links for 2011-09-14

Interesting post, and interesting to note the heavy customisation of the tools. But...Question: Has Tumblr changed journalism, or does it just enable different ways of publishing?

Perhaps the most alarming part of this story — aside from the silly idea that a Swedish furniture chain could unilaterally put a stop to the many woodworkers and designers who are still building robust bookcases despite this flimsy hysteria — is how quick so many alleged professionals jumped on the Economist‘s lead without bothering to check it out with IKEA. Indeed, cultural journalism has become so lazy in recent years that The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, The Week, Time, The Daily Mail, and The Consumerist all ran stories repeating this misinformation without bothering to investigate. Not less than a decade ago, such unpardonable amateurism would have earned at the very least a knuckle rap from the ombudsman.

Should we be worried by this, or be the first to welcome our new robot overlords? And seriously, if things like this offer an efficient way to add value to your publishing mix by turning untapped data streams into human language, surely that’s worth investigating?

It appears, as well as getting this, I need to find some excuse for the Guardian to send me to Munich, where there just happens to be a Kraftwerk 3D installation. Any UX conferences or meet-up groups there?

"The news industry can’t simply automate away its duty to respond to users. Small publishers and bloggers for the most part understand this, and – more crucially – so do our users. These are human beings at the other end of the internet, talking in our spaces, and we need to start treating them that way. As an industry, we are terrible at this. We want people to comment but we don’t want them to say anything we don’t like. We don’t offer sensible commenting guidelines, and we don’t lead by example. Rather than stepping in and talking to people when they harass or abuse other users, we try to automate their behaviour away. We mistake attention-seeking behaviour for abuse; we mistake problems of civility for problems of identity. We don’t listen to readers when they try to talk to us. And then we complain that they won’t behave."

"In his There Is No Mobile Web presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville TN, Jeremy Keith outlined why Web designers and developers need to embrace the flexibility inherent in the Web especially in today’s multi-device world."