PCMag editors select and review products independently. We may earn affiliate commissions from buying links, which help support our testing. Learn more.

10 Sites You Have to Check Every Day

Just like a shower and a cup of coffee, these sites should be part of your morning ritual.

Once you arrive at the office, how do you start your morning? You probably don't dig right into your work. (If you do, you deserve a raise.) More realistically, you hit the coffee machine and then peruse your favorite websites to catch up on the news you missed while logging your virtuous eight hours of dreamtime.

Even here at PCMag.com our browsers aren't always tuned to our own site. In fact, many of our must-read sites aren't even tech-related. Shocking, right? But it's our duty to be up on all the news that's fit to tweet. Besides, those Facebook friend requests aren't going to confirm themselves.

Remember, visiting these sites is important information gathering, not woolgathering. That way, later at the water cooler (read: on IMs to people in the same cavernous room at the office), you can show off your command of popular culture (read: who died on Game Of Thrones last night).

We've polled the masses here at PCMag and come up with a list of sites we just can't live without. So before you dive into your morning workload, be sure to check these 10 essential websites.

1. Facebook
Not that you need our encouragement—it's the most popular site on the Internet, according to Alexa traffic rankings. There are more than a billion people active on Facebook per month and for some of them, Facebook is the Internet. It's where kids and adults both go to check in with friends and family around their campus, city, country, and the world; organize events; share pictures and video; and more.

2. Reuters
If you're looking for sober, unbiased news coverage that's less infotainment, less political activism, and more pure journalism, then the international news agency with 160 years of history as the world's most respected wire service is probably your best choice. Established in London in 1851 to provide financial market data, Reuters built a reputation as the first to report international news scoops, including news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Reuters online is multi-lingual, employs thousands of reporters, and hits all the highlights without the fluff. It's like normal news, except for grownups.

3. Pinterest
Pinterest is a bit like Hotel California: "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"—it's that consuming. On the social pinboard site you "pin" images from around the Web to your categorized boards, and others can then repin your pics. It's a way to collect your thoughts, bookmark recipes and tips, or just get inspired. If you're not already pinning, check out how you can get started.

4. Lifehacker
Your life needs some hacking and this Gawker site has the low-down on how to do it. While there's a lot of emphasis on improving your digital well-being, there are also plenty of other worthwhile tips and tricks to be found for bettering your life overall, in areas such as food, creativity, work, and travel, to name a few.

5. The Verge
Former Engadget Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky launched The Verge to be an accessible technology site, but one with longer, in-depth features and reviews where the design is as important as the writing. Mission accomplished. The Verge may not have the most traffic among gadget blogs (yet) but it's definitely got the buzz; it even won five Webby Awards last year. The site now also features The Verge Video, with regular video updates about the gadget world.

6. Slate.com
One of the very first online magazines alongside Salon, Slate's come a long way from the days when it was owned by Microsoft. In its 17 years the online magazine has covered or argued about everything you can imagine in politics, tech, business, art, and life. It couldn't make paid subscriptions work but succeeded in podcasts, and became an award winner at the National Magazine Awards in 2011.

7. CollegeHumor
Perhaps you wish you could relive your college glory days—the good times when everything was a riot. Luckily there's plenty of that fun to be had at this comedy site, home of some of the most consistently hilarious sketches and series of today. Most of the time they are NSFW (not safe for work), so check it out before the boss gets in.

8. Twitter
There was a time when only a handful of the PCMag staffers had Twitter accounts. Now Twitter is a full-time companion for just about everyone here, and you're probably no exception. Even if you don't tweet anything yourself, it's the best place to read breaking news from media outlets, pithy comments from celebs and comics, and some solid lunch longreads. In fact, if you follow your favorite sites on Twitter you probably don't need to store them in your bookmarks bar.

9. Consumerist
When a tech product is flawed or an online service doesn't work like it should, you'll read about it in PCMag's review. But when customer service reps refuse to listen to your cable troubles or restaurants are overcharging for their meals, you'll read about it on The Consumerist. Now owned by Consumer Reports, it's updated throughout the day and is chock-full of useful shopper information.

10. Grub Street
If you're a foodie and want to keep up with restaurant and industry news, keep an eye on Grub Street and its local editions for New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The short blurbs on this New York magazine blog are repurposed from just about everywhere. If it concerns a food law, a restaurant, a chef, or even a chain of gas station supermarkets, it'll show up here.

Further Reading

More Software & Service Reviews

More Software & Service Best Picks

About Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith
Eric has been writing about tech for over 27 years. He was on the founding staff of Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine (all defunct, and it's not his fault). He's the author of two novels, BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale"--Publishers' Weekly) and KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. He works from his home office in Ithaca, New York. 

Read the latest from Eric Griffith
https://www.pcmag.com/news/10-sites-you-have-to-check-every-day
www.pcmag.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-10
172362
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RF2OURQ7ZQUHGJBWWTIZQAXLMNSPDJ6G
<urn:uuid:f688326c-00a2-463b-b85e-5b344506b208>
2020-02-17T18:13:02Z
104.17.142.99
text/html
sha1:52B2QULX7W2NLNHDDYLJ6WABHNLYA44E
<urn:uuid:fac723d4-e212-4670-a3ba-1658714847f0>
https://www.pcmag.com/news/10-sites-you-have-to-check-every-day
response
<urn:uuid:3dd1b8f6-a82a-461a-ade2-ba0b685b0266>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-10
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-170.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.16 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/