July 12, 2008
Snarkmatrix Alignment
Robin says,
I am in Minneapolis, in Matt's apartment. We are listening to Bon Iver. And talking about you.
Photographic evidence of Snarkfestival 2008 to follow.
November 12, 2007
Snarkmatrix London
Robin says,
Never done this before on this blog: Any readers/pals in London? I'll be there Thursday through Sunday. Drop me a line (robin at snarkmarket) or leave a comment.
September 22, 2007
Snarkmatrix Aligned
Robin says,
November 3, 2006
Happy Birthday, Snarkmarket
Snarkmarket turns three today. In that time, we've racked up 1,608 entries and 2,419 comments from a mind-warping passel of the best commenters in the world. We've got 357 subscribers to our feed on Feedburner, and we utter a daily hymn of praise to each of them.
My most fervent hope is that one day, this blog leads these people to Andrew Adamson.
To extend what I think is a fun tradition, here are the titles of the draft entries left incomplete over the last year ...
... Read more ....
Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Robin says,
Snarkmarket has been kinda busted for the last few days, so if you tried to post a comment, there's a good chance it flaked on you with one of those awesome 500 INTERNAL SERVER GIVE UP FOOLISH HUMAN errors. Our deepest apologies: It's some sort of weird thing with comment spam and runaway processes and... I don't know... dark matter.
Should be fixable with the application of quality troubleshooting time over the weekend. Until then... why not browse the archives with the slick new experimental search box? Check it out, over to the right -- click 'Search' to reveal.
October 18, 2006
Snarkmarket Feed Report
Robin says,
In an effort to better understand Snarkmarket's audience... or something... I have been trying to look at the Feedburner stats more often. They are often surprising. Top-clicked items over the past seven days (remember, this is from the feed only, not from raw website use):
- Secrets Buried Deep in Time -- 52 clicks
- How Sesame Street Changed the World -- 54
- Insurance and Opportunity -- 54 (nerds!)
- Post-Traumatic Architecture -- 59 (how can you not click on 'earthquake baroque'??)
And, proving at least one blogger here knows what he's doing:
- Rabbit -- 117
Wow!
July 8, 2006
Movable Type Hacking
Matt says,
I seem to have finally bested the quirks introduced by the Five Words category -- no dates appearing above entries on certain days, an inaccurate entry count on the home page, etc. -- using a sweet little heretofore-undiscovered MT plugin called CatEntries.
June 7, 2006
If Your Comments Don't Auto-Publish ....
Matt says,
... this might be a reason. We've set up Snarkmarket so comments on posts older than 5 days ago automatically head to moderation before they're published. This has cut waaaay back on the amount of spam that's published (unpublishing spam after it already goes through is a pain, requiring copious rebuilding of templates). I just junked about 500 messages on old posts, 99.5% of which were spam. Four of those comments, however, were legit, and I'm calling 'em out here, 'cause Recent Holla won't get 'em.
1) "Peak Oil News" weighs in on Robin's post about peak oil.
2) ScientistPeter fears Gore docu disappointment.
3) Peter on subscription produce.
4) Peter fears he's been blacklisted from Snarkmarket.
May 17, 2006
Blank Dates
Matt says,
The dates where we only post our Five Words links and no other entries show up badly on the front page. We are aware of this problem and shall attempt to remedy it soon have fixed it. Bam!
November 3, 2005
730 Days Later
Two interesting things:
One: On precisely this day in 2003, I wrote Snarkmarket's very first post. In it, I noted Snarkmarket's origins (as with many smart things, it began with Matt) and promised talk of politics, movies, video games, journalism, and miscellany. No warning was given that the Briefly Noted box would one day reign supreme.
Two: This post -- this one right here -- is number 1,000!
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??
To commemorate both milestones, we are rolling out a few new features, all designed to highlight the most transcendently awesome part of Snarkmarket: the comments.
First: Matt, whose CSS skills have somehow become Batman-like over the past two years, has invented a new style for comments on Briefly Noted entries. We were happy with the comment boxes that appear alongside normal entries, and wanted to make Briefly Noted entries sort've 'light up' in their own way when someone chimes in. You'll see it below if you scroll down a bit; isn't that cool?
Second: I, whose RSS skills are the result of typing 'RSS' into Google just now, have whipped up a comments feed, so you can keep tabs on the Snark-conversation in the feedreader of your choice. It doesn't exactly work the way I want it to yet, but it's functional, so go ahead and subscribe and I'll keep tweaking it.
Still to come: Revamped Snarkmarks. Plus a secret project.
You know, one of the things that led me into the world-o'-blogs in the first place was the sharp disappointment I felt whenever I'd write a column back in college or sometimes even a feature story at Poynter and not hear a peep from the audience. 'The audience.' Exactly.
In contrast, the conversation here at Snarkmarket has exceeded any expectation I ever had for it. It is truly a delight to click my little bookmark every morning and see what's new and who's saying what. So thanks, once again, for hanging out with us here.
Now, after the break -- the headlines of some of the many draft posts we've abandoned unfinished on the server over the past two years!
... Read more ....
September 12, 2005
In the New Version, Entries Write Themselves
Robin says,
We started Snarkmarket in November 2003. 891 entries, 1425 comments, and about seven billion spam attacks later, it's time to upgrade to the new version of Movable Type. If anything looks weird or doesn't work, that's why. See you in a bit!
Update: Okay, let us know if anything's busted. Other than the "remember me" field on the comments form. Its busted-ness exists in twelve dimensions, five of space and seven of time, and defies unraveling.
August 19, 2005
Bangalorean Bloggers
Matt says,
BTW, Robin and I have been outsourcing the content of this blog. Hope you enjoy.
April 20, 2005
The Snarkmarket Readability Scale
According to the JuicyStudio readability calculator, you need 5.65 years of schooling to understand the posts on Snarkmarket. Our "Gunning Fog Index" score is a respectable 8.99, which puts us right smack at the reading level of most popular novels.
NYTimes.com has a score of 6.7, while the WaPo's holding steady at 7.81. Not even the previously linked Valve post and its comments reached the current Snarkmarket score, topping out at 8.71.
The other blog I write for has a GF Index of 7.44, slightly below Reader's Digest. (Robin's clearly wrecking the curve -- it broke when I tried to feed it his other blog.) My senior college thesis has a GF Index of 15.47, at the lower range of the academic papers scale.
As Robin points out, Snarkmarket may have taken a slide toward the nerdy, given that our score for October 2004 (quite a prolific month for us) was 8.26. I imagine this post has not helped the trend.
Via Kevin Drum.
February 17, 2005
Open-Source Redesign
Wondering where I've been for the past two weeks? (Feel free to not answer that.) I haven't abandoned Snarkmarket; just the opposite, in fact -- I've been hard at work, in consultation with Robin, on a new design for the site.
We've tried to make a page that looks distinct, but respects its roots. We've been brainstorming ways to bring more attention to the ever-excellent discussion, so you'll see some experiments in that direction in the new design. We wanted to separate some of our longer, more thoughtful discursions from our quicker pass-alongs, so we've given those shorter items their own look.
And there isn't enough paisley on the Web.
But before we make the design official, we want to take some time with it, use it for a while and see what we like and don't like, and most of all, solicit your feedback on what works and what needs work in the new layout.
We have two very similar versions of the page available for testing. When you first see the page, it will look totally janky. Click on one of the two links at the bottom of the black sidebar at right -- either "change to ornate layout" or "change to simple layout" -- and it will pull in one of two stylesheets.
We would love it if people would try out each one for a few days and give us their thoughts. If you bookmark the redesigned page, it should store a cookie remembering which stylesheet you viewed last time, so you don't always have to pick one.
With your help, we'll solidify a final layout over the next couple weeks, change over the individual pages, and take over the world continue to dish out those actually-not-that-snarky ditherings we've been dishing for a year and change.
Thanks, sports fans.
January 10, 2005
A Note to Newsreaders
Note to RSS users: I just switched Snarkmarket's syndication feeds to go through Feedburner. I think, as a result, all of the Snarkposts will suddenly be duplicated. Sorry about that.
Using Feedburner, we'll be able to get a better sense of how many people read this site. Like, you know, is it just two million, or more like four million? What's that you say? Twelve?
Drop me a line if anything doesn't work correctly -- robin at snarkmarket.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about... hey, look, a baby hippo!
July 21, 2004
Deep Summer Doldrums
Robin says,
Holy crud! Where did Snarkmarket go??
Don't worry, Snarketeers. We're still here. Coming soon: David Brooks, "Grand Strategy," and the essence of education.
July 6, 2004
Movin' On Up
Matt says,
You may not notice the improvements, but we've forgone posting the last few days to make the site a happier browsing experience for all. Firefox users will be stunned by the miraculous appearance of a logo at the upper left, while IE users can bask in their newfound ability to select text (try it, it's fun!). Users of Netscape 4, however, which is no longer considered a "browser" under W3C standards, continue to suffer in the pit of despair.
You can now also search the site from the Snarkives.
Don't stay up too late playing with the site, kids.
May 27, 2004
The Future Waits For No Blog
Robin says,
I know what you're thinking: "This is supposed to be a blog? It hasn't been updated since July 1997!"
Well, that's true.
But Matt and I have been busy plotting the very future of media itself!
So cut the Snarkmarketers some slack, huh?
November 3, 2003
Snarkcharter
Two months ago, Matt appeared before me and said: "Let's start a blog."
So, finally, here it is: Snarkmarket.
Now, this is neither the snark of Tina Brown, nor the snark of Heidi Julavits, nor the snark of Gawker.com, nor the Snark of Lewis Carroll.
On Snarkmarket, we define snark in the broadest possible terms. Because really, why pigeonhole yourself from the beginning? That's what happens when you call your blog ForeignPolicyPost.com or AllAboutEggplants.org. Well, we're not falling for it. We're beating that rap from the beginning, man. Snarkmarket is anythingmarket!
But here's what you can expect for starters:
Original reporting, not just links.(Still working on this one)- Perspectives on the 2004 election.
- Reviews of movies and video games.
- Ideas about journalism.
- A gallimaufry of other things.
Thanks for checking us out. You can e-mail me or Matt with any comments, questions, or snarks. Whatever that means.
More info on Robin here.
Matt is apparently not cool enough to have a web site.
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