Another note on registration: DeWayne Lehman mentioned on online-news, in a detailed post, the extreme weakness of most registration systems. Few newspaper sites do the following:

• allow login through a secure server;
• encrypt stored passwords (using something like MD5);
• use strong passwords (more than eight characters, ideally mixed case alpha-numeric ones);
• or prevent usernames and passwords from matching (for example, “bingo/bingo” is often allowed).

While the first two require some degree of technical know-how, the last two be accomplished by anyone who knows a bit of JavaScript. If it’s so easy, why aren’t they implemented? Because, it’s commonly argued, the user might be inconvenienced.

(Semi-related, in his Media Hack column, Adam L. Penenberg suggested the New York Times is not “paper of record in cyberspace” because Google can’t index it. John Battelle plays on the idea, and imagines Google developing a service to manage your third-party subscriptions.)