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Where one reporter satisfies his curiosity and thirst for trends on the Web

JUSTIN ELLIS, Staff Writer August 6, 2007

Here's the great thing about the Internet: You can find anything you want.

On its face, the Internet is a research tool. But let's be honest, you can waste a lot of time "researching" fantasy sports, celebrity news, video clips and who-knows-what-else online.

What makes all of this more incredible is that it happened so fast -- we went from not knowing to use the @ symbol instead of spelling out "at" in e-mail addresses to everyone having at least one address to receive spam.

It's become ubiquitous, and yet, each day there's something else new, exciting and potentially weird happening online. Wasn't it just a minute ago that YouTube popped up?

When they asked me to jump the fence and start writing for iHerald, that was at least one of the reasons why I decided to do it.

The Internet is changing how we live our lives, and it's going to be a strange journey along the way, so why not have fun with it?

• Threadless -- www.threadless.com

• The Fan House -- www.aolsportsblog.com This is right up there with other sports blogs like Deadspin and the Big Lead that I check daily. It's a great combination of breaking news, commentary and comedy that comes from writers who are largely not typical sports journalists.

• Pop Candy -- www.blogs.usatoday.com/ popcandy/ Whitney Matheson has a great job -- scour the Internet for breaking news on music, TV shows, movies, comic books and all sorts of weird, pop culture Internet phenomena. If I've got funny TV or movie news in my blog, odds are I saw it first in Pop Candy. It's a daily read.

• My Old Kentucky Blog -- www.myoldkyhome.blogspot.com -- and Soul-Sides -- www.soul-sides.com Two excellent music blogs. My Old Kentucky Blog just serves up great new music and bands I typically have never heard of. Soul-Sides strikes a balance between digging up lost soul and funk classics as well as deep, unheard tracks or remixes of old school and current hip-hop. Great ways to learn about new music.

• Gizmodo -- www.gizmodo.com There are a lot of gadget/technology blogs out there, but I check out Gizmodo pretty regularly. Often they have the same news and rumors as Engadget, but seeing as Gizmodo is part of the Gawker network, there is a necessary amount of sarcasm that comes with it. A good combination for news and geekery on video games, cell phones, cameras, computers and TVs.

• The City Pages -- www.citypages.com I like to check out what a lot of different alternative weeklies around the country are up to, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, Seattle Weekly, but the City Pages is special to me because it's from my home town of Minneapolis. They're not just another snarky indie paper, when they take someone to task -- the Timberwolves, a city councilor, a restaurant -- they've done their homework.

• Romenesko -- www.poynter.org This may only be of interest to people in journalism, but Romenesko is the best way to stay on top of news about people who report the news. Some of it is inside baseball, but it's great to see media criticism and insight on things like media consolidation, ownership issues, open records battles, and all the design/people/style changes.