Wednesday, 4th July, 2007

FFS

doctorwho disappointment

"We are delighted that one of Britain's greatest talents has agreed to join us for the fourth series" — I can't stress enough how unbelievably shit this is.

Theatre and democracy in Second Life

link secondlife identity

"...I sense that most residents are looking for balance, with a consistent primary character that reflects them in real life, but doesn't define them, and therefore allows for some playfulness." — Hmm, possibly

Ingressing

photo secondlife leeds

Because my re-creation of our RL building is at an exact 2:1 scale, I can use it to work out where the new "five metre no-smoking zone" ends, and where I can therefore have a fag

A Ginsters Sandwich Metaphor

random

I was hungry, what with it being lunchtime and all that, and trotted down to the 1st floor. Having spent most of yesterday dealing with the after effects of trying to eat what was possibly the Most Godawful Toad In THe Hole In The World™, I figured I'd avoid the 'canteen' and grab a sandwich from the SU shop.

For some reason — I should point out — I'm in an awful grump today. I have no idea why ... I woke up all perky, and even had a pleasant(ish) drive over. But within five minutes of stepping in the building — possibly because it seems to be teaming with anonymous suited-clone-bots who keep getting in my way — I was huffing around like a dog that's just sat on a wasp.

I really dislike how 'corporate' everything is here — how brands seem to have wormed their way into every aspect of university life. It isn't possible (for example) to buy a decent sandwich that doesn't have the word "Ginsters" plastered all over it.

(And don't get me started on how all the drinking fountains were removed and replaced by bottled-water vending machines...)

I queued for ages while the woman behind the till nattered to some builders, and as I wandered by to my building I struggled with the packaging. When I did get into it, I was confronted by the dryest, saltiest, earth-shattering disappointment masquerading as a chicken and bacon 'feast'.

And that's a good approximation of how I feel about today — it's crap. Crap wrapped up in inpenetrable crap.

And it's raining.

Oh no, don't get me wrong — the food in the canteen is inedible¹. I just didn't expect a branded sandwich to be too.

¹ apart from their beef curry. If all they served was their beef curry, they'd be onto a winner.

sl-newspaper.com

This just pinged me by way of RSS

I was going to post the following as a reply to that discussion, but felt that perhaps even an honest critical assessment of their site shouldn't be posted in quite such a public space.

So I'll post it in this public space instead.

check the site out

@sl-newspaper.com — I'm guessing that what you meant by that was "Come look at our site, increase our pageviews, and click-through a few of the ads", but I'm going to take it as meaning "tell us what you think about our site" instead. Because I'm like that.

Basically, it strikes me that rather than a 'newspaper', what you've got here is a blog, wrapped up with a few frames containing adverts and whatnot. Before I give you an opinion on the design of the site — both in terms of accessibility and aesthetics — I'd like to seriously call into question the idea of repackaging a blog as a newspaper.

I dunno if you've noticed, but everyone has a blog these days. I'd even go as far to suggest that a hell of a lot of people have more than one. So when the blog-literate masses of visitors finally get to your content, it's painfully obvious to us that this is not some kind of formidable journalistic experience we're about to encounter — it's just another blog.

But I'd go further than that. The mistake I think you're making here is to try and attach 'gravitas' to your writing, by using the language of established journalism. Calling it "The Secondlife (sic) Newspaper" is trying, I feel, to add a layer of 'authenticity' to it — which is sorely let down by the content. And besides, why opt for a rapidly-becoming-out-of-date approach to web publishing?

Why not just have a blog?

It strikes me that you are, in some ways, 'roleplaying' as a newspaper — or rather your blog is. With all the extraneous frames and ads (etc), it's almost as if your blog has walked into a mall, bought itself a bunch of 'newspaper attachments' and is lagging the whole internets with its bling.

But hey — what do I know?

What I do know about is design, and I don't think I've ever seen a more ghastly collection of 3d-esque gifs and jpegs, combined with pre-millenium HTML techniques in my life.

The first thing that strikes me is the typography. It's awful. Not just in the choice of typeface for your masthead (I didn't think that people used Algerian these days), but in the overall treatment of type. Your kerning is miles off all over the place. Look at the gap between the "s" and the "e" in "Presents......" at the top of the page — see how it's enormous compared to the rest of the letters?

And while we're there, three periods make an ellipsis, not more than three — and definately not eight.

Also, there is nothing worse in my book that artificially stretched type. If you have to squish some words to make them fit inside a 'button', then make your buttons bigger.

The buttons themselves though: (a) they're ugly, sorry. And (b) they're hidesously implemented JavaScript rollovers (when you could have achieved the same effect with CSS), and have no meaningful ALT text. Meaning that anyone relying on a screenreader has absolutely no idea what they're for. Nor do search engine spiders for that matter.

Everywhere I look I see examples of awful design. Unstyled tables, bad grammar/spelling, contextually useless information (why have you put the url of the site in the sidebar? I could understand maybe if it was a link — but it's just text).

I've had your site on my screen now for about half an hour, flicking through each of the pages/sections, and I feel like my eyes have been assaulted. The colour-scheme is bland (sorry), the type jars (an entire page of bold text? Is it all super-important?), there's no structure, and all the time, I feel that words on the page are just an excuse to show me advertising.

Not just advertising in terms of ghastly pixelated old-style banners, but advertising in the form of paid-for 'reporting'. $300L to have you come review something I've made? That's not journalism — that's an advertising feature.

All in all, this is not a newspaper — it's a badly designed, hideously typeset, cobbling together of a few blogger-powered blogs, masquerading as somthing 'professional', but quite obviously amateurish in its execution.

You know what I think you should do?

1. Ditch the 'newspaper' idea. It doesn't work. Just call it what it is — a group blog.

2. Don't cover everything with adverts. The more ads, the less worth they have. Choose a few key positions and sell those. Or just use Google Ads like everyone else does.

3. Employ a designer. A proper designer. Not just someone "who has a PC" (or a Mac). Do some serious research into online journalism sites (like Wired, or The Guardian in the UK — two of my favourites), and find someone who can come as close to what you see that you like, within your budget.

4. Have good content. This is the most important thing — above all else. If you have good content, people will read it. Sure, make a few links here and there to things, but in general if you write good stuff then people will read.

Complainers of the World Unite

"If you play an online game that you enjoy, there's one surefire way to spoil the experience: read the forums on the official site." — [wired.com]

Yes, Its That Day

"ItÕs Independence Day, yes, when we here in Great Britain celebrate our Great Project Ñ creating an entire country for comedy purposes in the guise of ceding America its independence." — [warrenellis.com]

I like Warren Ellis Not only because he's interesting, witty, and intelligent, but also because he's the only person on the internets who writes more than me — even Wil Wheaton.

All The Time In The World

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