I’m just warning you in

I’m just warning you in advance: prepare to spend at least an hour surfing the following links.

The results of I.D. magazine’s 2000 Interactive Media Design Review are out (I’d throw in a link here, but the results are not on their Web site yet…tsk tsk) and there are a few sites of note on the list:

Willing to Try, a site previously featured on kottke.org, is one of the neatest interactive sites I’ve seen in a long while and is very deserving of its award.

I’m sure the stuff at Jump Stuff, a silver winner, is quite nice, but I found their site confusing. Very pretty, but confusing and poorly organized.

Chat circles is an interesting chat app that uses distance to control your interaction with others in the room.

Newsmaps.com presents information in the form of topographical maps. To try it out, click on the “Global News” link on the left sidebar.

The World’s Smallest Web Site reminds me a little of the 5K contest. It’s surprising what can be communicated in a 100x100 pixel space.

Google got a silver for their “clean good looks, straight answers, and no advertising”. While I admire the judges’ focus on the utility of the site (which is unusual because eye candy usually wins out in publications like this), I’m frustrated that their less-than-perfect design (and I’m not talking solely about the visual design here) got such high marks. BTW, the credited designers are co-founders Larry Page, CEO and Sergey Brin, president. That explains a lot.

Some other sites featured are TEXT.URE, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Lufthansa Systems Network, a presentation on the Principles of Graphic Design, and the Smile Project.

Update: I did a little URL hacking and it turns out ID does have the results on their site…it’s just not linked in from the front page.

Ok, exploring the results on the ID site has turned up several other goodies from a chap @ MIT named Golan Levin: ribble, floo, splat, blebs, meshy, dakadaka and streamer. Wonderful stuff.

I apologize for all the links, but they were all so good that I couldn’t help myself. Feel free to pass them on to other folks.