engadget

www.engadget.com

Intended Audience:
People who want to keep an eye on news, events, public opinion, etc., in the tech and gadgetry field. Techies, geeks, husbands, bored semi-techies at work.

Usefulness of Content:
So useful. Sooooooo useful. IF you are a member of the intended audience. Useful to my mother? FALSE. Not always useful to me--like my relationship with Penny Arcade, a lot of engadget is beyond my scope, understanding, or caring, but a lot of it is awesome. For instance, I just checked the recent updates and found out that as of next month, Sprint, my cell service provider, is going to be offering my #1 coveted mobile device, the Blackberry Pearl. Score! Thanks, engadget!

Consistency of Design:
It's blog format, so each entry is more or less the same.

Ease of Navigation:
This is pretty good, but also kind of a mess. The blog format makes it easy to read, and they use tags for poster and category of post, which is helpful. They suffer from the malady that plagues popular blogs, though--they've chosen a three-column layout, which leaves the viewer identifying the individual posts as "the content" and ignoring the rest. My eye passes over the two right-hand columns, dismissing them as ads, but they're not--they're actually useful features like newest and featured stories, most commented, categories, and links, but since they're trying to cram all of this onto one page, it ends up being kind of a mess. Call me old fashioned, but I'd prefer "links" and a "top stories" pages, not these extra sections all one one page. I like engadget, but I don't want to read it like this. RSS, please!