Ten years ago today Jason Kottke launched his influential blog Kottke.org. The site is a fascinating collection of...whatever Kottke cares to post there.
So prescient was his vision of the future of publishing though that today he's married to the co-founder of Blogger.com and can be counted among the earliest pioneers in the present era of online bricolage - the art of assembling diverse found objects.
Bricolage has become one of the most dominant themes of the new online world. The word may be French and unfamiliar, but you see the concept in action every time you read BoingBoing, for example. There are few blogs more widely read than BoingBoing - but it's in tribute to Kottke's 10 year anniversary that we offer the following collection of some our favorite places to discover marvelous things online. All are curated by the careful eyes and hands of one or a few editors, making these sites a different experience than places like Digg, Del.icio.us Popular, PopURLs or elsewhere.
Not only are these types of sites widely read, they are also inspiring a cultural renaissance of bricolage on sites like Tumblr and FFFFound.
Note: If you are reading this story by RSS, you may not be able to see the dynamic list of recent popular stories from each source. You can click through to the live site to see them. Speaking of RSS, reader Víctor Hernández created a spliced feed of all the blogs below into one at this URL.
BoingBoing
BoingBoing is the biggest mover and shaker here. It's a group blog with an art and politics slant. It's a great place to discover "wonderful things" in large quantities. You probably already knew that, though, because you probably already read BoingBoing.
| Dec 5 | Googling Security: book that opens your eyes to how much you disclose .. Greg Conti -- a West Point instructor in computer science and information war -- has taken a long, hard look at the amount of information Internet users explicitly and implicitly disclose to Google and the results, collected in his book Googling Sec.. |
| Dec 5 | Angry bored octopus goes wilding Otto the Octopus, a resident of Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, is bored because the aquarium's closed for the winter -- so he's making mischief. First he squirted an overhead light until it shorted out, and now he's taken to juggling the hermi.. |
| Dec 5 | Britain ordered to destroy its database of innocents' DNA The deplorable British policing practice of storing the DNA of suspects who've been exonerated or never even charged has been found to be illegal by a European court, and now the database must be destroyed. Remember the kid who was going home on the .. |
| Dec 5 | SmartBolts change color when they're tight enough Smartbolts have little discs in their heads that change color as the right amount of tension is applied to them. I recently installed a child safety gate with a similar mechanism: a red, spongy washer between the bolt and the frame; once the right am.. |
Waxy Links
Waxy Links is the link blog that rides beside Upcoming.org co-founder Andy Baio's blog Waxy.org. Baio has taken to doing investigative blogging on various topics on his main site, but his link blog is a widely loved river of weird. When your link blog is hot enough to have an ad from the uber-boutique ad network The Deck on it, then you know you're a monster.
| Dec 4 | Prop 8: The Musical starring John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, and Jack Black as Jesus |
| Dec 3 | David Recordon on building OpenID in the browser the best way to drive mass adoption, since it's such a difficult concept to understand otherwise |
| Dec 3 | Image and video manipulation in Mathematica 7 also, it supports built-in parallel processing on EC2 |
| Dec 3 | Songbird hits 1.0 very exciting release, though iPod touch/iPhone aren't supported just yet |
Neatorama
Neatorama is a lot like BoingBoing, but a lot less high-brow and a little more fun. Regular games of "What Is It?" challenge readers to identify photographs of old and unusual objects. The whole site is almost a clearinghouse of weird and it's a much quicker read than BoingBoing. The long list of authors is lead by Biochemist Alex Santoso, who started the blog as a hobby in 2005.
| Dec 4 | What is it? Game 84 Yay! It’s time for our weekly collaboration with the What is it? Blog . This week brings us this strange object to the left - can you guess what it is for? The first person who guessed right (or the funniest guess, if nobody got it right) wins.. |
| Dec 3 | The Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos You see these opening logos every time you go to the movies, but have you ever wondered who is the boy on the moon in the DreamWorks logo? Or which mountain inspired the Paramount logo? Or who was the Columbia Torch Lady? Let's find out: 1. DreamWor.. |
| Dec 3 | Pupaphobia: Fear of Puppet Most kids will find puppets funny, but not this kid. He’s got a severe form of pupaphobia (the irrational fear of puppets). I don’t think he’s making this up, and I sure hope that he outgrows it. I know people who have misophobia (.. |
| Dec 2 | Caption Monkey 52: Sara the Walrus Plays the Saxophone Photo via Ananova Hooray! It’s time for Neatorama and Hobotopia’s Caption Monkey game. But first, the story: that’s Sara the Walrus who is trained to play the saxophone! Under the direction of her trainer, Sara the Walrus grips the.. |
Laughing Squid
Laughing Squid is a great place to find cool art, projects and photography from San Francisco and elsewhere. It's the work of web-hosting company owner and aficionado of cool Scott Beale.
Beale's posts regularly hit the front page of Digg and his excellent photos are regularly ripped off without attribution by mainstream media outlets.
| Dec 3 | Proposition 8 - The Musical guest post by Aaron Muszalski Composer/lyricist Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, SNL) and director/choreographer Adam Shankman (Hairspray, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) have created a perfect three-minute gem of witty, playful musical agitprop in support of sam.. |
| Dec 3 | How to Land a 747 at San Francisco International Airport guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics) This video taken from the cockpit of a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 making a final approach to SFO seems to have been filmed with official sanction, so the production quality is excellent. If you’ve .. |
| Dec 2 | Metal Heart, A Tilt-Shift Video of Monster Trucks Keith Loutit is back with “Metal Heart” a wonderful tilt-shift video of a Monster Truck event in Australia. The song is “Robot High School” by My Robot Friend . See Previously: Amazing Tilt-Shift Time-Lapse Videos by Keith Lo.. |
| Dec 1 | Pownce Shutting Down, Technology Sold To Six Apart Pownce co-founder Leah Culver has just announced that Pownce will be shutting down as of December 15 and they they have sold their technology to Six Apart . Leah and Pownce developer Mike Malone will be joining Six Apart’s engineering team . I.. |
JoshSpear.com
JoshSpear.com is run by "one of the youngest brand strategists in the world," Josh Spear, and has a long list of regular contributors. Spear and crew regularly find some of the coolest art, music, craft, design and marketing projects on the web. In addition to speaking and writing around the world, Spear runs SpearCollective, an artist management collective.
| Dec 4 | 14 Days of Chrismukkah: Setgo The Gift: A very sexy wallet, bag, and money clip from Setgo , NYC-based purveyors of fine black leather accessories. The Rules: In the COMMENTS section, give us you most awkward “lost wallet” moment. Maybe you were on a date with a supe.. |
| Dec 3 | Glass iPhone Steve Jobs, here’s what we want for Christmas. The “Glassy Glassy” phone is a new concept by designer Mac Funamizu; absolutely gorgeous and looks straight out of Minority Report . It features a double-layered glass body — gre.. |
| Nov 27 | Botta x UNO 24 Time seems to fly when you’re having fun, but we found a watch that makes it seem as if it were moving a bit slower. The UNO 24 from Botta is just the type of timepiece that will help you make those good times last. It only has one hand, which.. |
| Nov 25 | Glenfiddich x Barrel Art Initiative The prospect of sipping a fine single malt scotch has caused a stir in the palate of many of a sophisticate. While ingesting such a splendid spirit has no doubt caused taste buds to dance around in ecstasy, it also possesses the power to inspire art.. |
Fresh Creation
FreshCreation is run by Dutch creative Martijn van Osch. The site collects oddly creative works from around the world and almost always includes a video for every post. FreshCreation was the inspiration for our recent post here on the future of interface design.
| Dec 1 | Fifty People, One Question The title says it all, I think. It reminded me of a video (in Dutch) that I made in Amsterdam with a friend of mine. |
| Nov 27 | Are You A Good Consumer? Neil Boorman, author of Bonfire Of The Brands , made a clip for Buy Nothing Day 2008. It’s called ‘The Good Consumer’ and it shows how people are made to think they need to buy stuff to be happy. |
| Nov 25 | ErockIT - Half Bicycle, Half Motorbike An interesting invention by a German. He built a special bike that runs up to 50 miles an hour, it’s electric and you have to pedal it to make its engine accelerate. Watch the video. |
| Nov 25 | ErockIT - Half Bicycle, Half Motorbike An interesting invention by a German man. He built a special bike that runs up to 50 miles an hour, it’s electric and you have to pedal it to make its engine accelerate. Watch the video. |
PicoCool
PicoCool says it "is dedicated to bringing you tiny bytes and obscure content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures. Cool content from real people." Lots of great finds from Etsy and other beautiful, small things. The site is run by web designer Emily Chang, whose company did the new design for RWW.
| Nov 30 | DNA Mini Portrait A compact version of their larger works, “the DNA Mini Portrait measures 8” x 10”. Custom Giclee print protected by a glare-resistant glass frame with stainless steel accents. Easily displayed on shelf, desktop or wall. Available i.. |
| Nov 29 | Instant Digital Prints The Tomy xiao is the first of its kind, “an integrated digital camera and printer that allows consumers to capture, view, and immediately print their digital images without ink, anywhere. Photos can now be viewed and shared right away - .. |
| Nov 28 | Citrus-Powered Clock ” Florian Dussopt and Julie Girard designed this desk clock that’s powered by one of my favorite early chemistry experiments: the Citrus Clock has zinc and copper electrodes under the lemon halves and through oxidation and electrolysis, .. |
| Nov 26 | Dalek Prints Colorful 6 color print posters by Dalek , now available at his store for $50-$95. The posters are limited edition of 150-200, and signed and numbered by the artist. |
Swiss Miss
SwissMiss is a widely read design blog written by Swiss transplant to NY Tina Roth Eisenberg. Lots of physical objects here but not exclusively. Eisenberg's discoveries are regularly reblogged by other cool-hunting blogs.
| Dec 3 | Keep Calm and Carry On Rugs I.want.this. rug . |
| Dec 2 | Would you like to be our Virtual Guest? Would you like to be our Virtual Guest at the next upcoming CreativeMornings on December 12th? All you would have to do is sit in front of your computer at 8.30 am, open video Skype and hang out with me and about 50+ Creatives. You would get to hear.. |
| Dec 2 | two blue cars Two Blue Cars makes fantastic T-Shirts/Onesies for little ones. |
| Dec 2 | thegridsystem.org Antonio Carusone just launched The Grid System , an ever-growing resource site on the topic of grid systems and anything associated to it, like the golden ratio and baseline grids. His goal for the site is to be a one stop shop for all designers to .. |
NotCot
NotCot is a beautiful site that collects image-based links to projects around the web. The site was founded by UX designer Jean Aw and Web 2.0 loving Cognitive Scientist Danial Frysinger. The site's organization is remarkable as well. Entries are navigable by time, popularity or by random selection.
| Oct 23 | the Interactive Mirror designed and constructed... the Interactive Mirror designed and constructed by Alpay Kasal takes the user experience of multitouch interaction and gaming to a whole new place. (Want more? See NOTCOT.org and NOTCOT.com ) |
| Oct 23 | So strange - the Tuttuki Bako, an interactive... So strange - the Tuttuki Bako, an interactive game system that requires you to insert your finger into the device to interact with the games. The display shows a digital replica of your finger - you can then play with a panda or annoy a girl by touc.. |
| Oct 23 | Unraveling sticky tape in a vacuum produces... Unraveling sticky tape in a vacuum produces enough x-rays to actually take images. Great video of the geeky scientists playing with tape and x-rays. The chance this could be used in third world clinics with no electricity blows my mind. (Want more? .. |
| Oct 23 | The world's first commercial wave farm recently... The world's first commercial wave farm recently went live off the coast of Portugal. Designed by Pelamis Wave Power, the farm employs three snakelike Energy Converters to generate 2.25 MW of electricity - enough for 1,500 homes. (Want more? See NOTC.. |
We Make Money Not Art
we make money not art is a phenomenon that simply must be seen to be believed. Run by an international trio of curators, the site's aesthetic is oddly fascinating. When the word "bricolage" comes up, we make money not art is the first blog that many people think of.
| Nov 18 | Links for 2008-11-17 [del.icio.us] Conferencia de Michel Bauwens - El Blog de Camon Michel Bauwens, una de las máximas autoridades mundiales en economía colaborativa e innovadora. Fundador y creador de la P2P Foundation, Michel Bauwens es un reconocido experto y comunicador sobre c.. |
| Sep 3 | Links for 2008-09-02 [del.icio.us] everyday and exotic | varnelis.net The difference between China and the West is now inverted. Unpaid interns designing horrible towers in a few days only to have them built by unskilled laborers? Falling cranes? That’s New York City or Los Angeles.. |
| Sep 2 | Links for 2008-09-01 [del.icio.us] A Dealer Looks Back - artnet Magazine Changes in the art world over the last 30 years. C.STEM - Torino, Italia | 2008 | Arte Generativa, Sistemi Elettronici e Software-art ArtCal - Chelsea - Lehmann Maupin - Alexey Kallima Alexey Kallima will presen.. |
| Sep 1 | Links for 2008-08-31 [del.icio.us] Zoom and bust: Airline collapses but 'worse is to come' - Business News, Business - The Independent If you have no choice but to find a new flight immediately, then you'll probably have to pay more than you did for your original flights. Unfort.. |
We'd love to know.
Comments
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uncrate.com has been a consistent favorite of mine.
Posted by: Brian | March 14, 2008 2:47 PM
Brian, that is a very manly site to suggest. :) I hadn't seen Uncrate before this weekend at SXSW when I found out that one of my friends writes there! Small world. Thanks for adding the link.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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March 14, 2008 2:55 PM
I don't know how you missed http://freshome.com/, a great website that amazes me every time I visit.
Posted by: M!hai | March 14, 2008 3:11 PM
M!hai, we "missed" probably hundreds of great blogs that do this kind of thing. That's what comments are for and thanks for yours, that site does look interesting.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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March 14, 2008 3:19 PM
Take a look at Veerle's blog on webdesign, she's well known within that community and delivers great tutorials etc on a very beautifully designed blog: http://veerle.duoh.com/
Posted by: Kris Hoet | March 14, 2008 3:27 PM
I am often pleasantly surprised by http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/
Posted by: John | March 14, 2008 3:33 PM
Kris, thanks for mentioning Veerle! I've worked for an organization whose website she did design for and agree that she's awesome.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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March 14, 2008 3:34 PM
Marshall please edit my comment, because I've posted the link with a "," at the end. Yes ..there are a lot of websites where you can find interesting things, and for a topic like this you would need a very good research that would take months, to ovserve what are the best website. Personally I love Freshome, and that's why I wanted to recommend it.
Posted by: M!hai | March 14, 2008 3:36 PM
I like INQdrop.com. It's a online community for people who want to share their stories and opinions. It' a great distraction from life!
Posted by: Richard | March 14, 2008 3:48 PM
*suckingup*
One of the best sites for finding cool things? AreDubDub ( http://www.readwriteweb.com ) of course!! i guess it depends on what's "cool" to you.... ;)
*/suckingup*
Posted by: Matt | March 14, 2008 4:22 PM
I'm a fan of browsing LFSTYL (www.lfstyl.com).
Posted by: Jay | March 14, 2008 5:09 PM
Digg?
Posted by: Internet TV | March 14, 2008 6:33 PM
fun blot where scammers get toyed with.
http://emailscamsarefun.blogspot.com/
Posted by: SHv2 | March 15, 2008 2:08 AM
Thank you for the mention! YAY! Waving from NYC!
Posted by: swissmiss | March 15, 2008 4:43 AM
Thanks for adding Fresh Creation to the list!
Good to see that I achieved my goal: inspiring others.
Grtz from Holland ;-)
Posted by: Martijn | March 15, 2008 7:26 AM
www.FindLikeMinds.com for the things that influence people.
Posted by: Rob | March 15, 2008 8:08 AM
These sites can be a great help when I want to create videos or design graphics.. sometimes new ideas comes just from readig. and new content that are interesting is one of the best input!
Thanks for sharing this post! I love it
Posted by: The Sleepy Surfer .com | March 15, 2008 9:10 AM
someone should give me an invite to ffffound. :(
loveless@ gmail.com
Posted by: rachel | March 15, 2008 10:16 AM
http://gemssty.com has some interesting 'tidbits' (as it says) from time to time too~
Posted by: pistol | March 15, 2008 10:19 AM
awesome post! I've always wanted animal superpowers. Or maybe I just hoped that someone would randomly come pet me and scratch my belly as I was walking down the street, i always get those two confused...
Posted by: Jason | March 15, 2008 10:47 AM
really nice list ^^
Posted by: K | March 15, 2008 10:54 AM
haha.nu has some really fun stuff. a lot of vids. They showed an artists work, Nanami Cowdroy, who was so talented, I hired her to design a tattoo for me.
Posted by: Peter Kelly | March 15, 2008 11:09 AM
Aw, you guys are sweet. Thanks for the linky love, Marshall.
Posted by: Andy Baio | March 15, 2008 11:25 AM
roaming the US and the world for cool stuff. my new fav site for beauty/art/and ads. please visit my site and email me to say hi! http://www.gavinwassung.com
Posted by: gavin | March 15, 2008 12:19 PM
thecoolhunter.net
Posted by: gavin | March 15, 2008 12:20 PM
We cover one amazingly cool thing every day at http://fresharrival.com
Posted by: richard | March 15, 2008 12:31 PM
I think that http://amomentofawesome.com is a great (although newer) site for finding awesome stuff!
Posted by: Mike | March 15, 2008 12:32 PM
I am going to suggest Open Culture (www.oculture.com) where you can find podcasts and videos that will make you smarter. It includes free audiobooks, free foreign language lessons, free online courses, and smart YouTube video collections.
Here are some links to good pages:
http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/audio_book_podc.html
http://www.oculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html
http://www.oculture.com/2006/10/foreign_languag.html
http://www.oculture.com/2008/03/youtubesmartvideos.html
Posted by: Allie | March 15, 2008 1:05 PM
http://www.bestsnippets.com has nice collection of cool, funny stuff too.
Posted by: Adam | March 15, 2008 1:51 PM
I have a mashup of digg, reddit, delicious and a bunch of other sites at http://www.jimmyr.com/
Posted by: Jimmy | March 15, 2008 2:24 PM
www.bulentongun.com looks promising
Posted by: sadegazoz | March 15, 2008 2:30 PM
Thanks for including us!
Posted by: Neatorama | March 15, 2008 2:56 PM
http://www.subbmitt.com
Posted by: Dimitri Sokolov | March 15, 2008 3:21 PM
For my weird/wonderful things, I read:
Neatorama
Boing Boing
Ectomo
Nothing to Do With Arbroath
Dave Barry's Blog
Dark Roasted Blend
Mental Floss
Brass Goggles
Cynical-C
Dethroner
Infosthetics
MAKEblog
Making Light (the Nielsen Haydens' blog)
Neil Gaiman's blog
Warren Ellis's blog
Posted by: Scott K | March 15, 2008 3:24 PM
It's strange that you don't have FFFound.com on your list.
Posted by: Yury Akulin : logo design | March 15, 2008 3:37 PM
inspire me now! (http://szymon.tumblr.com/)
have you seen this?! (http://ohhaveyouseenthis.blogspot.com)
bevel and boss (http://bevelandboss.blogspot.com/)
are all pretty wonderful. :)
Posted by: sara beth | March 15, 2008 3:44 PM
josh spear?
maybe if you're into reading a steady stream of shilling for overpriced, corny-ass crap nobody needs. oooo, new colorways for some wack ass sneakers!
its like reading the ads in a magazine and not the articles.
Posted by: wwew | March 15, 2008 4:48 PM
Here is a mashup if you can't get to your favorite feed reader.
186kps
Thanks for the great list!
Posted by: TD | March 15, 2008 5:44 PM
I'm not sure HOW you could have missed the truly wonderful'Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society' http://www.kirchersociety.org/ and, for Japanese strangeness, 'Pink Tentacle'http://www.pinktentacle.com -- these are my 2 most go-to blogs...but perhaps I just have minority tastes....
Posted by: Incognita Nom de Plume | March 15, 2008 5:50 PM
In itself, this page is a wonderful thing! I really appreciate the inline, live RSS feeds — great idea. Only thing, I wish there were more visuals to catch my eyes! Thanx for this compilation. :)
Posted by: Torley | March 15, 2008 7:19 PM
Thank you all so much for all these suggestions! Really great to discover these sites in comments that I didn't know about before.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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March 15, 2008 7:41 PM
www.damninteresting.com
It's only updated every week or so, but I have never been disappointed with a post. Articles from obscure science and history topics that provide some of the most fascinating reading I've ever seen on the net.
Posted by: Shrike | March 15, 2008 8:39 PM
I'm a fan of albotas.com. Stands for 'a little bit on the awesome side'. They have news on random stuff like art, toys, movies, comics, japan, video games, gadgets. It's pretty much every site on the internet (that isn't porn) smushed together.
Posted by: robby | March 15, 2008 8:41 PM
Shameless beg for ffffound.com invite. God I've been regularly using this site for over a year and CAN NOT find anyone with an invite -it kills me! (that should say something about how great it is)
pees oh pees
[/crying]
cellardoor504@gmail.com
Posted by: amanda, herself | March 15, 2008 8:53 PM
If you're interested in anything French you're going to love www.frogsmoke.com
Posted by: Romke | March 15, 2008 11:30 PM
I try to highlight cool stuff on my site here:
www.CONTEMPOZINE.com - men clothing stores
Posted by: Seb | March 16, 2008 3:28 AM
U forgot about http://growabrain.typepad.com
http://bornrich.org
Posted by: hearsetrax | March 16, 2008 4:04 AM
Metafilter. Perfect....
Posted by: mekon | March 16, 2008 4:13 AM
www.blather.net
Posted by: db | March 16, 2008 4:36 AM
A Welsh View (xo.typepad.com) is really good, together with "Blame it on the Voices"(http://blameitonthevoices.blogspot.com/) but my favourite is "aboutcolonblank"(www.aboutcolonblank.com).
Posted by: Timothy | March 16, 2008 4:57 AM
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