I have been reminded of exactly how important the online world has become in business - aside from the fact in my own life. The reminder has taken the form of the company I work for having first an intermitant then an absolute failure of their adsl connection. Adsl is hardly the most reliable at the best of times - the very fact that cable is not in my area makes me unhappy and dream of my fond cable memories. This week though has been one great narly mess of failure from our ISP through to Mr Undependable BT line provider.

In a post today on 37 signals by Matt, the subject of Simplicity making the rounds was looked at by citing a post by Mark Hurst. In his blog good experience, Mark Hurst recently posted Simplicity gets its media moment. There certainly seems to be a KISS craze going on amongst the stupid and not so stupid. Mark points out the recent upturn in the fortunes of simplicity with regards to wider and web media exposure. He points to a number of publications having simplicity motivated front covers and features. I agree and have noticed this in varying forms including advertising and print. My personal favourite of the week being the Yakult advertising campaign running on UK TV. On that note if slightly annoying sound wise the Yakult website and with note to Ask the oracle in the play section, is actually a good marketing website example. Large companies are also jumping on the designer laden boat of simplicity. It sure is rather crowded for something so simple.

When it comes down to a blog often the measure of success is seen as being the comment rate. While comments are part of the process and arguable to be essential maybe and definetly nice, how much are they an actual indication of the blogs success?

There are many factors as to why someone reads a blog post or clicks off. One of the most important of these is the title. This applies to feeds, archives and posts themselves. A great decider on to read on or pass is the craft of title creation. Titles are majorly important in blogging and the actual writing of a good one a tricky art form in itself. Be they informative, humorous or insightful; titles matter. I can draw this conclusion from my own feed and blog behaviour.

One of the ever present problem with having a blog has to be coming up with posts. It is not actually writing them that can prove the main problem, it is infact coming up with something to say. For me, generally the ideas of what I want to post tend to come in batches. I am not one of those people that can just sit everytime at a blank screen and come up with posts. I don’t deny that sometimes the delivering is easier than others. I often find that a trigger point will be used in a later post that I have been thinking about. I think this is the usual way you collect posting content. The way each blogger collects information or comes up with posts is wide and varied. I thought I would take a bit of a time to go into how I work.

At work today we just moved into a joining office which is purely to be for designers. While it is really nice to get our own space, this pleasure some what faded with the bizarre logic of the layout that was created. I probably had been aiming a bit high hoping for a memory of what I think of as a design studio when I work where I do, but I still held out some slight hope. All the initial signs were good and included a simple minimal layout in white walls with plenty of space. Thing is, over the day as more and more people moved in to the space it became what one junior called "a sweat shop". I admit I was thinking the same thing as the row of juniors was shoved to one end and the studio manager postioned behind in whip cracking pose. I now face his head and my department now resembles what another junior called rightly "the reception". I was determined the solitary potted plant was going nowhere near me as I was dangerously close to sodding it all and installing a coffee machine and reception chairs. What could have been a great space has now given off such bad vibes that various requests are being made for radios due to fact pins can be heared dropping in all areas of the open floor. I hold out against this as think the addition of a radio stuck on radio 1 or 2 at just within hearing volume, will put the final nail in us being a factory floor.