Flawed | Human | Being

First off : Oh hi!

Secondly, you may be wondering what this post’s title is all about. In fact, that may be the only reason you’re reading this right now. If so, did you see the sweet Photoshop job up there?

Moving on : There are a few reasons I am blogging tonight. Here are said reasons in a list-type format :

1. I like you.
2. I finished off the remaining 3 of the 6. (Anchor Steam for the curious.)
3. The newly redesigned Omaha.com launched today.
4. The t-shirt I am wearing is WAY too small…wait…what was that last one?

That’s right everyone! PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR SIMPLE MIDWESTERN MINDS ABSOLULTEY BLOWN BY THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY, BOXES & DROPSHADOWS!

Oh sorry. For that to happen you have to click here.

Funny thing is, on a Tuesday much like today (Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 11:24 AM to be exact) I wrote Omaha.com about their last clusterfuck of a “website.” See my letter below :

So…it’s 2008. You guys know that right? Having a message stating “This site is best viewed in…” is ridiculous. Firefox is a great browser, but do you understand the amount of people you alienate by having a blanket statement like that in the footer of every one of your pages?

Also, your site’s navigation is ridiculous. You’re lucky your search box is available…however, it does not save your site from itself. It literally just took me 10 minutes to find a story that happened in Bellevue on Monday night. MONDAY NIGHT WAS YESTERDAY!!!!

Omaha.com has been ridiculous for 6+ years and I don’t expect much from you guys. However, it would be refreshing if, the main online news outlet for omaha actually did something cutting edge.

First you need to play catchup of course. But why not look at site’s like salon.com, newsvine.com, or even cnn.com for godsake. Do better, be current, stop sucking and hiding your news and figure out a better way to show advertising on your site. Everything is way too spread out and jumbled. I assume your lack of maintenance or web pioneering is due to the fact that you do not want to stop people from getting your print newspaper. Probably because you spent so much on your facility and new printing presses a few years ago. But here’s a clue, PRINT IS DYING. Take note of the New York Times / Washington Post and their associated websites.

This site seems to have a bad case of “well, just put it here. No one will care.” But they do. And your site is a joke amongst the local web design community. Trust me.

Just because we’re in omaha, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t break out of your shell of conservatism and do something ground-breaking. Why do you want to be “the norm” anyways?

The reply I received (at 12:37 PM) went like this :

Thanks for your comments; I’m glad you got a chance to vent.  We have actually just started a complete site redesign, which will be live in spring of 2009. We look at all of our comments from visitors to try and make our site better, so I will pass this along to our developers.  If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them.

Thanks again and I hope you stick with us while we work through our redesign.

~ Omaha.com Online Operations Specialist

(Now, 6 months later, the hard part)

Dear Omaha,

I am sorry that I did not share any suggestions beyond the original suggestions from my original letter. The person who wrote me, in turn, did not have any suggestions to pass on to their developers (as she said she would) and this is the obvious reason the redesigned Omaha.com is a complete atrosity. I hope you will forgive me soon Omaha. As I will forgive you for having a newspaper whose head is up it’s ass. That is all.

Signed,

Me.

You may wonder why I brought Doc Brown into this mess. Well…I hear he has a car that can do amazing things at 88 miles per hour. So amazing in fact, that I think he just might be our ticket back to a somewhat…(slightly) more decently presented and kind of okay (sometimes) omaha.com (circa last week-ish). Who’s with me?!

Tags: fail, omaha, omahadotcomfail

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:33 pm and is filed under I am a dork, I am flawed, I am inspired. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.