Jakob Nielsen ranks Wufoo, Sugarsync and Xero among 10 Best Application UIs of 2008

Why doesn't he include links to the products? I don't understand. Isn't that un-usable? And screenshots of how each app uses the said components would've been nice. I don't want to create accounts on each just to see whether or not they use the ribbon, lightbox, etc.

Way to go, Wufoo! We've all known that those guys are awesome at usability, but it's cool to see the usability guru himself explain what makes it great.

The winners are:<p>- Campaign Monitor by Eyeblaster (Israel): Integrated management of multiple advertising campaigns for media buyers.<p>- CMSBox by CMSBox (Switzerland): Content management system.<p>- FotoFlexer by Arbor Labs (USA): Photo editor.<p>- PRISMAprepare by Océ (The Netherlands): Print shop software.<p>- Seating Management by Magellan Network and DesignBox (USA): Hostess-stand reservation book for restaurants.<p>- SQL diagnostic manager by Idera (USA): Database performance monitoring and diagnostics.<p>- SugarSync by Sharpcast (USA): Synchronizing files across multiple computers.<p>- SuperSaaS by SuperSaaS (The Netherlands): Creating and hosting scheduling and reservation systems.<p>- Wufoo by Infinity Box, Inc. (USA): Online forms, surveys, invitations, and payments.<p>- Xero by Xero (New Zealand): Accounting for small businesses.

"Many winners conducted field studies or other forms of contextual research in the workplace. After all, when you're designing mission-critical software for print shops, you need to move your precious behind out of the office and into some real print shops."<p>And that's exactly what I did with my startup :-P

This is intreguing. I look forward to REALLY getting into the report. I wish that they also listed ALL the web applications they reviewed. It'd probably be a tedius read, but it would be interesting to know where things like Tumblr and Wordpress fit in... amongst many others obviously.

Xero looks fantastic - just what I need but for the security implications. I can't see myself ever being confortable for handing off control of the data that is most important in my life except to someone with whom I have a solid personal relationship.