The Interwebs Isn’t (Just) For Porn.

[Sidenote: Before I start, I have a special announcement. My website has been banned by the Great Firewall of China. I'm getting censored by an entire government! I am illegal to 1/6th of the world! That's so awesome... soooo awesome. I feel so special...]

There’s this huge joke that the internet is just for porn. The problem is, it’s not really a joke.

This is a Google Trends diagram of “porn” vs “science”.

For the not-so-savvy, Google Trends is a branch of Google that allows you to view keywords and the frequency of their searches over the course of the years. Above is the blue line which represents the word “porn” and the red line which represents “science”. The graph top half of the graph represents the number of times “porn” was searched vs the number of times “science” was searched and the bottom of the graph represents the number of times “porn” was mentioned in the news vs the number of times “science” was mentioned in the news. So… despite science dominating porn in the news sector, porn has consistently whopped on science in terms of what people are most interested in finding on the internet.

So I’ve decided to start a series entries about websites/web2.0 apps that I think are awesome. After all, the interwebs is good for a lot more than just pornography.

First up: Twitter.

A microblogging site. It may seem completely useless to some people. After all, why would I want to put up a blog that is 140 characters or less? Sounds completely useless. Fair enough, it’s not for everybody, but it’s also not completely useless.

For those of you unfamiliar with the idea, Twitter is a site where you set up an account and your friends can get updates on whatever you are doing. It’s essentially like an “away message” or “status” except that it gets pushed to people who are following you. The usefulness is endless though… for example, during the San Diego Wildfires last year, KPBS would use Twitter to post tiny updates (“5 South has been shut down from _______ to ________.”) to keep the news as up to date as possible.

Another example, there is a wafel truck that drives around New York and lets people know where/when it will be via Twitter so you can get instant, up to date info about its location. Personally, I use it as a sort of broadcasting system. When I update my blog, it’ll update my twitter and when I update my twitter, it’ll send that update out to my AIM, gchat, and facebook.

Also, there’s a program on the iPhone called Twinkle which is basically a location-enhanced twitter. So it’ll send you the “tweets” of people around you (you set the radius). This was especially helpful when I was in San Diego and I got a public tweet that said “The 15N is deadstop traffic at the 52 junction.” and I knew to take a different route. Also, when I was stuck on the N-train going northbound, I sent out a tweet talking about hating being stuck in subway traffic and got two responses from people saying thanks.

The possibilities are endless, but the problem is like every other social tool: you need your friends to be on it as well. If you decide to give it a try, add me — I am mathewwithonet.

Second: RSS / Google Reader

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (not kidding) and is a form of web feed.

Imagine how cool it would be if you could get all the latest gossip news from Gawker, all the latest tech news from Engadget or Gizmodo, all the latest world news from BBC, all the latest local news from NYTimes, all your friends blogs (like this one), and all the notifications of your Facebook at the same webpage, to be viewed at the same time. These feeds can be organized any way you want and you can even note a particularly interesting post and share it with your friends. Instead of having to check 15 webpages, you can go to this single page and have it all sent to you with a delay of only a couple minutes.

That is RSS.

Basically, you’ve all seen the orange box with quarter, concentric circles in it or little things that say “RSS” or “Subscribe” on your favorite websites, blogs, news sites, band pages, etc. That is the shortcut to the “feed.” If you find a website that gets updated often and you want to keep track of it without having to go to it all the time, you subscribe to that feed via your favorite RSS reader (I like Google Reader) and done.

It’s like magic.

This post is dedicated to Robert Matthew Chin who is breaking the law in China by faithfully reading it.

To you sir,
Matt