onfocus

There's an article in the Oregonian about the upcoming Blogathon. I won't link to the online version of the article because the Oregonian has a severe usability problem. Every time I click on a "deep linked" article, I get hit with a splash page that says, "Help Us Serve You Better" and asks for my zip code, age, and gender.


OregonLive serving us all better

Saying that it "serves me better" doesn't seem to be accurate, though, because the content is not personalized to the information I put in. (I'm frequently an elderly woman from Ohio.) I don't think they're actually serving me better, I don't think they care about my experience at all—they're simply looking for demographic information. (Most likely so they can tell their Web advertisers who they'll be reaching—hmm, lots of elderly women from Ohio!) And in the process, they're getting in the way of how I want to use their site. To make it worse, once I enter the info I go to yet another splash page that is filled with disclaimers and legal warnings. (Tip: Never let your lawyers welcome people to your site.) By the third click I finally get the article I wanted to see—and it's covered with screaming, zooming, flash, animated advertising. Of course, most of the time I don't click through all of these pages. (And consequently, I don't see their ads. Which means they're loosing money.) Why don't newspaper sites get the Web? Anyway, if someone mirrors the Oregonian article I'll link to it. But I don't want you to go through the clicking hell.

Instead, search for "blogathon" at Google or Daypop and see what people who understand the Web are saying about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad blogathon is getting mainstream press. People outside the weblog community should know about it. It's a fun event for some very good causes, so definitely check it out. (And look into sponsoring some poor, tired, 24-hour blogging people if you have the means.)

Life in Roratonga: "When we tell our new landlord that we'd like to move into her house, she slowly gets up from the garden she's tending to and asks us what day it is. Then she asks which month."

O'Reilly put up some beta Amazon hacks from the book of the same name. These hacks haven't been through the entire editing process, so they're a little rough around the edges (hence, beta). Each hack (all separate PDFs) also has a complete table of contents, so you can get an idea of what's in the whole book. (Did I mention you can pre-order on Amazon? ;)

mistimed jump

An indpendent Amazon developer is keeping his eyes on the developer discussion board at Amazon and highlighting the good stuff on his site. [via the AWS Newsletter] This is cool, but it would be even better as a frequently updated weblog.

weblogs.com hasn't updated since 11:45 this morning. Which means Weblog Bookwatch and ORblogs aren't updating properly. (And a bunch of other services around the Web, I bet.)

Meg has a great idea for revitalizing tourism to Niagra Falls. Another way to improve tourism would be scheduling "natural flow" days at different times of the year where they open the dam a bit and bring the water flow back to its pre-dam volume. It would be a spectacular sight to see. In fact, people are trying to restore the flow. (Though I'm not sure how actively, because that page is out of date.) They could also go the other way and have "no flow" days where they let people see the rocks underneath the falls. (They did this once for research.) Though both of these may take away from the fact that Niagra Falls is a "natural" wonder because people would see firsthand that we control the amount of water rushing over the edge. Of course the least desirable option is to let Pfizer rename the falls for millions of dollars. It's only a one-letter difference—changing the signs would be easy.

If you're going to be anywhere near Portland tomorrow, be prepared to celebrate building the web at Webvisions. I'll be there—learning all I can. (Not sure if they'll have fighting robots, but I don't see why they wouldn't.) Rumor has it there will be wireless access, so I'll try to post what I'm learning.

If you're going to be anywhere near Corvallis this weekend, be prepared to celebrate art, science, and technology at da Vinci Days. I've never experienced them before, but I'm looking forward to it. The film festival looks interesting. And what small town festival would be complete without the traditional fighting robots? Or a giant robot (Juggerbot) destroying appliances? If I remember my history correctly, da Vinci had sketches of giant fighting robots but technology just wasn't ready to build them. So ahead of his time.

cool! Matt started PVRblog—news/how-tos/reviews about TiVos, ReplayTVs, and any other DVRs.

For $195 you can read the Jupiter Research report on using blog software for content management needs. Or for $0 you can read Matt Haughey's Beyond the Blog essay about using Movable Type for more advanced content management.