Yahoo is finally redesigning its front page. As rands noted in his post, it’s been a long time coming. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know it to see the design itself - I’m honestly surprised at how bad it is. It just looks like every other ugly-ass portal on the web now, which is really sad. The old design (not the current one, exactly, but maybe six months ago) wasn’t great either but it was definitely distinctive. After years and years of other sites following Yahoo’s lead, it’s depressing to see Yahoo turning around and following everyone else. Lean, usable design doesn’t have to be ugly or unappealing, as proven perhaps most notably by Google; the new Yahoo design may still be on the lean side, but that shouldn’t be the only thing going for it.

Ernie’s response to various recent writings (including that ny times article about “warblogging”) touches on what I think is an important and often overlooked point - weblogs shouldn’t be equated with journalism, necessarily. That’s why they’re so entertaining; it’s the mixture of personal writing, commentary, and links to other work that somehow ties everything together. Weblogging can be journalism, sure, but not all weblogs are intended to be, and only a very few of them are “warblogs.” Kottke (who seems to be on a roll this week with a number of excellent posts) sums it up: “Most webloggers (75%+ at least, in my estimation) are not tech bloggers or warbloggers. They’re just the ones that get all the press. LiveJournal has hundreds of thousands of members, a tiny fraction of whom talk about technology or current events. Out of the “10 most recently published blogs” on blogger.com right now, none are tech blogs or warblogs.” Incidentally, the term warblog might be my new least favorite word ever. (It used to be “blog.”)

Several people have asked if I’m attending the New York Mozilla release party tonight. While I don’t doubt it will be endlessly entertaining, I don’t think I’ll be there. Spencer and I had been considering it, but it’s so obscenely hot out today and we’re both sort of tired et cetera. Sorry!