Grumpy old media blogger

It seems to be the season of redesigns. After the Times, the Guardian has now redesigned its website - like the Times, making it rather lighter, with more space, and lighter font styles.No lime green, but like the Times it's changed the grid to enable more columns to be carried across the page, separating out the content in different ways. I don't love it... but it is undeniably useful.

This all leaves the Indie looking rather faded. The Indie seems to have decided that Web 2.0 isn't going to happen. It was early into podcasts with a travel series but it seems pretty much to have given up on them.

Attitudes to rich media are odd. For instance the Guardian and Times often run video but they still can't be arsed to put pictures or graphics with many of their articles. A recent article on the Times website about swimsuits had no pics. Fashion without pics? Weird, not wired.

And there is one thing the Times is doing - in fact, doing again - that drives me wild. Load up a page and IT STARTS TO TALK. You are reading, I don't know what, an article about the French parliamentary elections, and suddenly this voice breaks in and says 'I was in Hay-on-Wye the other day and...' or 'Welcome to Washington and Reuters News'.

Now we know, being English, that newspapers are there to discourage talking, that's why they come out in time for your breakfast. :-) Unlike on Youtube, I do not come to the Times for videos, and unlike iTunes I do not come for audio. I come, first and foremost, for news - and I want to be the arbiter of how I use that news. It's a usability issue, but one the Times doesn't care about. They are going to tell me how I need to experience their web site.

Oh dear oh dear. There's a traditional editor in there somewhere who still hasn't understood the meaning of interactivity.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be spending more time on the Telegraph site as my chunk of right-of-centre comment, and be damned to the Times and its talking robot.