With only so many minutes in the day (1440 to be precise) there’s not much time for lolly-gagging about when looking for which news articles are worth reading and which are not. Ferald is an extension for the Chrome browser which takes the hassle out of this equation for New Zealander news consumers.
Ferald replaces all the article images on nzherald.co.nz and stuff.co.nz with an illustration of the illustrious Grumpy Cat. The message from the developers is quite simple: none of the stories are worth reading. This may be a bit harsh to our friends at the two publications, but it’s hard to argue with Grumpy Cat (he is after all a cat).
The extension is developed and designed by Ludwig Wendzich and Su Yin Khoo. “Pizza tastes better than brocolli”, says the rather sparse extension description – a reference to Clay Johnson’s Webstock presentation on healthier media diets.
Wendzich, who organises the NZ Gather conference, says the extension is currently indiscriminate about which article it stamps with the Grumpy Cat. In the future there might be more discretion to the system.
“Right now we’re just blanket “No!”-ing all NZHerald and Stuff stories. Will try and figure out smarts later,” he writes on Twitter.
Now all we need is an extension which blocks articles about extensions which block articles, it would be very meta.
