We try to keep our thinking as original as possible at Technology Voice. After all, our primary area of interest is the cool stuff that is coming at us from just over the horizon. We see our job as to identify what is important and to try and make it as understandable and as relevant as we possibly can.

We have the words social media as part of the title of our publication, but we don’t use it to define the range of stories in the space we look at. Rather, it reflects the idea that in social media terms, more and more services and facilities pervade so much of our cyber and physical space. This gives us the huge advantage of having a remit that allows us to cast our nets far and wide for the stories that interest us and hopefully you.

However, we also like to know what our contemporaries are looking at and what they find interesting. What is fascinating is how we are all looking at this huge social media space using different lenses to focus on particular areas.

No one site can claim to have such a comprehensive view of the world and its contents that all other comment is redundant. That would be a bit loopy and definitely very boring. But combining the aspects revealed from the information gleaned from each of these sites, one can form a reasonable, patchwork-quilty view of current affairs and present thinking.

In no particular order, we would like to share ten websites that we find useful, entertaining and edifying.

• Mashable: Occasionally, other people (definitely not us) refer to our efforts as being a kind of an Irish Mashable. Not even close. At some point in the summer of 2010 they turned the corner from being just another news source to being an important news source. They have broadened the range and type of their articles and whoever is doing their web design must be due for web awards, medals, whatever they hand out for those sort of things. They are on a mission and it will be really interesting to see where they go. But still, after a little while here I always feel the urge to go and read something on Wired.
• Social Media Today: Has a tendency to the social media marketing, social media expert and PR side of things. If there’s a new buzz word you will hear it here first. But good to be able to see all that sort of thinking in one place. Despite themselves the articles can be quite insightful sometimes.
• Tracked.com: This is where I get my news from. Initially it looks like a financial tracking site and I only stayed with it because I knew Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures was an investor and I wondered what he saw in it. But as you feed more and more names in of people and companies that you are interested then the news stories it returns seem to be so timely and relevant. I have no idea how they do the aggregation but it works.
• Read Write Web: A reliable source of information for those interested in technical matters but not necessarily technically inclined.
• Techmeme: An aggregator of cherry-picked blogs and posts. As aspect I really appreciate is that you can see the writer’s byline clearly. More often that not it shows better here than it does on the original site. Discovered some interesting people to follow here.
• Lifehacker.com: All sorts of gadgets and helpful tips about things I never knew I needed help with. It is very good at talking about the integration of technology and lifestyle.
• Nieman Labs: Does the neat trick of being about journalism without being inside-journalism. Always something interesting here for those with curious minds.
• Harvard Business Review: This used to be dire to say the least. But over time they have shaken of the dust and cobwebs of academic worthiness and provide very accessible material while neatly dodging any accusation of dumbing down.
• New York Times: It was either The Gray Lady or The Guardian for best newspaper site. But the NYT wins simply on scale. It does so much more great stuff. The quality of internal sites such as the Lens Blog are phenomenal. Someone told me recently they actually publish a newspaper as well. I think they were pulling my leg what would be the point of that?
• Silicon Valley Watcher: Tom Foremski is an ex-Financial Times journalist who took the very brave step of setting up shop for himself in San Francisco. So much good stuff. I have no idea how he does it but highly recommended.

Lists like these rarely please everybody. If you think we have made some terrible omission why don’t you let us know.