Sightings: One excellent site each day.

Previous Sightings
March, 2002

Homeboyz Interactive
A Catholic brother founded this Milwaukee-based program in an attempt to alleviate the effects of violence on inner city youth. With their slogan "Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job," Homeboyz Interactive operates a Web development business that supports digital media, software development, and network administration training programs. Their training addresses the increasing gap between technological 'haves' and 'have-nots' by enabling young people who would not otherwise gain access to computer technology to develop the awareness and skills that will help them succeed in high technology work situations. Since 1996, 142 young people have graduated from their training programs and moved into full time IT careers. This site's well-conceived layout and use of Flash allows for a smooth navigational experience. (Sighted by Dax Phillips)

AmazonScan.com
AmazonScan.com is a program that scans different products on Amazon.com and records their sales ranking over time. What makes this site worth viewing is how public data from one site can be combed through and displayed much differently on an entirely separate site. So what does it mean that Ultimate Barry Manilow heads the pack and Licensed Varieties of Potatoes trails last? I don't know either, but it says something about the pulse of the online consumer. (Sighted by Stefan Gruenwedel)

Google's 20 Year Usenet Archive
Along with all the usual FUD posted to Usenet are some nuggets of history. Google has assembled 20 years of Usenet postings into a searchable archive. As electronic archives like this become more common, they are likely to change the way historians perform research. (Sighted by Russell Jones)

Bonnet House
The thing I like about this site is not so much the content but the layout. Each page is sort of artistically arranged and there's a mix of brief text, pull quotes, photography, and captions. Seems to me that someone very creative has rescued what, in another person's hands, would be a quite boring, academic Web site. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Pepworks Interactive
Pepworks Interactive is a multimedia gaming company, so you can expect its Web site to have very rich graphics and plenty of Flash motion. What Pepworks has managed to do is avoid giving visitors sensory overload at the same time. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Grateful Dawg
Many say that using frames is a bad idea--and they may be right--but the Grateful Dawg site makes a strong case for frames being a viable and effective Web design tool. The site has an old Wild West poster theme and a creative nav bar all nicely tied together with frames. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Formas Do Possivel
I can't read Portuguese, but the words aren't what convinced me to recommend this site. It was the creative use of SWF for its main menu that drew my attention. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Chrysalis
Don't have the resources or the inclination to make your site a mini Hollywood production with Flash or Shockwave? Don't worry, plenty of well designed sites get by without it. This site for Chrysalis training courses presents information clearly and concisely yet maintains an appealing design. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

Fine Art Weddings
Get a great example of how photographs with mouse-over effects can make your site lively without any animation work. Just be creative with the use of color and B&W. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

TechProfiles
TechProfiles bills itself as a skills-building resource but mostly it offers a long list of interactive exams that test your knowledge of specific technical subjects (though there are a few non-technical tests, too). The fun part is, you get to take the test and see how you fare against all the other people who've taken the test. If you've been thinking about a new direction for your career or just like to challenge yourself, this is a good place to spend some time. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Zoo Instinctively Creative
There's a couple of reasons to like this site, which is a corporate site for an Australian creative advertising firm. First, there's almost no scrolling. Second, their portfolio is really interesting, if you're into that sort of thing, and does this great slideshow/photo fade effect. Third, well, don't you just love that little bird? (Sighted by Phil Brown)

Dinnick & Howells
This flash-heavy design site has a super-cool portfolio book with clickable/zoomable pages. Very tidy and lovely...assuming you have a fast Internet connection. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Moments of Simplicity
The submitter described this site as "the UK's response to Web rage." It *is* sort of calming and pleasant. One caveat: We didn't like the way that, after you select a bubble, you have to wait for the movie to finish entirely before you can get back to the bubble selection. You should be able to back out to go to the next bubble. (Sighted by Darren Coolidge)

Doug Englebart 1968 Demo
In December 1968, the folks working at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California debuted the first computer mouse, along with many other now familiar computing concepts (like hypertext, object addressing, and shared screen collaboration). This site breaks the original 90-minute video of this event into smaller RealVideo streaming video clips. Watch the beginnings of the PC revolution! (sighted by Mac McCarthy)

eNature.com
Ever need to identify animals, plants, or insects? Want to know whether a species is native to your area? Although they are by no means comprehensive, the online field guides at this site are easy to use. This plain-vanilla HTML site does a good job of making the information accessible to non-technical users. (sighted by Russell Jones)

The Best of the Hubble Space Telescope
If you like astronomy and space photography, this site has the images. Unfortunately, the site itself is not up to the quality of its content. The white-on-black text below the photographs stands in sharp contrast to the beauty and clarity of the images themselves. You can learn a great deal about Web design techniques to avoid by browsing this site. (sighted by Russell Jones)

VitalWorks
Medical management software maker VitalWorks offers quite a lot of products and information on its site. Organizing it all must've been a challenge, but from the looks vitalworks.com it's a challenge they were up for. Even with the dozens of products in seven different categories, investor relations details, client profiles, and all the other requisite Web site info, you never feel lost navigating around this site. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

PreCom Corporation
Here's an idea: if you really want your visitors to view certain information, offer it in more than one place. PreCom Corporation's Web site puts links to their services both on the top nav bar and the left-hand nav bar. It might sound like overkill, but the site has a great design for browsing and the repeated information gives the illusion of more content than actually is there. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

WorldSkip
This travel information site packs in a lot of information on the home page with extensive use of drop-down menus--very practical for this sort of venue. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

Corporate Magicians.com
If you live in the U.K. and need a magician, this is the place to go. It's not a magical interface, but for ease-of-use, this one's hard to beat. (sighted by Duncan Trillo)

XSLT.com
On a whim, I typed this URL into my browser, and found a useful site. If you're looking for XSLT tools or tutorials, start here. The examples in the Gallery of Stupid XSLT Tricks (http://incrementaldevelopment.com/xsltrick/), are particularly worth your time--and they're not stupid at all. (sighted by Russell Jones)