Here are the 3 best websites I have visited this year, along with their bad counterparts.
1. Good: Newsmap.jp
URL: http://newsmap.jp
Don't let the URL fool you, the site is not in any way written in Japanese. Newsmap is a small website that grabs news from various news feeds around the web and displays them in a neat, color-coded grid boxes. These boxes are arranged according to importance and popularity using size. So essentially, the most breaking and controversial news are displayed in large text, while the not-really-that-popular ones are in smaller text. You can untick categories in order to hide them and give more space to other categories. Finally, news feeds can also be arranged according to country and region, although support for all countries and regions are still incomplete (unlike Google News).
Bad: Inquirer.net
URL: http://inquirer.net
Inquirer.net is the web site of the Philippine newspaper "Philippine Daily Inquirer". Like most other Philippine websites, it has lagged behind in terms of UI standards. For example, it uses an awful lot of tables for its layout, resulting in too many columns and rows displayed on the homepage. It makes navigation difficult, despite multiple navigation bars in the top and bottom of the site's home page. However, they are successful in their efforts to put the most breaking news on the front, where they are easy to spot. Additionally, they use a pleasant and well-balanced color scheme that is easy for the eyes. They need some work on the layout, though.
2. Good: Reddit
URL: http://reddit.com
Reddit is a place where people share links and rate them by giving upvotes and downvotes (similar to Youtube's like/dislike system), and give comments to content posted on the site. One good feature of the site is giving the users the ability to create sub-reddits, which are similar to subcategories. There are subreddits for different kinds of topics, like gaming, worldnews, etc.
Bad: Digg
URL: http://digg.com
Digg is a competitor to Reddit, since Digg also allows its users to share, rate and comment links. However, content on Digg has been recently monopolized by large media outlets, leading to most of its users leaving and finding more "open" link sharing sites (a large number of them migrated to Reddit). Digg had a good design before the "Diggpocalypse", however, after that everything became too blue and it was a lot harder to navigate than before.
3. Good: Imgur
URL: http://imgur.com
imgur is an image hosting site. The description probably ends there, but what I like about imgur is its very minimalistic approach to hosting its users' images. You just have to select your images, upload them either individually or as an album, and when it's done, you will be given links of all kinds. And those links are free from URLs to imgur, unlike other image hosting sites like Imageshack...
Bad: Imageshack
Imageshack is another image hosting site. It is reliable, however, the interface of the whole site is very, very messy, with advertisements everywhere and such. Also, the interface is not very intuitive, and new users can get lost trying to navigate its screens. Worst of all, Imageshack adds URLs to the links it gives to you for your images. For example, its pre-generated BBCode for forums has a link to Imageshack ("Uploaded with Imageshack.us"), and if you remove that part, the BBCode and the image will not work.
