Bro! Where are my Top 10 websites?

If there was a “desert island disc” list of your 10 favorite websites, which would you save and which would you feed to the sharks? Which would be on speed dial and which would end up in the Twilight Zone?

We all need our daily dose of info on the run. We want the latest news, videos, tunes and tones — and we want it now.

But sometimes, getting online isn’t easy. If you’re in a remote spot without an Internet café or a Wi-Fi zone (yes, such desolate places do still exist in the Philippines), then connecting isn’t always a snap.

Thankfully, this scenario is something that Smart Bro — from Smart Communications wants to eliminate. Smart Bro Prepaid, as you might guess, is a new prepaid service designed for college students and young professionals — young people who want easy Internet access to the latest news, music, games, websites and chismis wherever they are, without big monthly bills. How it works is this: consumers pay a one-time fee for a Smart Bro USB modem — a palm-sized device you carry with you wherever you go. Plug it into a PC or Mac, and you’ve got instant access. If you run out of minutes, just reload using a Smart Bro prepaid load card to refresh your account. Say goodbye to Internet cafés. With Prepaid Plug IT, you can even choose from customized “school design” modems.

And, while I can’t keep up with all the latest websites, at least I have bookmarked a few favorites that always keep me grounded, connected, or ready to fly.

1. Yahoo. Before I read my morning International Herald Tribune, I open my laptop to check my e-mail: Yahoo.com is staring me in the face. Sure, their choice of “important headlines” can make you smirk. But it’s presented in a bullet-quick, world-at-a-glimpse format that either draws me in for details or sends me safely on my way, knowing the world is still in one piece for another day.

2. Wikipedia. Originally, this was the noble intention of the Internet: to create a vast web of reliable information. Wikipedia is the world pooling its collective knowledge, launching a million school term papers in the process. That people can easily alter this knowledge with a few key clicks is both Wikipedia’s strength and its weakness. But if you need a second or third source in a flash (and that’s something we journalists rely on), then Wikipedia will at least steer you in the right direction. Don’t forget to check those footnotes at the end, though.

3. MySandbox.com. Launched last April, it’s Smart’s newest online portal for Filipino users, offering hundreds of applications on the run that you can sync to your cell phone with a Smart connection. Sandbox allows anyone to connect with friends, share blog posts, photos, videos, games and music. Blog from your cell phone, download exclusive ring tones and songs, and check up on a world of news, shopping choices and entertainment options. Check out “Sizzle” for the latest gossip. Visit “Moviemania” to link to quizzes, wallpaper images and logos — directly to your mobile phone. Best of all, Sandbox is all locally developed, meaning its content is made for — and by — Filipinos.

4. Facebook. Yes, I admit it. MySpace and the other social network sites are great, but for ease of use, innovative (and sometimes inane) platforms and applications and clean presentation of everything from videos and music to photo collections, FB is the one. Facebook allows you to track down and keep in touch with so many people in your life, it’s like having the world on speed dial.

5. YouTube: Yeah, it’s grown on me over the years. Rather than seeing video streaming as a threat to our traditional news sources, you’ve got to admit that getting a visual on something — whether it’s as chilling as the fate of Neda Agha Soltan, the Iranian victim of a post-election government clampdown, or as cheesily touching as the Cebu prisoners’ tribute to MJ — is an indispensable part of what makes news real for us nowadays. I also like uploading my own animated videos (under the tag name “escargot”) to YouTube and seeing how many views I get.

6. New YorkTimes.com Thanks, New York Times, for not charging us a cent to read your standard-bearing publication online. It’s the one I jump to when I need a good op-ed angle, a movie or theater review, or a terrific Sunday Magazine profile. We hope you can keep it going for a few more years at least, until you finally figure out a way to make money off of us freeaholics.

7. Philstar.com. Okay, call it boot-licking. But where else can I go to hunt down back articles from the Philippine STAR’s well-stocked archive section?

8. Clickthecity.com. Let’s say you’re running late for dinner in Makati, but you can’t remember the address or phone number of the resto. Clickthecity is there for you. It’s got restaurant, theater, art, movie and event listings, plus homegrown reviews (and sometimes photos) for people who want to take a stranger’s word about the best Indian food in town. Updated daily, it helps you get a geographical fix on Manila.

9. Google Books. Now that Google is engaged in a mad dash to scan every book ever written, it’s only fair to check out what they have for online perusal. You’ll be surprised by what you find: chunks of Noam Chomsky, classics by William Burroughs, Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, boatloads of hard-to-find stories by Donald Barthelme. If you’re not averse to reading great literature online, Google Books is worth a spin.

10. Google Earth/Maps. When you’re on the run, it really helps to get your bearing. Google Maps offers street-level views of just about every place on the planet. And Google Earth is like a God-level view from the clouds: satellite photos stitched together to simulate the fabric of every nook and cranny on our blue little planet. It’s a gas to spot the place where you grew up. Locate your coordinates — whether it’s your street in Manila or the place you grew up in back in Groton, Massachusetts — and start zooming in.