Here’s a few lines on why this New York Times article (for want of a better word) is the best thing I’ve seen on the internet. (Apart from shitwitter, obviously.)

It’s like a perfect storm of awesome because all the various aspects of it - design, technology, content, tone etc. support one another.

There’s nothing showy about any particular aspect of it, while it simultaneously manages to be enthralling; there’s nothing particularly “hard” about the technology or implementation, yet it still mangages to be work just so (would have been even more awesome if the headlines below the video were being spat out using AJAX-ey goodness.)

Above all, the most wonderful thing about it is that all of the ingredients, in their quiet way, support that most rare thing on the internets A POINT. Here are all these ingredients arranged on a webpage that are all useful - there’s no fat, no singing and dancing, just understated excellence.

Interestingly, probably the crowning glory of this little “package” (as they call it,) is that its got the weight of “Old Media” journalism behind it. See, this is what the internet should be about - all these dispirate threads of “What’s awesome about the old AND new media in one tidy package.”

In other words, this thoughtful little doo-hickey reminds me of the first time I read about hypertext in ACE magazine in the late eighties - where you look at something and you get a real sense of what the near future will look like. If you want to take it further, imagine how awesome it’ll be when we can parse the audio of broadcasts like this and get real time associated search results. Or better, when we can parse the video. On the fly. W00T!!

Now. Could we just send this to all my clients, past, present and future, and tell them that this is the bar. You know, like a sign at a theme park? You have to be this useful to have a website.

Having re-read this, I can’t help also feeling that I need to work on my reliance on sub-clauses and brackets.

Hmmph.