I am a pretty spastic person when it comes to the internet… checking the same sites 5 to 10 times a day… I figured I would provide you with a little insight to the top sites that I visit every day.

1. iGoogle: This is my home page actually… You can customize it using your google account to have nearly whatever you want. The addons I have are: Google Calendar, Google Latitude, Weather, Gmail, Engadget RSS, Lifehacker RSS, CNN.com RSS, I Love Typography RSS, Blog.SpoonGraphics RSS, My Money Blog RSS and the Google Technology RSS.
2. Engadget.com: This is one of the best emerging technology blogs out there. There are quite a few editors all with special areas of focus, so it brings a breadth of knowledge to the table. (Also check out Engadget HD for audio/video only and Engadget Mobile for all mobile computing.)
3. LifeHacker.com: This is a great site that focuses on the streamlining of life through the use of variuos (usually free) tools and techniques. Like Engadget, it has quite a few people working on it, so there are new articles posted all day, every day.
4. WiredDeals.com: This site takes the top of 2 different deal posting forums and puts them together for a quick glance of whats avaliable online. I have found many great buys using this site.
5. Facebook.com: You all know about this one, but it is worth being in the list. This is the best social networking tool out there IMO. Although some of the apps are quite annoying (I like my FB simple…) it has tons of very usefull features and supports one of the largest online communities there is.
6. Sxc.hu: At work, I have to do quite a bit of work with graphics, yet I don’t have a studio space or the resources for taking my own stock images. Therefore I must turn to the internet to saciate my need. Sxc.hu has TONS of photos are are free to use for the projects I do…

So… Those are the sites I frequent… What are some of your top sites?

I seem to change the background on my computer as often as Will Farrell makes a terrible movie(quite often in my opinion.) I seem to stumble accross tons of different collections of backgrounds that range from nature to surrealism, the depths of space to the ocean bottom, american grafiti to retro video game icons made new. Below is a list of some of the better sites that I have found that offer ton’s of different desktop backgrounds that you can all download for free… no more Windows XP generic backgrounds for you!!!!

1. SocWall.com – This website is very cool because it is updated fairly often, there are many styles of wallpapers and many are very high quality!
2. Customize.org – Customize.org offers anything from icons, wallpapers, skins (theme packs for all sorts of different programs) and plugins. Their wallpaper collection is pretty good… like the one above, they have all different styles and themes, but it is a little harder to find what you are looking for.
3. InterFacelift.com – This one is great! Tons of high quality backgrounds in a huge range of styles and themes. (Use the resolution filter up top to narrow results to your monitor size!)
4. HDWallpapers.net – More very high quality wallpapers… I don’t need to say much more about this one.
5. WinCustomize.com – another large collection of great backgrounds

Just so anyone who isn’t too familiar with desktop backgrounds… resolution size is important… If you have a 19″ monitor (which is pretty standard now) you want a wallpaper that is 1280×1024… this will look the best. On a widescreen monitor, the resolutions varry, but both of mine are 1680×1050.

Choosing the proper resolution will make it so nothing gets cut off, and it isnt stretched out of proportion to fit your monitor.

hope you can find some you like!

-Wes

Recently, a co-worker of mine suggested a link to me. It is to a blog that is all about money… the acquisition of, strategic investing (not in the stock market) and ways to save.

This link has already cut my cell phone bill by 15% and offers many other ideas and opinions on how to save…

My Money Blog

As a web developer/tech enthusiast in the Central Valley (California), I spend quite a bit of time just looking… and by looking, I mean gathering ideas, discovering technologies, learning about trends and what have you. I hope to begin posting about some of my favorite findings on this blog.

I will be honest, to find a good amount of the items out there, I use the StubleUpon addon for Firefox. (I suggest both of these free assets to EVERYONE.)

Thank you for reading my little intro to the blog here… and I hope to post a few items soon so everyone can see some examples of whats to come.

Thank you,

Wes C.

p.s. If you have ANY suggestions of websites, tools or resources… PLEASE send them to me and I will consider posting about them.