Who goes to see the World’s End?
Who goes to see what’s round the bend?
Who wants to know if we will fly?
How can you know if you don’t try?
AAAAAAH!!
Oops… guess that was a bad idea. Umm, where was I?
Do you ever use your feet?
Do you walk to that new beat?
If you don’t hear it that’s okay
Everyone hears it someday
When they see the world’s end
When they go around that bend
This is just a first draft.
I am positively sure that i can improve it. Don't ask me why. I just know.
I need to look at it again.
Maybe I'll keep doing this, and just for kicks, actually make a poem that actually has draft one in the title so I can throw everyone off.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Saint City News
Hello. I am KHoyt, and I am going to report on a very bad website design.
At the end of my online reporting class, we had a special guest come in. He was a recent graduate of the class and a reporter for the weekly St. Albert newspaper, the Saint City News.
When I looked at and "navigated" the site, I almost broke down in tears. First, let's look at the home page.
There is a paragraph of introductory text. They declare themselves the source for online news. I can't tell you how good the paper is because I don't live in St. Albert, but they are giving the site way too much credit.
They mention that their site is totally interactive, which really isn't true, and that they have hyperlinks, as opposed to just links. You can interact with the staff, sort of kind of, and they tell you to look at their "arhives." That's right, a newpaper website has a mispelling on their front page.
Oh, and you can get the newest version of the paper e-mailed to you. Just as well, no sane person would want this on any RSS feed.
I'll look at the stories later, right now I will navigate through the site. you know, it's bad when I can make that distinction.
I'll click on newsroom. It opens up a new window. If this were a vlog, it would no longer be appropriate for children...that is just broken. It has contact information for letters to the editor, news tips, sports, entertainment, and events. Four of the five e-mail addresses are the same, but it is a small newspaper. They also have fax and phone numbers, which is okay. It seems you can't e-mail them about reprints and that you need to call them. I'm being very understanding about this page.
The next on the list is advertising. This too opens up a new window. The first thing you see is an ad to subscribe to the online edition, which I'll get to at the end. It severely bugs me is is the part that nearly made me cry.
It page is just an ad to advertise in their paper. It has a links, one to the rates, one for classifieds and one for garage sales, both of which are pretty much the same thing with the rates directly on the page.
Click on delivery, new window. I will never drop that no matter how many sites I review... It's a simple site, just has e-mails for starting delivery and for stopping it in case of vacation. And a phone number for become a delivery person.
Now I click on current issue. This is bad. It opens the home page on the different window. I was already on the home page when I clicked it, so it just linked me to the same page on a different window. The same thing happened when I clicked on back issues, which means that it doesn't have an individual page for those two (if so, why list them) and that the arhives only consist of four issues before the current one. Incomplete words to indicate incomplete archives I guess.
Contact includes the same list of employees and a few e-mail addresses, what one might expect from such a page.
The worst part about the different windows is that if you click on the different pages on the side in the second window, it stays on the second window. It doesn't give you a third one. Why even have a second page if you can do that?
Now comes the moment of truth. I will look at the current issue of the paper.
I click on the simple versiom, digital anywhere, and it takes 20 seconds to load on my computer. This is not a slow computer.
I zoom in so it is actually readable (does anyone else have a problem with this?) and what I see just shocks me.
The term shovelware refers to just taking a print article and putting it online. As people read computers differently than they do paper, this can cause problems, and in the online reporting class, we learned how to write articles that are good for the internet.
But at least shovelware shows that they will at least format it for online. They will not literally take the newpaper and put it on their website. They at least put the articles on web pages, and different web pages too. I mean honestly, just go to the link up top, and right here and you will see what I'm talking about. (That link will probably die in a few weeks, but I'll check)
Their so-called links are to other pages in the paper and to advertisers who already have the web address in the ad. This is just disgusting.
It gets worse. Remember the annoying ad I wrote about earlier. This is it in it's entirety: "Subscribe to the weekly online edition which looks identical to the actual paper!" Yes, they are advertising proudly that their online paper is a digital piece of junk that is worse than shovelware.
Heaven help us from bad web design.
At the end of my online reporting class, we had a special guest come in. He was a recent graduate of the class and a reporter for the weekly St. Albert newspaper, the Saint City News.
When I looked at and "navigated" the site, I almost broke down in tears. First, let's look at the home page.
There is a paragraph of introductory text. They declare themselves the source for online news. I can't tell you how good the paper is because I don't live in St. Albert, but they are giving the site way too much credit.
They mention that their site is totally interactive, which really isn't true, and that they have hyperlinks, as opposed to just links. You can interact with the staff, sort of kind of, and they tell you to look at their "arhives." That's right, a newpaper website has a mispelling on their front page.
Oh, and you can get the newest version of the paper e-mailed to you. Just as well, no sane person would want this on any RSS feed.
I'll look at the stories later, right now I will navigate through the site. you know, it's bad when I can make that distinction.
I'll click on newsroom. It opens up a new window. If this were a vlog, it would no longer be appropriate for children...that is just broken. It has contact information for letters to the editor, news tips, sports, entertainment, and events. Four of the five e-mail addresses are the same, but it is a small newspaper. They also have fax and phone numbers, which is okay. It seems you can't e-mail them about reprints and that you need to call them. I'm being very understanding about this page.
The next on the list is advertising. This too opens up a new window. The first thing you see is an ad to subscribe to the online edition, which I'll get to at the end. It severely bugs me is is the part that nearly made me cry.
It page is just an ad to advertise in their paper. It has a links, one to the rates, one for classifieds and one for garage sales, both of which are pretty much the same thing with the rates directly on the page.
Click on delivery, new window. I will never drop that no matter how many sites I review... It's a simple site, just has e-mails for starting delivery and for stopping it in case of vacation. And a phone number for become a delivery person.
Now I click on current issue. This is bad. It opens the home page on the different window. I was already on the home page when I clicked it, so it just linked me to the same page on a different window. The same thing happened when I clicked on back issues, which means that it doesn't have an individual page for those two (if so, why list them) and that the arhives only consist of four issues before the current one. Incomplete words to indicate incomplete archives I guess.
Contact includes the same list of employees and a few e-mail addresses, what one might expect from such a page.
The worst part about the different windows is that if you click on the different pages on the side in the second window, it stays on the second window. It doesn't give you a third one. Why even have a second page if you can do that?
Now comes the moment of truth. I will look at the current issue of the paper.
I click on the simple versiom, digital anywhere, and it takes 20 seconds to load on my computer. This is not a slow computer.
I zoom in so it is actually readable (does anyone else have a problem with this?) and what I see just shocks me.
The term shovelware refers to just taking a print article and putting it online. As people read computers differently than they do paper, this can cause problems, and in the online reporting class, we learned how to write articles that are good for the internet.
But at least shovelware shows that they will at least format it for online. They will not literally take the newpaper and put it on their website. They at least put the articles on web pages, and different web pages too. I mean honestly, just go to the link up top, and right here and you will see what I'm talking about. (That link will probably die in a few weeks, but I'll check)
Their so-called links are to other pages in the paper and to advertisers who already have the web address in the ad. This is just disgusting.
It gets worse. Remember the annoying ad I wrote about earlier. This is it in it's entirety: "Subscribe to the weekly online edition which looks identical to the actual paper!" Yes, they are advertising proudly that their online paper is a digital piece of junk that is worse than shovelware.
Heaven help us from bad web design.
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