Letters Remain

Tag: web

  • The Declining and Thriving News Magazines

    While Time and Newsweek saw double digit falls in revenue last year, The Economist saw similar sized gains—despite increasing subscription rates (previously). The Atlantic discusses this phenomenon, looking in detail at why The Economist is thriving in a market seemingly in decline. The Economist prides itself on cleverly distilling the world into a reasonably compact…

  • Media Usage Over Time (1800–2020)

    Accepting its unscientific’ness, Thomas Baekdal presents an inforgraphic depicting the usage of different types of media over time—from 1800 to 2020. In the past 210 years we have seen an amazing evolution of information. […] But 2009 is also going to be the start of the next revolution. Because everything we know is about to…

  • The Perils of Pop Psychology

    In response to Jane O’Grady’s Open Democracy article critiquing the ‘neuro-social-sciences’, Julian Sanchez outlines his thoughts on the perils of pop psychology: There are arguments that simply can’t be made in the span of even a longish newspaper or magazine article. If one is writing for a lay audience, in fact, I feel pretty confident that…

  • Online-Only Newspapers: Counterintuitive Trends

    Studying the progress of the Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat as it became Europe’s first online-only newspaper, researchers from City University London discovered a number of seemingly counterintuitive trends from the newspaper’s retiring of its print business. Six and a half months after going online-only Unique Users were 22 percent lower and Page Impressions 11 percent down. […]…

  • Using Spammers to Solve AI Problems

    With spammers having already written software to match humans at solving some CAPTCHAs, many are predicting the end of the CAPTCHA. Not so, says Luis von Ahn (developer of the reCAPTCHA system) in a New Scientist article that asks why not set the spammers further AI tasks that they can solve inadvertently. Software that can solve any…

  • Print Your Own Magazines

    Upload your magazine as a PDF to MagCloud and they’ll not only print it on demand, but also manage payments, subscriptions and delivery… now to the UK and Canada as well as the US. Reasonably priced, too. It reminds me somewhat of the newspaper, Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 (via Kottke).…

  • Website Launch Checklist

    Here’s a great checklist for when you’re developing and launching a new website, as produced by Dan Zambonini of Box UK. Topics covered include: Pre-Launch Content and Style Standards and Validation Search Engine Visibility, SEO and Metrics Functional Testing Security/Risk Performance Finishing Touches Post-Launch Marketing Ongoing via @zambonini

  • Web Design Marketing Checklist

    Once again I’m put in mind of Seth Godin’s call for ‘web podiatrists’: this comprehensive web design checklist is perfect for not just designing a usable site, but a marketable one. [This] master website marketing checklist [covers] over 400 specific items over 23 topics. These topics include things such as website development, SEO, usability, accessibility,…

  • Times’ 50 Best Websites of 2008

    Time has just released the results of its 50 ‘best’ websites of 2008 vote. Present are many you would expect, but there are a few surprising entries too. The top 5: Penny Arcade Gaia Online Kongregate GasBuddy Free Rice via Mind Hacks