Check it out

CBC Radio 3 site.

Some of you may have noticed that a link was recently added to the CBC radio 3 website. I was introduced to this site by the autralian philosopher when I was last in Vancouver. The reason I'm pointing out the link is that I think it represents an advance in the manner in which information is disseminated on the web. "Advance" is perhaps not the right word. What's immediately striking about the site is it's graphic design and user interface. Most every page is eye catching, and many are elegantly laid out. Probably the coolest element of the interface is the streaming audio. When you first press play, it selects (randomly?) a song, but if you don't like the song, you can skip to the next one. And you can do this again and again and again. If you are particularly impressed by anything you're listening to, you can connect to a web page about the artist that contains a bio and discography (often with more music available for listening). These two taken together, good design and cool implementation of technology, already make for an enjoyable web site. For the most part, the music playing has no relation to the content on the page (some pages will play their own music, but not many), and what I find particularly interesting (and called an 'advance' up above) is the way the content is organized. Roughly speaking, you browse (or surf) through the site as you would a magazine, clicking on a page icon on the upper right hand corner to symbolically turn the page. There is however no table of contents. There's no sitemap page that splits all of the content into broad categories and then further subdivides them to expedite your information gathering. I referred to this as an advance above because I think it is one of the first sites (first site I've seen) to actually make use of the way in which many people surf the web. Perhaps I am part of a small minority, but I often find myself almost randomly going from page to page with no particular goal in mind, simply following my whim. It is not information of any specific category that I am looking for, but simply interesting information. Some might say that it is to its detriment that this site forces you to relinquish the sense of control inherent in following your own whim, but I think it is rather interesting.