Weblogs

Redesign madness

In Blogging, Design, Internet, Weblogs on 19 April 2005 with Comments Off

Caroline strips down her old site and relaunches at Each Man. (Aside to Caz: I got the reference.) Tom goes minimal with Plastic Bag. (Aside to Tom: Bold, confident design. Props!) I’d say there was a trend here, except that Matt just took his previously stripped-down A Whole Lotta Nothing and layered on the CSS [...]

Come here often?

In Blogging, Geek, Internet, Weblogs on 15 April 2005 with Comments Off

Jeff Veen makes a great comment about intimidating interfaces and I couldn’t agree more. My favorite recent example of this was at Tickets.com. Try to buy concert tickets and this is the first thing you see:

Captchas (those annoying “type that crap from the image in the box, you monkey”) are annoying enough, but the bold, [...]

Ephemera Archive by Base Color

In Blogging, Geek, Internet, Weblogs on 14 April 2005 with Comments Off

I’ve been posting photos to Ephemera for over 15 months now (666 photos as of today - creepy!). Any content-based site that runs long enough eventually has to solve the how-do-I-find-stuff problem. Blogs do this with archives by date and category. Others increasingly use search, leaving it to the user to figure out what they [...]

Bloggers Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Journalists

In Blogging, Internet, Journalism, Weblogs on 5 April 2005 with Comments Off

Here’s a fun thing to try: Ask your typical blogger what they think of journalists. “Hacks!” They’ll scream. “Journalism sucks!”
Then tell them about bloggers being treated differently than journalists. “Unfair!” They scream. “We’re journalists, too!”
Try to follow the logic here: Journalism is lame and broken, so bloggers want to be journalists.
With me so far? No? [...]

The Big Mirror

In Geek, Internet, Weblogs on 16 March 2005 with Comments Off

Here’s a little experiment you can do right now. When you reach the end of this paragraph, turn off your monitor. Really. Turn it off and give your eyes a minute to adjust and then look at the screen. What do you see?
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Back already? Did it work? If the light is right, [...]

New: Just a Link

In Blogging, Powazek, Weblogs on 14 February 2005 with Comments Off

A new feature to the ol’ dotcom: Just a Link. Approximately three years after everyone else got one, I’ve added a little sidebar link blog to my site. It’s for quick links. Just little one-liners: A link and a thought. The same thing I said was not “all that revolutionary” five years ago. And, yeah, [...]

A short history of my affliction with weblogs

In Bloggies, Powazek, Weblogs on 25 January 2005 with Comments Off

I’m honored to be a nominee for the 2005 Bloggies in the category of, get this, Lifetime Achievement. Seriously. If I win, I think I might just retire.
New ’round here? Here’s a short history of my affliction with the world of weblogs.
1997: I begin posting personal thoughts in reverse-chronological order. There is a photo of [...]

The Real Heroes of the Web

In Geek, Google, Internet, Weblogs on 20 August 2004 with Comments Off

With all the hoopla in the news about the Google IPO, let’s take a moment to remember the real heroes: The people who put all that great stuff on the web in the first place.
I love Google, I really do. But I also enjoy a nicely toasted bagel. And when I’m spreading cream cheese on [...]

Google Creates Comment Spam

In Comment Spam, Geek, Google, Internet, Weblogs on 19 November 2003 with Comments Off

There’s one central culprit that’s gone unacknowledged in this whole comment spam discussion: Google.
Google is the central motivating force here. Comment spammers are adding their links to thousands of weblogs not because the audiences of those weblogs are particularly valuable, but because the links raise their PageRank with Google.
Now, this is far from the [...]