They have wide, thin mouths, that by some conspiracy of anatomy and lighting appear to extend beyond the borders of their faces, improbable and frog-like. Irritated, emaciated amphibians skulking in plain sight.

“The soup is good, but it’s a little salty.”

Hunched over bowls of chicken noodle, holding court on the finer points of the food service industry. “A lot of diner cooks are smokers. It screws up their sense of taste. They wind up using too much salt.” It’s the wee hours, and they share a table squirreled away in some odd corner of a still odder hometown.

Someone’s hometown, at least. Not mine, certainly not yours. The local diner’s resting place, long since gone ragged.

Later, they don their jackets and walk out back, a scene strewn with empty boxes, grease-streaked and forlorn for lack of their former contents. Moving past the smokers who prepared their meals, all parties puff away silently and eye warily.

“If anything happened to my eyes, man, I’d be screwed.” And yet they’re already malfunctioning in their natural state.

“They’re called glasses. Don’t be so dramatic.”

Make of them what you will.

You open the door of the shop, start to walk in.

But before you can even pass through, the girl behind the counter blurts out a question.

“If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”

“Uhhh…”

Bopping along to the humdrum store music, she notes your hesitation, adds a qualifier. “Could be anytime in history too.”

“Umm, well—”

“Me? I’d be on Soul Train!”

“Damn,” you think. Now that’s a good answer.

“I guarantee there’s non-crap out there.”

Lanky and famously kinetic, Jeff Jarvis is holding court at the BusinessWeek offices in midtown Manhattan, conducting a teaching session entitled, “The Art and Science of Blogging.” The room is filled with reporters, editors, and the likes of me; 50-some-odd “institutional” bloggers in all. I’m in the middle of the crowd, nodding my head in agreement as vigorously as I can without making the folks around me suspect I’ve got a medical condition.

Same As It Ever Was

If there really is such a thing as a genuine tension between Old Media and New (for those of us manning the news desks of the former) it’s centered squarely around the meme his quip was addressing. The response to an oft-uttered, yet specious ad hominem about blogs that goes something like, “But there’s so much crap online.”

Oh, really? There may be truth in that, but compared to what? Let’s take a look…

As I type this, the most recent issues of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Columbia Journalism Review, Good, Mother Jones, and (of course) BusinessWeek, are sitting on my couch. Yes, I will read all of them. It’s a serious commitment of time and energy. Will I read each and every article? Absolutely not. Because, while there’s plenty of gold in them thar pages, there’s also plenty of noise.

And that’s different from my interaction with online sources how, exactly?

Only by virtue of the fact that online technology enables greater volume and velocity. It merely extends existing conditions in media, accelerates them. (And as with many great technological leaps forward, the scaling-up happened so suddenly that it blocked the obviousness of these parallels for many of the participants.) These factors don’t ipso facto speak to quality. Don’t confuse volume with ratios. (And while we’re at it, don’t confuse a technology—blog software—with a writing style. But we’ll table that discussion for now.)

It’s a variation on a great zinger someone shot my way over a cup of coffee once: “Crap is media agnostic.” (Rearranged for those with delicate sensibilities, it could run, “Every medium has equal potential to inform poorly.”) Turn on the TV or walk into the local bookstore and you’ll find much the same as you do online (as Jarvis went on to point out). Plenty of twaddle to go ‘round. Plenty of value too, if you know what you’re digging for.

How Do I Work This?

And therein lies the point. In order to be a savvy consumer of those magazines sitting on my couch, or any other medium, I need to develop a style of looking. Otherwise I’m destined to drown on the business end of the metaphorical fire hose—whether its dead trees or ephemeral electrons doing me in.

People already know this. Ask most savvy consumers and they’ll tell you they never expected everything being shoveled their way would be fit for consumption. They understand the need to be informed consumers—finicky eaters—in order to pan the gold dust out of the stream. (Mixed metaphor alert.)

So why do people forget this when they start talking about online? Why are sweeping dismissals still so common?

This Is Not My Beautiful House

My own pet theory is that the filtering mechanisms people have built up for other mediums are so well established that they’ve become transparent. Nearly automatic and unconscious, some don’t even know they’re doing it. Then this new package arrives (same contents, mind you) and suddenly they’re seeing the forest for the trees again. Taking in the totality of what it contains, they’re shocked.

Seeing the same phenomenon in a new form forces people to witness it with fresh eyes. It’s a lot like coming home after a long vacation and finding your home a little unfamiliar. (“Wow, we really should throw a fresh coat of paint on these walls…”)

But don’t confuse the content with the conveyance. It’s the same old story, just in a different box. There’s piffle, there’s pay dirt, and then there’s the part you choose to pay attention to.

If you’ve been to BusinessWeek.com lately, you may have noticed our article pages sporting some nifty new functionality. One of the first fruits of our partnership with LinkedIn, we’ve officially taken the wraps off the LinkedIn Company Insider tool.

Now a quick click inside our articles tells you if you’re connected to folks at companies in the news. Reading a BusinessWeek story about Ford’s effort to sell Jaguar? Click. Pop. Look, Ma! Turns out you’re connected to 8 people at Ford—through folks you already know on LinkedIn.

I’m jazzed about this not just because it showcases the mighty network effect of LinkedIn right where our users benefit the most from it, but also because it’s an article tool that’s gloriously contextual. The results you get spring directly from the specific news you’re reading.

The Usual Suspects

Let’s face it, tons of news sites out there sport a box, zone, region or seeming jimjam somewhere on their articles that’s chock full of “article tools”. It’s pretty much obligatory. These are the links that “do something” with what you’re reading. But the options haven’t shown much in the way of new thinking for years—to say nothing of being truly compelling. A link to print. A link to e-mail. A link to share on the Web 2.0 flavor of the month. Zzzzzzzz…

It’s not that these items don’t serve a purpose. It just bothers me intensely that these tools typically don’t affect or interact with the content in terribly meaningful ways.

Well, consider this our little effort to shake off some of that dogmatic dust and get folks thinking about these tools again.

Savoir Faire, Everywhere

The tool itself is added via the DOM, which is worth noting for those of you out there that are (or aren’t yet) hip to Web Standards. When it came time to to do the deed and flip the big switch, all that was needed was a change to a single script file to add this feature to thousands of articles on BusinessWeek.com—past, present, and future. And by “thousands” I mean, “all of them.”

That’s huge. No Maalox moments charting CMS changes. No heinous text grinds. And no compromising on showing new features on some pages and not others. All this equals time and money saved (and made), in more ways than one. If you’re not clueful yet, do yourself a favor and spend a little quality time with folks that can help you out. If this exercise proves one thing, it’s that Web Standards are far more than a hobbyist’s pursuit—they’re a competitive business edge.

But that’s enough talk for now. Go check out the new tool and have some fun with your soon-to-be-expanding network!

Watching the news the other day, flickering images of Kosovar independence, I couldn’t help but drift back to memories of an old friend of mine.

A seasoned cameraman with a major broadcast network, I had already lost track of all the warzones he’d blown through by the time he landed in that region. It was already tearing itself to bits, and his crew covered the turmoil out of an armored truck adorned with a latticework of bullet holes. Multiple calibers a standing reminder of the bounty on the press.

Close to the end of his tour there, on a beautiful day, he did something he knew was stupid. Leaving his flak jacket and helmet in the truck, he walked up a hillside to set up his equipment, silhouetted from behind by the sun. The camera was rolling as the sniper fired at him.

Watching the footage it captured, you see the silent valley he was filming. Then you hear the fugitive streak of something evil searing past. Then the image buffets stiffly, the sound of muffled panic and bodies scrambling to the dirt audible in the background.

That was everyday life in Kosovo.

He’s on the other side of that image. The bullet never touched him. But the pressure wave as it skimmed past his head was enough to leave him with permanent hearing damage. He was one of the lucky ones.

I’m glad my friend made it back.

But it seems that, even when they heal, some bones refuse to mend straight.

“Wait. Back that up. What did he just say?”

It’s the end of the week and I’ve finally gotten around to watching the 2008 Macworld keynote, dutiful geek that I am. Jim Gianopoulos just whipped a Family Guy DVD out from under his jacket and tossed off that 20th Century Fox will be including pre-ripped file copies on their DVDs, transferable to your iTunes library with a click.

(Before you jump down my throat about this hardly being new information, yes, I read all the rumors and saw the leaked screenshots weeks ago just like everyone else. But when it comes to Apple rumors—as with all retail tech rumors—I adopt a decidedly won’t-believe-it-until-I-can-buy-it attitude.)

Corporate sanctioned, studio facilitated Fair Use?

These kids might finally be getting it.

Asterisk

Okay, okay. So it ain’t perfect. It’s still wrapped in DRM. It only works within the iTunes/iPod universe. (These choices really boil down to issues of majority user behavior and coopetition, but there’s enough there for a whole other lengthy conversation. And no, this isn’t technically the first time. But the use case is so radically different it might as well be.)

Any way you slice it though this is a walking, talking Fair Use—the red-headed stepchild of the media world—delivered by none other than an über-corporation. In recent years if leviathans like this have deigned to cast their glance upon Fair Use it’s typically been to scream, “A witch! Burn her, burn her!” (Pun intended.)

That a major studio is publicly (albeit implicitly) admitting Fair Uses even exist is pretty singular in recent media history, let alone the notion that they’re going to hand one over to Jane Q. Customer at no extra charge.

This is what’s known as establishing a precedent. Quietly, tentatively, but unmistakably.

Please, sir, may we have some more?

Jeffrey Zeldman, discussing Web Standards and spending some quality time in the BusinessWeek.com recording studio.

Think of it as a soundtrack for Blue Beanie Day.

A few weeks back the inimitable Jeffrey Zeldman carved some time from his hyper-busy schedule to drop by the BusinessWeek offices and discuss Web Standards. And while he was in he was nice enough to sit down for a podcast interview with our very own Innovation of the Week series.

Far from simply being entertainment for Standardistas, the interview neatly encapsulates the arguments behind Web Standards in a lean, mean twenty minutes. Still can’t get that certain special executive in your life to spend some quality time perusing Designing with Web Standards? While the world waits for Hollywood to option the movie rights, they can give this a listen instead. All from the comfort of their countinghouse (maybe even using that iPod thing they’ve heard the kids talking so much about).

Think of it as one more arrow in your Standards advocacy quiver. A spoonful of audio sugar to help the medicine go down.

“This request is coming in really late.”

“Yeah, I know. Can you gin something up?”

“Probably. Maybe something like the one we did last week. It would work well for this.”

“Which one is that?”

“The two column layout. With the image running across the top of both columns. Something like that.”

“Hmm…”

“It would look like—got a pen? Thanks. Here… like that. You could drop the copy in right there.”

“Well…”

Pause.

“I know it’s really late, but can you mock it up for me? I’m really more of a visual person.”

“You know that implies exactly the opposite of what you intended, right?”

“What?”

“That means you can envision it without actually having to do it.”

Another pause.

“Like if I said I was a ‘plumbing person,’ I could conceive of how to set up a water heater without actually cutting pipes and sticking them together. But what you’re saying is you lack a visual imagination. Think about it.”

Someone is grinning now.

“Stop being a jerk.”

Anyone that’s stepped into the blast radius of a major redesign can tell you a thing or two about typical user reactions. From riding the bomb Slim Pickens-style to lab-coat-and-safety-goggles observation, I’ve weathered my share. Make a fundamental change to an existing product and reaction tends towards the swift and merciless.

Turn & Face the Strain

In every redesign I’ve ever been involved with user responses have followed a predictable pattern. You can group them into two broad categories: Negatives and Positives. (No creativity here—they’re exactly what they sound like.) Negatives tell you how much your update pulls a serious vacuum. Positives testify that you’re the bee’s knees. Both come from self-selecting users, since contact requires some kind of effort. (No matter how small—it’s what highfalutin types call a “barrier to entry”.) Kicking in the moment you pull back the curtain on your zippy new gewgaw, it looks something like this:

Quantity of positive and negative user reactions over time.

Almost instantly there’s the glut of reactionary feedback—the Who Moved My Cheese? set. Glean what you can from these comments, look for common threads, but remember not to let that five-hundredth “WTF?! Ur new design iS teh suck,” e-mail get you down. That’s the important bit. As designers, developers, and all around “Builders of the Interwebs” we pour or hearts and souls into our projects. (At least if you’re like me you do.) Even ironclad stalwarts can’t help but have their outlook dimmed a bit by that first feedback wave.

Stick it out though and—if you’ve done your job well—you’ll be through the squall, sitting pretty at the other end of the graph soon enough. Eventually the rest of the crowd chimes in. And the remaining negative comments shed their emotional edge, taking on a more constructive character.

Keep the wheat, lose the chaff. Quickly, lest you stew in it.

Something in the Blood

Earlier today I got to wondering what makes the Negatives so vocal compared to their Positive peers. Even when your audience research finds nothing but giddy users you don’t hear from them much. But even small sets of Negatives don’t have trouble making their presence known.

During an interesting chat Chris Fahey set me on the right track by pointing out something I’d overlooked: Negatives want to affect change, Positives are confirming assent. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but he’s absolutely right, and it explains a lot about their respective behavior. Negatives have the motivation to act since they want something done. Positives stay mum because, ultimately, they want nothing done.

The BusinessWeek redesigns just keep on coming—but this time around it’s our print colleagues taking the wraps off a shiny new package. Magazine creative director Andrew Horton and the folks at Modernista! have been hard at work retooling “the book” from top to bottom, and the finished product hit newsstands Friday. Go check it out. You could say I’m a little biased, but I think it’s been a long time since a business magazine looked this good. Clean layouts, distinctive typography, and a new no-nonsense minimalist logo.

News Types

My current office obsession is poring over the new typography. For purely selfish reasons of course—I can finally start using these new faces online! And there’s plenty worth digging into here.

First up is Berthold’s Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica’s direct ancestor. (Indeed, while Helvetica was celebrating its 50th birthday this year, Akzidenz was gearing up for its 110th.) BusinessWeek’s cut includes the great condensed version that the new logo is set in. It’s a genuine retooling, not some clumsy squashed knockoff of the regular face.

Three flavors of Akzidenz Grotesk: Regular, bold, and condensed bold—as seen in the new BusinessWeek logo. Love that open capital Q.

For body copy there’s Cyrus Highsmith’s Quiosco, a typeface constructed specifically for newsprint legibility. Which it achieves, with personality, thanks to quirky inner and outer letter shapes. It also has what I consider to be a must for large swathes of newsprint copy: a full set of titling and text figures (aka, “old style” numbers).

Quiosco by Cyrus Highsmith. Quiosco comes in four weights (named One, Two, Three, and Four, appropriately enough) for different printing conditions. Quiosco One pictured here.

Type wonks may recognize Quiosco from the 2007 Type Directors Club Competition. Unlike Akzidenz, this font is barely into its second year of existence. A newborn paired with an 1890s Realist old-timer. Historical juxtaposition makes my inner typophile smile.

Kissin’ Cousins

The only real change for the website involved—naturally—swapping in the new logo and tweaking the navigation. I was never really happy with the old “grey box” highlighting, and always saw it as something we’d eventually revisit and refine. Fortunately, the new magazine made this a cakewalk by setting up a strong graphic language to work with.

The BusinessWeek.com navigation before (left) and after the recent update.

The resulting navigation is cleaner and clearer by far. (So much so that some folks think we redesigned the site again!)

With time I’m sure we’ll be making more style nods to each other, where appropriate. The idea is that the magazine and the website do what makes sense for their respective mediums, but remain squarely synced with the overall BusinessWeek brand. Cueing off of, but not slavishly imitating, each other.