Via the impeccable taste of invisible shoebox I found linkdup, one of a growing breed of hand-edited portals where the decisions are based unashamedly on the subjective aesthetic judgements of the site administrators. Here’s the manifesto:

THE THINKING…

Design, content and technology are coming of age on the web and this maturation continues at a pace. It can be difficult to know where to look to see the best sites, so we collect and categorise them for you and save you the time and effort.

CREATIVE?

If your interests are purely aesthetic or experimental, then you can avoid the business side of the industry by sticking to our Creative Design areas, where you’ll find all the independant inspiration you could wish for.

COMMERCIAL?

Alternatively, if you are after an insight into what your competition is doing in the client focussed arenas then Promotional is for you.

INFORMATIVE?

The Resources category offers a slightly different focus as it features pointers to development, marketing and other such useful sites.

WHATS THE CATCH?

None. linkdup is non-commercial so there’s no nasty revenue-models to oblige us to do anything other than bring you the best, impartially.

As always with these things, you have to wonder how long they can keep it up before it becomes massively unwieldy, but so far so good. There is still only a modest number of links, most of which will interest anyone into design, digital culture, and online creativity. I’ll certainly be a frequent visitor.