Do you like the unusual side of the internet but are a little bored of the usual interfaces? Take a look at these sites and make a bet. Will you be able to log off before you visit them all?
Revolutionize your Image Experience
screenshot by author
Flickr is one of the biggest repositories of photographic images on the internet and it has its own search engine, it’s true. Throw in a little flash and you have something extraordinary. So, if you want something visual that’s not quite so, well, static, try this interactive site. You type in a tag that you want – in this instance it is the word ‘internet’ and you get the Flickr results for all of those images. In this case there were over eighty eight thousand results. If you pull your cursor out, you can see related tags to narrow your search down and find more specific result. The site loads faster than Flick and is a new and interactive twist on a site that is renowned for the quality of the images rather than its interface.
We Are All Going To Die
screenshot by author
Using flash technology, photographer Simon Hoegsberg has created a one hundred meter long image of people which he subtitles ‘100 meters of existence’. Over the course of a twenty day period in 2007 he took pictures of hundreds of people from the same place on a bridge in Berlin, Germany. These were then spliced together and this sliding view of humanity on their way who knows where is the result. Slide along and people watch!
Newsmap
screenshot by author
Newsmap takes the news and squeezes it in to little boxes – literally. The flash drive site allows you to click on to the country of your choice and see what is going on there. When you see something you want to read more about it, then you click on to the box and it will take you to the story. Not only that, you can either go for all news categories or you can ask for stories from just one category. The flash loads quickly and the links are equally fast. Could this be the way newspapers will operate in the future?
Ulechang
screenshot by author
Ulechang is odd. Very odd. If you like Monty Python, Anime and information that is cool but not strictly speaking vital to your every day existence, then this site may well keep you occupied for a very long time. You chose an avatar and begin your upwards experience, taking in the universe of very weird goings on as you do. Substances you cannot buy over the counter in a drug store may possibly help with this site.
Pretty Loaded
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When all PCs were dial up people hated the preloader. Waiting for that one hundred percent mark to come often involved an awful lot of time – whole families have been created waiting for that magic moment. This site is an archive of preloaders from across the ages of the internet. You can choose the year if you so choose, but you may just want to sit back and watch the preloaders load. It is perhaps suspect to call this an art form but the sheer creativity of some of these preloaders was a whole lot better than the content of the sites they were actually loading!
Three Dimensional Navigation
screenshot by author
Screenvader could be showing us today what we might expect from the average website on the internet in the future. The three dimensional environment is not, of course, but it gives us a good idea of the shape of things to come when the net becomes the cloud – perhaps. This site loads beautifully and had some fairly cool content, too. Although you may just say this is action script on acid, the truth is that the interface works fluidly and is very different from the usual fare out there.
Subway Life
screenshot by author
Antonio Jorge Goncalves is an artist who draws people sitting in subway trains. He spent over thirty weeks in total sitting on trains in various world cities and sketching the people he saw there. He chose a variety of lines and time of the day and drew over three hundred pictures in each city. Put them all in to a flash website and this is the awesome result. Quite an amazing record of life on the move, who knows, you may even see yourself there.
The Eco Zoo
screenshot by author
Environmental concern plus flash animation of the highest order combine in to this website to make it one of the more entertaining on the subject – both for children and for adults. You can choose from a variety of different animals to learn more about how to protect the environment. The flash is pretty whizzy and there is a lot of interactivity so you can leave it, go make a coffee and return without worrying about missing something.
Fly a Balloon
screenshot by author
Don’t worry when you hit this website about the fact that your browser has just reduced in size. Let the two little guys sort it out for you! Combining art, mime and some very clever script, this site will have you – hopefully – chuckling along once you realize that your PC is going to be alright!
Cards
screenshot by author
Flash simply for its own sake – nothing more. This extremely neat card ‘trick’ was created for the launch of Flash CS4. Only Adobe products were used in this animation, so nothing 3D has touched any of it. With a little help from Photoshop and After Effects this short will blow your mind. Takes some time to load so if you are dialing up – go make a baby or something while your connection handles this.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Some more great sites for me to check out R J. I’m getting quite a list now. Haha
RJ
February 9th, 2009 at 2:42 am
seems fun to try. I will check them out. Thanks for the info
February 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Thanks for this. I will give them a try. A great article.
Christine
February 9th, 2009 at 5:17 am
More interesting info!
February 9th, 2009 at 6:43 am
I liked the 100m photo. Great collection of sites.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Wow, great list…really sparks my curiosity..
February 9th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Great fun!
February 9th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Nice mix of sites/content; and as always, the consummate tour-guide!
February 9th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Interesting selection of sites to encourage me to spend even more timebrowsing, instead of working! LOL
February 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
bizarre
February 9th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Nice article…
February 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Om RJ, you know I don’t have this kind of time. Why oh why? lol
February 9th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Most of the ones I went to were cool, but I didn’t have time for all of them.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Nice stuff,it took me long to return to your article,thank you.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Interesting but way out of my line. Good info for those who do this stuff.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
wow, some of those look great, if I didnt have a poor internet connection, I could waste days….
February 9th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Interesting and fun!
February 10th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Well researched article: very informative and interesting.
February 10th, 2009 at 5:44 am
Awesome. Some very fun sites, there.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I had to go check out “Fly a Balloon”…. Great article, thank you for sharing.
February 10th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Cards was magical…great article
February 11th, 2009 at 3:31 am
I didn’t know about these sites,thanks
February 11th, 2009 at 5:50 am
Awesome article! Interesting beginning to end!
February 11th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Great article! I enjoyed it so much!
February 11th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Interesting and enjoyable sites.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Excellent! well-written piece and very attractive presentation. I really enjoyed reading your work. Well done and thanks for sharing
February 13th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Great article and very creative on your part RJ
February 13th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
As if I didn’t spend enough time web-hopping, now even more strange places to visit. The news one was odd, but good and I loved the bridge just people watching. Thank you for sharing them.
February 14th, 2009 at 2:41 am
I’ll have to try this out!
February 14th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
This was lots of fun exploring! Thanks
February 14th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Pleasurable site to open when you are bored! As always great post!
February 17th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Wow! I have to look at some of these sites. Thanks!