My Link Blog on NewsGator Online

flokoon visual search

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:44:32 GMT

an(other) online visual search interface that represents search results for music, videos & images queries by a network-like diagram. results appear alongside related items, which can then be further refined.

[link: flokoon.com & flokoon.com (blog)|via fr.techcrunch.com|thnkx Denis]

The Map of Scientific Paradigms

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Krum) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:39:00 GMT

One of the projects from Information Esthetics, the Map of Scientific Paradigms by Kevin Boyack, Dick Klavans and W. Bradford Paley shows how scientific papers in different fields are connected through their citations.

As to what the image depicts, it was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 scientific papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as red and blue circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved lines) were made between the paradigms that shared common members, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms closer to one another when a physical simulation forced them all apart: thus the layout derives directly from the data. Larger paradigms have more papers. Labels list common words unique to each paradigm.

Thanks for sending in the link Alwyn!

brand-based collaborative tag clouds

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:55:45 GMT

a collective experiment in brand perception, by querying online participants for keywords as a first reaction on a collection of popular brand logos. the collective results per individual brand are displayed as simple tag clouds.

[link: brandtags.net]

If the Flash uploader isn’t working for …

Ryan — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:36:29 GMT

If the Flash uploader isn’t working for you, you can now select a regular browser uploader.

monkey_bites Selects WordPress

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:17:36 GMT

The well known Webmonkey site, which is now part of CondeNet, has relaunched and selected WordPress for the monkey_bites blog:

It’s great to see such as fantastic blog , which is geared towards developers, on the WordPress platform.

As one of the commenters, thepickledegg, remarked: “WordPress would be proud of the Webmonkey blog.” We certainly agree !

[ Visit monkey_bites ]

The Internet's Undersea World

noreply@blogger.com (Randy Krum) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:57:00 GMT

An infographic map from the The Guardian in the UK, a map showing the few underwater cables that connect the world.

Found on digg.com

Inside Blogotics - Washington Times

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:07:15 GMT

Washington Times

Inside Blogotics
Washington Times, DC - 3 hours ago
"In the meantime," she said, "I'm happily settled in over at WordPress. Loving the new blog smell." "Geek Love" of Come a Long Way denounced "Blogger's ...

New Media and Local News

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:53:32 GMT

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about localized news online over the last few months. I’ve tried to come at writing a post on the topic about ten different ways and wound up scrapping it each time. Presumably, if you’re reading this, a post I’ve written on the topic has finally passed muster.

What’s finally pushed me over the edge to give it another shot writing it are two things - first of all, Adam Theirer over at Technology Liberation Front has done an interesting treatment on the age old idea of content hyperlocalization. That idea forced me to revisit the second event that’s recently caused me to think on these lines: my hometown newspaper now has an RSS feed.

Depending on who you ask, the town I live in has between 100,000 and 300,000 folks living in it. We’re in East Texas, and as we only about nine years ago finally rid ourselves of all the rotary dialing systems in our county, can’t be described as a mecca or haven for technology. So it’s more of a statement on the pervasiveness of RSS than my town’s forward thinking that this has finally happened.

I decided to take a bit of a look at the stats of our sleepy little town’s web stats as seen by Quantcast. I was very surprised the number of folks looking at the site. By their measure, my little old town’s paper has roughly two thirds the US audience of Mashable, and roughly triple the pageviews. This comes to about 150,000 more folks than by the most generous counts you’ll find living in our county.

Surprised as I was, I did a bit of poking around, and for towns the size of mine, this is fairly atypical (by comparison, the Dallas Morning News has only four times the statistics as our local paper, and the DFW area has at least ten times the population). I’ve done a bit of work indirectly for the Tyler Morning Telegraph in the past, and as such was privvy to a bit of their stats (meaning where on the site these visits were going).

Online readers mostly go to the society and the sports section, with a large share going to the marketplace (read: the online classifieds). Essentially, they’re going to the places where folks are most likely to see content possibly containing references to them - their stuff (for sale), their parties, and their highschool football games.

I’m also looking at the operations of a local news organization with new eyes. This is the first time I’ve really thought about it from the perspective of someone who’s an editor of a profitable and popular online publication (my underground online zine in high school doesn’t count!). The content isn’t that difficult nor expensive to assemble, particularly not if it’s approached with the organizational structure common to most bigtime blogging organizations.

Most of the raw information can be taken by a couple of party bloggers, sports bloggers, local business bloggers. Throw in some staff news writers to write local crime and government stories, and a few editors, and you’ve got yourself a ball game. Ten or so editorial members doing the jobs of what is presently in my town a multi-story building filled with folks.

I guess what I’m realizing is that the transition to something that is profitable using the tools, technologies and media types we use in our professions here as tech bloggers, and that the demise of the newspaper doesn’t have to be inevitable, as so many New Media pundits (like me!) are fond of saying. Beyond that, to be an entrant into the market of local news coverage using New Media tools on a professional level wouldn’t be nearly as hard as starting a local print operation. There are clearly a lot of eyeballs to work with. Gaining those eyeballs would definitely be an uphill battle, but not an unwinnable one.

Is the grand take-a-way, then, that newspapers are dead in (insert number of years here) only if they don’t start acting more like us bloggers?

---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Google News Goes Local
YouTube Launches in Australia & New Zealand
CBS Local Ad Network Spreads Content and Cash
The Daily Poll: What’s Your Primary Way of Consuming News Online?
YouTube to Split Revenue with Hearst-Argyle’s Local TV Stations
Old Media Giant Brings in PointRoll CEO to Direct Digital Operations
LocalReplay Gets Funded for Sports Site

Free And High Quality Icons: Function Icon Set

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:10:01 GMT

Function Icon Set is a set of 128 high quality icons in PNG format.

8 Floats

Function Icon Set with Major Social Media Icons

Ray Cheung — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:01:32 GMT

Function Icon Set is a set of 128 glossy Icons Included some of the main Social Media Icons such as: Design Float, Digg, Delicious, Furl, Technorati, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Twitter and etc. They are only available in 48×48px. All of them are free, you can use them anywhere you like.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-free-icon-set/
License: License Free

Hidden Pixels - FREE Web Icons

sankirthan — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:30:00 GMT

120+ Free Ajax Activity Indicator Gif Icons | badeziner

erfan2000volt — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:30:00 GMT

bookmark this on del.icio.us - first posted by erfan2000volt to ajax icons icon loading animation - more about this bookmark...

Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers

markuzzz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT

bookmark this on del.icio.us - first posted by markuzzz to cheatsheet css html reference javascript - more about this bookmark...

The State of the Web - Summer 2008

madpilot — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:36:29 GMT

bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by madpilot to funny humor web web2.0 - more about this bookmark...

Resources

richvideo13 — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:36:30 GMT

bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by richvideo13 to list marketing social socialmedia web2.0 resources community Media - more about this bookmark...

Effective Use of Blog Sidebars

Vandelay Design — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:59:27 GMT

While sidebars aren’t the primary focal point of blogs, they still have an important role in usability and appearance. A well-designed sidebar can make it easier for visitors to find what they like, which will keep them at your site longer and improve your overall effectiveness. On the other hand, a poor sidebar can lead to lost and frustrated visitors.

Before the re-design of this site was started, the sidebar (or in this case sidebars) was a focal point of need. I felt that whatever direction the new design went, it needed to improve the usability of the site by making navigation easier and directing visitors to the appropriate parts of the site. The decision was made to use two sidebars in order to include everything that was needed without cluttering up the sidebar too much.

While I was thinking about what I wanted to do with the sidebar, I did a good deal of analyzing other blog designs that I like to see specifically what was effective about their sidebars. In this post I’d like to take a look at several examples and highlight some key points.

What is the Purpose of a Sidebar?

When you’re designing a blog , why do you use a sidebar? In some cases sidebars are probably used because it’s just the thing to do. All blogs have sidebars, right? But without knowing the purpose it’s unlikely that you’ll have an effective sidebar. In my opinion, the primary purpose of a sidebar is to aid in navigation by making it quick and easy for visitors to get to many different places on your site without searching everywhere.

Additionally, I think an effective sidebar will give a new visitor a good idea of what your blog is about and what types of content they can find on the site. If a new visitors arrives through a search engine they’re probably looking at one specific post. They will obviously be able to see the content provided in that particular post, but that doesn’t tell them what else is available at the site. A sidebar (through category listings, popular posts, recent posts, etc.) can give them a better idea of the big picture of your blog.

What Should a Sidebar Accomplish?

Highlight the appropriate content

Many blogs, mine included, use the sidebar to display the best or most popular posts or pages. The sidebar provides you with an opportunity to show readers something other than just the post they are reading. What ever is most important to your blog should be highlighted. If your most important content is your popular posts, than a simple listing of those posts can do the trick (you can do this either manually or through the use of a plugin). If you’re selling a product, this is something that you’ll probably want to highlight on your sidebar. RSS subscriptions are a priority for most bloggers, so you’ll typically see links to RSS feeds at the top of sidebars.

Give an Overview

As I mentioned earlier, the sidebar can quickly give new visitors an idea of what your blog is all about and what topics/subjects are covered. Look at the sidebar as your opportunity to explain your blog. A few bloggers do this by actually having a paragraph or two to say what the blog is about, but what’s more common is to tell the story through the content that is highlighted. Judging by the content of your sidebar(s), can new visitors get an accurate idea of what your blog is really about?

Add to the Attractiveness

Some well-designed sidebars, like the ones we’ll look at in a minute, can go beyond just improving the usability of the blog by adding to the visual appearance. You don’t want the sidebar to take too much attention away from the primary content, but it can still me more than some simple text and links. In attempt to improve the look of the sidebar at this blog, images were used to accompany the links to popular posts. It’s still too early to tell if this has been effective in terms of getting clicks to those links, but that was probably the part of the design that drew the most comments from readers.

Allow for Scaling of the Blog

Because blogs are publishing new content so frequently, the sidebar needs to be able to adapt and scale with the blog. If you add several new posts per week and your sidebar hasn’t changed for six months, chances are that it’s not reaching maximum effectiveness.

Some sidebar elements, such as a list of recent posts, will update automatically, while other changes will need to be done manually. Don’t forget every now and then to evaluate your sidebar and see what needs to be added, changed, or removed.

Examples of Excellent Sidebars

The examples listed and broken down below are just a handful of excellent sidebars that you’ll find if you look around. The images that I’m using are obviously just a portion of the sidebars, so please click-through in order to see them in all their glory.

Freelance Switch

On of my favorite sidebars is from Freelance Switch. Their sidebar is one of the most attractive ones that I have seen. The color, typography and use of several small images create a sidebar that looks great while improving on the usability of the site. One thing you may notice that Freelance Switch does differently than most blogs, there is no category listing. Instead, they link to an archives page where visitors can browse through the categories if they like. Personally, I almost never use the category links on blogs, and I’ve considered removing them on this blog for that reason. At Freelance Switch the space in the sidebar is used for other purposes, such as an “Explore Freelance Switch” section that will take new visitors on a bit of a tour through the major topics of the blog.

Pearsonified

The sidebar used at Pearsonified primarily consists of links to specific posts in a few classifications, including Must Reads, Improve Your Blog, and Worth a Look. This navigational approach in the sidebar of highlighting popular or important posts is pretty common, but Chris gives his links a stylish, colorful look that you don’t see everywhere.

Pro Blog Design

Michael Martin of Pro Blog Design uses an attractive sidebar that features one of the nicer feed subscription areas that you’ll see. Right below that he has a spot that advertises his design services, which is a good use of the prime screen real estate in his sidebar.

David Airey

Graphic designer David Airey uses a very nice, clean blog layout with sidebar on each side. The sidebars are mostly lists with some CSS styling for appearance, which goes nicely with the overall look of his blog. At the top of the left sidebar, where most visitors will look first, he has a small picture of himself and links for “Hire David Airey” and “View David Airey’s Portfolio.” Since David’s blog serves in part to indirectly sell his services, this section of his sidebar is an excellent choice. It puts the most important parts of his site where visitors will see it, and the picture helps potential clients to feel like they know him a little better.

Copyblogger

Copyblogger also has a sidebar on each side. The top of the left sidebar, which starts very high on the page, includes an attract call for subscriptions, and then it links to some of the more important sections of the site. This list includes links to a few individual posts and links to pages that have been set up to funnel visitors to posts on particular topics (a nice use of WordPress pages).

The 9513

The 9513 is a country music blog with an excellent design overall. It uses two sidebars, however, most of the content is in the right sidebar. The part that I’d like to point out links to recent album reviews on the blog. Album cover images are used to link to 8 recent reviews. Very little screen space is taken up by this, but it adds to appearance of the sidebar and makes it easy for visitors to read the reviews that interest them.

What’s Your Approach with a Sidebar?

When you’re designing a blog theme, what do you hope to accomplish with a sidebar?

Three Statistics That Lie

Fred Wilson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:53:00 GMT

I love the line about lies: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics". You can use numbers to tell any story you want.

In the realm of web statistics, there are three numbers that are great to use if you want to tell lies. They are:

- RSS subscriber numbers
- Facebook app install numbers 
- Follower numbers on Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, or some other social media service.

I tell you this because there is a discussion brewing on Techmeme this morning about how to get a lot of followers on FriendFeed. And I am telling you that the number of followers you have may be relevant early on in the life of a service, but it really doesn't matter in the long run.

Let's start with RSS subscribers. This blog has, according to FeedBurner, 133,000 RSS subscribers. That's a big number. But the number of people who read this blog via the feed every day averages less than 4,000. Why is that? Well for one, that subscriber number has grown every day and never goes down. It includes people who stopped reading a long time ago, people who subscribed in multiple readers but now only use one reader, people who read once a month or once a year, etc, etc. Bottom line is the 133,000 number is basically useless.

Now lets look at Facebook app installs. Let's look at the Social Gaming Network (SGN). Their Facebook apps have been installed almost 46 million times. And yet all the games together average about 650,000 daily users. Why is that? Well for mostly the same reasons. Some people install Free Gifts once, but rarely use it after that. I don't mean to pick on SGN. It's true for every Facebook app company. Our portfolio company Zynga has had 51 million of their apps installed and averages 1.7mm daily users. That's the way it is in the Facebook app economy.

And the same is true with followers on Twitter, FriendFeed, and Tumblr. I have 5,152 followers on Twitter, 4,482 followers on FriendFeed, and 877 followers on Tumblr. I don't know of any way to calculate the number of people who actually visit my updates on Twitter or FriendFeed, but I do know that my tumblog gets on average 250 visits per day. I suspect the radio of daily users/viewers to followers on Twitter and FriendFeed are much lower than Tumblr, maybe approaching the 3% number of feed readers to feed subscribers number.

Social media is no different from all media. The number of people who at one point were interested in your content or service is not that meaningful. What matters is the number of people who engage with your content or service on a daily basis and how engaged they are. And RSS subscribers, Facebook app installs, and follower numbers don't measure that.

SAI contributor Fred Wilson is a partner at Union Square Ventures. He writes the influential A VC, where this post was originally published.

Link by Link: Poof! You’re Unpublished.

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:21:22 GMT

A flurry of intense and angry comments erupted on BoingBoing.net when it was discovered that the Web site had unpublished all references to the blogger Violet Blue.

Hitting the Frontpage of Digg

Matt Craven — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:52:10 GMT

Skelliewag takes a look at playing the odds and trying to “win” with Digg - a great article with some fantastic tips on how to promote your site using Digg.

Most bloggers would love their content to hit the front page of Digg. Unfortunately, most of those bloggers are never able to experience the huge spike of traffic and the feelings of accomplishment this brings.

In this post, I want to argue that success with Digg is an odds game. You can never guarantee it, but you can give yourself the best possible odds. I’ll be describing how to do this, right down to what kind of post you should create, and how to get it moving up the ranks on Digg.

There are many who swear by promoting their blogs via Digg or sites like Reddit - particularly if they have viral content that is fresh and interesting…

pulsating emotion organism

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:35:56 GMT