Dog Food

Weblog advice by Jacob Nielsen

Nielsen is at it again. This time his target is weblogs, yippee.
Summary: Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
Go check it out yourself at the UseIt website

And Jacob, if your listening, what is taking you so long writing the successor to Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity (see Amazon for the book and reviews). 

Web 2.0 / emerce e.day

Emerce e.day today (at the Amsterdam Convention Factory ) highlights for me in no particular order

• demonstration of the Backbase RIA (rich internet application software) 
• running into a lot of old friends
• internet and web development is accelerating again
• "PR in de blogosphere"

 

Weblogs big business

Website Paid Content reports that Weblogs Inc. sells to AOL for a cool $20 million, how's that compared to joining forces with VNU Media as rival Gawker Media did yesterday. This means gadgets weblog Engadget among others will be owned by AOL. Who's is more clever / rich Nick Denton of Gawker Media or Jason Calacanis, you tell me?

The "if you can't beat them join them" department

A weblog about gadgets, how smart and succesfull. The impact of these low cost publishing ventures has not escaped the attention of old school publishing houses or as Gizmodo calls it "an international media powerhouse". Today VNU Media and Gawker Media cooperate in Europe see the Gizmodo International announcement

Wonder what this means for the publishing experiment Xego.

Fatboy The Original aka Sumo

"The beanbag chair that I picked up is a Sumo Fat Boy and it can lie flat, be used upright as a single chair, and can be stacked for two people. This is great for a young person’s condo and if need be, can be tossed aside to make room for something else. "
http://www.fatboy.nl/

3rd of October

Leiden is famous for its history. Most notable is the brave defence by its inhabitants during a siege by the Spanish army When all their frontal attacks failed to take the town, the Spaniards decided to starve it into submission. The decimated citizens of Leiden, however, refused to surrender. On the third of October 1574, after months of hunger, illness and starvation, Leiden was finally released by the Dutch rebel army, bringing food supplies over the flooded polders. The third of October ( Leidens Ontzet ) is still a day that is celebrated by the inhabitants of Leiden by eating the same food that was supplied on the third of October 1574: herring, white bread, and hutspot.

Technology from another century

Steam engines still operational, but out of fashion