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This week’s roundup: Interesting tidbits on the web

by Jennifer J. Breazeale on March 22, 2011

How to use LinkedIn (corporette.com)

Especially relevant since I seem to be getting a handful of new connection requests each day – some from friends and colleagues, some from random strangers… How I use LinkedIn has definitely changed over time and will continue to do so as my needs change and the service itself changes.

How to turn all of your Facebook notifications into a daily digest (lifehacker.com)

I don’t spend much time on Facebook, so emails and notifications really pile up when I finally do get a chance to browse around. I’d previously been using Gmail filters to keep these notifications out of my inbox, but then I never actually took the time to go through my Facebook folder.*

This Lifehacker article will walk you through turning off (most) email notifications and using RSS instead. And, with one more step, condensing that RSS feed into one daily digest. Excellent!

_{*Happy Birthday/Happy Anniversary/Congratulations/Condolences/Get Well, etc. to everyone who I’ve missed an important life event from.}

Media outlets to readers: “Put your money where your eyes are” (37signals.com) and
How to keep reading the NY Times for free (gizmodo.com)

The paywall is coming… The paywall is coming… The NY Times switch to a digital paywall happened yesterday and, not surprisingly, generated a lot of discussion (although I think the overall effect will not be as magical or depressing as predicted.) These two articles provide some interesting ideas on the business model and the potential different paths to profit.

The Pros and Cons of Tumblr for Small Business (mashable.com)

I love Tumblr and have maintained my site pretty regularly for several years (I even prefer it to Posterous for short-form stuff), however, it’s not typically a tool I would recommend for small businesses. Tumblr has a definite sense of community and a unique culture, so if your business is a match with those, Tumblr can be great. If it’s not a match, well…

Hipmunk

Booking travel always seems like it’s much harder than it needs to be. And, while finding flight information is getting easier, finding a place to stay can still be a pain. Enter Hipmunk, a simplified search tool for flights and hotels. One of the cool features, visual data overlays for food/tourism/shopping, etc. (Hat tip to Joe Lazarus for this one.)

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The roundup…

by Jennifer J. Breazeale on February 28, 2011

Thought I’d pass along a few of the interesting sites I found last week…

Inventables
Bendable wood, aluminum foam, and translucent concrete are just some of the super-cool (and pretty affordable) materials available from Inventables – the “innovator’s hardware store”.

Web design tools and resources I use
A pretty comprehensive list of resources (with links) from Ethan at Elementiks. I typically use my bookmarking service (pinboard.in) to keep track of this type of info, but I really like the look of this page and find it very easy to use.

Google Recipes
Did you know Google’s getting into recipe searches? Take a look at this article if you want to make recipes on your site more Google-friendly. There’s even a hRecipe WordPress plugin that seems to incorporate these microformat standards (although I haven’t tested it.)

The Case of the Missing Design Apprentice (ZURB)
Talk about a timely article… At the last Boulder Open Coffee Club, we talked about this seemingly always-present gap between companies seeking programming talent (UI/UX, front-end, back-end) and people who are looking for work, but may not have the exact skillset required. If companies are no longer willing to take the time and effort to “train someone up” for these roles, perhaps the community should.

Google Courts Yahoo Users with New Delicious Bookmarks Importer Tool
I love delicious.com, but with Yahoo’s decision to shut it down sell it, now may be the time to make the move. I switched to pinboard a couple of years ago, but it looks like you can now roll everything over to Google, too.

And, just for fun…

Artist Mia van Beek can take your child’s drawings and turn them into jewelry or keyrings.

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The evolution of hubs – from Wes to WordPress

February 10, 2010

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr Anytime you’re trying to organize, coordinate, and communicate with more than two people over more than a few days, you’ll realize that relying on email (or Facebook, or Twitter) to carry the burden will drive all of you crazy. Someone’s going to miss a message, the “right” people won’t [...]

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Advanced SEO Tactics (IMU)

June 25, 2009

The community guy praised others, the marketing guy told stories, and the SEO guy pounded us with data. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised! Rand’s slideshow (below) is packed with helpful information and I know that I’ll be spending some more time digging into it in depth. In the meantime, here are a few of the highlights…

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Using Email Effectively and Making Sense of Analytics (IMU)

June 19, 2009

IMU wrapped up with presentations on old-school email marketing campaigns and web analytics and both speakers managed to provide meaningful suggestions, tips and tricks for small, medium, and large businesses.

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