Blogocracy

Although I missed Derek Miller’s presentation at the Vancouver meeting of the Editors’ Association of Canada, I listened to it the next day by podcast. He describes building a website in less than 15 minutes.

The talk followed a day-long blog conference in Vancouver called Northern Voice.

Reason contributing editor Cathy Young writes on “Smears in Cyberspace: Blogs and media ethics” in the February 2006 issue. Visit her blog.

Arm-chair traveller

Think{it}communications has a simple but stylish website with samples of several genres of writing. Without the icons accompanying the links on the right-hand side, the home page would be too text heavy. The exception is the banner at the top that rotates photo art when clicked. Sometimes though, the banner goes blank. The only contact information is a phone number, but no email.

Eyetrack III studies “online news consumer behavior in the age of multimedia.” Eyetrack III's website is hosted by the Poyneter Institute of Journalism. While Poyneter’s website is too busy for my taste, I enjoyed browsing Eyetrack III. The designer handles a great deal of information by dividing the layout into three columns and three rows. The first row provides a paragraph or more on the topic with link. The second row gives only the first sentence of articles with links, while the third row simply provides links.

Once a link is clicked, the design switches to a narrow column of links on the left and a wide column of text on the right. It’s easy to navigate. Eyetrack III offers a lot of information for web designers of online news sites.

Arm-chair travel takes on new meaning with Central Park.com. The website has photos, events, and interactive maps. It presents a ton of information, nicely arranged in its user-friendly website.