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I'm giving you a fatty, since I've been sporadic with the newsletters lately... IA MATTERS So I've suddenly started receiving a new newsletter (not surprising, I'm subscribed to so many, it's hard for me to keep track) that starts off with this tag line "Head food for Internet architects http://www.newmedia.com" What's the deal? The articles are the usual internet mish-mash with an occasional interesting article... I wonder who their target audience is, or if they even know. I'm betting they are just dropping in a buzzword, hoping it'll work. They've just gone through a major redesign, which has upped their site from utterly unusable to moderately tolerable. But don't listen to me, you be the judge. Me, I'll stick with http://www.thestandard.com, which has twice the IQ of its print sibling and is a model of best practices for internet news sites: navigatable, writing in the inverted pyramid and broken up into bite-sized chunks, lots of charts to tell the story visually as well as with words, excellent navigation... and the content has something to say. GLEANINGS NEWS PICKS from Tomalak "Forbes: Lyin' Eyeballs. But tactics like About.com's hidden window suggest that traffic increases aren't always as healthy as they seem. Hidden windows are just one of the gimmicks dot-coms now employ to inflate unique visits with little regard to whether the visitors end up using the site to buy products or view ads. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/00/0807/6604118a.htm" more on the same LA Times: From April 17, 2000; Web Firms May Vastly Inflate Claims of 'Hits' http://www.latimes.com/business/updates/lat_traffic000417.htm but the whole measurements system is suspect; "News.Com: Net ranking numbers don't tell whole story. Because no one has created industry-wide usage standards, and several companies purport to be the most credible ranking services, experts say that gauging Web traffic is an imprecise craft in need of an operational overhaul." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-2312839.html GLEANINGS IS WATCHING: Gleanings is --of course-- perpetually amused watching old media redefined online. Today's stories are on this theme, starting with our favorite rebel, Napster. Study: Napster Users Buy More Music http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2306997.html and the movie industry joins the litigious music industry http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/21music.html (Registration required.) and http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,7047_9,00.html meanwhile information wants to be free and Stephen king wants to be paid http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17025,00.html?nl=mg EYECANDY http://www.visionarymultimedia.com/port/ OTHER PEOPLE'S GLEANS from kottke.org: Flashturbation n. The practice of using Macromedia Flash on Web sites for nothing more than demonstrating its cool "whiz-bang" features. Sample usage: Did you see all of the Flashturbation going on over at KPMG's Web site? and http://www.askoj.com/ both from biggerhand.com the URL says it all... http://www.disturbingauctions.com/ from glassdog.com ODDS AND ENDS ready to start-up your own company? or join one a the beginning? Webmonkey tells you how. is there anything they don't know? http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/28/index3a.html?tw=eg20000721 go see this great new product!! http://www.aalgar.com/aalcorp/062900/index.html Flash statistics just released by Macromedia... research by IDC: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/ Well, gleanings has been going for... about a month now? I'd like to elicit some feedback: Whaddya think of it? Like the French word of the day? Like the newsletter divided up by topic? Want more IA/less mish-mash? Want a comment board where you can post comments? Want me to post the newsletters online as well as mailing? more commentary from me, or less? Hide under the bed when you realize I was too lazy to put together a gleanings? Write me at gleanings-comments@eleganthack.com. thanks! ................................................................ sick of me? Go to www.eleganthack.com and unsubscribe. Can't get enough of me? Go there and read my 'blog. |