There is an evil scourge enveloping the web. Its name is IntelliTXT. You may not know it by that name, but I’m sure you’ve seen it. Ever been to a site where some of the words are double underlined? That’s InteiliTXT. Here’s an example:

Note the word “gaming”. This image was taken from a website about video games, but even so, the word “gaming” seems so general that no reasonable person would expect to see it linked. As you can see, when hovered over, an ad for a computer pops up (some of these even have embedded video).

IntelliTXT’s website says they “enable every word to be an opportunity to engage with customers.” Why, oh WHY, is making every stinking word an “opportunity to engage” someone a good idea? Every word (or even every 100th word) shouldn’t be an opportunity to do anything other than read them. IntelliTXT creates a rotten experience by popping up stupid little windows even if you just happen to pass your cursor over them and distracts from the act of absorbing content by emphasizing some words over others in a way not controlled or even desired by the visitor or the content creator. It’s an unholy alliance of hyperlinks and Google’s AdSense and somehow happens to build on only the negative aspects of both.

Digg, our favorite social news website, has launched a new design today. Simple, functional, and absolutely gorgeous.

Check it out.

I missed a really great post by John Gruber from this past summer where he takes the music industry to task for their griping that Apple’s iTunes has too much power in the world of online music distribution. Basically, they want an open, “interoperable” digital rights management (DRM) scheme. Unfortunately, DRM is, by its very nature, proprietary. It builds a little wall around media files that only lets in the right paying customer. If you put the plans to that wall out there for everyone to see, then all the little cracks and openings in that wall will be visible to everyone. An open DRM is a broken DRM and that’s the same as no DRM, and that’s clearly not what the music industry wants.

Says Gruber:

The industry’s idea of a “perfect” DRM scheme is one that is not controlled by either Apple or Microsoft, and which gives only them (the record industry) complete control over what users can do with their downloads. Such a scheme does not exist, and it does not exist because it isn’t possible.

And then…

The music industry’s insistence upon DRM is what put the [iTunes Music Store] in the position that Apple now enjoys; the record industry is decrying a lock-in advantage that they themselves handed to Apple so they could deny their customers (i.e. us, the people who listen to music) the interoperability they now say they want.

DRM is, in my opinion, bad eight ways ’till Tuesday for nearly everyone, but none of those ways are nearly as delicious as how it maintains such a concentration of power in the hands of Apple and how the music guys absolutely hate that.

The New York Times has added the ability to submit their stories to social bookmarking websites like Digg.com. TechCrunch says:

Although you could always manually add The Times stories to news sharing sites such as Digg and Newsvine before, the capability to do it directly from the story means that The Times is paying attention to where its stories are shared, who reads them, and, more importantly, what they are saying about them.

I think this is a certified Big Deal. One more step towards a new world order…

Read more.