You Can't Miss: National Geographic, Internet Sites

From National Geographic: an interactive map of last names around the country.
It was fun to click around and try and figure out where the most Morris' live in the U.S. However, I had a hard time reading many of the names, mostly because of the transparency on the text. This was especially hard with blue, which is the color Mina Liu and Oliver Uberti decided to use for England. It seems that most American's last names come from England, so it's a consistent problem. I also wish that you could search a last name and find an area. It would be cool to search "Morris" and find everywhere with an overwhelming population, instead of searching throughout the entire graphic.

On MadeByMany's blog, there was an interesting post on the worth of internet sites. The author, Tim Malbon, takes the reader through a brief history of the must-haves of website design, including micro-sites, Flash and now a connection to social media. He makes the point that without interesting content, all the video, recipes and interactivity won't make a bit of difference to the consumer. One of the commenters noted that true engagement with the consumer happens when companies interact with consumers about what they like, not the product the company is trying to sell. It serves as a reminder to design around the user, not about what's cool or to show off what we can do.