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Science

Scientific American Web Awards 99

Posted by michael from the top-five-percent dept.
ldopa1 writes "Scientific American has just announced their 2nd Annual Web Awards. The article outlines the very best of the best of the web in the following categories: Archaeology & Paleontology, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth & Environment, Engineering and Technology, Mathematics, Medicine and Physics. Sadly, Slashdot isn't on the list, but some great sites are. It's worth checking out."
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Scientific American Web Awards More

Scientific American Web Awards

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  • It's nice to see that A.L.I.C.E. got an award under the CS category. It's really neat, and you should check it out.

    http://alicebot.org/
    • Alice isn't that impressive from a technological standpoint. It's basically just a big database of previously asked questions. If you ask it a question it hasn't heard the response is predictably vague/wrong.
    • I had a less than impressive conversation with A.L.I.C.E. It started out sounding pritty normal untill I tried to make abstract comments such as commenting on the A.L.I.C.E. logo.. from then on the AI tried to change the subject. ;)

  • A*W*A*R*D (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by doooras ( 543177 )
    does Hawkeye still do the SA shows?
  • NASA watch is useful to keep track of whats goin on...
  • Seriously, I'm glad Slashdot isn't on there. In fact it would decrease the meaning of the award if it was voted on the "Very best of the web" list.

    I mean I read /. pretty often (too often?), but it isn't really in that category - it's a news site.

  • a good basic website, but an amazing project isn't it? www.setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu

    • Re:No SETI? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Cmdr Taco (luser) ( 578089 )
      SETI is, while not quite passe', at least a little worn.

      I understand the basic tenents of SETI and run one, sometimes two, SETI clients myself. Popular interest is notoriously fickle and SETI hasn't delivered any aliens of yet. So, correspondingly, the fickle alien hunters, as well as the general public, have lost interest to some notable degree. SETI does gain the occasional new signup (client-wise), but its peak is done.

      In spite of my statements above, I believe that SETI will maintain its position as, at the very least, a quasi-respectable scientic research venture, with many supporters and I support its interests fully.

      • SETI? If you believe aliens are going to reply to your PC's "hello, universe!", shouldn't you be at least a little worried that the government is secretly peeping in all your documents?

  • Uhm (Score:3, Funny)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2002 @06:13PM (#3648817) Journal
    Sadly, Slashdot isn't on the list, but some great sites are.

    Why would Slashdot be on the list? Did JonKatz discover a fascinating fossil that put the archeological community on its ears and post his dissertation on it here?

    Why would a news site win an award for original content?

    (Disclaimer: I haven't read the criteria they use, so maybe Slashdot should be in the list - but I doubt it)
    • because /. is the ultimate psychological experiment?
    • Let me qualify my statement before you mod me as flamebait :)

      What I mean is, Slashdot doesn't post original content (often), only links to existing content.

      Unless we have a fascinating ScienceTroll I haven't noticed...
      • This is an automated reply from the Science Troll.
        Currently I'm in hibernation, but after that I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
        Thank you for your interest, and goodbye.

        The Science Troll

  • Wayback Machine (Score:1, Interesting)

    by entrager ( 567758 )
    They gave the Internet Archive an award. Interesting idea, but I feel not really award worthy. Although the Wayback Machine is really neat.

    The oldest archived version of /. [archive.org] is interesting. December 21, 1997. My favorite headlines:

    1) Linux 2.1.74 Released
    2) Judge Uninstalls IE in 90 seconds
    3) The poll: I would see Titanic just to see a Prequel Trailer (Yes/No/What are you talking about?)

    Just goes to show how long this Microsoft crap has been going on...
  • Check out this [slashdot.org]. Slashdot hasn't won a web award since April of 2000. That must mean Slashdot is going downhill, right?

    • No, it just means Slashdot hasn't won a web award since April of 2000.

      **Shrugs** I don't know why most web awards matter to Marketroids, since all they really are is a method of advertising the websites that give out the awards. Just think of Danielle's Rainbows and Unicorns website--all those awards little Danielle collected, all pointed back to the other Unicorns and Rainbows websites that gave them to her. It's about as meaningful as a banner exchange.

      The Webbies are a special case--people actually vote for this stuff, therefore the number of votes relates pretty closely to the traffic each website receives. And that is what matters, since website traffic == advertising opportunity.

      So whether SlashDot wins awards or not doesn't mean that it's the best, or that it's going downhill. It probably just means their advertising rates since April of 2000 have been a bit lower.

  • The son (who had been looking out the window) turned to his mother and asked, "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats,
    why don't big planes have baby planes?" The mother (who couldn't think of an answer) told her son to ask the stewardess.
    So the boy asked the stewardess, "If big dogs have baby dogs and big cats have baby cats, why don't big planes have baby planes?" The
    stewardess responded, "Did your mother tell you to ask me?" The boy admitted that this was the case. "Well, then, tell your mother that there are no baby planes because Southwest always pulls out on time. Your mother can explain it to you.

  • A mini directory listing (Score:4, Informative)

    by OaITw ( 155633 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2002 @06:21PM (#3648876)
    This "Awards" are more of a mini directory listing than an true awards. The slashdot blurb states "The article outlines the very best of the best of the web", but on the actual site it is clear that there is no such claim. This is just a list of interesting sites, worth browsing in some scientific oriented categories. I think this is a good service. Hopefully it stays up for some time, and does not grow to much. I think large directory structures, like Yahoo's web directory listings are not terribly useful for browsing. I miss the early ninties when I could browse from home page to home page with individuals listing 5 to 10 interesting sites each. Now days I usually just browse from slashdot; in fact, excuse me while I return to browsing these science links.
    • These aren't awards? Then can you explain why the title of the page is "Scientific American: Explore!: SciTech Web Awards 2002"? Can you also explain why the giant graphic on the page reads "2002 Sci-Tech Web Awards"? Or perhaps why they say, "In this, our second annual Scientific American.com Sci/Tech Web Awards, the editors have again done the work of sifting through the virtual piles of pages to find the top sites for your browsing pleasure" if these aren't actually awards?
  • Sadly, Slashdot isn't on the list, but some great sites are. It's worth checking out.

    Yeah, I think that "Lone Gunmen are Dead" article kinda did /. in for this year. ;)

  • Ah, a Web Award that actually means something (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Prof.Nimnul ( 583515 ) on Wednesday June 05, 2002 @06:29PM (#3648937) Homepage
    Hopefully S.A. can keep this up for several years to come. Two of the biggest drawbacks that I've found about web awards in the past are:

    1) Sites can suddenly disappear or (more frequently) slowly slid into inactivity.

    2) A number of awards really aren't all that impressive because the award was either given by a friend, or has been handed out so many times (i.e. a "Pick of the Day") that the luster fades about as fast as David Lee Roth's stardom after Van Halen.

    I've always liked the idea of an annual web awards, but given the very fluid nature of the web, I wasn't sure if the idea would really work. I suppose that other annual awards are given out for web work, but I think these are the first that aren't based (solely) on design and graphics.

    Matt

  • Just in case you haven't gotten tired of posts theorizing why /. isn't on the list, try this: It's not there because the rest of the world has yet to recognize Zealotry as a science.

  • Web.archive.org (Score:2, Insightful)

    by i_am_pi ( 570652 )
    is sadly blocked at most filtered internet places (libraries, schools) (good thing I have a cgi-proxy available running on https)

    It is a good site however. My job's very first webpage is on there. Sure freaked out the boss when I showed that to him: "What happened to our website"/"Nothing! it's an archived copy"


    CGIproxy site [jmarshall.com]

    Pi
  • that even our (presumably /.) favorite search engine still is not reliably capable of delivering results apropos to any given quest. In clarification, the apropos results may be listed, but finding them amongst the other 10K to 1M results is may be problematic.

    There has been a respectable amount of research applied to making web search results meet the criteria of the user. The results have been improvement, much to Google's credit, but the product is not yet acceptable. Efforts to create search engines with a special interest focus have been met with mild success and meek acceptance. The correct approach, I think, is that some entity in the position that Google has should provide a method to segregate results, not only based on keywords, but by meaningful content as well. The early rough-and-tumble days of the Weird-Wild-Web brought us search engines that were easily fooled by meta-tags and other keyword embedding methods. The next step is to provide, via AI methods, a search engine that can provide, given well defined search criteria, only the set of results that make the *best fit*.
  • Shame they haven't added a category for general science education for kids.

    I grew up at a great time to be a science nerd, I remember fondly the Time-Life Science Books, newspaper articles and television coverage of the Apollo missions, playing with a chemistry set...

    I'm not sure what science kids resources on the net will live up to those standards. A couple that I like are Nine Planets [nineplanets.org] and Science Toys you can make with Your Kids, [scitoys.com] anybody got any others?

  • It's great how only one of the "computer science" sites has anything to do with computer science.
  • On my first look, the site made me laugh.
    A third of the page was blank since they
    assumed my browser width. Shrink it too much,
    and the page gets lost. Then, first
    check the physics link (my field):
    Physics 2000 wants a plugin (ok this is not
    my primary machine, but this is a pain).
    Then the string theory site, not too bad but
    again inappropriately assumes my geometry.
    Jump to chemistry: organo transition? what
    happened to spelling. Try the virtual experiment,
    galeon enters an infinite loop.

    Whatever happened to the idea of the web site
    presenting the information and the browser
    doing the displaying.

    Oh well, I guess this is a loosing battle :(.

    Mike
  • Slashdot.org should be on the list as a great anthropology site.

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