:: Die newsletter, die! ::

I don't get it. Call me a total webhead perhaps, but I just don't get it.

If you have an intranet site or a big-I website, and you have an easy publishing tool so you don't have to fiddle with HTML code, AND you know that getting people to read information is crucial, why? oh why? would you ever put up a page that looks like the old fashioned cheezy newsletter of yesteryear?

Now - if you still want to publish on paper that old-fashioned thingie, go right ahead. I won't say that I will read it...but then I'm probably not your target audience anyway.

But...in a new medium like the net....why try to force me to follow a sentence break over a column across a FOUR COLUMN newspaper format - complete with silly sidebars and an HTML enabled table of contents that refers to the newsletter pages further down by PAGE NUMBER? And use stupid ugly amateur clipart like that friggin' "champagne bottle with cork popping out" graphic that I've seen on every god-awful newsletter in the universe?

And, as if that weren't bad enough, then send me an email asking me to go to a web page to read something that needs actually to be printed first anyway in order to be read properly??!?!?!

ARGH! My head's gonna explode.

You know what? People in corporations who don't get the web shouldn't be allowed to publish on the web, internal corporate web or otherwise.

"Psst! Yeah..you...hey!!! You may not have noticed but we're in the 21st century here! Newsletters are a dead format, people! Get with it!"

:: Canadian cyborg ::

A schoolmate passed along a link to this story about a Univeristy of Toronto professor who goes about his daily life wired into a tiny camera that he wears in front of his eye.

Gibson would be proud!

:: Performing Virtualities ::

This is an excellent Rob Shields article on the virtual.

:: Vision, parody, or..? ::

I am not sure what to think about this story/article in Harpers.

But I figured it was worth blogging regardless of my opinion of it. I'll let you read it and make up your own mind about it.