Archive for January 2006

I’m a member of an online book club and one of the neatest things — though I don’t participate — is the conference call with the author of the book we’re reading. Turns out our book club leader wasn’t one of the few who came up with the great idea as according to USA Today, it’s becoming popular.

These calls are a great opportunity for book clubs and authors. Book clubs get closer to the author and feel a personal connection while authors gain sales, publicity, and goodwill. HarperCollins makes it easy for readers and authors to connect with its Invite the Author.
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* Call Center Blurbs takes you inside the world of call centers.

* SEO Analyzer is a free tool. [ Link: Google Blogoscoped ]

* Writing for Tabloids gives you the inside story on writing for those unbelievable publications… hey, people buy ‘em!

* Worst Jobs in History – Think your job is that bad? Maybe not after you read this.

* Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents from Reporters without Borders [ Link: Cincom Expert Access ]

* Ajax year in review has great pointers to Ajax tools, techniques, news, and analysis.

* Best Web 2.0 Software lists many applications that make you go, “Wow!”

* 10 Things to Look for This Year in Mobile Computing lists Ajax as number one.

* PocketMod is a creative and disposable organizer. Create your own to have a calendar, lines, grids, music sheet, lists, contacts, conversions, formulas, sudoku, and more. [ Link: By the Sea ]

* Will Ajax Replace the Desktop? – interesting food for thought.

Last year, I made predictions for 2005 along with the other InformIT folks. The original list isn’t online anymore, but I posted the 2005 predictions along with what really happened. I batted average. Some on the mark and some way out there.

So continuing the tradition, I wrote up my thoughts for this year and linked to those who did the same. Not too many common themes popped up. Most of us mentioned Web 2.0 and Ajax in some form, but we said different things.

* Web standards will neither gain momentum nor slow down because it’s become an old topic and people want to move on to new topics. Furthermore, sites coming out with standards-based design aren’t as frequent.

* Ajax and Web 2.0 will continue to buzz though they shouldn’t. Ajax has been happening long before it got a name and Web 2.0 is explained here. However, I can’t imagine them being buzzwords for the entire year.

* More asynchronous Web-based applications using XML and Javascript will make news and impress.

* More sites go for simplicity.

* Colors? Every year a designer predicts a color trend. There’s has yet to been an “in” color since “Zeldman orange.” Sites will do what they see works best for their needs.

* Style. I don’t think the last ten years have seen a style in terms of clothing compared to the past as everything in the past comes back in style and then some. Design has reached that same stage in the past six months that we see few “styles” used repeatedly like rounded corners. The only time we see a lot of the same are with blogs and their templates.

* Big text is finally cool! I’m already seeing a trend and a great one at that! I hope it becomes a permanent fixture.

* Designing for mobile devices picks up speed thanks to more phone / PDA hybrids.

* RSS will steadily climb and we’ll see more sites add feeds and more users adopt it, but it won’t be a dramatic change. Still many sites don’t have RSS feeds as I was trying to find feeds having to do with writing.

* More businesses will jump into blogging especially with an influx of books on the topic coming out in ’06.

* Blog / Web site advertising. GoogleAds has gotten a lot of competition toward the end of 2005 in Yahoo and Chitika. More will enter the arena.

* Podcasting continues growing. Since speaking and listening are faster than typing and reading, podcasting is more convenient especially since people can take it with them in MP3 players. Of course, this does those with hearing disabilities no good.

* Video / vodcasting. See podcasting especially with the video iPod. Expect to see more players coming out with video versions.

I didn’t mention Ruby on Rails because the business world doesn’t even know what it is while it knows about Ajax and Web 2.0. These predictions try to look at the picture of what we’ll see across the Web.

Other folks’ predictions:

* Baekdal.com

* Robin Good

* Anil Dash

* John Battelle

* Conversion Rater

* Cameron Moll

* Andy Budd

Quickly Learn How to Be a Graphic Designer

A once complicated profession is now something you can do on a standard computer; even with no “artistic” ability.

A couple of days ago, we discussed importance of blog post titles. Ted followed up with another post about blog names. This was another thing I discovered too late.

I agree with Ted. I started my blog in 2000 and couldn’t think of a clever name then… so I called it “meryl’s notes” since my name is uncommon. That doesn’t say much about the blog’s topic, but at the time, I didn’t know either. If you look at the old, old posts… you’ll see it was a very different blog then as I was “finding my blog voice.”

Over time, my blog gained direction, but to change its name this late in the game would be crazy as it’s set in stone… similar to Ted’s “Ted Rap,” which I like.
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I promise this is not another “Texas rules!” post. But before I move on, I have to say: What a game!

When I was seven-years-old, my brother entered Texas A&M. I was gonna be an Aggie, determined to go to college there. I even went to basketball camp at Texas A&M and was in awe of the Lady Aggies basketball team. My brother was and still is a big Aggie. He was torn about the Rose Bowl. He wanted Texas to win as a rep for our state, but not THAT Texas. A friend sent me this photo. (click photo for a larger picture – it opens in a new window)

When I was a senior in high school, I knew it wasn’t meant to be. A&M was way too big for my needs. I needed a smaller school to reduce the chances of having classes with 100 students. In spite of my going to TCU (go, Horned Frogs!) for one year and completing my education at American University, I continued to root for the Aggies.

My mother went to UT in her sophomore year. My sister got her masters there. Now my daughter wants to go there. Gig’em Horns!

I tried to get creative with my blog entry titles once upon a time. Over time I learned that’s not a good idea unless you don’t care about search engine traffic. That’s a laugh, right? How many people don’t care about search engine traffic? Ted does an excellent job explaining the importance of blog titles.

At the end, he asks why the subtitle of his entry is in a larger font. I think the subtitle is a better title than the main one and he uses h1 around the subtitle, which gets a higher preference in search engines — if I remember right.

His uses h3 around the title. Technically, it’s wrong to use h3 before h1, but there are exceptions to every rule and I’m sure he has valid reasons for doing this and I look forward to reading the follow up.

No matter what business a company is in, it can make its site useful for its visitors and turn them into eventual buyers. Cashing In with Content shows how to do that with 20 case studies of types businesses — ecommerce, business-to-business, nonprofits, healthcare, education and politics.

Every case study includes an interview with an employee who played a large role in the Web site’s direction. Also, the case studies have the following sections:

* What’s for sale
* What’s so interesting
* Why you should care
* Cashing in

This set up makes it easy to reference and find what you need.

The case studies are extra useful because they’re based on lesser-known sites rather than the biggies like eBay, Amazon, and others whose names often crop up. These are sites that businesses can follow as examples instead of seeing them as pricey or impossible to do like the biggies.

Scott closes the book with the 12 best practices and shows how each practice gets applied by using examples from the case studies. While “best practices” sounds like it’s full of theory and jargon, it’s not and that’s what makes the book successful. It’s about normal challenges with realistic and doable solutions. The book offers many solutions so businesses don’t have to worry about getting stuck with one that doesn’t suit them.

The book should be on the reading list of anyone involved with a business Web site.

Title: Cashing In with Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers
Author: David Meerman Scott
Publisher: Information Today, Inc.
ISBN: 0910965714
Date: October 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

I was a little behind on my “blog” terminology this year when I was overloaded for the first half of the year and couldn’t surf other blogs during that time. Thanks to Debbie, I quickly got caught up. One word I picked up was BlogCarnival, a blog showcasing the best entries for a specific topic.

MobHappy: presents a Carnival of the Mobilists, the best of the year. [Link: Lockergnome ]