A couple days ago, my tech-savvy grandparents e-mailed me a link to a story in the Gazette, my hometown’s newspaper and location of my summer 2003 internship.

While the Gazette has long been negligent in its online efforts, the reporting and photography at the paper has always been top-notch, garnering many awards for the 15,000-some circulation publication. Within the past two years, the Web site finally received a nice face lift, which was subsequently gutted for an awful replacement earlier this year. At least they enabled comments.

As circulations plummet, ad dollars evaporate and American newspapers head toward bankruptcy, what has the brilliant leadership (read: publisher George Hudnutt) decided to do for the Gazette? Start charging for content online.

George, where have you been for the past 18 years? (more…)

• Spot.us seeks donations for election project — Spot.us is seeking a freelance journalist to do some fact checking for it during the upcoming election season. But being that it’s a community-funded venture, they need your help. People in San Francisco: toss a few dollars their way to help this community journalism project get off the ground. It could be our/your/journalism’s future.
• Yahoo developer divines Web 3.0 future — He sees it as desktop apps, an extension of the current AJAX experience. Tim Berners-Lee sees it as the semantic Web. No doubt both will be strong components of the continuing metamorphosis of the Web.
• Yahoo giving coupons to replace dead DRM tracks — As mentioned before, Yahoo’s DRM-based music service is dead. Originally the search company suggested music users burn all their tracks onto CDs and copy them to their computers. Now it’s offering free replacement downloads via Rhapsody.
• Cheap usability testing software — Usability software Silverback is only $50 and comes with a 30-day trial. It allows you to record your test subjects as they navigate about your site. Usability testing is a science upon itself and requires very specific techniques. Still may be worth using after reading up on the volumnious subject.