Bugs first: I have a pretty speedy computer with a big screen, and sometimes articles get hung up and just won’t load. The commenting system appears to have gone berserk, completely upending a system that was driving a lot of traffic to the site. Depending on the source for videos, the dimensions of punched-in media players can be so incredibly tiny that it’s not worth even clicking “play”. And I’m not sure if this is a bug, but it sure isn’t a feature: the newly-prominent adverts pop up, spin, warp, and float inconsistently. That means that the text you’re reading can jump without any warning at all, and it’s absolutely maddening.

Design-wise, I see where they were going and I actually thought it would work at first. But that was before I realized that the prime above-the-fold real estate was going to be dominated by ads. It’s completely possible to load Gawker today and have almost the entire top half of the page flashing chewing gum graphics at you – and since Gawker usually posted photos on top of articles anyway, you end up with a weird image-on-image stack interrupted by a pithy headline. It is not a good thing when a news aggregation site loads and 80% of the page is made up of three giant images. Especially when you realize the meager amount of text left over is actually just headlines, and even some of those are sponsor-branded articles. Oy.

The article nav on the right side is good in theory, but again gets torpedoed by the ad problem. A fixed ad squats on top of the stack, hogging about 1/3rd of the column, sometimes leaving only 5 headlines below. If you’re used to zipping around pages with a touchpad, you’re out of luck: try the swipe trick on the headlines column and they’ll whiz by faster than you can read. Fall back and use the keyboard arrows, and the rest of the page moves instead of the headline stack. You end up having to go to the bottom of the page and clicking “next headlines” for the next set to be dutifully batched up without missing anything out.

As for the content… Eh, I don’t know. It’s visually annoying to have an ad jammed in the centre of the article’s body, especially when a story about sexual assault in Egypt features a sensual Diesl ad, but that’s one of those common contextual ad groaners. But where the long-form articles have made the transition all right, Gawker’s one- or two-sentence zingers (usually linking out to another source) now just look lazy instead of quick off-the-cuff postings. In the old format, those zinger-links were treated like asides nested under the headline; now you have to go to the nav column, swipe down carefully, pick a headline – and it’s a sentence-long article, clearly more trouble than it’s worth.

In the end, I’m just not visiting the site as frequently as I used to, and when I do I don’t stay long. Sometimes I hate a redesign so much it irritates me just to look at the page, but this seems to be a case of very rapid fatigue: logging onto the site, looking at a story that interests me, and then just closing the window when I’m done with that one article. No browsing, no retention, no comment-reading. The overwhelming feeling is that I’m getting much less out of this new design than I did the old one.

Weirdly, I actually don’t mind this design on io9 as much – maybe it’s because those articles tend to boast more self-explanatory headlines, or because the editors frequently write science-based stories that have wordcounts high enough to cancel out the annoyance of adverts? And the io9 advertisers are less addicted to flashy pyrotechnics, so the site’s much easier on the eyes. I don’t know what Gawker’s revenue situation is, or how vital it was to embed all of these ads so deeply. There are a lot of factors that play into site redesign, but here I’m thinking that commerce edged out user satisfaction a little too much to succeed.

There are alternative routes to Gawker content that will save you from the new, app-influenced redesign. For instance, there’s a sneaky little icon lurking right at the top of the page next to the “top story” label. Give that a click and you escape a lot of the issues mentioned above. Billed as “Gawker Classic”, it’s a hybrid of the old and the new (and I suspect it’ll end up being the default for most Gawker sites that don’t have a heavy video/graphic load after the redesign has settled more). And if you pine for actual-classic Gawker, it looks like the Frozen North held on to their version.

I’m curious what the traffic stats will look like at the end of the month; with the alternate views and international sites, Gawker could have hedged its bets enough to retain users overall. But for bored cubedwellers used to idly cruising a gossip site, Gawker may just have become more trouble than it’s worth.

So, it looks like Google’s getting into the museum game. I like a lot of things about this tool: the quick, smooth assembly of collections in a lightbox-type area is especially good. It definitely feels like it’s set up for browsing instead of serious scholarship, which unfortunately means that the Street View feature comes off as clunky, with the same odd angles that make it impossible to get a good look at the 19th Street bistro you’re supposed to meet your friend at tonight. I can only assume that the tours of the museums will get a lot more detailed, with good head-on shots of all of the paintings when you click on them.

It’s a great tool for a curious population, and I’ll be interested to see how many other museums will jump onboard.

Google’s released something called “Buzz”. Unlike Wave, which I heard a lot about and had a Gmail-like exclusivity to it, Buzz only hit my radar 12 hours before it suddenly popped up as a Gmail category. No effort required.

As far as I can tell, Google Buzz is what would happen if the Twitter bird smacked into a Facebook Wall. And then fell into my Gmail inbox, bumping into Wave on the way down. Is this a panicked reaction to Wave not catching on as quickly as Google hoped? Maybe — or maybe it’s been designed as an onramp, hoping to get people used to the format before promoting them to full Wavy privileges (Buzz shares a lot of UI elements with Wave).

Buzz does get rid of one of the major Wave hurdles: the separate email inbox. Most of us are used to refreshing Gmail, but to keep both Gmail and Wave open is a headache. Buzz skips the formalities and just wedges itself in under “Inbox”. You don’t have to do a thing.

I’ve already seen people using Buzz more than Wave, so maybe Google’s onto something. I’m also interested to see if Buzz manages to squeeze into the workplace by skirting the “no IM” rules. But Google’s facing a tough path, considering both Twitter and Facebook are already on this track, and thriving.

Between the launch of the iPad (…meh) and Amazon’s fight with Macmillan over ebook prices, the publishing world’s seeing a lot of action. Publishers are going to have to drastically change their model in the coming years, clearly, and no one knows yet whether that will take the form of Amazon or Google partnerships, or maybe a wholesale dismantling of the current system, where editors and publicists work with an author on a much more freelance basis. No one path’s really picked up steam, but building a slow-but-steady audience is Scribd.

I really like the format, which can handle illustration just as well as text. It’s also a great partner for small-scale publishing, allowing an audience to flick through a book as though in a bookstore. I’ve included one of my favorite Scribd books above, which can be ordered in book form for $14.66. It’s certainly a lot more expensive than buying a children’s book off of Amazon would be, but that’s what happens when you’re not a wholesaler, and frankly the book’s hilarious. I’m going to wait and see what the physical book is like, quality-wise, before declaring the price worthwhile. But for now, Scribd is looking like the winning web-based publishing format.

A pretty stunning visualization of what it feels like to read a really good book.

And as far as I’m concerned, this is still one of the better interactions I’ve seen (in concept, at least — the recipe results still don’t exactly deliver the sort of precision the tool implies).  But by breaking up the randomly-generated terms into four very different tabs, Cookthink’s encapsulated a very familiar everyday event: standing in front of the fridge, mulling over what you’ve got and what you crave.  Also, “peasant food”!

Now if only they could nail down the search accuracy and get a massive recipe list, I’d be using this every day — for now, I only use it if I’ve got the time and feel whimsical.

We’ve all studied atoms in school, maybe you’ve even built one out of balloons or made a mobile for science class.  But atoms are so tiny, they almost leave the physical world and end up in a theoretic space in our minds.  I can draw an atom, I can describe an atom, but were to to ask me “how big is an atom”?  I’d have to shrug and say “tiny”.  This is a place where language can’t fill the gap.

Luckily, design can.  And using objects and structures familiar to anyone who’s been through a couple of high school science classes, this interaction (and its ingenious zoom feature) scales the atom for us in a really vivid, lasting way.  Nice work, U of Utah!

Courtesy of a friend in the know, I got an invite to Google Wave. I’m going to have to wait for the rest of you to get onboard for a rigorous test-run (most of the more complicated features are heavy on interaction, so multiple users are needed), but so far it’s pretty cool. This video will give you an idea of what’s in store. The way Google’s rolling the system out ensures that most people will start using Waves in a social capacity, rather than as a business tool; so far my Waves have been light conversations, but I can already see the appeal.

The blend of IM and email is very user-friendly, and the “playback” feature’s a lifesaver when things get crowded. New users can start using Wave with very little training, especially if they’re already Gmail users — even if you skip all of the videos and just go with intuition, you’re likely to stumble across the right answer.  And I like the idea that email addresses have basically been replaced by iconography, though that brings up an entirely new issue regarding icons themselves — will business users have to start using their actual headshots instead of Mad Men icons?

My icon imported straight from my IM client (a surprise when I first logged on), and I think this is the first time where my presence is primarily a symbol, rather than text.  On the top of each wave, participants are indicated solely by icon — hover over and sure, you’ll see a name, but when there are twenty icons up there will you really want to do a one-by-one hover to figure out who’s who?  Will there be a feature in future that allows you to split your icons, with one for business use and another for social contacts? This isn’t a flaw in Wave’s functionality, they provide a search bar specifically for wading through your contacts, but I’m interested in how icons trends might react to Wave becoming the go-to tool for communication.

I’m intrigued.  At the moment icons are very personal and change frequently, and are secondary to the IM or email name.  What happens when your icon stops representing an element of your personality and starts representing YOU?

My favourite books as a kid were the ones with fighting and survivalism and desperation and usually orphans and real menace; think “The Giver” or “The Lottery”, and a slew of other books with weapon-toting children. A book called “The Girl Who Owned a City” made a particularly strong impression when I was about 9, and I only realized this year that it’s pretty much a pro-libertarianism screed (and not very subtle, at that).  Strangely, I didn’t remember that part — I just remembered the warehouse-raiding, fortress-building, boiling-oil-pouring preteens in the story.

And that’s the sort of adventure Suzanne Collins serves up in “The Hunger Games”.  I’m not going to spoil it, go and get hooked by the same io9 review that got me.  She’s just released the second book in the series, and it’s as good as the first.  There’s talk of a movie that might get made, though I have no idea how Hollywood will deal with the content in relation to the audience.  If they try to tone it down, kids will riot — but if they keep the violent scenes intact, I’m really not sure what kind of rating the film would get.

But this is why science fiction and fantasy are great: they can bend your mind into a pretzel and then force you to think your way out.  You know, like the anti-Dan Brown.

Khaki Pants Pete

This comes across as one of those horrible ideas that germinated in a dark corner of the internet marketing department, then accidentally escaped and became reality. The style and tone remind me of the old game “Leisure Suit Larry”, but given that this is supposed to be a marketing gimmick for Klondike bars instead of a crap 80s video game, I expected more than the single Klondike shout-out (at the end, if you can stand to make it that far).

The point of the game is to escape your shrewish wife, semi-seduce the 21 year old babysitter, go to a sex shop, wander a sorority house, pudding wrestle at a bachelor party… only to return to the same shrewish wife who has now apologized and eaten a Klondike bar in your absence. So the only person eating a Klondike product is the one who has to deal with a neglectful, resentful, tomcat husband. And she’s eating it alone, on the couch.

And as an interaction, this is a mess. Nonsensical script, unrewarding levels, little relevant product placement. I’d love to see their target audience, and the usability trial results. Or the stats on how many people actually complete the game.

In the meanwhile, Klondike’s managed to turn something I only ever associated with good memories into a product I now link with misogynistic Leisure Suit Larry idiocy. Nice work, guys.