We covered a lot of ground in class on Wed.  An article from Smashing Magazine talked about How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business.  It even mentioned a site that Sam talked about on our first day of class, Etsy.  Main points, keep sites simple, no clutter, leave out unrelated products, reduce # of columns.  And, as always, pictures are worth a thousand, it had some nice screenshot examples.  Good way to kick off a Web Design course.

Soft Economy Speeds Newspaper Cuts basically aggregated what has been going on in the newspaper industry for the past several years.  Starting with the McClatchy layoffs and others, the article blames the reduction in ad revenue for the cutbacks. And, unlike other industries, most don’t expect a recovery, due to intense competition from other media, mainly the Internet. The most astute comments added that the reason for cutbacks is for retooling the organization.  “They are making a lot of these cuts up front so they can be in a position to turn the organization around,” said Randy Bennett, senior VP of the Newspaper Association of America. He added that some companies were likely to start hiring again, but “they’ll likely need employees with different skills from the staffers they’re letting go now.” This is why EVERY company goes through layoffs. Nobody shrinks to stay small.

Pretty interesting that Tom Anderson was a hacker in the 80s (MySpace Cofounder Tom Anderson Was A Real Life “WarGames” Hacker in 1980s). I didn’t know he was that old.  Apparently, he got in trouble with the feds when he was 14.

Of course, we talked about Chrome. Scott presented it, had the class read the Google comic introducing it (produced by comic guru Scott McCloud).  Won’t be relevant until Mac users can get it.  Looks like theirs already an issue in their Terms of Service that has to be removed. They reserve the right to do what they want with anything made in the browser.  Supposedly, it was a mistake of using a common EULA.

In a bold move, several shows will be premiered on Hulu BEFORE regular television (Hulu Launches Fall Lineup, Premieres Before TV Broadcast), hoping to increase Internet traffic on the video site.

And, finally, from Web Strategy, Social Marketing from Democrats and Republicans looks at trends amongs social media users in the parties.  In all cases, Democrats were more engaged in social media.  Could be due to younger age demographic of Democrats, could be due to McCain’s slow entry with McCainSpace.  Will it have ramifications for the election?