Juliette/SF

Jakob Nielsen just released his list of the 10 Best Application UIs of 2008
Here’s what he had to say about how the winners used usability research to build superior products:

Usability Methods: Cheap but Contextual
The winning designs are revolutionary, but there’s nothing revolutionary about the usability methods employed to ensure their quality. The teams used well-known […]

Amaztype uses the amazon.com API to pull search results for a given keyword, then returns results in the shape of the search term. My name returns a lot of different editions of Julie of the Wolves.

(Another great find from Kristin.)