Monday, November 11, 2002

Salon Premium's Alternative 'Payment' Play. I've long been a believer that two-tier approaches to content-centric Web sites would be a good way for them to stay afloat and even become profitable. Back in early 1996 when I was Director of Technology at Salon.com, I advocated a premium membership approach loudly and often. After I left, the idea was implemented (though not the way I had recommended and not in a way I necessarily support). However, I decline to link to premium-content articles from my Web log or my Web site because I don't think it's fair to my readers to send them off to read a teaser on an article that they then can't read without paying something. Today, I saw a link in my News Aggregator to a Salon piece interviewing Bob Kerry on the subject of why liberals (like myself) should back a war on Iraq. I respect Kerry and I wanted to see how he made his argument. When I got to the article, I found it was a premium piece. But I noted for the first time that I could choose to watch a Mercedes-Benz commercial rather than paying for the content. Nifty idea. So I decided to try that. It worked pretty well. The commercial stopped loading at the third page for some reason and I thought I was in a sort of catch-22. But if you drill down a couple of links from there, you actually get a "day pass" to all of Salon's premium content even if the commercial didn't for some reason work for you. Sterling idea. I'm sure some people will claim the commercial wasn't viewable and get the free day pass anyway, but in the process they will see Mercedes' name a few times and then the premium content displays Mercedes ads, so it seems a fair trade. 9:54:21 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

Hey, Macromedia! You Didn't START This!. In an undated essay, Macromedia's President of Products Norm Meyrowitz describes the vision behind his company's Contribute. He's a bright guy and he's right in most of what he says. I think Contribute will be a good...er...contribution to the evolution of Web editing and maintenance. But when Norm says, "We believe that Macromedia Contribute starts the next wave of the web[~]the low-maintenance, read/write web[~]where each user can participate actively in what's out there, rather than be a passive recipient," he's just wrong. Zope has been enabling Web builders to create sites their users can maintain without fear of breaking things for a long time. I suspect other CMS solutions including Manila have also been allowing non-professional Web users to be Web writers for some time. So while I have no doubt Contribute will be cool, well-designed, and highly functional software that will move this important marker along, I think Norm and Macromedia should acknowledge the shoulders on which they stand. 9:24:43 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

A Veteran's Thoughts on Veterans' Day. Today, Monday, Nov. 11, is Veterans' Day in the United States. It's a day when we honor the boys and girls, men and women, who served their country in the Armed Forces. While there is certainly mindfulness of those who died in that service, this holiday is more about those like me who, thankfully, were not called to give the last full measure. I did back-to-back tours in Vietnam in 1964-66. I am not always proud of that service. Following my five years in the Army, I became a peace activist and I remain to this day a pacifist at heart. Vietnam was not a glory war. It was a gory war, a war of mistakes and attrition, a war with no clear goal, and as such frustrating to fight and to try to understand from any perspective. I had many friends who left the U.S. for Canada to escape the draft. I respected their moral choice then and I continue to do so. I had lots of friends who were part of the anti-war movement. I respected their moral choice then and I continue to do so. I had many friends who chose to go to Vietnam and fight. I respected their moral choice then and I continue to do so. It was clear to me when I returned to the United States and remains clear since then that most Americans are embarrassed at Vietnam, don't want to talk about it, and certainly don't respect the moral choice my brothers and sisters made then and don't understand it today. It's all good. The war wasn't a choice any of us made lightly. It wasn't even a choice most of us made wisely. It tore this country apart and it brought it together again in a new era. As with all historical events, it was purely neither good nor bad because it wasn't pure. It was messy and nasty and confusing and ugly and painful and uniting and cleansing. Ultimately, it didn't really conclude, it just sort of fizzled out. God has used it for peace. Those of us who are veterans who served in the belief -- mistaken or otherwise -- that we were preserving peace did so in good faith. Those who saw their role not as preserving peace but as wreaking havoc had their own agendas. At the end of it all, the qustion is what kind of men and women we became as a result of the crucible of that experience. I do not of course presume to speak for anyone else. But the Vietnam experience shaped me at a deep level and has given rise in later life to my pacifist and spiritualist nature. And for that I am grateful. Not proud, but grateful. 12:18:47 AM    Add your viewpoint [ comments so far]

© Copyright 2002 Dan Shafer.