Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Digg and the art of the headline
Alex Watson
When it comes to the web, there really aren’t many ways in which to gain readers for your site. Not that many practical and legal ones, anyway - sure, I could pay a dodgy bunch of Eastern European types to knock up a virus that sets everyone’s homepage to custompc.co.uk, and I could hire a team of skywriters to put our name above London. Increasing readership online is fairly similar to increasing readership of a magazine in real life - although at first glance this isn’t the case. The New York Times has run stories about how search engines are changing the dark art of writing newspaper headlines. Instead of witty puns, the story goes, the importance of appearing high up the Google rankings means simplicity is more important. There is a truth to this: Google drives a lot of traffic, and while humans will understand a punning, tabloid style headine when they see it on the page, when people Google, they Google in simple, explanatory language. The headline in the picture above is a good example: I know it’s about Tony Blair’s resignation announcement, but if I was searching for that story online, I wouldn’t necessarily Google “beginning of the end.”
However, while Googlers prize simplicity, the art of headline writing lives on: submit a story to online news aggregators such as Digg or Slashdot, or even to one of the big blogs such as Engadget, and you tend to find that plainly worded stories die an obscure death - unless of course, the story itself, even worded plainly, is powerful enough to draw people in.
Rated: 100% (4 votes)
Loading ...Mobile internet is rubbish
Alex Watson
I’ve just moved house, and my commute now involves having to take an overland train, rather than just jumping on the tube. This means wrestling with train timetables in order to work out when it’s best to leave work, and, as my new house is between two stations, figuring out which is best to go to. This is exactly the sort of task mobile internet should be great at. Unfortunately, it’s been a massive disappointment so far, on a par with an England World Cup campaign. Read more
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Facebook is [not] the new AOL
Alex Watson
Jason Kottke started the ball rolling for the ‘Facebook is the new AOL’ story by writing a tempting little note in a link post. It turned into a headline, and as the hours zipped by, a host of talented bloggers filled out the body of the story with some really good pieces. Is it true, though? Is the mighty Facebook (and its newly launched platform) really just the evil old AOL mindset in disguise? Read more
Rated: 100% (4 votes)
Loading ...Most Hated Words
Alex Watson
“Teh internetz” are not always the best friend of the English language. Not that I subscribe to the idea that all this chatting on forums is ruining the kids’ ability to use language - after all, a language is a living thing, and should be, needs to be, remoulded, reworked, and re-engergised on a daily basis - but the IT world throws up some really ugly words, just plain minging arrangements of letters that should never be displayed on screen, let alone spoken out loud. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has a brief post up about a YouGov survey of the most annoying words spawned by the web. These include folksonomy, vlog and webinar. Nate adds a few of his own linguistic nails-on-a-blackboard moments - including the terrible ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘AJAXify’ (although I’d disagree with his inclusion of ‘podcast’.
There are a few words that are regularly used to pepper press releases for hardware products, and have the same effects as seasoning your chile con carne with horse manure. Here are the terms that deserve to be publicly shamed like a first-round failure on X-Factor:
1. Solutions.
As in… “AMD continues to deliver technology solutions that improve the way we live, work and play.”
No. Solutions don’t improve things, they solve problems. ‘4′ is the solution to 2+2. Ordering a pizza when you’ve got no food in the house and everyone is starving. These are solutions, because they address direct, easily quantifiable problems.
2. Platform.
As in… “Creative is now driving digital entertainment on the PC platform with products like its highly acclaimed ZENâ„¢ portable audio and media players.”
Nope. A platform is a place which trains arrive late to. Why even use the word ‘platform’ here?
3. Extreme.
As in… “NVIDIA’s GigaThread Technology, which, through the use of a massively multi-threaded architecture, is able to create thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency for advanced, next generation shader programs.”
Nein. Forty degrees below zero. Fans of Adolf Hitler. Stoning people to death for stealing. These are extreme.
But the worst offender has to be…
4. Functionality.
As in… “Consumers today are demanding higher standards of digital entertainment experiences that enhance the very personal environments of their home,†said Satjiv S. Chahil, senior vice president, global marketing, Personal Systems Group, HP. “HP designers have achieved a much needed balance of form and functionality that enriches the experience and ease of use of today’s personal technology.â€
ARRGH! What’s wrong with ‘function(s)’ for crying out loud? If adding -ality to a word automatically added 30% more professionalism and excitment to something, this website would be called Custom PCality. You’d be searching the web with Googleality and enthusing about your iPod and its iTunesality. But it’s not, and you don’t. People, let’s end the -ality now.