Færslur föstudaginn 25. júní 1999

At 04:00: Writing for the Web 

Steve Outing writes a great article on How to Write for the Web. Anyone doing any amount of online writing should be forced to read this.

Writing text for websites requires in many ways a fundamentally different approach, from writing printed material - regardless if the print material is news, ad-copy, or longer articles.

This difference is caused by a number of factors: The unique technical nature of the web (links, user confusion, etc.), the primitive reading medium (small windows, coarse pixels, etc), and an emerging (cultural?) change among readers (info overflow, short attention span, etc.).

Some quality writing guidelines

• Useit.com: Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web) - basic writing tips.
• Useit.com: Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines.
• Useit.com: How to write inverted pyramids - tips on how to structure text and essays.
• Useit.com: How people read on the Web.
• Editing Online Documents: Strategies and Tips - Title says all.
• GoodDocuments.com - writing and struture of digital (business) documents.

Update, June 11th 2000: "Strageties and Tips" link added, plus brief introductory statement on why web writing is different.

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At 03:00: Links Regarding Searching the Web 

Lewis Barnett is a guy who maintains a nice page about Web Resource Classification links. - Has links to all the most important pages in the business.

Hypersearching the Web is a Scientific American article about IBM's Clever project. See also SciAm's Searching the Internet.

Third and last there's a Czech page with a list of W3 Search Engines of all sorts. The engines are sorted and categorized and the author furthermore recommends few engines in each category. (I of course don't agree with all of his recommendations but hey...)

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At 02:00: A Little More on Annotations 

This came to my knowledge a few days ago on the www-annotations mailing-list. This is a project called the Interactive Paper Project. The project got exposure recently in Wired (Ivory Tower Open Source) and that was where even the old-timers at "www-annotations" first heard about the IPP. (This actually came as little surprice to most as www-annotations has been really quiet for a couple of years).

IPP seems to be designed for more structured and diciplined communication, than Third Wave or CritLink, and intended primarily for discussion of scolarly papers. - Interesting though.

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At 01:00: search.netscape.com 

Nescape launced today a reved-up version of their search engine. In it they combine the content from the Open Directory Project at DMoz.org with the Goggle search technology.

I tried making a few searches, and my first impression is pretty cool. The results come in a nicely structured form (similar to what only Yahoo has offered until now) and seemed to be of a reasonable quality. Of course what I tried was just some Popular terms, like "Austin Powers", so I don't really know how well it works in finding some really obscure, low profile documents.

The biggest problem with Google is that it's such a sucker for popularity. This often makes Google much less useful for finding obscure/low-profile content than traditional string-grinders like Hotbot.

It's my hope that Netscape's combination of Google's pop engine and DMoz.org's Human intelligence will produce a new and interesting perspective on the web-jungle...

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