e-newsletter

All Ka and I wanted was to trot three teen and near-teen kids over to an East Coast beach, within driving distance, for a long weekend.

Consultant Greg Sterling's new blog has quickly grown to a must-read for anyone following local search, directory and content businesses.

Jeff Jarvis tees off on Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen replies in comments and Jarvis shoots back. Let's see if we can summarize:

• Jarvis points: Nielsen dissed blogs in a Wall Street Journal interview, instead hawking his own e-newsletter usability guidelines while maintaining his own site in an ugly, unusable state.
• Nielsen counterpoints: Jarvis' usability concepts are based on personal experience, not user testing, so they may not apply to average users. His remarks in the WSJ interview were distilled from a much more detailed report on e-newsletter usability.
• Jarvis counter-counterpoints: Nielsen's usability concepts are based on old research, and his site is still ugly and unusable.

You can read the whole thread if you want the gory details.

Now I respect both these guys and follow their work pretty closely. I get Jarvis' stuff via RSS and Nielsen's stuff via e-mail.

They're both right, but not about the same things.

Since Jack Lail brought it up first, now I'll mention the Evansville la

Scott Karp has been on a roll for a few months now.