Sightings: One excellent site each day.

Previous Sightings
January, 2002

Nature Photo Gallery
This e-zine for nature photographers tells where to find great photographs even if they aren't featured in mainstream travel guides. A monthly photo contest features quality work from professional and beginning photographers. The tips help us all make better nature images. The design may be bargain-basement, but users don't care. They keep the discussion forums pretty active. Someone say function is more important to some people's needs than form? (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

The Mighty Organ
This simply designed site from the UK contains some excellent investigative journalism, short stories, travel writing, arts and culture, reviews, and weirdness. Sometimes simplicity is more important than flashy design, especially when content is what you're after, instead of ads and streaming multimedia. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Halfbakery
The Halfbakery is a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression. Ideas include a built-in thermometer on disposable beverage containers and the concept of publicly traded countries. Layout is simple but not without a sense of design. It works to get those half-baked ideas out. (Sighted by Don Luse)

Levitated Tile
This site has a very interesting design. It contains a collection of images and computer constructs (advanced object instantiation and manipulation, pseudo rotational structures, and the like). There's a distinct possibility of being entertained for hours. (Sighted by Shimon Israel)

dellazine: smart for a girl
Sarahjane White's site contains random musings and rants on life, love, movies, and travel. Site runs fast, design looks cool, and content is fun to read. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

IDEO Project Archives
IDEO, "the most famous design company you've never heard of" (according to One Magazine), is a large design firm that boasts many big-ticket clients. While their overall site is pretty nice to look at, their archive page uses mouseovers to good effect. Rather than just show a boring list, the page's grid presentation actually makes browsing their past projects fun. Dig the "scroll right" icon, too! (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

It Came from the 1971 Sears Catalog!
Linda Causey picked up this Fall 1971 Sears catalog at an estate sale and found it contained over 1,600 pages of pure ugly. Considering that paper catalogs are starting to go the way of the rotary phone, and "catalog.com" sites refresh their images routinely, we should realize that we may not have any historical record in thirty years of what we consider fashionable today. Perhaps this Sighting will encourage you to archive your own site' image library rather than overwrite it like so many reusable bits. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Alice in Wonderland: An Interactive Adventure
If you're pretty darn good at writing client-side Java and Javascript you aren't necessarily going to be impressed with the development sophistication of these games. But I picked it because I think its creator did a wonderful job of integrating design (using the original John Tenniel artwork to lovely effect), storyline, and simple but fun games. And there's a lot of them, too. A nice pastime but also a good learning tool for those who've done little or no Java applets or Javascript work. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

OddTodd.com
For those of you who are glad to see 2001 behind us, but ready to laugh about all the layoffs and economic troubles--don't miss OddTodd.com. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Flight 404: Search and Recovery
Robert Hodgin's Flight404 site is an experiment in animation and imagery disguised by an investigation into the mysterious disappearance on September 6th of "Flight 404" from Boston's Logan Airport to London's Gatwick Airport. The general public assists him with his ongoing investigation. Although it takes a while for the site to load when you first come to it, once it appears you're treated to a series of haunting images and a subdued, but effective, use of audio and animation elements. Especially check out the passenger manifest. (Sighted by Farrell Griffith.)

Google Catalog Search
The search engine team at Google aims to collect "thousands of scanned mail-order catalogs, from industrial adhesives to designer clothing and gourmet food." Ambitious, considering the countless junk-mail catalogs sent through the postal system each year, but also cool because the archive is easy to navigate and doesn't create a fire hazard. Does your site archive any non-online documents? (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel.)

Humorix
Humorix shows the lighter side of Linux. Jokes about Slashdot, Microsoft, and Tux Penguin are mixed with various hilarious musings and parodies of the computer world (in the guise of fake news articles) that many people take too seriously. It's The Onion for nerds. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

NFL.com
The approaching Super Bowl spurred me on to checking out NFL.com and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found. Good stats, polls, schedules, and just about anything you could be looking for regarding the NFL can all be found in one place. I love one-stop shopping. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Orbitz
This travel site is quick and easy to use and it's simple design doesn't distract you with flashy graphics. No nonsense, just quick price quotes...no need to register before you can view them either. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Giger
This site displays fantastic images by H. R. Giger, the original designer of Ridley Scott's Alien movie artwork. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

Prehistory in Modern Form
This anthropological site displays images, short videos, and textual information from the Atapuerca dig in Spain--including those of a possible ancestor to both modern humans and Neanderthals, called "Homo Antecessor." (Sighted by Russell Jones)

MisterSF.com
Hank Donat is "Mr. SF," a devout San Franciscan whose site reveals his love for the city he's called home for 20 years. Dedicated to "preserving and promoting the character of the City and People of San Francisco," MisterSF.com is easy to navigate (thanks to the consistent use of thumbnails in a grid), nice-looking, and fun to read. Donat's site is a must-see for anyone looking for off-beat, up-to-date information about this favorite city. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

LOKi Design Labs
Kevin Lo's personal design studio site breaks up its contents into nice segments that are easy to browse. Although the text areas may be challenging to scroll through, his list of resources features a nice touch: click on a category in the right panel and see the relevant links appear highlighted in the left panel. This makes it easy to see at a glance what's what without the site having to reload anything. (Sighted by Scott Bellware)

Karen Dupuis Photography
This portfolio site showcases Karyn Dupuis' photography and make-up artistry. Cool features include the gallery category images in the footer and the highlighted thumbnails in each gallery, which indicate how many images each one contains. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

com[motion] new media
This Australian Web design company's site comes in two varieties, which is a good thing. But each one offers slightly different functionality. To see an interesting way of laying out information in a grid pattern, check out the HTML ("fast") version; for a fun, animated alternative, check out the Flash ("funky") version. Unfortunately, those animations (lasting 5-15 seconds) tend to get in the way of the information. Even so, it's an idea to consider and perhaps improve upon. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Mosca
The site for this producer of attractive ceramics combines thumbnails with mouseovers to create a very nice navigational feature, keeping the site compact in the process. (Sighted by Annalisa Berns)

TheAxis.org
This gallery site displays "a rich diversity of art from across the boundaries of media." It uses CSS and DHTML to create a fast-loading, attractive art gallery that always puts the work on show first. It also never loses you in the navigation. (Sighted by Yeskin Gallen)

Inheritance: Art and Images Beyond a Silenced Genocide
This site is the collected effort of nine diversely different Armenian-American artists. "Although strangers to each other, there is consonance in their experience as inheritors of an enormous, unacknowledged tragedy that took place more than 85 years ago in Ottoman Turkey." This site is simply, yet beautifully designed and easy to navigate. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)