Archives for February 2001

Is it just me

February 27, 2001 by Michael Boyle

, or is what Thom Calandra (editor in chief of CBS MarketWatch) says in this interview completely off target in the current context? Maybe it’s just me, but I strongly believe that doing anything for a mass market on the web in 2001 is doomed to failure. His comments read, to me, like unadulterated thoughts from 1997.

A principle of the web that has emerged: if the barriers to access are low enough, users will tend to be drawn to more specialized, niche-oriented material. Weblogs are not the be-all and end-all, by any stretch of the imagination – but it’s not a coincidence that the form has thrived and that tools have been built to maintain them easily. Personal publishing is just the opposite side of the same coin in terms of the development of content online. As niche web publications built out since 1999, so did niche-focused publishing tools begin to thrive.

A moment of silence

February 27, 2001 by Michael Boyle

is in order for Claude Shannon, who dies on Saturday at age 84. Shannon was literally the father of information theory.

Captain Cursor

February 27, 2001 by Michael Boyle

Captain Cursor presents Cursorbot!

I’m in the midst of some

February 26, 2001 by Michael Boyle

pretty big decisions – one involving starting up a consulting company with some colleagues, one involving moving to the other side of the table, figuratively speaking.

The latter brings up lots of questions though. People (designers, web developers) always complain about how clueless clients are. What if the client isn’t clueless? What if your client knows exactly what can and can’t be done, what the best approach would be, how much it should cost? What if you client has a long background in web design, web coding, content development for the web, and the like? What if I suggest that the code be done to (say) W3C standards – or at least pay attention to the current developments on that side of things?

Does that still look like a client you want to work for? Or is that still a nightmare client? I’d let you do your thing – but cut a corner, and I’ll see it. I’ll look at the code and expect it to be professionally done. Still a good client?

A fear I have is that although clueless clients are a horror, so might clued-in clients be to many web designers and web developers. Can you deal with someone who knows his stuff?

I think many

February 26, 2001 by Michael Boyle

people will be annoyed by the New Yorker’s article debunking the idea that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer. It seems well enough researched though, and the Ada story always had a whiff of the fanciful around it.