Feeling down?

Feel the need for pure steel under finger?
Air guitar not satisfying the fix?

 http://guitarshredshow.com/

Rock on.

I’ve always had a real hard time with certain advertising phrases. Some people have a knack for reducing the English language to meaningless dribble. Take for instance the following formerly meaningful terms:

• World Famous
• Homemade
• Natural
• Best

Today I was on a quest for liquid refreshment. We’re not usually soda drinkers, but some friends had extra, so I pulled out the bottle of 7up they brought over.

News flash: 7up is “natural“.

What the crap. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to be joking me. Since when is high fructose corn syrup natural?! A few gems from wikipedia reveal how naturally fresh this drink really is.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a form of corn syrup which has undergone enzymatic processing in order to increase its fructose content.

The production process of HFCS was developed separately by Japanese and American researchers in the 1970s.

High-fructose corn syrup is produced by processing corn starch to yield glucose, and then processing the glucose to produce a syrup that contains fructose. First, cornstarch is treated with alpha-amylase to produce shorter chains of sugars called oligosaccharides. Then, an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains…

Okay, enough. Hm… about at the part when it starts talking about Japanese researchers is where my dreams of little boys and girls picking fresh fruit from some alpine vegetation are crushed by a bucket of enzymes in a processing facility somewhere in Tokyo.

I guess if Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is “Homemade”, then 7up is natural as pine nuts. Geez, people.

An interesting read at dlib.org that cuts through the buzz regarding folksonomies. Seems like a really nice take on how tagging gets really screwy when people come at indexing from different cultural, academic and even linguistic backgrounds.

I’m not sure where I stand on the issue, but here’s the most critical argument leveled at folksonomies:

Folksonomists are confusing cataloging structure with personal opinions and subsequent social bookmarking. These are not the same thing, and they need to be separated.

Case in point, how would you tag an article about the war in Iraq?

What’s the point of a CMS? I’ve really been trying to figure that out, because here is the usual pattern for CMS users:

1. Company X Wants a web site.
2. Company X looks to hire a web developer/designer. In-house people who know the web would be perfect.
3. Said designer is “too expensive”.
4. Company X finds CMS XYZ, which is only a few grand, spent only once to implement.
5. XYZ is purchased, because it allows everyone to share the load, without knowing HTML.
6. XYZ is deployed, and there is much rejoicing.
7. X uses XYZ for a time, but becomes more web savvy.
8. XYZ is found to be missing some nifty features that X wants, and non-HTML knowing staff members step it up.
9. The non-HTML knowing staff gets tired of trying to make updates. By this time, they all know basic HTML.
10. XYZ is labelled internally as inflexible, and the new guy gets assigned to do all of the updates.
11. Back in his lair, the the vendor for XYZ counts his gold pieces.
12. X gets tired of the inflexibility of XYZ. Even though they’ve sunk in some cash for upgrades, they drop XYZ.
13. Said designer is hired, and the corporate site is fresh, nimble, and flexible.

Yeah, so maybe I’m biased, but there really is no reason for a large corporation to have a CMS. Ever. Maybe they have some sort of twisted point existing as training wheels for smaller organizations, but I don’t think I’ve seen many succeed.

When is the last time you heard someone talk highly of the CMS running the company website?

Time for a bit of a redesign. Please pardon the dust. I’ll be back online here in a few. Let me know what you think.