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prior listings

 

• The Half Project 9/30/00 
  Description: a grungy design site filled with collaborative works of artists
  Comments: What do previous Best of the Cool winners //Retina-e and Australian INfront have in common with today's pick?  On a medium that is so largely concentrated in the U.S., it's not surprising that designers and artists from other countries can easily go unnoticed in the vast cyberspace — sites like today's pick focus on showcasing the works from many talented people in their country, with an impact much greater than one could get on their own.  Kudos to today's winner for taking the initiative!  It's cool how they're doing it.  Providing various, unique stimuli to spark the creative juices of the collaborators, they're accumulating quite a collection of tasty visuals — the site has a certain "grungy" look and feel and I particularly like the style of the background images.  There's something about big dirty graphics that appeals to me and I like the easy navigation and fast loading pages, too.  Thanks, Zoo, for putting this great site out there for us!
   
• g-e-l-u-n-d 9/27/00 
  Description: Personal home page.
  Comments: It's funny... when you talk about years on the Internet, "since 1995" is considered a veteran.  Hell!  That's only five years ago, but in Internet time, it seems like so much longer than it really is.  Anyway, Gary's been dabbling in HTML since 1995, and today's pick is his "launching pad to various web projects" he's developed since then.  The content is diverse and there's a lot of it.  Three little "+" signs on the cover take you 3 simple motion graphics pieces — sorta like old fashioned cinema with pixels exposed.  Gary uses a lot of popup windows, but, in most cases, they seem appropriate.  Among his various projects, there's some interesting texts, more visuals, and an "audio diner" — in general, it's pretty entertaining stuff.  Pages load very fast and the design is clean and appealing.  This is a personal website of someone who obviously enjoys the medium and has been doin' it longer than most — 5 years, that is...
   
• current form 9/25/00 
  Description: a community of and for designers to help us better understand each others processes and ideas
  Comments: Sometimes, I like to pick a site that's not fully launched yet if it has a unique concept in mind for the full launch.  Of course, if the pre-launch version is not well designed or contains no original content yet, I'm probably bound to wait a while.  But, today's pick already has an interesting weblog in place and I think the design is original and appealing.  The mission of the site is well explained in the "about" section and I'm guessing that their plan is moving towards realizing the potential they describe.  Simon King is the producer of the site, and though it appears that Spring 2000 was his targeted launch date, I have a feeling that the delay doesn't mean much.  I have a feeling that when the full launch actually takes place, that this can become a really interesting and useful site, especially for web designers.  I'll admit I could be wrong here, but for now, check it out and we'll see what it becomes... (thanks go out to linkwatcher for pointing to this soon-to-be great website)
   
• nine design 9/21/00 
  Description: portfolio of Kevin Abrosini
  Comments: Late last Friday night, Kevin wrote "launch beta. most of the sections still need work, but this huge graphic has been sittin in my hard drive for months..."  Well — that huge graphic is just that — 4 screens wide, each clean, tasty piece of it served up by a nifty scrolling script.  And some sections "still need work" — you bet!  I'd really like to see that "nine archive" but the link needs fixing.  I'm sure it's on Kevin's todo list, and you'll seldom see me pick a site that has a bad internal link, so I'm counting on you, Kevin... Less than one week old and showing bold signs of being one really cool design portfolio type of thing, I'll stick my neck out on this one.  The experimental section has some excellent pieces in it.  Computer-generated art is one of those broadly defined areas of creativity found on the web and Kevin's stuff is in the zone that is pleasing to look at... it's stands out as the real thing.  I hope his list of things to tweak includes settling down those popups a bit... bring 'em to the left so they fit and the user will love ya for it.  Twenty year old Kevin is bursting with talent and this brand new site, plus another one he's getting ready to launch, are sure to be popular sites... quickly.  Late last Friday night, Kevin told himself "tonight is the nite" and I'm thankful he followed through... bring it on, dude!
   
• diesel sweeties 9/20/00 
  Description: pixelated online romance comics with robots and retired pornstars.
  Comments: "You never know if these people are real or not."  They probably are real — even Clango the robot... pixelated comics with a strange sense of humor are what Today's pick serves up and today's episode even contains a guest appearance by a web character you might know (with his permission, of course).  It's an interesting coincidence that after I picked this site, I noticed that he just happened to mention this site yesterday in his daily thing as well.  This type of pixel art is similar to that found on another recent Best of the Cool winner, and like that other pick, today's also offers some tasty icons for download.  This pixel thing is definitely something that came from the web and I like it.  The archive of comics here is fun to explore — titles like "Cutie Pie" and "Fleshy Organs" and "Inhuman" each lead you to (or should I say, mis-lead you to) strange 4-panel comics with a satisfying bit of humor.  That cast of characters is quite real to me — in fact, I've already identified four of them with people I know (but you can bet they're not the same real people that the author identifies with them or that you might).  Web entertainment lives on through little amusements like today's pick, and if it wasn't for that annoying affiliate banner at the bottom of some of the pages, I would say this site is absolutely perfect — but despite that little prejudice of mine, I can still safely say that today's pick is GREAT...
   
• Heroine 9/19/00 
  Description: A magazine for women of substance.
  Comments: Volume I, Issue 1 of this new magazine for women jumps online with a bold statement from Joan Osbourne — "Magazines about women have some great articles in them, but those articles are surrounded by words and images that reduce women to their bodies, their wardrobe, their spending habits."  Joan's had this thing about idolizing heroines in her life, and this cool new mag is her attempt to do it in a new, real way.  Her one-on-one interview of Mary J. Blige and her conversation with Susan Sarandon and the Indigo Girls all together are just part of the cool content in the first issue.  There's also exhibits of photography and art from more of Joan's heroines... The mission is clear and the whole attitude of it is fresh — this is no typical online mag.  I love the unique combination of fast loading Flash navigation and HTML pages.  Today's pick is a definite cool stop and though I'm not its typical kinda viewer, you can believe I'll be there for Issue 2!
   
• the couch 9/18/00 
  Description: sit, drink, talk and listen
  Comments: Today's pick is probably one of the better examples of a type of site I feel is key when I think of the "spirit of the web."  We all have our concept of what "spirit" means, I guess, and my concept has much to do with personal, creative expression — providing a vehicle for it and encouraging talented storytellers to participate is half the battle.  Presenting real, human content via a design that makes the user feel at rght at home is the other end of the accomplishment, and if you pull all of that off just right, the result is a site that many will enjoy.  Today's picks seems to have done it well — "a place for people to gather and tell stories. Our lives seem to revolve around being sat on a couch while drinking and eating and chatting. We want to see if we can succeed in doing something kind of similar on the web. It won't be the same, we want it to be different, but its got to be interesting."  You did succeed, Jason, and "interesting" is putting it mildly!
   
• Funkysmile 9/15/00 
  Description: 'A site about me' (Flash)
  Comments: "If you do not have a browser released in the last few years - go away."  I like his spirit immediately.  In that day job of mine, I spend hours upon hours making sure that everything works for those bozos using 4-year old browsers (they'll even take the time to complain when it doesn't).  Sometimes I just wanna put a little note in the footer includes that say's "Get a browser – get a life!"  But since I kinda need to keep that day job of mine, it's nice that 18-year old Mohammed is free to say it for me :)
  
  
  
  Seriously, though, today's pick is pretty darn good when you consider that Mohammed is just getting started.  From what I can see, he's already accumulated a few years experience – an obvious natural at design.  He tells a story of getting his first computer and doing graphics on it three days later.  In his portfolio, one of the pieces is an impressive Flash site that he did only three days after getting Flash.  This kid has taken to the medium like a fish takes to water.  Shorten that colorful Flash introduction a tad, and bring in even more content that showcases that wonderful talent of yours, Mohammed, and you've got a site that many will say is "perfectly cool."
   
• Dean Larson 9/14/00 
  Description: showcase of oil paintings done in realistic style
  Comments: I'm wondering if the artist whose work is the content of today's pick actually designed the site.  The information about him is written in the third person, but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone else did the site — in fact, that's done intentionally a lot on the web, so I'm still curious.  It's not that the design is cutting-edge or anything like that, but it is very clean and functional — nice navigation, smart use of popup windows, and balanced page layouts.  I guess my curiosity has a lot to do with having seen so many sites featuring great artwork in the total absence of decent design.  Enough of that line of thought, though — I've got a strong feeling that Dean Larson did design his own site, and will remain curious as to whether that's true or not.  CONTENT! — that's really why I picked Dean's site, anyway.  Realism is the style of his work and he's been painting oils for over 20 years.  He's featured in galleries, and according to one of them, his works sell for as much as $15,000.  What I appreciate about his site, though, is that it makes no attempt to sell his art — it only presents samples of it without the typical pricing and ordering information, etc.  Kudos to Mr. Larson for realizing that the web isn't necessarily what makes you or breaks you in your professional life, especially if you're a great artist whose art sells itself — I've got the feeling that the motivation behind the site is to share the art, not to peddle it...
   
• waferbaby 9/13/00 
  Description: we eat bandwidth for breakfast
  Comments: I hadn't seen this site in a while, but thanks to fojm (talk about cool concepts!), which I visited recently to see how my mugshot looked on the page, I was reminded that I've meaning to check this one out again soon.  The design's a little different than what I saw before and the site's taken on a more personal tone.  The home page is actually a news page sort of thing that gives you a pretty good taste of the personality behind the site.  Though it appears rather non-graphical when you arrive, digging in a little will definitely change that perception.  What this guy does with pixels is unique — the action figures are terminally amusing — there's some characters there that many will recognize.  Then there's the ecards which have titles that are actually more racy than the cute little depictions on them.  The collections of "iconz" are probably the coolest thing about this pixel madness.  They're free and available for Mac or PC and are obviously done for the love of it.  Positive and interesting, this site was definitely fun to visit... cool is such a perfect word for it.
   
• Web Design Guide 9/11/00 
  Description: Web Design Guide. Learn strategies for faster download of every page. Web page authoring, web design tutorials, resources, and tools.
  Comments: I'm not real crazy about most sites that offer "web resources."  It seems to me that most of them perpetuate the myth of getting rich quick on the internet and when they talk about promoting your website, it's one big crock of you know what.  I have to admit that I tend to shy away from that whole category of sites and that I am quite prejudiced in the way I look at them.  Well, folks, prejudice is not a good way to go and I constantly try to put it aside and give every site its due consideration — that's good, 'cause look what I found.  Today's pick is a web design tutorial and resources site that's a breath of fresh air.  Very few sites of this type present their material in such a non-commercial and hype-free way (here's another I can think of offhand).  Excellent information in the areas of making pages which load quickly, the basics of HTML, and javascript is available here, and the beginners' guide is done well, too.  I was impressed by the promotion section which deals with meta tags, etc.  All-in-all, today's pick is well designed and seems most credible to me... real resources and excellent tips for both novice and more advanced web builders.
   
• Common-place 9/10/00 
  Description: "a common place for exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture"
  Comments: Today's pick is the first issue of a new web magazine about history and culture that's attempting to fill a gap.  Popular online magazines about history tend to be more about media and technology-oriented history where "snazzy graphics" tend to be an appropriate part of presenting the material and the content tends to be limited to covering great people and events of the twentieth century.  Presented by a group at Boston University, this site intends to cover the more commonplace cultural aspects of history in a broader timeframe.  Instead of popular, technology-oriented material, the goal here is to take a more scholarly (though not purely scholarly approach.  "Our features, reviews, and columns track the lives of ordinary men and women, embracing new scholarship, teaching, and exhibits that explore all aspects of America's past and its many peoples."  The result is a well-designed presentation of texts with limited use of graphics, aimed towards the user who is more interested in a broader view of American history.  I think they've done a nice job!
   
• Philosophical Toy World 9/9/00 
  Description: Entertainment of wonders and conflux of apparent miracles...(Shockwave/QuickTime)
  Comments: Today's pick is clearly the most mind-boggling and eccentric website I have ever encountered — it's a deep philosophical study of moving pictures and illusions that looks at "pre-cinema" technology dating back to the 1800s.  The navigation is bizarre and the design is like a schoolbook from the 1940s.  If the texts don't throw your thoughts into a frenzy, the whole visual impact will.  I won't even try to describe this puppy... yer on yer own today, folks... but don't expect it to make total sense, or even seem sane, and you'll need Shockwave and QuickTime to be truly entertained.  Zoe Beloff is obviously more intense than the average web artist.  Enjoy!
   
• Sebastien Chevrel 9/8/00 
  Description: personal webdesign portfolio, photography and dhtml experiments.
  Comments: Alongside his copyright notice, Sebastien Chevrel tells you "this ain't no flash, baby. all dhtml code is cooked from scratch" and even invites you to steal the code, as long as you tell him you did.  Seb doesn't need flash to impress you with — "good old html 4, a good dose of javascript and some basic math" does the trick rather well.  This showcase site is chock full of dhtml experiments, a little about his work, and also features a gallery of his original photography.  In my humble, but consistent opinion, every bit of Seb's site is top notch... great content, presentation and design... who the heck needs flash, anyway :)
   
• troopdesign 9/6/00 
  Description: experimental lab design (flash)
  Comments: Today's pick comes from Italian visual designer Biffi Simone, whose main project is another site with a similar name.  An interesting combination of two distinct versions in one, 3.1 appears to be the non-flash version, while 3.2 presents roughly the same content using flash.  Yes — Biffi deals with visuals, indeed, and the site does come off as somewhat of an experimental work in progress.  Though the flash version has an introduction that's a little longer than I like, eventually the cool interface appears.  It all seems to be more about presentation than actual content, but that's okay... there's some really interesting graphics along the way.  I liked the non-flash version better myself — it provides more content and information about Biffi than the "bells and whistles" version, and is just as appealing visually.  As I left this site, the buzzwords from the splash page remained in my mind: Reaction, Equality, Autonomy.  Something to think about...
   
• cubadust 9/5/00 
  Description: very cool design featuring wallpapers, fonts, and an arcade
  Comments: The fullscreen interface launched from the splash page of today's winner is impressive — the deep blues and black and fine lines and yummy images combine together just right.  It's got a certain richness that I find quite pleasing.  Though I think the information in the "latest updates" popup (which appears a little funky in NS as compared to IE) might be better presented by incorporating it into the interface itself, that's just a preference — I just don't like the way it immediately blocks a portion of the beautiful artwork behind it.  Featuring unique wallpapers and fonts, all excellent, I have a feeling that the site will be adding things with time.  This is an advanced design with superb graphics and I would love to see an actual gallery of the producer's artwork — I'd be willing to bet that something along those lines is being planned.  And my tip of the day is don't ever ignore that ambiguous "misc" link, folks.  Click it on today's pick and you get a mini-arcade... there's several challenging Java games that load pretty quickly.  I'm glad this site was submitted — though the number of submissions is constantly growing, only a few are as cool as today's pick.  "Very cool design" he said — I'll have to agree...
   
• uncontrol 9/4/00 
  Description: gallery of experimental Flash and interactive drawings
  Comments: Not a whole bunch to say about today's winner.  In fact, today's pick says very little about itself.  The first attraction is an exhibition of various Flash experiments that are interactive and interesting — the mathematical patterns and critter-like things that the user can manipulate or affect with his/her mouse make excellent diversions — useless fun and an excuse to vegetate :)   The other key attraction is even more user-oriented and is really what got my attention.  A shockwave drawing application with excellent controls (which is a concept that seems counter to the name of the site) allows the user to draw pictures and submit them to the gallery (via email).  The gallery has some surprisingly good stuff — apparently this site's visitors have considerable artistic talent.  Though the gallery does load a little slowly because of all the mini pictures (too large to be called thumbnails in my mind), seeing what people have submitted is more than useless fun... it's a little excursion into real art created on the fly...
   
• Simian 9/2/00 
  Description: funny, sad and thought provoking all at the same time (Flash)
  Comments: There's a certain primal flavor here and the name and initial graphics might make you think that evolution is at work.  Look closer, starting with #1, and the thought of revolution is more like it.  #1 is just the first of 9 interesting collages of site and sound – It's all Flash and it's all good.  This is Volume 2 of what the producers call an experiment and that always means I wanna see what Volume 1 was like.  I did and I liked!  A dozen pieces on display in the first collection and 9 in this one — and after viewing only about 1/3 of it, once again, I start thinking those positive thoughts about sites that use the medium well to present real content.  There's a few pieces that are for more mature audiences, but all the sights and sounds presented here are for thinking people — an excellent blend of emotive art and design that stimulates and appeals that part of the brain that has to do with growth and change.  Evolution?  Maybe.  Revolution?  Indeed!
   
• Nuclear Sunday 9/1/00 
  Description: "my artistic outlet"
  Comments: This one is special... it's so cool to literally bump into such artistic talent, especially with all the stuff I've had to wade through recently.  Jessica's sense of color and uncanny ability to accomplish a look and feel I can only describe as subtle and faded has left me somewhat amazed and thankful.  The emotion hits you immediately – there's very few words on the site, yet you get to know the artist quite well.  Perfection is close at hand, my friends, and I just bumped into one of it's edges... don't miss this sweet assortment of visual art.