bethinkr

There are two places that have a pretty slick design that you ought to check out. First was discovered (to me) by Rhiannon Bowman, an Obama and iPhone fanatic whose blog I have quietly followed for the last few months. It’s called “DailyLit“.

DailyLit has embraced new media (and attention spans) with their distribution model. They send books, in part, day-after-day through RSS or email. It’s brilliant. They include free old classics and new, for-pay books. I’m in a Dickens mood right now, and he is, thankfully, one of the freebies.

The second design that I have enjoyed is less obvious. My favorite dictionary site is The Free Dictionary. The definitions are more comprehensive, the synonmyns more accesible, and the ability to dive deeper into the copy is wicked. You know how you can double click a word to highlight it? Well, on this dictionary site, it takes you to the definition of that word. Any word in the copy. Say you look up pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, and you are unsure what is meant with the use of “siliceous”. Just double click and you get the definition:

Containing, resembling, relating to, or consisting of silica.

Silica?

A white or colorless crystalline compound, SiO₂, occurring abundantly as quartz, sand, flint, agate, and many other minerals and used to manufacture a wide variety of materials, especially glass and concrete.

Of? It’s pretty long.