Sightings: One excellent site each day.

Previous Sightings
July, 2002

GE's A Light: A Learning Unit
In an effort to help educators teach a strong, lasting message about light and overall energy-efficiency to students, GE Lighting has developed a new interactive, online Light and Energy Learning Unit. There is a section for students where they can try fun activities or use GELA, the online lighting auditor which will allow students to create an online audit for their school lighting. (Sighted by James Koppenal)

Monsoon Wedding
This colorful and imaginative site is an excellent reflection of those same qualities in Mira Nair's film of the same name, Monsoon Wedding. I loved cascading flowers--granted, the flowers might not make much sense if you haven't see the movie, but they're still pretty. Besides, they're very easy to turn off--a good site design detail. (Sighted by Carrie Sherrill)

M&Ms
For a candy site, I thought this was pretty darned cool. You get immediate results on the world-wide poll regarding the new M&M color, lots of games, recipes, and did you know that you can order custom colored M&Ms? (Sighted by Randy Jackson)

Life Interrupted
Life Interrupted is one woman's personal site giving providing information about the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis. Most of the information, at this point, is her personal story. The overall feel may be a little Oprah-esque, but the organization and layout are clever and intuitive. With a little beefing up of the non-first person categories, this site could certainly become a centralized source for learning and venting about this disease. (Sighted by Erin Gannon)

F9000 Anti-Gravity Racing Federation
This site is an extensive content site with a very sharp Flash design to accompany the release of the Wipeout Fusion title on Playstation2. It basically covers all the history of the wipeout anti-gravity racing event. It also covers the 'race season' in which the new game takes place, along with all the news, team info, circuit information, weapons systems details, governing rules of the 'sport', pilot profiles, etc. It also includes downloads for users. (Sighted by Justin Copplestone)

Super K9
Super K9 is British Columbia's complete online directory which features a list of upcoming events relating to dogs and their owners, a directory of boarding kennels, breeders, dog clubs, dog trainers, groomers, non-profit organizations, pet supply retailers, and veterinarians. A couple of additional features include discussion boards, classified advertisements, and a regular contest entitled "dog of the week". (Sighted by Fred Weeks)

Giant Robot
From movie stars, musicians, and skateboarders to toys, technology, and history, Giant Robot magazine covers cool aspects of Asian and Asian-American pop culture. The graphics are bold and the navigation is easy. (Sighted by Josh Twist)

KQED
Public broadcasting sites are often very plain-jane, but this site offers all sorts of multimedia experiences. I especially liked the Hidden Alcatraz and Snapshots of Asian America sections of the site. (Sighted by Karen Walters)

Night of Artists
This site is very easy to navigate and is incredibly fast-loading for an image laden site. (Sighted by Derek Deuling)

Xenoscape
This abstract art and poetry site by 17 year old Brett Klaassen is well thought out and provides a forum for others to display their work as well. (Sighted by John Marks)

Groninger Museum
Many museums, for all their great works of art, have very conservative Web sites--not so for this Museum in the Netherlands. Color abounds and the choice of language and various sections add yet more layers to this vibrant site. (Sighted by Tup Wanders)

Media Bistro
I go to Media Bistro at least once a week and the site has gotten better and better. Note that it uses a horizontal nav that actually stacks into layers once you drill down from the home page. Normally, I don't like it when it when the main content area is "framed" within other content but I think the persistent rectangular sidebars on Media Bistro work pretty well. (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

The New World Trade Center 2002
Somebody's conceptual proposal of a new World Trade Center, featuring, in part, four cylindrical towers topped by an enormous glass pyramid hotel and conference center, 50 elevators (one named for every U.S. state), and a Ground Zero memorial. Great use of Flash throughout this site. (Sighted by Laurie Trimble)

Taobot
This is a clever portfolio site for an interactive design company, using a user-controlled avatar in an animated Flash environment. At a minimum, it's a fun way to kill 30 minutes, though I found myself really wanting to make the avatar jump in the pool. (Sighted by Matthew Watkins)

Deja Vu
OK, it's not very pretty. But I did spend way too much time looking at Web sites with the browser emulator, which lets you see how any Web site looks with very early browser technology. Assessment: really awful. The timeline was kind of interesting too. (Sighted by Jay McCormack)

Terry Pratchett Books
Each page has it's own distinct look while still using the same layout. The navigation is on the left, the standard to which we've become accustomed, but it has a more creative layout and therefore dresses up the page without being flashy. And besides all that, it's a place to learn about a wonderfully creative and fun author. (Sighted by Robyn Pearson)

Dan Bricklin's Personal Home Page
This is more than a historical curiosity--though it certainly is that, Dan Bricklin having cocreated arguably the most influential single user program idea in computing, the spreadsheet (VisiCalc). It's an attractive site with a nice color scheme, maintained using Dan's Web editing software Trellix. Of particular interest to some may be his hands-on review of the Segway, the two-wheel self-balancing scooter that's causing controversy in some communities. (Sighted by Mac McCarthy)

Ivan Hoffman's Internet and Intellectual Property Law
Ivan's site will win no prizes for design, but it has won many prizes for content--Lawyer Ivan specializes in advising Webmasters, Web publishers, and Web editors about contracts, intellectual property issues, and publishing law as it impacts Web publishing. If you're publishing commercially on the Web, you really must have his site in your bookmark list. (Sighted by Mac McCarthy)

Melroze
One challenge in presenting a Web magazine is pulling all of the content together in an easy-to-navigate design. Melroze.com is one Web magazine that pulls it off--and it has more than just one subject to cover. It offers seven sections (News, Business, Entertainment, Music, Sports, Technology, and Lifestyle), and yet no matter where you are on the site you never feel like you’ve clicked yourself into a corner, with the Back button seeming like the only way back to where you started. (Sighted by Glen Kunene)

The Essex Mountain Sanatorium
This site is half history, half mythology, all creepy. If you like abandoned buildings and ghost stories about tormented lunatics, this site will make you happy. Lots of fabulous pictures everywhere. A guest book writer said it best, "We always found this to be a place of refuge and great beauty, albeit a terrifying one." That goes for the Sanatorium *and* its Web site. <insert menacing laugh> (Sighted by Lori Piquet)

Powerflasher
There is some seriously amazing Flash stuff going on here. The text is all in German so make sure you click the "Enter Site" link after the first intro loads. There's a lot of Flash effects I've never seen before but my favorite is the way you can move the navigation background either left or right (and control the speed) by where you position the mouse. Do NOT miss the Team area. (Sighted by Alexander Swagemakers)

Travel with a Challenge
Travel with a Challenge features richly illustrated articles, travel news and advice appealing to the mature (40+) traveler. The focus is on "alternative travel", that is, nature and active adventure, educational, cultural and volunteer vacations worldwide. (sighted by Alison Gardner)

Stands4
Stands4 bills itself as "the source for acronyms and abbreviations" and it's by far the biggest one I've seen. For example, looking up "ASP" returns a list of 39 terms, among which, as you might expect, are Application Service Provider and Active Server Pages. You don't have to look up individual acronyms, you can browse alphabetically, or by category. The site lists only 10 results per page, which sometimes forces you to browse through several pages to find the acronym definition you want. The pop-up tips on the menus are excellent. (sighted by Russell Jones)