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December 25, 2004

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone that celebrates Christmas has had a happy and joyous holiday -- i know mine was pretty good, and i was happy to be at home with my family. One of my gifts was Leo Laporte's 2005 Technology Almanac. It's 365 days of tech news, from the common to the unusual :)

Getting this book reminded me of when Leo hosted The Screensavers on TechTV. Did your cable subscription have TechTV? I really enjoyed that daily show, as well as most shows on that channel. Then earlier in 2004 it was bought by G4 TV, which is a game network, and they changed the whole feel of the station. Even worse, Leo and his co-host on The Screensavers, Patrick, were fired! The show apparently still exists, but i miss the original... Apparently others agree with me:

Posted by MaTT at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2004

The Digital Divide Among Websites

Today during some cheap TV advertisement, i heard a website address being trumpeted by the announcer, as if that would somehow make the product seem better or the company more professional. And that made me think of how some companies or organizations (many in fact) are just beginning their foray into having an online represenation of themselves, and many others have none at all (the hardware store i worked for as a teenager doesn't have one, no offense tho ;) ).

Contrast this to the endlessly iterative refining that other companies such as Amazon or Microsoft or eBay do to their websites. These places have dedicated budgets just for the website; they have a team of talented designers, usability experts, coders, and architects; some even conduct their entire business online.

So, this made me realize that there is an ever widening gap (or 'digital divide') between these companies and the places that are first defining themselves on the Web. Just as there is a 'digital divide' among countries that have the latest in technology (like the U.S. and Japan) and the ones that are struggling to get any type of IP telephony (like parts of Africa), there is a similar condition among organizations. Coming from a school that is training a host of web designers, usability experts, and overall information professionals, my colleagues and i will have an increasing range of website 'maturity' to choose from. Some may want to work for an Amazon or a Google, doing cutting edge and stressful work. Others may want to work in the mainstream, doing major corporate sites but not where the company's business is 'down the tubes' if the website is not perfect. And still others may want the challenge of bringing websites to beginners, where simply having their Word documents translated to HTML is amazing to them.

All of these levels have their rewards, and i think it is interesting to see that even tho you can't just slap some HTML together and compete with Amazon, you can make some simple usable webpages for someone's small business and benefit their organization in ways they never imagined.

Posted by MaTT at 02:39 AM | Comments (1)

Life is full of changes

You may have noticed lately (or maybe not, b/c i don't have alot of readers) that i haven't been updating my blog much at all. That is because mostly, i don't have alot of time or even desire to write publicly about little things that come to mind, that make me happy, or i find interesting. Blogging like that was fun for a short while, but as they say, one should write about what one knows, and thus the change to MaTTech. I know technology, that's what i read about, study, and am interested in, and so that's what i will now designate this blog to be about. All the old stuff is still around at its new home: http://www.matthewbrian.com/happy/ but will most likely not be updated.

Sorry to disappoint those readers who enjoyed Matt's Happy Adventures, but i didn't want to have a neglected blog, and i think i will be more productive with this new topic.

Therefore, welcome to MaTTech :)

Posted by MaTT at 02:31 AM | Comments (4)