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The Very First Web Page

Here at the brink of 2006 I took a trip back in time and visited the very first page on the World Wide Web. It came to life in 1990 and was (of course) put out there by none other than Tim Berners-Lee.

But "old" is definitely not the same as "outdated". It's kinda striking how much the 1990-web page looks like Jakob Nielsens current web site ;-)

A very happy New Year to you all.

Fewer Bloggers And So What

According to analysts in Gartner the number of bloggers worldwide will peak next year and then decrease.

At the end of 2007 there will be one hundred million bloggers in the world, reports the firm. Gartner states that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs.

To me it is pretty clear that the number of bloggers will eventually decrease as the novelty of the phenomenon vanishes. But what is far more unpredictable (and important) is the actual impact that blogs of the future will have on economy and culture as a whole. In other words the actual number of blogs doesn't say much about the importance of blogs in society.

New York Times Begins Sharing

The New York Times times today unveiled a service that allows readers to quickly post stories that they find on the newspaper's site to Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. Thus allowing readers to develop conversations about specific stories.

Newsvine Chief Executive Mike Davidson said the partnership is a tremendous boost for the small Seattle startup:
- It is one of the world's most established newspapers and we have a great amount of respect for them, so the prospect of helping their audience get more out of their news and helping The Times doing some of the new things that they are looking at doing is very good for us, Davidson tells Seatllepi.com

It makes good sense that the third largest newspaper in America implements such tools. The Web site is the most frequently visited newspaper site in the U.S., with about 10 million unique visitors per month. Let the sharing begin!

Designing for Web 2.0 - Branding Via Simplicity

If you're into design and branding on the web, you may be interested in reading my synopsis from the IT University of Copenhagen.

It's called "Design 2.0" and focuses on the trend among an increasing number of web sites to incorporate a simplistic design that typically originates from collaborative -- or so called web 2.0 -- sites.

Web 2.0 seems to have found it's own distinct minimalistic style under the credo: Less is more. Interestingly the design often contrasts the complex and thoroughly interactive functionality of most web 2.0 sites (a task that must have cost more than a few headaches for the web designers involved).

But why minimalism in an age where Flash-plug-ins are widespread and DSL-connections keep getting faster. Shouldn't we be using a lot more graphics?

Well, aside from the obvious usability benefits of simplistic design, I think web 2.0 site owners also need to communicate that their sites are different from web 1.0 where the Internet is primarily seen as just another marketing channel, sites are graphically bloated and heavily remediate print media...

Get the full story. Download the synopsis here (pdf 543 kb)

Please note that the whole thing is in Danish, though ;-)

Parents Will Be Worried

One in five American parents believe their kids are spending too much time on the Internet, CNN reports.

"According to a study to be released Wednesday by the University of Southern California, 21 percent of adult Internet users with children believe the kids are online too long, compared with 11 percent in 2000. Still, that is less than the 49 percent who complain their kids watch too much TV," writes CNN.