Get High Now (And 49 Other Good Web Sites)

You have to give the folks over at TIME.com some props: Their list of 50 Best Websites of 2009 includes some interesting and eclectic choices.

Sure, the TIME.com best 50 includes some obvious sites such as Google, YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter and Facebook. But how many of you are aware of some of these sites?…

OpenTable — Helps you make restaurant reservations, apparently with incredible ease.

Academic Earth — Videotaped lectures and full video courses from the world’s greatest universities.

Craiglook — No, not Craigslist, but Craigslist on Web 2.0 steroids. Don’t let the bland home page fool you; they’re being ironic.

Get High Now — It’s actually (as TIME.com describes) a “science site disguised as mind expansion,” but the site bills itself as “an illustrated, mind-blowing magic carpet ride of more than 175 ways to alter human perception and consciousness (without drugs or alcohol).” Let’s go with that.

This is the seventh year that TIME.com has compiled its own list of best web sites. You can see the full list here. If you have a lot of time to kill, you can view a slide show of the 50 sites. And if you just want to officially write off today, here are slide shows from the 2008 and 2007 selections.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.