I enjoyed Zeldman's A List Apart, and had no idea that he was so old at a time that we were all in our mid-twenties, I thought he was our cohort :D

Nielsen I can honestly leave, maybe he did help millions of people have easier to use sites, but I found him rigid and boring; especially rigid with his prescriptive approach to sites - "the home page should have these links". I think Philip Greenspun skewered him at some point.

I understand why a lot of this was like this, as people wanted answers and direction, and were prepared to pay a lot of money for it, and he was a consultant doing consultancy. People have always wanted answers and direction, and will pay for it, but in a rapidly-changing world, the answers have a short shelf-life. Maybe that's why he took his site down a long time ago, aware that his maps were getting very out-of-date.

Still, fun times, what a great age it was.