Most-useful websites
OUR MONTHLY ROUND-UP OF THE WEB’S MOST ILLUMINATING, USEFUL, OR JUST-PLAIN-COOL WEBSITES.
NoClip Website
EXPLORE SOME CLASSIC VIDEOGAME WORLDS IN YOUR BROWSER. noclip.website For the nostalgic gamer, there’s nothing quite like revisiting the worlds that captivated us in the past, but for some, the portals into these universes (i.e. our ancient consoles) are no longer up to the task. The NoClip website is a project largely run by coder @JasperRLZ and offers a glimpse into some of these worlds by way of rendering them in your browser. When visiting the site, you can choose a platform (predominantly Nintendo consoles at this point) and a game title, and boot up one of its many areas to explore in your web browser. Whether this is one of the open world maps from Super Mario Sunshine or a dungeon or boss room from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, you’ll be able to navigate around it by way of the WASD keys and your mouse. While not everything is present and accounted for at the moment, there’s likely some memories to be found in the selection that is available and the list is ever-growing with the help from some passionate coders.
World Wide Web
SEE WHAT THE INTERNET LOOKED LIKE 30 YEARS AGO. worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser The internet recently passed a pretty impressive milestone, celebrating its 30th birthday, and to commemorate the occasion, CERN created an emulator of the first web browser from 1989. For some context, CERN is the organisation Sir Tim Berners-Lee was working with when he invented the World Wide Web in order to share information internally between scientists. As such, you’ll notice that all the information provided on this wonderful browser is related to communication and protocol within CERN, as it would have been 30 years ago. When opening the browser, you’ll be greeted with the delightful message “Welcome to the Universe of HyperText”, and from there, you’re free to browse around the ‘webpage’ as you wish, double-clicking on hyperlinks to user guides and other such artifacts. Ultimately, the experience isn’t all that useful, but offers a glimpse into a long-lost world for those that weren’t around to experience it, and a nice fuzzy nostalgia blanket for those that were.
HotSpot 3D
WEIGH UP THE SMARTPHONE COMPETITION VISUALLY. hotspot3d.com Choosing your next smartphone is growing increasingly more challenging as their specs inflate along with the dollar-amount you’re expected to invest, but one factor will always remain the ultimate decider: aesthetics. HotSpot3D hosts 3D rendered models of a good majority of the latest flagship handsets (although there are some notable exceptions, like Google’s Pixel range) and allows you to place two of them side-by-side. Once you’ve selected which phones you’d like to compare, and the colour you’d like to compare them in, you’re free to rotate the models and view both of them simultaneously, from any angle you desire. Each phone looks rather striking in the render, and materials such as glass and iridescent finishes have the appropriate light response as you rotate them. As a neat utilitarian bonus, the full dimensions of each device are displayed next to the handsets as well, and one of the options you’re able to compare the phone to is a credit card, a sensible and universal choice for scale. Currently, the handsets are limited to Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Sony phones, but this will likely expand as the site is currently in Beta.