October 15, 2007 (Vol. 27, No. 18)
Rating:
Strong Points: Vast array of pix
Weak Points: Retrieving desired pictures not easy
Summary:
What you see here is what you get. It ain’t bad but it needs some polishing. First, the site is one of the most amazing collections of wildlife pictures you will find anywhere on the Internet. The opening page organizes the site’s material by organism category (mushrooms, for example) and a picture of a representative member of the group. This is fine and dandy, as is the enormous number of pictures in each category. They are also high quality to boot. What’s wrong then? The problem is the site’s overly techie classification/sorting of pictures—by genus/species only. Clicking, for example, on the Mammals section brings up a collection of names that most users will have no knowledge of, and as a result, finding a picture of a desired species is a pain. That’s too bad. Fortunately, a well-designed search engine that recognized common names (moose, for example) as well as scientific names (Alces alces) would fix the problem. Let’s hope it happens.
