Well, certainly not for any particular personal expression reason. I was more interested in learning basic hypertext. It was back around '95 or '96 (the year escapes me now).

Heh. Well, as of late, in the last couple of years, to try and introduce some sort of balance to the local web scene. Most sites around were concentrating on a standard formula, a journal and a webcam, and then espousing to one and all how unique they were. I decided that everyone was taking themselves far too seriously.

Very little of my actual personality or life is accurately portrayed on anything I've uploaded to a web server. This is the distinction most people have trouble coming to terms with. The whole "the web is an extension of my personality and feelings" camp have always had a hard time understanding what I've written doesn't have to be taken at all seriously. They jump to conclusions and automatically assume a personal attack is my motive. Which it's not. It's simply another form of publishing and conveying thoughts and ideas.

Well, I took it down briefly at about that time more to score political points. It was all rather tenuous, but one Steve Pullman (www.orari.co.nz) was behind that. I didn't want him scoring any points at the expense of the owner of the fs.co.nz domain, who is a good personal friend of mine. One thing I did achieve by taking it down and replacing it with a brief survey asking people what their opinions were on tv journalist's salaries was Holmes pulling the short segment on my site. Which all just goes to show how biased traditional media is.

I think that the pendulum is swinging in a better direction as far as the web is concerned. There are some really good efforts sprouting up all over the place nowadays, sites with substance. I think the traditional media - and by that, I'm talking about TV1 - 4 news and most major newspapers - have probably always lacked balance. They follow a particular and distinct formula designed to pull ratings at the expense of actually providing timely, balanced news.

The problem with Netguide's awards is the fact that they tend to pick sites based on "wow" effect. The award given to Webmedia is a classic example. Their site is just plain hard to use. Sure, they're absolute masters of multimedia on the web, which is fine, but they ignore the basic tenet of web design - if people find it difficult to use, they won't come back. And if they have to come back, they won't enjoy it. The same sort of principle can be applied to a lot of the sites they hand out awards to. The shame is that there are a large number of sites written by gifted, talented people that go ignored - secret passage, ani moller, Aletta's journal - because they're not the latest showcase in multimedia design.

People are writing again. Writing is cool again. Weblogs have gone some way towards diminishing that - they tend to encourage short, badly-written prose - but all in all, people are beginning to realize that actual content is what people want to read. Multimedia on the web is coming of age too, as long as it's used properly. It's easier now to find fast-loading web sites that are truly interactive, and I guess a lot of that is due to advances in technology, software and hardware. It's like the advancement of the web has picked up it's pace in the last year or so.

I think there;s a definite lack of organized community within the .nz webspace, but I don't think thats a bad thing. Organized collectives tend to fizzle out after a while; a good example is the Vision Project. I actually think they were on the right track, but that kind of organized participation is probably doomed from the start. The best individual publishers in any media are, in my opinion, working on their own. Sure, a medium for exchange of ideas and collaborative efforts are to be applauded, but any rigid structure is best left in the virtual recycling bin.

I actually think that .nz is in relatively good shape. There are some good ideas and web sites out there now, and some excellent web development being done even down at grassroots level as it were; James McGlinn's UpdateFu is a prime example of what local developers are capable of. Whoops, that's James and Olivia. Heh. I think local web publishers are finally getting over the idea that they need, above all, to have a journal and a webcam. Most of them just weren't good enough writers or designers to pull it off cohesively. I'm looking forward to the next twelve months, it's going to be an interesting time.

As for another version of waste, it's a question of time. I'm busy with my career at the moment, and I don't often get the time to write anymore. If and when I do, it's going to be in a different format and subject matter than before. I don't see the need to ask people to evaluate the worth of their publishing anymore; I think by and large everyone is figuring that out for themselves and on their own.