What are the best sites out there? What do we think is cool? These are pretty loaded questions. What method would you use to assess them? What makes a good website?
At Bootstrap, we generally think that the best websites are clearly focused, useful and user friendly. Whether the topic of the site is food or finance, real-estate or religion — a good site has a clearly defined user interface that provides the user with clear direction and easily discernible actions.
Once or twice a year, Bootstrap takes an internal poll to see what excites people on the web. The results range by people’s tastes, their personalities, and what they tend to gravitate to online.
Here are some of the latest results, for better or worse, with a short description from the reporter why they like it:
2009
Searches food blogs, and presents a wide array of dishes visually. If you want to learn more or get the recipe, just click through.
Cool app to help get you noticed on Twitter. (Check out that bird logo – designed by one of our own)
http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map
Shows where people kill one another in New York City from an an amalgamation of data from different sources. It provides many different ways to look at homicides: time periods (specific years), demographic data of the victim, demographic data of the perpetrator (if known), weapon used, and location.
Aggregator of news aggregators – never need to look anywhere else ever again to find what the Internets think is cool.
You can easily make yourself super-stalkable, but it’s an app that links into a bunch of the big social sites.
Provides a mapping tool to allow you to plot and save courses all over the country (haven’t tried internationally). When mapping, it calculates the distance automatically (always useful). There’s also a training log component that tracks your workouts and provides estimated calories burned per exercise.
http://www.rewardtv.com/welcome/sampleGames.sdo
Not cool for its front end so much as what’s going on behind the scenes. It’s really a Nielsen market research site disguised as a TV trivia game for a half a million stay-at-home parents in the flyover states. Big hit with the Top 20 consumer brands spending billions on TV ads trying to gauge message retention.
http://www.bio-bak.nl/?ref-reallyflippingcool
Its Dutch! its Flash! it reminds me of the Addams Family! Its wacky and wild! And did I mention, its Dutch!!
TED talks! So the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is an invitation-only event where people from various industries and scientific backgrounds give <20min talks about… pretty much anything and everything, and then they post the talks online for free. Some reeeeeally incredible stuff in there. They do a great job of making very niche or complex scientific/political/economic disciplines understandable and appreciable to the layperson. I’ve been using the ted talks android app a lot on the train.
Converts YouTube videos into MP3′s. Not without it’s kinks (it’s still in Beta), and the sound quality is only as good as the file. But sitll a great way to build up your concert library and locate hard to find tracks.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/
Great apartment ideas. Classifieds section that is specialized to mid-century modern/ chic used furniture. Localized to main cities. Shows where the shopping deals are for the week. Linked to unplggd.com, ohdeedoh.com, re-nest.com, and thekitchn.com, all equally cool and are house related
Calendar for pregnant women to enter the due-date and get a day by day calendar that talks about baby’s development and changes that moms should expect. I like that it is individualized by due date and easy to follow because each day has the actual date based on the due-date.
location-based social networking. i think it’s going to get huge. what i like most about it is how lightweight it is (compared to, say, facebook)
Green, easy to use, satisfying, interesting crossover from internet to paper world
2008
Singular focus. Good deals. It’s important to remember that a website does not need to do too much. It can be simple and still drive lots of traffic and provide value to consumers.
Great algorithms for matching people up. Also, the developers stick in funny content and obscure references wherever possible.
clean,funny, allot of info (what not to do ..) no popup
i’m always amused by the content
Searches multiple airlines (or other travel) at once to get the best deal. Also allows you to customize your home locations and get a weekly email with avg low fares. It’s simple and does what you need it to do – not confusing.
I am also a fan of the single function website. This one provides a service everyone can benefit from. It also does not ask for more personal information than it absolutely needs.
http://www.geocities.com/icyhotstuntazz/
Why? Because they took over in the 2G+1.
Community based content that “bubbles up” to the front page based on popularity, with users either “digging” or “burying” them. Open discussion about each article, with the ability to digg or bury comments as well. The idea is really simple, but has gained quite a fair amount of popularity.
Lots of products that can be easily narrowed down because of the amount of drop downs they have.
http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
a “why didn’t I think of that” website
For a fairly “boring” task of finding out your upload and download speeds, the interface is very cool, and they provide a good amount of data and easy options to figure out bandwidth to locations worldwide. There are ads paying for the site, but they are really outside the core functions so is easily discernible, and separate from the use of the site.
http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/
Because I like these kinds of bikes and it gave me great examples when I was building my fix. Singular focus, lots of relevant advertisers.
So long as you have an address or an intersection, it can get you from any one place in the city to another. You can also use it to map from NYC to other cities close by. Also gives fairly accurate time estimates and re-routes based on construction.
You don’t have to login to purchase anything.
Well thought out and organized, clean and simple look that belies its complexity.
Complete RSS feed site of torrent files of TV shows. You can either use their combined feed that compiles the latest popular shows as they come in, or you can create an RSS feed based on one particular show, with optional filters.
Tracks flights you are looking to purchase for lowest fares. Also tracks fares for flights you’ve already purchased and works with the airline to issue a voucher if the price drops below your purchase price. Brilliant!
Funky idea (morbid yet kinda cool), well executed (ok bad pun). Plus my nephew built it.
I like this site because it gives comparison of prices from different hotels, airline flights etc.
In my opinion, the best site if you want to comparison shop for the best prices on Computers, electronics, and other items. Has user reviews as well as expert reviews of products, and merchant reviews so you know you are dealing with a reputable merchant site. Search results can also give you the best bottom line price based on the cost of the product, tax, and shipping if you enter in the zip code that the item will ultimately be shipped to. -Chew
This is cool because if you like you host your own poker tournaments, you know it can be a burden to figure out what are the blinds, keep a timer, what are the prize allocations, how do the prizes change if additional players buy in or rebuy after the tournament starts. It’s nice to have a program manage all this for you, and provide a nice display of the information for all the players during the tourney. That’s why this is cool, but I’m biased because I created the website.
Democratizes data analysis & visualization
-Kinda like eCards but more room for fun…
1) focus: talks about one thing — cellphones 2) content: great reviews (one of the less biased ones i’ve seen), info, pictures, and comparisons; very comprehensive and updated 3) design: neat and simple
Mike Stineman
Director of Business Development
Service Delivery Manager