Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Whether you are looking for some really cool wallpaper or just some great pictures to look at NASA provides us with the Astronomy Picture of the Day.
The NASA site has some amazing stuff everywhere, but some of the best is the “Picture of the Day”
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good, and are clear and easy to use. They don’t use Flash at all or use it only when necessary and never for navigation. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Appartement Mallaun. The site is very simple and still appealing. It loads fast and the navigation is easily understandable. Plus it’s such a beautiful place.
I often think about how much information is collected and shared about me about my online activities. I try to keep myself as anonymous as possible when browsing. I use Firefox, keep cookies turned off except where necessary and then only allow them for the session so they get deleted as soon as I close the browser. Even with that (and more) I am sure that there is much more personal information collected on and about me than I care for.
Probably the biggest collector of personal information in the history of the planet is Google. Even though I use and recommend many of their great free tools the one thing that concerns me the most is what will happen to all of this information that is collected in one place? Even though they seem to pretty benevolent about it now, privacy policies can be changed with the stroke of a keyboard.
I am writing about this today because I ran across a post by Hamlet Batista called “Our Digital Footprints: Google’s (and Microsoft’s) most valuable asset” which got me thinking about where this could end up. It’s fun to think about, but probably useless to worry about.
When I first meet with a potential client I ask them what they want their site to do, then I ask them about how they want their site to look. Where is the best place to put your navigation? Your email signup box?
I usually send them to a page I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web to give them some ideas about where to start.
I may also start sending them to this article by Miles Galliford on the SiteProNews site called “The Best Page Layout and Design for Content Websites”.
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
I’ve been very busy this week and my posting has been a bit slow, but I know how you all look forward to Fridays. “The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.”
Some of the stupidity here is legendary.
I was searching for an easy way for my customer to manage the email addresses for their newsletter campaign and I came across OpenNewsletter and it seemed to be just what I needed.
” A free, simple, and beautiful open source newsletter solution aimed at small-medium scale. Very easy installation. Just upload and its working. No database needed.”
I found it simple and easy to use, but he had all of the main files in one folder and I had some security concerns about leaving the password and the customer’s email addresses in an place where anyone could look at them. I moved those two files into another folder and made it so no one except the program could access it. Now it works well and is much more secure.
I’m going to tell the author, Sohail Abid from Pakistan ,what I did so he can offer it to all of his visitors. Drop me a note if you want to know yourself.
On the Search Engine Watch site Mark Jackson of the ClickZ Network has posted an article called “Avoiding Cookie Cutter SEO”.
He speaks about how no two web sites are created equal and how template SEO is just bad business.
Search engines are looking for unique sites to show to their searchers and generally what happens is that the first to have the information is the one that gets the ranking credit and all the rest are just all the rest.
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Ever wondered what would happen if you put a football into a microwave oven? How about Christmas lights?
This site does those and more. Just a silly way to spend your time really, but isn’t that what Fridays are all about?
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good, and are clear and easy to use. They don’t use Flash at all or use it only when necessary and never for navigation. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called The Found Bin. It’s a cool idea for a site The Found Bin is an online collection of free lost and found listings. I like the way the site is very simple and fun with a bright color scheme and plenty of whitespace. Even though the navigation is mixed in to the content it’s very easy to find and use.
I have written before about keeping your domain name up to date and today I have a customer who is having trouble with transferring his website to another server.
My customer is a Polka and Jazz artist named Al Meixner. Al hired me to update his site and to give it a more consistent look and feel. Al had originally put his site on Enter.net and since his hosting agreement was about to expire he wanted to move his new site to a new web host as well.
He wrote an email to the proper department requesting a nameserver change and nothing happened. Then a second and third request. His original request was July 30 and as of this moment (Thursday Aug 2 at 9:00 AM) it still hasn’t changed.
My recommendation is to use a domain name host that is well known and stable that allows you to make changes yourself. I use GoDaddy and they seem fine for me although I have heard a few horror stories. No matter which domain registrar who you choose, check them out well first because in the end the only thing that you really have is your name.
If you don’t have access to it to easily make changes to your domain look for someone else right now, because your current host could also make moving your name to another host difficult as well and it may take some time.
