Click away for help at work, home and play

When asked to write this column my initial thoughts went to the ways I use the Internet for professional purposes. At our public relations and marketing firm we use online resources daily to better serve clients, find efficiencies and manage our business.

For example we subscribe to Online Media Atlas, a database that helps quickly identify and work with reporters and editors from around the world. Sites like prsa.org and ama.org can be interesting and useful for best-practice research, webinar calendars and more.

Then again, I’m a self-professed PR and marketing geek. I love the stuff, but I’m pretty sure the average reader doesn’t give a rip about sites for insight into marketing metrics or quantitative research models.

Here are other areas that align not just with work, but with the rest of my life as well.

Bike riding: the new golf!

For years I’ve attempted to sway my co-workers and friends into believing that in terms of business networking and camaraderie, bicycling is the “new golf.” So far I’ve convinced at least two others. And because it’s a business development exercise (right?), there are a few cycling sites I sometimes visit. Cyclingnews.com and pezcyclingnews.com are great for race reports, product reviews and up-to-the-minute doping coverage. (Hey, at least cycling goes through the trouble of drug-testing its athletes.) Locally I check in on my racing teammates’ progress and results at emdesports.com, and look for new bike routes at mapmyride.com, a site that, shockingly, provides maps of rides.

24-hour news cycle

I’m a news junkie. In addition to super-credible outlets like theonion.com, I also love the coverage and range of stories at nytimes.com, plus the strong feature writing and point-of-view found at sites like salon.com and slate.com.

It takes a village…

Two and a half years ago my wife, Kristy, gave birth to our daughter, Lyra. From the moment I held her I knew how completely unprepared I was to raise a child. Luckily Kristy found a great site called parenthacks.com. It makes me feel better knowing there are plenty of parents far more inept than I am. Plus, my hat goes off to the dad that thought it would be a good idea to create an online video of how to clean up a “mess” in the bathtub using chili for demonstration purposes.

With friends like these…

One of the great joys in life is watching friends succeed. For example, I learned yesterday at jesswalter.com, that Jess has a short story in the most recent Playboy. I guess it really is all about the smartly written articles.

If you build it, debt will come…

We recently bought a bit of land a few miles from downtown with the thought of perhaps building a house at some point. It”s fun to check out dwell.com for interesting ideas, especially ones with a strong sustainability bent to them. A couple of other cool design sites I like are inhabitat.com and fabprefab.com.

I like to think about the kind of furniture that might exist in our imaginary house, and designwithinreach.com offers plenty of fodder. Of course we like to call this company DesignALMOSTwithinreach.com, but that’s another story.