"A key problem with the site (www.aa.com), Samuel said, has been the BroadVision software it uses. American will be replacing the system with software from Art Technology Group. Its Dynamo software can be programmed with standard Java tools. The key factor, Samuel said, was 'how much more open the ATG architecture is. The Java programming capability has almost no restrictions.'"

I HAVE NOTHING BUT RESPECT FOR A GUY TO GIVE SUCH A HUGE GENERALIZATION ABOUT A PRODUCT WHOSE TIME IS YET TO (AND WILL) COME. YOU EITHER HAVE REALLY BIG BALLS OR VERY OLD AND SET IN YOU'RE WAYS, OR THIS IS SOME SORT OF PUBLICITY STUNT TO DRIVE PEOPLE TO YOU'RE SITE. I THINK ITS THE LATTER. NO WAY YOU COULD BE THAT SHORT SIGHTED. FLASH IS OBVIOUSLY NOT GREAT FOR ALL, NO PRODUCT IS. ANYWAY NICE JOB ON THE PUBLICITY STUNT FOR THE SITE. IT SEEMS TO BE WORKING! WHO NEEDS A GREAT SITE WHEN THERE'S PROPAGANDA! MAYBE TRY A SEX SITE FOR THE NEXT VENTURE?

As for the question of what goes up on the silver screen, perhaps it will be the foreign fare, or the independent stuff that never had a chance in the Hollywood hierarchy, or best of all, perhaps the bygone movie, the type of matter that slipped on and off our radars before we had a legitimate chance to be entertained as well as examine what it meant in the first place.

"Many companies imitate Apple. But we all secretly know that knockoffs don't matter much because they copy the style and miss the substance. Now, with OS X's brushed aluminum "scheme" (a fitting label if there ever was one), the Dock and general emphasis on the eye-catching over the truly useful, Apple seems to be thinking like its imitators."

"I'm not exactly sure when I first became addicted to the abuses and misuses of Flash as it was a subtle seduction. It started out with nothing more than a bloated demo here, an oblique navigational system there, but the next thing you know, I was building entire sites with the damn stuff whether it suited the job or not."

"Of all the hot air generated during the great bull market of the late 1990's, none propelled stock prices further than the notion that new economy stocks were a breed apart and should not be held to stringent, old economy investing standards."

» Forrester research analyst Paul Sonderegger on Scient telling clients they could get 'Amazoned': "It was the perfect selling environment. They created an atmosphere of fear, and oversold their capabilities in alarming ways. A lot of stuff was snake oil, and the clients didn't know it. That makes their actions more vile."

» Credit Suisse First Boston analyst David Sturtz on Scient's plan to move into "back-end" projects like automated supply chains: "Scient is dead. Why would any worthy client hire Scient to integrate its supply chain, given that its only experience is building front-ends for dotcoms?"

» Don't miss this: Fortunes made at Scient from stock sales before its shares crashed.

"Take note, Café del Mar. This is a highly original and eclectic collection that pushes the envelope of the Chill Out compilation in a new direction — and that's precisely what this genre needs."

"Smith is talented and has a sense of humor, and you would, in fact, even like his music. Do not let this get out or it will ruin his career."

Today U2.COM is live with a new HTML version which offers fans far quicker loading times and a significantly more convenient use of the site.

We are aware that for many users access has sometimes been slow and movement between pages a little laborious.

Now if you connect to the net at speeds of 28k/56k you will find that our new version, which doesn't use FLASH, dramatically improves your experience of U2.COM. The only visual difference is that the Timeline is designed in a different way.

"I hate to go all "High Fidelity" here, but I miss my late-night trips to the used CD store, flipping through stacks of countless failed sophomore albums until I found that one gem, that one album I had always meant to buy, or had but lost, or never even knew existed ... and there it is for $6."

"While some of you may contend that Tuesday is too premature for a sicky, surely it is actually a real show of power. Employers expect Friday to be lost to fatigue and boozy lunches, but Tuesday is sacrosanct. Take it back and it will show you are not to be trifled with."

I would love to say that after that dinner, I realized that I was just being a snob, that the food really isn't as bad as people like to joke, and that it's great that all these people love going to the Olive Garden for a little watered-down culture. But I can't. The Olive Garden just sucks far, far too much.

"The feeling around here is that no one minds when one of your hottest shows of the year goes 45 minutes late for the all important second game of the XFL. We're used to getting bumped by the sixth game of the World Series."

But ever wonder why divorce rates are so high? The real culprit isn't some kind of moral collapse. It's excessive expectations, driven and fueled by the civic religion of romance. For a lucky few, infatuation sometimes does lead to lasting love, and love to family, and family to all the other virtues our preachers and politicians regularly celebrate. For the other 99 percent of us, relationships are, at best, useful economic bargains and, if we're lucky, successful sexual transactions ...

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FROM: Curtis Batt
MESSAGE: You chose Labatt's Blue to represent Canada?! ARGH. Not all of our beers are horse piss, so if you ever get around to a second edition, please choose something better. I suggest: Rickard's Red, Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, Moosehead or for Christ sakes, at least Molson Canadian! (not that crappy "made for 'mericans" Molson stuff) Anything but Blue. (And never drink Budweiser from a Canuck brewery... the clydesdales serve double duty up here.)

FROM: Dan McMullan
MESSAGE: Where are the Australian beers in the The Sauced 16 competition? This competition seems to be filled with your nation's mortal enemies from World War II (namely the Japanese and Germans in case you have forgotten), and seems to purposefully shun the Aussies, your allies in each and every conflict your nation whimsically seem to engage in. Yes, even the Vietnam War and the limited military outing in the Persian Gulf. We seem to fight for no good reason other than to win the half-arsed approval and military backing of the US when finally some Asian country invades us. Our only other national pursuit is beer making, drinking and other beer-related activities.

(ps: No one drinks Foster's in Australia.)

You get some kind of fame. All of a sudden you can have it every day. And then all of a sudden you want to get selective. One a day is not enough. Then you want two a day. Then three a day. Then two at a time. Then two at a time with toys. Then two at a time and I'll just watch. It just gets more bizarre and more bizarre.

[snip]
In an attempt to be trendsetters ourselves, CNET has opted to change its formula for presenting advertising. Most of the standards for Internet advertising haven't changed since 1996. We felt it was time they did.

The first thing you'll probably notice is that the ad is bigger and it takes up more space on the page. Is this a sign that CNET is selling out and doesn't care about content? Actually, it's a sign that CNET wants to more clearly delineate the difference between content and advertising.

Instead of a banner and a host of small ads clogging the page, now there's just one big ad. It makes more of a branding impact for the company which is advertising on our site, and it is also easier to distinguish from content.

Of course, we'd love to hear what you think.

Laura Lindhe
Executive Editor
CNET Tech Trends
techtrends@cnet.com

» Visited and non-visited link colors remain undefined, so most users will get the default bright blue for non-visited and purple for visited. Same as it ever was.

» Even though the page is formatted with CSS, they've eschewed the hover pseudoclass that's all the rage with the kids these days.

» They've increased article readability by setting the site's width to 750 pixels, ditching the "liquid" design that had its day when Project Cool's Glenn Davis had his bully pulpit on the back page of Internet World.

» They've simplified and cleaned up the UI by going from three to two columns. A tour around the Web won't turn up many two-column news sites.

The giant fucking Flash ads, of course. 360x300-pixel scabs planted right in the middle of every article. And they move. Some of them move constantly, like this one, which makes it impossible to focus on the content. And the bastards removed the menu so users can't right-click to uncheck "Play." Grrrrr.

Is this the sorry state of advertising on the Web? Where content must now be unreadable to be monetized?* Jakob, hurry up with that new-fangled micropayments thing already!

"Family shopping, where you might be able to make money, is done by women with kids who are looking for any hint of a reason to get the hell out of the house. Strap the little tykes into a grocery cart, rip open a bag of Doritos for them and have at it for an hour. It beats trying to navigate a Web site looking for Cheez Wiz while little Teddy is tonguing the light socket."

"10. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups. You'll have to confront lots of people, including customers, who resist change."

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

Reading articles about your own work is often interesting, criticism is most helpful and can aid future designs and updates to the site. What seems to be forgotten however is that all of the issues presented are neither sudden mistakes nor lapses in design and usability judgement, and are in fact thrashed out with the enormous scrutiny to create what is believed to be the best user experience.

"Endless Loops, so you can't tell where they start or end."
One of the most challenging things for me is containing content (in this case the products) across endless pages without a simple method to browse the information with ease. The reason for looping the products is simple, to enable the user to place the mouse over the roll buttons and create an interactive show reel of the furniture. Aimed primarily at interior designers, these people know the furniture and its designers and recognise the products simply by shape and form which in this case aids the speed of viewing and download time to the section. The reason for all this is called 'Target Audience'.

"cutesy color-dip"
The is the easiest to answer, yes we would love to create a whole range of animated wave motions with a real sense of random beauty that doubles the file size and makes people wait incredible amounts of time..........whoops.

"the Web is just like an animated print layout"
I would agree in many cases this is true. However this is a term I would liken more to sites that use full screen jpgs and are simply click throughs of something that could have been created much more effectively in HTML. The key to Flash sites is simplicity and seamless fluidity, I see too many sites that use the functionality of Flash simply because it is there and end up shouting about what Flash as a technical tool can do rather than focusing on the brand and user market.

Alex Griffin
Deepend London

1. When the penguins start jumping, it's probably too late. If you wait for everyone to agree, any idea will be old news. Ignore group-think.

4. Growth and profits matter. A good business is a good business. A bad business sucks.

7. Don't get out of the Trojan horse until you're inside the gates. In other words, don't announce to big, established players that you intend to redefine their business -- and thus invite them to crush you before you do.

9. Companies will be part of interdependent "econets." The defining organization will be a porous network of partnerships.

13. Legendary businesses require courage. The people who win will be those who say, "We have whatever it takes."

CA has asked me to jury the 2001 Interactive Annual. By pointing me to the work of Deepend, one of their 'favorite' studios, you have singlehandedly caused me to dread the entire process. Even their best site, Viaduct, is riddled with beginning user interface mistakes.

Trying to browse our client's products? Let's put them in an endless loop so you can't tell where they start or end. Then, we'll _fade them in and out_ while you move them, to make it even harder to tell where you are. Finally, let's make the scroll controls active on rollover, so that basic navigation becomes a constant game of acquire-the-target.

Even the Flash gravy is half-assed. That cutesy color-dip that highlights a section when you roll over it? Roll away, and it just runs in reverse, ruining the illusion of weight and motivation. Listen closely, kids: you animate the _entire_ _motion_, from off to on and back again, all with appropriate ease-ins and ease-outs. Then, you cut the animation into two halves.

I'm becoming thoroughly convinced that the only reason Flash is so wildly popular is this: It comforts graphic designers with the familiar. It lets them pretend that the Web is just like an animated print layout. Hint: it's not. Grrr.

And now, thanks to FlashMania™, it seems that Director, a truly useful and powerful interface design tool, is being neglected. Have you heard Macromedia's announcement about porting Director to Mac OS X? Neither have I.

"Jakob's essay has lead to a slowdown on new Flash projects. Some companies have called for an internal moratorium on Flash development, while others are pulling their Flash content. Flash developers are now finding that they have to sell the benefits of Flash to their clients all over again."