boston.com has a fever and the only prescription is more ads
The Globe rolled out a tweaked boston.com home page. It's quite something. At least on my monitor, the first screen now has six ads and just three stories, six random headlines and half a photo.
Also, for you bloggy types, they've ditched the daily link to a local blog post, but given more emphasis to the Your Town listing of Globe-specific mini-sites on communities that are not in the city whose name still sits in their masthead.
Yahoo!
It's the internet, for old and stupid people! Big print, happy colors, cartoon faces, and a clusterflock of trivial nonsense.
This has been in beta for months, at least it finally launched.
Amazing what a news site has
Amazing what a news site has to look like in a time when the web has totally devalued advertising and presented news as cost-free. Less news, more ads--all hail the glory and wisdom of the "information is free" Internet! Thank god we'll all just tweet the news to each from now on.
Globe's new layout is a loser for local news
Boston.com's new layout is a sure loser for those of us who read it for its—admittedly scanty—local news.
It has moved from a format of quickly scan-able headlines to a silly [i]MetroDesk[/i] decorated with big photos. I'm not going to waste my time scrolling around looking for the headlines.
Welcome to the future
[img]http://www.ilounge.com/images/uploads/idiocracy3.jpg[/img]
In all seriousness
My 11 year old told me that he didn't understand why Ow! My Balls! wasn't a real program. He thought it would be an awesome TV show!
Actually, it _has_ been done:
http://www.kickedinthenuts.com/
(Tell your 11-year-old "You're welcome.")
This helps.
AdBlock Plus (Firefox only, I'm afraid.)
NoScript
Using NoScript for Firefox is a truly great thing. I see something very different.
(I'm not a fan of the new "compactness," either, ads or not.)
[IMG]http://i31.tinypic.com/2qx6hzc.jpg[/IMG]
I use noscript, too
I use noscript with Firefox, too. And, when I wrote my cavil above, I didn't notice the box on the left labeled [i]Local >>[/i].
I'm guessing the format is squirming. Or, maybe my eye was completely captured by a [i]Metro Desk[/i] planted in the middle of the page.
Pathetic
Debbie Downer here. New design is terrible. Ugh!
Beyond that, I like how they've prioritized the Metro Desk. Can we spin that off to a site of its own??
boston.com right now shows one "news" story above the fold - about Harvard's drop in endowment. Says it was uploaded at 4:00 PM. What, do all the reporters go home then?? It's quarter to one in the morning!!! Post something new!
Can they just move everything over to twitter with links to a single news story and one ad beside it? That's all I need.