The internet can be a dreadful bore. You visit the same old websites day in day out, whether from habit or necessity. Finding something new and interesting in the net's plethora of pages can be a real chore. How on earth do you sift through it all to find something you really want to see, without trailing through all of the junk as well?

Luckily, a group of college friends from Canada came up with a search engine with a difference, StumbleUpon, to help you discover and share great, interesting websites, without trawling through the nonsense it would usually take you to get there.

The site launched in 2002, but only seems to have hit the jackpot in media headlines in the past year or two. Maybe that's because of its now-impressive claim to 4 million users. Or perhaps its rise to the limelight can best be attributed to its sale to eBay in 2006 for $75 million. This begs the question – what exactly makes it worthy of this kind of cash?

Most of us have heard, read about or experienced the success of Google and the inherent benefits of 'Googling' to find just what you are looking for in the myriad of useful and useless information that is the world wide web. To some, Google is an essential tool to help cut out the middle man and find the best the internet has to offer. StumbleUpon has taken Google's notion of the 'search engine' a step further.

First of all, to use StumbleUpon you need to be a registered member. Signing on requires you to list your interest areas (500 to choose from, so there is a fair chance that your passions, be it alternative culture, fine arts or teen parenting, will be covered). It is through these defined interests that the site can start recommending websites that other 'Stumblers' have discovered. With the number of members growing everyday, the list of web sites that have been stumbled upon is growing rapidly. It also means that you are almost guaranteed to find something new and interesting – something that could be hiding on page three of your Google search, when you only have the time and effort to look on page one.

Using StumbleUpon is not rocket science, it's really just a matter of downloading another toolbar for Internet Explorer or Firefox. After that, surfing is quite easy. The toolbar is simple to use and allows you to start stumbling upon web sites that fit your defined interests and/or sites that have been recommended by friends. Add them to your favourites, rank them with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, then keep moving on.

If your biggest problem with the internet is looking beyond your traditional cyber-haunts, then StumbleUpon might just be for you. Sure, the web is not perfect and you are likely to get some not-so-fitting recommendations too, such as the fish tank in a telephone booth that I found… but that's another story. On the whole, I think StumbleUpon and its vision has a lot of merit. Start stumbling yourself at www.stumbleupon.com.