OPENING THANG
One more week ’til Christina, your regular editor, is back with her own flair for picking-and-gleaning in IAland. Until then, everything’s my fault: send Gleanings-related insights to noel@carboniq.com.
DESIGN MATTERS
Good stuff over at Noise Between Stations today:
“The wonderful aspect of information architecture for a hopeless generalist like myself is how it ties into so many other facets of product design and business. It’s impossible to separate it from strategy, project management, engineering, and the other product design crafts.On the strategy front, Fast Company scores with the article Michael Porter’s Big Ideas.”
Michael Porter’s Big Ideas (Fast Company)
“The world’s most famous business-school professor is fed up with CEOs who claim that the world changes too fast for their companies to have a long-term strategy. If you want to make a difference as a leader, you’ve got to make time for strategy. ”
Reinventing an art form online (Apple, from Xblog)
“‘All in color for a dime.’ That was the phrase used to describe comic books during what is now seen as its Golden Age, the 1930s and 40s. If artist and writer Scott McCloud has his way, that phrase will be true again and comics will enter a new Golden Age, but this time it will happen online, not at a corner newsstand.”
Scott McCloud’s site:
ADVERTISING MATTERS
Wireless Advertisers Fight For Consumers’ Favor (TechWeb)
“While most advertising is centered around finding the “hot button” to motivate a consumer to buy, wireless advertisers must still work to persuade mobile users simply to accept their ads, insiders say.”
Advertising Age: Advertorial seeps into search sites. (Tomalak’s Realm)
“A few years ago, the idea of tainting search results with paid listings set
off an industry fury. But in today’s economic climate, what once was
unthinkable by the most successful search engines is now being accepted as
status quo and a means to eking out desperately needed online ad revenue.”
New Alternatives to Banner Ads (NY Times)
“Mr. Boyce said one of his chief concerns was keeping the sites’ pages light enough to load quickly. Like many other online publishers, Snowball frequently carries four ads on its pages, and that can clutter the presentation and slow the load times, he said. In March, when Snowball’s starts using the redesigned sites with the new ads, the pages will display just one ad and will take less time to load than the current four-ad pages. ‘So the user’s experience will actually improve in a number of respects,’ Mr. Boyce said.”
NEWS
Red Hat Dares MS to Debate (Wired News)
“A Microsoft executive’s recent quip about the purportedly un-American characteristics of non-proprietary software did more than send open-source fans into a tizzy. It also sent companies supporting the Linux operating system a clear signal: You’ve become important enough for Microsoft to attack directly. ”
High-speed rate hikes may be on the horizon (News.com)
“After rates have remained unchanged at about $40 a month for the past few years, industry analysts and executives say a confluence of several events may mean rate increases are on the way.”
Napster Said to Hurt CD Sales (NY Times)
APROPOS OF NOTHING
In the need for some quick publicity? There’s no better way than creating a virus.