Dumping core
Andy Rutledge has some thoughts on the terrible design of news websites, and some actual proposals at making it better. A very interesting read, and some very interesting proposals, but I have a feeling news websites are defective by design. There’s no advertising revenue on cutting down confusion and unnecessary clicking. Services such as Readability and Instapaper are allowed to let ‘power users’ actually read stuff (some people do the darndest things!), but their very existence is a sign media companies don’t care about the readers, and content is often considered cattle feed. They’d give us lorem ipsum every day if we read the ads. ¶
If your website is full of assholes, it’s your fault. So says Anil Dash (warning, the link crashes consistently on Chrome, which is something the author should really look into). I agree: moderation is essential. I’ve often learned this the hard way, but there’s no incompatibility between aggressive moderation and freedom of expression (after all the Internet is big, and there are enough free places where you can exercise your expression). It’s all a matter of my house, my rules. ¶
Ted Dziuba is a great programmer, he even built a Facebook clone in 4 days. A great humourous play on the stupid job offers that ask for incredible complicated feats of Web development for indeterminate future money (or, I would add, the digital sweatshops *ahem*, 'creative industries’ that ask for developers to be proefficient in every language known to Man, with some design software thrown in, which only shows ignorance and a certain path to insolvence). ¶
The Cinefamily is my new favourite blog about cinema. It rawks. ¶
Whose Ideal Was This, Anyway?: the evolution of the ideal body, from late 19th century women in corsets to early 21st century women on the edge of the Uncanny Valley. The contrast between the images of Bond Girls 40 years apart, Ursula Andress and Halle Berry, is the difference between an image of a woman and an image of a Formula1 racing car - an image of science and technology, but not an image of a woman, really. Men, by contrast, have had an easier time keeping the media at bay from blasting their self-image, even if some things are ridiculous - see the steroidal ultra-muscular action figure. ¶
