Hey Team! My birthday is next week!!!! I’m pretty excited to be 27! That’s a perfect cube! Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m getting for my birthday yet (!!! surprises!!!!), but I really like Bilbo’s idea of giving presents to other people on your birthday, so I thought I would get you something!
Unfortunately, I’m pretty cheap, and you’re the Internet, so it’ll have to be free things. So, here are 27 free things I like that you might like too! I organized them into categories for you:
1-5 are great web tools for different things!
1. GoodReads
Sorry the first one isn’t much of a gift, since you already know all about it
I know I talk about GoodReads all the time and you probably know all about it because you have it anyway. If not, you should!
2. Postable
Super simple and convenient interface!
Postable is a free online address book! I like it because it’s cute and easy, and they provide a link you can send to people to fill in their own info that automatically gets added to your contacts.
3. Feedly
It does its job well
Feedly is what I migrated to after the sad death of GoogleReader. It’s the only way to keep up with all the RSS feeds I follow!
4. Postcrossing
I just learned about Post Crossing pretty recently, but I am all in
Basically you sign up to send someone in the world a postcard (you’re assigned an address), and someone in the world sends you a postcard!! Exciting!!
5. Geosense
Strangely addictive
It’s a simple game: two players, each looking at a map, have a few seconds to click where they think a given city is. Points are given based on closest distance. There are different maps to choose from (world or USA) and I can waste hours getting pwned by someone from Finland.
Gifts 6-9 are cool places to learn something!
6. Io9
This stuff is important
Sometimes science news, sometimes interesting TV/movie facts. WHATEVER
7. The Mary Sue
I am all about this concept, incidentally
The Mary Sue has movie and TV news as well as random fan-made creations.
The “Daily Life” posts are often my favorite
The Big Picture is part of the Boston Globe’s website that publishes photo series, either on specific news events, specific themes (spring around the world), or just “Daily Life” for a particular week.
Education or entertaining, always fascinating
A repository of charts from around the Internet, from super serious graphs about income inequality to silly Venn diagrams about pizza.
Numbers 10-14 are funny!
10. NYTimes Haiku
Some are funnier than others
This blog just collects sentences from the New York Times that are unwitting haikus. It’s best to read them in a dramatic voice.
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