An age-old post topic (see David Airey’s, Andy Clarke, etc), so thought it was about time I got round to doing a URL ABC myself. The premise is simple: for each letter of the alphabet, you’re meant to pick the first entry in your browser’s history. Being the awkward so-and-so I am, I’ve disabled history in my browser of choice (Opera), so I’ve gone through my bookmarks instead!
A: Amazon
I’m assuming everyone knows about Amazon, but if not: it’s a wallet destroyer (I blame one-click checkout), so best to stay away ;)
B: BBC News
That bastion of Britishness (and news, obviously).
C: Clients from Hell
Light relief from other designers/developers. My personal favourite is probably ‘This is everything we asked for but not what we wanted’: sometimes, you just can’t win!
D: Damn Interesting
I’d forgotten about this until I saw it in my bookmarks. Does what it says on the tin: provides ‘damn interesting’ content!
E: Earl Grey & Battenburg
It appears I don’t have anything bookmarked that begins with e…earlgreyandbattenburg.co.uk is it!
F: Flickr
A boring choice, but always good for a break from staring at CSS!
G: Google
I don’t technically have it bookmarked since I use Opera’s address bar to search, but nothing else is in my bookmarks for ‘G’.
H: (College)Humor
Ah, Americans and their persistent misspelling of words. Some gems hidden among some poorer content: this is how I came across one of my favourite web comics – Amazing Super Powers.
I: Inkscape
Open source vector-editing software. Pretty good, if lacking a few features found in other packages (especially for print). If you’re a beginner, you might find the Inkscape Cookbook worth a look.
J: Joomla!
Not all that surprising, given a certain book (Joomla 1.5 Templates Design) and a recent project or two I’ve been working on.
K: Keshen8
Source of entertaining Lego videos on YouTube. My personal favourite is the Mac vs PC advert parody. You might also enjoy oldScratch’s videos.
L: Lamebook
A favourite time-filler…stupid statuses etc collected from Facebook.
M: Magento
Again, hardly surprising. Suppose I should also mention Michael Peacock.
N: Nitrome
Nitrome are online game developers; very good game developers. In particular, I’ve wasted invested hours playing Ice Breaker Gathering and Rubble Trouble.
O: Opera
Without getting all preachy, it’s an ‘awesome‘ browser.
P: Peacock Carter
Ok, so it’s not exactly bookmarked, but it had to be in the list somewhere!
Q: ?
None.
R: RICS
This must be the anomaly – the website for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Probably had this bookmarked for a client project.
S: Saturday Morning Breakfast Club
A recent discovery of mine, Saturday Morning Breakfast Club provides regular entertainment in both comic and video form (see SMBC Theater, as the Yanks insist on misspelling ‘theatre’).
T: Twitter
Obviously.
U: UTurnTV
A source of some quite compelling material (including the victory dance). Jules, who is in the videos, is also on Twitter: @UTurnJules.
V: VPI.net (Dilbert)
vpi.net is what shows up in my RSS feed for Dilbert cartoons…a good job too, otherwise I’d be head-scratching for a better idea!
W: Wolfram Alpha
Not a search engine, but a computational knowledge engine – incredibly useful for looking up city populations and other assorted, useless trivia. Probably best described as a the first-born child of Wikipedia and Google.
X: ?
None.
Y: YouTube
In particular, the SMBC ‘Theater’ channel – funny stuff (just not safe for work):
Z: ?
None.