Stumble Upon: A New Internet Experience

Have you ever been bored on the internet? You've checked your email, checked Facebook, and read the latest entries on Fmylife, and now you're just sitting there wondering what to do next? Recently, I stumbled upon an internet community and toolbar aptly called "StumbleUpon." It's quite a simple and genius application that makes the Internet experience much more engaging and entertaining.

The premise is simple. First you download the toolbar. Then you just click the Stumble button on it, and you're taken to a random page that other people on the internet have rated positively. You can add your friends on Stumble, and see what web pages they've been viewing. It's a wonderful tool for the internet surfer and, in my opinion, can be a great learning experience.

Stumble allows you to select a list of topics that you would want to Stumble through. These include anything and everything you can name, different languages, religions, arts, software, games, pictures, video, educational topics, and much more. It has a wonderful search option as well, where you simple type a keyword that you would like to stumble onto and it takes you to a random page associated with that keyword. This is great if you want to stumble through authors, actors, theories, or anything else. Just yesterday I typed in "chess" and found all sorts of wonderful sites related to chess.

StumbleUpon also has a wonderful features entitled "StumbleThru" where you have the option of choosing from one of many websites, and every time you click the Stumble button it takes you to another page on that website. Two of my favorite things to do is to StumbleThru Wikipedia and Youtube. It's wonderful to find random articles on Wikipedia that other users found interesting, and great to learn about random interesting trivia. On the other hand, it's equally fun to stumble through random Youtube videos that have drawn interest from other users. Some may be funny, but I also found many that are educational (the lotus leaf effect and Milton Friedman's take on greed quickly come to mind.)

You can stumble through videos, pictures, several sites such as BBC, CNN, FunnyOrDie, The Onion, Youtube, Wikipedia, and others. This isn't just a tool for the bored but it's useful for anyone, easily engaging and highly interesting. It's very easy to just click the button between activities and quickly stumble, though sometimes you get caught up and don't even realize how much time has passed. I highly recommend this to everyone and I believe that by going to their website you can give it a try before downloading the toolbar.