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50 secret websites

Posted on 31 May 2007 at 14:41

From an online jukebox to a superb photo-editing suite, we pick 50 great websites you might never have heard of.

Discovering a brilliant new website is like hearing a great band for the first time: you simply have to tell someone else about it. After months of trawling the web, ransacking our bookmarks folders and considerable deliberation, PC Pro's editorial team has 50 superb websites to share with you.

These aren't the well-known click magnets that traditionally top favourite website lists. You won't find our selection being advertised on prime-time television. Our 50 are the hidden gems without the multimillion marketing budgets; the lesser-known but no less worthy websites that you might not have come across before. Each has been hand-picked by a member of the PC Pro team, and they'll explain what makes them so exceptional over the next eight pages.

Why have we chosen to shine the spotlight on the web's unheralded talents? Because, despite the emergence of thousands of new sites every day, people are increasingly sticking to the familiar favourites. The average surfer visited just 68 domains in February according to Nielsen NetRatings, which is just over two new sites a day and down 7% from the same month in 2006. Considering that Google currently tracks more than 600 million web pages, the average person's monthly surfing makes the needle in the haystack look enormous.

So we've decided to broaden your repertoire of must-visit sites, breaking our 50 into ten categories. And to save you the bother of manually typing the URLs into your browser, you can simply click here and download our selection as a bookmarks folder. If you've come across any hidden gems of your own, drop us an email to letters@pcpro.co.uk and we'll print the pick of the suggestions.

Click on the categories below to start exploring our 50 sites:

News (3)
Arts (10)
Money (3)
Online applications (4)
Fun & games (7)
Reference (7)
Sport (3)
Technology (5)
Shopping (3)
Photos & videos (5)