The year is coming to an end and the top 10 (or whatever) lists of 2006 are hitting the web like Viagra spam in 2001.

AdAge gives us the top 10 acquisitions of 2006:

1 YouTube by Google , $1.65 billion
2 Massive by Microsoft, $200 million-$400 million
3 Atom Films by Viacom, $200 million
4 DMarc by Google, $102 million
5 Xfire by Viacom, $102 million
6 Platform by Comcast, $80 million
7 Grouper by Sony, $65 million
8 JotSpot by Google, $50 million
9 Petfinder by Animal Planet, $35 million
10 Wired.com by Conde Nast, $25 million

Number 1 on the list is a given one, but I’m not sure I agree with the rest. What do you think?

Originally posted on December 20, 2006 @ 3:21 pm

Apparently Wikio is huge in France, a reason as good as any to take a look at the not even close to ready to launch English beta version. Yeah, I know, beta usually means there’s stuff left to do, or it should anyway, Web 2.0 sickness and all that crap.

The idea is to let you choose from various news sources in a bunch of categories, sorry, tags – Web 2.0 again… While most of the site seems to work well enough, the documentation is poor at best.

Google News beware? Somehow a doubt it, but best of luck to the Wikio folks. Who are they by the way? Oops, Pierre Chappaz, the French guy who founded Kelkoo… Maybe should keep an eye on this Wikio thing, he’ll probably sell it to Yahoo or something.

Hat tip to Mr. Jones (via email).

Originally posted on December 21, 2006 @ 10:16 am

Roger Johansson is a fellow Swede, and calls himself a web professional. He is, I know because I read his blog. Good stuff.

That’s why it’s fun to read his six things that sucked about the web in 2006 post. He warns us not to take it literally, but of course we will so that it’ll make a nice little discussion, right?

1. Overuse of JavaScript frameworks/libraries.
2. Ajax.
3. High contrast, light-on-dark designs.
4. Headings that aren’t real text.
5. Accessibility extremists and design zealots.
6. Over-wide, fixed width layouts.

Explanations to why he’s chosen the ones he has are available in the original post. I sure agree with him in some aspects, there’s way too much fancy stuff on the web these days. Whatever happened to usability?

Originally posted on December 21, 2006 @ 5:13 am

As a designer, I’m looking more to print media than to design galleries online. The reason is simple: You have more freedom in print since there are no technical aspects to worry about, type will be fitted and all that.

So lists like the top 10 magazine covers of 2006 one over at AdAge is always interesting. Sure, nothing completely stunning this year, but overall a pretty nice compilation.

I like the Time cover. They usually have a nice thing going with their covers, a distinct style that you expect.

Originally posted on December 20, 2006 @ 4:33 am