Isn’t it nice when someone else does all the dirty work for you? If you’re in the mood to do some Web exploration (or just have some free time to kill at work), check out this compilation of 100 web sites by the folks at PC Magazine.

They’ve broken them down into more than a dozen categories, including music, photo, social networking, lifestyle, travel and maps, and health and science.

How did they make the list?

When judging a Web site, we look at its content, update frequency, design, innovation, and usefulness or entertainment value (or both). We compare similar sites with one another, but we also look for a broad range of topics and categories.

Here are a few that made the cut:

• RulesofThumb.org This helpful site presents user-submitted “rules of thumb,” which the community can rate for their usefulness. Want to harness the collective wisdom on managing your money, finding the perfect mate, or getting rid of back pain? RulesofThumb is the place to be. Whether the collective wisdom is on target, however, is a call you’ll have to make yourself.
• RadioTime Got a favorite country station in Nashville? Want to hear what your college station is spinning this afternoon? RadioTime lets you tune in to the online streams of terrestrial radio stations, whether they’re in your neighborhood or across the country.
• EveryScape The big online mapping services offer photograph-based street views that let you see what your destination looks like from the street, but newcomer EveryScape goes even farther by letting you explore both the street view and the interiors of buildings, too. The service also helps users find hotels, restaurants, and popular tourist sites with reviews from Yelp.com. Photographers on the ground are shooting as many building interiors as they can as EveryScape continues to roll out to new cities.
• Gazelle.com The big dilemma for early adopters is what to do with all that not-quite-obsolete tech gear that you’ve already replaced. Gazelle will pay you cash for it. Just enter the make and model of your gadget, and its condition, and you’ll get an on-the-spot offer. You’ll get a box in the mail to ship it in, and you’re done. The service accepts cameras, MP3 players, cell phones, laptops, and much more.