Saturday, May 28, 2005

Good clean fun

I watched Noot vir Noot, the Afrikaans TV music quiz show, last night. It has been going for years, and, although the music is not the type of stuff I would normally listen to -I only decided to watch because one of the contestants was quite pretty- it is nice to see that there are still television shows that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Don't believe everything that you read in the papers

There was a fairly big news story today, and I happen to know some of the people involved. Because of this, I know that the coverage, particularly from the newspapers has been ludicrously inaccurate.

The amount of bullshit produced by the mass media is astounding.

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Ooh shiny!

I attended a wedding ceremony the other day, and the chap officiating described the event as a "sanctimonious occasion". No one else seemed to have noticed the malapropism, and most were probably impressed that he used a difficult word in his speech.

Big words impress people. Jargon intimidates the feeble minded. Fancy graphics can mask crappy functionality.

Too many people value style over substance and pay the price in the long run.

Saturday, May 07, 2005

Blindingly obvious observations about corporate website content (that some people still don't know about)

  • I surf the net looking for information that is useful or interesting to me. I use web applications to get things done. I expect that most people do the same. I am not awed by eye-candy, but I appreciate an aesthetically pleasing website as much as the next person.
  • Presentation is important, but if your corporate website doesn't have useful content the it will probably be a white elephant.
  • If your website's navigation scheme makes it difficult for search engines to follow your links you will lose business.
  • If you use obscure jargon to describe your business, instead of saying what you do in simple English, you will probably lose search engine hits
  • If you have spelling and grammatical errors on your site, your company will look unprofessional, and even the best site design won't compensate for that