San Francisco

Redux

By now you know to only hit up trusted sources when procuring certain important goods, e.g., kind buds, or new pets, or new videos of kind pets making #2's in the toilet. For help with the latter, there's Redux.

From a couple of Cal engineering students, Redux is a beta site with a Twitter/Facebook insta-share time-wasting utility that'll sabotage your workday by bringing you fresh YouTube clips, local interest stories, etc, based upon who's in your Redux network, not upon whatever crap's trending on the web -- so good bye forever, sweet Susan Boyle! Hit the site and you'll spy a stream of links (the content of which can be read/watched right on Redux) with Facebook-style thumbnails and user descriptions, plus user comments and "props"; if you're feeling somebody's posting, click their avatar to see all their Redux contributions, and if those rule too, follow them Twitter-style -- so you'll know exactly when they drop something hilariously new, not when in Dolores Park they'll be slinging their BBQ creme brulee banh mi tacos. The postings of all the peeps you follow're collected in a separate, your-kind-of-stuff only stream labeled "My Network", which lives alongside other streams like "Popular" (stuff w/ the most props/comments), "Everyone" (a chaotic mashup of all users' stuff), and "Channels", e.g., "Stand-up Comedy", "Laughably Bad Movie Scenes", and "110% Awesome" -- otherwise known as the Little Hercules channel.

Redux also sports a TV tab, where vids from whatever stream you've selected'll be played one after the other for passive viewing while you're eating lunch, or active viewing as you train Mr. Bojangles.

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