Ten Best Sites

Recently, Shift magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary by issuing a slew of lists of the "ten best" thingamajigs. One was the ten best technologies, one was the ten best types of Oreos... you know.

The list that matters, though, is the list of ten sites that matter. Matter? Yes, matter - not just "make things useful" or "look good", but matter. So naturally, I got to thinking about compiling a list of ten sites that matter to me. Not necessarily "matter" in the spiritual sense, but matter in that I use them almost every day and consider them great resources.

I came up with this.

1. Google. Undoubtedly, it's the search engine that changed my life. And yours, too. Google Groups is fantastic and complete; Google News is brilliant. Google is amazing, wonderful, and on its way to becoming the web's interface.

2. Yahoo!. Say what you will about their advertising (it stinks), but Yahoo! is a fine resource for things such as maps, movie times, and occasionally, information on web sites. Funny how that shook out.

3. Slashdot. I fully admit that I read Slashdot - mostly for the articles. A good number of thought-provoking links and an ungodly number of mind-numbing comments. There are occasionally good ones out there, though.

4. EFF. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sticking up for our rights in the entertainment realm as more and more companies look to take them away. Their site is loaded with information, and truly matters in the social and economical senses of the word.

5. bOingbOing. BB has taken its place in my heart as the blog that does it all: witty, insightful commentary; topical links; fun, esoteric links; still easy to read. I always check out BB when something's going down.

6. dictionary.com. Because I am lazy. "But you have a dictionary right there!"

7. BankOne. I'm not the biggest fan of my bank (they're very large and occasionally charge wacky fees), but their online banking is superb. They took a 37signals approach to designing it, and the result is a useful, clean banking site that looks and feels like it was made recently. Most banking sites are stuck in the 90s.

8. allrecipes.com. When I do cook, I turn to allrecipes for assistance. It's easily searched, and being able to search by ingredient is a godsend. I can print recipes on a multitude of media (index card, full-page, etc.) - that's nice.

9. php.net. PHP is the language I use to create most of the web stuff I do, and I'm tickled that the site for it is nice and slick. The biggest feature that I love: you can type your search term right in the URL. So, typing in "http://php.net/foo" will search for "foo" on the site. What a time-saver.

10. Amazon. Because I love that Gold Box.