A tangential: after seeing this and almost.at, I conclude that aesthetically pleasing websites really matter.

This was apparent when I was in high school, even: the kid that did best in our CS class had the best eye candy (and he went to Stanford and now works at Facebook I think).

So I'm going to bookmark all of these eye-catching websites on HN and study them. Not only should my startup be something that people want, but also something that makes them enjoy simply looking at it. Good-looking websites draw attention. Useful websites retain and help build a user base.