Sightings: One excellent site each day.

Previous Sightings
January, 2001

Snowman Fun Time
Learn to build your own snowman. This site has lots of features and high resolution printing, as well as: nice artwork, amusing sounds, and cool Flash 4 technology. (Sighted by Travis McElhany)

Utorials
Utorials.com is a new Web site dedicated to creating a database of helpful and informative tutorials on dozens of subjects. Tutorials posted are written for and by visitors. (Sighted by Lenny Masters)

Super Bowl History
For those of us who get all drippy about NFL lore round this time of year, Super Bowl History provides a lot of good stats, facts, and historical comparatives on every Super Bowl from I to XXXIV in an easily readable format. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

World Time
Did you ever wish there were an easy way to find out what time it is in far-flung locales? This site let's you easily find out the local time any place on earth and offers some nice customization features for its graphical display. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Film in a Cup
This site hosts short, independent films, videos, and documentaries that are specifically made for Web playback. Inclusive of multiple genres, the site is easy to browse so you can find the subversive bits that interest you most. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

www.beerculture.com/
Since we're just looking at design, language (German) isn't a barrier. Check out the brewmaster page for an interesting scheme to help users navigate a page. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

nexuscreative.tripod.com/Splash.html#
Once you close the annoying pop-up ad, you'll realize that The Nexus Of Creativity is a great showcase of the designer's skill. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" movie site
The official site of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," this Flash 4 presentation plays segments of the film's score behind a mouseover-heavy photographic and textual layer that echoes the film's visuals perfectly. Even the "Loading..." graphic is suitably designed! (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Altoids: Too Hot
The hip trax underneath this site's Flash show create the right animated ambiance to convey the hot image of Cinnamon Altoids. What's cool about it? The "Loading..." message follows the cursor around. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Icon Town
Resembling the town structure of a SimCity computer game, Icon Town consists of many international members who create their own building to live in. It may look simple, but it's a nice idea and fun to look at. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Otaku e-Zine
Very futuristic looking and sounding, Otaku e-Zine uses nice rollovers to enhance the content of this site. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Memes.net
This site clearly shows the power of storing your site data in XML and using transforms to display the pages. Look for a "Change Layout" dropdown list and button. Select different layouts from the list and click the button to see the transforms in action. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

www.waimea.com
Check out how the pull-down menus are designed in this (wave) surfer site. Once you’ve clicked on them, you can drag them around the screen—so they don’t block any of the cool images. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

www.mediacosmo.com
This Web design firm’s Flash intro is cool, but that’s not why I chose its site. The main page has great mouse-over icons that make for a very compelling, yet still functional, GUI. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

www.nixhilton.com
You have to see the navigation interface this site uses. All the company’s information is divided into these cube icons that are arranged into an interactive insignia. Confused? Check out the site to see what I’m talking about. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Smarterville
Smarterville is a instructional site for kids. Download the free samples to see the possibilities. You must become a member to take full advantage of the offerings. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

XDude's Knowledge Emporium
This clever site's entire purpose is to showcase the author's sophisticated Flash animation and audio synchronization techniques. Be patient, it starts slowly, don't give up before the music starts--it's worth the wait. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

AfraLisp
If you ever have any need to control AutoCad using VBA, then you'll appreciate the resources in this site. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

Paolo Shoes
This Flash-intensive site likes to throw letters around in the animations, but if you get past that gimmick, you can see some nice, simple rollovers and text that loads quickly in a frame. Simple, and perhaps worth applying to your own site? (Sighted by Susan Parini)

Daily Radar
Interesting and very up-to-date news site that concentrates on games and consumer technology. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

Astronomy Picture of the Day
If you're at all interested in astronomy, you'll find a wealth of data, images, and links here. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

North American International Auto Show 2001
Automobile manufacturers have big advertising budgets--and the collections of images, video, and Flash techniques on this showcase site push the limits of Web page design (and bandwidth). I'm don't sell Toyotas, but move your mouse over the image and watch what happens. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

Earth from Above
This site shows many very interesting photographs of earth from high elevations taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. It's too bad that the intro screen has to contain so many caveats about browser versions, Flash versions, and connection speeds (ISDN or higher), but the Photo Index (http://home.fujifilm.com/efa/pi/index4.html) is fun to browse through and it provides a good idea for showing many images in a grid. (Sighted by Susan Parini)

The Lord of the Rings
This is the official site for the movie trilogy, the first installation of which is scheduled for release in December 2001. The site does well in matching the books’ air of subdued extravagance.

Clothing for Ferrets
They've got the clothing you need for your ferret, "for any occasion. Casualwear, Formalwear, even Coats and Jackets." So why is it cool? Well, beyond the cuteness factor, the site's design is clean, it's easy to navigate (images complement the text links), and it loads quickly. (Sighted by Susan Parini)

Etiquette Grrls.com
Taking such a sensitive, complex subject as etiquette and designing a cohesive, easily navigated Website around it seems hard enough. These women went one step further and made their site entertaining.

Famewhore
Wow, what a way to show visitors a large selection of your images! Mouse over any image and watch the "greyscale wristcam photography" flash by at lightning speed. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

SeeItWork.com
This business site uses an interesting rollover effect to give visitors a "peek" at what's available behind Door #1 and Door #2, so to speak. Hope this site lasts long enough for you to see this; FuckedCompany.com reported that they recently laid off all but four employees. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)