Here’s a great article from Smashing Magazine on 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Web Design. I’ve worked online in some form or fashion for about 10 years and this article really gets to the heart of a lot that I’ve experienced. My favorite truths are
I think I like these so much because I can related to them– I have lived them.
The whole concept of paying for newspaper content is making its way around the journalism blogosphere again. Except this time it’s also had endorsements from print journalism celebs like Walter Isaacson, Mort Zuckerman and Steve Brill. For the most part I’ve tried to ignore it all since I feel like I’ve been there, reputed the arguments and fought that battle and won before. Of course this all stems from the fact that newspapers as we know it are dying and the old hands are pulling out all the stops to save the old way of doing things so they don’t have to change.
At times I’ve really had to admit that I’m not part of the old newspaper tradition and wonder if I’m even part of the new newspaper tradition because I really agree more with what the webbies/techies have had to say about the newspaper industry rather than the newspaper industry itself. For example, Techdirt responds to the claims that google devalues everything (ridicolous!)
This is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. Google doesn’t devalue things it touches. It increases their value by making them easier to find and access. Google increases your audience as a content creator, which is the most important asset you have. It takes a special kind of cluelessness to claim that something that increases your biggest asset “devalues” your business.
The new hospital at UAMS will open this weekend with the dedication ceremony taking place this morning. At the same time, we are launching our new clinical web site uamshealth.com.
If you have a few minutes, click around and let me know what you think. If you want to know more about the new hospital, read the newly redesigned edition of our quarterly magazine, Housecall.
The Arkansas legislature convened yesterday and it’s apparent the digital revolution is chasing them down at full speed. Last time around you could tune into the Arkansas Times Arkansas Blog for an overview or Steve Harrellson’s Under the Dome for the details, but you only got their distinct opinion on things.
This year we have my brother-in-law’s Tolbert Report with his ubiquitous flip camera and house speaker Robbie Will’s new blog also keeping us informed on what is going down at the Capitol. I can promise you the Tolbert Report will have a slightly different take on the legislature’s actions than the rest of the pack, but I am wondering if Robbie Will’s will have the stamina to keep up with all the duties of being Speaker and keeping the blog up to date and responding to comments and questions from the blog (it’s fun reading about his struggles with technology).
It’s also interesting to see how the Arkansas legislature agenda compares to other states. The National Conference of State Legislatures has released their top nine issues of 2009.
When it comes to web video length , I’ve always said the shorter the better with a sweet spot being around 60 to 90 seconds. Video 2 Zero has taken an interesting look at how long people will watch web video analyzing audience attention span coming to the conclusion that ideal run-time for web video 2.5 – 4 minutes. I know that will be a relief to any video producers out there, because it is rare to find a producer (and I used to be one pre-web) who can say anything in less than 90 seconds.
For their analysis six top video sites (excluding YouTube) let Video 2 Zero have access to their statistics for two weeks giving them 188,055 videos, totaling 22,724,606 streams to break down.
The Pew Research Center released their top stories of 2008 report (pdf) and the big news in their report is not what the top stories are, but where people found them. In 2008 forty percent of the respondents to this national survey said they found their international and national news online compared to only 24 percent in 2007. This moved the Internet ahead of newspapers (35%) but still behind television (70%). However for respondents under thirty, 59 percent said they found their international and national news online which is exactly how many found their international and national news on television.
The end of the year brings on many predictions for next year. Placecast looks at digital advertising trends for 2009. Again my favorites of their predictions with some comments.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is reporting that they are hearing predictions for content web site revenues to be down fifty to eighty percent in 2009 with “the median pessimism point around 50%.”
The only thing that can be said is on the other side, those that survive will be stronger and will have found a revenue model that really will work.
Shel Israel has written a great case study for his new book Twitterville on how to use twitter to catch a PR disaster before it becomes nightmare and how to put it out quickly using twitter. Israel outlines how Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, catches a web site and the Ford legal team in a spat, get the real story out and helps settles the dispute.
The latest issue of A List Apart examines how building “a website without a content strategy is like a speeding vehicle without a driver.” It looks at what content strategy is, why it’s important and how it effects design.