The Consumer’s Corner

Do you ever sit up late at night on the internet, really bored? You’ve checked out all of your favorite websites, some of them twice, and there’s just nothing left to do? Wish there was some way to ‘channel surf’ the internet, like your TV? Not just randomly either, but surf in a way that your beloved computer knows what you like to look at, goes out and finds it especially for you, and then delivers it straight to your screen at the simple push of a button? Yeah? You do? Well, you’re lazy.

Totally kidding. But that fantasy service does really exist, and it’s called StumbleUpon!, or Stumble for short. Stumble is a tool bar that attaches to your browser, Internet Explorer and Firefox (Safari as well? I don’t know, comment me.). You register your account, it’ll ask a few questions about about things you’re interested in, and off you go.

Clicking the ‘Stumble’ button on the tool bar will send you to a site that the service thinks matches your interest criteria. Once you’ve Stumbled, if you like the site you land on, you can (and should) click the ‘Thumbs Up’ button on the bar. If the site sucks, you click ‘Thumbs Down.’ Really complicated stuff, huh? Over a period of time, the program ‘learns’ (it’s smart!) your likes and dislikes, and will more consistently send you to more sites that you’ll love, and fewer that you’ll detest.

You already have favorite sites, right? Go ahead and give them the ‘Thumbs Up,’ this increases those sites ranking with the service, and let’s Stumble know you like that type of material. If it’s never been ‘Thumbed’ before, you can write a brief review of it, tag it to certain interests, ect. There are communities to join where you can share your favorite bookmarks with like minded people, see what the other friendly folks like you have to offer, and so on.

Oh yeah, if you enjoyed this article and end up trying Stumble out, you’ll come back and give Consumer’s Corner the ‘Thumbs Up.’ If you really, really love it, you click the title of each of your favorite articles and ‘Thumb’ that sub page, as well. This helps promote the site, a site you obviously like or you wouldn’t be reading this. But I’m not begging or anything (please, PLease, pretty PLEEEAAASSSEEE!!!!).

They’ve recently added video and picture services (and more) as well, but I’m kind of scared to play with those. I might never leave my computer. Anyway, it’s free, so try it out, and see how it works for you. I’ll never have another browser without it.

Official Site

–Jeremy Hobbs

stumble, stumleupon, social bookmarking, web 2.0

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Websites & Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.