hyalineskies

“I’ve always found RSS to be extremely useful. Since the inception of a CMS-based hyalineskies, I’ve offered RSS support for the site and have watched feed usage grow continuously. I, however, have somehow (somewhat hypocritically) kept myself from using RSS in what is quite possibly my most technologically stubborn mistake possible.”

With the increasing use of XML/RSS and the “unstructured web”, we need to spend a little bit of time not looking at our designs, but instead looking at the content that we wrap with them.

“It is with this same condescension that the editors look down upon the democracy and socially-aware self-government of independent news sites such as MetaFilter and Digg as well as Internet media phenomena such as the blogosphere and Web 2.0. Hypocritically, however, they are amazed at the extensive amount of participation present on such sites and want to harness them for their own content. Herein lies the paradox of online journalism: they want Web 2.0 and its social audience without the social aspect that lies at the core of the Web 2.0 infrastructure.”

After a lengthy debate with my boss and editor-in-chief of The Michigan Daily, Jason Pesick, I attack the problem of online journalism from both the perspectives of a designer and an editor. I’ve got a pretty good feeling that I know which one will win.

With Christmas right around the corner, I’m a regular Grinch, and I’m blaming the superficiality of a commercial Christmas.

Internet Explorer 6 is useless. Through the power of the blogosphere, we can move the majority of the userbase to something better.

Last winter, I read a book by Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske titled Trading Up: The New American Luxury (link goes to Amazon,) which presents an extensive case study of a new American consumer culture. The book roughly concludes that all Americans are constantly pushing their financial limits to buy semi-luxury brands - the economist’s superior goods - instead of what is “common” for their income bracket. I’m not about to argue with Silverstein and Fiske - I believe that they are honestly entirely correct in their findings - but I think that they didn’t spend nearly enough time highlighting why places like Starbucks are so successful across a diverse socioeconomic landscape: the sheer individuality and creativity in their business model of what I’m calling microcustomisation.