[First filed: October 13, 2008 @ 23:43]
Candidate websites are in decline.
Politicians seem to have realised that the web is hostile territory where people won’t always say what you want them to say. Much safer to stick to older school media where opinion can be safely bought and sold, to be ladled to the dwindling band of proles still receptive on their couches.
A minority of candidates, however, are still giving the interwebs a go.
I plugged the laptop into the tele and got my politically apathetic housemates to give their opinions of the various websites and, photography permitting, crumpet factor, of those who would rule over us for the next four long years.
For those unwilling to wade through the notes I can say it was an all Labor show.
Mary Porter has the best website by far. Adina Cirson (pictured) wins the crumpet factor, with Andrew Barr the only male to make the crumpet list (should have had a website Morgo).
Mike Hettinger also features with the ugliest website, possibly the ugliest website ever produced outside the educational sector.
It has elegant design. And it’s well set out. But making text deliberately small is just silly.
A decent effort, but unremarkable.
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Unremarkable and dull, lacking in appeal. But she seems like a nice person.
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A housemate thinks he looks a little insane
As for the site the fonts are too busy and it looks like a blog. A plain blog.
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When his picture came up the comment was “eahhh…”
But the site looks friendly, if a little empty.
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This page is super trendy with the centrepiece being a flash driven slideshow zapping gormless motherhood statements into your brain.
The problem is that periodically the same photo keeps flashing
It’s otherwise light on content.
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Wayne Sievers is a serious man, but perhaps the site could have benefitted from less photographs of him rather than more, because he’s no oil painting.
The use of hyper-emphasis which drops high level heading text into the middle of paragraphs was also not appreciated by the housemates who shrieked “STOP YELLING AT ME” at Wayne’s visage.
On the other hand he mentions RiotACT on the front page so he gets a plus mark.
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The Motorists Party are too busy reminiscing about Pauline Hanson to do web pages. But we did have lots of giggles looking at their photos. William “Andrew” Simington always got a laugh when spirits were flagging.
Anyone want to speculate on why all the AMP candidates are men in white shirts? Hasn’t history shown us poor results when political movements wear uniforms?
The housemates wanted to know why they’re all so ugly?
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The housemates quite liked the look of Chris Bourke saying he looks reasonable, with quite a pleasant face.
The website on the other hand is dull, sparse, with not much to it.
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According to her website Adina is “one of us”
Which made us wonder what if God was one of us?
And is she trying to hide being an alien?
The site has far too many colours. They clash. And the whole thing is not pleasant to look at.
In a rare break with convention the candidate appears to be the child standing next to the grownups, and is not the focus of the pictures.
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This is a very pleasant, very well laid out website.
By far the best on offer for any candidate. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what ails a site but this one is rolled gold.
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An ugly and disinterested site with mixed fonts and motherhood statements heavy, everything else light.
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Like Adina, Jacqui claims to be “one of us” with all the slightly creepy overtones entailled.
While not making the crumpet list she was considered to have a reasonably pleasant face.
Nothing too exciting about the site but no complaints.
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Andrea has a myspace page with all the ugliness that entails.
She also proves that scans of campaign literature don’t work on the web.
And she scored as crumpet.
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Mismatched fonts, and bad proportions were balanced by a link to RiotACT on the front page.
Matt on his soapbox did not impress. Although he was accused of looking at one of the housemates “funny” one night in the Pot Belly. Make of that what you will.
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Blurg.
Egocentric and yet with nothing on it other than the colour green, buttons and a photo.
It says “Hello, and welcome to my web site,” welcome to 1995.
And how many fonts do you need? Three? Four different fonts?
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It’s generally considered to be one of the better sites, and it didn’t make anyone’s eyeballs hurt.
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Adam was considered to be possible crumpet, but with insufficient detail in the photo no verdict could be reached.
The site design was considered harmless if slightly amateur.
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Popups everwhere!!!!! Nowhere is safe to mouse!
We thought it had the same picture over and over but down the bottom there lurked a new one.
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The only male crumpet in the pack the website also rated well with the layout especially pleasing.
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Housemates wanted to know why is her neck the same size as her head?
It’s dull, but well set out and she rated as Semi-crumpet
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“Our city is under a tack!”
This site bugged me so much.
So very much effort has gone into annoying the user.
It changed the mouse cursor to something blue. “Give me back my mouse bitches!” shrieked the housemates.
And if you have sound turned on it makes a HORRID HORRID noise – like a coin on glass – when mousing over the menu buttons. Why go to that much effort to upset visitors?
The big red tack stabbing into Canberra was thought to be a positive, distracting from Simon’s zombie like visage,
After some debate zombies were prefered to giant tacks.
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Despite a staggeringly dorky “Welcome to my new website!” message Katy scored as crumpet.
The site also featured far too much red text. But was otherwise workmanlike.
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“OH MY GOD” we all screamed.
“MAKE IT GO AWAY” followed forthwith.
Then we all fell around laughing for some time.
The housemates decided that young Mike was crumpet in his USAF uniform. Current Mike less so.
Outside of the education sector it’s possibly the ugliest website ever made.
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David’s eyebrows were thought to be on the scary side.
But on the plus we were able to find his page even though he shares a name with a rock star.
The website cunningly matches his grey suit and hair.
But it was thought he needs more information on the front page, and less begging.
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“welcome to my little part of Cyberspace” was not a winning message with the housemates.
Now was two shades of orange for communicating. And not much to communicate.
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Another Myspace page, and one of the more elegant ones out there.
Elena’s reputation of emo-hate had preceded her and the housemates were not pleased.
“I think the reason she hates emos is they’re so much more beautiful than her,” said one.
“It’s time to grow up and get a real website,” said another.
It also features leftover senate campaign information and puts her a year younger than her profile data suggests.
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“She looks like she’d be a nice mum,” was the verdict.
A good looking site at the top of the page, down the bottom it looks like her kids have been trying to help out.
Red buttons with bevelled edges and mismatched fonts urgh. Ticker blech.
But there’s some nice use of themes with imagery.
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“It is a pleasure to welcome you to my homepage,” is the opening piece of patronisation.
On the site there’s very little to indicate she’s a Liberal.
It makes nice use of simple points and benefits from a well thought out soft palette.
Definitely one of the better ones.
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This site is a triumph of style over substance.
It plays up his Army links but features such comedy boxes as:
- “Upcoming Event
No Upcoming Event”
It also starts an auto-load of video which is a great way to seriously annoy visitors.
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Grey text on white, with a grey background.
The site makes a point of flogging opportunities to help him, and fourteen mentions of the word “Gary”
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It’s a default template blogspot blog, hasn’t been updated since August.
It screams “I wish I’d never let them talk me into doing this”.
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Apologies if I’ve missed anyone, but frankly if you can’t get your site into the first couple of pages of google results you’re just not trying very hard.
