Updated the ultimate blog template list with a dozen or so new sites. I now list 65 different sites that offer templates for your blog - some linkware, some shareware, some freeware. Every time I browse new template sites I'm tempted to make my own.

Yet another in a long list of things I want to do. What else is new. :)

10:31 AM :: Permanent Link

RSS Tutorial for Content Publishers and Webmasters: “RSS is an XML-based format that allows the syndication of lists of hyperlinks, along with other information, or metadata, that helps viewers decide whether they want to follow the link.” Excellent overview.

Helvetica vs. Arial quiz: “Once there was a typeface called Helvetica. Later came a software company called Microsoft. They "borrowed" Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial. This inferior typeface is now on millions of desktops all over the world. Can you tell the difference between the original and the rip-off in these ten examples?”

Curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax. Cool.

Elegant thinking from Boxes and Arrows, and not without its controversy in the hard-core user experience world in the form of The New R&D: Relevant and Desirable. Functional design is important, sure, but meeting and exceeding marketing initiatives and being responsive to business needs simply opens the doors for innovation and ensures that we're able to do more than have the most optimized web site for our users.

More from the company that does things smart: Amazon.com Recommendations—Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering. The algorithms in here pretty much flew over my head (math and I are generally like oil and water) but there's some good strategic thinking and process also included in the article. If nothing else, finding stuff like this and passing it on to people at work means that tech guys and biz analysts alike continue to think I'm brilliant. Which I am, of course [grin]. (via kottke)

10:33 AM :: Permanent Link

Just this evening, I was trying to explain to a newbie to the blog world just why they're such a wonderful thing. I still think the answer is simple.

Blogs are a wonderful thing because they're a highly concentrated microcosm of the web at large — an online publishing media with almost unlimited ability to scale, incredibly low barrier to entry, and an immediacy that allows for revolutionary speed in disseminating and debating thoughts, concepts and ideas.

Like the Trent Lott fun, for instance.

A new article entitled How blogging changed journalism -- almost sums it up pretty well:

“The central virtue of blogging, I've decided, is that in the proverbial agora, or online marketplace of ideas, bloggers are like Socrates on speed.

They're constantly interrogating arguments and points of view, noting flaws, advancing more sound positions, and shifting the focus to new questions. The mainstream media are being watched more closely because of bloggers -- and kept more honest -- and that can't be a bad thing.”

11:42 PM :: Permanent Link

Whole bunch of links that have been gathering collective dust in my “to-blog” list recently:

Startup Cop is an interesting little Windows app that will help you monitor just what programs are booting up when you start your computer.

Although I generally avoid the “pundit” blogs and other political writings like the plague, every so often my favourite journalist nails it and I feel the need to read, and then share.

Enter the fabulous showroom of Predicta Television in living color by Telstar. Very, very sweet television design.

Publishing ads on nothing but his bare chest, web entrepreneur Chris Pirillo has netted $940 since January 22. Superb.

Interesting insider info and history on the making of O'Reilly animals.

(new for the Tech Toys Wishlist)
iGesture Pad: “The iGesture Pad is an ultra-thin, large-area, superduper touchpad that is both mouse and powerful multi-finger gesture input interface.”

The real power of artificial markets. (via kottke)

Symbols.com: “More than 2,500 Western signs, arranged into 54 groups according to their graphic characteristics. In 1,600 articles their histories, uses, and meanings are thoroughly discussed. The signs range from ideograms carved in mammoth teeth by Cro-Magnon men, to hobo signs and subway graffiti.”

I am geekier than thou. Believe it.

10:41 AM :: Permanent Link

My name is Anakin Skywalker, and I'm a Sith Lord. Hilarious Apple spoof.

[Update: it has been brought to my attention that some people, somehow, even Mac users, have missed the Apple ad campaign that the above link is spoofing. To these people I say Wake Up! Oh, and I also say go see the original Apple commercials.]

The question is, do they need traffic cops or waste management engineers?

Selecting and evaluating keyphrases for search engine marketing.

The 10 Commandments of Content Management. Pretty straightforward, but a good list to slide under your developers' doors if they forget while building/selecting one for you. :) (via ia/)

Online magnetic poetry. Fun. See the words available from this site.

NYT's Joe Sharkey says: “About seven years ago, in one of those boneheaded statements that can haunt anyone who expresses an opinion in indelible ink, I declared grandly that I wasn't much impressed with the Internet. That, to be sure, was back in the days when Internet hucksters were proposing to spin gold from base metals, but there's nothing like a paralyzing snowstorm on the heels of a long slog on the road to drive home the point that today a working Internet connection is sometimes as valued as a working phone.”

Or more so, nuh?

Also: What advertisers want.

08:18 AM :: Permanent Link

Globalization is just hard. Internationalization alone is not easy — just translating what you've got into different languages is expensive and isn't something on which you can cut corners. Then localization starts (customized content and/or behaviour) and managing several or even dozens of versions of your site with local identities and more is, well, daunting. Why so few companies do it, and even fewer do it well.

It's something we struggle with every day at work. I work pretty much hand in hand with the International Webmaster to make sure things we develop or adopt for the domestic site will work internationally. It's a lot to manage and a lot to think about and it's just hard. But I do understand why it's worth it. Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies (right) has been helpful to us, if for no other reason than to tell us we're moving in the right direction.

I keep a sheet of paper tacked on my wall at work. It's a printout of a Babelfish translation I made more than a year ago when one of our clients sent feedback to us in Korean. Since I don't speak Korean, I was hoping Babelfish could help. This is the translation I got back:

Affectionately, this phrase has been referred to as “Oh! the mouse!” — we use it whenever we need to be reminded that the world is not all one language or culture, and that disconnects are all too easy if we're not careful.

10:03 AM :: Permanent Link

It is a little known yet deeply tragic fact that if you want some people to understand and thereby buy into a new idea, you need to show them commercial and/or famous applications of said idea.

I've been trying, however unsuccessfully, to explain why having a useful, well-written blog as part of many kinds of sites can accomplish some major goals every web site should work toward:

• fresh content on a daily or at least very regular basis
• an informal voice that visitors can respond to and get to know
• Useful information via outgoing links

But the point is that without some serious corporate, journalistic and famous people resources to point to as “proof” of blogging's viability, it can be a tough sell for those not in the know.

Since I had to compile the links anyway, I share them here for your enjoyment.

Articles about corporate blogging or blogging going mainstream:
Wired: Blogging Goes Corporate
Not So Quiet on the Set
New Biz on the Blog

“Famous” bloggers (people who were famous before the blog):
Moby
RuPaul
Wil Wheaton
Seth Godin
Founder of The Body Shop
William Gibson
Al Roker
Jeff Bridges [interesting side note: handwritten. literally.]

Corporate blogs:
Ms. Magazine
Jeremy Allaire
O'Reilly Network Webloggers

Articles on famous bloggers:
Weblogs of the stars
Weblogs of the Rich and Famous

12:32 AM :: Permanent Link