Web Gems
Welcome to the web gems portion of my website! Here you'll be able to find websites that I like and what those reasons are. I will be updating this page weekly, so that in the chance that you find what I'm putting here interesting, you can see a new submission every seven days.
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Soundcloud is yet again another music related website. It's awesome in a couple of ways. First, you can find really long mixes. And by really long, I mean over an hour. And for free without being illegal. It's sort of like YouTube but solely dedicated to music. If you're an artist you can put your songs up and give people options to download the track or even buy it. Another interesting feature is that you can leave comments on the song at specific points on the song's timeline. For example, if you wanted to say how 0:53 is when the song got bad, you would click on the blue bar below the song's wave display and you can leave your thoughts wherever you clicked. The website is very poular with electronic music more than anything if you're into that genre. |
If you like music, you should know about Grooveshark. I found out about it just a few days ago and I've been kicking myself for using YouTube to listen to music for years. Grooveshark has pretty much every album from almost any artist you listen to. I've found songs from albums that have millions of views on YouTube to songs with only a couple of thousand on YouTube; A couple of thousand views on YouTube isn't much at all in relativity. Not only do they have a giant database of music, they also have an internet radio feature, like that of Pandora or Slacker. I'd suggest signing up for a "VIP" account if you like the website- you get unlimited listening and no ads at all, and that's a pretty good deal in my opnion for such an awesome page.
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In short, WolframAlpha is the Google of "computational search engines". Well, for me at least. It's usefulness is unlimited for things like doing calculations that Google normally can't, as well as immediately coming up with the information you need to know. Do you want to know the distance from the earth to the moon? Search it, you won't need to scour through a myriad of links, no, you just have to look at what came up, and your answer will be there. It's basically the Google of science, but don't try to use it as Google with things like searching for your name. What it does is it acts as a database and calculator for math and science, not as tool for searching the web like Google, Bing, or whoever. |
If you're interested in digital media or arts, chances are you're familiar with Planet Renders, or PR. In essence, this website is your "one stop shop" for almost anything related to digital arts. It doesn't have photoshop brushes or those sorts of things, but it does have probably the best database of renders (images with transparencies behind them) on the internet. Where it shines though, is the forum. Its community is very helpful, albeit a little elitest. The sense of condesending from the more experienced members is not fun to deal with at first, but you'll soon realize how much the strong critique makes you better. If someone says your piece sucks, they'll explain why, thus allowing you to improve for next time. The community is tightly knit and this also helps you grow and improve. If you're looking into learning photoshop, this is probably the best place to go. |
Tumblr is an interesting website, and there's a lot of cool things about it. It's sort of like Twitter but it doesn't suck- you can upload pictures, even GIFs, have embedded videos, edit the CSS of your page, and like Twitter, follow people. The nice thing about tumblr is that a lot of the accounts aren't just people posting "Eating dinner now", but rather they relate to topics you're interested about. For example, I like astronomy and there's an account which posts news and pictures, as well as it answers people's questions relating to the topic. Whenever you log on, there's stuff you're interested about, usually pictures. Be it architecture, memes, science or photography, there's always someone interesting to follow. |
This website here is obviously a purpose-specific place per se, but if you're into longboarding you shouldn't be caught dead without an account on the forums. The community is really helpful with any problems you may have, the users range from newbies to professionals, and there's even sections for get togethers which are relatively safe, even though it sounds pretty dangerous. The buy and sell section is pretty helpful and I've bought stuff from others- it's sort of a like the craigslist of skateboarding if you have other people on the forums living near you. Although, that doesn't mean there's no scammers so if you do choose to take my advice, be cautious about what you buy or sell. |
Here's one of my favorite websites- Something Awful. Not only do they have articles on the homepage which always prove to be entertaining and interesting, but they also have a giant forum which is really the best part about SA. I personally only read the forums because I'm too cheap to buy an account, but there's never an absence of interesting stuff to read about.
On a side note, it's a great time killer.
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