NASA Launch is GO

NASA... the source of dreams and exploration for years. The one government organization that spends its money to better mankind and explore something bigger then ourselves. The one organization that has given us such things as composite materials and "space-age" technologies. The one organization that should always be taking a leap forward has taken one small step backwards, and one giant leap backwards for website design and technology.

I was never really all that impressed with the NASA website of the past:



I found it somewhat difficult to navigate and they really did a great job of making you explore the search for the information your looking for. Great if you have a lot of time to kill and your interested in spending more time searching for what your looking for then reading about that thing. But now...



So... who is the target audience for this website? What possessed the people behind the design of this site to have meetings and decide that this would be a good idea? I do give them a hand up however for focusing on standards and accessibility more with the new site then the old but seriously now? I don't dream of greater things and new technologies looking at this website. Instead I envision a tired old has been trying to be hip and cool. It's one thing to try and be like others, but when your in the space industry and the entire world looks at you as a leader of space exploration and pioneering I suggest you spend a little more time with information management. I also suggest you ditch the local science museum exhibit look and color scheme and focus more on minimalism. After all if your traveling into space the last thing you want is unnecessary cargo that could endanger the mission.

Now that my personal rant on how terrible the re-design of www.nasa.gov is, I hope to hear from some of you how you feel about it. I will sum up my feelings with a qoute from the world of tomorrow.

"Space, it seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."

Weather for Sale

Driving into work on Thursday morning I heard an interesting story on NPR. Ok so they have lots of interesting stories but this one struck me because just that morning I had been thinking about the topic for the past couple of days. Here is what the story was:

Marketplace' Report: Weather Channel Sale
Day to Day, January 3, 2008 ·
The company that owns the Weather Channel might put the network up for sale along with nine daily newspapers. The channel is expected to sell for close to $5 billion dollars. Madeleine Brand gets the forecast on the sale of the Weather Channel from Marketplace's Sam Eaton.

Why is this interesting? Well if your like me I check the weather often and I use www.weather.com to do so. This is what your presented with as your first screen.


I have always had problems with using this website. I still manage to get the weather but it is so much work. Aside from the terrible overuse of advertising, the site is poorly designed and the layout, if you can call it that, screams "Please dont use me!". I can only imagine the usability nightmares that reside behind this mess and what a screen reader does when you visit this site. My biggest complaint of all are the rollover menus, they are like taking the Double Dare Physical Challenge.

Trying to find the correct information your looking for on the site is near to impossible also. Having to scroll through more advertisements then weather related information is again a real problem. I'm sorry but I don't see how someone who is trying to see if it is going to rain or not will be interested in refinancing their mortgage or choosing a dancing shadow to show how much they like credit cards.

So with one of the last privately owned cable channels, The Weather Channel, going up for sale, and with potential buyers such as Comcast and Time Warner, what is in store for the new weather.com... if there will even be one. I think all we have to look forward to is full page, intrusive, click to close ads and a quest to find out about the weather. It seems even the weather has sold out now at days. Long live the outdoor thermometer in your back yard!