Postsecret

Postsecret is a (snail) mail address, a website and a couple of books. As the name implies it allows anyone to make a public (though usually anonymous) confession to small and sometimes big sins - the author's or someone else's. It would be easy to send in imaginary secrets but still the majority seems genuine enough. Watching the site never fails to touch me - some secrets people carry with them daily! Although the main infrastructure of Postsecret is plain cardboard, stamps and regular mail it wouldn't be as popular and well-known without the Internet. It also shows how one man can rival the suspense and intrigue of big media reality TV shows, because that is what this is - a platform for public confession by the writer and a peephole into people's private space for the viewer. A discrete peephole on anonymous lives though, outclassing any Endemol style show by far. A link to the Hopeline service for people in emotional distress is provided.

Nanobliss

Nanobliss is a website that tries to show the beauty in nanostructures - and in some cases succeeds. It is far from a nanoscale art gallery, and in some cases it is nothing more than a show-off of what one can do with carbon atoms and a scanning electron microscope. A logo section? Come on. The site best succeeds with those pictures that weren't so much engineered for effect, but that do show incidental structures at tiny scale. Still worth a visit.

Cheddar Vision

The first ever online camera was of course the coffeepot at The Trojan Room at the University of Cambridge, even before the World Wide Web made publishing images and creating webcams easy. The original cam got unfortunately switched off at august 22, 2001, but now has a worthy successor in perhaps an even more British endeavour (with even a touch of Monty Python?): A webcam showing a maturing Cheddar. For those of us that find watching grass grow a too exhilarating experience, please browse to the CheddarVision website to see, err, mould grow?