June 2010
2 posts
2 tags
3 tags
May 2010
3 posts
4 tags
Sharpie enlists artists and bloggers to showcase...
Marker company grows its online community, builds customer trust, and engages in a bit of whimsy in new social media plan.
By Lindsey Miller lindseym@ragan.com
The ways Sharpie spreads its message through social media are almost as varied as the ways people use the iconic markers. What once was commonly known as the best tool for labeling file folders or for celebrity autograph signings has...
2 tags
Twitter Resets Follower Count To Zero After...
Freaking out because you suddenly have zero followers on Twitter? No, you’re not unpopular.
Twitter temporarily reset users’ follow count to zero and suspended the follow/unfollow feature in order to restore a bug that allowed people to force anyone to follow them.
Gizmodo spilled details on the “Forced Follow” bug, explaining in explicit detail how Twitterers...
April 2010
15 posts
5 tags
Experimental & Successful Social Media Campaigns
iMedia has some great examples of highly experimental but extremely successful social media campaigns carried out by some big brand names. Although these are some grand-scale endeavors, any small business can adapt tactics as it fits their business objectives and personality. Check out the highlights:
vitaminwater - Flavor Creator Lab Facebook App
Displaying an intense devotion to Facebook,...
3 tags
Google Local Business Center is Now Google Places
This morning Google announced that their Local Business Center is becoming Google Places. Essentially, it’s just the name catching up with the practice as the ‘place pages’ have been around for quite some time. The reasoning behind the change is sound:
Why? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world, and we want to better connect Place Pages — the way that...
6 tags
It’s not difficult to find examples of businesses with beautiful websites but no traffic. Businesses with stunning websites that fail because the product or service they’re providing just isn’t good enough. Design only goes so far, and ultimately cannot save a business if the product just doesn’t cut it.
Of course on the other end we have pig ugly websites that are wildly successful. Websites...
6 tags
Average Age on Social Network Sites
Pingdom breaks down each popular social network site and the average age per site. Why is this important? If you’re looking to use social media to market your ecommerce site, you need to know what the demographic is for each site to wisely target and save time and effort (and money).
5 tags
12 WordPress CMS Plugins
Onextrapixel.com has a great article breaking down WordPress as a web development platform. It includes a list of 12 popular CMS plugins and a design gallery of sites using WordPress, from photography to ecommerce to a creative agency, even an online high-end jewelry store. The article also brings up some important points you might want to consider before using WordPress as a CMS solution, as well...
3 tags
Google now uses site speed as a factor in ranking →
techspotlight:
guillee:
Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users...
7 tags
4 tags
On Reporting Spammy & Blackhat Sites to Google
There’s a great blog post (and subsequent comment discussion) happening over on the SEOMoz Blog today. The topic is one that all SEOs and webmasters have encountered at some point in time:
Why, oh why, has the Google God not smited my competitor who engages in obvious blackhat SEO practices?!?!
Google has been pretty aggressive about asking webmasters to report this evil behavior, and a few...
7 tags
Will Columbia-Trained, Code-Savvy Journalists...
Bill Grueskin, academic dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, told us that although students generally know their way around the web by virtue of being young, creating these powerful new tools requires a different, deeper skill set — one that, to date, has been missing from university journalism and technology departments, and it’s underrepresented in the field at large to a damaging...
Thanks for the follows, Josiahstaggs & Tenfar!
8 tags
Tumblr: Microblogging Its Way Up
“Tumblr—which is beloved by its users for its clean interface, ease of use and community.”- The New York Observer
“…The smart thing to be doing online these days is tumblelogging, which is to weblogs what text messages are to email – short, to the point, and direct.” - Telegraph.co.uk
Tumblr is the slightly lesser known hybrid of Twitter and WordPress (or any other complex blogging platform)....
4 tags
Dribbble: Twitter for Designers
Part image library, part discussion forum and part game, Dribbble is a site by and for designers. Users upload bite-sized work samples and do a show-and-tell on their latest creations or works in progress.
The site was in private beta until this past weekend, and Co-founder Dan Cederholm said the site will “likely remain invite-only. Can’t say for certain of course, but for now, absolutely.”
...
3 tags
Tech Guru With a Social Vision
An interesting feature on Omar Wasow from The Wall Street Journal:
…It surprised many in the technology world when he decided to resign his leadership position at Community Connect Inc., BlackPlanet’s parent company (which was later sold for $38 million in 2008), and move to Cambridge, Mass., to pursue a Ph.D. in African-American studies and government at Harvard University.
His...
Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't,... →
minimalmac:
Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.
In the midst of all the iPad hype you need to hear another point of view. And no one...
March 2010
9 posts
“What forces Google to have a foreign policy is that what they’re exporting isn’t...”
– Google Searches for a Foreign Policy - NYTimes.com (via interestingsnippets) (via infoneer-pulse) (via techspotlight)
Google to produce internet guide leaflet |... →
techspotlight:
Google, one of the world’s most prominent evangelists for all things digital, has turned to one of the most traditional of old media routes to try to persuade more British people to go online: it is printing a leaflet. The Simple Guide to the Internet is part of the search engine group’s commitment to Race Online 2012, an initiative started by the UK government’s digital inclusion...
4 tags
In Defense of Eye Candy
By Stephen P. Anderson
Recent studies into emotions are finding that we can’t actually separate cognition from affect. Separate studies in economics and in neuroscience are proving that:
“affect, which is inexplicably linked to attitudes, expectations and motivations, plays a significant role in the cognition of product interaction…the perception that affect and cognition are independent,...
Free Printable Sketching, Wireframing and...
plague88:
Advertisement
Sketching and wireframing are a specialized style of drawing, used for fleshing out preliminary complex ideas, group brain-storming, a lo-fi method for evaluating interaction concepts, and as a way of roughly perfecting a design technique.
Sketch and wireframe paper is essentially drawing paper that is designed specifically for this purpose. You could use it for web page...
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Simplified Web Design Can Help Your Ecommerce...
Simplicity is key with ecommerce sites, says SmashingMagazine.com. A couple facts about online consumerism:
No longer do users spend time on a site’s homepage and navigate to content by category search or other product recommendations. Users type product or service names into a search engine, most likely Google.
Too many options and cluttered design (useless text, widgets or unrelated ...
6 tags
Voice-based App Affects International Markets
AdAge.com goes international reporting on the latest phenomenon to take in India. The service is called Bubbly – a 30 second or so long voice recording service. Bubbly works a lot like Twitter. People sign up to follow a friend, family member or celebrity, brand or company. It’s free to post messages and follow people. After a new message is sent out, users get alerts and pay for airtime if they...
10 tags
5 Ways to Build Buzz and Traffic to Your Website
By Sheena Nix
The lines between PR, Marketing & Advertising are continuing to blur, especially in the online world. While there will likely always be professionals who specialize in one area or another, more and more people (especially those at smaller agencies & companies) are starting to wear multiple hats. In fact, some people are wearing all the hats. Many started out in a single...
6 tags
February 2010
1 post
4 tags
Social Networks Becoming Less Social?
The explosive growth of social networking sites in the past few years has led to quite a bit of clutter, and people are starting to notice. Whether you choose to go on a manual de-friending spree on Facebook, or use a tool like UnTweeps to ax followers on Twitter, you aren’t alone. In his post Six Social Media Trends for 2010, David Armano says… With groups, lists and niche...