I usually post about my own thoughts, but this time I want yours.
The other day I was thinking about the evolution of how information is presented on the Internet. Fan pages became e-zines. E-zines became blogs. Then came podcasts and videocasts. Wikipedia popularized the Wiki format. Social networking succeeded with aggregation of social status information. The latest leap that I’ve seen that impresses me is Stack Overflow.
Even though there are many forks in the evolution of data driven websites, the blog still appears to be the most popular. I love the blog model, but I see a few flaws with it.
- Too many blogs, too much content. John Mauldin recently stated it felt like he was drinking water from a fire hose.
- Older valuable content gets buried quickly.
- For a site to remain popular, it must keep posting, even if they have nothing new to say.
My question to you is: have you seen any websites recently that have decided to do something different that impressed you? Share any links in the comments. Note that my SPAM filter will sometimes flag links in a comment as naughty, so it may take a little longer before it shows up.
Ah, I like this stack overflow. Very cool, thanks!
It’s probably old news to many but I really like http://www.kayak.com for it’s innovative take on finding cheap airfares. It polls the big travel web sites and finds the lowest fares so you don’t have to visit 6 different sites. It’s a real time saver.
I think http://www.thesixtyone.com/ is the most interesting presentation I’ve seen on a website in a long time. It basically throws out the typical website chrome and allows a different way to browse.
I love innovative ways of presenting information my favorite to use is http://www.wolframalpha.com for parisng comparitave data, although i do like browsing http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ just for visual clue on how to present abstract concepts.
I still get emails from wikihow all the time from the couple of questions i answered there a while ago.
@Dhammy – I’ve been a user of KAYAK for years. I love that site. They even keep track of baggage fees (bottom of left column).
@Joe – That is a cool site. Especially how the background photo resizes with the browser. I enjoyed that dance remix of the Star Trek theme.
@Paul – Information is (truly) Beautiful. Kind of wish WOLF used a larger brighter font.