This morning there were some fairly severe storms in the Nashville area. The typically placid Richland Creek in the Nashville community of Belle Meade was cresting its banks when I drove across the Jackson Boulevard bridge around 1 p.m., local time. I thought some video of the creek may make an interesting first experiment with Flickr’s new video-hosting feature. (Note: The 1:14 video was shot with a Canon PowerShot TX1.)

In a really transparent link-baiting, page-view inflating scheme, eweek.com is running a slide-show-ish “editorial” feature titled, “Should Facebook be Banned from Work?” (I hate doing it, but as a service to you, dear reader, here’s the link.)

Obviously, I think it would be ridiculous to ban Facebook from work. I prefer to ban from work employees who aren’t productive and responsible. If employees are productive, they’ll discover how to use anything productive that Facebook enables — and learn how to manage the noise.

What I’d rather see banned from work are editorial features that make the reader click through 12 pages (or more, if you count the ads popping up along the way). The “page-view” metric is the reason publishers do this, but it’s a nightmare user experience and I’m sure any analysis of site traffic would show that people rarely click through more than 2-3 pages. On this one, I didn’t get past the second frame.

Also what I’d like to see banned (and I thought it was) are the types of embedded-in-editorial link-ads that appear on the eWeek website. The type that send Paul Conley over the edge.

For anyone the least bit “web-savvy,” eWeek is a much bigger time waste than Facebook.

• We Need A New Path To Liquidity | Fred Wilson
  Quote - “The de-portalization of the Internet … is very real. And yet, these large behemoths are trying to do their normal consolidation play on the Internet.”
  (tags: internet web web2.0 technology vc)
• Nationwide text message alert system approved | USATODAY.com
  Or, perhaps they could just set up a Twitter account. (Just kidding: I think this is a good thing.)
  (tags: emergency2.0)
• US news magazines reinventing themselves as ad pages slip | Press Gazette
  Quote - When giving a speech at Columbia University recently (Newsweek editor Jon Meacham) asked the 100 or more students attending how many read Newsweek. Not one hand went up.
  (tags: magazines)