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What makes a good website?

I have being try to figure this one out over the last couple of days before I start development of the new 3stooges.co.uk site, i know what i personally want from the site, but what will make this site different from any other site? Well first of nothing there are so many websites out there that it makes no difference what your content is cos chances are there will be somebody else somewhere doing the same, so does it then fall to interesting design, well yes and no if you make it too radically your site becomes niché (new cool feature in mac os i found to get accent) and confusing to use, and you could even make the site too good and the content would be all poo.

So a perfect website would be nice to look at, some cool features and plenty of good content. In that statement i opened another can of worms what is good design, for me it would be functional and looks simple.

“99% of the internet is rubbish” -unkown “the internet is a series of tubes” – Ted Stevens

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So How dependent are we on electricity?

Well the answer is simple, VERY.

We had a power cut yesterday and i could do nothing while the power came back on (about 35mins). We couldn’t ring out on the Landline or VOIP line, watch the tele, do my day-to-day business on the interweb, i couldn’t even hoover(yes i was forced to tidy up, and i still haven’t finished)

But just think how much of our infrastructures are dependant on electricty? Increasingly Phones, Traffic Lights, Safety systems (these should have back-up power) Even the bare essentials are effected, showers, heating/AC, Cook Appliances. Practically everything goes off, i would be interesting to see how we could manage without power. The big power cut in New York a few years back highlights out dependancy how many millions did it cost and how many people were trapped or unable to commute in that 14hour stretch.

No moving to focus on the UK, with the amount of redundancy in the National Grid dropping as more and more pwer stations are taken offline we are going to face more and more power-cuts, which means we have to get big on renewables or nuclear, or even both. I have to say i arent a fan of nuclear but the fact is there is that many people who object to the current viable renewable means that nuclear is the only option.

N.B. I couldn’t be bothered to link to sources for the information but it is freely available have a quick google.