Wired = Tired?

If you look at it these days, every 'news' story is just hype. Another IPO. Another Austin Powers plug. Another Linux vs. NT article. I mean seriously, how many times can they cook the same sh@t up day after day and serve it as 'fresh baked'?? Another example(sorry to get into this whole thing) is Webmonkey. It used to be the coolest spot on the web for people like us. Cool articles about cool things. These days its one or two new articles per week with articles from last spring backing them up. Then the newer articles always seem to be about whatever is in the news that week. "How to tune Apache" "ISS vs. Apache" "How to install Linux". What about mozilla's new user interface that will allow you to pick a 'skin' for your browser, winamp style??

That or anything like it might be relevant to us, but its not a headline and therefore won't draw any ad revenue and *therefore* isn't worthy of writing an article about(But that damn linux thing is in the news again, how about an article how Apache is based on Linux?!?!!?)

It is turning out that Wired in general is morphing into exactly what it used to rebel against. In a word, "The Man". They don't really innovate these days, write about anything cool or take a chance on something because if it doesn't fly and sell, ad revenue suffers. 'Stick with whats safe, whats in the news, and what sells' seems to be the rebel cry at Wired these days..

The one thing about Wired that makes me sick is something that got whispered in my ear by what I would consider to be a very reputable source: Wired is thinking about starting a new 'vertical portal' where developers can come and view up-to-date and relevant news & info about the web developer industry daily, ala Slashdot and.... you guessed it, evolt.org. It seems 'vertical portal'(one that provides content to a niche group such as web developers, or linuxheads in the case of Slashdot) is the hip and happnin new buzzword these days and *everyones* doing it. I can see the marketing dept at Wired now: "So if everyone else is doing it, we should do it too and cash in!"

I don't really worry anymore about what Wired is doing these days, but rather enjoy the kind of freedom that we as a community here at evolt have. I enjoy it because instead of worrying about ad revenue and banner ads, we can focus on a great idea a company called Wired had once: Write about cool stuff, have fun doing it, and inform people while doing it.

To me, that sounds 'cool' enough.