This site was brought to my attention in another class as a site useful for finding all kinds of information. It is an attempt to be a online general reference desk. In its attempts to please everyone, I find it is so busy that I would not use it.
Intended Audience
Anyone and everyone wanting to find information.
Usefulness of Content
There is tons of information here, some more useful than others. It seems to attempt to link to everything hoping that some of it will be of use to everyone. There are calenders, calculators, quick links to major online resources (email, news, search sites, dictionaries, map/direction sites, etc), news stories, entertainment, article/joke/story "of the day" sites, columnists, encyclopedias... I could go on and on. The site doesn't really contain information, it links to it.
Consistency of Design
There isn't much to talk about here. Virtually every page is a link to another site or a pop-up. There is little to no local information besides FAQs about the site, pages to allow you to subscribe to a non-ad driven version, or to set up a "My Refdesk" personalized page (essentially restricting/ordering whats on the page to be less busy). What content there is is pretty basic (white background, ad and logo at top, etc) and boring.
Ease of Navigation
Well, not much to navigate. Its all links to elsewhere. It can be hard to find things on the main page as it is so busy. One big beef, something (I think the refreshing ad at the top of the page) combined with the length of the page means that if I am in the middle of the page and switch to another window, when I return the page will not be where I left it, it will often have refocused back to the top of the page.
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