Imgur has always been one of my favorite websites to visit when I just plain feel like killing time on the internet. The website is very simple and mindless, yet often highly entertaining. Most of the UI is just clicking on a minimal set of buttons and thumbnails to view images and gifs. It's easy to search images and sort by what your looking for. They have changed some minor things in the last year or so that I really like. Namely, you used to have to scroll back up to the top of a long series of images to go to the next when finished. Now they have added a fixed scroll bar that stays with you as you go down the page, so if you get halfway down and decide you're bored with the content, you can simply move on to the next one. They don't sell anything and as far as I know it is free. I've never signed up because I have never felt the need to comment but I know most imgurians try and get upvotes and whatnot. It's kind of a cool internet community with its own language, jokes, and references. Only problem is sometimes if you haven't been on in a while you won't get any of the comments or tags. My only complaint is that after about an hour I feel like I have been a total slug. In other words, its addicting. They make it so easy to just keep clicking.
Another site that I frequent is facebook. Like imgur, facebook is a timekiller for me, but also a way to stay updated on what's happening in the lives of friends and family. Additionally, by following/liking certain other groups and by the content your friends share, you can actually search through quite an array of news articles and blogs that people post. Its a good source for getting a feel for the pulse of your family and friend circle. Though facebook has a fair bit of clutter in the form of sidebars, the eye is drawn immediately to the newsfeed, as that is where users spend most of there time. Inclduing me. Usually, I will simply scroll through my newsfeed to get a feel for what's going on until I see a post/share that I want to look at more in depth. A nice feature about facebook is the fixed taskbar that scrolls with you at the top of the page. That way, if you get super far down the page and want to navigate elsewhere it's fairly straightforward. Facebook is not as big of a time drain for me. Its easy to pop over for 5 or 10 minutes to take a break from work and its incredibly informative if you have more time to spend reading. I come away from the site feeling more informed usually.
The third site that I use frequently is websudoku.com. This is a very simple web page. In fact it looks quite dated and bland. Not a lot of design going on, but it is fairly straightforward in what you can do with it. I go here from time to time to give my mind a break or to kill time by solving a sudoku puzzle. They are challenging and I think the feeling of accomplishment sovling a puzzle sort of cancels the feeling of wasting time. The easy ones take less than 10 minutes anyway, so its generally not a site that I spend a lot of my time on.
Coming Soon!
Copyright Jordan M. Schreuder 2014