What the Daily, Yo?

Why did I do this? The Daily's publishing free, web-based versions to every article, but without an index, it's very inconvenient to find or link to individual articles from the web. And since the iPad app appears to only carry today's edition, it makes finding any historical articles you've paid for nearly impossible.

Frankly, I'm also very curious about the legal implications. My understanding is that linking to public news articles is unquestionably legal, and I believe that right should never be discouraged. It's also worth noting that Google's slowly indexing all the articles too, and search engines aren't blocked in their robots.txt file.

via waxy.org

"The Daily: Indexed," is smart and saucy, Andy Baio at his best. Andy is an artist and a scholar at once. But why did The Daily launch without a homepage? Because they are trying to market it as a phenomena, not a really good blog with a pretty good iPad wrapper, which is what The Daily is.

Now that Andy's made an index, and we can browse the Daily as we do the Times (or other blogs), we can put aside our hipster swords and recognize that some of these stories are pretty good. For news, I still prefer Gothamist. It is updated throughout the day, so I know I will get the latest news, I find the comments both fun and insightful, and the design stays out of the way of the content.

And I have to admit, I'm cool on big geometric carousels, they remind me of the Phantom Zone in the Superman movies - as seen here (watch starting at :50 if you're impatient). UPDATE: This recut is a superior examplar of the phantom zone.

Comments

[Angrywayne]

I'm chilly on carosels too. Fucking pain in the ass if you ask me. Which you didn't. Ever try setting the timer on the iphone in a pinch? Yea, it ain't easy. Click click click. #designfail

Good points overall. I wasn't convinced by their little sideshow yesterday. "Have I decided that x percentage of the room is for in-depth, no.."-Jesse Angelo. Oh really, screw you too.

[David Jacobs]

Wayne, I'm always asking! Make sure you check out that last Superman II video, it accurately captures how carousels make me feel. Free the content from the phantom zone!