Not to throw oil on some old fire, but shouldn't this (otherwise interesting) article disclose that O'Reilly invested in Pyra? This article is quoted on Blogger's front page right now, which looks like self-served (if indirect) publicity. I have nothing against plugs but we (the web logging community, if such a thing exists) would be the first to scream if MSNBC failed to disclose its affiliation to Microsoft and GE.

Fascinating experiment, although the billing address doesn't necessarily point to the real owner of the domain. Some clients don't want to bother with their domain name and have it billed to their host or web agency. So these physical addresses are sometimes intermediaries (say a 'hot' Silicon Alley shop hired by a Nebraska company.)

Jakob Nielsen wrote an article on url navigation, back when he didn't think game publishers need to follow his web design principles to create their games. I'm not making this up, just check out the current useit news. Of course gaming needs strong usability, but it follows its own principles. If every game looked the same, who would play them? And mastering a complex set of features is often part of the goals (it's called proficiency, a very different thing than unnecessary complexity.) Nielsen should take it easy: just because some guys at EA bought his book doesn't mean they want to use it for their games (they do have, you know, web sites), let alone that their competitors now change their strategy! Talk about wishful thinking.

But wait, I have just found some notes and a screenshot that mister Nielsen sent Epic, after they asked him how to improve on their pathetic track record.

"You can see some easy usability improvements at the top of the screen. For another $20,000 I can redesign the bottom section to look like Amazon.com because if they use thumbnails you should too. Also, you must add a "Freeze Other Players" feature because I found your game unusable and damn frustrating. I joined an online game and was killed 54 times before I could even move the mouse. Do you think users will want to learn your game before they can win?

Failing to act on my recommendations will drive users to other FPS's (First Person Shooters) that make it clearer where you have to aim and get rid of all the distracting sound and visual effects. You have to remember that the players' goal is to reach a very high score. You must not get in their way and should make it extra easy to finish the whole game in less than three minutes. My studies with users (5 will be enough, so I can keep most of the 20 grands for myself) show that with every extra minute you will lose 28.14% of them."

Does that mean that Society: Issues: Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations: Racial Supremacy and Hate: White legality depends on the nationality of its editor? Or its place of residence? Nothing implies so in the form used to become an editor. And how sites that use the ODP would be legally involved if some of its content was declared illegal somewhere?

The recent French ruling opens a big can of worms. One wonders why plaintiffs didn't target other companies beside Yahoo. In the meantime, the ODP staff obviously sweats about potential liability:

Yes, but. Click on the more netbusiness link, you're taken to a personalization page that asks for a zip code. In other words, the main portal leads to US-only section that doesn't even hint of international content. You have to backpedal to the main page and find country sites at its bottom.

Now click on any country, you're being presented the same generic international page. An unnecessary step since you already selected a specific country. From here pick up, say, Netscape France, you'll see it still dons the old clothes. (As a side note, the site announces Navigator 6.0 and promotes Communicator 4.75 at the same time. Oh yeah, one is the browser and the other is the full suite, but is that making any sense for the average user?)

The new Netscape home page might be well laid out, but its information architecture completely fails to serve worldwide users. It's even worse if you navigate from the US site to its international counterparts, since this will take you back in time as well. Compare this with Yahoo's consistent design across all countries, and clever promotion of local content on the US site.

However, this is not a cut-and-dried situation. In the first place, spider engines like Google will continue to drive a lot of traffic through their main (non-paid) listings, and will continue to be trusted by end users for their ability to point to relevant resources. That's important for those millions of users who still see the spirit of the Internet as resource first, shopping mall second."

I'm quoting the Amazon.com staff asking its customers to think about how their CEO reffered to the Cluetrain Manifesto while discussing patents with Tim O'Reilly. A bit circular but interesting nonetheless. Here Amazon.com is introducing reading group guides, another trick to get people to point to their site as the ultimate way to refer to a book. If only Amazon was as smart with outbound links as they are getting incoming traffic. Group guides also help Amazon increase peer pressure and bandwagon effects ("everyone else is reading these books, get a clue and buy them!")

While trying to find other books that had a reading group guide, I "discovered" Amazon.com@work, their corporate book section. Bulk orders won't get you any discount but companies have payment options beside credit cards. Here's some lightweight, sensible B2B if you ask me. I'm convinced there are some books you want all of your employees to read and "swear on" (and maybe your customers too.)

As a side note, the recent introduction of ebooks was well integrated into the usual online store, since "digital" is just another format besides hardcover or paperback. The only problem is pricing. Digital products are cheaper to manufacture and distribute. Until these savings are transferred to the consumer, hardcover/CD prices for ebooks/MP3s feel like lame attempts by publishers and record companies to increase their margins.

I'm a SciFan myself, but this kind of pie in the sky (eheh) reporting doesn't really help the space cause. The price of a commodity is obviously related to its rarity and the balance between supply and demand. Would there be a demand to match a massive new supply of platinum, or wouldn't its price more likely collapse? What is the point then to throw in our faces these "trillions of dollars" calculated at "today's prices"? Let's remember that not so long ago (through an admittedly biased European perspective of what is old), salt was used as a currency.

This kind of sloppy reasoning is similar to hinting that the increase in life expectancy we enjoyed during the last two centuries is somehow similar to Moore's Law. As a species, humans don't have a longer lifespan than they did thousands of years ago. On average, people live longer, but medicine didn't produce any meaningful life extension as of yet (that is, human life still tops at about 120 years.)

It's a shame widespread fuzzy thinking is undermining projects that are otherwise interesting. Many people overestimate the short term consequences of new technologies and understimate their long term impact, and it's true that linear projections are often irrelevant to figure what is going to happen. But we don't need invalid logic to come in the way of promoting promising ideas such as life extension or space colonization.