From a discussion of Slashdot vs. Digg:
Digg’s comment systems suck. Hard.
Digg’s pages are full of bloat, 50+ javascript files, slow loads.
Slashdot has extreme fanatics for *nix systems.
Slashdot won’t ever host a decent MS article.
Digg likes to pretend to hate MS, too.
Digg’s editor-free system brings some real turds floating to the top.
Slashdot’s moderated system keeps things clean (but *moderated*)
Digg is full of brain-dead, script-kiddie-wannabes.
Digg’s recent spikes in activity, that will not sustain.
Slashdot is a good source for *nix stuff, that’s it.
Digg is a good source for 500 CSS articles, 324 Photoshop tutorials, that’s it.
Digg steals slashdot articles.
Slashdot steals digg articles.
Fark steals from both.
Both steal from Fark.
All three get them elsewhere.
Nobody has it right yet.
My take: slashdot still has in-depth commentary, but less content. Digg has great interactivity, but a limited focus (why doesn’t it have categories for less techie subjects?). Slashdot used to be cool, but now you can find this kind of group commentary anywhere. Neither site offers original content, and slashdot offers too little content (although I guess they have to set limits somewhere). Slashdot’s advantage comes purely from its webtraffic. If they had only 1000 readers, the site would collapse upon itself for lack of participation.
Sadi on stylistic standards for ebooks. I’m working on a similar piece for teleread soon.
What they (ebook authors) failed to do before doing this was to tailor the book for the Internet. Make the paragraphs shorter and thus easier on the eye, and the sentences shorter and snappier– again, easier on the eye and easier to read….
In fact, the only author I can think of who could cross both genres is Marguerite Duras, whose paragraphs are just short enough and whose writing comes in and draws back like the sea lapping the shoreline–an ease of flow.
One thing, one of the few books that had originally been a print book that really worked as an e-book was the first version of Alice in Wonderland; and that was Alice’s Adventures Underground (Lewis Carroll) which worked perfectly on my pocket PC or PDA.
…
In other news, calling a random payphone can be fun.