Maybe you’ve heard of StumbleUpon. I vaguely knew of its existence for quite a while but never took a close look until earlier this week. I read an article a couple of days ago about the flaws of Digg’s front page and how Reddit is attempting to improve on the idea of user submitted news, sites, Socialist screeds, etc. What caught my attention was the description of how StumbleUpon was different from both Reddit and Digg.

The answer to the problem is quite simple. In fact the right answer has been around for quite a while and it’s called StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon has pages akin to the traditional social news sites’ front pages, but for a majority of the users, StumbleUpon is not a destination site. You install a browser toolbar, select your preferences, and you never have to visit the actual site ever again (unless you want to change settings or post to your blog). The toolbar sends you directly to pages that match your preferences and your voting habits. The more you use it, the better the pages you get.

My interest was piqued so I created an account. I entered my interests and installed the Firefox toolbar. After that, it’s as simple as clicking the Stumble button. You’re brought to a site someone has submitted to StumbleUpon that somehow fits your interests. Once there you can use the toolbar to say whether you like the site or not which helps StumbleUpon choose the sites it will present to you in the future. It’s like Pandora for web sites.

I really like this sort of tool because it helps me find sites that might located in the mythical Unsearchable Internet. Those are sites that for some reason are unsearchable by the major search engines. If someone happens upon the site and thinks it’s cool, they can submit it to StumbleUpon. I also use del.icio.us for finding sites that are hidden. I’ve had a lot of success searching other people’s bookmarks.

StumbleUpon improves the idea of finding interesting sites that might be unsearchable by one more step. When searching del.icio.us, you have to think of the topic you want to search for, when you use StumbleUpon, you can find Internet goodness you had never even dreamed of.

From time to time, when I’ve collected a few interesting sites that I would like to share, I’ll post them here. Today, I’ve got a some interesting ones.

Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad - Print this one out and hang it up on your fridge. I’m not sure how accurate these numbers are, but they are probably a good guideline. As Nate pointed out, some of the ranges are kind of large, for example Tabasco Sauce goes bad in 2 to 5 years. That might make me kind of nervous while residing in that range. Frank’s RedHot tastes better any way.

Frozen Wave Phenomenon at Lake Huron - I’ve never heard of this phenomenon and it looks really cool. We don’t get winters like that in Central PA.

HijiNKS Ensue: Geek Webcomic - This particular strip involves a subject near and dear to my heart… wiping Internet Explorer from the face of the earth.

MonkeySee - Videos on how the experts do things. There are videos on all sorts of subject.

P.S. I will blame my job on the lack of posts here the last two months. It has sucked the creativity right out of me.