MediaSavvy » Links

Salon bloggers on Radio Userland

Barry Parr — Mon, 21 Apr 2003 19:13:04 +0000

Salon, which host weblogs using Radio Userland has some interesting survey results on how users would like to see Radio’s blogging environment improved. I found the results tracked pretty closely with my own experience. It’s required reading for anyone evaluating blog software.

Ed Felten plays Paul Revere as states fall to the MPAA’s troops

Barry Parr — Tue, 15 Apr 2003 00:02:14 +0000

Ed Felten’s ongoing chronicle of the state DMCA scandal is an extraordinary service to the Web community, and three weeks ahead of the EFF, which has just take a position.

No one is doing as much as Ed to monitor and publicize the fact that the Motion Picture Association of America is rewriting state laws to limit our fair-use rights even further than the federal DMCA laws. That this is being done in states with virtually no interest in helping the MPAA and every interest in preserving their citizens’ rights is a national scandal.

Where are the national media on this issue? Where is Congress?

MediaSavvy’s a tiny bit faster, thanks to the Web Page Analyzer

Barry Parr — Tue, 25 Mar 2003 23:32:46 +0000

The Web Page Analyzer at WebsiteOptimization.com is really useful for understanding what might be holding your page performance down. [Thanks, WebWord]

I’m pretty obsessive about things like graphics size and quantity, and page size, but it made me realize that I was running too many items on my home page. This was a relic of my last vacation, when posting was very sporadic. It’s mercifully shorter now. Of course, it doesn’t matter unless you believe the myth that readers care about page load times.

I love the Buzzwordometer

Barry Parr — Thu, 20 Mar 2003 19:01:38 +0000

The Buzzwordometer is very cool [thanks, WebWord], but I wish I knew what words that were in the list.

I’m stinging a little bit because of the relatively high (658) “suit” buzzword count for Mediasavvy. I’d like to believe that all those buzzwords are in the blockquotes and my sarcastic asides.

Holovaty’s review of NCAA bracket implementations

Barry Parr — Wed, 19 Mar 2003 21:34:09 +0000

Adrian’s Holovaty’s review of Web NCAA bracket interfaces is great. He discusses both the technology used and how well it works.

Adrian’s winner is Flash, so this may be a case where Flash is the best tool for the job. It’s by far the best-looking. But Yahoo’s HTML (and JavaScript-less!) application does very well indeed. And Adrian himself chose HTML with a JavaScript-free option for his own implementation.

Everybody! Everybody!

Barry Parr — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 01:00:00 +0000

OK, I’ve hammered Flash and the whole concept of Internet entertainment pretty savagely in recent weeks. Right after my last screed about Flash, I happened on Homestar Runner, the most entertaining site I’ve seen on the Net and a single-handed mitigation of Flash on the Web. (I wish I could remember where I found the link).
It’s so delightful that it’s easy to forgive its use of a Flash splash screen, and Flash for navigation.

Excellent research on usability

Barry Parr — Fri, 04 Oct 2002 18:53:29 +0000

The excellent site on designing for usability could be more usable. It really needs a navigation bar, for example. But it’s really worth keeping handy for when you need research to back up detail of usability. [via PHP Everywhere]

Yahoo Finance is testing a cool new RSS stock feed

Barry Parr — Thu, 26 Sep 2002 22:41:52 +0000

Dave Winer was the first to report that Yahoo Finance is beta testing an RSS feed for ticker symbols. To get the latest news on a company, just replace the YHOO at the end of the following url with a ticker symbol.
http://rss.finance.yahoo.com/rss/get?ticker=YHOO
I subscribed to a couple of these URL’s inside of NetNewswire Lite and the result is great.

It’s an honor just to be nominated, or not

Barry Parr — Thu, 19 Sep 2002 23:46:44 +0000

The Online News Association has announced the finalists for the 2002 Online Journalism Awards.
I went to the awards last year and was impressed by the nominees, but events like this always leave me feeling there are lots of remarkable sites that will never win an award.
Last night, I cruised recently-updated sites as they were listed on the Moveable Type home page and was stunned by the quality and creativity that has been unleashed now that real people have access to real publishing tools. Most of these people will never win anything for their work.