- Clumsiest Corporate URL
A sure indicator of a company composed entirely of people who've never used the Web in their life, or alternatively are too stingy to pay up to domain name squatters Nominations: EMI dancesite <http://www.dancesite.com/> crap writing, empty pages, nonsensical design. NomiNation <http://www.uk.com> What a big rip off! A fee for being in uk.com?! Suckers!. HM Stationary Office <http://www.theso.co.uk> They use this domain for email, and their alternative web domain is the even more hideous http://www.the-stationery-office.co.uk/, and these guys are professional publishers. Evening Standard On-line <http://www.thisislondon.com/> Oh please, what was wrong with www.standard.co.uk?. NTK .NOT nominations <http://www.ntk.net/not.cgi> For not realising they had HM Stationary Office listed twice ! (Alright, we fixed it now - Dave) Internet Works <http://www.iwks.com> Unmemorable, unpronounceable, barely typeable. That's Future Publishing!. Dateline <http://www.datelline.uk.com> Overuse of .com domain name where .co.uk is more appropriate. Lycos UK <http://www.lycosuk.co.uk> Mmm, two UKs in one URL! Tasty! British Midland <http://www.iflybritishmidland.com/> It's long, its clumsy it's hard to type and there isn't a hope of guessing it from scratch. Harley-Davidson-London <http://www.harley-davidson-london.co.uk/> Excessive use of hyphens, extra localisation information. Chrysalis Records <http://www.chrysalis-uk.com/> This site has loads of graphics, Impossible navigation and zero content.
- Ghostliest Site
Sites that sound great, but haven't been updated for ages. Broken links a bonus! Nominations: C'Lock magazine <http://www.clock.co.uk> Uncle Rupert discontinues it... but forgets to archive it COS HE DOESNT UNDERSTAND!!!. Nerdware <http://www.nerdware.org> It's sad beyond belief!.
- Least Lamented Net Magazine
Plenty to choose from, some of which still have live Websites. Coming soon: a complete list of all the ones that went bust this year, in case you've forgotten them already. Nominations: None received.
- Most Disappointing Rip-off of Suck
In tribute to all those who see themselves as ground-breaking and original as the last ground-breaking and original guy. Nominations: Rant <http://www.rant.co.uk> No, please! More obvious targets! NTK <http://www.ntk.net> Superior in every sense except the complimentary one. The Lard Enquirer <http://www.lard.com/enquirer> for continuingly misspelling month old stories in an unreadble format. Weird magazine <http://www.weird.co.uk/> Looks good, the art is great. But isn't funny. Or weird. Rant <http://www.rant.co.uk> . Tired <http://www.tired.co.uk> Also a contender for Ghostliest Site
- Most Gratuitous Use Of Frames
Work this one out for yourself. Oh, where do you start? Nominations: The VNU Website <http://www.vnu.co.uk> Just appalling. Appalling. Jean Michelle Jarre <http://www.jarre.com> It's the virtual Jean Michelle Jarre's home, but does the real JMJ's home look like a tiny minimaly renderd, hard to naviate white 'space' boxed in by tiny frames? . Matthew Thompson's World <http://www.flirble.org/mattt/main.html> As you can see - I'm crap and got the URL wrong the first time round. So don't I deserve an award for not knowing my own URL?? Please?. Matthew Thompson's World <http://www.flirble.org/matt/main.html> Well I'm hardly going to win awards for the amazing design of the site so I might as well slate it myself!.
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- Most Mediocre Net Journalist
Another 'open round'. Have fun. Note that you have to supply an URL (or a representative quote of their writing) for this category, just to prove how mediocre they are. Nominations: Spyder <http://> Oh, come on... Dr. Keyboard <http://www.the-times.co.uk> for stating the blatantly obvious. Wavey Davey Winder <http://> . Dave Green <http://alt.venus.co.uk/davegreen/> Because he claims to be. Leslie Bunder <http://www.teletext.co.uk/couk/bunder.htm> Nominated for services to stating the obvious (What I want from the web ... up to date sites, more email - what he needs is a spell checker!). The Times "Interface" Team <http://www.the-times.co.uk> Press release re-writing beyond the call of duty. Kate Russell <http://www.computerchannel.co.uk/> Sadly, no longer sarcastically referred to as "our resident expert".
- Most Overrated Website
The site that everyone plugs, and everyone recommends, but in fact is rubbish. Nominations: The Mini Site <http://www.mini.co.uk> Mini is right. Okay, well-designed - but does anyone go back there twice? Time For Teletubbies <http://moose.spesh.com/teletubbies/> It's bloody tellytubbies innit. Kate Russell <http://www.computerchannel.co.uk/> Sadly, no longer sarcastically referred to as "our resident expert". DigitalMindStream <http://www.abel.net.uk/~dms> Because of all the porn, drugs, bombs and free perl scripts. Alright, I just wanted a link to my site, OK ?.
- Most Underrated Website
The opposite of the former. Good sites that don't get any coverage because they aren't very flashy or lah-di-dah, but are really useful. Like the good old Internet Movie Database. Nominations: Geek Code Generator v.3.1 <http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~northrup/geek/geek.html> . The Good Old Internet Movie Database <http://uk.imdb.com/> Everyone's too busy trying to work out how to rip them off to do them justice. RootShell <http://www.rootshell.com> All your useful anti-social exploits in one website! Wow!. SavvySearch <http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/form> A meta search engine that searches loads of other places, and no adverts either !. CricInfo <http://www.cricket.org> it may look crap, but an average of 2.5 million accesses a week say it's the most popular single sport site in the world. And you can look up the accesses. NewsHub <http://www.newshub.com/> All the headlines you can read in a variety of areas from loads of sites, updated every 15 minutes. What more could you want?. Nerdware <http://www.nerdware.org> It's sad beyond belief!. Cheeses of Nazareth <http://www.cheesesofnazareth.com/> Because they domain name is fuxxin brilliant. Internet Oracle Resources <http://www.pcnet.com/users/stenor/oracle/index.html> Everyone forgets about the Internet Oracle, but I still find it good for a laugh and a nice way to waste time at work.
- Worst Design Innovation
Pointless innovations in the Web world. Nominations: Novell UK's "3D" site <http://www.novell.com/uk/3d> Novell says "we have created a 3d Web site" - but are they using Superscape software or somthing similar? Are they hell. You have to get a pair of green/red specs to view it. And even then it's crap. Danda's Personal Eyes <http://www.danda.co.uk/personaleyes/> It's a "see the spectacles on your own face" gimmick. But you have to send them the photo by post. DoooHHhhhH!. PixFX Creative Division <http://www.pixfx.co.uk/creative.asp> Creative? Creative over use of the transparent gif trick .... uggh!. Microsoft's Tiny Fonts <http://www.microsoft.com> IE4.0 shows fonts bigger than Netscape. So if you design for IE 4.0, you're condemning 70% of the public to myopia. Parlophone Records <http://www.parlophone.co.uk/> I's so damm ugly, yet it used to look so nice( about 1 year ago! ). The unentertaining shockwave games at www.herc.co.uk <http://www.herc.co.uk> Shockwave! Satan's gift to designers Hot Wired <http://www.hotwired.com/> Oh look please, this one is obvious! Who decided that gaudy colours and abuse of HTML was trendy? I wear they'd use blink if they could ... Littlewoods Online Shopping <http://webspecials.virgin.net/> It's just rubbish. .
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