Portals & Directories

A directory of blogs and tools that load in under one megabyte, kept as a quiet protest against bloated pages. Every link opens almost instantly.

A ranked list of websites that weigh less than half a megabyte. A tour of the fast, lightweight personal web, sorted from tiniest to merely small.

A calm, ad-free space where artists and researchers gather links, images and notes into shared channels. Follow one thread and an hour disappears.

The index of GitHub's 'awesome' lists: curated links on almost any subject, from fonts and podcasts to self-hosting, all maintained in the open.

The front page of Bear, a no-frills blogging platform: a feed of trending and recent posts that are short, personal and free of ads.

A daily showcase of early-stage startups looking for their first users, sorted by topic. A preview of what might be everywhere next year.

A long-running directory of wonderful things: odd gadgets, art, science and internet culture, posted every day by a small team of editors.

The original boredom portal, still sorting thousands of time-wasters into categories with no discernible editorial filter.

Curated stumble button that sends you somewhere good rather than somewhere random, with categories if you are feeling fussy.

The volunteer-edited web directory that outlived DMOZ, still organising the internet into a category tree by hand.

A weekly newsletter of thoughtful links on design, technology and cities, with every past issue readable on the site without signing up.

A long, community-kept list of software and services with genuinely free tiers: hosting, databases, email, monitoring and much more.

A weekly, hand-picked digest of the best Hacker News links, with an archive of past issues you can browse straight from the site.

Shows one fresh post at a time from a hand-picked list of personal blogs. Press next and you are reading a stranger's corner of the internet.

A community weblog running since 1999 where members share the best thing they found online today, with thoughtful threads underneath each post.

Hand-curated index of several thousand active blogs, sorted by subject, for when you want writing rather than a feed.

A plain list of personal websites, each added by its owner. Pick any name and you land on somebody's homepage, built exactly how they like it.

Hand-listed index of useless websites, sorted into categories so you can choose your waste of time rather than roll for it.

A daily leaderboard of new apps, sites and gadgets, upvoted by the people who make and use them. The place to spot a tool before everyone else does.

Crowd-sourced feed of well-made and gloriously pointless websites, and the closest thing left to a modern stumble button.

The Hacker News lane where people post things they built themselves: odd side projects, tiny tools and a frank comment thread under each one.

One button, escalating nonsense, and no way onward except pressing it again. Works on a phone, which is the danger.

One button, one random pointless website, no explanation offered or needed. The site that turned this whole genre into a genre.

A collection of single-purpose online tools for web makers, from favicon makers to CSS generators, sorted by topic and searchable in one box.

A daily five-minute roundup of tech, science and programming news, with every issue also readable on the website.

Home of a long list of absurd browser games and quizzes, several of which have quietly consumed entire office afternoons.

Wikipedia articles served as a vertical swipe feed, which is either a public service or the end of civilisation.