Sherwood, Eric was using a literary structure known as sarcasm. I think he
was rather incensed by more comment, which I still stand by. See, Eric is
in the Marketing part of Lucent RABU - though I don't know why he would have
taken my comment personally. I've always wondered why people seem so eager
to believe a general comment is aimed at them in particular. But anyway...
>run-of-the-mill marketers, but I do have to use that hat being part of a
>small company... and I think such a generalization is a bit cruel...
I don't. As a generalization MOST of the marketing people I've dealt with -
either at a place I've worked or in my day to day life - have not left me
with a good impression of their understanding of Internet commerce or the
marketplace. I've had them suggest sending bulk, unsolicited emails as a
good idea. I've had them suggest market programs which would just fall flat
with the market they were trying to target. I've seen them push for features
in products that make no technical sense, or fight against useful additions
because they don't understand them. I've seen them ask for, suggest, or even
demand HUGE images for websites. I had one suggest that forcing all users to
login and supply contact information before accessing the site was a GOOD IDEA
to gather contact info to use in market mailings. I could go on for quite a
while...
Does this cover ALL marketers? No. And, in my experience, Livingston/Lucent
RABU is different in that most of their marketing people are technically
saavy and either understand these issues themselves or will turn to those
who do. But there have been exceptions. And I have the strong feeling that
this redesign is due to the merger - but not unexpected. Once the merger
happened I knew it was just a matter of time until Lucent asked for RABU's
website to follow their corporate look and feel. So I'm not surprised by
the fact that it was done.
Many of the corporate Lucent pages are top heavy, and WAY too many lack
things liek ALT text on images, or have other problems that makes them shit
to use in Lynx - or with bells and whistles off in a GUI browser. And just
forget it if you are disabled. They also seem to have a thing for images and
Java - which needs to be closely watched.
>My personal take is that the website needs to be broken up into sections
>with different oversights per section. Yes, there needs to be an
>over-riding theme/look for the site, yet, the technical section should be
>looked over by either the support guys or users from outside to get
Unless it has changed, that is how the Livingston/Lucent RABU site has been
handled since mid-1996 or so.
-MZ
-- <URL:mailto:megazone@megazone.org> Gweep, Discordian, Author, Engineer, me.. Join ISP/C Internet Service Providers' Consortium <URL:http://www.ispc.org/> "A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men" 781-788-0130 <URL:http://www.gweep.net/> <URL:http://www.megazone.org/> Hail Discordia! - To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message. Searchable list archive: <URL:http://www.livingston.com/Tech/archive/>