How To Use StumbleUpon To Find SciFi Websites
Lately I’ve been using StumbleUpon.com as an excellent source of new science fiction and fantasy websites. When I’m lacking inspiration for Solar Flare, I often go stumbling for half an hour to see if anything catches my imagination.
What Is StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a user generated and categorized directory of web pages, pictures and video. It’s a way of moving around the web and finding new sites based on the recommendations of other users with similar interests to your own.
Instead of specifically searching for some information, users just Stumble from page to page in a category of their choice.
How Does it Work?
StumbleUpon uses a ratings system to establish website quality. As you Stumble around the web you will be sent to pages which friends and like-minded stumblers have recommended. The idea is to let you see pages that you most likely wouldn’t find if you were using a search engine.
The more you stumble, rate and submit pages the better StumbleUpon gets at suggesting new sites for you to visit. The great thing about this system is that unlike a search engine you don’t have to know what you’re looking for in order to find something of interest.
The StumbleUpon Toolbar
The key to the system is the StumbleUpon Toolbar. It sits in your browser and allows you to stumble to a new website at the click of one button. You can also easily rate any page you visit as either a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
If the page has never been submitted to StumbleUpon before, you are given the opportunity to categorize and review the page.
There are versions of the StumbleUpon toolbar available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
StumbleUpon has over 500 categories (or topics as they call them) and you can choose your interests in order to guide the system to offer you the most relevant content. Obvious categories for visitors to this site include:
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy Books
- Comic Books
Because of the large number of users (over 5 million), there is a constant stream of new pages and pictures being submitted to the StumbleUpon directory so there’s always something new for you to see.
What Sort of Sites Can You Find?
Here are a few examples from a quick stumble I took while writing this article:
- Mark Garlick Words and Pictures Ltd. - Website of a freelance illustrator with some excellent science fiction images.
- 10 Must-Read “First Contact” Novels - From the Seti.com blog
- Did Bugs Bring Down The Dinosaurs - An article from Cosmos
- Vendetta_UK’s Doctor Who Artwork - Some nice desktop wallpaper
- You Have Ten Seconds To Reach A Safe Distance - io9.com article on scifi’s love of blowing things up.
All those in less than 10 minutes of stumbling. And remember those are what came up for me. Since the sites offered to you are based on the ratings you submit, you will get a distinctly different set of results to me.
Try It Out
So hop on over to StumbleUpon, sign up (its free), download the toolbar and start enjoying some of the thousands of science fiction sites you didn’t even know existed.
If you do sign up, why not check out my page. Let me know if you add me as a friend.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Manxom Vroom
I signed on, and added you as a friend. This seems like a good service to keep track of good pages I find while surfing.
Manxom Vrooms last blog post..This is why they invented the internet.
Aug 13th, 2008
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