Several days ago, May 12, 2002, one of the most attractive and interesting competitions on the internet has opened its doors for submissions – The 5K Competition. This event, being held third time in its history, is open to all designers, who have not lost the sense of measure when it comes to website’s size and are still able to create a website less than 5 kilobytes in size. The more one can cramp into these 5 kb – the better, and functionality is not a requirement neither.

    The idea behind 5K is that if a designer is put into a 5120 byte “cage”, her imagination will work much better, possibly producing a masterpiece. Anything can be used – from pure text to Macromedia Flash; however, if the judge wont have the needed plug-in to play back the work, the entry will be disqualified.

    5KB is obviously not a lot. 5 KB would be able hold two of the articles, like the one you are reading now, or about one half of the image on the front page of WinGlitch. One of the side-goals of the competition is to show just how little resources are required to create truly complex things.

    5K is traditionally judged by great people. This year, the committee includes futurist-journalist-writer Bruce Sterling, author of GUI modules for first versions of MacOS and a legendary lady overall Susan Kare, Vicki Wong from Ot-to and other patrons. Every year, its different people – lat year, the jury included people from Kaliber10000, Metafilter author Matt Haughey and one of the Slashdot creators, Rob Malda.

    Checking out winners of past competitions [2000, 2001] is truly a pleasure for those who get a hard on from looking at beautiful HTML/etc code. Even those, for whom the word HTML is nothing should feel the aesthetic strength of a <5KB porn site Pixxxel Chix or the suspect generator with 24192 potential gangsters. If you are one of the few who look at banners and have already seen all these things one or two years ago, it is still a good idea to refresh the memory: the smallest net museum, compact furniture shop, the meaning of life in XML, a game called Falling Princesses, and a plethora of other exciting tiny things.

    If you decide to participate [competition is open to anyone with a computer and a brain], go ahead and send your work in before June 16. Don’t plan on getting rich though – the first prize is 5K cents. Well, its still money actually.