Shhhaw: What I'm Reading

Things We Love

2009-11-13T12:00:00Z

This morning's post by the always-fertile Grain Edit reminds me that I’ve wanted to write something in appreciation of Mark Weaver. As with so many things I like, Weaver’s work is difficult to classify: design? illustration? art? The term “collage” might do as a formal description, but it’s a shabby word to describe Weaver’s mysterious inventions, which so successfully bypass both the senses and the intellect and go straight to the mid-brain. His tableaux that simultaneously evoke grange exhibits, Japanese consumer goods, early David Bowie, and recent Wes Anderson — without ever quoting any of them literally — are worth experiencing up close; spend some time with his Make Something Cool Every Day series, and I think you’ll leave intriguied, delighted, and inspired. —JH

Harry Beck's US Interstate map

2009-11-12T13:58:33Z

Map of the US Interstate system in the style of the London Tube map.

Go large for detail. (via coudal)

Tags: London Underground maps remix subway USA

Proposed Design for The European Journal

2009-11-10T16:41:48Z

Massimo Vignelli’s Proposed Design for The European Journal, circa 1978. Via AisleOne and the AIGA Archives.

IVOR Radio Show 10/30/09

2009-10-30T21:32:40Z

No related posts.

Keller: NYT “within Weeks of a Decision” about Paywalls

2009-11-01T16:14:20Z

In his Public Editor column today, Clark Hoyt reports on the surprising-but-also-unsurprising--and either way media-moment-symbolizing--staff reductions that The New York Times is about to endure: Though The Times retains the largest newsroom of any American paper—1,250 reporters, photographers, editors, columnists, graphic artists, Web producers, videographers and more—it is about to cut 100 people...

Fond Farewell

2009-10-29T21:59:01Z

You probably know our reporters better. But behind the scenes Andrew Golis, TPM's Deputy Publisher, has been a big part of TPM's growth and accomplishments over the last three years he's been working at the site. Today's Andrew's last day. He's leaving to take a job at Yahoo! News helping create ... what else, a new news blog. 'Nuff said. We wish him luck and thank him for all his work.

We've just posted photos of Andrew's impromptu going away party a few moment ago in our NY headquarters at our Facebook fan page. (If you stop by, take a moment to become a TPM fan on Facebook.)

First 5,000 Tags Released to the Linked Data Cloud

2009-10-29T20:07:19Z

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of http://data.nytimes.com and the release of 5,000 person name subject headings as Linked Open Data published under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.

Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS) Explained

2009-10-27T06:15:36Z

Amazon RDS, basically MySQL in Amazon’s cloud, launched today. In the past, if you wanted to host MySQL databases in Amazon’s cloud, you’d have to get an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and pair it with Elastic Block Storage (EBS), build and configure the Linux distro, etc. Now, it’s one thing. Werner Vogel explains:

Quite a few of our AWS customers are running relational databases, either because they require the specific relational functionality or because they are using software packages that have been designed with RDBMS as the database solution. These customers typically spend a significant amount of time in database management [but] the tremendous amount of work they have to do […] prevents that from focusing more on delivering value with their product. For these customers who require a relational database but do not have a need to exert complete administrative control over their database server, there is now another option: the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS).

The cheapest offering costs about $80/month, incredibly affordable for those who want this kind of cloud redundancy and scalability.

[Permalink]

Two Brain Cells Is a Lot in Some Places

2009-10-27T01:15:31Z

Some old friends of mine are quoted in Tech Radar’s elegy to GeoCities. My soundbite is on page two.

“The sad truth about home pages, on Geocities or elsewhere, is that they were actually a lot of work to set up and maintain,” rues Derek Powazek of Fray.com. “So when blogging started, blogs quickly replaced homepages because they were just a lot less work. Now, with the ascendency of Twitter and Facebook, which require, at most, two brain cells to operate, I fear the death of the truly independent personal site may be at hand. Making something personal, something meaningful, something beautiful, has always been a lot of work. Some things just take time.”

For what it’s worth, I think it’s great that there are ways to participate online that don’t take a ton of time. I just wish more people had more time to do more things that go deeper than “here’s what I ate today.”

Also, today I had a cheese sandwich.

Post from: Derek Powazek

Two Brain Cells Is a Lot in Some Places

CNN.com Gets a Redesign

2009-10-26T13:41:57Z

Their content itself is vastly--vastly--different. But, online, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between cable TV outlets...and their print--paper, mag, blog--counterparts. Conventional wisdom about Intuitive and Yet Compelling Web Site Design has, it seems, coalesced to the point at which, save for the site's individual branding (CW: site logo should be located on the top of the page),...

e.e. cummings Or YouTube Commenter?

2009-10-24T17:31:00Z

McSweeney's offers the challenge - which is which?

1. loog a his lirow nose
2. there is some shit I will not eat
3. LISN bud LISN
4. this i bad sorry to saY
5. leave her alone
she's not your gal
6. She is Lucifierian !
7. THuNdeRB loSSo!M iN
8. aThe):l
9. stunned. i. am. stunned. every question speaks to us
10. What is nothing?

Answers after the jump:

YouTube comment: 1, 4, 6, 9, 10
e. e. cummings: 2, 3, 5, 7, 8

The Bold Italic

2009-10-21T22:18:22Z

Jason Kottke just linked to an interesting design tidbit – the launch of a web magazine in San Francisco called The Bold Italic. (No, not that bold italic…)

We’ve seen some small-scale examples of art direction on the web, but this seems to me to be something in the ‘medium’-scale range – I really love this stuff, hopefully they can keep it fresh.

Also, I can’t wait for the day when ad budgets and tools are at the point where designers can art direct on the article-level, as opposed to just designing templates and frameworks. Maybe this gets us an inch closer to that goal.

The Divided Self, 1965

2009-10-21T01:08:28Z

Poor Self. He used to be all happy and green. Now he’s all divided and is just blue and yellow.

★ Annals of Our Endangered Medium: Out and Driver, Town & Country & Guns & Ammo, and Wired Brides

2009-10-17T14:50:00Z

Here are my latest magazine covers for Vanity Fair. They appeared in the September issue under the hed and dek “Annals of Our Endangered Medium: Some Shotgun Magazine Mergers You Might Soon See (Second in a Series).” I’m especially amused by how perfectly the Out and Car and Driver logos fit together.

The first installment of “Annals of Our Endangered Medium” appeared in the March 2009 issue.

[Visit the magazine covers page for more stuff like this.]

gist: 6443 - GitHub

2009-10-16T00:57:36Z

What Up: A Few GOP Heroes Steele Left Out

2009-10-15T05:36:04Z

Did someone say The BAG has been a little too serious lately? This blogospheric response to the GOP Heroes cavalcade is from the great and often proudly blasphemous artist and designer Mike Monteiro.

...And then, my question to you is, who did Mike forget?

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

2009-10-12T20:34:02Z

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.

First came the web, and it was a mess. Servers went up everywhere, the net connected them all, pages bloomed like flowers, and no one could find a damn thing.

Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google with its rankings of most-linked pages, we were finally able to find the pages we needed, mostly.

The ascendency of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. I’m going to tell you about the problems, and then tell you the one true way to generate traffic on the web, based on my own 14 years of hits and misses.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

Occasionally a darkside SEO master may find some loophole in the Google algorithm to exploit, which might actually lead to an increase in traffic. But that ill-gotten traffic gain won’t last long. Google changes the way it ranks its index monthly (if not more), so even if some SEO technique worked, and usually they don’t, it’ll last for a couple weeks, tops.

And when they do reindex, if they determine that you’ve been acting in bad faith (like hiding links or keywords or other deceptive practices) they’ll drop you like a hot rock. So a temporary gain may result in a lifetime ban.

In the end, you’re sacrificing your brand integrity in a Faustian bargain for an increase in traffic that won’t last the month. And how valuable was that increase, anyway? If you’re tricking people into visiting your site, those visits are going to be bad experiences.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Google’s ranking algorithm is based on links. So the most effective way to game their system is to plant links on as many sites as possible, all pointing to your site, linked from specific keywords. This is called Google bombing.

SEO cockroaches employ botnets, third-world labor, and zombie computers to blanket the web with link spam. 99% of spam comments to blogs are these kind of links. The target of these links is not the blog readers, it’s Google.

SEO bastards are behind worms that attack blog services like Blogger, WordPress, and Movable Type. Some hack into the blog templates themselves to insert links that are hidden from the readers of that blog, but visible to a Google crawler.

And they create programs to grab expired domain names, automatically create websites, filling the pages with content stolen from RSS feeds, creating billions of bad results for users.

It’s a game, and every link is a score for the SEO jerkwads and their disreputable clients. And every time they win, those of us trying to create quality work and good experiences on the web lose.

Worse than the hackers are the competent journalists and site creators that are making legitimate content online, but get seduced by the SEO dark side into thinking they need to create content for Google instead of for their readers. It dumbs-down the content, which turns off your real audience, which ultimately makes you less valuable to advertisers. If you want to know why there’s so much remnant advertising on online news sites, it’s because you’re treating the stories like remnants already.

Remember this: It’s not your job to create content for Google. it’s their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

The One True Way

Which brings us, finally, to the One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web. It’s pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:

Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.

That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.

Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.

Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.

It’ll take time. A lot of time. But it works. And it’s the only thing that does.

UPDATE 1: SEO FAQ
UPDATE 2: The Green Hair Theory

Post from: Derek Powazek

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

Outlook is Cloudy

2009-10-12T06:12:21Z

Well, well, well.

So you might have missed this piece of news, but this past week, if you owned a phone branded as a T-Mobile Sidekick, which itself was based on original work of the Danger Hiptop, then your phone’s data was all lost and if you power-cycle your phone, you will lose all your contacts, photos and other important data. Permanently.

That’s pretty awful.

So let me modify my previous sentiment:

FUCK THE CLOUD, BEFORE THE CLOUD FUCKS YOU.

Being the guy who gut-punched current presentation and marketing crap of “The Cloud” earlier this year, I’ve been a lightning rod for a spectrum of frustrations. Some are annoyed at this weird marketing term taking on such strength. Others are people who have glommed onto this marketing term and are hella pissed that some upstart fuck like myself is indicating in some way that they are charlatans or misinformed dupes. And some others are end-users who are worried about some of the concerns I have been raising and want more information. It is nominally less interesting than other mail I get, but it’s pretty important stuff, so I don’t mind being at the center of it.

Therefore, when things started really going to ass-town earlier this month for Danger/T-Mobile, I got communications from a lot of people. I’m still getting links and I am grateful to all the people who wanted me to know about this nightmare and what it was all about. I was also given vaguely privy information to what is “really” going on, and how some perfectly talented folks are not getting any sleep for quite a long time while the problem is being addressed.

The story, as I understand it from various sources who may or may not be as insider as they claim, is that this is a classic case of “no separate hot hardware backup during major upgrade”, resulting in a worst-case scenario when what was supposed to be a relatively smooth transition fell apart, cascading and knocking over all current data. Backups exist, I’ve been told, but obviously they are slightly out of date and probably don’t keep around every piece of data important to the end-users. And they will take quite a while to come back. Meanwhile, we are treated to people, regular and normal folks, who have been absolutely fucked over. This is the human side we probably tend to forget:

You should have a bunch of feelings when using computers. Excitement. Pride. Delight. Amazement. Curiousity. Yes, even frustration and anger. But you generally should not feel despair. You should not be feeling desperation. You really shouldn’t. An architecture and environment that could lead you into this situation, where you are helpless and wronged and did nothing but what you were told was right, and then punished quite severely, is very wrong. It is the opposite of what a computer and technology should do. And worst of all, by any of the information I’ve been given, it was avoidable – just more expensive to assure such avoidance. And expensive gets lost as an option, when you’re dealing with a cloud.

What we call The Cloud is about obfuscation, about blurring. It’s in the name of ease and convenience and about incredible savings on a number of columns in your galactic spreadsheet. Unfortunately, this marketing bullshit easily comes at the cost of service level agreements, error tracking, and accountability.

Oh sure, the worms have come out of the wood to make fun of people who owned T-Mobile Sidekicks, saying they shouldn’t have been with a “kid’s” phone instead of a grown-up phone or some other platform-related calling of the dozens. These people are beneath contempt – all centrally located items, like, oh, telephones that rely on checking centralized servers, are prone to potential failures in the future. Failures that could affect everybody, even people who own some other brand of phone who are the type to point and laugh at others’ misery. Here’s hoping the hot guy/gal you gave your digits to was using a T-mobile, Mr. Jerkin’-it-on-Saturday-Night. They ain’t calling you back anytime soon.

And sure, I’ll be sure to get mails and comments from people who have hung their shingles on The Cloud to tell me that this wasn’t the fault of the Cloud and that the Cloud was actually down at the local pub sharing a pint with 39 buddies who The Cloud bought drinks for and so The Cloud is innocent. That’s what’s so great about something like The Cloud – a few tweaks of the words, a clever turn of phrase, and the bad part doesn’t apply to you and what you’re selling. That was something else, somebody else. Not your fault. No mea culpa required. Come buy our new Cloud service.

Remember lives could be very negatively affected by this outage and loss. People whose sales contacts or organization information or any of a number of critical phone lists were on these phones is gone. That can be devastating to a businessperson who relies on this list to get work done, or who stored photos, memories, messages on this platform. Sure, you can point here from the Magic Fucking Future and act like they were committing a sin by not syncing their data up every single night, but how’s your sink looking, motherfucker? Got any dishes in it?

Like Roger Boisjoly, I don’t take much pride in being “right”. What I want is for us to stop making these mistakes, to stop several terrible trends from continuing. It’s partially an engineering issue – syncing up data quickly and easily to several locations isn’t a terrible task and it certainly isn’t something to be ashamed of and hidden way up the food chain at the central servers. It’s also a social issue – data owned by users should be sacred, considered the highest calling in computer services, with people’s lives understood to be affected by every choice. It is often, instead, thought of as a business case – if we lose everyone’s data, what will it cost us? Right now it’s costing T-mobile plenty (they’ve halted sales of the Sidekicks), but how often has anyone within the paradigm of Microsoft/Danger/T-Mobile used the terms like “trust” and “caretaking” with relation to this data? Will they ever? Will anybody else? In a world full of fucksticks like Larry Halff who should have a restraining order from ever being in charge of user data again, you don’t know what the ethics/value system of the people in charge of your data are, and in this situation, the idea of something like the approach of what we call The Cloud is a step, no, a marathon run backwards. We’re better than this. We really are.

This is not a time, over here, for pointing and laughing. It never was. It’s a time for mourning. It’s a time to realize that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people woke up and had part of their lives ripped from them and had done nothing, nothing to deserve it. And to realize, with horror, how many people are walking around as we speak with pieces of their own lives hanging in a fragile balance with only one bad upgrade, one poor business choice, one missed phone call between them and losing it forever.

Chinese Twitter users live in a density 2x to 8x their English counterparts.

2009-10-11T23:40:48Z

Comments

"Clicking Close [X] on a Flash ad feels like accepting a paper towel from a homeless guy who just..."

2009-10-09T00:12:20Z

“Clicking Close [X] on a Flash ad feels like accepting a paper towel from a homeless guy who just randomly jizzed in my face.”

- Remiel