Article:  |
Attack of the Guys in Pajamas | |
| Subject: | Yes, I remember the web in the early 1990's | |
| Date: | 2004-10-08 00:45:16 | |
| From: | scottwalters1 | |
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Sorry, I'm apparently on fogey patrol tonight, keeping you slickster youngin's in line with the facts. The web back in 1993 didn't flood you with un-informative marketing spooge in the form of images blanketing an entire page or Flash animations requiring constant upgrade for the 99% of the population that could actually run the plug-in (completely locking out research users using Sun Sparc 5's whom they should be trying to pander to most desperately). Websites were simple, with a logo graphic on the front page, and a wealth of technical information, direct phone line numbers to technical personal, links to competitors, and links to employees personal projects pages. Navigation didn't use complex idioms that involved a top navigation bar, side bar, bottom links, pop down menus, and a dozen different searches, none of which can ever find anything but zero content press releases. Top level navigation wasn't "Press", "Terms of Use", "Mission Statement", "Jobs", "In The News", and "Investors" - heck, no! It was "Schematics", "Source Code", "Research", and "Email Jon and he'll send you a prototype board". I've found the more money spend on the site, the more self serving it is and the more annoying it is to actually use. Pay some highschool kid $100 and you'll have the best site possible. Where's the old codger going with this? Well, the way I see it, blogging is just a revival of how things used to be. It's volumous detailed information, personal pages, unabashed linking, minimal graphics (and then only where they serve some purpose - bloggers don't link to navigation buttons or logos, just funny things - and scary things). It's individual level, talking about our own personal projects and interests, which is useful because it's focused on our own individual contributions, which are the only things of value. Companies never owned the Internet. They spent a lot of money trying to. They bought a lot of hits and sold a lot of advertising. But they couldn't keep away from things people wanted to be kept away from - take goatse.ch for instance. I'm not disagreeing with you per se - just vigerously defending some baselines by which the new and the old should be judged. Best! -scott |
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