Reading On/Off The Screen

A quick glance at the Guardian website today reveals a few separate but related articles, here, here and here. The common theme: reading from a screen.

It interests me because my last two posts have been fairly long and opinionated; perhaps not ideal for the computer screen. I wonder if I've really got the hang of writing for the Web.

I read and write a lot in my spare time; so far that's been the strongest influence on my blogging here. I've included pictures and blocktext in recent posts but a more radical approach might be in order...

The idea of the blog of the week I suppose is that I can look at what kinds of blogs are out there and what makes them successful in my (so far long-winded and prose-y) opinion. To date, we've only had three but two of them have been webcomics.

There's something about the comic strip form seems to lend itself really easily to the screen. It's visual, it usually gets to the point quickly and that point is normally funny. It'd be interesting to see if something like a longer narrative could be pulled off in this medium though.

Currently, I can't imagine trying to read a novel on one of the new e-readers coming onto the market - I'm too fond of paperbacks. What about you?

Blog of the Week: Very Small Array

Okay, I missed one last week. I was busy tidying my room, washing my hair, going on dates... (Yeah right; it was work as usual).

Here's Very Small Array. Brought to us by Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl fame (which'll one day be a blog of the week here too, probably), this one is updated pretty irregularly.

As with the previous blog of the week (yes, two weeks ago now...) only the newest post ever shows on the front page, normally featuring an interesting visualisation of some obscure data. Somehow, most entries manage to be both quirkly funny and bizarrely poignant at the same time...

Check out this one, for example (as ever click to enlarge/expand):




And for the confused or bored, let me elaborate.

Craigslist is a site featuring free classified ads and discussion forums. The most well-known (or notorious) section of Craigslist is the "Missed Connections" area which features posts from people who thought they had some kind of brief but unarticulated spark with someone, usually a stranger, usually in a public place. For example:

You were on the Central line and I got on and we made eye contact a few times. You seemed very tired, but you still looked cute. You had on a brown knit sweater on top of a plaid undershirt, and some cute loafers.

The ads are written in the hope that that stranger (or whoever) will read it and recognise themselves described in the post and reply and then that something will happen...

The site is used all over the world, though it was started in America, and the locations where "connections" are missed are, as you'd expect, very varied.

So the above image shows the names of places where connections were most frequently missed by State, displayed in the actual States themselves. While I have no idea what the black patches mean, there's something poignant about the data being presented in this way with the stark white-on-black. Instead of being given their proper names, States are labelled with the names of corporate coffee houses (like Starbucks) or popular shopping destinations (Wal Mart) and I can't help but picture lonely people wandering around with shopping trolleys or sitting quietly desperate with coffees, surrounded by so much stuff but still hoping for something as simple as a "connection"...

I'm not sure if this counts as webcomic or not but it's pretty powerful stuff and I can't imagine it existing in any form quite so potent and far-reaching as a blog.

Blog of the Week: xkcd

Well, why not one a week? Assuming I read enough blogs that I consider worthy of attention, it shouldn't be any trouble. I suppose, if I run out of ideas, I can just go all self-referentially postmodern and link to this one.

But this week I want to mention a different kind. Normally, when I'm explaining what a blog is, either to an individual or during a talk, I use the analogy of a diary where the newest entry is at the top. I don't know that that's a good explanation really but it gets people started - they understand that the blogging tool does the dating and sorting for you and I think that's the crucial difference from ye olde "Web 1.0 "websites.

Only blogs don't have to be in journal or diary form at all. They can be webcomics like xkcd:


One I thought might appeal to academics - click to expand/enlarge. Although my recent favourite, which contains some swears and is therefore mildly NSFW, is here.

Which is why I think it's worth a mention here. When you visit the website, the newest strips always appear on the front page and then there's a "Prev" and "Next" button for you to navigate your way through other comics. It's updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and you subscribe to a feed as with other blogs.

Also, it's funny. Which should've been reason enough really.

Tip: Hover your mouseover each strip for a follow-up punchline. It means misinformed screenreaders but they were never very good with webcomics anyway.