Nielsen needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
His ideas are sound, and from a pure usability standpoint they are correct (as long as you trust his "don't perform usability tests on more than five people" method) - but there comes a time when aesthetics are equally as important.
I think we are very much in a transitional stage right now, where AJAX and Flex are allowing for richer applications, but users are still expecting every site to look like useit.com - thankfully we are making that transition with the user in mind (more so than ever).
If you are looking for a local Chinese restaurant then you can look in the Yellow Pages, or you can look on Google Maps. They both display the same information in a different way, but who is to say which is more usable?