Time.com's list of the 10 best websites of 2009.
Time.com's list of the 10 best websites of 2009.
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02/05/10
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1
Flickr
Computers don't handle visual imagery with the same native ease with which they parse text or crunch numbers. Flickr was the first site to solve this problem with something called collaborative tagging. The idea is that if everyone is allowed to tag everyone else's uploaded photos, then a rough-and-ready categorization will naturally emerge from the wisdom of the crowd. It works because it has to — there aren't enough librarians in the world to look after Flickr's archive of 3 billion photos, much less file them away for future reference. But it also works because the many really is smarter than the sum of its parts. The Library of Congress has even started to poll the Flickr hive mind when cataloging its own photos. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1918028,00.html#ixzz0ei5Nf1v0
2
California Coastline
A man, a helicopter and a digital camera: those three elements combine to create one of the most engrossing sites on the Web. There's nothing fancy about California Coastline's execution or interface. The site is simply what it claims to be: 10,000 up-close-and-personal aerial shots of the entire 1,000-mile-long coast. You can see everything from Barbra Streisand's Malibu backyard to the best secret surf spots the state has to offer just past the off-limits Vandenberg Air Force Base. The site is catnip for daydream-prone cubicle dwellers, though it's definitely NSFW. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917968,00.html#ixzz0ei5SHRH8
3
Delicious
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) started out as a kind of Flickr for bookmarks (it's no coincidence; Flickr and Delicious are both owned by Yahoo!) but is now more useful as a search-engine hack. You filter Delicious' tags to drill down to the type of content you're searching for. For example, if you enter "search" and "hack" and, to narrow the myriad results, "popular," you get a page of promising leads, including Googlism.com (which is the only way you should search for your own name, ever). Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917969,00.html#ixzz0ei5XMkWb
4
Metafilter
There are lots of collaborative voting and comment sites out there — Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon — but there is only one worth joining, even if it does cost $5: Metafilter, or "MeFi" for those in the know. In fact, that fee ends up feeling like a feature rather than an impediment, because it manages to keep the site remarkably free of trolls, griefers and other anonymous jerks. As a result, MeFi has the public-spirited flavor of a small town or good university, and the answers on AskMeFi can be helpful. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917970,00.html#ixzz0ei5aZuU5
5
popurls
The hardest thing about getting news from the Net is keeping up with it. First there were browser-based bookmarks, but you had to check them all the time. Then the RSS reader was invented, which brought the news home by asking you to subscribe to feeds from your favorite sites. Invariably, they stacked up, unread. Then popurls (it rhymes with popular) cracked the code by pulling together up-to-the-moment headlines from the biggest and most popular news and opinion sites, blogs and vlogs onto one giant Web page for you to graze through. There's nothing to remember to check or install. It's the perfect homepage. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917971,00.html#ixzz0ei5fo01K
6
"The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression," wrote Steven Johnson in his TIME cover story on the micro-blogging site, and it's true: you'll either love it or hate it. Haters maintain that nothing worth saying can be said in 140 characters. Lovers quote Hemingway's most famous short story in its entirety: "For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn." Nevertheless, Twitter's ubiquity is upon us, and at least the musings of Twitterati like Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O'Neal are less harmful than their movies. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917972,00.html#ixzz0ei5lTSbZ
7
Skype
With cell-phone minutes being so cheap, Luddites wonder what the big deal is about making phone calls over the Internet — or as geeks call it, VoIP, short for "voice over Internet protocol." The answer is that VoIP has the power to turn an Internet connection into a videophone. For the average user, Skype is the best VoIP, even though it is a "walled garden," meaning that in order to use the videophone feature, you have to convince your friend on the other end to join Skype too. Gmail users already have a videophone built into their e-mail app. Power users may want to check out Dim Dim. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917973,00.html#ixzz0ei5pdfkV
8
Boing Boing
Boing Boing functions as a proxy for the entire aesthetic of the Web. It's a deliberately eclectic mix of tech commentary, sci-fiction nerd-outs, fringe culture, gadget porn and serious news items. It is, according to its own description, a "directory of wonderful things." The four editors and writers behind Boing Boing will fiercely dispute this, but the site's dirty secret is that it's about as mainstream as it gets — for the mainstream of the Web, that is. If you want to understand what online culture is all about, stop by Boing Boing. When you find yourself anticipating the wacky and wonderful items the editors regularly churn up, you'll know you've gone native. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917976,00.html#ixzz0ei5uESuG
9
Academic Earth
The latest campus revolutionaries are the so-called edupunks — and their mission is to break up the ivory tower so everyone can pile into the classroom. MIT was the first university to heed the edupunk call: it started posting syllabi, course notes and videotaped lectures on ocw.mit.edu back in 2001. Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Princeton and Stanford soon followed suit, with their own schemes for posting videos of their most popular courses. Now Academic Earth aggregates all this material so you can audit classes from the comfort of your computer. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917977,00.html#ixzz0ei5xsNtn
10
OpenTable
The latest campus revolutionaries are the so-called edupunks — and their mission is to break up the ivory tower so everyone can pile into the classroom. MIT was the first university to heed the edupunk call: it started posting syllabi, course notes and videotaped lectures on ocw.mit.edu back in 2001. Harvard, Berkeley, Yale, Princeton and Stanford soon followed suit, with their own schemes for posting videos of their most popular courses. Now Academic Earth aggregates all this material so you can audit classes from the comfort of your computer. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1918031_1918016_1917977,00.html#ixzz0ei5xsNtn
[source: Time.com ]
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