Fraction Of One

As well as mentioning older more established sites it's occasionally nice to ramble on about new sites too. Like Fractions of One, a new music site that launched around the beginning of November and concentrates on features, recommendations and in depth interviews rather than record reviews.

Recently the site has featured artists like new Brainlove signing Mat Reviere, bittersweet rock band The Tailors and avant pop upstarts Munch Munch and previously it has featured the likes of Shoes and Socks Off and Alloy Ark.

So indulge your web 2.0 craving and subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on twitter, it's totally worth it.

Listverse

Making top ten lists is something I've done for as long as I can remember, it's a fun way to pass the time and can help you reminisce about your favourite tv programs for example my top ten scrubs moments, I'd actually struggle to do this but the JD and Turk drum line would be somewhere up in the top 5, oh and 'betrayal five' would definitely be in there too.

Because of this I found that Listverse, a website focused purely around lists of trivia from a variety of different sources is pretty fascinating, although perhaps it really shouldn't be. But where else can I read about the top ten unusual cat breeds *spoiler* the number one choice isn't Siamese but it is possibly the scariest thing I've seen since The Thing it doesn't even look real, more like one of those creatures that would feed on humans on some god forgotten planet in a futuristic sci-fi horror film.

Other favourites are the top 10 Bizarre Tourist Attractions which include the dictator inspired Neutrality Arch, a life sized depiction of the great battle of Sekigahara featuring life sized depictions of mutilation and ritual suicide and a house featuring around 2,100 real painted skulls.

This isn't to say Listverse isn't without it's flaws the top 10 genres of Extreme Music coming across as not only slightly uninformed but the inclusion of 'Political Hip Hop' seems head scratchingly odd particularly when the first paragraph highlights the fact that many artists who could be said to have formed the roots of todays modern hip-hop came from a highly politicized background.

This aside there's plenty of other lists on the site to both entertain and inform and chances are provide the answer to that elusive pub quiz question and as per usual there's space under each list to debate inclusions or exclusions on the latest list addition.

Read Platform

Platform has gone from being totally unknown by me to one of my favourite places to go on the internet. I first read about it whilst perusing a guardian article about sites made by (and for) young people, which made me a little cynical admittedly since I thought it'd be purely composed of crass 'edgy' articles, a little bit like the tongue in cheek article how to pick up children which has been featured on the site this week, and yoof slang but when I finally got round to looking at it I actually found the site to be quite refreshing.

Not only for the fact that the editorial content covers in knowledgeable fashion the some of the most popular elements of youth culture insert compulsory < "what booze drugs sex?"> comment here but this is also bolstered by the use of cross site material from places like lookbook.nu and coverage of up and coming bands such as the casio drums and guitar toting Internet Forever and US punks Pissed In The Eye. The site also updates ridiculously fast, so there is always something new to look at whenever you check back. Although I suppose the only disadvantage of this is that articles don't stick around long on the front page and it can be a bit tricky to find older articles.

One of my favourite regular features is the Secret Diary Of A Teenage Boy which achieves that rare standard of being realistic without compromising on being humorous. The 'I'm joking' paragraph in his latest entry is funniest things I've read in awhile which probably hints at the fact that I should probably read more. Oh well.

Download Squad

I really enjoy reading Download Squad, there's just something so refreshing about the way that the articles bypass technological jargon and instead provide readers with easy points of comparison.

Like for example their recent coverage of Google's acquisition of AdMob, a deal worth 750 million, I mean I can tell that's a large amount of money but I mean it's given even more weight when you think that that's enough to buy 3.9 million people iPod touches, which is almost the entire population of Ireland. Sort of like how the total bomb tonnage in the Vietnam war was 7,078,032 tons thats equal to 1,000lbs of bombs for every man, women and child in Vietnam. Basically that's a lot of iPod touches.

Alongside news from the front line of desktop and mobile technology, also featured on the front page are various productivity boosting tips including 14 Extremely Useful Firefox Addons and Four apps that will/might keep your wife from killing you and to be honest I can see why despite any previous indiscretions any husband who can restore his wifes data with the click of a button is going to be well on his way to watching that frown turn upside down.

There's also a Time Waster section which gives you plenty of games to while away the hours with including my personal pick of the bunch Small Worlds which despite the simple exploration premise managed to keep me entertained for hours.