I wrote early last month on an employee workplace feedback tool we launched using our WordPress MU installation and the Survey plug-in.  Overall the plugin worked well.  Here is a screen shot of one of our forms:

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I have held my tongue as far as comments on Apple’s iPad — there is more than enough other chatter from other quarters.  But a recent article in the New York Times, The Media Equation – To Deliver, iPad Needs Content Providers on Board – NYTimes.com caught my eye in a comment on book publisher’s response to the platform: Read the rest of this entry »

Jay Collier at Bates ponders the strengths of Drupal and WordPress MU.  In my experience WordPress is quicker to get going with, and for most web sites it can rise to most any challenge.  And it is the king of multi-site installations.  Drupal has a steeper learning curve, but can better support needs such as a work flow-content approval path, or something less traditional, like a content repository system.  In meeting a business need the technology is normally the least important element — what are your goals, who is the audience, what do they need, etc. — those are the important questions.  Once you have those answers you go looking for a technology.  My advice?  Look at WordPress first — if it doesn’t do what you want, in a quick straightforward way, keep looking.  But in my experience that won’t happen very often.

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Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash in this month’s Website Magazine suggests that elements such as wild background colors, garish text, visual embellishments (eye candy) and animation/video distract website visitors from important content.  In a case study of a redesign of the CREDO website they found an 84% improvement with a simplified design.  The case study used a new service called AttentionWizard.com which uses computer algorithms to approximate eye tracking studies of a web site.  The idea is these will reveal what point on the page the visitor’s eye should land on.  If it is what you want them to see — like a buy now button — bingo, you are doing well.  If their eyes don’t land anywhere, or on the wrong things it is time to make some adjustments.  I thought it would be fun to compare the Yale and Harvard main websites using the service.

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Starting sometime early next year the New York Times will start charging for content on its web site.  Is this the start of a new internet business model, or the last gasp of a dying industry?  Times will tell (pun intended).  But it seems to me that they are on the right track.  The charge will only affect more active site visitors, who presumably see value in the content and would be willing to pay for that.  Occasional site visitors won’t need to pay.  Makes sense, but how do you track this?  Will those casual visitors still need to log-in somehow?  Enter your email here?  Or maybe limit how many articles can be viewed from an IP address in a day?   It will be interesting to see how they pull this off without scaring users away.

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I recently read Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.  It was a gift, and while I hadn’t heard anything about the book, it looked promising.  Lanier is an early internet pioneer counting early work with virtual reality (and coining the term itself) among his accomplishments.  And the basic premise of the book — essentially a contrarian view of the current state of internet culture — is interesting.  A regular practice of challenging common assumptions and examining choices made along the way is healthy.  Unfortunately Mr. Lanier’s arguments are poorly supported, and often based on inconsequential or incorrect assumptions.  I’m not going to recap his whole argument here — check out the linked articles instead.  But here are a couple of points inspired by ideas exposed in the book: Read the rest of this entry »