am just back from a wonderful vacation in Detroit Lakes. Those of you who know me will be amazed to hear that I went a week without a TV. What more amazing is that I’ve been home 5 hours and still haven’t watched it!

While on vacation I picked up a copy of Wired just for fun. Here are some of the fun sites I learned about:

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) – OK it’s not new but I was amazed to read so much about it. It’s a site where you can upload and download videos for free. A lot of people are getting their 15 minutes of fame here. But I think it’s a good place to hear about and/or promote new trends. I saw a video from the Spiderman 3 set, a few minutes with a Brazilian World Cup Fan, a song about YouTube, and 5 minutes of Zach Braf (guys from Scrubs).

Prosper (http://www.prosper.com/) – this is the “online marketplace for people-to-people lending.” If you need money you post your case. If you have money to lend you post your rate. Or if you are a borrower you can join or start a borrowers club to try to get better rates. It looks a little bit like eBay.

Squid Labs (http://www.squid-labs.com/) – best described on their homepage, “we’re not a think tank, we’re a do tank.” These guys do R&D for hire – and it looks as if they collaborate a lot. (In other words if you have an idea, they might have a way to help you work on it.)

What really impressed me with most of what I read for fun was the many ways in which the Internet is really becoming a place where people post info, talk to others, and form communities. It was good to step back and see that.