On Vox: Webby Awards
In a few hours the winners of the 2010 Webby Awards will be announced. I had the geeky pleasure of going through each of the categories and selecting my favorites. This took me days and I didn't even get to all the entries that were parked on YouTube. It was easy to see which sites were front-runners in a category, with the leader board appearing immediately after pressing the vote button. What I found is that the sites that I liked best were generally in fourth place or dead last. Oh well. Clearly I have different tastes (and a significantly slower internet connection) than most other voters.
Toward the end I got sick of the obligatory Flash tickers counting slowly to 100% only to show some sort of ~edgy~ but confusing navigation. I gave votes to ones that tended to load site content right away. First impressions count for a lot, and the sooner the website can make that impression, the better. Not that I have dial-up or anything but websites should consider that not everyone has G3/ T3 connectivity all the time.
The sites that I found particularly interesting are listed after the cut. I voted for several, but some were sites that caught my attention-- just not as well as another in its category. I didn't automatically vote for the most popular sites. I purposely wanted to give each unknown site a fair share of my time and maybe throw it a vote of confidence (or whatever these votes count for) if it impressed me-- good or not so good. Below are the standouts IMHO, in no particular listed order.
Banking site
http://promotions.bankofamerica.com/oncampus/themorriscode/
Innovative entrepreneurial-marketing site
http://entry.comps.co.nz/Awards/YellowTreeHouse/index.htm
Sites I should visit more
http://mashable.com/ a popular social media news aggregator. I'm into social media. I should be into this site, right?
http://www.npr.org/ I listen to the radio station in my car, but I hardly have an urge to visit the site.
http://gigaom.com/ this site is new to me and worth going back to...
http://allthingsd.com/ another new to me site. I like the layout and it's easy to read.
http://designobserver.com/ I have this bookmarked, but how often do you go through your bookmarks? Exactly.
http://1000awesomethings.com/ I first saw this site as a nominee last year. I visited it the second time as it is one this year too.
http://www.truthdig.com/ I've heard about this site many times more than I've been to it.
http://www.colourlovers.com/ This has pretty colours, so why shouldn't I visit this again? See, I even used the British spelling of colours because the site has impressed me so.
http://www.folkways.si.edu/ music site with content I'd likely enjoy reading.
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/ money blog that I'd likely enjoy reading.
http://www.bitterlawyer.com/ never seen a lawyer focused blog before. This could be interesting to revisit.
http://www.mnn.com/ I really enjoyed this site. I should definitely bookmark this-- or something.
http://current.com/ I have this as a module on igoogle. I just don't visit the website proper very often. I should.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/us traveling interests me and so does this website.
http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/ over the hills and through the woods to Daryl's house we go.
Sites I would read if I could stand the font
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/
Sites I should visit again but probably won't
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
http://www.tribecafilm.com/
http://www.drinkwise.com.au/
http://www.epicurious.com/
http://www.fizziolo.gy/
http://www.tripadvisor.com/
http://www.cnet.com/
http://failblog.org/
http://graphjam.com/
http://www.adobe.com/brilliant/
http://www.bakespace.com/
Guilty-pleasure sites
http://www.bluebelljeans.com/
http://www.cheeseandburger.com/
Interactive or Game standout sites
http://www.recordtripping.com/
http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Activities/Games/simple_machines/
http://machinarium.net/demo/ if you've played "Samorost" this is the next game by that company. Same dealie.
http://www.mathmovesu.com/sum-of-all-thrills.aspx?AuthTicket=debug loads slowly but the flash loader is interactive and yay for roller-coasters!
Spend an hour on this site and change (or solidify) your financial outlook site
http://www.pbs.org/your-life-your-money/ give up one night of tv and watch the videos on this site instead. Worth your time.
Originally posted on madeline.vox.com