Joe Flood

writer, photographer, web person

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USAJOBS vs CBO Job Site

September 8th, 2009 · 1 Comment · rants

Too much exposure to USAJOBS has really turned me cynical. Despite news reports on the need to recruit thousands of new employees, the main federal jobs site is a usability nightmare, unfathomable to even people who work on web sites, like me. While the site has few defenders, some have argued that it has to [...]

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Lessons from a Webby-Winning Web Site

May 5th, 2009 · No Comments · raves

I was excited to learn that The Nature Conservancy won a Webby for their web site, nature.org. They beat out the competition (which included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!) in the category of Charitable Organizations Nonprofit.
I worked on nature.org from 2003-2005 as a Web Producer. I think it’s a great site though, of course, [...]

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Clay Shirky on the End of Newspapers

March 16th, 2009 · No Comments · rants

Like it or not, newspapers are going away. Printing day-old news on dead trees and then shipping the results to subscribers by gas-burning trucks seems antiquated and inefficient, a process that has become obsolete in our lifetimes.
I love newspapers. One of things I like about living in DC is the heft of the Washington Post. [...]

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No More Washington Post Book World?

January 28th, 2009 · 3 Comments · rants

Call me old-fashioned, but I think that one of life’s joys is to sit down with a good newspaper.  Though I’m someone who’s spent a career working on web sites, there’s some really special about a quiet morning with a paper.  And some coffee.
A newspaper is easier on the eyes than a glowing screen.  It [...]

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Seniors Spend More Time Online Than Anyone Else

May 21st, 2008 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized

This seems counterintuitive but seniors (age 55+) spend more time online than any other age group, according to a recent Jupiter Research report.
How times have changed since my days at AARP in the late 90s, when seniors were underrepresented online.  More than once, I heard the argument that seniors would never use the web, that [...]

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