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From: Gleanings To: Cleanings Subject: Gleanings: Monday after the drugs wear off OPENING THANG I was possessed by […]

From: Gleanings
To: Cleanings
Subject: Gleanings: Monday after the drugs wear off

OPENING THANG

I was possessed by something this Sunday (Theraflu, most likely- caught a cold) and rambled crazily on the blog. I tried to understand the web’s relationship to old medium by contemplating rock and roll, poetry and collage, and I wrote something nice about dot-coms. Okay, you’ve been warned, it’s more off-topic than usual.
http://eleganthack.com/blog/index.html

DESIGN MATTERS

Beautiful. Beautiful fonts, interesting content, nice wrapper… not usable. but again, personal sites are not subject to such rants.
http://www.patricking.com/

Design is not a therapy session
“Web designers need to grow up, leave their
inner artist behind and embrace the challenge of usable design.”
http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/design_therapy-1.html

IA MATTERS

Let me write that down: the genius of documentation
“For almost all Web developers, documentation equals dullness. Thus few Web
projects get properly documented. Which helps explain why so many fail.”
http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/documentation-1.html

“Comic Books: A Case Study for Redesigning Traditional Media and Assessing Entertainment Value.” (peterme.com)
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/%7Eaklein/ComicPaper.pdf

MARKETING MATTERS

HTML Versus Text: The Saga Continues
“So HTML’s losing steam? Don’t believe it. Despite what HTML naysayers say, Kim’s finding that HTML messages consistently return stronger results than plain-text ones. But don’t take her word for it — put HTML messaging to the test.”
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3710.html

Data’s Dandy. But Do a Reality Check, Too
“Numbers, as much as we love them, are never enough. Part of the task of drawing meaning from customer data requires that we go beyond the charts and graphs and the segmentations and profile pictures and actually communicate with real people. ”
http://clickz.com/article/cz.3726.html

NEWS & COMMENTARY

Counting the Human Toll Among the Internet Carnage
“What do you call someone who was president of a dot-com company last year?” asked Kenneth McGee, a vice president of Gartner Group, before answering: “Waiter!” The joke drew rather tepid laughter at a discussion session here of the World Economic Forum last week.”
http://www.iht.com/articles/16255.html

NBC to Buy Back the Rest of NBCi
By Kenneth Li
Retreating from its big plans, the network plans to remove the portal from the public market by offering a premium to its shareholders.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23581,00.html

BTW the standard redesigned, and I don’t understand why. It was one of the most pleasant and usable news experiences on the web. now it’s a disjointed mumble. well, my opinion, anyhow.
http://www.thestandard.com/

APROPOS OF NOTHING

“Subvertising is the Art of Cultural resistance. It is the ‘writing on the wall’, the sticker on the lamppost, the corrected rewording of Billboards, the spoof T-shirt; but it is also the mass act of defiance of a street party. The key process involves redefining or even reclaiming our environment from the corporate beast. Subvertising is a lot like good modern art – they both involve finding idiots with too much power and wealth, and taxing them. ”
http://www.subvertise.org/index.html (littlegreenfootballs.com)

Extreme Robotics
“Okay, why are robot designers suddenly so interested in geckos?”
http://www.techreview.com/web/leo040301d.asp