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)
