I hope to relaunch SDHO.org over the summer. The old blog will remain accessible at http://log.sdho.org, but all comments will now be closed.

I was emphatic about Jessica Peterson for a reason. Over the past month, our freshy reelected state senator Tom Neuville has been blogging his “skepticism” on global warming.

You’ll have to read through the posts yourself for the full effect, but here are the juiciest quotes I found:

“The economic consequenses of ‘fixing’ global warming, thru the implementation of Carbon caps and carbon credit trading, are profound. Let’s be sure the problem is real before we try to fix it.”

“I won’t be supporting the ‘Carbon cap’ bill in the Minnesota Senate this year. I simply don’t accept that global warming is caused by humans. The cost of the ‘cure’ would be worse than the disease.”

Quote #2 especially; I guess we wouldn’t want to deplete our regional stadiums and gas subsidies fund state budget with frivilous little things like conservation.

But here’s the whole of what he’s written, judge for yourself:

• Global Warming: The next issue where Politics Trumps Science?
• Global Warming: There are many Skeptics
• Global Warming: The 1500 year warming cycle
• Global Warming: Environmental Effects of CO₂
• Global Warming: What do the Proponents Say?
• Global Warming: Al Gore has some explaining to do!
• Global Warming: What is the Average Global Temperature?
• Global Warming: What do Religious Groups Think?
• Global Warming: The “Skeptics are increasing”
• Global Warming: “The Great Swindle”

Those titles actually read very fair and balanced — I can’t say the same for the content of the posts.

Take for example this article — How the Brain Rewires Itself from the January 29 issue of Time Magazine.

Now, look at its online companion:

There’s a lot of information being displayed in the online version, some of it very aesthetically interest, but most of it of little relation to the article (though I mustn’t speak ill of an article linked on the page, entitled “Is the tide turning in Britney’s favor?” — after 85 years, Time is finally living up to its potential).

The online issue also has the very same graphic seen in the print one. And at a whopping 360×265 pixels. Take technical hangups out of the equation for a second: Why is the image so small? Why isn’t the text integrated with it? Why is the biggest visual point of this page the Time masthead and not the article itself?

Especially that last question. Even as I’m looking at my own blog, the header for the site name stands out significantly more than the title of the entry. I would imagine it goes back to thinking the basic structure of a page (esp. <h1>, <h2>, etc.). And I suppose in 1996, that was a good excuse, but we don’t have that limitation anymore: we can easily manipulate the final seen product without altering the information-providing XHTML.

And don’t be afraid to bend the rules a little bit. Standards advocates are constantly fretting about the 3% (that’s a gross and likely inaccurate estimation) who use text browser or screen readers, that we tend to neglect the gross majority whose browser use CSS and Javascript and other things we can use to enhance our sites. I’m not saying web developers should go Frontpage on their users, but let’s not forget the 97%.

Two websites that are the most visually impressive to me: Gucci and FRONTLINE. Gucci deserves applause as well for doing incredible effects without resorting to Flash (yeah, I did just kind of contradict my last paragraph, but I really really hate Flash). And FRONTLINE does exactly what I wanted to see from magazines like Time: the graphics are large and eye-catching without distracting from the content. And the features clearly take precedent over the fact that it’s from FRONTLINE or PBS.

I recently completed an extremely simple-looking redesign of Charter Vision — in fact I generally pride myself on my simple designs — I guess I justify it because A. Charter Vision’s print issue wasn’t that visually engaging either and B. there would be too much work involved to create a unique design for each story, but B is everyone’s justification. I’m going to have to keep this in mind when the next design of Redirect comes…

I know, it’s like watching like a stabbing in slow motion.

I’ve complained and complained about the forced migration of Flickr accounts into Yahoo’s ID system, but now that they’ve set a deadline, I’ve given it up.

Life goes on.

But the sun is shining!

None of the three is especially breathtaking to me, though Edwards (despite my general distaste for him) has an extremely well designed splash page. I’m not a big fan of the rest of the site. And somebody’s trying to be a little Web 2.0 — he has links to pages on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr plus an RSS link and a signup for SMS alerts. This is just downright tacky and it reflects poorly on the seriousness of the candidate (to be fair, this isn’t a serious candidate — it’s John Edwards).

Obama has the best-looking site overall, though it’s quite barren other than that. Don’t have much to say other than that. And I appreciate the lack of MySpace links.

Rodham Clinton has the most content-heavy website, to be sure, though it’s looks oddly like a slightly glossier version of JohnKerry.com. The webcast seems like a corny idea, but as I’m watching it I kind of like the idea. My only real complaint is length — it’s only a half-hour, I’d like to see one hour — and the other is just techincal: loading a Java applet and a Real Media plugin nearly crashed my browser. One interesting thing about her website is that the word “Clinton” just isn’t visible on the website at all.

18:19 gripe: “I support all kinds of ethanol” :-O

One thing I’ve noticed in all three sites is the heavy amount of video content. In 2004, we saw campaign ads online but little more. Now we’re seeing mini-documentaries about each candidate. I guess I like it. One thing I dislike is that all three sites are HTML 4 — and none completely valid.

iWork

There’s little doubt that Apple will release a new version of iWork — as they have the last two years — this month. What exactly will be contained in said new version is up for speculation.

Hope: iWork ‘07 will include a spreadsheet app. Pages (word processor) will include a format that’s practical for actual word processing. Apple will ditch their stupid proprietary formats (that a whopping 0.001% of other people on the world can actually read) and make OpenDocument standard. They’ll ditch the stupid 20-bazillion-step export menu and allow you to save as different formats under… and I’m just throwing this out here… the Save As menu?

Expect: iWork ‘07 will include a spreadsheet app (this has been well documented on Apple rumor sites. TUAW ran a story earlier today including what could be a real screenshot of the app — speculatively being called “Numbers” and “Charts”). Pages will include a format that’s practical for actual word processing. Apple will keep their dumb proprietary standard as default, but they’ll support OpenDocument (this is based on the fact that builds of Leopard for some time have been able to view ODF files in TextEdit — Apple generally seems to do things like that across the board. The reason I don’t expect it to become default is… well… this is the company that brought us “FairPlay”). I don’t know about the Save As thing. Saving stuff under the Save As menu is pretty wild and crazy.

iTunes

Hope: iTunes 8 will be released. Unlike iTunes 7, it won’t require intentional suppression of the gag reflex. Apple will allow you to “trade in” all those crappy 320×240 videos they sold for the year between fall 2005 and fall 2006 for the much nicer 640×480. iTunes 8 will allow you to rip and burn DVDs. FairPlay will be eliminated.

Expect: Nothing.

Leopard

Leopard is, of course, the successor to OS 10.4 Tiger. I have to say, I was incredibly unimpressed with what I saw demoed at WWDC this past August. (In Leopard’s defense, I was watching the keynote over a choppy internet connection — the reality distortion field might not function properly in such an environment)

Hope: Leopard will have a completely new finder. Software Update will have an API, meaning apps could seamlessly tie their updates into it — no more downloading updates to update Microsoft Update or constantly monitoring sites to see if a new version is out. One simple, easy update. Spotlight will search OpenDocument and OpenXML (Microsoft OpenDocument knock-off) files. Leopard will allow you to remove idle drives without ejecting them and without data loss. Safari will ditch the rather obscure KHTML and instead pick up the far more standard Gecko 1.9 (when it’s done).

Expect: Leopard will have minor overall visual improvements. Spotlight will search OpenDocument and OpenXML files (again, I think if it’s going to TextEdit, it’s going everywhere). iChat will allow you to communicate with more networks than just AIM and Jabber. Safari will see some overall refinements. Most (but not all) remaining brushed metal will be removed and replaced with either Illuminous (see below) or Unified.

Fear: “Illuminous” (i.e., Windows Aero). Also, anything that looks like iTunes 7.

.Mac

Hope: Service will be made free.

Expect: Nothing.

iPhone

Until I read TUAW’s predictions I was really confident iPhone was coming. But I guess I could see it going either way now.

The Best

1. Shaun Inman.com/post

This design I discovered only just last week, but it’s one of the most innovative (and certainly easy-to-read) designs I’ve ever seen. Not sure quite what to say about this though.

2. Nudo — Adopt and Olive Tree

It’s clean, cheerful, and I love the way they use the tree graphics.

3. Blacktree

I’m not super-impressed with the subpages, but I’m very fond of the home page. I also enjoy the contrast between the conservative serifed logotype and the more modern Gill Sans. Now if only the HTML were tidier.

4. Veerle’s Blog 2.0

It’s colorful, happy, and I love it.

5. Slate

My favorite magazine relaunched their site over the summer after years on a stale old design. The new layout I like: it’s comfortable to read, and the home page is able to present a crap-load of information in a way that’s easy to digest. And though I ordinarily despise drop-down menus, I like what they’ve done for their navigation. Two complaints though: their forums are incredibly difficult to navigation and sign in to. Also, Slate has begun splitting longer articles on to multiple pages.

The Worst

I’m feeling a little-bit toothless for only picking sites of major companies. But trust me, they’re all justified.

1. Apple

It’s not that it’s a inherently bad design, it’s just time for a change. Apple makes the best operating system out there and some of the best hardware — both with breath-takingly good design. So why is their site still stuck in a 7-year-old design?

2. America Online

(Or I suppose just AOL after their… uhh… “brilliant” April rebranding) This website is just plain ugly. I also find it sluggish and confusing (how come when I enter my zip code for weather it can’t take a wild leap of faith that I want that same zip code for local events? Why does the “News” headline have a picture of cutest mutant animals of 2006? I can customize the page, but why can my password only be 6 to 8 characters long?). Memorably non-standards-compliant to boot.

3. MySpace

I suppose this goes without saying, but MySpace is awful. The home page is a dizzying array of ads and the user pages are a pandora’s box of bad HTML and even worse CSS. And now companies seem to have decided to jump on the Web 2.0 train to hell — Chili’s restaurants has been advertising their web address as http://myspace.com/chilis on their telivision ads for the past several months.

4. American Broadcasting Company

I congratulate ABC for being the first major network to have complete episodes online, but their website is horrible. When I first loaded it up, my computer attacked me with a loud video that played without my consent. When I browse deepr, I realize that the subpages all seem to be using an older design. And why are they still redirecting me to a subdomain of Go.com (the long-dead web portal that CNET named one of the top dot-com web flops)?

5. MediaNewsGroup

Straight out of 2001, the country’s perhaps least-favorite media company also has one of my least favorite websites.

Though this may be one of the less objectionable applications of the death penalty, we must always remember that it is always a fundamentally unacceptable punishment. It still says murder is okay, as long as the victim is a bad guy. And even despite his past actions and I’m sure even current thoughts, this man being hanged is still — if for that moment — a helpless 69-year-old man.