Mighty Goods
Here blogger Margaret Mason of San Francisco cheerfully identifies cool things to buy and provides links to the websites that sell them like the sheep mobile from Sparkability.net and the Hammerhead shark wallpaper-by-numbers from 2Jane. Her prose is tight and upbeat the tagline is, appropriately, "Hooray for stuff!" While ads do appear in the margins (hey, a blogger needs to make a living too, or at least cover her expenses) Mason does not accept paid placements or postings (though she gets a share of some click-throughs items sold at Amazon.com items for example but this arrangement affects only a small percentage of posts, and, Mason says, does not influence her writing). Best feature: the grid-view option, which displays just the photo images from posts in a particular category, for quicker scanning. For more cool stuff to buy, check out Uncrate, a shopping blog for guys, and its sister blog, Outblush. Worried about the environment? TreeHugger blogs for consumers like you.
50 Best Websites 2006
Many of this year's choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips.