5 SALON MAGAZINE (www.salon mag.com)
The San Francisco-based online journal has been winning Best of the Web awards since its 1995 launch, but this year finally saw it entering the mainstream discourse--albeit controversially, with painstaking investigations of Kenneth Starr and the revelation, in September, of Rep. Henry Hyde's adulterous affair of 30 years ago (Salon's Washington bureau chief, Jonathan Broder, argued against running that story and resigned shortly thereafter). Infamy aside, the magazine continues to publish thoughtful, beautifully written pieces on everything under the sun, making it one of the Net's few genuine must-reads.
6 THE IMAC
About the only thing it didn't win was the Nobel Peace Prize. In its brief lifetime, Apple's wonder box--a curvaceous, 38-pound, translucent blue-and-white computer--has saved the company from public and financial oblivion (it's no coincidence that Apple is enjoying its first profit in three fiscal years), earned design and technical awards from the media, and spawned the kind of fan websites usually reserved for Jennifer Love Hewitt. The celebrity status is well deserved: It's loaded with a lusty G3 processor and all of the trimmings, and users can set up the machine and get online in minutes, all for $1,299. Kind of makes you wonder why no other computer maker can think this different.
7 THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME (Nintendo, for Nintendo 64, $69.95)
Nintendo 64's lack of killer apps--there hasn't been a monster hit since Super Mario 64 two years ago--came to a momentous halt with the late-November arrival of Zelda, a fantasy-adventure game from the wildly imaginative mind of superstar game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. As the swashbuckling Link, a lad who's equal parts Peter Pan, Robin Hood, and a Keebler elf, you explore an enchanting realm painted in the most ornate visuals you've ever seen in a videogame. And in a stunning redefinition of immersive gameplay, virtual days pass--marked by sunrises and sunsets and your character aging from boy to man--as you progress through the game. Serene and hypnotic, noble and beautiful, Zelda's an instant classic.
8 GAME BOY CAMERA (Nintendo, $49.95)
The resolution stinks. The screen's too small. And--somebody call the folks in Pleasantville!--the images are in black and white. Yet despite all of the shortcomings, there's something undeniably cool about making a camera out of the same Game Boy that's been around for nearly a decade--if only because it makes us feel like we're MacGyver. Available in a rainbow of colors and ingeniously simple to use (just plug the bug-eyed widget into the cartridge slot and shoot away; plug in the optional printer to put your photos on stickers), the camera is digital photography's poster boy for chic kitsch.
9 ICQ (www.icq.com)
In reality, it's just a little window that sits on your computer screen and lets you know when any of your friends, anywhere around the world, are online and available to gab. In effect, this invention by four Israeli twentysomethings has turned the entire Internet into a cozy proprietary chat service. Launched in 1996, ICQ (I Seek You, get it?) achieved critical mass this year, with more than 20 million registered users by late October, must-have status among teenagers and college kids--and $287 million in the kitty when AOL snapped up parent company Mirabilis in June.
