I'm just checking up on folks. Seems awful quiet around here lately. Anyone have interesting projects going on? I went to see V on Sat. Good movie. I also read the graphic novel, which was different but also good.

I'm leaving Wed for a conference that'll last until Sat--I'll be in Chicago.

Okay, guys. I'm trying to brainstorm here about some possible layouts for the banner (across the top of the site). This is obviously a very important part of a website, so it's not something we want to just "slap together." Elizabeth is eager to get started on some drafts, but needs basic direction. I have some ideas, but wanted to discuss them with you guys first.

Here's a very rough idea of what I had in mind. Legend is below:

XXXX ARMCHAIR ARCADE YYYYY ZZZZ
MENU 1 MENU 2 MENU 3 MENU 4

Key:
XXXX: Images of Matt & Bill (and others as desired?)
ARMCHAIR ARCADE: The logo

These guys are a small outfit that I've seen on newsstands at Barnes and Noble, which seems like a haven for niche magazines. They just released a new issue: http://www.vgcollector.com/index.htm

I see these guys as basically accomplishing what I'd like to see us do at some point, and that's go legit to print, even if it's a quarterly thing. I'm still very much behind the online thing and all of our other plans, but I just KNOW there's a market out there that needs to be tapped.

For the hell of it, I'm going to inquire about writing for them. I want to see how they operate...

Read the last comment: http://www.armchairarcade.com/aamain/content.php?article.100

The guy doesn't seem to check out with the scam-ola e-mail address and poor writing skills, but you never know...

Hey, I'm always afraid of spam filters doing their dirty business, so let me know if you guys didn't get my two e-mails concerning the "Planet Muscle" exchange.

In the blog below, we were talking about the best banner for neo. Bill suggested that we use a combination of photos of vintage hardware (which we gratefully have in abundance), and images of ourselves. I'm going to ask those of us with artistic talent to begin thinking about some possible designs and eventually start coming up with drafts. I think at this point, it might be best just to send a bunch of photos and images to our artists and let them play around for awhile.

Everyone, please send some good images and photos that you'd like to see on the banner to e.bartonopoulos aT gmail.com. I'm not sure yet if we'll want to use our actual photos (perhaps p-shopped) or drawings, but try to send some very nice representative photos as well.

Okay. I've been working too long on this, so let me share my thoughts now (even though they are still a bit muddled). I'm trying to get my slowly growing knowledge of theme development organized. The key theme issues that we need to settle seem to be these:

Top Banner. This is clearly the top priority in designing our layout. You can see what I'm talking about here. Clearly, we want something at least as distinctive as the banners we had at the old AA. I like the idea of having buttons on or below the banner, as in this example. If we wanted to be clever, we might have a console (like the one at the old site) whose buttons would actually be alternate navigation buttons for the site.

We've been talking here about how to streamline the comment features. Part of this problem seems to stem from the nature of blogs vs. forums. We're accustomed to talking with each other in a forum environment, and this is a bit different. Forums are typically arranged in "threads," with a leading topic and a chain of responses. Blogs are a different creature. Instead of "threads," I find it more useful to think of "comments." What's the difference? Well, imagine hearing a speaker, then hearing people go up and making comments to him about his presentation. These comments may not be related to each other; they may be connected only in that they concern the same speech.

One thing that has been playing on my mind as I've been going to other Websites is that we must take great pains to make the look of the new Armchair Arcade as distinctive as possible. Blog/news sites are a dime a dozen and we must truly differentiate ourselves from them. Again, while the current Armchair Arcade is broken from a functionality standpoint, in its favor, to the outside world everything looks just about right as rain and it has a unique look that's not quite like anything else out there. We need something distinctive, bold and yes, still intuitive on Neo. I hope we all keep that in mind as we generate graphics and think about layout and content.