lifehack: "How to Read a Painting"
• Andrew Sullivan: "Why I Blog"

Art Traditional and Digital

• Wooster collective, street art (large blog roll)
• PostSecret
• Daily Monster
• That was Epic (recontextualization)
• Coudal's MoOM, the Museum of Online Museums
• No Caption Needed, very smart intersection of politics and art--a great model. There is also a great link roll for those interested in photography.

Cool Hunting

• Wired's Underwire Cool Hunting, virtual reporting on real places, people, and things
• Fritanancy, cool stuff
• Daring Fireball, technology cool hunter
• Coudal Partners, the cool hunter's cool hunter
• Boing Boing -an internet cornerstone of everything; described by Time as a Geek Clubhouse, one of the first cool hunting sites
• Trend de la creme -focus on marketing and fashion NSFW
• Buzzfeed-tracking viral videos, searches, images etc. Has been described as "the last to get it"
• metafilter

Technology

• Slash.dot, I don't trust the opinion of anyone who doesn't know what this is. You don't have to like it, but you have to know about it...
• Ars Technica, once upon a time this was about art; now its raising geek-speak to an art form.
• Wired's Threat Level
• Electronic Freedom Foundation, the most important political organization in America that no one knows anything about.
• Web2Oh...Really?, a skeptical voice in a world of cheerleaders
• TechCrunch
• engadget
• lifehacker, what do you want to learn today

Finance / Business

• Freakonomics
• See WiseBread's "list of the 100 most popular personal finance blogs", more for the general public
• See Greenfaucet's "top finance blogs of 2008", more for majors, professionals, insiders

Video Games

• Penny Arcade, some of the most disorienting writing on the web... but everyone in the video game community is aware of these guys
• Slash.dot and engadget have robust forums dedicated to games
• joystiq
• games for lunch
• dasgamer
• major nelson, x-box insider and microsoft employee

Sports

• ESPN Sportsnation
• SI's Fannation
• Baseball Toaster, raises baseball blogging to an art form
• The Joy of Sox (incredible Red Sox blog roll)
• Bad Jocks
• FireJoeMorgan, sadly inactive, this was once among my favorite blogs
• baseball savvy

Comics and Funnies

• Penny Arcade
• Overcompensating
• Indexed
• xkcd, be sure to roll over
• Bad Gods
• My Milk Toof
• Treatloaf

Entertainment / Pop culture

• Gawker
• Radar
• Ohnotheydidnt
• The Movie Blog
• TV Squad
• pullquote (great link roll for independent movie people)
• dlisted
• epic fu, the hub of geek culture.
• The Frisky, description: a daily romp on the sexy side
• Non-Society, see esp question of the day

Professional Trolling / Punking / Debunking

• Fuckyoupenguin, hee hee hee
• Copyranter, cool hunter of sorts, advertising miscues
• Regret the Error, media mistakes of all sizes
• The Consumerist, letting the public bite back
• Why Women Hate Men (NSfW)
• You Suck at Craig's List
• Awful Library Books

Politics

• Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
• Crooks and Liars, far left with large blog roll
• The Huffington Post
• The Daily Beast
• RealClearPolitics, independent political blog
• Andrew Sullivan, difficult to categorize--leans right and libertarian; described by Susannah Breslin (reverse cowgirl) as a gay, catholic conservative.
• The Daily Kos, liberal, active
• Ace of Spades, the longest link rolls I have ever seen
• Slash.dot, yup--politics too
• Wired's Threat level TreeHugger, enviromental activism and news
• Feministing.com, not just politics, socio-political issues as well
• First Draft, social and political, incredible blog roll
• Rhetoric of Documentary, tough to know where to place this one--politics, academics, film-making; needed to put it on here for the link roll
• The Reverse Cowgirl (pornography, politics, sexuality and culture NSfW)

Fashion

• The Sartorialist
• Style.com, Vogue online
• Just My Cup of Tea, active in waves
• Style Bubble edgy, interesting blog roll

Music

• pitchfork, mostly independent music; novice music snobs like it; professional music snobs consider it too mainstream...
• last.fm
• elbo.ws, wide variety
• cdbaby, independent music
• residentadvisor, dance and electronica
• Jump Off, independent hip-hop
• largeheartedboy, more than just music
• The Rap Up (large hip-hop blog roll)
• Kanye West's blog

Smart People Writing Smart Things

• Flowing Data
• Blog-William Gibson (rarely posts, but its usually cool stuff)
• Rands in Repose, engineering, writing, life.
• The Littlest Bird, human wellness, diverse topics
• mrxk- dark, at times off-color, political humor
• Both Wearing Black Masks, humanism, spiritualism, politics, etc.
• Velveteen Rabbi, beautiful poetic prose
• Radosh.net, see especially his blog roll. His incredible blog roll, his anti-caption contest, and his PowerPoint Shakespeare.
• Dooce, motherhood
• gladwell.com
• stevenberlinjohnson.com
• dangillmor.com/blog
• raw thought (Aaron Swartz)
• crooked timber (by-line: out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made)
• ill doctrine (podcasts, currently my favorite thing on the internet--I still haven't made it all the way through his fabulous link roll)
• ZeFrank (formerly my favorite thing on the internet--I miss The Show)