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.
| Jul 4 | Massive bank fraud in massively multiplayer game EVE The chairman of the virtual bank in EVE Online, a space-trading/piracy game, absconded with billions of virtual credits, swapping them for $5,000 in cash to make a house payment. The embezzlement caused a run on the bank and has rocked the economy of.. |
| Jul 3 | Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie Stephen Worth says: When I was very small, I had one of those horses on springs. I would jump on it and bounce around furiously while my Dad would urge me on, calling out to me to "Ride that horse down the bumpy road to Bodie!" Before I was born, my.. |
| Jul 3 | The Don Martin Dictionary Richard Metzger pointed me to the Don Martin Dictionary. Martin was one of my favorite Mad cartoonists. His sophisticated absurdism was the opposite of Dave Berg's middlebrow sitcom humor (but I liked him, too). The Don Martin Dictionary |
| Jul 3 | Music video of stochasticity for Radiolab science podcast Higher Mammals made a song and video to accompany Radiolab's recent show about stochasticity. If you don't already know about Radiolab, it's a terrific science podcast produced for WYNC public radio. Radiolab Stochasticity Bonus Video! |
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.
| Jul 2 | 72-year-old retired boxer beats up knife-wielding knucklehead the inane Facebook photos make this story even more delicious |
| Jul 1 | RIAA wins lawsuit against Usenet.com judge rules Betamax case doesn't apply; every other Usenet provider is next |
| Jun 29 | Quarrygirl's undercover investigation of non-vegan ingredients used at.. outstanding blog reporting, with industrial food testing from 17 different restaurants and research into suppliers |
| Jun 19 | Pixar grants dying 10-year-old girl's last wish to see "UP" prepare to weep [ via ] |
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.
| Jul 3 | Fun With Webcams ( YouTube link ) This is a music video for “Hibi no Neiro” (Tone of everyday) by Sour. The people in it are fans of the band, and the whole thing was shot on webcams all over the world. At first, you think that using fans and webcams wou.. |
| Jul 3 | 557,000 Miles 90-year-old Rachel Veitch of Orlando, Florida has been driving the same 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente since it was new. Now she has racked up 557,000 miles on the odometer -and it’s still going great! Unlike her three husbands, Veitch says, the .. |
| Jul 3 | Fly Powered Aircraft Photo: Eric Long / Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum It goes without saying that the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has some of the neatest collection of planes in the world, but this one is particularly intriguing: fly-powered ai.. |
| Jul 2 | Terrifying Surgical Tools of Old Think your health care plan is bad? Consider yourself lucky that you don’t live back in the middle ages when "advanced" surgeries were done using these 20 seriously scary surgical tools. Yikes. This one to the left is the Arrow Remover: Arrow .. |
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.
| Jul 2 | TweetCraft, An In-Game Twitter Client for World of Warcraft TweetCraft , an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft . Coding4Fun has more info on how it works . via Jeff Sandquist This is a blog post from Laughing Squid . For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed , Link Blog , Twitter & Frie.. |
| Jul 2 | Jeff Goldblum Interrupts The Colbert Report To Let Stephen Know He’s N.. Jeff Goldblum interrupts The Colbert Report to let Stephen know that he’s not dead . via Jeremiah Owyang This is a blog post from Laughing Squid . For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed , Link Blog , Twitter & FriendFeed . Jeff .. |
| Jul 2 | Fireworks, Stop-Motion Animation by PES “Fireworks” , another wonderful stop-motion animation video by PES . This post is dedicated to Elli Kate who loves everything PES does. This is a blog post from Laughing Squid . For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed , Lin.. |
| Jul 1 | Pez Suing Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia guest post by Doctor Popular photos by Plug1 (WHAT IM SEEING DOT COM) Pez Candy Inc. is suing the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia over copyright infringement. The suit, filed last week, claims that the museum deceives the public into believing .. |
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.
| Jun 30 | The Umbrella Skirt Italian designer Cecilia Felli knows what to do with a broken umbrella– turn it into an umbrella skirt . Pretty great! check out all her different creations over here . |
| Jun 29 | Typeography Soap If you’re truly a typography geek, then why stop at just outfitting your office and your bedroom with lust-worthy fonts? We just spotted this rad translucent soap created by Debbie Chialtas at The Soap Lab on the design site FredFlare . The sq.. |
| Jun 22 | Funemployed: Irina Blok Remember those awesome Fashion Surgical Masks to protect yourself against Swine Flu? Designer Irina Blok is at it again with her project entitled Funemployed . She’s still unemployed and looking for a job as an Art Director (if I was hiring Ar.. |
| Jun 19 | Better Off Dead Logos Interesting (and dark) interpretations of classic logos like Louis Vuitton and Channel , hand screened and printed on T-shirts for the brand Better Off Dead . This is the Sweeny LV Tee . You get it, I’m sure. $40 CAD and a soon-to-be cease and.. |
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.
| Jun 23 | Free Beats, Like Free Hugs With Music Open mics in parks are not really new. Open mic with a human beat box back up, however, are new to me. The feeling behind Free Beats is very much like Free Hugs but with some musical expression. (via eugene’s blog ). |
| Jun 14 | Ways ARG Is Changing TV Kevin Slavin is co-founder of area/code , an alternative reality gaming (ARG) company. In a 30 minute speech at the 5D Conference , Kevin talks about recent projects area/code did with TV shows and how TV is becoming more interactive. (via offworld .. |
| Jun 9 | Origin Of The Star Wars Lightsaber Sound Ben Burtt , Star Wars’ sound designer, talks about the creation of the sound for the light saber. Ben says it was a combination of subconscious thinking and an accident. He also says he was inspired by the design work Ralph Mcquarrie did for t.. |
| May 13 | We Are Monkeys After watching this video I am sure: We are monkeys. Thanks to robinhoed for the tip! |
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.
| Jul 2 | Drag n Drop to label in Gmail Now one can drag messages into labels and labels onto messages in Gmail 2 Vote(s) |
| Jul 2 | Typography Jewelry Cool typography and graphic jewelry by Jen, a graphic designer living in Los Angeles. 2 Vote(s) |
| Jul 1 | Iacocca Silver 45th Anniversary Edition Mustang Every year, countless tuners and gearheads throw themselves at the latest iteration of the Mustang, eager to coax every bit of horsepower out of its sturdy powerplant. Graphic designers and artists likewise look at the ‘Stang from every angle, tryin.. |
| Jul 1 | Banksy Versus Bristol Museum The Banksy Summer Show opened in the Bristol Museum. So, when in the UK, head for the exhibition. 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.
| Jul 1 | wells&more book flips two ways Joy of dn&co . just pointed me to their latest book which utilises the mechanic of cutting every other page by 5mm so that when flipped in different directions the pages viewed are either graphic content or photography. The photography is by Sa.. |
| Jul 1 | Red Rabbit Red Rabbit from Egmont Mayer on Vimeo . (via tim ) |
| Jun 29 | Interview with Dieter Rams Less, But Better - an interview with design legend Dieter Rams (thank you @mikeaurauz ) |
| Jun 29 | Stuck! Goldfish Bathplug . Made me smile. |
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.
| Oct 23 | the Interactive Mirror designed and constructed... the Interactive Mirror designed and constructed by Alpay Kasal takes the user experience of multitouch interaction and gaming to a whole new place. (Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com ) |
| Oct 23 | So strange - the Tuttuki Bako, an interactive... So strange - the Tuttuki Bako, an interactive game system that requires you to insert your finger into the device to interact with the games. The display shows a digital replica of your finger - you can then play with a panda or annoy a girl by touc.. |
| Oct 23 | Unraveling sticky tape in a vacuum produces... Unraveling sticky tape in a vacuum produces enough x-rays to actually take images. Great video of the geeky scientists playing with tape and x-rays. The chance this could be used in third world clinics with no electricity blows my mind. (Want more? .. |
| Oct 23 | The world's first commercial wave farm recently... The world's first commercial wave farm recently went live off the coast of Portugal. Designed by Pelamis Wave Power, the farm employs three snakelike Energy Converters to generate 2.25 MW of electricity - enough for 1,500 homes. (Want more? See NOTC.. |
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.
| Jul 2 | Self-Portrait Machine Jen Hui Liao's Self-Portrait Machine is a device that takes a picture of the sitter and draws it but with the model's help. The wrists of the individual are tied to the machine and it is his or her hands that are guided to draw the lines that will e.. |
| Jul 1 | Toys A fictitious company called ENT International has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Some of the items listed in the catalogue of the bankruptcy clearance auction are perfectly mundane, others are fictitiou.. |
| Jun 12 | Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design Just found out that the utterly brilliant and fascinating thesis that Otto von Busch presented last year at the University of Gothenburg is available as an online PDF. So leave Dan Brown on the shelves and take this one on the beach this Summer, ok?.. |
| Jun 9 | Image of the day For no particular reason continue |
Those are some of our favorites. What are yours?
We'd love to know.
FOLLOW RWW ON TWITTER
RECENT JOBS
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
uncrate.com has been a consistent favorite of mine.
Posted by: Brian | March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
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.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
March 14, 2008 2:55 PM
I don't know how you missed http://freshome.com/, a great website that amazes me every time I visit.
Posted by: M!hai | March 14, 2008 3:11 PM
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.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
March 14, 2008 3:19 PM
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/
Posted by: Kris Hoet | March 14, 2008 3:27 PM
I am often pleasantly surprised by http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/
Posted by: John | March 14, 2008 3:33 PM
Kris, thanks for mentioning Veerle! I've worked for an organization whose website she did design for and agree that she's awesome.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
March 14, 2008 3:34 PM
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.
Posted by: M!hai | March 14, 2008 3:36 PM
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!
Posted by: Richard | March 14, 2008 3:48 PM
*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*
Posted by: Matt | March 14, 2008 4:22 PM
I'm a fan of browsing LFSTYL (www.lfstyl.com).
Posted by: Jay | March 14, 2008 5:09 PM
Digg?
Posted by: Internet TV | March 14, 2008 6:33 PM
fun blot where scammers get toyed with.
http://emailscamsarefun.blogspot.com/
Posted by: SHv2 | March 15, 2008 2:08 AM
Thank you for the mention! YAY! Waving from NYC!
Posted by: swissmiss | March 15, 2008 4:43 AM
Thanks for adding Fresh Creation to the list!
Good to see that I achieved my goal: inspiring others.
Grtz from Holland ;-)
Posted by: Martijn | March 15, 2008 7:26 AM
www.FindLikeMinds.com for the things that influence people.
Posted by: Rob | March 15, 2008 8:08 AM
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
Posted by: The Sleepy Surfer .com | March 15, 2008 9:10 AM
someone should give me an invite to ffffound. :(
loveless@ gmail.com
Posted by: rachel | March 15, 2008 10:16 AM
http://gemssty.com has some interesting 'tidbits' (as it says) from time to time too~
Posted by: pistol | March 15, 2008 10:19 AM
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...
Posted by: Jason | March 15, 2008 10:47 AM
really nice list ^^
Posted by: K | March 15, 2008 10:54 AM
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.
Posted by: Peter Kelly | March 15, 2008 11:09 AM
Aw, you guys are sweet. Thanks for the linky love, Marshall.
Posted by: Andy Baio | March 15, 2008 11:25 AM
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
Posted by: gavin | March 15, 2008 12:19 PM
thecoolhunter.net
Posted by: gavin | March 15, 2008 12:20 PM
We cover one amazingly cool thing every day at http://fresharrival.com
Posted by: richard | March 15, 2008 12:31 PM
I think that http://amomentofawesome.com is a great (although newer) site for finding awesome stuff!
Posted by: Mike | March 15, 2008 12:32 PM
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
Posted by: Allie | March 15, 2008 1:05 PM
http://www.bestsnippets.com has nice collection of cool, funny stuff too.
Posted by: Adam | March 15, 2008 1:51 PM
I have a mashup of digg, reddit, delicious and a bunch of other sites at http://www.jimmyr.com/
Posted by: Jimmy | March 15, 2008 2:24 PM
www.bulentongun.com looks promising
Posted by: sadegazoz | March 15, 2008 2:30 PM
Thanks for including us!
Posted by: Neatorama | March 15, 2008 2:56 PM
http://www.subbmitt.com
Posted by: Dimitri Sokolov | March 15, 2008 3:21 PM
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
Posted by: Scott K | March 15, 2008 3:24 PM
It's strange that you don't have FFFound.com on your list.
Posted by: Yury Akulin : logo design | March 15, 2008 3:37 PM
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. :)
Posted by: sara beth | March 15, 2008 3:44 PM
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.
Posted by: wwew | March 15, 2008 4:48 PM
Here is a mashup if you can't get to your favorite feed reader.
186kps
Thanks for the great list!
Posted by: TD | March 15, 2008 5:44 PM
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....
Posted by: Incognita Nom de Plume | March 15, 2008 5:50 PM
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. :)
Posted by: Torley | March 15, 2008 7:19 PM
Thank you all so much for all these suggestions! Really great to discover these sites in comments that I didn't know about before.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
|
March 15, 2008 7:41 PM
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.
Posted by: Shrike | March 15, 2008 8:39 PM
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.
Posted by: robby | March 15, 2008 8:41 PM
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
Posted by: amanda, herself | March 15, 2008 8:53 PM
If you're interested in anything French you're going to love www.frogsmoke.com
Posted by: Romke | March 15, 2008 11:30 PM
I try to highlight cool stuff on my site here:
www.CONTEMPOZINE.com - men clothing stores
Posted by: Seb | March 16, 2008 3:28 AM
U forgot about http://growabrain.typepad.com
http://bornrich.org
Posted by: hearsetrax | March 16, 2008 4:04 AM
Metafilter. Perfect....
Posted by: mekon | March 16, 2008 4:13 AM
www.blather.net
Posted by: db | March 16, 2008 4:36 AM
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).
Posted by: Timothy | March 16, 2008 4:57 AM
1 2 Next