Cogimator – A Curated Directory of Unique Websites#
Cogimator.net is a carefully curated directory of websites that offer something more than just sleek design or trending buzz. It’s a collection of digital places created with passion — independent projects, experiments, and archives that challenge how we experience the web.
We don’t chase popularity. Instead, Cogimator focuses on originality, usefulness, creativity, and cognitive depth. You’ll find websites that are often overlooked by mainstream platforms — projects made by individuals, small teams, or devoted communities.
In short, it’s a curated directory of unique websites — assembled by hand, driven by curiosity.
We feature:
educational tools and visual simulations
cultural curiosities and digital micro-archives
experimental interfaces and interactive essays
artistic expressions and personal knowledge libraries
web-native projects that defy classification
Our mission is to:
support independent creators and timeless ideas
promote alternative knowledge sources
encourage slow exploration and digital curiosity
Most featured sites are:
non-commercial or ad-free
niche but high quality
thoughtfully crafted and often hand-coded
alive for years, yet virtually invisible to the average user
We believe in an internet that surprises, teaches, and inspires — a web that resists homogenization. If you’re tired of algorithms, top-10 lists, and over-optimized content, you’re in the right place.
🌐 Cogimator is where the unexpected web begins.
99% Invisible – hidden stories of design, architecture, and material culture
🔗 99% Invisible is a project that, since 2010, has explored the unseen aspects of design, architecture, engineering, and material culture. Originally launched as a podcast by Roman Mars, it has since grown into a full-fledged website featuring articles, photographs, audio recordings, and videos.
Each episode and article tells the story of seemingly ordinary elements of our surroundings – from the shape of road signs, to the construction of bridges and buildings, to the hidden meanings behind patterns and urban systems. These are narratives about the subtle forces that shape our lives, often unnoticed, yet profoundly impactful.
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Atlas Obscura – a guide to extraordinary places and cultures
🔗 Atlas Obscura is a unique guide to extraordinary places, cultures, and phenomena from around the globe. Founded in 2009 by travel enthusiasts, it was created to build a knowledge base of places and stories overlooked by traditional travel guides. Today, the site contains thousands of entries contributed by travelers, historians, researchers, and enthusiasts.
The platform features an interactive map that allows users to explore geographical and cultural curiosities anywhere in the world. Descriptions cover natural phenomena – such as unique geological formations and rare plant species – as well as man-made wonders, including forgotten buildings, abandoned sites, quirky museums, and unusual art installations.
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Colossal – art, photography, and creativity from around the world
🔗 Colossal is an independent portal that has been operating since 2010, publishing carefully curated content from the worlds of art, photography, design, and creative projects every day. The editorial team focuses on presenting creators – both established artists and niche authors – while avoiding sensationalism or excessive commercialization.
The site offers a diverse range of topics: from photo reports on exhibitions and art installations, through projects combining technology with traditional craftsmanship, to macro photographs of nature and biological structures. It also features unique handmade works, illustrations, and videos documenting the creative process.
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The Public Domain Review – an archive of culture in the public domain
🔗 The Public Domain Review is an online archive and magazine dedicated to works that have entered the public domain – from rare illustrations and maps, to forgotten literary texts, films, photographs, and audio recordings. Founded in 2011, the project is run by a non-profit organization with the mission of preserving, digitizing, and promoting cultural resources free from copyright restrictions.
The site combines the role of an archive with that of a content curator. The featured works are carefully described, often enriched with historical, artistic, and cultural context. Visitors will find both classic pieces by renowned artists and entirely forgotten works by anonymous creators.
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Hundred Rabbits – Creating and Living Outside the Mainstream
🔗 100r.co
Hundred Rabbits (100r) is a radically unique digital project – an independent studio run by Rekka Bellum and Devine Lu Linvega, who live and work aboard a sailboat on the Pacific Ocean. Powered by solar panels and fueled by curiosity, they build tools, write essays, and publish reflections outside the gravitational pull of the tech industry.
Their website is a living archive of life off the grid – equal parts travelogue, laboratory, sketchbook, and philosophy zine. Highlights include:
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Matt DesLauriers – Code as Material, Art as Algorithm
🔗 mattdesl.com
Matt DesLauriers’ website is a unique fusion of generative art, computer graphics, and low-level programming. Based in London, DesLauriers is both an artist and a developer, exploring the beauty of code through visual, interactive compositions powered by WebGL, GLSL, and JavaScript.
His site offers a rich gallery of browser-based visual experiments, showcasing real-time rendering techniques and shader-driven artworks. Each piece strikes a balance between mathematical abstraction and aesthetic intuition – whether it’s particle simulations, dynamic light effects, or procedurally drawn forms.
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Robin Sloan – A Writer Who Codes, a Coder Who Tells Stories
🔗 robinsloan.com
Robin Sloan is a writer who codes – and a coder who tells stories. Known for novels like Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and The Future Library, he runs his website as a digital storytelling laboratory.
This is not a standard blog or author page – it’s a living archive of ideas, short essays, fictional experiments, literary musings, and software prototypes. Some entries are tiny daily notes, others are full-length short stories, technical deep dives, or conceptual frameworks for new modes of storytelling.
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🔗 Anvaka’s Package Matrix is a mesmerizing web tool that turns the vast complexity of JavaScript dependencies into an interactive, explorable map. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just curious about how the internet is built, this site offers a unique glimpse into the interconnected world of open-source packages.
The idea is simple yet powerful: enter the name of any npm package – like react, lodash, or chalk – and you’re instantly presented with a dynamic force-directed graph. Each node is a package. Edges represent dependencies. You can zoom, drag, rotate, and interact with the map in real-time.
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Atlas of Economic Complexity – interactive map of global economies
🔗 Atlas of Economic Complexity is an interactive data platform developed by the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. It offers a sophisticated lens for examining how economies grow – not just through output or GDP, but by analyzing the complexity and diversity of what countries produce and export.
At its core, the Atlas is based on the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) – a metric that doesn’t simply measure how much a country exports, but how advanced and diversified those exports are. Nations exporting only raw materials typically score low, while those exporting specialized machinery, chemical compounds, or electronics achieve high complexity scores. The higher the ECI, the greater the latent capacity for sustained economic growth.
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Musicmap – an interactive genealogy of popular music
🔗 Musicmap is an extraordinary web project that charts the full evolution of modern popular music. Part encyclopedia, part timeline, part interactive network – it invites you to explore over a century of sonic development through structure, style, and cultural influence.
The project is the work of Kwinten Crauwels, a Belgian engineer who spent over ten years meticulously researching and building this map. It’s not backed by any major label or academic institution – instead, it’s a deeply personal yet public open-access knowledge system.
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