Daily Check Ritual

Every morning, the first thing I do is click on a tab group called ‘check’.
These are the sites it brings up:

Shortstats

Shaun Inmans Shortstats are what I’ve been looking for a for a long time. It displays just the information I need - in one page. From this I can see that there are still a lot of IE6 users visiting the site (shame on you!), and that there are people still using the pre-beta Safari. Eh?

Anyway. I’m watching you.

Who’s linking to me and what are they saying about me? Call me paranoid, but I like to know these things. Its also an easy way of discovering new blogs.

Camino forums at Mozillazine

While I don’t have time to post as often as I used to, I still dip in every day to see whats going on with Camino - hoping that there is a new unofficial build of Camino 0.9. No other OS X browser (’cept maybe Firefox of course!) has got such a good discussion forum.

NetDiver

I lose count of how many design portal sites there are, but nobody does it quite like NetDiver. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but the outstanding quailty of design showcased here is nothing short of inspirational. Whenever the creative fridge has just got some mouldy cheese left in it, this is where I stock up on the fresh stuff.

Shiira project homepage

The nightly builds seem to come very regularly, so I always check to see what those crazy Japanese have done this time.

Textpattern forum

This is relatively new addition, but I’ve gained some much from it. There is a really good community here.

3hive.com

I’ve saved the best till last. 3hive has been the musical equivalent to NetDiver for me. The deal is this: every day, links to free mp3 downloads are added. Many bands offer free downloads via their sites, and this is resource to list all these freebies. Its a no-risk opportunity to try out new music, and I’ve discovered the band ‘Low’, who I’ve gone crazy for. It’s also helped me categorise the kind of music I like - Slowcore! (So nice that I’ve now got a name for it)

What sites do you fire up first thing in the morning?

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