SOCIAL SITE

Facebook
www.facebook.com

The most grown-up (just) of the social-networking sites that are fast taking over the world. Excellent for staying in touch with far-flung friends, though pretty good too for re-establishing contact with those you hoped you had lost.

Wordpress
www.wordpress.com

The quickest and easiest way to create a blog of your own.

Ringsurf
www.ringsurf.com

Like an online Mothers’ Union meeting (though sometimes a little more risqué), Ringsurf is a chatroom where people exchange ideas about anything from politics to relationships. The quality is not always high, but users have been known to discover new (real-life) friends with interests they thought no one would share. A tribute to the information-sharing capability of the net.

bubbl
www.bubbl.us

Organise your thoughts by creating mindmaps online and sharing them with others.

Technorati
www.technorati.com

An intelligent, intuitive and inspiring way to read entries from some of the millions of blogs that dot the internet. You can browse by subject or area of interest, read the postings that are catching the world’s attention and bookmark blogs that catch your attention. And if you want to join in…

Flickr
www.flickr.com

The website you graduate to once you’ve discovered how to put your holiday snaps on the net. Here, everyone’s photos are linked by using tags, such as ‘Spain’, ‘beach’ or ‘happy’, which sets you off on an exploration of others’ uploads.

BabyCentre
www.babycentre.co.uk

There are plenty of great parenting forums out there - Netmums, Mumsnet - but this is still the best source of considered, authoritative, often soothing advice on everything from colic to tax credits.

Friction TV
www.friction.tv

YouTube for debaters. Upload a short video about an issue close to your heart and others reply in kind or by text.