Open Thread: What's Your Web Vice?
We’ve published hundreds of articles on using the web to improve your productivity. We’ve offered advice on convincing your boss to let you telecommute. We’ve offered tips on just about every piece of web software out there. You know, and we know, that the web is a great tool for getting your work done.
OK, are all the bosses safely out of the room now? Great! Let’s take a few minutes today to talk about the part of the web that we usually ignore here at WWD: the big, sprawling, time-wasting, fun part. Here’s your chance to share your guilty pleasures, the sites you visit when everyone just thinks you’re working, in short: your web vices. Can’t stay away from Dilbert? Fascinated by SlashDot? Hypnotized by an obscure MUD? ‘fess up in the comments so the rest of us can play too.
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somethingawful, kdice, urbandead
Instead of listening to my professor preach about formal logic, I check my affiliate stats…
Justin Dupre
http://www.blogosis.com
Desktop Tower Defense! Desktop Tower Defense!
I play Scrabble on Facebook, watch the stock market, and watch live music videos on YouTube waaaay too much.
Travian!
ask.metafilter.com – I can spend hours and hours on it.
Google Reader, loaded up with every obscure hobby and interest that crosses my mind. It’s a fascinating world. Webcomics, stationery, scale modeling, Linux, illustration, reading, martial arts, web design, outdoor life, etc.
For a while though, I worked at a job where I literally could not find enough work to do. On top of that, our web access was monitored, and I didn’t want to give my boss the satisfaction of finding me surfing. I went through the entire CSS spec that came with Dreamweaver, and then I learned all the Illustrator shortcut keys.
Finally I got so bored, having completed every imaginary project I could think of, that I brought in my PDA and read ebooks all day, every day.
It felt like a mortal sin, but that place was so locked down, even my boss was locked down. I couldn’t talk to him without arousing suspicion. The CEO was on a whole list of prescription drugs and ran the place like it was an atomic submarine. I was once sent a warning because I arrived for work 2 minutes early, rather than the normal 5 minutes early.
Now that I work for myself, I’m grateful that I had that opportunity. It gave me a lot of confidence in myself and trust in my inner compass that tells me what’s right and wrong, rather than letting a mismanaged organization drag me down.
Twitter, twitter and more twitter. Throw in a few hockey blogs, committing stats from NHL.com to memory, obsessively checking my own blog’s statistics, and aimless surfing with stumbleupon, and you have a day well wasted.
YouTube of old movies and music videos. Best swordfight scenes I’ve found so far are Princess Bride (duh), Court Jester (duh), and the Gene Kelly Three Musketeers. My most delightful find may have been a Richard Burton/Julie Andrews version of the title song to Camelot.
And let’s not forget WWD. Ever since making this site my Firefox homepage I get sucked in every morning for longer than I should. Perhaps I should change my homepage to Google spreadsheets instead.