At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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One could be forgiven for believing that the online publishing industry
had hit rock bottom if you were to read
this story
from IDG.
I'm not knocking Scoop.co.nz, it's a great site with good content -- but I am
concerned that they, and an increasing number of other sites, have been
forced onto the streets of the information superhighway with their begging
bowls in hand.
Indeed, the demand for administering these begging-bowl systems has become
so high that earlier this year Amazon.com even started offering
a service
designed to collect donations made to such impoverished publishers.
Now I could understand this kind of thing being just the bee's knees for
something like the Salvation Army's
War Cry
magazine -- but online news and the like?
Actually, if you hadn't realised it, I am being just a little tongue in cheek
here.
I think it's actually not a stupid thing for online publications to openly
solicit donations from readers -- especially if it allows them to continue
providing quality content without having to resort to dorky gimmicks (like
words that chase your mouse pointer or pop-under windows) just to squeeze
a few dollars out of advertisers.
Of course donations (preferably in unmarked notes or gold bullion) would be
most welcomed by Aardvark -- but then there's always the risk that accepting
such "donations" might affect my objectivity.
What's next though I wonder -- cyber soup kitchens?
Too Smart?
Just who is the idiot at the
NZ Herald website
who thought it would be clever to use some Javascript to annoy the
stuffing out of visitors by having some inane message chase the mouse-pointer
around the screen?
Is this yet another case of "Forget the content -- just look at
how clever we are"?
While it was ever-so slightly tolerable yesterday, today it has become nothing
but an annoyance that detracts from the site's otherwise useful functions. It's
just like those God-awful watermarks that our TV broadcasters are inflicting
upon us these days by plonking their station logos in the corner of the screen.
And is it really worth adding 200 extra lines of Javascript code to
a page just to do this?
Unless the whole idea of this little piece of annoy-ware was to get a mention
in Aardvark then I suspect it is not going to be doing a lot to endear visitors.
I wonder how many people, on visiting the Herald website, wondered if they'd
caught some terrible virus or been hit by an evil hacker.
And the message -- "we like One number" -- is of course related to an ad
being run for Telstra/Saturn -- or at least I guess that's what it's all about
by looking at the Javascript code itself.
Unfortunately the adserver at Focalink.com wasn't responding this morning so
all I could see was this
broken graphic
where the ad should be.
Please NZ Herald, just stick to banners, even if they're big ones -- and for
goodness sake, don't succumbe to the temptation to start delivering those
awful pop-under windows!
Or maybe I'm just being grumpy again :-)
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