March 19th, 2007,
A small human-like robot flys around recording playing music, recording video and giving you messages. This is an exciting promo video to entice students to think about a career in Computer Science. I can’t wait for the personal robot to finally transition from science fiction to household appliance. In another article I’ll re-post here Bill Gates talks about robotics being the next great thing and about how robotics is in it’s infancy where PCs where 15 years ago. It’s very interesting, I’d love to see more videos like this.
read more | digg story
March 14th, 2007,
The next major wave in entertainment technology is only two years away from making a huge splash on audiences across the world. Dreamworks just announced that starting in 2009 it will release all of its features in 3-D.
read more | digg story
March 8th, 2007,
“It’s now been more than two years since the first story was submitted and dugg on Digg. Since then you guys have helped Digg move from a personal project amongst a group of friends to a huge online community. Now, your contributions in submitting, digging, and commenting on content have propelled Digg to a point I never dreamed of ”
The Social Media Concept is still in it’s infancy and already Digg has 1 million users. I expect to see it double in size again in the next 2 years even when faced with some new competitors, (unless Google joins the race, they could definitely take a large cut out of any social media site’s audience, even diggs)
read more | digg story
March 3rd, 2007,
You don’t have to pay a lot (or anything) to get good info about your website or blog’s traffic and visitors. This article compares 6 free traffic analytics packages and why you should (or shouldn’t) use them. I have used 4 of these and still like Google Analytics the best out of the free ones.
read more | digg story
March 3rd, 2007,
“A researcher at Stanford has created an alternative to the mouse that allows a person using a computer to click links, highlight text, and scroll simply by looking at the screen and tapping a key on the keyboard. By using standard eye-tracking hardware a doctoral student has developed a novel user interface that is easy to operate.”
read more | digg story
February 15th, 2007,
Opportunity cost and prioritization are harsh taskmasters. When you have a lot of resources and assets to put to work, the marketplace expects that you will use them in the best possible way. If you don’t, those resources go somewhere else. So, sure, a SuperBowl ad makes your business go up. But does it go up as much as if you had spent the $2 mill
read more | digg story
February 15th, 2007,
Excellent list of 10 must-read design blogs that anyone who’s into graphic design or web design should check out.
read more | digg story
February 15th, 2007,
Smaller companies in markets with heavy PPC competition would probably see more of a return on their investment by using those resources for an organic SEO campaign combined with some targeted website advertising (like buying sponsored listing on appropriate portals and niche directories.
read more | digg story
February 14th, 2007,
Beyond the hype, the idea is really a very good one As I looked further into the concept of an interactive internet/television hybrid, it got me thinking about the myriad possibilities. How about television shows where you, the viewer, get to choose the plot direction.
read more | digg story
February 14th, 2007,
Andy Hagans offers an in-depth guide for webmasters to responsibly leverage social media. The article covers several topics including titling, content architecture, formatting, the major social media sites, and ethics.
read more | digg story
February 4th, 2007,
The video titled, “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” was created by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and is a very entertaining and enjoyable visual representation of the changes that took place on websites from the beginnings of the internet until now.
read more | digg story
January 31st, 2007,
According to Forrester Research, User-generated content (UGC) is being created by approximately one-quarter of online consumers. Are you tapping into the massive power of 2.0 users?
read more | digg story
January 31st, 2007,
I’ll be setting up a pligg site shortly and I’ll probably refer to this great article that takes you step by step though setting up your own news-voting website with Pligg. Pligg is a content-management system that supports social media news sites that allow users to submit stories and vote on the ones they find most interesting.
read more | digg story
January 31st, 2007,
It takes more then just good content to get noticed on Digg. Unless you’ve got the scoop on a very sensationalized story, it’s important to make connections and network if you want maximum exposure for your stories and participation. This article gives 35 tips to maximizing your use of the Digg community.
read more | digg story
January 27th, 2007,
A comprehensive 101 list of website marketing tips , ideas and best practices (online and offline).
read more | digg story
January 27th, 2007,
Digg’s brand and influence are increasing even more with YouTube adding “Digg this” buttons. YouTube released many new features including the ability to block certain users, improved search (plus YouTube videos being indexed on Google Video Search), fixed messaging, and more options for customizing channels.
read more | digg story
January 22nd, 2007,
In an effort to combat spam, Wikipedia has changed all it’s links over to nofollow, meaning they will no longer pass pagerank and count as an “editorial vote” for that page. Wikipedia links use to be a great way to build pr and trust for people with excellent sites that were less commercial oriented, or at least had sections that were (Wikipedia is notorious for disallowing sites with commercial intent, although that is slowly changing and the links are becoming more main stream.) Even without passing page rank the value of a link from Wikipedia link is still great for driving quality traffic and I have a sneaking suspecion Google may eventually (or even right now) still give some extra “value” of some sort from links on popular Wikipedia pages, but that’s just a hunch. I mean heck, any spam links are removed within hours and every external link has to go through editorial review, it’s one of the better checks for the value of a site.
Officially Google, MSN, and Yahoo all teamed up to adopt the nofollow attribute, but the nofollow links still show up on link searches. Additionally Google still gives page rank to pages with “noindex” “noarchive” “nofollow” meta tags and ranks those pages for specific quieres (like the exact title search). MSN and Yahoo also still index and rank pages that are “suppose” to be purposely invisible. A good example of this will is individual de.licio.us user pages. They are in the cache, show up in the results (for very specific searches mind you), and can have page rank.
read more | digg story
January 22nd, 2007,
A discussion of different possible ways in which Google may rerank it’s results after an initial search querey. This is a great article for anyone trying to understand the behavior of Google’s results and why different types of seraches bring up different kinds of websites. One example is a “commercial intent” filter, simliar to Yahoo Mindset, Google may rerank the results to favor or downgrade commercial results depending on what the query was.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, google rankings, SERPS
January 22nd, 2007,
An in-depth 1700+ word article on how to get free publicity for your business. It’s authored by SS PR firm, which represents clients in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal among others - Good advice on how to get publicity without spending anything.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: pr tips, publicity, public relations
January 19th, 2007,
Excellent resource for css technqiues. The examples have great screenshots and are taken from well designed sites. I’ll be visiting this site again and I already know these techniques, but the implementation is just as good as the know-how and everyone could use a review.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: css techniques, web design
January 19th, 2007,
With all the emphasis latley in the SEO world on the benefit of social media sites (Like digg) for link building, traffic and general brand awareness, it makes sense that VERY strong anti-promotional sentiments are springing up in heated debates (or insult exchanges depending on the maturity of the commenter) on the ethics involved in authors submitting stories themselves from which they will in some way gain from the promotion.
For a GREAT example of this check out the comments on this article “187 Amazingly designed sites to see before you die.” The author made an ok very long list of all the sites he thought looked the best. He submitted this list and on other pages of his site he sells text links.
I didn’t digg the article and I say ok, because although most of the sites on the list are very pretty their usability is so terrible (meaning it’s difficult to tell how they are, what they do and navigate around) I consider most of them failures as anything more then GREAT eye candy and perharps valuable fodder for a viral marketing (or the new term link bait) campagin from people saying “Woah look at this.”
The article nevertheless recieved a lot of diggs and people in the comments blasted him, why? Because he submitted the site himself and he may / will financially gain for the exposure it recieves on digg. Other people came to his defense saying it didn’t matter if he makes money or not, it’s all about where the users like the content. I tend to agree with that atitude, but I expect to see even harsher examples of “anti promotionalism.” springing up as more and more people attempt to “abuse” the system.
What the future of social media and it’s effect on advertisers is still up for debate.
Technorati Tags: social media, digg, anti-promotionalism
January 19th, 2007,
A decently funny joke about how as web designers / developers progress in ability their code becomes more and more complicated.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: web design jokes, web developer jokes
January 17th, 2007,
I’m about to launch a niche social media site myself so I’ve been looking closley at the history and some of the problems and potential exploits for digg. This article is way too long, but gives some interesting stats about digg users and the potential traffic and power they can manipulate. It’s also worth reading, because the author is one of digg’s top submitter and he talks about ethics and self-promotion.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: digg, social media
January 17th, 2007,
Take a look at this story about the power of certain digg users and how digg may not be as democratic as some people believe, it’s a good read. It’s also interesting that the story itself recieved 873 diggs, but aparently never hit the front page, it appears that from my inital scan that a moderator didn’t allow the story to go to make it to the front page.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: digg, social media
January 16th, 2007,
I’ve been reading a lot about this new Wiki search engine, I tested it out and while it doesn’t work as well as I would have liked, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it and using it to search Wikipedia and take a look at the improvement. The cool thing about Wikiseek is that it only bring up results from Wikipedia AND THE SITES THAT WIKIPEDIA LINKS TO. So if you’re looking for a quick reference it seems to be a good choice, although I still find the regular Google results absolutely wonderfully relevant most of the time.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: wikipedia, wikiseek, wikipedia search engine
January 16th, 2007,
With most of the web still consisting of text based content (as of today all of my blogs are text and images based, but I’m going video soon too) the sites that take the inital step to producing video content designed for online consumption have a unique advantage. It’s interesting to see what people you may have read online actually sound and speak like on video. Webpronews (which syndicates the Stir Crazy Search Engine Marketing Blog I co-author at Acclivity, Inc) has an interesting video blog that interviews some of the search engine marketing world’s biggest stars.
The information the videos contain is pretty basic and not anywhere near as valuable as what you would find in text-based blogs, but I imagine that will change in time. If you ever wanted to hear some SEO geeks on video here’s your chance. I definitley found it amusing. I hope they expand their video blog to tackle some deeper issues, although I may be out of their target audience.
Technorati Tags: seo video blog, seo geeks
January 15th, 2007,
In November of 2005 I wrote an article on entitled “Why Vincent Flanders, of webpagesthatsuck.com, is a Success, but Still Misses the Point.” It’s a bit dated, but the idea is still valid. Today I revisited webpagesthatsuck.com expecting to find an updated vibrant website and I was unfortunately surprised by the lack of change. It seems that webpagesthatsuck contains essentially the exact same content, dated site design, and lack of images that it did over a year ago.
I would think with all that traffic (Alexa rank is 23,538), two books out, and a website with a page rank of 7 he would have done more with the site. He has Google adsense on there (meaning he’s trying to make money from the website traffic), but not in a place that will get enough click throughs and his website almost completely void of useful imagines and surprisingly enough violates many of it’s own rules. I remember how impressed I was with the innovative marketing strategy when I first learned of web pages that suck 10 years ago when I designed my first website.
Technorati Tags: web usability, web design mistakes
January 15th, 2007,
A Collection of classic corporate logos re-designed with modern web 2.0 features like glossy text, bold colors, and reflections. This wasn’t meant to be taken completely seriously, but the end results are excellent. Although, I believe we’ll all get sick of the web 2.0 look eventually for now it’s a welcome bright and bold change to normal boring design.
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: web 2.0, logo graphic design
January 14th, 2007,
This website (Elite Skills) contains a large list of free education links to courses and video lectures. It obtained a large amount of bookmarks and votes on various social media and bookmarking sites including digg. I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet, but it look interesting and I’ve added them to my list to check out.
January 9th, 2007,
This is an interesting article ( gilsmethod.com ) describing one method of how to download and save videos from the huge variety of video distribution sites. Once the videos are downloaded on your computer they can be replayed or burned onto DVD for playback on your television.
Technorati Tags: download video, youtube, video distribution sites
January 7th, 2007,
(via Acclivitymarketing.com) Part 1 of a good series on contracts and copyright and how they apply to websites.
January 7th, 2007,
(Via Acclivitymarketing.com) Good introduction to copyright as it relates to website content.
Technorati Tags: copyright, writing, contracts
January 4th, 2007,
( http://www.feedicons.com/ ) Offical rss feed icon with downloads in multiple resolutions and formats.
Technorati Tags: feed icons
January 1st, 2007,
( http://www.typies.blogspot.com/ ) Excellent typography blog - I love this designer’s text layouts; they make me want to spend more time and energy on typography.
Technorati Tags: typography, typography blog
December 31st, 2006,
Via Acclivitymarketing.com Article examines if dmoz will survive or if their return from being down just prolongs their slow demise. Includes examples of what works on the site and what’s still down.
Technorati Tags: dmoz, odp
December 31st, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com ) A discussion about the term user generated content and why it’s not an insult to independent content publishers.
Technorati Tags: user generated content, user-generated content
December 21st, 2006,
Why the Blair Witch creator so depressed over his new movie release, and why he doesn’t have to be. ( Via Solomonrothman.com )
Technorati Tags: altered movie, blair witch director
December 20th, 2006,
Cool new keyword research tool I orginally read about at seoMOZ. It’s cool, but I don’t see myself using it regularly. ( http://www.keycompete.com/ )
December 16th, 2006,
Step by Step guide through Microsoft Adcenter with screenshots and discount code.
( http://www.acclivitymarketing.com/blog/2006/12/17/microsoft%C2%AE-adcenter-guide/ )
December 12th, 2006,
This is a great tutorial for photoshop users that describes how to do some of the trends inspired by the web 2.0 movement including glossy text and fancy gradients. ( http://photoshopit.wordpress.com/2006/09/04/the-glossy-text-web20-style/ )
December 12th, 2006,
List of places to get royalty free icons for websites. ( http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/ )
December 12th, 2006,
( http://www.openclipart.org/ ) Nice collection of public domain clip art and icons. Not as good as some commercial collections, but definitely usable, even for commercial projects. I going to use a few of the icons on my own re-design.
Technorati Tags: open clip art
December 10th, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com ) A list of 10 ideas of how DMOZ could change it’s image, become more modern and gain a new audience. What could the future bring for the Open Directory Project?
Technorati Tags: dmoz, odp, open directory project
December 10th, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com ) Article giving an update on the status of dmoz and what it’s future holds with the info taken from a locked editor forum. What’s going to happen to the ODP?
Technorati Tags: dmoz, aol search business unit, odp, open directory project
December 9th, 2006,
( http://www.zamzar.com/ ) Convert between video, documents, and music formats all online without needing to download software.
Technorati Tags: online file conversion
December 9th, 2006,
The internet is filled with websites here and there offering reciprocal linking services, management, or automated software that handles your reciprocals for you. A lot of individual webmasters and SEO consultants spend hundreds of hours, and by that acco
December 9th, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com ) The internet is filled with websites here and there offering reciprocal linking services, management, or automated software that handles your reciprocals for you. A lot of individual webmasters and SEO consultants spend hundreds of hours, and by that acco…
Technorati Tags: reciprocal linking services, reciprocal links
December 9th, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com )
Should SEO / SEM companies publicly display case studies and what would be the potential ramifications for doing so?
Most SEO companies currently don’t list their clients or if they do its years after the work has been completed or in a non-informati…
Technorati Tags: seo case studies
December 4th, 2006,
( Via Acclivitymarketing.com ) From a user’s perspective, quality (or my preferred term, valuable) content, whatever the medium, is characterized by one essential factor: it fulfills the user’s needs at the time they’re looking for it.
Technorati Tags: website content, writing
