Strolling through the Net, one thing is for sure — you almost certainly get to find things that you never expected to be there. Stuff that make you jaw drop, leave you wide-eyed or, plain and simple, leave you wondering, “What a crazy thing to do!”
Recently, I was left saying the same thing when I visited what the site administrators claimed to the smallest web site. Present at http://www.guimp.com/, the site opens in any regular web browser. It is a small box that, when clicked on, presents you the option of going into either the HTML or the Flash-based site. But whichever you choose, prepare to be bombarded by a lot of information as well as loads of fun.
In the Flash-based site, there are games — play Pong, Astro or even PacMan to your heart’s content, or, to the best abilities of your control over the mouse cursor. But this site isn’t alone. In fact there is another address that is vying for the title of the smallest web site on the Net. The world’s smallest web site http://www.coolornot.com/is almost on the same pattern. And though the site may seem a little smaller than the previous site, the content here isn’t as detailed as in the earlier site. However, one thing’s for sure; you’re going to strain your eyes viewing both of these sites. Especially if you decide to play Pong or any other game on it.
Apart from the smallest site or any other superlatives that you might find on the Net, there are a lot of other places on the WWW that really leave you wondering, what on earth is that? One such site is the Google Mirror http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/m/index.cgi. Now, in Internet terms, a mirror means a copy of a site, a site that is based on some other server so as to ease the load off the original site. However, here the folks have taken the meaning of the word in the truest of senses. Feed the address and you will be face to face with a Google site that is reverse of the original; like when the site would be viewed in a mirror. The scroll bar on the left of the window and Google, from the two search buttons to about everything on the page is on the reverse. But when you feed anything in the search field, it comes in the right form, albeit from the right of the field. Even the results are in the reverse. Thank God that the links, when clicked are in their right form. A little taxing on the eyes but on the whole the site is a good visit.
Another site that is a little (my bespectacled friends would say more than a little) bother to the vision is Blurry Sites http://blurry.sytes.org/. Not only is the homepage of this site blurry, it also blurs all the sites that you feed in its field. Type yahoo.com and the result will be a Yahoo site that is almost illegible. And if you can read what’s on the site, then you’ve got much better eyesight than I have. Like I said, this site is a little heavy on the eyes.
At Funky uRL obfuscation http://filters.2meta.com/url/obfuscation/ you really get to know how much free time people have on their hands. This guy is convinced that he has come up with something really great. Feed any web address in its search field and the result is strange. I quote the guy who made the site, “Convert URLs into something really funky”. He goes on to explain, “It takes the hostname and converts it into a 32 bit integer, and the rest of the URL into those funky hex thingies.”
What fun is that? I guess the same kind of fun one had on the previous sites. But what kind of people make such sites? I guess for that you will have to consult People of the Net at http://www.bluepineapple.com/people/. It seems that this guy has really taken time out to categorizes the Netizens into 17 categories. This is actually good reading. And according to this site, our guys above might well be categorized either in “The ‘I think I’m so cool’ person”, or “The Fanatic Nonsleeping Paid Surfer”. In fact, read and discover what category you and your friends fall into is rather fun.
Many things about the Net are also categorized in the 1001 Internet facts at http://www.silverpoint.com/1001/. All right, so there aren’t that many fact here — just seven of them. Still, this too is one smile-cracking site to behold. More than text, this site tries to convince you with graphs of either the fruits that women eat while chatting and the really stimulating graph about the Y2K problem (remember that one?).
I know there are plenty of sites that could have been accommodated here. But let’s leave some for later on. Right?
Strolling through the Net, one thing is for sure — you almost certainly get to find things that you never expected to be there. Stuff that make you jaw drop, leave you wide-eyed or, plain and simple, leave you wondering, “What a crazy thing to do!”
Another site that is a little (my bespectacled friends would say more than a little) bother to the vision is Blurry Sites 
