Max Kiesler - Web Design, SOMA San Francisco

Great page presentation with a nice use of dark tones, highlight colors and gradients. The thing I like best about onsens is their user experience. Sending a message is intuitive and visually appealing. Your message text is added through an live edit on the first screen. Clicking "next" gives you a nice slide and fade into the next screen. Here you can asynchronously add an image, change background colors, and drag the text around in you new message. Finally, all you have to do is click the large send button. A great user experience.

The digg spy page is essentially a real-time view of digg. As users digg stories they instantly appear on the spy page without reloading the page itself. These asynchronous content loads make using the digg spy page a bit like watching a movie. The other nice UI element on the spy page is the asynchronous tab views which let you, spy on all stories, spy on queued stories and spy on front page stories only.

Taking the time to go to another page to login to a website has always annoyed me. Inline login boxes are fine, however they do take up real-estate. One of the most exciting new features I've seen in AJAX are new login conventions. Wayfaring uses a login system that may have been inspired by Jalenack's original periodic table of the elements, which was first shown at the initial AJAX summit held in San Francisco California. This technique has been used many times since however, I think this is a particularly effective application of the AJAX popover. Their front page design is a little bloggeresque but I like the login box. It is a very nice variation on this type of theme. Finally, I must say, the green is stunning.

At first glance Netvibes looks like many other web 2.0 sites, however, it's interaction design is superb. Nearly all of Netvibes user interaction is controlled by an AJAX presentation layer. Smart features include inline title editing, a hide and show add content box, and the content boxes control elements located in the header of each box. Also of mention is the smooth performance of the drag and drop function. In my opinion the strength of the Netvibes design is the attention to minimalism and the close attention to user interaction.

Good balance between visual saturation and simplicity, dark and light. Great presentation of the core message and features without overloading. I also like the visual pull of the signup icon and the arrow as the little head's body.

While I'm not in love with the odeo redesign I do still appreciate their log in box. The pop-over works well and quickly and it's a nice surprise on the page.

A dark grey gradient and blue branding are highlights of the new edgeio sign up page. I liked the fact that a web 2.0 start up company is using a background color other than white. I would imagine their site will not be the same dark tones, however, this technique does make a great sign up page.

ookles has a very comprehensive sign up page with an AJAX input field, RSS feed and links to faq's, their blog and the founders sites to keep you interested until they launch.

mabber takes the page fade to a new level with its sign up process. Clean UI with a nice use of AJAX, gradients and icons. mabber is a browser-based instant messenger client which integrates ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo and Jabber.