9 Websites That Changed My Online '00s Life

I first went online at home in 1997, but the prevalence of the internet certainly took hold in the '00s. So, because December's the traditional time for superfluous lists, here are 9 websites/online services that revolutionized my "online life" this past decade...

Amazon

These days, I trust internet shopping a lot more than I did around the turn-of-the-millennium, but I still get a paroxysm of terror when I type my credit card details into a site that's new to me just because they have a good deal. But, I trust Amazon 100%, because I've never had a bad experience with them and I love the design. I sometimes buy stuff from them that's slightly dearer in price, just because I know I can trust the speed and efficiency.

Blogger

Of course! Look where you're reading this! I didn't really "get" blogging at first, and I closed my first Blogger account after a few days treating it like an online diary. But then Web 2.0 exploded and blogs got interesting around 2006, as the designs and functionality became closer to that of decent websites. Blogger's still not as slick as the likes of Wordpress, but it's far easier to create a blog with them and the options available to you are 10x better than they were a few years ago.

eBay

I love it, but I don't use it much these days. There are two reasons for this: (1) I used it to sell everything I owned of value around 2003, so I have nothing left to sell now! (2) Owing to a silly misunderstanding with PayPal about 5 years ago, I can't open an account with them again... and eBay's tied to PayPal like prisoners in a chain-gang. But, earlier this decade, I used eBay a great deal and got some great bargains from them.

Google

I remember when Yahoo was the dominant search-engine of the late-'90s, but Google overtook it in the '00s. So much so that "Googling" has become a verb and it's a fixture as my homepage. I've never even given upstart Bing a second thought.

IMDb

Excellent resource for movie info, particularly cast/crew lists. I visit it nearly ever day, if only to peruse the celebrity birthdays. The only thing I dislike is what each film's individual page looks like. I'd prefer all the info to be there to see, but it's all hidden behind links and whatnot. The data IMDb has is exemplary, but not how it chooses to shows it.

Online Banking

I'm not going to tell you which bank I'm with, because I'm overly paranoid, but the concept of paying your bills and setting up direct debits online has revolutionized my financial lifestyle. I still like getting paper statements sent to me every month, though -- sorry, environment.

Twitter

I still can't quite wrap my head around it, but it's addictive. It's easy to do, you don't feel a slave to it, it's mobile, you can maybe get response from celebrity users, and it's great fun following tweets to TV shows like Big Brother.

Wikipedia

The best way to settle any argument is to call up a Wikipedia article. The simple idea of putting a user-maintained encyclopedia was a masterstroke. Remember when researching the 'net was fairly tricky and you had to keep a mental note of many different websites to refer back to? Well, Wikipedia changed all that. Sure, because it's user-generated you can't trust it 100%, but I've personally never had reason to refute anything it says.

YouTube

A very recent addition to the web, but it's quickly become the premier streaming video site. Remember when funny video clips were attached in huge e-mails and passed around offices? That still happens, thanks to most workplaces and schools blocking YouTube, but never at home. I tend to watch funny clips, film/TV trailers and interviews on YouTube, but it has something for everyone. The fact you can embed videos in your own blog/website has been an obvious bonus for me. The only downside is that the good stuff is so hidden away, so I tend to rely on links.

Intentional omissions: MySpace and Facebook (I've never seen the point in them, and both have terrible interfaces), BBC iPlayer (a great creation, but not something I use very much, and certainly not on a PC because I have Virgin's catch-up service)

How about you? Did any websites change your life in the '00s, or soak up a shocking amount of your freetime? Care to share?

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Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe

I caught up with Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe yesterday, the one-off BBC4 special that used the format of Screenwipe and Newswipe to tackle the video-game industry. A few brief thoughts on my own gaming life and the show itself after the jump:

I'm not really much of a gamer these days. I have a Playstation 3 that spends its days playing video files and Blu-ray discs, not games. The only game I own for the PS3 is Street Fighter IV, and I've only played it three times. I also own the original, chunkier Nintendo DS (with five games) that's proving itself a great dust-collector. The only game I ever played with much regularity was Brain Training. I also have a GameCube purchased cheaply on Ebay purely to play Super Mario Kart Double Dash a few years ago; the result of a recurring five-year itch to relive my Mario-related youth.

Yes, I'm from the generation that grew up with Mario on the Nintendo NES in the '80s, before gaming took-off culturally in the early-'90s -- fuelled by the rivalry between Nintendo's Super NES and Sega's Megadrive (Genesis for any Americans reading.) The era when everyone at school owned a Gameboy and the Tetris soundtrack resonated around every playground. I bought video-game magazines, saved up months of pocket money to buy the latest SNES cartridge, and was a devout fan of Channel 4's Gamesmaster.

My gaming life started to dwindle when Sony's Playstation arrived in the mid-'90s. I was only about 16 at the time, so I still had plenty of years left in me, but I just grew bored of that pastime. I was a Nintendo brat, so seeing Sony come to dominate the marketplace just didn't sit right with me, and when the mighty internet entered many households around '97... well, my gaming life turned to computing and more "serious" ways to channel my creativity. As a result, I grew less passionate about gaming and even the arrival of the Playstation 2, with its slicker graphics and DVD-playing ability, couldn't lure me back to the gaming teat. Strangely, as the technology and graphics got better, my interest levels dropped...

Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe was a mix of nostalgia for classic '70s/'80s games (the requisite clips of Pong and Space Invaders), acerbic observations on grungy gaming culture (particularly the furor in the media over violent games), clips of odious games like 50 Cent's ugly and violent tie-in, amusing '80s anecdotes from the Scottish duo of "Consolevania" (who reflected on the days when British nerds created homemade, eccentric games that competed with massive US and Japanese corporations), intriguing ideas from comedian Dara O'Briain (who noted that video-games are the only entertainment medium that will intentionally deny you a beginning-to-end experience unless YOU prove yourself worthy) and writer Graham Linehan (who spoke on the awful storytelling in games, then highlighted the few that are immeasurably improved by treating characters and plot with respect), and it also served as a kind of Cliffs Notes exercise for newbies by explaining what each gaming genre's all about -- from the obvious "beat 'em up" to the bad round of Scrabble-sounding "MMORPG".

I found it a very entertaining fifty minutes, mainly because I've always enjoyed hearing about video-games and have long lamented the absence of a decent TV show on the subject. I'm not passionate enough to read gaming websites/magazines for news and reviews these days, but I'd certainly tune into a TV show on the subject. A restyled Gameswipe (more closely following the review style of Screenwipe) would be welcomed, if this can be considered a means of testing the water. But I suspect the grumpy middle-aged bias of Gameswipe would be something "the kids" wouldn't like. If they even manage to find BBC4.

For me, as a 30-year-old with one foot in his youth and the other in middle-age, I'd certainly watch a full series of Gameswipe -- but perhaps Brooker's patented sarcasm would grow tiring after awhile? It's a bit too easy for Brooker to ridicule terrible games in the same way he spits venom at bad TV. The difference is that TV creeps into everyone's home and we can all feel disillusioned by appalling programming, and take consolation in hearing a timely rant from Brooker. But with games, people have to decide to buy the game and play it, so in most cases people know what they're getting and hearing a rant from a man pushing 40 fall on deaf ears, and only cement an opinion in the minds of people who haven't actually played the game themselves.

Really, Gameswipe would need more balance to be of any worth as a series, but I'm not sure Brooker's all that entertaining when he's being nice. It's not really his thing, is it? It's like Adolf Hitler putting his oratory talent to good use and doing an episode of Jackanory. In leaning on Brooker's cynical verbosity, a lot of Gameswipe chose to focus on the evils of gaming because there's more mileage in that for contentious clips, so I wound up feeling that 80% of games are distastefully violent, 10% are misunderstood by hack journalists, and 10% are fluffy fun your gran would enjoy. None of that's strictly true, but it's the feeling I was left with after seeing Gameswipe, because the show tended to focus on the grubbier aspects of gaming so much, because there's more comedy there. Shame, really. There are more cheerful and life-affirming avenues to investigate about gaming, but they mostly went unexplored here.


29 September 2009
BBC Four, 10pm

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