We've entered a revolution in web design

The Twitter redesign is just one bit of news this past week about new website or app designs that focus on how to better present dynamically generated content in fresh and indigent ways.

I heard on This Week In Media that MySpace's redesign, set for launch in October, draws inspiration from Flipboard. If you're not an iPad user, check out the video below on how Flipboard works. It has revolutionized the concept of serendipity in packing packaging personalized content in new ways. Facebook, Twitter and some of my favorite RSS feeds were already sticky but Flipboard makes them moreso by pulling in images that you or others linked to, but did not directly publish.   

iPad apps like FLUD and Pulse draw similar inspiration in allowing one to add their own mix of RSS feeds, and have the apps surface the content in attractive ways, and often more intuitively than their original source. So what once were heavy text feeds now come to life with rich images and integrated social-media connections.

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Logan Molen is a silly name

Stumbled across this fun text-to-video animation tool from XtraNormal the other day, and decided to have some fun with it while exploring ideas for inexpensive, off-the-cuff marketing. 

What you see here was created in a few minutes using XtraNormal's free tools. You can add a variety of gestures and body movements (I added a few oversize movements for laughs). You can pay money to remove the XtraNormal branding, customize characters and scenes, or open other controls. 

Cheesy, yes, but cool possibilities with a little practice. 

The downside of customized media

One of my favorite magazines is The WORD, a music-centric but eclectic publication from Britain that leaves me invigorated. 

The WORD delivers wonderful surprises each month, among them this lament from founding partner David Hepworth's column in the August issue that suggests technology makes it too easy to put blinders on our media consumption:

"If you turn on the radio, they promise to perfectly mirror your tastes. Who wants that? Patrick Crowther was speaking for many when he posted this on the WORD website:  'Despite its obvious faults, old-school Radio 1 was instrumental in developing my love of music and my interest in different kinds of music. I might not have liked Lena Martell, but being exposed to music that wasn't specifically targeted at me was, in hindsight, a good thing. It broadened my horizons.'

"It didn't just make people keener on what they loved. It also made them more forgiving of what they didn't. The WORD Massive [the magazine's online community] is very tolerant but even I sometimes feel like taking issue with people who don't understand why a particular feature is in the magazine. Isn't part of being a mature individual showing that you can live with and even be interested in things that weren't designed with your approval in mind? I've spent months reading about people I'm not interested in. That's how you get interested. The narrowing is no way to go and that's where we're increasingly being led. 

 "With its personalisation devices, narrowcast channels and sophisticated content filters, contemporary media and technology is doing everything in its power to ensure we never have to go near anything we are not personally enthusiastic about. That way lies what? Better targeting? A station that plays nothing but Fleet Foxes or Tinie Tempah? One thing's for sure, it isn't happiness."

I'll argue that the freedom to choose your own content streams more than ever before is a great thing. Too much choice is much preferred to just three TV networks, a few news stations and a newspaper or two. 

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