Archive for March, 2011

IE6 is a stark reminder to developers of what a Web monoculture looks like. We need to remember it.

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

The title of this post quotes Evan Prodromou.

See Internet Explorer 6 criticism for the baneful details.

Firefox broke the monoculture. Today is a good day to remember, and celebrate, as Firefox 4 is released. I’ve been using alphas and betas for many months; highly recommend.

Given the quote from Prodromou, founder of identi.ca/StatusNet and first among federated social web equals, it’s also a good idea to remember that many of the services that dominate their niches on the web are themselves monocultures. It was really great yesterday to see the EFF explain and get behind the federated social web.

Be a good citizen today — here’s another helpful and current link in that regard.

NYT digital subscription plans as Kickstarter project backer levels

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

Apart from curiosity about what the New York Times forecasts for the project and how they arrived at same, I really don’t care one way or the other about the upcoming New York Times paywall.

However, the paywall’s convoluted pricing cries out for taking the form of Kickstarter project backer levels. I haven’t done justice to the NYT plan and have done injustice to well-crafted Kickstarter project backer levels I recently admired. Apologies to all.

NYT Paywall as Kickstarter Levels

Addendum 2011-03-22: Thanks to Kickstarter for appreciating and blogging about this post. I didn’t mean to suggest “the whole thing would work best as a Kickstarter project: funding goal + tiered reward options + the assurance that you will only be charged if they do indeed survive the death of print/revolt of the internet” but that’s certainly correct! For some of the reasons why, extrapolate from Timothy B. Lee’s two recent posts on the paywall, Shoe-Leather Reporting at the New York Times and Misguided Moralism in the Paywall Debate. For a future with good journalism, Kickstarter is of far more relevance than any paywall.