A little while ago I had a brief discussion with an online contact over at Pownce. It was about web design, and how he felt that it was something that had totally degraded. In his point of view, designers just didn’t try hard enough, they just went with the current flow, sporting a pretty one-sided canvas.
I agree to some extent, that’s why I bashed the rounded corners in one of my first posts here at Wisdump. It’s not that I hate rounded corners, if they’re warranted in a design then that’s fine, but more that I think that too many uses them just because that’s the current craze. Just like the fresh Web 2.0 pastels and whatnot, we all know the look, and we like it. If all aimed to achieve it, the web would be a bit boring, however.
more
Matt Mullenweg, of WordPress fame, is mad, and this time I’m not bitching about not giving designer credits in the upcoming (?) WordPress.com theme marketplace. No, this is even zanier.
You see, Matt recently published a post titled Top Emailers on his blog, listing the ten people that sent him most e-mails in 2007. Toni Schreider popped him 996 of ‘em by the way, he tops it.
more
IZEA, the folks behind everyone’s favorite blog corruptor, PayPerPost, have launched IZEARanks, their PageRank alternative. Basically, it’s a service that lets you rank your blog and have it displayed to the public, giving you credit and authority where it is due. You install IZEA Toolkit, claim your blog, and you’re on your way. It all sounds easy enough.
Will you use it?
more
I never was an avid Facebook user, but now I’m officially done with it. Sure, I’ll probably keep my account around, it updates itself by syndicating my Pownce and Twitter/Jaiku stuff anyway, but any thoughts on actually using the service are cancelled, destroyed, and all out forgotten.
Why? Because it’s spammy crap, that’s why.
First there’s these Facebook Apps. Some are actually quite good and add something, like a charity drive in October for breast cancer, and boxes for displaying your Flickr photos. These are good things, they add to the experience.
Being bitten by a poorly drawn werewolf doesn’t.
more
I almost got feed fatigue (does anyone use that expression?) yesterday. It was my first day back at work, and it consisted solely of answering e-mails and scanning my RSS feeds, which amassed to 1,000+ stories, which in reality was more like 10,000+ stories!
Now, I’m a harsh RSS user. If I don’t find myself following up on posts in a subscription, I cancel it. Having too many feeds in the feed reader is just stressful. However, I still have a fair amount of sources, so they got piled up over the holidays.
Three things struck me, when scanning the feeds.
- I clicked through more often on partial feeds.
- Images does work in feeds as well, not just in post.
- It sucks to read in a feed reader, but it sucks even more to read in an ugly designed site.
Mayhap not the most stunning revelations of 2008, but nevertheless, they were painfully obvious when I had to handle so much content.
I prefer my feeds like I prefer my content listings, with read more links and images to lighten them up. In other words, I don’t want to read 50 paragraphs in my feed reader, more like five and then if I’m hooked I’ll click through. Add an image and you’re more likely to succeed.
How do you prefer your feeds?
