What are you looking at?

It can be very easy to get into the habit of just using the web when you’re looking for something specific – you go to your office, login, type ‘buy lawnmowers’ and there you are. But, if you have the time to spend to have a bit of a wander around, you’ll find that people are putting up some incredible things. Here are a few of the sites – recent and not so recent – that we’ve been looking at over the last month.

Student makes a million.....

The Million Dollar Homepage is the creation of 21 year old Alex Tew, a student at Nottingham university. Alex was looking for ways to make a little extra cash before beginning his course this October, and came up with the idea of selling advertising space on his website. The site is made up of one million pixels, selling at $1 each. Alex has already sold over 500,000 pixels, and confidently expects to reach the one million mark before Christmas. (Damn, why didn't we think of this one first....)

The Road to Enlightenment

An oldie but a goodie, this is the opening phrase of the Zen Garden website, a site dedicated to showing what can be achieved with design using CSS stylesheets. Users contribute their own stylesheets to create a new version of the site.

Like a good photo?

Heather Powazek Champ has been an award winning web designer for over 10 years, she now works with the Flickr team at Yahoo, and edits JPG magazine whilst also maintaining the Mirror Project. Visit her site, and that of her husband, Derek Powazek for an entrancing glimpse into their photography, and Heather's blog. I came across this site looking for something else entirely, and 3 hours later I was still reading.

Fancy a cuppa?

Visit Adagio Teas – you will have had no idea that there were this many or that people could make such a pretty looking site dedicated to tea. Where else are you going to find a tea called ‘White Monkey’? (Note – we have no affiliation with Adagio Teas, and we're not promoting them for any commercial reason – we just liked the way the website looked.)

One big place to play...

Sites made by people, and for people, who see the web as one big playground. Try the 'When Hamsters Attack' game...

And the winner is!

With the web (as with everything else) there are awards and votes for best sites. Check these out for sites people have voted as the best they’ve seen. Go here for sites in general, or here if you want to see Flash sites only.

99 Rooms

If you fancy something a little out of the ordinary, I'm always blown away by this site. The creators describe 99 Rooms as “a unique internet art project”. Navigate your way through the rooms, finding the key in each that will unlock access to the next room. This year long project has resulted in “a scintillating intermediary world which invites the observer to an interactive journey through its morbidly-beautiful rooms”.


We’ll keep posting links to sites that we think are interesting, out of the ordinary, doing things better than other people, or just plain weird. If you’ve seen any sites out there that you think are worthy of a mention, let us know.