A photo of Jason Clarke from the waist up, smiling at the camera wearing a brown corduroy sport coat and blue sweater

Hi, I’m Jason Clarke. I’m a family guy, writer, and digital strategist based in Orono, Maine. More about me →

Ideas & Ethics

  • Bangor Daily News blurs the line between news and advertising

    The Bangor Daily News is back at it with more ethically-questionable practices on its website, this time in the form of its new “BDN Marketplace News” section which attempts to disguise advertisements as news headlines. What’s Going On? At the bottom of article pages, the “BDN Marketplace News” appears directly under a larger “Similar Articles”…

  • Let’s see more context-aware design touches

    I hope, and I predict, that we’ll start to see more of a trend in web and software development in the coming months and years that probably already has a great name, but since I don’t know it, for now I’m giving it my own name: context-aware design. Loosely, I define context-aware design as a principle…

  • Ratio of tweets to alcoholic beverages

    I noticed that people (myself included) seem to tweet more frequently when they’ve had drinks, so I made this chart to describe the rise (and fall) of tweets to drinks.  

  • Why the Bangor Daily News “ad frame” is bad for you, and what to do about it

    Links should be free- and users are worth more than a few cents each. Why “ad frames” are bad business for news. My local newspaper, the Bangor Daily News, has made some admirable improvements to its otherwise lackluster website over the past few months. To their credit, they’ve slowly integrated topic and people-based cross-links throughout their…

  • Blogging doesn’t need- and shouldn’t have- a code of conduct

    Tim O’Reilly, owner of O’Reilly Media, recently proposed a blogging code of conduct in light of recent threats against blogger Kathy Sierra and the ensuing controversy that arose around the discussion of those threats. While this is obviously a move born of positive intentions, I think that a blogging code of conduct is a terribly…

  • Despite apologies, Imus critics reveal true motives

    Note: This post was scheduled to be published tomorrow morning, but after learning via CNN.com that Imus has now been suspended for two weeks, I’m posting it now. Last week on his radio show, Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus made some cruel, stupid, and insensitive comments regarding the Rutgers University Women’s basketball team.…

  • NBC to enhance its online video offerings

    Good news for the continuing un-harnesing of network television: NBC has announced it will both expand its online video platform, and in a big finally! move, it will make its video player embeddable. This move is a big step for a major network…it turns the tide from complaining against services like YouTube, and begins challenging…

  • Twitter: a fad, not the future of all blogging

    I am coming out, for the record, against the increasingly popular social networking tool Twitter. If you’re not familiar with it, Twitter is a relatively new web-based service headed by Evan Williams, a founder of pioneering blog engine Blogger. The concept behind Twitter is that you keep in touch with friends– and fans– by posting…

  • Adholes and the lessons of corporate indifference

    The laughably awful advertising industry website Adholes, which has declined steadily in terms of reach and influence over recent years, has taken another sad step on its way to irrelevancy by publicly calling me (and by extension other customers experiencing this issue) an “idiot” on their corporate website. Not since CBS News hoisted fake documents…

  • Looking back on my predictions for 2006

    Just over one year ago, I posted “7 things to look for on the web in 2006“. Now that 2006 is over, let’s take a look at how I did! Here’s my original post, and here’s a summary of my predictions, in order of what kind of impact I predicted them to have: 7. Hyperlocal…