Kinky for Governor Website: Hitting the Right Notes

As a follow up to my last post, the Kinky Friedman for TX Governor website is the kind of candidate website I’d like to see more of. It’s a good example of a campaign site that is both professionally done and a true reflection of the candidate’s personality.

It’s working too: 169,000 Texans have signed a petition to get Kinky on the ballot in November as an Independent and he’s outraising the main Democrat in the race....

Can Ugly Design Work?

I came across the trippiest political campaign site I’ve ever seen today. Check out Eric Jon Gunderson for Congress (D-MT). We’ve got a litany of design offenses here: background music, spinning logos and clip art. We’ve also got some features that are just bizarre: an animated illustration of someone playing guitar in front of a tree and a section labeled fun that includes a typing test for reasons beyond me....

Web Design Matters.

The first ten years of the Internet are over. The web is no longer a new thing. It is an ingrained part of our lives.Studies show that users form their first impression about a website in 1/20th of a second. What are they going to think if that time is spent watching Flash animation load?...

RSS and Ajax about to go Mainstream

According to new Microsoft employee Niall Kennedy, Microsoft’s Ajaxy new website, Live.com, will serve as the default homepage for users of Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Kennedy says that hundreds of millions of computer users around the world will visit Live.com when they load up their new version of IE for the first time....

User Interfaces: East Coast vs. West Coast

I recently had an insight about the interfaces of two extremely popular social networking websites: MySpace and Facebook. These sites allow you to create a page on their network where you can post a photo and profile of yourself, allowing your friends to contact you online. However, these two specific sites take very different approaches....