Mike Industries

Ask and ye shall receive.

In an act of laziness and borderline stupidity, I set the theme of August’s iPod-A-Month Creativity Competition to “submit the best site I’ve never seen”. I did so because I was about to leave on a trip and didn’t have the time to cook up a proper contest.

Seven days and 486 entries later, I had a real judging mess on my hands. Apologies for taking until today to get this entry up, but I spent 10 straight hours on Sunday afternoon/evening going through each entry and picking the best of the best. Brutal, brutal work. I also had to delete about 130 entries because they were either duplicates or had no business being on the list.

Originally the goal was to put the top five up for a vote, but I just couldn’t get the list down below 15, so I am presenting the top 15 sites for everyone to vote on. The person who submitted the site which receives the most votes by the end of next Tuesday (September 13th) will receive a free iPod Shuffle from me and a pair of $150 Etymotic ER-6i earbuds from iLounge.

Can I also just take a moment to say how much I love every single regular reader of this blog? The quality of the first 150 or so entries was SO much better than the last few hundred… the cause being that the last entries came from people visiting via MSNBC, Metafilter, and a few other sites which covered the contest. Nothing against outside visitors… I love all visitors. But the regular peeps here really know their stuff. Many thanks.

So without further ado, I ask you to take a quick look at all 15 sites in the poll to the right and place your vote. Please either view all the sites, or click the “Show Me The Results” button. I don’t want to skew the results with people who have not checked out all 15 sites. I know 15 sounds like a lot, but it’s less than 486… and they are all very good.

Happy voting and may the best site win.

In addition to the finalists in the poll, the sites below all receive honorable mention:

• Centricle
• The Museum of Bad Album Covers
• Flickr Related Tag Browser
• Official Web Site of New Zealand
• Deeply Disturbing Carl Lewis Music Video
• Kitten War
• Alli Arnold Art
• Group Hug
• Jamming a Pair of Scissors Repeatedly Into Your Crotch
• Black People Love Us
• The Circular Life
• GUIdeBookGallery
• Airtoons
• Gig Posters
• Top Left Pixel
• Red Nose Studio
• Bzzzpeek
• Ambigramatic
• Neave.com
• Chromasia
• The Hotchkiss School

Important Note: Any campaigns spotted on the net aimed at pumping up votes for a particular entry will result in the disqualification of that entry. Mint knows all.

Next week is a big news week. Apple is releasing their new lust object, NFL season begins, and there are tons of Labor Day concerts and festivals to attend. But the biggest development for me personally will be the release of The Wolf’s shiny new creation:

Mint.

For the last several months, Mr. Inman has been frittering away his nights and weekends creating what I believe to be the most useful stats program in existence. It’s not Urchin, it’s not Analog, and it’s not designed to record every single hit to your website since the beginning of time.

But that is its strength.

Mint, as the name so cryptically implies, is designed to give you a “fresh look at your site”. A slice in time, if you will. Where has my traffic from the last 48 hours come from? What days of the week does activity on my site peak? What terms have people possibly been searching for that could lead them to my embarrassment-of-a-website?

Mint grew out of a desire to maintain a rolling window, or dashboard, of activity with which one could easily analyze what’s going on in the here and in the now. Not so much in the two years ago. It is this philosophy which allows Mint to maintain such a small database (generally around 20 megs, but fully customizable) and yet provide such great functionality.

I’ll let Shaun spill the full details upon release next week, but I wanted to briefly talk about my favorite Mint feature; one I feel somewhat responsible for since I badgered The Wolf so incessantly about it all through development — The 24-hour “Drive Through” Referrer Window.
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