yet another directory but I love it
Here goes nothing! First project. I’m thinking of this weekend activity like some kind of advent calendar. Let’s see, there are 16 weekends to Christmas 2026, this included, so I can publish 16 different projects of mine.
This one is a pretty static website. I like its design, but above all its purpose: it’s an old style webistes directory. I’m quite fond of the kind of platform. When I got my first PC, Google was just born, but the concept of search engine was much less known than the concept of directories, at least for simple users. Curated directories. In fact, I remember that I’ve known Google itself through an italian website that mainly hosted a directory (was called Arianna, part of IOL - Italia OnLine). I also remember using altavista in that period, but now I diverge. Because the power of directories (other italian examples from that period, late 90s: tuttogratis, Virgilio Genio) was not about finding what you were looking for, was about finding what you weren’t even looking for because potentially you didn’t know 1) it existed 2) you needed it.
I get it, recommender systems (more recently known as “The Algorithm”) have had the role of filling that gap, creating the neverending feed we can scroll anytime everywhere forever, but the issue with those is that they don’t pursue that goal, of showing us things we may care about or things from which we can learn and discover new stuff. Their goal is much simpler: maximize the time you spend on the platform. Although there is an overlap there (if you never see something you care about, sooner or later you’ll leave) it’s not exactly the same, and it’s known that reward hacking can create monsters.
So yes I created yet another directory. I’m currently the king there so I decide what goes in and what gets “in evidence” spots. But you can submit whatever and I’ll review.
I’m not gonna say AI didn’t help with it, of course it did and it does. Some of the websites there I’ve stumbled upon by myself (mostly recently, although I’m gonna find my two decades worth of bookmarks and torture you with it, soon) other are surfaced by a set of bots that I scheduled to crawl the web for new stuff. BUT, I (a human, so far, until trascendence) am the judge of what’s actually cool and interesting. Plus, as a gating rule for websites, I avoid anything that can afford a marketing department, prioritizing individual and small groups (or open source and non-profit) efforts, simply because they’re often harder to find randomly.