March 1, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 5)

URL:
http://personal.denison.edu/~kuhlman/hot.links.db.html

Rating:
Strong Points: Great collection of links
Weak Points: Many links broken

Summary:
I used to cover more sites that offered links as the majority or sole component of their content, but I have reduced the number of these in recent years. This one caught my eye with its clever title and, as readers undoubtedly know, I’m a sucker for a title and for pix. Scanning through the Coolman’s Database, I found many sites of considerable interest and others of limited utility to scientists. The overall signal to noise was ratio was pretty good. I’m not sure what the designer’s aim is with the site, but it clearly must relate to the biological sciences. On the downside, though I discovered what one usually discovers in massive collections of links – many of them are as dead as a doornail. There are automated means of checking if a collection of links is active or not and I’m surprised more page designers don’t use these, because one of the big turnoffs to visitors is scrolling through a set of links and hitting numerous broken ones. By about the third one, I’m “outta here”. Hopefully, Coolman will get his act together.

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