RSS feedI’m always amazed when a huge coincidence happens in my life, and this
week has been full of them strangely enough.
Roughly 8 days after I posted my Web site design tips and hints for
bands and other musical artists (yeah I know, long title, but there be method to my madness), along comes
Merlin Mann‘s Five Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make, and I will add, to
much more fanfare in the blogosphere than mine.
Reading through his post though, with the odd exception, it seems very
much like a rehash of various parts of my post, surprisingly so, with
similarly amusing asides. Now I know that a fairly prominent blogger such as Merlin
wouldn’t… umm… plagiarise… but talk about coincidence.
Running through Merlin’s short list, Flash is definitely the biggest
problem with band sites, so I’m not surprised we both put it first. Too
artsy fartsy is basically a reworking of a few of my suggestions, and
One-way communication also covers the same issues I talk about.
Where we seem to differ is in areas I’d consider way down the issue
list. MP3 metadata? I consider the fact that most sites don’t actually
have MP3s probably a bigger problem. And search? Well, that’s kind of
what Google’s site: parameter is for, and some of the information
architecture ideas I discussed would be a better starting point than
that old chestnut of blaming search.
So what are the chances that two very similar articles would suddenly
appear within 8 days of each other, when for the entire history of the
web, very few people have written anything similar in subject, format and tone of delivery? Quite high it would
seem. I guess great minds think alike, and Merlin and I also seem to have some similar ideas…