Helping You Excel in Procrastination 2.0

This is bank-holiday weekend in many European countries, the week is almost over over here in NY, you’ve finally realized that no one wants to play Vampire/Zombie with you, you already know that you’re a cauliflower thanks to the “What vegetable are you” quiz on Facebook, there is nothing but slutty reality TV shows on the cable networks, and you forgot the location of the nearest news kiosk. Worry not, here are few sites that should keep up your procrastination trend, while conveniently allowing you to pretend that you’re doing some marketing research.

1/ Technorati: Yes, the young dinosaur that we all love to hate, just launched an animated version of their blog posts tracking tool, and it is fascinating. Less misspellings than the ticker at the bottom of MTV’s TRL, less geeky than a RSS feed and unlike Bloomberg TV, you don’t need Advil after a 5 minute session. Grab a drink, select your topic (Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business, Life) and wait for the next post about Britney’s Classy Cat Halloween costume.

2/ Rentometer: Is the $2,400 rent for that 2-bedroom you saw in Greenpoint a rip-off? How much is your boss paying every month for his loft in Kensington? Well, the great Rentometer will tell you if you give them your address and the type of apartment you’re enquiring about. Mine is a bargain apparently, I guess that gives me an excuse to do some shopping this weekend. (If you’re a home-owner, check zillow, created by 2 exes from Microsoft and Expedia, that became the reference site for real estate for its accuracy, or lack of)

3/ TasteBook: My favorite. Somewhere between as-fascinating-as-Shopping-TV-at-3-in-the-morning and useless. The idea? You pick up your favorite recipes from cooking websites and create printed cookbooks for you and/or your friends. The best is that you can fill the book at your rhythm, i.e. order your first customized book with 30 recipes and insert more recipes whenever you want. A bit like those animal fact-cards that you collected every month when you were a kid, except that you only get the cards you want, not a 5th kind of mountain goat you don’t care about. It costs $35 for 100 recipes, I’m so getting this to my gourmet friends for Christmas, thanks Condé Nast!