| After four years of writing this column and more than 400 website reviews, I find I’m constantly asking myself, "What’s good on the web? What are people using the Internet for?" Well, it depends on who you ask, really. According to memepool.com (a meme is defined by dictionary.com as "a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another"), the top five hotly linked subjects are computing, music, wackos, web and movies.
Google, one of the most-used Internet search engines and now a publicly traded company, keeps a list of the most popular queries in countries from America to Sweden. In its aptly-titled zeitgeist link you’ll find Britney Spears shows up on a few top-10 lists, sharing the spotlight with cheap flights and Spongebob Squarepants.
My homepage on Netscape lists the Fox Network’s Bill O’Reilly as the top search, followed by Halloween costumes. True, the U.S. presidential polls are also listed, but scarcely beat out National Boss Day. At least there’s no Britney.
Fark.com, is another site devoted to interesting news links, receiving 350-million page-views last year. Its top-links listing is considered an excellent web-surfer tracking device. The top hits consist of dubious subliminal Britney porn, Playstation 2 screen captures and 9-11 photos.
The web is a haven for guilty pleasures – the commercial, the political and the just plain strange. Checking past Web Watch instalments in the Fast Forward archives at ffwdweekly.com (it’s all there, people – not just the Best of Calgary winners), I breathe a sigh of relief. From fetish sites to U.S. politics, rest assured, this column continues to showcase what's happening on the web. |
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