Dayn W Creative

• Facebook Open Graph Search, A Semantic Web Tool That Actually Makes Sense – A real competitor to spider based search indexing? It’s just crazy enough to work.
• In Online Retail, Usability Is Rated No. 1 – eMarketer – At the very end of this article is an important point. If visitors to your e-commerce site are there for research, you can think of your site like any other non-e-commerce site where the goal is efficient access to valuable information. Good to remember.
• Music – AudioJungle – I haven’t bought anything from this music collection yet, but if you’re familiar with the other online options for sound effects or background music for video, you’ll recognize the potential here. Plus, it’s part of Envato, so you can expect quality.
• Bounce – A fun and easy way to share ideas on a website – Simple to make notes on website design layouts and share them. Enter a URL, it loads. You overlay notes and share with others. Perfect and easy. via @vinthomas
• Blog Navigation WordPress Plugins: Related, Recent, Most Popular Posts … – Old post from Feb 2007, but great links in here for customizing #wordpress nav. I’m sure some of these plugins must not work anymore…
• Data Monday: Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Web – Clients are often quick to request we build an app when often a mobile website makes more sense. Then again, Jobs says the future is apps. Here are the user tendency numbers to help you decide.
• Article: Twitter Moms Care for Content over Coupons – Congrats to moms everywhere for bucking the Twitter-Direct Marketing love fest. Promos and coupons, your days are numbered. Let’s all follow our mothers and demand more for our follows.
• ALERT: Facebook Phonebook Is Not A Security Threat – Also tells how to hide your phone number on Facebook.
• Twitter Launches Promoted/Sponsored Tweets Before USA World Cup Game – Save some of that Adsense money for promoted Tweets. Can’t wait to see the auction action for this new medium. Also, has anyone else noticed the number of ESPN3 pre-roll spots has increased as we near the finals? Love the #worldcup.
• Launchlist – Your one stop website checklist! – A nice pre-launch checklist for web development. Some of the list items are pretty vague, but this is a great start for creating your own list with more detail.
• When Social Media Becomes The Message: The Gulf Oil Spill And @BPGlobalPR – I hear BP got in the social media game after the gulf disaster. That spells inauthenticity. If all other tactics to sell the importance of social media participation don’t work, here’s your scare tactic angle.

• Personal Tech: Apple iPad FAQ’s – @pogue answers all of the important questions I had about iPad. Video out, how’s the typing experience (really), USB, they 12hr battery life claim is not a myth.
• Facebook’s New Solution For Unofficial Pages: Community Pages – Facebook makes a distinction between brand pages and pages meant to build community around a topic. Think it will take off?
• BRITE: Influence on Twitter can’t be purchased with Kim Kardashian | Econsultancy – Can you buy influence on Twitter? Maybe this should say “meaningful influence”?
• iPhone and iPad Stock Files – collis – GraphicRiver – iPad UI graphic elements kits from Envato for your application design and wireframing needs.
• Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0 – Custom post types is going to be a game changer for my dev team. We currently use a few plugins to massage WordPress into a CMS, namely Flutter and Secondary HTML Content. Custom post types might eliminate the need for those plugins. RT @danielbachhuber.
• Mirror files across systems with rsync – Backup utilities – Lifehacker – I know this is the right way to backup. Real geeks use rsync. I haven’t had the chance to poke this bear yet, but Gina’s article is where I’ll start.

These are my links for March 21st through March 24th:

• Should Facebook Users Be Required To Approve Photo Tags? -
• Amazon.com: Coleman LED Quad Lantern: Sports & Outdoors – Videographers and shooters, here’s your new DIY light kit. No temperature control (gels maybe?) but $60!
• Take your RSS Feed and Dlvr.it to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr | Techcrunch – … and LinkedIn. Portland social syndication company Dlvr.it just got ‘crunched. Just out of private Beta, this is my favorite tool for sending social status updates to custom delivery groups. Powered by multiple RSS input sources, I can customize exactly what content I want to post where. Want examples? My blog posts are announced my Facebook Page, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as are my Delicious bookmarks. Any photo I post to my ‘life’ Flickr photoset shows in my personal Facebook profile status. My Pandora favorites are announced on Facebook and Twitter…

  Combine this syndication convenience with the power of their dlvr.it URL shortner, and you get the very best social media reach stats out there. Beyond retweets, think click-through trends, reach potential, most popular links you’ve posted… I could go on, but you just need sign up and check it out. You’ll wonder how you handled your social media presence without it.

• How important is it to include a company’s url in broadcast advertising? – I answered a question @FishMarketing posed on LinkedIn about the importance of, or lack thereof, including URLs in your advertising media.
• Why User Competency Matters in Social Design

These are my links for March 12th through March 16th:

• Interactive Online – 10 Features to Look Forward to in WordPress 3.0 – RT @jonmacdonald
• Facebook Upgrades Search Capabilities | Mashable – Suggested results while typing in the search box now show more than just your friends or pages you’ve fanned.
• A Guide To Typography On The Web | Fonts | PelFusion.com – Thx @eyedesignstudio @alvinmartinez
• Microdata support for Rich Snippets – With HTML5, Google helps microformats grow up. Add another to-do to the SEO checklist.
• The Battle of the Men’s Body Washes – WSJ.com – Ms Wells thinks W +K’s Old Spice campaign has the edge for men’s personal grooming because they’re selling to the ladies. For the rest of us, we prefer whatever is already in the shower. I’ll do frilly, especially if it’s convenient.

These are my links for February 24th through February 25th:

• 5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From – This article shows a few examples of what to use a business Facebook Fan Page for: a landing page with a simple call to action (which eventually utilizes FB photo sharing to host user photos), full functionality micro sites, and coupons.
• Why Do People Always Order Ginger Ale When They Fly? : We allow some flight attendants to speculate wildly – CHOW – I clicked this just because I am definitely more likely to drink ginger ale on a flight vs real life. I think it has something to do with having something crisp and refreshing whilst being packed in with all those humid humans. 7up doesn’t cut it. Too sweet.
• Before & After magazine e-list – How to find the perfect color for your next design. As seen on Lifehacker. This is a PDF with some basic color theory and a tutorial on using colors in an image to build the perfect palette.

My wife linked me to TiltedTwister.com, because she knew I would watch the video end to end, jaw agape.  Hans Andersson has used only the pieces in the Lego Mindstorms NXT retail kit to build a robot that can solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle in about 6 minutes.

The TT uses it’s one little eye to scan the entire cube first, then plans its moves accordingly. Even more amazing is that the robot only has a single motor that will only turn the bottom row. Hans, your brain is huge.