after reading this article from brill's content (well, i read it in print originally), i decided to check out united press international's web presence. after being thoroughly disgusted, i sent them an email (to the webmaster and sales addresses), which has so far garnered no response. my email is attached here (finally taking advantage of that 'article' support i added to my little homebrew weblog application).

date: thu, 22 mar 2001 21:54:52 -0800
to: sales@upi.com, webmaster@upi.com
subject: yikes, get a clue.

your website is terrible. what are the products? what do they cost? why are you linking to dotplanet.com, who is obviously using news feeds from moreover.com? why does your featured "business & finance" link go to an error page? is unitedstates.com really the best partner you can showcase? (never mind that your links to them are broken.) infospace.com is the only partner you're linking to which isn't flat-out embarrassing.

"unlimited possibilities and ideas" is a nice call-out, and the tie to the upi name is good. but why is the upi name buried in the footer? (do i need to tell you how 1998 "knowledge@work" is?)

if you have a proud and colorful history as it says online at http://www.upi.com/corp/about/, why don't you even link to that page on your site? hell, why aren't you proclaiming it on your front page?

do yourself a few favors:

• buy "the cluetrain manifesto" read it. take it seriously.
• look at how journalists like dan gillmor are really bringing journalism to the internet and the internet to journalism. or paul andrews. or glenn fleishman.
• if you don't have any worthwhile online partners to link to, build your own showcase.

you do have a proud and colorful history. you should have unlimited possibilities and ideas. i don't see evidence of the pride, or of the ideas. please fix that.

jim winstead

(ps. what is the "this site best view with microsoft internet explorer" crap? i don't see a difference. it is an uninspired design with any browser. and a scrolling text java applet? yeesh.)