MUSIC AND VIDEO.

1. Vimeo - Vimeo is the video-streaming service of choice for creative types — the indie darling to YouTube’s blockbuster. For casual viewers, Vimeo is the place for shorter, artsier clips.

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2. Movieclips - Need to find a scene from your favorite film? With more than 12,000 film snippets, Movieclips has one of the most comprehensive collections available on the Web — and there’s no need to wade through duplicates.

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3. Grooveshark – Free online music-streaming hub Grooveshark is a pick-and-choose listening service that depends on its users to upload content.

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4. MOG - A subscription-based music-streaming service based in Berkeley, Calif., MOG offers unlimited listening for a low monthly rate.

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5. Labuat - A beautiful, user-interactive site, Soytuaire.Labuat.com invites users to paint to music.

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SPORTS.

6. Sports-Reference – The site compiles statistics and game results for seven sports — baseball, football, basketball, hockey, college football, college basketball and the Olympics — linking the past with the present for every franchise and athlete.

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7. Rotoworld – Rotoworld is your rotisserie nurse, delivering up-to-the-minute information on roster moves, injury reads and rising stars.

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8. Yardbarker – In partnership with FoxSports.com, Yardbarker keeps a close eye on all the yelps within the morning sports headlines.

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9. Total Pro Sports – The site prides itself on capturing rare moments, from Hungary’s skateboarding priest to the best sports-themed McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.

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10. Citizen Sports – For those enamored with trash talk, rumors and gossip, Citizen Sports drives the conversation by combining sporting events with social networking.

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FAMILY AND KIDS.

11. Design Mom – Design Mom is about where design meets motherhood and shows that somehow you can have it all: the big family, a keen eye and creative flair.

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12. Serious Eats – Tired of making Tater Tots and chicken fingers? Then turn to Serious Eats for community-inspired recipes, videos and blog conversations about all things munchable.

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13. Babble - This online magazine shows just how cool parenting can be, from pregnancy to the preteen years. It’s Australian too.

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14. Etsy - Etsy is the online bazaar for handmade fashion, toys and home furnishings. This crafts-only marketplace is every family’s one-stop shop for decorating the home, clothing the kids and buying grownups’ toys.

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15. Sesame Street – This site offers a great way to keep the magic going all day, with cute facts about all the characters on the show.

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NEWS AND INFORMATION.

16. The Guardian – Not only does the British newspaper offer smart, comprehensive coverage via one of the best-designed newspaper websites in the world but it has also developed an amazing set of mobile applications that help propel the content out across various platforms.

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17. The Onion – Celebrating its long history, it offers an archive that stretches back more than 20 years; the Onion is also very much in the present, featuring semi-daily videos that spoof everything from C-Span to the Today Show to ESPN.

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18. The Daily Beast – As a news site, it’s something of a triple threat: a trendsetter, an insightful and analytical clearinghouse of events and ideas, and thanks to the thorough and easy-to-scan Cheat Sheet, quite the time saver.

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19. National Geographic – Make sure you’ve got some time to kill before diving into National Geographic’s Web world, as you can easily pass hours digging into the depths of the global ecosystem and other eco-weighty subjects that other sites merely skim.

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20. Wikileaks - Launched in 2006, WikiLeaks, an anonymous forum of leaked secrets, amassed more than a million documents in its first year alone, establishing itself as an invaluable venue for public disclosure and accountability.

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FINANCIAL AND PRODUCTIVITY.

21. Mint – Whether you’re trying to tighten your belt or accelerate your retirement savings, you won’t find a much better analytical tool on the Web than Mint.com.

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22. WikiInvest - Think of Wikinvest as Mint for your investment portfolio. The site synchronizes with brokerage houses to import real-time data so users can monitor their performance relative to the market as well as find research on companies.

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23. Stockmapper – Don’t just read about the stock market; absorb it. It’s visually possible with StockMapper, which not only posts a statistical table of all stocks but also colors them according to their relative market performance using a so-called heat map.

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24. Springpad - Promising the ability to bookmark, categorize and organize just about everything in your life, Springpad really set itself apart in 2010 with the release of its mobile application, which allows users to search, grab and sort on the fly.

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25. Wakerupper - Wakerupper is a simple site with a profound service. Type in your phone number, assign a date and time, add a message that will be read via computer voice, and presto: Your phone will ring right on queue.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

SHOPPING AND TRAVEL.

26. Groupon - Combine impulse buys with massive discounts and you get Groupon, a site that offers daily deals at restaurants, spas and other attractions in more than 90 cities in the U.S. and Canada.

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27. Gilt Groupe – High fashion meets the recession on this site. Gilt Groupe offers discounts on fashion, gifts, home products and travel, each deal lasting for three days.

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28. Rent the Runway - Since formal occasions don’t come that often, it can be a waste to spend a ton of money on one frock. Rent the Runway provides a solution, letting you rent pricey outfits and accessories for 90% off the retail rate.

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29. Stay - Stay offers recommendations for hotels, restaurants and tourist spots, and sorts them by popularity, price and location.

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30. SeatGuru – Just enter your flight information and SeatGuru will mark which seats have more legroom, which have better luggage storage and which have the best armrests, making your flying experience just a tiny bit easier.

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HEALTH AND FITNESS.

31. Keas – Founded by the former head of Google Health, Keas aims to provide tailored health programs for individual users by combining personal medical data with general health advice.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

32. Mayo Clinic – The renowned Mayo Clinic’s website keeps its tips legitimate, combining ease of use with sound medical advice. The site offers an encyclopedic index of diseases and a symptom checker to see what that forehead pain could mean.

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33. Walk Jog Run – Stuck in a running rut? Walk Jog Run utilizes Google Maps and community involvement to map out the best routes in your area.

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34. Exercise TV – On-demand cable channel Exercise TV allows you to get fit with only a laptop and some extra floor space.

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35. Fit by Fun – Fit by Fun animates your exercise with illustrated trainers, upbeat music and a community feel, giving you a list of “classmates” currently using the site.

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SOCIAL MEDIA.

36. Gowalla - Foursquare may be getting all the attention, but Gowalla — its scrappy Austin competitor — is more fun.

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37. Foodspotting - Menus are nice, but pictures are yummy. Foodspotting combines the location awareness of Gowalla with the food fetish of a restaurant critic, letting diners update and share on-the-spot reviews and photos of every restaurant they hit.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

38. LinkedIn – Somewhere between the formal business lunch and the irritating Facebook friend request lies LinkedIn, the far-reaching professional social network that allows you to reconnect with old colleagues and acquaintances, offer recommendations on bosses and co-workers and maintain up-to-the-minute résumés that might just catch the eye of Web-surfing headhunters.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

39. StockTwits – StockTwits is a by-product of all that financial chatter on Twitter. Think of the website as a social ticker — instead of tracking stock movements, it tracks the ongoing discussion around each stock.

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40. Tumblr - The trendy blogging platform — somewhere between the short-form bursts of Twitter and long-form blogging — has benefited from some high-profile media brands getting on board following a cool interactive Tumblr powered by Newsweek.

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ONLINE GAMING.

41. Kongregate - The site’s massive collection of online games will kill most of your day.

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42. Cactus Squid - Cactus Squid is the online repository for the games of Jonatan Soderstrom, creator of a wonderfully quirky (and utterly creative) series of free arcade-style games.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

43. Pogo – If it seems like Pogo has been around as long as the Internet, that’s because it has. The site’s now 15 years old, but this latest iteration is one of its best. (Try Poppit. You’ll love it.)

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44. Newgrounds - Users can submit their own games to the Newgrounds collection, where the community ranks them and highlights the best ones.

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45. Games.Com – The site features a comprehensive collection of online games with something for everyone, whether a crosswording fiend or an action junkie.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

EDUCATION.

46. Livemocha – Livemocha has assembled more than 6 million members, each listing fluency and linguistic skills. When submitting an exercise, you have the option to get someone in the community to grade your effort, correcting your pitfalls and helping you hone your skills through the careful lens of a native speaker.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

47. Chegg - Chegg has experienced explosive growth by offering semester-long textbook rentals. Chegg ships a title at the beginning of class, lets you use it through finals and provides a free shipping label to facilitate the book’s return, all at a steep discount off the list price.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

48. MIT OpenCourseware – Mimicking the principle of open-source software, MIT OpenCourseWare offers many class materials for free, with lecture notes, class assignments, tests and even the audio and video of professors’ lectures.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

49. Readprint - Delve into the world of public-domain books with Read Print, an online directory that catalogs books that are freely available online.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

50. TED – Short for Technology Entertainment and Design, TED is a set of annual conferences that brings together some of the world’s best and brightest thinkers to deliver talks on their realms of expertise.

Read more from Time or visit the site.

RELATED POSTS: See last year’s pick at Time’s Top 50 Websites 2009 or take a look at other lists.

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