Wow, the new york times is doing some incredible work. They are really moving the web forward.
I believe they were RoR early adopters and one of their guys is a leading contributor to ClojureScript.
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Riding the New Silk Road
81–90 of 161 posts
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#82Time to trot out trivia. As the article points out, the Silk Road faded in importance in the 1400s. But it doesn't say why. There were three major reasons why it faded. The first was the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, ending the last remnant of the original Roman Empire. This made trade with Europe harder. The second was the development, initially by the Portuguese but followed by others, of direct sea routes…
Some related trivia: While it was called the Silk Road, silk was less of a major point of trade after the 6th century. Two Byzantine monks made the journey from Constantinople to China and back, purloining silk worms in the process. This led to a domination of the European Silk trade by Byzantium for the proceeding 8 centuries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_into...
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#83Wow, the presentation of the photos really made an impression on me -- it's just like Harry Potter. It's amazing that even after almost 10 years of YouTube, having video presented to you in a slightly different way can give you a feeling that you're experiencing the future.
Are you being snarky? They were randomly greyed out and then just black for me.
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#84It seems to me like we're finally witnessing the birth of a 21st century news paper. The New York times has always been well regarded for it's journalism. Now we're starting to see what can be accomplished when a credible journalism outfit is complemented by equally credible digital designers.
And yet, I can't see this being developed into something regular; I mean, artfully done as this is, eventually they're going to want to make money.
They've created quite a few stories like this now. I don't have any links but I've seen several appear on HN.
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#85Wow, the presentation of the photos really made an impression on me -- it's just like Harry Potter. It's amazing that even after almost 10 years of YouTube, having video presented to you in a slightly different way can give you a feeling that you're experiencing the future.
Are you being snarky? They were randomly greyed out and then just black for me.
I guess you did not notice the animated GIFs?
Edit: or may be those are videos?
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#86I was suspecting a story, well, the other Silk Road. I was pleasantly surprised by both the journalistic value of the piece and the excellent presentation. I'm on an iPad, and the images and scrolling map worked flawlessly. Superb!
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right - so, the stats say that there are a lot of people using mobile devices to surf the web, many of whom are using mobile almost exclusively. A fraction of the time those users spend on the web is spent on news sites. Does the fact that those mobile web users split their time across different destinations really lead you to believe it's not worth optimizing for them?
First of all, the stats don't say that many of them are using mobile almost exclusively. As I previously said, the way it is written leads me to believe that "mostly" to them is "more than 50%". Almost exclusively implies a much higher percentage of use. And in any case, if people are only going to spend 5% on news in general while on mobile, then I would most definitely not optimize my site for them unless it were i…
Huh - so 5% of mobile browsing time dedicated to news sites isn't worth optimizing for - but the 4% of desktop web browsing time that is dedicated to news sites (same link) leads you to believe you should optimize (only) the desktop web experience?
I guess I just don't follow your logic.
Ignore mobile if you like. But good luck with that. Mobile users will find an experience that is optimized for them.
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#88Time to trot out trivia. As the article points out, the Silk Road faded in importance in the 1400s. But it doesn't say why. There were three major reasons why it faded. The first was the final fall of Constantinople in 1453, ending the last remnant of the original Roman Empire. This made trade with Europe harder. The second was the development, initially by the Portuguese but followed by others, of direct sea routes…
Don't forget the fall of the Mongol empire, and then of the successor states. It was only really during the Mongol age that the land-based high-volume trade could exist along the routes of the Silk Road.
Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#89Re: Riding the New Silk Road
#90I appreciated the keyboard shortcuts to jump through the pictures. Loved the attention to detail here.