getting the most from broadband

SoundWave

If find myself wandering around the web aimlessly, not knowing where im going to go today, so i thought it might be a good idea to ask for help. what good broadband orientated sites are there... games.. music.. stuff.. anything realy.

i feel like im not getting the most out ot the service, i tend to check my mail, have a look on boards. and generally scratch myself.

where do you all spend ur time online (apart from here)?

if this has been asked before or already exists feel free to delete

Davey Devil

I play poker and lots of it, I know you don't really need fast internet for that but at least i don't get kicked off the line anymore.

ando

play games like B1942

eircom.net is very good for giving good sites to visit. Its updated every day. Goto the broadband section of eircom.net

OfflerCrocGod

where do you all spend ur time online (apart from here)?

This could take a while to answer.....
Slashdot
The Inquirer
The Register
OS News
BBC News
Plastic: Recycling The Web In Real Time
All these sites are Computer related...and a bit serious Newgrounds
is a good mess site with flash distractions

Enough with the nerdy sites....Games!.
Look for: Enemy Territory <- free download somewhere
Americas Army <- free download on nvidia.com site
Then off course if you have Half-Life there are more Mods out there then the stars......
Get Mozilla Firebird for all you're browsing and look around the extension page to get some really cool extension i.e. a flash click to view were flash adds are only show if you click them, some bril themes eswell!.

PaulMagrath

Get GameSpy!

Placebo

my friend has it, i am getting it now, i`ll be spending most of my time playing CS against him, Online gaming is the way to go.
apart from that, its music and music videos .
apart from that , theres nothing really , lol

anto1

Simple. Use Bit torrent.

Placebo

that illegal *cough*

Tivoli

www.fhm.co.uk

lots to do and look at there

ando

Originally posted by tlachta
www.fhm.co.uk

lots to do and look at there

WTF? They had Halle Berry as THE sexiest women ??? I mean comon.... and what the f*ck is Kylie doing down in number 9 spot?

My opinion, Jennifer Love Hewitt deserves joint number 1 spot with Kylie ahh yeah ,,, hmmm,,ll,. klfajlksdjfkk;l';sadf asjlkfj.l;kjfsdf:::........ . . .. .

BigEejit

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
This could take a while to answer.....
Slashdot
The Inquirer
The Register
OS News
BBC News

All of these and of course boards.ie first ... I also keep an eye out for cheap(ish) stuff on ebayireland.com ... stuff thats on my wish list ....

steviem

loads to see and do at www.siteforsites.com formerly known as johnnybroadband.

muffen

You shouldn't limit yourself to webbrowsing... just browsing around gets dead boring after a while, not matter where you go... I try to avoid working sometimes, but I can never find anything to read on the web anymore, so I just end up working instead.

Anyways, if you want things to do, its easy.

This is what I do with my connection.

1, Listen to internet radio while I'm at my computer... www.di.fm is good if you like trance, otherwise, check shoutcast (winamp site).

2, Play games. I play UT2003 right now.. I try to stick to one online game at a time, otherwise I tend to find myself spending toooo much time behind my computer.

Games I used to play online, which IMHO are good online games: Quake (1 - 3), UT, UT2k3, Diablo, Everquest (never played it, cause a bunch of ppl I know got "addicted" to it, so I didnt dare try it), Diablo II and Warcraft 3.

The only problem with playing online is that you need to be really good, so it can get frustrating at first, but just read some strategyguides and practise, and you should be able to join in without looking like a n00b in like a week or two.

3. IRC, Instant Messaging (if you have friends you dont meet to ofter, IM is really good), message-boards (www.slashdot.org, www.boards.ie etc) newsgroups (news.eircom.net in your newsreader if you use eircom)

4, At your own risk, you can also illegally DL stuff (bittorrent, www.kazaalite.tk, binary newsgroups directconnect etc etc).

Furthermore, you can always look at p0rn, thats one thing there is a lot of on the net.

Personally, broadband is kinda part of my life. The following things I do on the web after I got BB, that I used to do differently before: buy movies (www.amazon.co.uk, www.dvdboxoffice.com, www.cdwow.ie etc), buy CDs online (www.cdwow.ie and amazon), look up movies to see if there's anything worth seeing on www.imdb.com, check what on in the cinema (www.uci-cinemas.ie) ... before I buy ANYTHING, I check the price on the net. ... and I prolly do a lot more I cant think of right now

BTW, the time I spend behind my computer is the amount of time most ppl watch TV. I haven't turned my TV on for more than an average of 1 hour a week, for the last 3 months. IMHO, TV is braindead and useless... rarely anything worth watching on it... I can add that I do have NTL with all basic channels. I used to have ALL channels NTL offered (yep, every single one), but after two months I realised I hadn't watched it at all, so I got rid of it and got BB instead

Well, I'm sure you'll figure out something to use your connection for, just dont get stuck browsing the web only, there's sooo much more you can do (btw, if you are browsing the web, use firebird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/)

OfflerCrocGod

Got to agree with muffen there TV is brain dead and boring

btw, if you are browsing the web, use firebird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/)

As I sayd up there in my first post get firebird you will never look back i.e IE:D , it changes the way you use the net.

machalla

Might have pciked this up wrong but bittorent isn't illegal. I've used for downloading varius linux distros and the like over the last few months.

I just wish it was used more widely for distributing software etc...

What got it the illegal tab is the fact that it got used a lot when Matrix reloaded came out to distribute the illegal version of it.

Then all the torrent sites got shut down. Its still out there and still good.

As to what to do on the web?

Games, game demos. Books, programming books, programming tutorials! If you're into that sort of thing of course.

Hard to know what to do really. You'll find your way. Its nice to have it when its needed. Can't go back to dialup now after BB. Always on is just to handy.

Lex_Diamonds

[

As I sayd up there in my first post get firebird you will never look back i.e IE:D , it changes the way you use the net. [/B]

Im intruiged, how so?

muffen

Firebird is a good browser, nothing more, nothing less.

It has a LOT of stuff IE doesn't have, for example tabbed browsing (which makes it soooo much nicer to browse around), the ability to add extensions, it's not vulnarable to all the IE exploits etc etc.

Point being, IE is crap in comparison. You just have to use Firebird for a week, and I mean USE it, and you'll never wanna go back to IE.

swoofer

Is it better than OPERA 7? FIREBIRD that is.

gb-/-

moley123

I agree with StevieM www.siteforsites.com seems to be about the best broadband only search engine out there plus it is just full of links.:D

muffen

Is it better than OPERA 7? FIREBIRD that is.

In my opinion... yes.

Opera either costs money, or you have to get a version that sends usage stats to a server.

Furthermore, Opera doesn't have the ability to add extensions the way FireBird does, and because FireBird is open source, there are a lot of people writing extensions for it.

I cannot think of one thing opera has that I'd like to see in Firebird, but there are several things firebird has that opera doesn't. So, I'd choose Firebird over Opera any day!

Might have pciked this up wrong but bittorent isn't illegal. I've used for downloading varius linux distros and the like over the last few months.

yeah, you're right, the protocol isn't illegal (just like the napster protocol or the Kazaa protocol isn't illegal).
Differently from the P2P apps I mentioned, you are right in the sense that torrent has a much higher legit usage than kazaa for example.

However, I have to disagree with you about the torrent sites being shut down after the matrix. There are tons and tons of them out there still, and IRC is full of torrent links. I do believe that torrent is more used for illegal software downloads than legal software downloads.