Four Unusual Sites - Coming soon

My lecturer, Jason, says we are to find four unusual sites and write 100 words on each, which is a task that on the surface sounds very boring (sorry Jason, but do read on, I'm not this sad the whole way through). I understand that as a lecturer he has a mandate to be fairly specific about how many words we have to write, because I know that most uni students are trying to do as little work as possible. I know because there are times that I am one of them. I'm like "no way am I gonna write a bazillion words on some weird-arse websites - the writers have stopped striking and Lost is back on again."

For me, however, telling me to blog is like telling a child to eat lollies. I love to communicate with people I don't know... which even I'll admit is super-weird. I think that gets reflected in what I appreciate about a website, and so that will colour my observations and the websites I choose. I love blogs and YouTube. A lot. Unfortunately these kinds of websites tend to be very standard-looking. You know, the good ol' two-or-three column structure with the fat column in the middle(ish) and a heading at the top.

The thing is, what draws me to a site is never the site itself, but rather the content that the site contains. I even use an RSS reader which strips the content from the site completely. It'll just show up as ugly, bare text and pictures. I'm sure site designers just hate the guts out of me. I love it though because it lets me keep tabs of a multitude of blogs at a time without having to do anything more than sign into my Google account.

Actually, while I'm sure Jason knows all the tricks, if he hasn't set up a Google Reader to keep track of his classes' blogs it would probably be a good idea if he was really into the "I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING MY STUDENTS ARE SAYING ALL THE TIME AS SOON AS THEY SAY IT" kind of thing. I'm just saying you know...

And so because I've gotten off on a tangent and not actually done the set work, I'll talk about the sites tomorrow. I think I can get away with using mostly - mostly! - the sites I've already linked to even though they are fairly standard in how they are set up as sites. I have it written down: 100 words on content, look and feel of each site. I should find at least one freaky Heliozoa-esque site though, but not actually Heliozoa, because using your lecturer's site is just plain sucking up.