Daily clicks

Here are the sites that I visit at the start of each day:

• Hotmail for junk email and online subscriptions
  
• Mail for personal email
  
• Google just to see what's up with the world today
  
• Stuff for NZ and international news
  
• TradeMe to check on what I'm selling and what I want to buy
• Yahoo Mail for email relating to TradeMe
  
• Smile City because this site rewards me for clicking and those clicks turn into cash - they really do!
  
• IMDB for the daily poll. Actually, I visit this site mostly out of habit nowadays.
  
• Facebook cos I'm totally addicted to Scrabulous and other things
  
• RSS feeds on Google Reader for various blog posts, both personal and professional
  
• Online banking just in case someone's deposited an outrageous sum of money overnight and I don't need to work today after all

And the it's on to work email and all the sites I maintain for my job. But, upon reflection, these are all about me me ME! Gosh, how selfish.

Maybe I should be including things like these in my daily clicks, whereby one click can give the value of 1.1 cups of food to the hungry, or help a woman in need get a free mammogram, and so on.















But, really, do these sites actually work? How does me checking out a new word actually relate to 20 grains of rice for hungry people? I've supposedly donated 600 grains while writing this post. So who's going to pack up these grains and them off to the right places around the world? Who are these women in need who get mammograms thanks to my clicks? Can I really save chunks of rainforests simply by tapping my touchpad?

I'd like to think that the advertising on these sites pays for these services, and that the revenue generated via this sponsorship genuinely goes where it's intended, but I can't help wondering whether it happens and who makes sure of it. I personally don't look at (or click on) any of the ads surrounding the text, but does that mean that everyone else does?

What's on your list of daily clicks?