Percolate Blog

I like technology, but I’m not one of those people who runs screaming for my nearest electronics shop when the newest gadget comes out. For instance, I like to keep my phone and mp3 player separate. I don’t know what I’d use an iPad for. The gadget (if you could call it that) in my house that excites me the most is our Bialetti coffee pot.

Image: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2008/06/

But the LiveScribe is different. LiveScribe is giving me intense, unrivalled feelings of *WANT*.

It has a pen with embedded digital recorder and computer which, when used with special paper, records what it’s writing for later upload, and syncs those notes with what’s been recorded. For writers, especially those who do a significant amount of interviewing, this could change the world. It’s so much easier to engage in a conversation if you’re not frantically scribbling at the same time, hence why dictaphones became popular. But the joy of these is that it’s nice and discreet, not a box sitting on the table and intimidating your subject. And for someone like me who struggles sometimes to decipher their own scrawl, it would save a lot of time and confused squinting.

Not to mention that every time I used it, I’d feel like I was in James Bond or Get Smart.

You might wonder what rock I’ve been living under, given that according to Wikipedia this product has existed since 2005. In my defence, I live in New Zealand, and unless they’re from a huge corporation, we often don’t hear about things until long after they’re old news. Even in this world of instant information.

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of arguments in blog comments about the proliferation of web content, and why it brings down the reputation of everyone who writes on the internet.

A lot of the vitriol is directed at so-called ‘content mills’, those sites to which almost anyone can contribute almost anything, sometimes receiving a small (very small) payment for their efforts. Those sites contain a great deal of information, some good, some not so much. The argument against these sites is that it makes writers lazy, they earn three bucks for 15 minutes’ worth of Googling and rewriting what they find, and people shouldn’t get paid so little for writing, anyway. It’s not enough to live on! As well, a lot of people seem to have an idea that because of the nature of web writing (short sentences, bullet points, just give them the basic information without getting lyrical), good writing on teh interwebs is in short supply.

To me, this whole argument is ridiculous and frustrating. The writing community has a huge snobbery contingent. This has probably been true since language was scratched on stones in ancient civilisations.

People, listen. Just because it’s short, to-the-point, and is easy to digest, does not mean that a writer can’t get a point across, and do it well. Hemingway was famously able to tell a whole story in just six words: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. No, we are not all Hemingway (which is probably just as well, the world couldn’t handle that many emos). Yes, there is a lot of drivel on the internet. That is why at school we’re taught to critically analyse texts. Yes, great, informative, to-the-point writing can be found on the internet.

I fully believe that as more writers take the plunge and get into the web writing biz, the overall quality of this very new medium will get better and better. Maybe the snobbery against those who write primarily for the web will die out as the team gets stronger and more visible.

I suspect that too often the good web writing gets overlooked by this elitist group, because they seek crap writing to validate their point, consciously or subconsciously. Seek, and you shall find, as it were. Maybe if their efforts were focused more on ignoring the rubbish (do not feed the troll!) and constructively applauding the good, they might find less need to complain about the quality of web writing. What do you think?

Something that business owners might want to think about when they’re building or redesigning a website is why they have FAQ pages.

You come across them all the time, and usually they contain a lot of the most basic information that could so easily be included in decent copy.

Internet users have notoriously short attention spans, and putting useful information into a section in your FAQs isn’t always a good choice. Only the most dedicated will plow that far into your site – most will simply hit the back button and look elsewhere.

Of course, if you have so many questions that to answer them all in your body copy will turn your site into a lumbering beast, an FAQ page is probably not such a bad idea.

But it never hurts to ask yourself why your copy isn’t already answering your clients’ potential questions.

Because I’m a modern girl, and because of the industry I work in, I read a lot of internet forums and blogs. It’s great to read individuals sharing ideas and debates that span continents, whether I agree with them or not, and see how everyone expresses their thoughts. Some posts are hilarious, some offer brand new perspectives, others are downright poorly thought out and make me want to beat their owner with a heavy dictionary.

What really frustrates me is moderation. I do see the need for it in some situations; when spammers get into the comments, when people risk committing libel. But it does bug me to read a slew of comments berating someone for an inflammatory posting and not to be able to judge for myself because the posting is gone.

I think moderators can be a bit click-happy. Even if a comment seems likely to cause upset to the original poster/blogger, I wish (in most cases) it would be allowed to remain. Some might think that’s pretty callous of me but firstly, if you post on the internet you open yourself up to people having – and sharing – opinions about you, fair or not; and secondly, if you post on the internet, you should have some degree of accountability for what you post. So if you post something that marks you out as a complete arsehole, it should remain for all the world to see.

The security and anonymity you get behind a computer screen means that people do often say things online they wouldn’t have the guts to say to someone’s face. Maybe those people might think twice if they knew that their vomit might actually be kept.

I’m a technology philistine and I don’t see the point of Twitter.

Admittedly, I’m often one of the last to catch on to new technology phenomena: for years I shied away from iPods, and I’m still using a cellphone bought in 2004 (and have only just been convinced it’s time to replace it), but it’s going to take a lot of convincing to get me to see Twitter in the way that the rest of the world seems to.

For that reason, this blog was interesting reading for me. I have actually checked out Twitter, and I’ve found it to be largely vacuous drivel. Maybe I’m just not given to philosophising but I can go for days without updating my Facebook status if I don’t have anything to update people on, so I’m not sure how I could do it several times a day. “I’m eating raspberry jam on toast for breakfast.” “The coffee this morning is nice and strong”. “I’m doing some real work – woohoo!” “I think I need another coffee.”

I’ll never say never. But I still think I need some more convincing.