Archives for 2001

There’s a mysterious

April 25, 2001 by Michael Boyle

story by Declan McCullagh at Wired News today: Journalists Protest Gag Order. Evidently it has something to do with a piece published on the Montreal indymedia site – but a gag order was served in Seattle. It’s all very confused now, but I’m curious to see what happens, if anything.

Suck speaks the truth

April 25, 2001 by Michael Boyle

: Jocko Homo; or how banner ads could actually work if people used them better. It’s easy to say, I know, but this has been my mantra for a long time now. Banners have to click through to something with an immediate payoff for users – content that they can rely on, content in a format they don’t normally see, content that’s tied to a specific event. And the banner itself has to communicate that – and never diverge from the principle. Cause as soon as someone clicks through to something lame, they may never go through on that site again. Banners aren’t a revolution in advertising – but nor are they useless.

From Metascene

April 24, 2001 by Michael Boyle

comes a nice piece on Joey Ramone’s passing: My Grandma and Joey Ramone.

Yay

April 23, 2001 by Michael Boyle

! I can reach caterina.net without going through a third party or getting a “not found” error or anything bad like that.
If only they could see how nice it is in Montreal now.

The continuing development

April 23, 2001 by Michael Boyle

over at Automatic-media is getting interesting. They’ve plasticized Feed, meaning that they’ve added a weblog using the Plastic (Slash-based) tools. Of course this sparked quite a discussion, because notwithstanding Stefanie Syman’s explanation, people are confused.

I get the confusion – the new front page design leaves something to be desired in terms of the clarity of presentation. There could (and probably should) be a clearer distinction between the long-form original Feed content and the back-to-the-future Filter stuff.

Some have also shown some hostility, though – that I don’t get. Whether you like the execution of the new model or not, it’s pretty clearly a step forward. The days of atomized, standalone sites are over. MetaFilter’s shared registration database (with the 5K contest) is one example that’s been around for a while. Feed/Plastic/Automatic-Media have just taken it to the next level.

I like the idea of a media company giving a diverse range of users a layered experience by working the connection – and the differences – between sites. There will be multiple ways of getting at content, and each person, depending on their own habits, will be able to follow their own path to what they want. This happens through preferences and such, but also through actually opening new doors as well. Blowing away the idea that each person has one way that they always want to approach things.

For a lot of people that might not make much sense. Especially for those who expect that better algorithms alone are the critical factor in this area. That assumes, though, that algorithms are the problem in the first place – a dangerous assumption to make.