I used to use the Hotwired site as a reference for students learning how
to design web sites for the first time. The use of a simple vertical
menu-bar frame was a good design that worked, and the various discrete
sections would often stick to an agenda enough to retain a distinct
identity. It was an easy site to use, and organised text well enough to
be a useful site as well. It proved that you didn't have to go too
crazy with Java and frames to make a site look contemporary.

The new Hotwired sucks. Gone is the simple two-frame layout to be
replaced with a cascading front-page that owes more to the detestable
'Slate' than it does to any decent innovation in web-design. It takes
more time to scroll down it than most people will be bothered to spend.
This is inexcusable when the site had previously used frames so well to
avoid such problems. Also, the information on the front-page offers
little that indicates content across-the-board. Why not offer leads
from all sections on the front-page?

So…to the new content sections:

Webmonkey is alive and kicking. Call me a geek, but I still think this
is the best section. It still has good content on web-developing tools,
and excellent links and tutorials (and the monkey graphic's so *cute*).

Netsurf is Suck-lite. The best brains of the co-opted Suck thrown in a
blender and diluted, mixed with vanilla essence and poured over the
corporate structure of Wired Digital Inc. Why not just throw in Suck
wholesale?

Synapse seems to want to be CTheory, but ends up more like Riki Lake for
the web generation ('My Email Fiancee Was A Gender-Bending Turkle
Acolyte'). Jon Katz is left to fester here, vainly trying to offer
interesting content to counter-point discussions about media violence.

Dream Jobs is self-explanatory, and will probably be the most visited
section. Dream on.

Beta Lounge is the on-line video and audio experiment. I'm sorry, but
I've never seen the attraction of watching someone else party via a bad
Internet video and audio link. If I want to be a voyeur, I'll get James
Spader to set up some CCTV in my neighbour's house. Beta Lounge is like
that well-designed bar in the centre of town that nobody goes to.

RGB is the most interesting section for the RHIZOME family. Be prepared
to have every new plug-in before you enter. You are initially presented
with 4 (count 'em) frames that divide up the screen into byte-sized
chunks that can contain little else except small animations. RGB has
some potential as a space for digital art, but they premiered with
ex-Westminster Digiterati Anti-rom. Call me a pedant, but Anti-rom are
closer to a design company than an art collective. RGB will be a useful
space if it actually showcases digital art instead of taking the lead
from print Wired and printing designer's CVs.

Beyond these content sections, there are the usual ghettoized chat
spaces, and the 'new' and 'exciting' chance for members to have their
own personal pages hauled up on the Hotwired server. There is little
that is really new, although there are moves in some of the right
direction. But what hacks me off is that some of the things I thought
worked about Hotwired have disappeared. The content sections used to
have discrete identities - the redesign gathers everything under the
same umbrella and some of that distinction is lost. And the feeling
that Wired is covering the cultural life of the web is lost to the
overwhelming predominance of business news. Wired Digital Inc.'s product
has, for some time now, become a space where businessmen who dream of
being techies salivate over adverts for servers, and where techies who
dream of being businessmen salivate over adverts for investment trusts.
Such is the way of the Wired World… + + +

Chris Locke runs the MA in Electronic Communication & Publishing at UCL.