I Hate Lists

I use the Google desktop. It has this cool little function where it automatically discovers RSS feeds of sites I visit, and flash them near my systray every time a new item is found. It's a nice way to be alerted of things like the latest news headlines, or the latest posts from my favourite blogs.

Lists are Good

Usability guys have repeatedly said that online readers respond better to lists, as opposed to large paragraphs of text. Lists are byte-sized pieces of information that is easily digestible despite our ever-shortening attention spans. Web writers seem to have got the idea, and are starting to produce lists. Heeding usability advice is a great thing.

Too much of a good thing makes it bad

The problem with large chunks of text was that it was too large to be consumed, which is why lists were better. However, large chunks of lists are the same, if not worse, than large chunks of paragraphs. These days, I'm bombarded with lists. Smashing Magazine seems to be devoted to lists. There are even lists of lists. Phew! Every 5 minutes, a popup appears in my systray saying something like "30 cool websites", or "50 useless sites", or "25 ways to rock hard abs", "118 cool fonts", etc. etc. I don't know about you, but I am about to snap one of these days...