Web: Media Ratings

I'm a fan of Metacritic:

Metacritic® compiles reviews from respected critics and publications for film, video/dvd, music and games. Our unique Metascores® show the critical consensus at a glance by taking a weighted average of critic grades.

Lists Of Bests is fun too (I should update my list):

A one-stop shop to find all the "best of" books, music, and movie lists . . . also providing a way for you to keep track of the books you've read, the CDs you've listened to, and the movies you've watched from the lists.

And I'll be checking out All Consuming:

A website that watches weblogs for books that they're talking about, and displays the most popular ones on an hourly basis. You can also use this site to add a list of books to your own weblog.

Categories: Music, Web

Web: Search Sites

I've been a dedicated Google user for a while, but there are some other interesting search sites to try:

• Amazon's A9.com
  
• The clustering Clusty.com
  
• Metasearching ez2Find.com
  
• Dallas-based and Mark Cuban recommended Icerocket.com
  
• Recent changes at Yahoo! look great

Here are a couple search resource sites:

• Google Help Cheat Sheet
  
• Search Engine Watch

And a couple shopping search sites:

• Google's Froogle.com
  
• eBay's Half.com
  
• PriceGrabber.com

Additional recommendations are welcome.

Category: Web

Design: Color Generators

• The Color Scheme Generator from WellStyled.com, a bilingual site that also features some useful CSS articles
  
• The Site Pro Central Color Scheme Tool hosted on Steel Dolphin Creative
  
• A useful Photoshop PSD file (420KB) distributed by eScrappers that generates complimentary, triad, and analogous colors based on your chosen background color

Category: Design

Music: Citizen Cope

Citizen Cope's second album, "The Clarence Greenwood Recordings," is a polarizing album. I've read reviews that trash it and others that say it's great. I think it's great. Billboard agrees, saying his album his highly recommended and that his style is:

All-inclusive with hints of reggae, shades of hip-hop, allusions to Memphis soul, a sprinkling of Latin jazz percussion and even a clopping country lope.

The album sounds like a slower, blues inflected Maroon 5 and includes appearances from Carlos Santana and Me'shell Ndegeocello. Check out the audio samples on Amazon.com.

Category: Music

Music: Solid Steel

I love the long-running radio show Solid Steel, originally created by the master cut-n-paste DJs Coldcut and now featuring many great guest DJs. Go to NinjaTune.net for the latest Windows Media stream and tracklist.

From its inception Solid Steel presented arguably the finest and most diverse selection of music to be heard on one radio show. The emphasis is on mixing many styles seemlessly, from jazz to electronic oddities, from hip hop to poetry. There are no records or styles deemed unnacceptable, even a children's story has featured in one particularly wigged out show. Another unique element is the way 100's of spoken word samples are used to tie the music together, a style often imitated but never bettered elsewhere on radio. Each mix becomes a mini masterpiece.

Category: Music

Web: Table-Free CSS Layouts

I found a nice selection of table-free CSS layouts and may adapt the one I'm currently digging through from the Max Design Presentations. They're beautifully made with DIVs and LIs.

I've also finally purchased Zeldman's orange book that includes this topic among many others related to designing with web standards:

For every web professional who wants to reach more users on more browsers, platforms, and devices – including wireless and hand-held devices – with less work, less maintenance, and at lower cost.

Categories: Web, CSS

Web: Please Make Me Think!

Here's an interesting take on what some consider the over-simplification trends in website usability:
Please make me think! Potential dangers in usability culture.

I see my goal first to make a product work as efficiently as possible for the repeat, more experienced user, then for the novice and then finally for inexperienced or infrequent users. Many times though, I’m asked to reverse my approach, to make everything obvious so inexperienced users are appeased first.

Category: Web

Quote: Heraclitus

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

From Heraclitus, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, (544 - 483 BC).

Category: Quotes

Quote: Wilde

From Oscar Wilde, Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900 AD):

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Category: Quotes