Week 3: Thing 7 -- Anything Tech Related post

For my anything tech related post, I just wanted to share a few interesting websites.

The websites that are most interesting to me are the ones that encourage you to share your own links. A community of like-minded individuals sharing information and engaging in dialogue. Or, if you prefer, a community of individuals who are twisted in the same way that you are twisted. Isn't that the most any of us can hope for, really? :)

Digg offers news items from around the web, organized by topic. People follow a link, read the story and decide whether or not to digg it. Stories with the most diggs rise to the top and, in that way, the digg community decides what the important news of the day is.

Metafilter has been around for a long time and some of you may have heard of it. Contibutors post links to things that they stumble across on the web. I'm amazed by some of the things I've learned from MeFi. The downside is that it's a lot more random than Digg. No neat tabs to sort stories or sites by topic. You never really know what you're going to get, but chances are it will be interesting.

DCist is a site devoted to all things DC. It is a member of something I've heard refered to as the IST-iverse, because there's also a Gothamist for NYC stories, an SFist for San Fran stories, etc, etc. When I first moved to the area, I used it to get tips on events of interest. While the stories are great, be sure to check out the comments--that's where the real action is.

Take for example this piece about the pros and cons of moving to Baltimore versus living in DC. You'll notice three short paragraphs from a DCist contributor followed by over 50 comments from readers.

I've follow spirited debate about all sorts of topics in the comments of DCist--some folks providing more cogent arguments than others. In their defense though, many of these people live and work in the neighborhoods in question; so they give you the real dirt on things.

In conclusion [STRAIGHTENS TIE], the websites that I like best are the ones that encourage sharing and collaboration and foster dialogue.