Recommend some good "low bandwidth required" websites.

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

So I’m in Afghanistan right now and, though I do have some internet in my room (I pay $100/mo for 64kb/64kb) most websites are far too flashy for me to surf here. I can’t watch video and anything with huge advertisement splash screens takes forever too load.

I’m looking for some websites with the following kinds of content that aren’t covered in big moving ads, sounds and/or videos that I can browse at night for a half hour before I rack out and start another day:

video games
quirky humor, commentary (something awful type stuff)
news
sports
entertainment

I like commentary and opinion stuff. Game reviews are good too.

Anyone see my problem here? Hope I’ve been clear. I only use this connection to chat with my family on the weekends otherwise.

#2

Well, this one is pretty good. :wink: Mostly just links and text!

If you like pro wrestling at all, DDT Digest is just about the lowest-bandwidth website I know of. It chronicled the last 5-6 years of WCW, which was a pretty interesting time to be a wrestling fan. Anyway, you’ll chuckle. If you don’t like wrestling… er, don’t bother.

#3

Anyone know how to get any of the Gawker sites to come up without the big ads? I can call up Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik etc. on my Blackberry without all the bells and whistles, not sure how to do that on a standard browser.

But… that’s one option, if you can duplicate the BB format.

#4

Rinkworks. I used to read this frequently when I was on dial-up (in the late 90s), and it has barely changed in form since then.

#5

I’m curious…if you use the AdBlock extension with Firefox, does that speed up your experience? It should make all of the ads not load.

You can also try the Flashblock extension to block ALL flash, not just ads (I would try this in addition to Firefox). That way, embedded video won’t be embedded at all, and you can read blogs without having to wait for video previews to load that you won’t be watching anyway.

I’m not saying this is your answer, but if you get a chance it’d be interesting for you to try it and let us know the results.

#6

If you really want just the text, you might consider using Lynx instead. No graphics at all. The Dope is perfectly readable via Lynx, and your bandwidth bill will be tiny.

#7

Another thing to consider is getting an RSS reader and subscribing to feeds of frequently visited webpages. Feeds generally strip out everything except the text so they load faster plus they can download in the background so you can wake up in the morning and instantly have something to read.