Tales of Hoffman

Web Designer Wanted

Are you a web designer? Want to work for a small team looking to accomplish big things? Have a yen to design the best web portal for an award-winning high speed Internet service? Want to work for me? ;-)

We need a web designer. If you've ever looked at Yahoo, MSN, or even Optonline.net and thought "I can design something better than that," why don't you prove it. You can see the full Web Designer job posting here.  Feel free to reply directly to that or  -- even better -- email me directly with a resume and a link to your portfolio (stevehoff --- at --- mac --- dot --- com). 

Buying a Tech Gift? Listen to Uncle Mark

Mark Hurst has updated his excellent Uncle Mark Gift Guide & Almanac. If you need to give a tech-related gift this holiday season and you're just not that familiar with what to buy, head on over and download this smart and pithy gift guide. It's free, well written, and WAY more useful than about 100 interactions with the slacker-dude sales person over at your local Best Buy.

Too Much Ajax is Abrasive

It seems like creating a To Do list application is the new way to earn your coding stripes and try to attract a little attention. These task lists never did much for me anyway, but I see how some ultra-organized people can get use out of them. Let's just say that my path to project completion is just a little more...random.

The latest To Do list app to get the love from some commentators is Remember the Milk. Neat name. Unfortunately, in an effort to jam this thing full of Ajax-y goodness, I think we have arrived at the moment where the programmers of this app have jumped the shark. Now, I like the interactive capabilities of Ajax as much as the next guy. As an old-school web guy, I marvel at the ability of this new approach to bring more of an application-type feel to web pages. But, in this case, it truly feels like Ajax for Ajax sake.

Is anyone else put off by the jumpy interface here? As I mouse over items, there are other areas of the screen flippin' and flashin'. It's like trying to keep track of the acrobats in a three-ring circus. Is an item selected or just highlighted? And why is that stuff over on the right changing in a seemingly random fashion? It got to the point where I felt like Yosemite Sam firing his gun at Bugs Bunny's feet, as I was just mousing around to see how I could make the interface "dance."

If you are planning an app on the web, by all means, use Ajax to your users' advantage. But if you go this far, take a step back. Take some stuff out. Back off. Simplify. Your users will thank you for it.

Apple's Next Step

  I'm not all that excited by the new iPod. Yes, it's cool. Yes, it plays video. But for my life right now, it doesn't....fit. Oh sure, a few months ago, when I had a roughly 45 minute train ride each way each day, I would have snatched this thing up faster than a monkey eats a banana. But now, my one-hour-each-way commute is in the car and the Mini iPod adapter/Radio Recorder combination works just fine thank you very much.

The bottom line for me though, is Gizmodo is SO right, here. This is the first step in Apple's attempt to dominate the home entertainment space. Take FrontRow, Apple's new 6-foot interface (that's an interface that's designed to be seen on your TV -- 6 feet away -- rather than a computer) and put that baby on an HD capable iMac mini with DVI out and now you are talking. It will happen. And I will be clicking the "buy" button on the Apple store faster than you can say, "Didn't they try this once before with the Pippin?"

Dr. Lundberg is Wrong on Medical Blogs

Dr. George Lundberg has posted a video editorial over at Medscape last week titled, "Is There a Place for Medical Blogs in a Medical Media Company?" His answer, unfortunately, is "no," and I disagree (no surprises there!).

I have the utmost respect for Dr. Lundberg, with whom I worked pretty closely while at Medscape. As a matter of fact, I helped develop the idea and format of these video editorials while I was there. But on this topic, I think he's wrong.

After a lengthy list of interactions from the past that he feels are similar to Medical Blogs today, Dr. Lundberg finishes with the following:

But since the blogger may be the author, editor, publisher, advertiser, critic, reviewer, and owner -- all at the same time -- and fake the whole thing, a trustworthy medical media company may embrace unfiltered blogging at its even greater peril.

Actually, I believe for all those reasons, it's important, compelling and maybe even vital that a leading medical media company embrace the medical blogging world. The key word in the sentence above has to be "unfiltered". Of course, any time a media company gets involved in anything, by the very nature of the terms, it's not going to be unfiltered.

But, the killer feature of the medical blog world is it's transparency. The trick for a medical media company such as WebMD (the parent company of Medscape) is to try not to be a filter, but to be the check against the "doomsday scenario" (faking it) that Dr. Lundberg describes. If WebMD and/or Medscape were to present the leading medical blogs -- unfiltered, but verified -- they would be exposing these compelling and vital writers to the much wider audience that they deserve.

Here's the task -- Bring the best medical bloggers to your unmatched audience, but don't get in the middle. Then you'll be doing a service to all parties.