There is going to be a lot of the color pink popping up around the Web for the month of October. Matthew Oliphant has started a campaign called "Pink for October" in which those sites who re-style/theme their site in pink show support for breast cancer and raise greater awareness. I lost an aunt to breast cancer just over a year ago and to show my support to find a cure I'm going to take From the 21st Floor pink. Even though I'm in the midst of redesigning the site (more of a re-alignment) where I had planned to launch sometime in September, I'm going to create a version of the new design in pink to show my support. Take a look at Matt's site, grab a button for your site, and if you are so inclined, Go Pink in October.
August 2006 Archives
Lots of stuff happening in the Web world lately, but two to note on is that del.icio.us updated their homepage today to include more search options and added thumbnails of the "Hot Now" bookmarks. Pretty cool stuff. Their homepage was updated not too long ago to a much improvement in design and layout. This just continues the trend of great things from del.icio.us with Yahoo! funding. Oh, and a side note is that del.icio.us also has contextual ads now too.
Google opened up the doors on Google Analytics yesterday. I've had a Google Analytics account for a while and found it very useful. I've debated using other types of sources, but my Web host doesn't provide the greatest package out of the box, and I'm not willing to spend the money yet to get something more robust. GA seems to fill the bill for now. Of course I want other features to be added that can help me determine key information about my visitors, but what do you expect from something that is free. Still worth having, so go get your account today.
Recently Google acquired Writely also opened up its doors today for new registrations. The online collaboration tool that allows multiple users to write on a singe document and then export out to RTF or DOC for free is an indispensable tool for those who are not in the same organization who are working on the same document, let alone hate the problems of swapping files in email. This centrally located tool was indispensable for me when working on a recent article with multiple contributors. If you haven't checked it out, you should.
Via: Lifehacker
Larry Bodine reports that some of the clients he is working with are just not getting it right when it comes to their Web sites. In fact, he says 80% of the traffic for his one example came from internal traffic! I've mentioned before here that you must look at your Web site traffic to see where your problem spots are. To review, check out my April 2006 article from LLRX on Is Your Web Site Successful? Tips and Techniques to Get More Out Of Your Web Site.
If you want to learn more about building valuable Web sites, come see me on August 28, 2006 at the Hyatt Regency at the National Business Seminars Internet Strategies for Legal Professionals where I will be discussing Basic Considerations for Marketing Your Firm on the Net which will include a lot about your firm's Web site.
Just logged into Gmail and noticed my options in the upper left hand corner is a little bigger with the addition of a link to Google Spreadsheets in it. Did Google just open up their "beta" of Spreasheets? I wonder how long it will be before I see a Writely or "Write" link up there. Does anyone else see the link in their account?
The word on the street today is that Niall Kennedy is leaving Microsoft, not long after Robert Scoble left. This is yet another in "A" list or high-profile bloggers leaving their company's to do either start their own business or leave for a new-media company. Kevin O'Keefe asks the obvious question "Can large corps retain the visionaries?" I say no. Here is my short list why:
1. Let's face it, old school companies, ones who are older than the Internet, don't "get it" (bold statement, but more true than false)
2. New media companies like Feedburner, LexBlog, Google, and even Userland have started because those who founded them believed in changing the Internet via the Internet. Old media still believes in traditional ways that are proven. They are less likely to take, or set aside monies for risk that will not make a profit for shareholders. Which leads me to no. 3...
3. Funding is different. Either it is via bootstrapping or VC funding, new media is exactly that...new and thus has to find funding in new ways. Old media have shareholders to answer to and thus cannot or are willing to take chances on new technologies
So can companies keep visionaries...I say it is no because those companies who have visionaries are either too political, have to answer to shareholders, or are too slow to adopt to changing times that the visioinaries get bored and need to feed the need to make a difference. So I ask you...do you have a visionary you need to worry about leaving? Are you sure?
I proudly host my Web sites with Dreamhost and lately I've been a little perterbed with them regarding their Webmail service. It has been slow, timing out, erroring out, and overall frustrating. It is with their blog that I learned of some issues they had been dealing with on some of their systems that directly affected Webmail. So I tolerate the problems knowing they are being addressed. I routinely have been impressed with how Dreamhost handles the glitches that come their way over the three years I've been hosting with them.
Last year you may remember that Los Angeles had a major power outage. Turns out that many Web hosts are located in LA, including Dreamhost, and they were hit head-on with the outage. The building their server farm sits in lost power, due to the fact that all their back up systems (deisel generators, UPSs, etc.) all failed. Yes, FAILED. Well after learning from that experience Dreamhost went into pro-active mode and saught out some disaster recovery solutions, like migrating part of their network over to a second host. The long and the short of the story is that in the process of being proactive, some other random server issues, and another power outage severs went down, routers crashed, and service was interrupted again. It is through this blog post Josh, the owner of Dreamhost, explains the problems, how it happened, what was their fault, and how they are fixing it. Through humor, bluntness, and some associated graphics, this post in itself will be the reason why I continue to host with Dreamhost. Transparency is key and this blog, a corporate blog at that in its own unique way, is what makes it possible.
If you are looking for a Web host that has a variety of features, check out Dreamhost. If you are really looking to host with them, let me know and I can hook you up with a discount code to waive your set-up fee. Drop me a line at fred [at] fromthe21stfloor [dot] com