Category Archives: Work

News/Journalism, Work

My day job

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Well, I talked to my boss and got the green light to post about work-related things. I doubt I will need to worry about it, but seeing that this is my personal space, I will still disclaim that my comments are entirely personal and do not represent the views of my employer. There.

So, in case you didn’t know already, my job is the web designer for Minnesota Public Radio. (Wikipedia has a pretty nice entry if you’re unfamiliar.) MPR is foremost a network of radio stations based on three services: news, classical music, and alternative/eclectic music… but it’s really much more than that. MPR has quite a robust offering of news and features apart from the radio content — much more so than most radio stations (public or not) — and it is very akin to working at a newspaper company (or so I’m told).

We actually recently did a redesign of the site just a few weeks ago, and are pushing out things in manageable chunks. Today, for example, we pushed out the new design to our weblogs. (My “other job” is as a contributor to one of said weblogs, The Bleacher Bums, which is all about baseball, which is a big deal right now if you live in Minnesota.) Most of what I do has to do with the presentation of the news content, creating interactive elements (sometimes complementary, sometimes entirely web-specific) and crafting the numerous sections, projects, and general interactions of the site.

The news aspect is only one part, which is part of why it’s such an interesting place to work. I also do work with American Public Media, which is the brand under which MPR produces and distributes public radio programming for other stations around the world. I’ve designed a handful of sites such as Saint Paul Sunday, Pipedreams, and American Mavericks (which won a Peabody, by the way) and been a part of a lot of interesting projects.

So there’s news, there’s music, and there’s ideas, design and presentation. I’m a huge fan of all of those things. If you are too, check out my bookmarks and future posts on this weblog.

Anything in specific you’d like me to talk about?

News/Journalism, Web Design, Work

Well-designed news sites

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Over time I have bookmarked news media sites that I find particularly well-designed. In particular I like to have the home page be the largest factor because of all that it usually has to cover, but I am also interested in well-designed “common” pages, such as a simple news article or collection/index of news articles. I am posting them for posterity’s sake, but also to hopefully garner some suggestions from the audience on sites that I am missing out on. These could be television, newspaper, radio, strictly online, or perhaps even something loosely based on any one of those. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • BBC

    I actually liked their previous iterations better, but this home page is still an exercise in clarity and simplicity, given the scope of the organization. I wish more people could sell designs like this to similarly-sized companies.

  • Bayersicher Rundfunk

    Nothing particularly breathtaking, but definitely organized and fairly uncluttered given the circumstances.

  • Australian Broadcasting Corporation

    An excellent example of an organized bevy of text links. Could use some design polish, but it is very skimmable (is that a word?)

  • Chicago Public Radio

    Nothing spectacular here, but a decent sense of design and restraint (although possibly because the rest of the site is fairly shallow.)

  • Deutsche Welle

    The top navigation, map, and graphical arc are a poor use of real estate, but the rest of the page is templated and fairly well kept. This site would probably go downhill real fast if it had banner ads.

  • dradio.de

    I love the boxed grid system, the simplicity of the navigation, and the choice of HTML over graphics in alot of places. Although some might argue the grayscale color scheme is a bit boring, I like how they use blue/red combo to both make the radio services stand out from the gray, and also connect the radio services from the top navigation to the right content column. A terribly clean gridded design.

  • Schweizer Radio DRS

    An excellent grid system on several pages. I particularly like the display of the radio services across the middle. Although I’m not a fan of color-coding every section of a web sites, they at least handle it well by termpering everything with alot of gray. The news stories need some help, and those photos in the bottom right of people with headphones frighten me.

  • Inc.com

    For all the ads and ad-like content on the homepage, I can still skim fairly well. The icon system and font size/color variety help alot with that. I love that header bar. Great design on the home and story pages, especially with way too many ads.

  • International Herald Tribune

    The poster child for out-of-the-box news story thinking. The clippings feature and the customizable three-column pageable story text have been around for years, and people are still trying to copy it. Amazing stuff. Clean, simple, excellent grid system. I don’t think I’m alone in this, but I totally love the serif headline with sans text. I’m also a sucker for horizontal line backgrounds, good icon sets, and (if you hadn’t noticed it yet) grayscale color themes.

  • Lawrence Journal-World

    The poster child for news site innovation in (at least) the U.S., along with it’s sister site lawrence.com. Decent grid system and color scheme, but I also wish they would use HTML more often, like for the “services” block, and for all the section headers on the page like “latest stories” and “local sports”. (By the way, what the hell are “top ads”? Who are you kidding?) I like the potential of the very large graphical news block at the top, but I’ve never seen it executed to much effect. The photos and accompanying display font text are lacking. Can’t get enough of the dynamic weather graphic.

  • MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk)

    I absolutely love the cropped horizontal photo space on the home page. The simple navigation, grid, and color scheme aren’t half bad either. I like the balance of HTML text/navigation and graphics/photos.

  • NDR (Norddeutsche Rundfunk)

    I’m a big fan of the top navigation bar with the logo, photos, sharp colors, and subtle rollover links. Great grid, good typography. The double-wide photo space on the first story in a list is a nice touch.

  • WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk)

    Lots of spacing, big text, and thumbnails. The icon system could use a little work, but at least they have one. A very clean design, with a good balance of text and graphics.

I will add more comments to the rest of these as I get more time…

Please add suggestions in the comments!

Music, Work

Thoughts on playlists and iPod usage

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Random personal notes on this “article” in the New York Times on how people use playlists and randomization:

  • This entry is an excellent instant reaction to the piece. Why are such simple functions (shuffle, smart playlists) so unknown and mysterious?
  • Mr. Angus (although somewhat fruity) is creating playlists for specific purposes. Good!
  • Smart playlists will not solve the randomization or conspiracy theory problem. Smart playlists are based on completely objective data. The only way you could never have an “incorrect” song play is by providing/accessing metadata about uses and meanings of particular songs.
  • Saving the uses and meanings of songs is, oddly enough, exactly the kind of stuff that I am doing with Mixmatcher. As people add songs to playlists, it is relating that song with some sort of subjective metadata. Over time, you will be able to get an understanding of what a song means, along with its possible uses based on the playlists it has been added to, without having to know the song beforehand.
  • I really like the idea of TuneTags, which is basically creating adhoc metadata (ala del.icio.us) for songs. Let people tag them however they want to describe them, and let the aggregation sort out what is the most popular way of tagging. (“Kill them all and let a Norse God sort ’em out!”) I think the missing link with this idea is how to use this newfound data: What is the best way to make a mix for Mr. Angus bike workout? Create a smart playlists based on songs tagged with “upbeat” and “biking”? Are people really tagging things that way?
  • I really like the possibilities of Mixmatcher or TuneTags for disovering new music. There are literally millions of songs that are published every week. There is no way to even begin picking the relevant (although not necessarily always “good”) songs out of that haystack. Even if only a small percentage of people tagging or sorting songs, I think it would still be providing enough data to make the songs useful to rest of the population. It would at least level the playing field, instead of 99% of those songs being obscure in a month.
  • I think tagging ala del.icio.us might end up being easier and thus more popular, but that alone wouldn’t be giving people the final end product they desire. Even if you do give people another way to access the music, you still don’t have the things that mixtapes do well: structure and specific song selection, often done by a trusted individual.
  • I don’t want to say it, but Audioscrobbler is another app that I don’t think fulfills its potential and/or does a very good job of its mission priorities (if I am to go by what their site tells me) of a) building my musical profile, b) matching me to people with similar tastes, and c) personalized music recommendations. Part A is being handled very well, but Part B and Part C are basically one section or page of each user profile. Does anyone know of any apps built using their data?

    (This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: Two women are eating at a restaurant. One says, “This food is terrible,” and the other woman says, “And such small portions!”)

This making sense to anybody?

Music, Work

Mixmatcher rolling along

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Mixmatcher is rolling along quite smoothly. The Belgians and Brazilians have begun to take over. Playlists are being made, and descriptions are being written. The XML feed of songs is isn’t showing every new song added in Bloglines, although the XML file has all of them in there. (Anyone know why? What is it checking to tell if there were changes? Is it reading a particular date? Is it expecting a certain type of date?)

Music, Work

Mixmatcher open for business

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I don’t know if I’m feeling masochistic or something, but for some reason I am going to open up Mixmatcher to you all, right now. Possibly for only a limited time, possibly forever. We’ll see how it goes. (Sorry, no circa 1998 launch party.)

What is Mixmatcher? Mixmatcher is part mixtape database, part playlist generator, part contextual music metadata database, part new way to discover new music, and part human collaborative filtering. Mixmatcher is a collaborative playlist environment, where people give meaning to songs by adding them to playlists. The more playlists that a song gets added to, the more meaning, contexts, and potential uses it gives that song. You’ll see when you get there. All comments and such should go to ben@magnetbox.com.

Ideas, News/Journalism, Web Design, Work

Posting purgatories and the public transparency and cross-pollination of links and sources

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I am beginning to enjoy my array of available posting purgatories, along with the public transparency and cross-pollination of links and sources. Now I can have multiple levels of filtering, yet I (and everyone else) can see the original sources, such as my personal editorial process: scan all the content sources (bloglines.com/public/magnetbox), filter out the interested portions (del.icio.us/magnetbox), and decide what the general public gets to see (magnetbox.com).

I can’t help but think it would be amazing if content sources (news organizations?) did sort of the same idea, so that people could decide for themselves what level of news/filtering fits them best.