forums

i spend 8 hours plopped in front of the pc at work and when i get home, i spend a minimum of 2 hours freelancing also plopped in front of the pc. my money-churning assets are my eyes and fingers (i can make do with the other limbs, touch wood!). hmmm mayb i shld get them insured. anyway, 8 hours of solid programming can fry my brain cells, so every ten minutes, i'd log onto a forum and read. now, some ppl frown upon forum browsing and posting. they say its a waste of time. i beg to differ. i've been a frequent reader of http://forum.lowyat.net for the past year and i've learned a lot from the forum. to date, there are 80k registered members and at one time there's always more than 1k reader online.

things u can do on a forum (depending on niche)

• chat
• talk kok
• buy/sell things (be wary and go thru the black list first)
  
• news & politics (this is even more update than online media), i got to know of spiderman climbing twin towers along with live update of pictures as he went up every level. another incident: the explosion in shah alam that wasnt reported in the news was the HAWT topic on forums, complete with video and sound of the explosions
  
• update yourself technologically (i didnt know abt pc modding and xtreme rams until i read abt them in forums)
  
• ask/give advice/opinion
• latest movie review minus the biasness and hype
  

my forum experiences

• exposed frauds
• ppl have challenged me for fights (nvm that im a girl and had a broken arm)
• got support when broke up
• got my bling bling PC assembled
  
• solved technical glitches
• sold my paypal
  

so, even more than static websites and blogs, forum are updated in real-time by a lot of ppl. once u filter out all the junk and jokes and lame posts, u'd find a vast information portal at your fingertips