Favorite Mac Sites, Worst Email, Richest People.

This isn’t a Friday rant. It’s more of a Catch-Up-On-Loose-Items™ Friday. A few words of praise, some damning accusations, and a swoon or two about those on the Richest People List.

Word of Praise: Favorite Mac Sites
It’s a healthy list and this one isn’t really anywhere near complete; just a few words of praise for some Mac sites that work hard, offer good value (it’s free, right?), good reading, get the honor of a bookmark and a free mention, and deserve your attention.

Best Forums
They rattle my cage over there regularly but no other forum for Macs is better than MacRumors forums. I never imagined there could be that many topics that are Mac related (and that many folks who seem to be online ALL the time—government employees?).

Regardless, if you want to join into an online community you can start elsewhere, but your writing, thinking, and posting skills will get challenged, sharpened, and improved at MacRumors Forums.

Our site is banned from MacWorld forums. MacMinute and AtAT are very tame, though a good place to start if you don’t have an online forum life. Honorable Mention goes to SlashDot. If you don’t know what it is don’t bother for now.

Best Mac Application List
There’s not many, though all Mac sites talk applications from time to time. The battle is between MacUpdate and VersionTracker. My vote goes with MacUpdate.

First, it’s easier on the eyes, better reviews, and it’s a single click to download the latest application update, whereas VersionTracker requires that extra page view (more advertising).

Click Here for the latest Mac application updates.

Best Mac Rumor Site
Apple lawsuit notwithstanding; free speech issue not relevant; an accurate record means the most (regardless of how the information is obtained), Think Secret is usually tops on most lists.

They called the $500 Mac mini on the nose and promptly got slapped with an Apple lawsuit. Interestingly, Think Secret also called a new iPod mini with a color screen and got that one wrong. No lawsuit.

Still, if you want the latest “secret” news from Apple before other sites get it, Click Here to get it.

Best Mac News Site
It’s a 27 way tie. Almost. I usually prefer MacMinute, though TheMacObserver and MacNN are working hard to be “newsworthy” these days. Maybe they don’t want to be perceived as a web log like Think Secret, therefore, not real journalists.

Those are general sites, though. iPodLounge is tops for iPod info and the forums are robust. Like our site and MacDailyNews, they use pMachine’s Expression Engine as their content management system.

If you like Mac rowdyism and a staunch defender of the Mac faith, you’ll like MacDailyNews. There’s no forum but it looks and feels like one.

I almost forgot this: Best Mac Commentary Site is DaringFireball by John Gruber. There’s always something thoughtful going on.

Damning Accusations: Most Hated Email Messages
Where to start? I get up to 400 messages a day and most of them are spam. I use Spam Sieve and it does a good job, though each day there are five or six messages that get through to the Inbox.

Since you also have to check the junk mail for false positives, there’s another five or six in there, too. Daily. That’s a decent average, but still a pain to deal with.

Worst New Offenders? The auctions for [censored]. One of my email accounts got on their list and they don’t quit. 30 a day now.

Biggest Waste of Time? The “Approved Mortgage” spam. Come on. Who responds to those?

Funniest Porn Headline? It’s gotta be the “Cheating House Wife Services.” That’s followed up closely by “College Graduate Girls Going Wild.”

By the way, those Free All Day Passwords? They don’t work.

Favorite New Spam? “Do You Prefer Plain Or Peanut M & Ms?” Just take the single question survey and you could win $25. Or not.

What’s your favorite spam message? Share with other Mac users and click on Comments below.

Richest People List: Guess who’s on it? Guess who’s not? Chances are very good that everyone you’ve ever met, ever, is NOT on the list.

Well, Bill Gates, co-founder and Chairman (and chief software architect) of Microsoft shows up at #1 with $46.5-billion. He’s followed closely by 74-year old investor Warren Buffett.

Buffett got his the old fashioned way. He earned it. Gates got his the old fashioned way, too? He ran a criminal company and extorted revenue, profits, riches from other companies.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen still has $21-billion left and shows up at #7. Oracle honcho Larry Ellison (buddy of Steve Jobs) makes the Top 10 List at #9, just ahead of a bunch of the Walton family.

Michael Dell is the youngest of the Top 20 at #18, 40-years old, and worth $16-billion.

Our favorite CEO of our favorite computer company makes the Top 200. Steve Jobs, 50, shows up as worth $3-billion and that’s good enough for #194—tied with George Lucas.

There’s a grand total of 691 billionaires on the latest Forbes list. I’m not there yet. Somehow or another there’s not enough zeros in most spreadsheets to mark my place on the financial list. Yet.

Click Here for the list in descending order.

End of rant.