Chris Heisel

The News Hour has a piece about how more users and publishers are taking to digital replica editions.

I haven’t personally used them, but I’ve seen demos. I don’t particularly like them. As a designer, I think they suffer from some usability issues.

But if some readers do like to use them, then this is a case where both the business side and the users can win.

I’m going to venture a guess, that digital replica users are most likely converts from the print product — probably in the older demographic range. If that’s the case, I can understand why they’re taking to them.

As an industry, we’ve trained generations of readers about our print edition’s user interface. The replica editions leverage the users past experience (albeit with some differences) with the ease of digital delivery.

I know some folks in the industry don’t like the replica editions — but in keeping with my different strokes view of electronic publishing, I say why not have them as an option.

A replacement for a Web site (and RSS feeds, and e-mail, and whatever comes next) — no. A product in addition to a traditional Web site — why not?

Ok, three.

I’m still alive, but busy. I’m hoping to post more regularly soon. I’m working on a big project at work that I hope to announce soon, and I’m also working on a big personal project… stay tuned for details

What Do I Know, a fellow Atlantan, makes a good observation: There’s no Verdana and Georgia with IEMac. Two fonts that us Web design folks have taken for granted may soon disappear from our toolbox. Mac users are moving to Safari, and in Panther you don’t have to install IE. Also, M$ plans to move IE to a pay model, so even future users may not have those fonts installed…

I’m just starting to get to know Pharrot, but these numbers (courtesy PHP Everywhere) make me feel even better about the future of PHP. Some folks seem to think PHP can’t scale (not so). That issue aside, interpreted languages do have a potential for bottlenecking in the fact that they’re parsed each time. Caching helps, but the idea behind Pharrot really excites me.

Well, I’m back from my interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Here’s what I learned:

• AJC.com is a really cool site
• They have a really great staff, with whom I’d love to work
• Dress shoes should be purchased for comfort, not just looks
• When you’re really late for a flight, those shoe screenings can really crimp your style
• I’m still so nervous about flying, that walking halfway to the plane with my shoes in hand still seems an acceptable security measure
• I really want this job — everyone I talked with seemed to have views and goals that totally meshed with my own
• Atlanta is a very cool city — but not in the temperature sense
• I really, really want this job
• Edit: Moveable Type doesn’t handle list-item tags well when you have the “convert line breaks” option checked.

I’ll, of course, update as soon as I hear anything.

The dearth of postings here has been due to: a.) teaching taking up more of my time than I thought, b.) thesis work taking up more of my time than I thought and, c.) the job hunt taking up more time than I thought.

I promised updates on the job hunt, so here they are.

I’ve been surprised how few (recent) postings there are on the journalism jobs boards. That said, I’ve found a few leads and sent of packets with resumes and print design clips to some papers and I’m waiting to hear back.

I had found a few openings for Web designers online, but I guess I just haven’t known where to look. If you know of some good sites to look for online jobs, (preferably in journalism), then feel free to e-mail me or to post them in a comment below.

I was suprised to get an e-mail message from Julie Albertson, who works at The Atlanta Journal Constitution. She heard from Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman, who had seen on my blog that I was looking for a job.

She contacted me about a possible opening at the Constitution, which is where a friend of mine, Adrian Holovaty, used to work.

Isn’t the blogsphere wonderful?

I’ll be sure to most more regular updates and let you know what happens with the Constitution.