Web Bests, Cool, Portals, and Rings

There seem to be fewer lists of the best and cool sites than there used to be. I guess the Web has gotten so big that no one wants to go out on a limb and say what's the best or the coolest. Now, over in Web design — that's where they have plenty of opinions.

This page:
Web Bests | Web Coolness | Web Portals | WebRings

Web Bests

• 100 Best Websites
• Alexa - Find the most popular sites, see how your site ranks, get web analytics (this last for a fee)
• Top Site Globally
• Top Sites in Categories
• Top Sites by Country
• Forbes' Best of the Web list
• PC Magazine's Top 100 Web Sites - also, the top 100 classic Web sites and the top 100 undiscovered Web sites
• Scout Select Bookmarks - No longer updated (Internet Scout Project)
• Top Five Sites - Top 5 in 20 categories = 100 great sites
• Top of the Web (John December)
• Webby Awards - Annual awards for the best Web sites in various categories

Web Coolness

• Cool Site of the Day - Have the day's site e-mailed to you or browse the archives
• Voice of the Shuttle Laws of Cool Page - An attempt to categorize cool and meta-cool Web pages

Web Portals

A  portal is a starting point on the Web, which you can customize with links and news of interest to you.

• AOL
• Excite
• Go.com (formerly Infoseek)
• Lycos
• MSN (Microsoft)
• Yahoo

Personal Start Pages:

These sites allow you to create a start page with just what you want on it: news, weather, movies, humor, music, blogs, other interests. Use it as a daily starting point or share it with friends. Particulary useful if you use more than one computer. (Many of the "widgets" for these pages use RSS.)

• My Yahoo
• Netvibes
• Protopage
• Start.me
• Symbaloo - Choose search engine widgets. When you click on one, it changes the search box in the center.
• uStart.org
• Webwag

WebRings

A WebRing is a series of linked Web pages on a particular subject or theme.

• WebRing