ProBlogger’s got a post up by Suzanne Falter-Barns, basically retelling Andy Wibbels’ opinions on why blogs have killed conventional websites in a 13 point list. In other words, the question they’re asking - have blogs killed conventional websites? - i rhetorical to say the least.
The answer, being yes they have, obviously, is also wrong.
No, blogs haven’t killed conventional websites.
New publishing platforms have, on the other hand, killed the need for a webmaster hacking HTML code to update. Some people use blog software or bloggish news sections to get this effect, while others still have the same old conventional layout on their websites, just utilizing modern CMS platform to manage it.
Andy and Suzanne, you’re not talking about blogs killing conventional websites, you’re talking about modern platforms killing the need for a HTML hacking webmaster.
Apples and oranges, anyone?
I’ve finally decided which design I’ll work with for the next version of Wisdump:
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This post over at The Blog Herald got me thinking. It’s about geotagging posts, which means showing people where you are on a map.
Why? Well, sometimes it might be relevant to see where in the world you were when you published a post, especially if you’re doing a travel-focused blog.
However, do you really want people to know where you are? Tabloids in Sweden ran a story on burglars using blogs to find out who was on vacation, and then broke into their houses. While that might happen for sure, I believe this particular story was a way to scare people into buying issues, reading about those scary blog things.
That being said, being at least a bit anonymous is what a lot of people find appealing with blogs.
Would you consider geotagging your blog posts?
Matt Harzewski of Webmaster-Source asks if Internet Explorer 5 is dead, and does a nice little bullet list of things that have happened since 1998 (which is funny since IE5 launched in 1999, which he also notes).
9 years is serious time for a web browser. There is no excuse for IE5 to exist anymore.
Luckily, it just about doesn’t. On my Swedish sites I’ve got 0% IE5 visitors, and on the international ones it’s below 0.15%.
In other words, IE5 is dead. Now please kill IE6. Thank you.
Google, have you heard of them? Of course you have, they’re the strongest brand online today. When you google something, you search the web. Just like playing Nintendo was videogames (and perhaps still is, given the success of Nintendo DS and Wii).
One thing Google does better than the rest is using their brand, the logo in particular, in a playful way. It’s called the Google Doodles and you see it every Holiday season, or when something interesting is happening. Check out the Doodle archive to see what I mean.
So what’s so great about that? Well, besides the fact that it’s something to react to when visiting google.com, it’s also a very viral marketing ploy. Think about it, how often have you seen tweets or pownces, perhaps even full blog posts, or just short IM messages letting you know what those zany Google people’ve done now.
The Google Doodles spread across the web like a wildfire. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy, simple yet effective. The best ones usually are.
I have by no means seen or fiddled with the majority of Japanese magazines, but I do have made some observations. Take a look at the two covers below, what do you see?
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I’m in Japan, it’s Monday, and I have yet to get my act together and take a dive in Japanese design. It takes time, it seems, to do that. Honestly, it’s quite overwhelming to follow take it all in. Just the fact that the kanji characters that the Japanese written language consists of is an almost graphical element by itself, since most of us can’t read them, is something that I need to ponder and consider the implications of.
However, these things strike me right on, in no particular order, about Japanese design in the public room.
- Colors are plentiful.
- If uncertain, add a speaking dog or something to your commercial spot.
- Hello Kitty.
- English is cool, so don’t worry if you can’t spell correctly.
- Neon always works.
- Magazines should have lots of noise.
This isn’t the country for minimalists. I’ll take a closer look at various phenomenons during the coming week, especially advertising and print magazines, I think.
Oh, the picture to the right is from Universal Studios Japan. It’s a trashcan. The type is ironic to say the least, since cutting down on waste, such as unnecessary plastic packaging, paper napkins overflow, and so on, isn’t something that is remotely in the Japanese social mind, it seems. So please Waste Paper, eh?
In my opinion, it’s important to keep the readers informed, at least if you’ve developed some sort of reputation of keeping the updates coming - and suddenly they’re not. And since I’m doing weekday postings here on Wisdump, I wanted to make my point by telling you all that I’m in transit, on my way to Japan.
Hopefully I won’t be too jetlagged to write something witty tomorrow. You never know.
How you want to pimp your blog is up to you, but this week, being totally stressed out to get everything ready in time for me leaving for Japan on early Thursday morning, I realized that blogs without these three plugins (or similar functionality) and features just will have to go!
- Subscribe to comments plugin. Seriously, it should be a default functionality, and yes, I realize that it’s not here on Wisdump. One of the things I’ll fix when we upgrade to the new design.
- Valid RSS feed that’s easy to find. Why do you hide it in the footer already? If I like what I see but am stressed for time, I want to add it to my reader and be on my way.
- SuperMegaDuperSpamKiller(TM). No, that one doesn’t exist (?), but the result does. If your comments are full of spam, then I don’t want to participate in the conversation, and that’s both you and me missing out, mate.
Are there any features or plugins you feel have to be there for a blog to be usable at all, particularly when you’re in a rush?
