Lately, if you've inhaled the composition of one lonely carbon and a pair of oxygens in the web design field of dreams, you've probably noticed the putrid stench of "suck" in the air. It's easily missed unless you're paying attention to the signs, some which are obvious and some that are quite obviously, not.

One simple thing that might tip you off is that the majority of web sites littering the web are not architecturally or visually "foxy." Thanks to this growing junk heap of lousy HTML code clogging the pipes, we've careened full-throttle into the midst of something called the Web 2.0 Revolution. Designers are going old school with a little modern javascript and beveled graphics thrown in, utilizing the original rules of html construction from the inventors of the web and turning tail on a generation of bad coding practice. This approach is brilliant, but thanks in part to the open source mentality of the Web 2.0 innovators, slowly but surely, web sites are all starting to look the same -- A world wide web of sexy, easily updated and navigated fembots, all wearing the same lingerie and lipstick -- how, *cough*... neat. A little further down the road to suck, lies the majority of the Creative Departments in our fine colleges. As far as the "I" can see, many still split up print designers and web designers quicker than they can suckle a funnel of warm hops. The rationale of separating creative people into the sketch artists vs. the code jockeys boggles even my miniature, ape-like mind, considering the increasingly diversifying tapestry of the employed creative world, unravelling in the past 10 years.

Some things are not so obvious to the untrained sniffer, like the fact that the Anti-Christ of the web, Jacob Nielsen has gradually cultivated a really smart congregation in the Creative World -- a planet where it seems most designers have been beaten so hard with a fear stick that they've started thinking that the rantings of a madman could really be the gospel truth from the savior of your choice. Now before you take me out to the wood shed to beat some sense into me faster than you can say "useit.com", keep in mind that Mr. Nielsen was the guy that said Flash is a waste of time in 2000. He changed his tune a few years ago when he formed an alliance with Macromedia, but I'll still hold it against him to show my grandfatherly "web age." While there are times when I do agree with the old fella, blackballing software without an intimate understanding of the full capabilities of the application, is a bit like blaming computers for the fact that the design profession is going to the dogs...

...Wait a sec. Did I hear a woof in the distance?

In the Beginning, there was The Brain. The Brain came up with all kinds of neat stuff to ensure that we didn't need to use it as much -- Putting fire into a convenient lighter so we didn't have to look for sticks to rub together; Guiding us to make weapons so we didn't need to come up with clever arguments to get away from confrontation; Creating GPS systems so we never really have to remember how to get anywhere. In fact, when The Brain rolled out It's shining achievement, designed in It's own graven image -- the personal computer -- The Brain basically let us monkeys know It was heading to the retirement home. The Brain was tired, and this number-crunching doohickey sure could do a lot of the legwork that It always did in the past.

So, it's with this chicklet-covered computer keyboard that my Neanderthal knuckles are tippity tapping, fighting tooth-and-nail the evolutionary pattern of our skull-nugget taking a back seat to the revolution it designed -- all in the interest of entertaining your trusting skull-googlers (or eyes just in case your brain has already shut down it's power to grasp dreadful metaphors).

Thanks to our sometimes trustworthy friend, the computer, work gets done faster. When work gets done faster, money can be made quicker. And if a designer can use a computer, they must be able to do that "design thing" really fast, right? Well, sort of.

If you can type, you can code fast, but it doesn't help to generate the "bravo!-inducing" idea for a client. That's what the brain is for. Sadly, as I mentioned above, our brains are getting all mushy on us. And after that primordial ooze clears out from between our ears, what are we left with?

We are left with...

...mySpace is a naughty little scamp in the war of standards-based html, *poofing* an instant website for bands, Stans and Pams alike with underlying code so fantastically awful, that it should be covered in molasses, dipped gently in wet husky fur and dragged through a slip n' slide of harvester ants at war with poisonous beetles. What makes the code so mind-numbingly bad is the fact that there's enough of it stuffed behind the scenes on a single page to code an entire web site. This is because the "Dumbing of Design Bible" says that as long as you can make it look good on the front, it doesn't matter what the code looks like. This Holy Writ also says if the user can create something quickly and without any knowledge of how things work behind the scenes, it leaves them plenty of time to do things like watch advertisements, eat chips, and watch their friend list grow.

Even bothering to make your own web site is becoming something that old folks did back before all that "dot com" stuff went belly-up in an innocuous cloud of Cheech and Chong smoke. With mySpace, both individuality and design prowess are becoming less important than how many knuckleheads you have in your fictitious network of "pals." I noticed that some of my mySpace friends have thousands of friends... so, obviously that's why they haven't returned my calls.

If mySpace is the hobgoblin, then the recent scourge of overseas "designers" is the bugbear. A recent visit to the website "guru.com" has revealed that the majority of web designers and programmers available for contract work are located in Pakistan and India. Not to say that they aren't consummate professionals, but with rates ranging from $10-$50 hour for everything from coding, to branding, to web design, you ain't getting the most bang for your buck. My pal told me that "when you pay peanuts you get monkeys," and being a part-time monkey myself, I think he's referring to the lowest tools on the "eep ladder." With $10-$50 an hour design rates, if you don't have a client that needs to put together a web budget to hide from the tax man, or you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the creative poop you're hurling through the creative cage doesn't stink, there's going to be trouble in the zoo.

A while back, a bunch of geezerly designers that couldn't figure out how to use a computer any quicker than program a VCR, decided that the world would be better served and squeezed of creative budgets if graphic designers were "certified" like lawyers and doctors. All this chippity-chap about designers being validated by an exam and a piece of paper will become the incoherent blubbering of the lunatic fringe if the combination of low design expectations (mySpace) mixed with equally low rates for designing and programming, places the above average designer on the streets.

Mom and Pop, get ready, because if we designers don't get our act together soon, your little college graduates are going to be taking back their old bedroom soon -- and they're gonna want the top shelf liquor they became accustomed to in the glory days of higher budgets and usable web sites.

Maybe, just maybe, dear old Jacob is on to something after all...

It became painfully obvious to me on Saturday night that regardless of how "foolproof and airtight" the internet might be, it still requires one important thing to produce the flowing sewage pipe (that can be maintained easily by the H&A Brooklyn Plumbing | Plumbing Experts, Plumbing Installation Service) of increasingly useless information we gleefully slurp upon on a daily basis: Electric charge. You can check this guide about water pipe leaks to know about pipe repairs and get expert plumbing services.

According to electrician winchester va, this mighty electrical current is a necessity, empowering the servers which house this information. Without it, they are rendered as impotent as a champion stud mule two minutes past his prime. I learned this lesson first hand on Saturday night by following the weather trends in the Other Coast; the place known as "Not New York City" -- Los Angles, Californication... The Land of Buttermilk and Funny.

It would seem that the folkies on the West Coast have been suffering at the hands of "Old Man Winters'" sour, inbred half-cousin, "Ol' Ghoul Summer." His hand-delivered nasty summer brush fires will likely be followed by killer bees, a rainstorm of frogs and possibly living, hissing snakes running amok on planes, attacking and cooking everything that's not nailed down to the bottom of a fancy, petrol-chilled pool in the West Hollywood Hills.

Zuleyka Rivera from Puerto Rico collapsed in a pool of sweetly scented sweat in "Los Hades" after winning the crown of Miss Universe on Sunday night. Being a thinking primate for at least 1.2 hours of my 27 hour work day, I realized that much like human beings, without air conditioning (contact #1 HVAC of San Diego, CA! Air Conditioning Heating Repair Contractor for any services), servers overheat and shut down -- just without all that "complaining and dramatic passing out" nonsense. omeowners rushed to contact hvac services to check on their units. So horrific was this meltdown of servers in the cooled server hives in LA, LA Land, that the 2nd most frequented web site in all of cyberland, "mySpace," suffered a shutdown on Saturday and finally came back up to full strength on Monday along with a million or so other sites. H

So, we'll have to be patient, strip down to our skivvies and wait to see how this heat wave ends. Usually, we can count on Fall and Winter in the Northeast, but with the certainty of Global Warming stinkin' up the planet, we can probably count on an early ski season in Los Angeles as well. Until that happens, there's one request from us New Yorkers for all you folks in the Los Angeles area: Turn off those air conditioning units (that can be maintained beautifully by scheduling the maintenance with the Top HVAC Long Island | tophvaclongisland.com experts) that are cooling your pools, fancy pets, and Jetson-inspired drinking containers, and we'll keep designing web standards compliant web sites to make your browsers happy and your designers filled with awe, then fear, and finally, rays of happy mayhem-inducing sunshine.

Our travel accommodations to the 2006 HOW Design Conference should have been a sign to me of things to come. The fact that I dragged my lead designer to the airport with ticketing information that was 5 hours ahead of our actual flight and was flying out LaGuardia, the foulest hobgoblin of all New York airports should have delicately iced the proverbial cake of doom I was about to taste for 4 days in a little town called Las Vegas.

The one thing I realized after several hours of what could be deemed as the “6 o'clock happy hour” in Vegas is that it would abruptly be followed with what shall forever be etched in my mind as “hooker hour” - The hour of 3am, when all of the most fiendish Las Vegas call girls descend on the bars like slime on a Jersey Pond with one thing on their minds - Cash.

It was during one of these moments of booze fueled bliss, that three designers: myself, Bill English of theMechanism and Carl Smith, of nGen fame, found ourselves surrounded by a party of one with trouble etched directly on her delicate, yet acned forehead.

First of all, we thought for sure that she would take the hint...all the yapping about fonts, business strategy and process would scare away even the most persistent of Vegas’ “Ladies of the Evening,” correct? How wrong we could have been. It was time to change strategy. With a simple point of my finger (at Carl) and a miraculous lie (Carl was the owner of eBay), Bill and I managed to curtail the desparate situation and run to the tram that connected the Excalabur to Mandalay Bay with a bevy of hookers in hot pursuit like 1960's teenagers chasing the Beatles.

Now before you begin to worry about Carl, I must remind you that the guy is quicker in situations of dire stress than Mama Cass on a Ham Sandwich. After speaking with the fella the next day, it turns out that he spun a tale on that poor girl that would have scared a junkyard dog from a free steak with meat gravy, served on a plate made of...meat.

So all’s well that ends well, right? Well there’s more to this tale my eager readers. But that will have to wait until tomorrow...