You Learn Something New Every Day

The wonderful world of Stumbling

I love finding the best web sites out there, especially sites that provide me with useful information, which I then provide here on my blog.

So I checked out StumbleUpon, yet another social bookmarking site out there that uses ordinary people’s tastes in websites to bring out the best in the Web and showcase it.

StumbleUpon brings you to sites that other StumbleUpon users (”Stumblers”) have marked as interesting, cool, useful, funny, etc. You download a plug-in for your web browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer) that inserts the “StumbleUpon toolbar” into your browser. The toolbar is made up of these elements:

This is the big mama! Simply click on this “Stumble!” button and you will be whisked to a cool Website of some sort. If you like the site and want to see more like it, click the thumbs up:

You can also click the thumbs down, of course, if it’s not your style. Now, if you really like the page, you can click the Send to button, as displayed below:

The little white speech bubble brings you to reviews about the site you have just Stumbled Upon.

But what if you don’t want simply any old site? What if you want to see only sites about science and geography? Simply access this menu on the toolbar with your mouse:

You can “favorite” sites, share the sites you’ve “stumbled” with friends, and even customize what categories you want included in your random “stumbles.” Eventually, the toolbar learns what you like and suggests certain categories to you—but it’s all up to you what you want to StumbleUpon!

To get involved, simply set up an account at StumbleUpon.com. Once logged in, simply go back to the homepage and scroll down just a bit. On the right you will find something like this:

And then you’re all set to go! Happy surfing (trust me, you won’t want to stop using this!)

June 21st, 2007 Posted by Michaell at 09:19am | The Web | one comment

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