StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon

For such a small Firefox plug-in, StumbleUpon wears a lot of hats. Random Web site surfer, social networker, social bookmarker, site reviewer–it’s a powerful little app for 170Kb.

Installing and removing it is just as simple as any other Firefox add-on, and we struck no snags when we used it with other plug-ins or programs. Once activated, one click is all it took to get going. The “Stumble!” logo that’s part of the proprietary toolbar whips the user around the Net at the user’s pace, based on categories selected during installation. Hundreds of topics are available and can be updated at will, with no selection limit.

Other StumbleUpon functions are just user-friendly. A click on the toolbar’s “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” icons make ratings a cinch, and another click is all it takes to share sites, to update the friends list, to view the rated pages list, to read reviews of the page, to peruse the menu, or to search the StumbleUpon database.

Sometimes, “stumbling” would take us to a StumbleUpon page that reminded us to upload a profile image or some other annoying-but-trivial nonsense. Another “stumble” would whisk us to our next random Web page.

If Web surfing is the new channel surfing, then StumbleUpon should be your remote.