Did You Stumble Today?

This morning after I arrived at the office, I was greeted by two co-workers. The conversation initially seemed typical. What we worked on the night before, what was happening with the family, watched on TV, or Podcasted. But then the conversation took an interesting shift. They both looked giddy with excitement (no, I'm not kidding). They had an odd question for me. Do you Stumble? I responded, "ummmm I try not to." They laughed. Obviously I was not in the know.

After I logged on they asked if I use Firefox. Of course I do, on both my Mac and Windows machines. Do you use 1.5 (the version tag for the latest Firefox). I just looked back in amusement. One of them said, "that was a stupid question, your always up-to-date." Okay, my heads starting to spin. They tell me to open up Firefox and find an extension called "Stumble Upon". On Google, it immediately came up and I was on the Mozilla Extensions Website. I install it, close and then restart Firefox.

When I reopened Firefox, "Stumble On" appeared as a new toolbar. I clicked on "Stumble Upon" and a box appeared. I created a login (No need to fear. they are anti-spam and anti-spyware. I checked them out already) and immediately came to a screen with a matrix of boxes (they could definitely pretty it up a bit). Next my peers advised me to check all the box topics that I'm interested in. I click Graphic design, Animation, Web development and Astronomy. Next I clicked the "Stumble Upon" button and low and behold a website comes up that I've never seen before. It's a very cool interface and animation. Then I'm told by my co-workers, "click again" and another website appears talking about web development with "Ajax". Nice! Click again and this time it's cool tips and tricks on graphic design. Now here's the kicker, I've never seen any of those websites before. Better still some of them had some important resources that I *really* am interested in.

"Stumble Upon" answers an important question for web users. How to find new and interesting information outside of our normal behavior patterns? Human beings, believe it or not aren't really that random. If you ask a person to randomly place dots on a piece of paper they will still end up attempting to construct a pattern. It's our natural tendency.

The same thing can happen on the web. We have our bookmarks/favorites and sites that we look at on a regular basis. That can put us in a rut and tend to only look inside our own lane. The closest we come to randomness is probably when we Google. "Stumble upon" uses broad categories and presents some great surprises both on and off the beaten path.

Digging deeper there are some nice features. If you install it, take the time to play around with it. You’ll find some great content. I should note that currently in their website index they catalog and categorize over 300 million websites. And no that was not a typo. I said over 300 million. Give it a spin and let us know what you "Stumble Upon".

// Jaye Morris