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Here's a great and free online tool for notes, to dos, calendar items and the like. The site is called Online HomeBase. It's a Web-based interface that allows you to store information and access from any Web browser anywhere. This is a great tool for saving links that you want to use at home and at work or jotting down appointments that you need to remember in multiple locations. Features included scheduling e-mail reminders to yourself and sharing your notes, calendar or lists with others. Read more about it on its FAQ.
I've recently converted all our weblogs from Greymatter to Movable Type. I was a serious Greymatter devotee, but just a few minutes working with MT has made me a convert. It's an extraordinary tool, especially for folks maintaining multiple blogs, as I do. Future posts will include a lot more information about using MT.
Ever have trouble putting together the right color scheme for background, text and links? If so, check out the Chosing A Color web page, which provides a lengthy list of colored text along with its hex code and one-word identifier. Click on a color and, through the magic of JavaScript, the background automatically changes to that color, allowing you to sample how all the other text colors look against that particular background. Check it out.
This story from Fortune looks at the emergence of "relevant" ad marketing as a successful business model. The notion that ads work best when tied to user interests is nothing new. But the story includes some interesting data that validate the economics of this approach. A telling stat is the fact that the average price paid for a successful click-through on Overture's keywork auction market rose from 22 cents last year to 35 cents this year. As advertisers see growing value in well-executed Web advertising, it becomes easier for niche Web sites to succeed.
If you're like me, your e-mail Inbox is increasingly filled with Spam - unsolicited junk e-mail. As Colleen notes in this week's Web Update, many Internet service providers see Spam fighting as a large and important opportunity. The problem is that none of the current approaches do more than slow the rising tide of Spam. Web professionals agree that things are looking bleak. “The bad news for those of us combating spam is... we're losing," writes Clickz Columnist and Internet.com Editor Rebecca Lieb. Read more.
The Corante web site has been one of the pioneers in trying to carve out a business model for weblogs. They may be getting somewhere, because they're rapidly expanding their lineup of bloggers. The newest, called We've Got Game provides a fascinating inside look at the electronic gaming, as both a business and a social phenomenon.
Having seen the way my kids interact with games, I'm convinced that this topic needs intelligent scrutiny. When I was reporting on computing, I sought out research on how kids interact with games, and whether it might impact the way they interact with the rest of the world. An exhaustive search found that almost no one outside of the gaming industry was really studying this. There were plenty of academics looking at the impact of video game violence on kids, and lots of others examining how to incorporate educational games into the classroom. Blogger Andrew Phelps is filling the gap. "This blog is about tracking the rise of games as a medium of popular culture, and perhaps the medium of the times," Phelps writes. "The Jones’ kids all have game consoles, but more and more it’s not just Saturday morning entertainment - games are impacting peoples lives in a way never seen before." Go take a look.
Succeeding in "E-Business" isn't easy. To help our clients stay current, we're featuring a weekly column on the subject, Doctor EBiz. It's written by Dr. Ralph Wilson, who I've been reading for many years. Nowadays, everybody and their brother is offering to help you market your web site. Back when we started WebWorks in 1996, there were few authorities on web marketing or e-commerce, which were brand-new industries. Ralph Wilson was one of them. His advice and expertise has withstood the test of time, and we're pleased to offer his informative weekly column as a service to our clients.
Which weblogs are the most popular? The Technorati site compiles a real-time list of the top 100 blogs, based on the number of links they receive from other blogs. The champion? To no one's surprise, Slashdot stands atop the rankings with links from nearly 2,000 other sites, followed by the Scripting News, Boing Boing and Instapundit. The Technorati site tracks more than 133,000 weblogs. See this page for a listing of other tools that seek to rank the popularity and/or importance of widely-read weblogs.