A lot of people give me suspicious looks whenever I go surfing on the 'Net, as if I'm performing some sort of hideous sin or something. I guess it's because they never seem to understand what I do when I'm online for at least an hour per session. The only thing they know is that I'm either reading some incomprehensible article online, or that I'm downloading some other incomprehensible program online. Stop the looks: it's not as if I'm downloading or reading porn; porn definitely would not be incomprehensible, rather it would be blatantly clear: "XXX Paradise!" or "Just Turned 18!" (pornography is prohibited for those under 18 in the US). I'd like to to use this post to actually share with you the uber-secret websites that I surf and all the darn stuff that I actually download from the Internet.
What are the websites that I have to open first whenever I go online? Since I'm a self-confessed Mac addict, the 1st website would have to be MacAddict (www.macaddict.com)! On it's front-page, the editors would actually compile 1) news all around the Apple Kingdom, 2) a bit of news of news of the Microsoft world, 3) a bit of general IT news, and 4) news better considered as general enlightment, which on some days can be considered as really cool, and on some days not really worth opening. This website really glorifies whaterver's good on the Mac and really humiliates Microsoft whenever it gets the chance, but sometimes it doesn't hold back when it comes to blunders from Apple (the Apple Legal Division and problems on the 1st gen. iPod Nano come first to mind). If I'm looking for news of unsuspected stuff, this is the 1st place I go to (but I actually go to all the sites for that matter).
Next stop: Macworld (www.macworld.com). Macworld is the extremely casual Apple website; Macworld is the exact opposite, professional in approach, with good objective advice on matters close to Mac consumers. They publish articles which are suitable for both Mac newbies, as well as the Mac experts, with hints for example on using Unix commands to perform secret tasks. This website also publishes podcasts which are downloadable for free. All in all, I say that this website provides the best content concerning the Mac, but it's not as updated as I would like, not touching on the trivial (which is probably also a good thing). The website also provides guides on software & hardware, advising readers on the pros and cons of each choice.
The 3rd website would be Macrumors (www.macrumors.com). As the name implies, this website provides news on rumors concerning Apple, while not forgetting all of the true proven news. This is generally a light website, nothing heavy, just news or rumors.
The last website dedicated to the Mac platform would be Apple Matters (www.applematters.com). This website is similar to Macworld, but publishes new articles on a daily basis, ranging from reviews to news to flashbacks to personal comments on whatever's going on. This website opens comments on each articles, so basically you could usually flaming between the pro-Mac and the pro-Windows, including sometimes much-needed buffering from the moderate faction. But this is expected of a website which is much driven by sentiments leading to blatant bias by the writers, unlike the more objective-driven Macworld. But if I 'm looking for new articles, I can expect them to come from this website. However, all of these websites, as others, usually do not update with new articles on Saturdays and Sundays. Hey, they need a break as well.
Glossary of terms for the technologically impaired:
Difficult term: UNIX - A multi-user operating system primarily used to manage large corporate servers.
Moderately difficult term: Podcast - An audio/video public broadcast which is similar to radio or short television clips. Freely distributed via downloads. Made by all kinds of people except cyborgs and humanoids.
Easy, simplistic, almost-impossible-not-to-know term: Internet - An international computer network, accessible to the public via modem links, aka what you're surfing on. If you still don't understand, ask the owner of the petrol kiosk near your home; he probably knows it. Now. Or your ex-kindergarten teacher, pet iguana, parents, siblings, daughter, great-grandfather...
End of Part 1.
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