Ten Sites for Finding Wonderful Things
Ten years ago today Jason Kottke launched his influential blog Kottke.org. The site is a fascinating collection of...whatever Kottke cares to post there.
So prescient was his vision of the future of publishing though that today he's married to the co-founder of Blogger.com and can be counted among the earliest pioneers in the present era of online bricolage - the art of assembling diverse found objects.
Bricolage has become one of the most dominant themes of the new online world. The word may be French and unfamiliar, but you see the concept in action every time you read BoingBoing, for example. There are few blogs more widely read than BoingBoing - but it's in tribute to Kottke's 10 year anniversary that we offer the following collection of some our favorite places to discover marvelous things online. All are curated by the careful eyes and hands of one or a few editors, making these sites a different experience than places like Digg, Del.icio.us Popular, PopURLs or elsewhere.
Not only are these types of sites widely read, they are also inspiring a cultural renaissance of bricolage on sites like Tumblr and FFFFound.
Great Sites to Find Fantastic Things
Note: If you are reading this story by RSS, you may not be able to see the dynamic list of recent popular stories from each source. You can click through to the live site to see them. Speaking of RSS, reader Víctor Hernández created a spliced feed of all the blogs below into one at this URL.
BoingBoing
BoingBoing is the biggest mover and shaker here. It's a group blog with an art and politics slant. It's a great place to discover "wonderful things" in large quantities. You probably already knew that, though, because you probably already read BoingBoing.
| Nov 22 | Associated Press loves fair use (we just wish they'd share) The Associated Press, a organization with so little respect for fair use that they expect you to pay for a license to quote as little as five words from its articles, describes how it relied on fair use to do reporting on Sarah Palin's memoir Glowing.. |
| Nov 22 | Short papercraft film on the beauty of the book Going West is a beautiful short film illustrating the worlds in a book, incorporating papercraft to make something dreamlike and wonderful. It was animated by Andersen M Studio. NZ Book Council - Going West ( via @GreatDismal ) |
| Nov 22 | 16 Golden Retrievers Teach You About Atoms I've often found that, when I can't understand a concept in science or math, putting it into pictures will make everything make more sense. It's like magic. Now, none of the visualizations I used as a kid involved a cadre of trained golden retriever.. |
| Nov 22 | Brits: sign petition to kill three-strikes law Britons: here's a petition to the Prime Minister to abolish the new Digital Economy bill's provisions that will require ISPs to cut off your household's internet access if anyone living there (or using your network) is accused of three acts of copyri.. |
Waxy Links
Waxy Links is the link blog that rides beside Upcoming.org co-founder Andy Baio's blog Waxy.org. Baio has taken to doing investigative blogging on various topics on his main site, but his link blog is a widely loved river of weird. When your link blog is hot enough to have an ad from the uber-boutique ad network The Deck on it, then you know you're a monster.
| Nov 20 | Patrick Moberg's Internet Vices funny, Tumblr feels more like beer than wine to me |
| Nov 17 | Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter on Zach Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns his style of comedy usually makes me uncomfortable, but this made me laugh |
| Nov 17 | The Pirate Bay shuts down their tracker for good they're switching to DHT instead |
| Nov 10 | Christian Swinehart's epic Choose Your Own Adventure visualizations everything here is amazing, from the animations to the playable visualization of Meretzky's Zork: The Cavern of Doom |
Neatorama
Neatorama is a lot like BoingBoing, but a lot less high-brow and a little more fun. Regular games of "What Is It?" challenge readers to identify photographs of old and unusual objects. The whole site is almost a clearinghouse of weird and it's a much quicker read than BoingBoing. The long list of authors is lead by Biochemist Alex Santoso, who started the blog as a hobby in 2005.
| Nov 22 | The Curious Case of Rick Rosner Is there such a thing as “too smart” or perhaps too smart for your own good? Bruce G. Charlton states a common observation that “high IQ types are lacking in ‘common sense’ – and especially when it comes to dealing with other huma.. |
| Nov 21 | Medieval Tron It’s no wonder that Neatorama reader Guy won the recent Bent Objects caption contest – turns out he’s one of the guys behind Brevity, a darn funny syndicated comic strip. This one above, titled Medieval Tron, is my favorite, but th.. |
| Nov 20 | LED Tattoos Charlie Sorrel has an article at Wired exploring the potential development of LED-lit tattoos. New chips are small enough to be placed under the skin, mounted on a sheet of silk that dissolves into the body: New LED tattoos from the University of Pe.. |
| Nov 20 | Il Silenzio Conductor/composer Andre Rieu showcases Il Silenzio (commonly known as Taps) with trumpet solo by 13 year old Melissa Venema. The song is much more beautiful when played in its entirety, as opposed to what we hear in movie funeral scenes. This is .. |
Laughing Squid
Laughing Squid is a great place to find cool art, projects and photography from San Francisco and elsewhere. It's the work of web-hosting company owner and aficionado of cool Scott Beale.
Beale's posts regularly hit the front page of Digg and his excellent photos are regularly ripped off without attribution by mainstream media outlets.
| Nov 19 | Foursquare Adds 50 New Cities + Exclusive Preview of Secret Product Ro.. photo by Scott Beale I stopped by the Foursquare offices in Manhattan this afternoon, where they were busy rolling out support for 50 new cities around the world . While hanging out there I also came across their secret product roadmap. This is a bl.. |
| Nov 14 | Animation of Pirates Pitcher Dock Ellis Telling The Story of When He P.. No Mas presents “Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No” , an animated short by James Blagden about Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis (who died last year) who pitched a no-hitter while tripping on LSD playing against the San Diego Padres on.. |
| Nov 12 | Donut Seeds Thinking about growing your own donuts? Then you’ll need a few of these “Donut Seeds” by Jason Fulford . via Chris Glass This is a blog post from Laughing Squid , subscribe via RSS , Twitter , Facebook & FriendFeed . |
| Nov 11 | Newsweek Presents The Decade In Seven Minutes Newsweek has produced a video that recaps the last decade in seven minutes . It’s part of their series 20/10: The Decade In Rewind which takes a look at the biggest moments in the first ten years of the 21st Century. This is a blog post from L.. |
JoshSpear.com
JoshSpear.com is run by "one of the youngest brand strategists in the world," Josh Spear, and has a long list of regular contributors. Spear and crew regularly find some of the coolest art, music, craft, design and marketing projects on the web. In addition to speaking and writing around the world, Spear runs SpearCollective, an artist management collective.
| Nov 3 | Papercraft Self Portrait Artist and designer Eric Testroete , in his own words: I made this as my costume for Halloween 2009. It was kind of inspired by big-head mode seen in videogames. I really wanted to get the faceted geosphere look with wireframe. So awesome. Check ou.. |
| Oct 29 | Krink Mini Cooper Legendary New York street artist Craig “KR” Costello customized a Mini Cooper S with his signature KRINK aesthetic. The car was shown today at Erste Liebe Bar in Hamburg, Germany. A vernissage takes place at Vicious Gallery on October 31st. Want. Vi.. |
| Oct 23 | Mike Leavitt’s Carboard Shoes Give him some recycled cardboard, paper bag, along with some glue and acrylic paint, and artist Mike Leavitt could create just about anything, including the replica sneakers above. You can pop by the Fuse Gallery at 93 Second Avenue in NYC to see th.. |
| Oct 23 | What do birds eat? Well, human trash. Easily some of the most unsettling photographs I’ve seen in a very long time– but oddly important to spread around. Artist and photographer Chris Jordan always nails the point. These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks a.. |
Fresh Creation
FreshCreation is run by Dutch creative Martijn van Osch. The site collects oddly creative works from around the world and almost always includes a video for every post. FreshCreation was the inspiration for our recent post here on the future of interface design.
| Nov 12 | Trillions - Why The Future Needs New Ways Of Thinking The story This is a short film (a fast paced preview of a larger effort ) by MAYA Design created to put some perspective on the invisible but fast approaching challenges and opportunities in the pervasive computing age. Why this story inspired me Th.. |
| Oct 23 | Eye Gesture Recognition Move over voice and motion recognition. The new kid on the block is eye gesture recognition. Not with a camera either but an ear bud that detects nerve signals. |
| Oct 10 | Transcendent Man Trailer for a documentary about Ray Kurzweil called Transcendent Man . Ray is… strange. Depending on who you talk to, he is either a genius or a mad man. |
| Sep 23 | 4 Minutes Of Incredible Facts And Figures There a millions of ways to visualize information. Xplane’s latest video brings together incredible info and trends around the internet, social media and more, and tries to guess where we are headed. The computer in your bloodstream stuff is k.. |
PicoCool
PicoCool says it "is dedicated to bringing you tiny bytes and obscure content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures. Cool content from real people." Lots of great finds from Etsy and other beautiful, small things. The site is run by web designer Emily Chang, whose company did the new design for RWW.
| Nov 14 | Mavizen TTX02 Electric Race Bike Does 130 MPH The new Mavizen TTX02 electric motorcycle is designed as an alternative energy race bike. Featuring twin Agni electric motors, it has an output of roughly 100 horsepower and provides quite a bit of torque. Three lithium-ion battery packs serve as th.. |
| Nov 12 | Words Watch I use FuzzyClock on my laptop, and love it. Why not on a real watch? 3 Vote(s) |
| Nov 12 | Apple Mac Key Skull T-shirt A classic skull icon but made with the keys from an extended white Mac keyboard and the keys from the black keyboard from the original iMac (the one with the half sized 'F' keys). I could say it depicts the obsolescence that all computer equipment f.. |
| Nov 12 | Top Modern Wood Christmas Trees For 2009 A round up of beautifully designed wooden alternatives to the traditional Christmas Tree. Eco-friendly, reusable and just plain cool. 2 Vote(s) |
Swiss Miss
SwissMiss is a widely read design blog written by Swiss transplant to NY Tina Roth Eisenberg. Lots of physical objects here but not exclusively. Eisenberg's discoveries are regularly reblogged by other cool-hunting blogs.
| Nov 20 | Super Epic Rainbow Cake How fabulous is this Super Epic Rainbow Cake ? (thank you jessi ) |
| Nov 20 | FOWD 09 | Dan Cederholm My friend and studio-mate Cameron Kozcon was so kind to write up some of the talks at this week’s Future of Webdesign Conference (FOWD) which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend. Cameron was officially my first ’swissmiss field r.. |
| Nov 18 | Behind the Scenes: Tim Burton at MoMA MoMA Video interview with Tim Burton. Discussed: drawing, themes in his work, favorite movies & why he wears striped socks: (via @MuseumModernArt ) |
| Nov 18 | Scroll Clock Scroll Cloc k is made entirely out of scrollbars. Made me look. (via konigi ) |
NotCot
NotCot is a beautiful site that collects image-based links to projects around the web. The site was founded by UX designer Jean Aw and Web 2.0 loving Cognitive Scientist Danial Frysinger. The site's organization is remarkable as well. Entries are navigable by time, popularity or by random selection.
We Make Money Not Art
we make money not art is a phenomenon that simply must be seen to be believed. Run by an international trio of curators, the site's aesthetic is oddly fascinating. When the word "bricolage" comes up, we make money not art is the first blog that many people think of.
| Nov 22 | Feedforward. The Angel of History. Part 2: Globalization and agency Together, the projects featured in Feedforward create a complex picture of the global political and social forces that drive us forward. The exhibition features both the problematic aspects of the present and future, and the potential for collectivi.. |
| Nov 13 | Venice Biennale: Juan Burgos at the pavilion of Uruguay Burgos expands urban apocalyptic visions which proliferate in daily life. His starting point is a children's storybook, from which he constructs a delirious collage. Anything is possible in his productions. With amazing dexterity he cuts, pastes, di.. |
| Nov 9 | Portraying the mafia Letizia Battaglia's pictures, because of the corruption, silence, violence and suffering they laid bare, played a crucial role in the anti-mafia campaign. They show anti-mafia Judge Cesare Terranova shot in his car, corpses of mafiosi found by the r.. |
| Oct 29 | Book Review - Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building an.. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the publ.. |
Those are some of our favorites. What are yours?
We'd love to know.
Comments
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uncrate.com has been a consistent favorite of mine.
Brian, that is a very manly site to suggest. :) I hadn't seen Uncrate before this weekend at SXSW when I found out that one of my friends writes there! Small world. Thanks for adding the link.
I don't know how you missed http://freshome.com/, a great website that amazes me every time I visit.
M!hai, we "missed" probably hundreds of great blogs that do this kind of thing. That's what comments are for and thanks for yours, that site does look interesting.
Take a look at Veerle's blog on webdesign, she's well known within that community and delivers great tutorials etc on a very beautifully designed blog: http://veerle.duoh.com/
I am often pleasantly surprised by http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/
Kris, thanks for mentioning Veerle! I've worked for an organization whose website she did design for and agree that she's awesome.
Marshall please edit my comment, because I've posted the link with a "," at the end. Yes ..there are a lot of websites where you can find interesting things, and for a topic like this you would need a very good research that would take months, to ovserve what are the best website. Personally I love Freshome, and that's why I wanted to recommend it.
I like INQdrop.com. It's a online community for people who want to share their stories and opinions. It' a great distraction from life!
*suckingup*
One of the best sites for finding cool things? AreDubDub ( http://www.readwriteweb.com ) of course!! i guess it depends on what's "cool" to you.... ;)
*/suckingup*
I'm a fan of browsing LFSTYL (www.lfstyl.com).
Digg?
fun blot where scammers get toyed with.
http://emailscamsarefun.blogspot.com/
Thank you for the mention! YAY! Waving from NYC!
Thanks for adding Fresh Creation to the list!
Good to see that I achieved my goal: inspiring others.
Grtz from Holland ;-)
www.FindLikeMinds.com for the things that influence people.
These sites can be a great help when I want to create videos or design graphics.. sometimes new ideas comes just from readig. and new content that are interesting is one of the best input!
Thanks for sharing this post! I love it
someone should give me an invite to ffffound. :(
loveless@ gmail.com
http://gemssty.com has some interesting 'tidbits' (as it says) from time to time too~
awesome post! I've always wanted animal superpowers. Or maybe I just hoped that someone would randomly come pet me and scratch my belly as I was walking down the street, i always get those two confused...
really nice list ^^
haha.nu has some really fun stuff. a lot of vids. They showed an artists work, Nanami Cowdroy, who was so talented, I hired her to design a tattoo for me.
Aw, you guys are sweet. Thanks for the linky love, Marshall.
roaming the US and the world for cool stuff. my new fav site for beauty/art/and ads. please visit my site and email me to say hi! http://www.gavinwassung.com
thecoolhunter.net
We cover one amazingly cool thing every day at http://fresharrival.com
I think that http://amomentofawesome.com is a great (although newer) site for finding awesome stuff!
I am going to suggest Open Culture (www.oculture.com) where you can find podcasts and videos that will make you smarter. It includes free audiobooks, free foreign language lessons, free online courses, and smart YouTube video collections.
Here are some links to good pages:
http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/audio_book_podc.html
http://www.oculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html
http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/foreign_languag.html
http://www.oculture.com/2008/03/youtubesmartvideos.html
http://www.bestsnippets.com has nice collection of cool, funny stuff too.
I have a mashup of digg, reddit, delicious and a bunch of other sites at http://www.jimmyr.com/
www.bulentongun.com looks promising
Thanks for including us!
http://www.subbmitt.com
For my weird/wonderful things, I read:
Neatorama
Boing Boing
Ectomo
Nothing to Do With Arbroath
Dave Barry's Blog
Dark Roasted Blend
Mental Floss
Brass Goggles
Cynical-C
Dethroner
Infosthetics
MAKEblog
Making Light (the Nielsen Haydens' blog)
Neil Gaiman's blog
Warren Ellis's blog
It's strange that you don't have FFFound.com on your list.
inspire me now! (http://szymon.tumblr.com/)
have you seen this?! (http://ohhaveyouseenthis.blogspot.com)
bevel and boss (http://bevelandboss.blogspot.com/)
are all pretty wonderful. :)
josh spear?
maybe if you're into reading a steady stream of shilling for overpriced, corny-ass crap nobody needs. oooo, new colorways for some wack ass sneakers!
its like reading the ads in a magazine and not the articles.
Here is a mashup if you can't get to your favorite feed reader.
186kps
Thanks for the great list!
I'm not sure HOW you could have missed the truly wonderful'Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society' http://www.kirchersociety.org/ and, for Japanese strangeness, 'Pink Tentacle'http://www.pinktentacle.com -- these are my 2 most go-to blogs...but perhaps I just have minority tastes....
In itself, this page is a wonderful thing! I really appreciate the inline, live RSS feeds — great idea. Only thing, I wish there were more visuals to catch my eyes! Thanx for this compilation. :)
Thank you all so much for all these suggestions! Really great to discover these sites in comments that I didn't know about before.
www.damninteresting.com
It's only updated every week or so, but I have never been disappointed with a post. Articles from obscure science and history topics that provide some of the most fascinating reading I've ever seen on the net.
I'm a fan of albotas.com. Stands for 'a little bit on the awesome side'. They have news on random stuff like art, toys, movies, comics, japan, video games, gadgets. It's pretty much every site on the internet (that isn't porn) smushed together.
Shameless beg for ffffound.com invite. God I've been regularly using this site for over a year and CAN NOT find anyone with an invite -it kills me! (that should say something about how great it is)
pees oh pees
[/crying]
cellardoor504@gmail.com
If you're interested in anything French you're going to love www.frogsmoke.com
I try to highlight cool stuff on my site here:
www.CONTEMPOZINE.com - men clothing stores
U forgot about http://growabrain.typepad.com
http://bornrich.org
Metafilter. Perfect....
www.blather.net
A Welsh View (xo.typepad.com) is really good, together with "Blame it on the Voices"(http://blameitonthevoices.blogspot.com/) but my favourite is "aboutcolonblank"(www.aboutcolonblank.com).
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