Web Applications and Web Sites Are Different
Web design and integrated marketing: This author hits the nail right on the head: Web applications are not the same things as Web sites. I learned quickly that the design choices one makes for a Web-based application are often quite different from those of a content-based Web site. Why? Because ...
Published: November 13, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 1000
Business Card Web Site
Download details: Hosting a Business Card Web Site: The new version of Small Business Server includes a feature called the "Business Card Web Site." "A business card Web site enables you to establish a Web presence for your company. It can contain basic information about your company, such as name, ...
Published: October 10, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 951
Should "Web" be capitalized?
"Once again, we find ourselves in the middle of a language evolution process. When referring to the 'Web,' do we capitalize or not? Intranet Design Magazine has decreed that the first letter of the word 'Web' is to be capitalized ONLY when reference is made to the World Wide Web. ...
Published: October 1, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 951
Web Design Links
Web Design References: A staggering collection of links about all aspects of Web design from University of Minnesota, of all places.
Published: January 9, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 948
The First Web Page Ever
9101 -- /News: This was the first Web page ever published.
Published: May 6, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 947
Excel Web Queries
Updating Excel From the Web: Really great article on Excel Web Queries. Users always want to get data in Excel for some reason. Web queries are a rock-simple way to let them do this. Web queries essentially let Excel read data in from an HTML table. Excel can call a ...
Published: August 27, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 945
Yahoo Trolls the Invisible Web
Yahoo crawls deep into the Web: I'm nervous that this will lead to people found out about that murder conviction in '78. Yahoo on Tuesday began a systematic effort to draw more content into its searchable database of Web documents, its latest bid to win Web surfers from search rival ...
Published: March 3, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 943
Open Source Web Design
Open Source Web Design - Home /\^/\: Not a bad bunch of designs floating around here. They're all certainly very tweakable. Open Source Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Helping to make the internet a ...
Published: June 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 943
Web-Safe Color Picker
ColorPicker II: Not a bad little Web-safe color picker.
Published: May 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 942
Web Design from Scratch
Web Design from Scratch: A good-looking site full of good-looking content about building Web sites. If you're a professional developer, I don't know how much you'll get out of it, but if not, it seems to be worth a look. This site is for everyone involved or interested in creating ...
Published: February 4, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 941
Microsoft Content as a Web Service
Microsoft.com Web Services: Microsoft has opened up a bunch of their content as a Web service. "The Microsoft.com Web Service is an XML Web service that will enable you to integrate information and services from MSDN, Technet, other Microsoft.com sites, and Microsoft Support." It's not anonymous you need to ...
Published: August 30, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 938
The Death of the Web Site?
From the "Let's Jump To Conclusions" Department with my acquisition of Zempt, and my continued use of NewsGator, I can produce and consume content without ever using a browser. I get information in Outlook via NewsGator, and I can turn it around (or create it from scratch) in Zempt. ...
Published: July 2, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 932
Web 2.0 Own3d
Controversy about our "Web 2.0" service mark: O'Reilly is attempting to own "Web 2.0," at least when used to describe a conference. I don't know how I feel about that -- I think the term is stupid, but can they really own it? To protect the brand we've established with ...
Published: May 26, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 932
Web Sites and Terrorist Groups
Web Sites Listed as 'Terror' Groups: This seems a little fishy to me. Is the enemy the Web site, or the organization behind it? If you give money to a "Web site," you're really giving money to the organization that runs the site, right? "The United States has added Web ...
Published: October 13, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 932
Prioritizing Web Usability
Prioritizing Web Usability: Jakob Nielsen's early book, Designing Web Usabillity was a masterpiece -- it fundamentally changed how I built Web pages. It's the Bible of Web design, in my mind. This is the updated version. Not a sequel or a new edition, but: A second goal of the book ...
Published: May 8, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 930
The Web Turns 15
The Web: Fifteen years of browsing: I was 19 when the Web was created, it turns out. It had a birthday last week. This is a good article. Fifteen years ago this Christmas week, Tim Berners-Lee, an obscure scientist working in a European laboratory, invented the Internet browser, now a ...
Published: January 2, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 930
One Page Web Site
Puremedia Brisbane : Web Design, Development, New Marketing and Media: This is a very interesting Web site, and I maintain quite effective for the right kind of company. It s a Web site in one page. This probably isn t the type of website you were expecting to see for a Brisbane ...
Published: July 24, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 926
On ASP.Net Web Forms
I was looking through the MonoRail project today, and I found this little nugget: [...] Developers that were introduced to Web development using pure WebForms also lack the basics http protocol concepts required to use MonoRail (or any other web framework for that matter). I've been working with ASP.Net a ...
Published: March 16, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 923
Web Style Guide
Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition: I'm not totally sure, but I think this Web site is a complete reprint of this book. I enjoyed the first edition; haven't read the second.
Published: September 5, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 922
New Tools for Web Services
Web Services Get Managed: It's always interesting how a new technology creates a brand-new industry angle. "...[the] company's SIFT (service instrumentation, filtering and tracking) tool monitors and analyzes the performance of transactions that use Web services and pinpoints the source of performance problems across each component in the Web services ...
Published: June 2, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 920
Web Load Testing Tools
Can anybody recommend a Web Site stress testing utility?: The answers to this question over at LinkedIn are a plethora of Web load-testing tools. A lot in here I ve never heard of.
Published: June 19, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 919
Yahoo! Web Services
Yahoo! Search Web Services Launch!: Yahoo! has released their Web services API, and Zawodny has a great collection of links. I was reading somewhere else too that pointed out the fact that Google's Web service API has stagnated horribly since it was released, which is true what have they ...
Published: March 2, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 916
Vitalty's Web Development Links
Essential bookmarks for web-designers and webdevelopers: Here's a really good set of bookmarks for Web developers. (Vitaly sent me the link via email, but I snoozed and Lifehacker beat me to it.)
Published: May 20, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 915
Digital Web Magazine
Digital Web Magazine: This site just keeps getting better and better. They have a new design, which is top notch, and some of the best content of the Web for designers and architects. A true gem.
Published: August 23, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 914
The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web: This is one of the terms that s been lurking on the periphery of my mind for about a year. I keep hearing it and meaning to look into it. Today I stumbled onto a good article about The Semantic Web and what it means. Most of the ...
Published: June 2, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 914
Web Development Professional Organizations
Joe and I are tossing around the idea of starting a local chapter of some Web development professional organization. To this end, I took a look around the Web this morning, and I found these: International Alliance of Web Designers The American Association of Webmasters International Webmaster Association The Web ...
Published: March 2, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 911
Government Web Site Content Editing
White House Web Scrubbing: An interesting story about how government Web sites are changing their content to avoid...what? Offending people? I guess with content as sensitive and controversial as what goes on these sites, and the fact that they have to speak to the entire nation, and that is an ...
Published: December 18, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 907
Web Messenger
MSN Web Messenger: I couldn't try this because Passport is down for some reason, but my buddy Matt assures me that "it works great and looks just like the client version." MSN Web Messenger lets you talk online and in real-time with friends and family using just a web browser! ...
Published: August 30, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 907
Open Web Design
Open Web Design: Here's a good collection of open source designs that you can use. Open Source Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Helping to make the internet a prettier place! There's some really nice ...
Published: November 23, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 905
RSS and the Waning Mystery of the Web
Is it just me, or does RSS suck all the mystery and joy out of the Web? Does it make the whole concept of "sufing the Web" just a little more disappointing than it used to be? Once or twice during the course of an evening, I'll tell my wife ...
Published: June 7, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 904
Another Run at Web Appliances
Lindows WebStation: Lindows is taking another stab at the Web appliance market: $169. The lowest priced Internet-enabled computer ever! The Lindows WebStation is the first ultra-affordable, unbreakable computer designed specifically for Web work. You may think unbreakable is a pretty strong word, but it runs Linux off a CD, which ...
Published: July 22, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 903
Rescue Via Web Cam
Web Cam Watchers Help Injured Iowa Woman: Interesting story here. People around the world watching live on a Web cam as a horse gave birth called for help when the mare in pain and confused kicked her owner after delivering her foal. Bev Holzrichter said she owes her ...
Published: January 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 901
Acronym Soup
ongoing · WS-*: This is pretty funny. It's a list of Web services projects underway that were mentioned at a conference called "CBDI" (I couldn't find a definition for that acronym). ...BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services), WS-Addressing, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language), WS-CAF (Web ...
Published: April 27, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 900
Turbo Tax for the Web
I've purchased a shrink-wrapped copy of Turbo Tax every year for the last five years or so. I was going to do it again this year, but Joe told me to try their Web-based version (same link as above). I've known about Turbo Tax for the Web, but I've always ...
Published: April 11, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 895
Web Developer Toolbar Ripped Off
Chris Pederick is the guy who makes the awesome Firefox Web Developer Toolbar, so he gets free beer from me if he ever needs to drop by Sioux Falls for any reason. We've talked up Chris' toolbar since way back, and it takes CSS development from a headache to a ...
Published: August 23, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 894
Versioning Web Services
Versioning web services: This is a good article on how to change a Web API without breaking things. I have this same problem right now -- I have a REST API on a project, and I need to consider versioning. When I add a new feature to Tagyu's web service ...
Published: February 24, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 894
Columbia and the NASA Web Site
NASA mulled nixing Web site after shuttle loss: The recent report on the Columbia disaster shows that NASA got worried about how current the information on its Web site was and how this would be interpreted by the press. "...one proposal by a midlevel employee at headquarters for a 'complete ...
Published: August 29, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 892
The Quandary of the Web Development Sales Process
I often give thought to the really unfortunate sales process involved with Web development. There's so many variables involved with building a Web site, and so much of it is buried in the creative process, that it's hard to really paint a picture in a prospect's mind as to what ...
Published: January 19, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 892
The Third Era of the Web
The third era starts here: This article is a good overall introduction to where the Web is headed. It's worth reading if you think the Web is going to stay a "come-and-read-my-Web-page" affair: The programmable web is different for two main reasons. First, instead of going to look at a ...
Published: May 30, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 892
Single Purpose Web Sites
Single Serving Sites: Kottke put together (he was kind of forced to put together) a great list of single purpose Web sites one page sites that do something interesting. Think Is It Christmas? Lately I ve noticed a pattern of people building Single Serving Sites, web sites comprised of a ...
Published: February 19, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 891
Web to Slow Down by 2010
Video, interactivity could nab Web users by 10: This sounds awesome. Enjoy your speedy broadband Web access while you can. The Web will start to seem pokey as early as 2010, as use of interactive and video-intensive services overwhelms local cable, phone and wireless Internet providers, a study by business ...
Published: November 18, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 890
MVC: Wrong for Web Apps?
MVC and web apps: oil and water: Harry Fuecks does the unthinkable over at SitePoint: he calls MVC (model-view-controller) architecture into question for Web development. [...] let's face it: MVC sounds impressive (and intimidating) to people no in the know. What do we do when we see a term we ...
Published: December 24, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 890
International Journal of Web Based Communities
Int. J. of Web Based Communities - IJWBC: Your phpBB install finally has a scientific journal. The IJWBC is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It offers state of the art to practitioners such as communication managers, officers of public information services, web masters and of course those who are responsible for ...
Published: December 17, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 889
Best Buy's Secret Web Site
Best Buy Web site pricing probed: If Best Buy actually did this, then they're brutally stupid. Blumenthal said his office received at least 20 complaints after a columnist for The Hartford Courant reported the experience of one Connecticut man who found a laptop computer advertised for $729.99 on BestBuy.com, then ...
Published: March 6, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 887
Selling Site Thumbnails
Alexa Site Thumbnail / Amazon Web Services: This is brilliant. For $0.20, you can access 1,000 thumbnail images of Web sites from an Amazon Web service. The Alexa Site Thumbnail web service provides developers with programmatic access to thumbnail images for the home pages of web sites. It offers access ...
Published: August 4, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 886
Shirky on The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview: Clay Shirky gets medieval on The Semantic Web. "In an echo of Richard Gabriel's Worse is Better argumment, the Semantic Web imagines that completeness and correctness of data exposed on the web are the cardinal virtues, and that any amount of implementation complexity is ...
Published: November 9, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 883
Use the Web or Pay Extra
Northwest, United Airlines Adding New Fees: Two airlines are making booking tickets via the Web their default method all other methods will cost extra money. Northwest Airlines Corp. plans to begin charging customers and travel agents extra fees for domestic tickets that are not booked through the airline's Web ...
Published: August 25, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 882
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web: While still a work in progress, this site is gearing up to be the most in-depth examination of typography on the Web. It's set up like a book -- some chapter examples: Define the word space to suit the size and ...
Published: December 24, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 882
Don't Write Numbers Out on the Web
Show Numbers as Numerals When Writing for Online Readers: Web writing is slowly developing its own official style. I know that we ve written differently for the Web for ages now, but Nielsen is throwing facts at the issue, and I wouldn t be surprised if we soon see a Chicago Manual ...
Published: May 14, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 882
Web UI Collection
Widgetopia: A good collection of UI elements from various Web sites. A boon for designers. Good blog name, too. Reminds me of one of the appendices of Jakob Nielsen's last book.
Published: December 12, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 880
Liquid Web Design
This article is a little light on content, but it speaks to a point very important to me the requirement that Web sites flow within the browser window, no matter what that window is sized to. "...nine times out of ten, the 'best' web layout is the one which ...
Published: August 28, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 880
Where Have All The Writers Gone?
Over the years, I've learned a big secret about building information-focused Web sites. This big secret is the single most important thing you can do for your Web site. It is the absolute make-or-break characteristic of successful Web sites. Without this, you really don't have much. With it, it doesn't ...
Published: July 30, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 879
Let's Ban the Phrase "Web 2.0"
Architecture Astronauts Are Back: Joel Spolsky goes eloquently buckwild on the term "Web 2.0." Bonus points for the Adam Sandler reference. The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It's not a real concept. It has no meaning. It's a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness. When people use ...
Published: October 20, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 878
Political Web Sites Redone
Political parties revamp Web sites: Nothing like fear of your opponent to force a redesign. Both parties acknowledge that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's extraordinary success using the Internet to help raise a Democratic Party record of $40 million last year and organize tens of thousands of supporters caught their ...
Published: April 13, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 877
Web Content 2008: Day Two
Making Web 2.0 Work For You, Inside and Out The day started with a keynote from a guy from Human Factors International, which is a somewhat legendary usability firm. His talk was dense, but fascinating, so I ll have to dig through the slides later. It was a discussion about ...
Published: June 19, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 877
When the Net and the Real World Collide
A friend and I were talking tonight about the perils of setting up a Web community to compliment a real-world community. For instance, a community Web site for your church, or for your neighborhood -- so a group people that would interact with each other both online and off. (And ...
Published: October 27, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 877
Zawodny's First Web Server
You Never Forget Your First Web Server: Zawodny gets nostalgic about his first Web server. -- a 486DX2 machine. It's nice piece, full of memories. That application led to the student government paying me $400 a year or so later to build the first on-line voting system. That's right, back ...
Published: January 1, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 877
If Jesus Had a Web Site
Free Church Web Site Design Advice - If Jesus Had A Website: I love the name of this Web site. It s kind of along the same lines as Mean Dean and healyourchurchwebsite.com. Welcome to If Jesus Had A Website, where we strive to help churches make their websites all they ...
Published: October 22, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 875
Web 2.0 Company or Star Wars Character
Cerado's Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz: This is priceless. There's a fine line between Jango and Django. How silly is the Web 2.0 hype getting? You tell us! Here's a quick quiz...we looked in 30Boxes and analyzed 37Signals that led us to come up with the 43Things below. So ...
Published: March 15, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 875
Evolution and Decay in Web Pages
A Large-Scale Study of the Evolution of Web Pages: This page may seem terribly long and dry, but it's fascinating. Researchers from Microsoft and HP (as part of the PageTurner project) were measuring the rate of change and decay of Web pages over time. "Between 26 Nov. 2002 and 5 ...
Published: July 26, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 874
BillyHarvey.com
I remember back when the web was still fairly new, no one really knew how to make a good web site. The down side was that there were a lot of lousy web sites, but the up side was that there were no defined rules, and so people were trying ...
Published: September 14, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 874
The Problem with Web Polls
Gay Marriage Poll Gets Annulled: Here's a example of why Web polls are silly. The American Family Association put a poll on their Web site asking people if they were opposed to or in favor of gay marriage with ultimate plans to take the results to Congress. Of course, they ...
Published: January 24, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 873
Web 2.0 or Star Wars
Here's a fun little quiz to kick off your morning: Web 2.0 company or Star Wars character? How silly is the Web 2.0 hype getting? You tell us! Here's a quick quiz...we looked in 30Boxes and analyzed 37Signals that led us to come up with the 43Things below. So without ...
Published: March 15, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 873
The Well-Appointed Web Page
Web developers want one thing: control. HTML is such an imprecise language that building Web pages has continually been a struggle between what we want to do and what the language is capable of. As a result, the short history of the Web has been an exercise in perverting HTML ...
Published: August 19, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 871
"Don't Make Me Think"
If you've ever been impressed with your ability to make elaborate, content-rich Web sites, here's a good, solid kick in the teeth for you. Steve Krug's book, "Don't Make Me Think" is well-known in Web usability circles and in the sample chapter provided here How we really use the ...
Published: October 11, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 871
The Joshua Project
I've been involved with Web development work at my church for several years now. In that capacity, I've been confronted with (1) the huge need churches have for Internet development, and (2) the general inability of churches to pay for it. Good Web development is expensive, and churches have much ...
Published: August 30, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 869
The Web Empowered Church
The Web Empowered Church: This is a system to power your church Web site that's built on Typo3 -- the founder of which proclaims his faith directly in the license agreement. The WEC is a ministry of The Foundation for Evangelism designed to help churches around the world apply Internet ...
Published: January 24, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 868
Web Developer Extension Re-Visited
Web Developer Extension: I don't remember where I heard about this one, but it's a peach of an extension. We've talked about the Web Developer extension for Mozilla and FireFox before, but the latest version comes with the sweetest sidebar you could ever imagine... You can open the stylesheet for ...
Published: July 7, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 868
Web Design Practices Survey
Web Design Practices: "Web Design Practices is a site devoted to helping designers understand what design practices are currently in use on the Web" Lofty goals, but the site makes a good go of it. It's a survey of the practices found on major sites. For instance, they surveyed, screen-capped ...
Published: November 8, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 867
Your First Web Page?
Does anyone remember the very first Web page they ever visited? I do. I was in the computer lab at Sioux Falls College with my buddy Paul back in 1994. We searched InfoSeek for Arena Football and found the official site -- Times New Roman on a grey background in ...
Published: February 16, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 867
March for Web Standards
March For Web Standards | Washington, DC: These guys claim they're going to march on Washington to protest the lack of Web standards. I can't see a date, but I'm willing to bet it was posted on April 1. Be at the National Mall, Washington, DC, in front of the ...
Published: April 3, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 866
Scrapbook
ScrapBook: This is a great little Firefox extension that lets you save Web pages locally with a right-click. That's handy all by itself, but it also has a browser sidebar that lets you manage and organize everything you've saved. ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web ...
Published: May 12, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 866
Web Design Site Comparison
These web sites are identical or are they?: Here's a wonderful page that takes 10 sites all very popular in the blogosphere then examines them for common elements like search boxes, righthand columns, footers, etc. Degrees if incidence and dissonance are calculated and lead to interesting conculsions. ...
Published: August 12, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 865
NOAA Web Site Traffic
Public storms NOAA site: Ivan hasn't been the only thing the National Oceanic and Atmopheric Administration has had to worry about. Keeping their Web site up hasn't been a rose garden either. Also collecting up-to-the-minute, high-resolution images, NOAA's Web site has received a record number of hits during this hurricane ...
Published: September 17, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 862
The Needless Complexity of ASP.Net
Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?: This is a post that asks a solid question: Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET? It s a good question. Where are they? Why do all the rock star start-ups use CakePHP or Rails or anything but ...
Published: September 15, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 861
Vigilantes on The Wild Wild Web
On the Web, vengeance is mine (and mine): Interesting story about vigilantism on the Web. One of the self-appointed auction cops...sends e-mail to potentially fraudulent sellers asking them about their auctions. But he attaches surveillance software that reveals information about the seller, and he uses that information to track them ...
Published: April 4, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 861
The $200K Web Developer
Web Development Software Engineer Jobs in Fairfax, VA: There s a job at Career Builder today for a Web developer with a salary of $200,000. But there s a catch. A principal Department of Defense agency is looking for programmers, developers or coders to code, support field deployment and maintenance of a ...
Published: July 26, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 858
Web Calendar Recommendation?
Much like my selfish use of this space to ask for a GMail invite, I'm now asking for a software recommendation. I'm building a Web site for our local Christian school, and we need a Web calendar. I'm not going to roll my own, so we're looking for open-source or ...
Published: September 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 857
Make Sure You Have Content Worth Managing
Content management: web publishing needs real discipline: This is so true. These's nothing more pointless than a massive content management intiative to manage crappy content. "Too many organizations take an unprofessional approach to the content they publish on the Web. Many web managers still seem to believe that if they ...
Published: November 4, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 856
Judge: Web Libel Claims Only Good for One Year
Judge: Libel limit applies to Web: Interesting. Godbey ruled Monday that the one-year clock begins ticking when an article first appears on the Internet and ends a year later, even if the article in question remains available for reading on the Internet.
Published: October 18, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 856
Newsflash: Web Users Don't Take Their Time
Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye: Don't think design matters? This study shows that users take a grand total of 50 milliseconds to come to a judgement about your site. Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as ...
Published: January 16, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 855
Switching to Web Mail
I've decided to make the switch to pure Web mail. It's been a long time coming. About three years ago, I got sick of having to sync a POP account in two locations, so I switched to IMAP. I've loved that set-up ever since. I have an account at Fusemail, ...
Published: September 28, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 854
The FrontPage Experiment Has Failed
Can we finally admit that the FrontPage experiment has failed? You know -- the promise that FrontPage will allow novice Web authors to create and maintain (especially maintain) good, solid Web sites? Can we finally admit that this just isn't going to happen? How many people know someone that is ...
Published: January 12, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 853
Web Apps Rule the Organization
IDevelopers show their independent streak, favoring Web-based apps: Big frameworks and multi-layered architectures seem great in theory, but I've yet to see them work really well in practice. This seems to be the feeling coming out of this programming survey as well. "Web applications rule the enterprise. That's the indisputable ...
Published: October 16, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 852
Ford Fusion Web Site
Ford mines consumers' wants: This is pretty brilliant. Ford is using a Web site to let people outfit fantasy Fusions a new sedan coming next year. But they're not just throwing away the data. It's an attempt to more closely align consumer demand with actual production, which often can ...
Published: March 22, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 852
Seniors on the Web More Often
Old Is New For Online User Base: Huh. File under "Things to Tease Grandma About Later." The study, compiled in October 2003, shows Web usage among seniors surged 25 percent in the last year... Adults ages 55-64 had similar growth over the last year as well, jumping 15 percent...
Published: November 21, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 849
Pay-to-Read Web Journalism
Have Web Site, Will Investigate: So-called "pay-to-read" journalism is on the radar. The guy at Back-To-Iraq.com apparently got people to donate $14,000+ so he could go to Iraq and report to them about it. Jakob Nielson has talked about this lately as well.
Published: July 22, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 848
Redesigning Nielsen's Site
ReUSEIT: There's a contest on to redesign Jakon Nielsen's site. Apparently Nielsen himself has blessed it...sort of. "Web usability maven Jakob Nielsen has been writing his "Alertbox" column on web usability since 1995. His web site, UseIt.com is read by millions of web professionals and other interested parties each year. ...
Published: August 16, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 848
Web-Based PR Spin
Welcome to Save Disney: Web spin is all the rage these days. Martha Stewart started it with a site to refute the charges against her. Michael Jackson recently did the same. Now a Disney heir and an ex-Disney board member have set up a site solely to attack Michael Eisner ...
Published: December 12, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 847
Web Standards Virus
I Wanna Devise A Virus: Funny. Devious. Illegal. Isn't it about time someone wrote a web standards virus? It would uninstall older browsers and replace them with Firefox or worse case, IE 6. Maybe even be so nice as to move the victims bookmarks/favorites and homepage over to the ...
Published: September 22, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 847
Why the Windows API is Dying
How Microsoft Lost the API War: This is an incredibly long, but very interesting, article from Joel Spolsky in which he explains why the venerable Windows API is dying. He spends 6,252 fascinating words and a couple of dozen tangents getting to this point at the end: [...] Microsoft's API ...
Published: June 17, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 845
Tim on Web 2.0 and Trademarks
Web 2.0 Service Mark Controversy (Tim responding this time): Tim O'Reilly responds to the "Web 2.0" trademark controversy which has apparently been pretty hateful over the last week. O'Reilly also values its trademarks -- as do other companies and individuals aligned with the values of openness and sharing. (I'll note ...
Published: May 31, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 845
WMD Game Based on Web Documents
Computer Programmer Makes 'WMD' Treasure Hunt Game: This guy is the reason that we really need to limit the amount of information on the Web. He found a bunch of documents on the Web relating to Iraq, and used them to hude clues to find fake WMDs. The game includes ...
Published: December 17, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 844
War on the Web
United States Central Command Home Page: This is really incredible it's almost a blog, complete with photo galleries.
Published: December 7, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 844
Which is the Fastest Web Language?
Fastest web language: Interesting thread over on Spolsky's forums on the perennial question: which Web language is the fastest? Some points that jumped out at me (all from different posters): Once you scale up to the point at which performance actually matters, the database is usually the bottleneck. Using efficient ...
Published: May 8, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 844
When Web Forms Attack
Or, "How not to make your TV station web site work". News 14 Carolina in Raleigh, NC apparently had a web form for businesses to submit information closings and late starts due to weather. While a human reviewed the submissions before they went on the air, you could edit your ...
Published: March 9, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 842
Katrina Web Scams
Beware scammers using Katrina to fool charity contributors: Here's a depressing statistic. There are now some 2,300 Web sites advertising Hurricane Katrina relief services, and most of them are presumed to be bogus, the FBI said Friday. Twenty three hundred? Now there's a group of people that need to held ...
Published: September 11, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 841
Outlook Web Access Privacy Hole
Here's something a little scary for anyone who uses Outlook Web Access. Watch out for the links you click in emails, because your browser may send a whole lot of information about you in the HTTP Referer header. Browsing through my log files the other day, I found this as ...
Published: December 23, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 841
The Ultimate in Web Site Marketing
Animal rights activist changes name to GoVeg.com: Someone call Chris Pirillo. "It might sound more than a little odd — but it's true. A young animal rights activist from Indiana once known as Karin Robertson has legally changed her name to that of a Web site run by her employer, ...
Published: August 3, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 841
The Invisible Web
Seek and Ye Shall Find: This is an interesting article about "the invisible Web" -- large repositories of data that search engines don't pick up on. For instance, Web-enabled databases that use POST forms to search. Spiders don't do POST requests -- if there are no direct URLs to the ...
Published: October 3, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 840
Google Web Toolkit
GWT is Open-Sourced: This is cool, but I had no idea the GWT was that complicated. The Google Web Toolkit has been open-sourced. The toolkit was developed internally and can be used to create products like GMail and Google Maps. It allows you to program in Java and let the ...
Published: December 13, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 839
Anil Dash on the Semantic Web
waffle: under the iron: Anil Dash of Six Apart and LinkedIn has some comments over at Waffle about the future of The Semantic Web: "The most productive next steps are going to happen in a few phases, I suspect. The first will be new generations of blogging tools that natively ...
Published: June 11, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 838
Berkshire Hathaway Web Site
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.: Take a look at this Web site. It belongs to Warren Buffet's company. He's the second-richest man in the United States (the world?). You'd think his site would be a bit more...professional? On one hand, this is refreshingly non-corporate. But on the other hand, it's very...1995-ish. Any ...
Published: May 3, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 836
HGTV Pro.com
Scripps Takes Latest Channel Direct to Web: The line between TV and the Web is blurring, as evidenced by this article. It discusses how the media company E.W. Scripps Co. put their latest "channel" directly on the Web. HGTV Pro.com, the company's first independent e-offering, began in January with dozens ...
Published: March 21, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 835
Yahoo! "Web Beacons"
Do you Yahoo? Were you aware of this: Yahoo is using something called "Web beacons" or a "super cookie" that tracks not only where its users go on the Yahoo network but also tracks where they go outside of the Yahoo network using a persistent file on the hard drive. ...
Published: March 6, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 835
Web Advertising Showcase
Creative Showcase: Some neat Web ads here. Click the screencap to see the ad. "Creativity is alive and well, and living on the Net. But too many breaking campaigns have slipped through the cracks without the industry taking notice. Explore with industry consultant Joseph Jaffe an ongoing showcase of the ...
Published: July 11, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 835
Web Site Tours
Last year, I built a nice little Web site for my church pre-school. Go take a look -- it's really well-done, and has served the school well. (Look hard enough, and you might find my wife in there somewhere...) However, one of the problems with the site is that new ...
Published: June 6, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 832
The BNA Web App Oscars
Barenakedapp.com points out some great design ideas by handing out fake Oscars: While scouting around the internet in my search for concise web copy I also found some nice layout features - devices to help your readers either get to your info or help them understand your app better. Skype's ...
Published: May 24, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 831
ASPs and Web Services
Salesforce.com to Offer Hosted Development Tools: One of the inevitable problems with using an application service provider for your core business apps is that eventually you're going to want to do more than they offer, and this presents problems. How do you get at your own stuff? A lot of ...
Published: June 6, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 831
Jakob Nielsen: Video on the Web Sucks
Talking-Head Video Is Boring Online : Jakob Nielsen has published a bit about how bad video apparently is for the Web. What's interesting is his eye-tracking study, where he shows you what someone looks at while they're watching video. He has an image which show where the viewer's eyes rested, ...
Published: January 1, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 830
Top 10 Web Site Mistakes of 2002
This is a Jakob Nielsen article which is a good wrap-up of mistakes people make when building Web sites and what to avoid. I got this in the mail (I don't remember from whom) as a poster which I proudly hung on my wall (mainly to antagonize my boss, who ...
Published: December 23, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 829
Web Site for GPL Violations?
What is the Best Way to Handle a GPL Violation?: There should be a Web site solely to track GPL violations. It'd be a nice way to keep everything in the same place. When you find that somebody is violating the GPL by distributing your code or a derivative of ...
Published: January 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 829
On the web, no one can hear you scream...Until now
Have you ever wanted to chat with other folks looking at the same web page you are? Now you can. Chatsum is a Firefox extension that lets you chat and leave messages on any website for other Chatsum users to see and interact with. The Chatsum sidebar houses a fully-fledged ...
Published: January 11, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 828
Web of Letters
Make: posted a cool but totally useless thing this morning. Web of Letters will generate words in pictures for you. Just type in the word or words you want picture-ized and it will show you the results. There must be a sizable number of pictures for each letter... ...
Published: March 14, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
Making Web Communities Work
12 Variables for Understanding Online Communites: Whether or not a Web community thrives or sputters had always been kind of a hit-or-miss affair. This article identifies the 12 most important variables. The twelve variables we've selected are most likely not all that exist, just the ones we find most important ...
Published: January 9, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
AOL Moving to Web Standards
AOL's Garden Might Flourish Without Rainman: I did some searching for "Rainman" and didn't find much. The good news is they're bagging it for HTML. Over the past year, the Dulles new-media pioneer built a fancy new system to publish its fare not in the company's proprietary programming language called ...
Published: April 16, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
The World's First Web Cam
Trojan Room Coffee Pot Biography: The first Web cam in history was invented so that everyone in the Computer Lab at Cambridge would know if there was coffee without having to go looking. It ran from 1991 to 2001. The last image is here, which shows the pot be turned ...
Published: February 14, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
2003's Web Site Mistakes
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003: Love Nielsen or hate him, there's some good advice here. 8. Products Sorted Only by Brand. Sites that offer many items ought to provide winnowing and sorting, which is a highly useful way to deal with lists and is fortunately fairly common. Unfortunately, ...
Published: December 22, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 827
Protecting Content Editors From Themselves
Say you put together a nice, static site for a client. There's a lot of CSS, a fair amount of scripting (in whatever language we'll assume PHP here), a handful of images, and a lot of HTML. The client is going to manage the site with a WYSIWYG editor. ...
Published: September 21, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 826
Save a Developer. Upgrade Your Browser.
SaveTheDevelopers.org :: Making The Web A Better Place: Dear God, please save us. Say no to IE 6! Our current campaign focuses on assisting users in upgrading their Internet Explorer 6 web browser. This campaign will result in former IE 6 users having a more enjoyable experience on the web ...
Published: March 25, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 826
The Internet as Virtual California
Matt Webb has postulated a fascinating theory about the dot-com bubble, and why so much money got thrown after so many crazy ideas. A great article and a must-read for web folks. The huge influx of cash at the turn of the millennium led to the whole Web being built ...
Published: June 8, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 826
Web-based Image Cropping
Cropping Images using DHTML (Prototype) and symfony: Here's a slick little DHTML script (backed with PHP) that lets Web users crop photos. Flashback to today, for my company... we want users with avatars... but nothing too large. Maybe a nice 80x80 picture. Well the coolest UI I've seen was Apple's ...
Published: September 18, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 824
S.D. Library Web Site Controversy
S.D. governor pulls plug on part of library Web site: Our governor, Mike Rounds, ordered some links removed from the youth section of the South Dakota State Library Web site this week because they linked to "inappropriate content." The governor's office isn't identifying the links, but sources say they were ...
Published: July 13, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 823
Why You Need Web Content Editors
why content management fails: So true. A lot of companies could do a great job by just issuing FrontPage or Movable Type to someone who knows how to develop Web content well. ...there is a larger issue at play. Even the most thoughtful projects may be misguided. Over and over ...
Published: April 3, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 823
Macromedia's Contribute
Some very interesting news out of Macromedia this morning. They plan to release a lightweight Web editing tool called Contribute that's geared for non-Web developers that need to make changes to Web pages. I'm interested in the possibilities this could open up for the workplace. I'm involved in using content ...
Published: November 11, 2002  Geek Popularity Factor: 823
Patterns in Web Design
As a programmer, I've come to use the concept of design patterns in my software development efforts. I was suprised, though, to hear that the pixel-pushers also have a concept of patterns in web design. Ryan Singer of 37Signals has written an excellent article on patterns in web design, and ...
Published: October 6, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 821
Error Message Primer
Error Messages: More Important to Your Web Site Than You Think: Good error messages are an often-overlooked detail of every Web site. This article dissects them, from "Placement and Format" to "Voice" (is "pompous indifference" a good voice?) to "Length." Well-done. Error messages are essentially the driver’s side air bags ...
Published: December 2, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 821
.Net Coders = American Tourists?
Are .NET Developers the American Tourists of the Software Industry?: This is an awfully good post that examines just why we all hat e.Net developers. The same segment of the software industry that dislikes Microsoft also views developers who use Microsoft tools and languages as inherently less skilled and less ...
Published: March 10, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 820
Web Content 2008: Day One
Day One was busy The Next Content Wave: Hypersyndication We started off with a keynote talk from Dick Costolo, who is the guy who created and sold FeedBurner and now works for Google. He talked about how far syndication has come. If you went to CNN or Gannett even ...
Published: June 18, 2008  Geek Popularity Factor: 819
Web Services At Recreation.gov
Recreation.gov: This a great site run by...well, I'm not sure, but it's the federal government in some form. It's a big database of outdoor facilities and activities in your area. What's so geeky about that you ask? Well, they have a Web services API: RecML. You can query the database ...
Published: July 24, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 819
Spy Recruiting on the Web
Hamosad: This will be my last post to Gadgetopia. You see, thanks to a certain Web site, I am leaving all I know behind to become a spy. It was inevitable. The State of Israel has tasked the Mossad with collecting intelligence and performing special covert operations abroad. Its job ...
Published: May 25, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 819
Operation Web Snare
53 convicted for Internet crimes after government sweeps: I hope you all feel just a little bit safer. Operation Web Snare, which began June 1, wrapped up Thursday with several arrests at locations across the country. Justice Department officials said victims lost more than $215 million. They said there were ...
Published: August 26, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 819
Masturbatory Web Design
I used a term with a colleague the other day -- "masturbatory Web design" -- and he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I use the term a lot, so I don't think about it, but he thought it was hysterical and completely appropriate for the situation ...
Published: October 20, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 818
Amazon's Virtual Data Center
Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon EC2 / Amazon Web Services: My understanding of how this works is that you can upload a disk image of a machine, and it will live at Amazon on some virtual, uber-server, and run there. Cost is $0.10 per hour (or $2.40 a day, ...
Published: August 24, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 816
Web Competition Driving Retailer Honesty
Now on the Web: The Total Price: Here's a good trend to see. "Online merchants have improved how quickly they disclose the actual selling price of goods and services after taxes, fees and shipping charges have been added on. In the early years of e-commerce, when merchants considered low prices ...
Published: August 31, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 815
The Peril of Entwistle's Web Surfing
Entwistle reportedly searched Web for ways to kill people: Interesing how they're combing through this guy's surfing habits and essentially building a case out of it. A man charged with murdering his wife and baby daughter searched the Internet for ways to kill people and methods of committing suicide in ...
Published: February 14, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
Shawn Hornbeck Posted to his Parents' Web Site
Report: Shawn told police in 2003 about stolen bike: Man, this is just spooky. On Friday, Shawn's stepfather, Craig Akers, said he was haunted by having dismissed a series of messages Shawn apparently posted on a Web site his parents had created in their search for him. "How long are ...
Published: January 20, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
Spolsky's New Web Sites
New websites: Joel Spolsky just had both his Web sites Fog Creek and Fog Bugz redesigned by Happy Cog Studios. He has an interesting piece this morning about the process, and about how he incrementally destroyed one design and had to start over. That s when I knew we ...
Published: October 30, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
Salesforce Does Content Management
Salesforce.com buys Web content management firm: I don't get the integration angle here. What's the benefit of integrating CRM with Web content management? Salesforce.com, best known for its hosted sales applications, is pushing into Web content management. The company on Tuesday expects to detail new products and the acquisition of ...
Published: April 10, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
Interview with Josh Clark
Admit it: whenever some group like 37 Signals or Six Apart comes out with a new software product, you secretly think, "I could of done that." How many of us developers thing we could build something just as good if we only put in the time? I do. Yes, I ...
Published: March 2, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 814
Colleges Testing for Web Gullibility
New test would measure students' Web wisdom: The Information and Communication Technology Literacy Assessment will be given to incoming students, and if they believe that a guy in Nigeria really has $19 million to share with them, they have to take remedial classes. "Every single one that comes through the ...
Published: July 1, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 813
Bad Web Presence Case Study
Charity Begins at Home. It Can End Online: Here's a fascinating story of incredible Web incompetence. A journalist tried to donate to the Cousteau Society but was thwarted at every turn by an abandoned site, a Flash site invisible to search engines (the link above), and an email delivery issue. ...
Published: January 9, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 813
Web Patterns
Patterns in Interaction Design: Here's a good list of a lot of the UI patterns and site types you see around the Net. You know, things like flyout menus, site maps, advanced search, etc. For each, it shows an example and discusses when and where you'd want to use them. ...
Published: December 24, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 813
Stealing Web Site Content
Stealing My Content... Again: Shirley's got a problem with a certain Web site. "One of the things that hits me the wrong way is to continue to find people blatantly stealing website designs, content, and anything else. Many of us have had our hard work and efforts stolen, unfortunately. ... ...
Published: September 26, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 811
Web Violates Bryant Accuser's Privacy
Bryant accuser asks judge to stop posting court documents: Some interesting privacy implications in the Kobe Bryant case. The attorney for the woman accusing NBA star Kobe Bryant of rape on Monday urged the judge to stop posting court documents on the Web, saying she and her family are concerned ...
Published: July 20, 2004  Geek Popularity Factor: 811
IE Is Costing You Money - An Angry Rant
Are you paying someone to make web pages? By now I'm sure that everyone is sick of hearing web people wail and moan about how much they hate IE. But the sad truth is that aside from giving your security guy nightmares, and serving as the source of a lot ...
Published: February 15, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 811
The Making of a Web Developer: Where Would You Start?
Say you have someone who is interested in Web development, but who has never really progressed beyond Dreamweaver. Where would you start with them? My gut is telling me that you start by teaching them HTML and CSS from the ground up. Do you agree? If so, what resources would ...
Published: September 10, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 810
Exchange 2000 as a Corporate Blogging Platform
So you want to give blogging a go at your company, but you dread the thought of getting sign off on new software, setting everything up, handling permissions issues, etc. What a huge pain, especially when you have no idea if anyone is going to even like the concept. Never ...
Published: December 11, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 810
Broadband and Commercial Effectiveness
At Last, the Web Hits 100 MPH: Here's an article about how broadband will affect the commercial potential of the Web. It includes this quote that had never occured to me before: In tests, customers who watch videos about the luggage [eBags] sells are 19% more likely to buy than ...
Published: June 18, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 810
Your First Web Site?
Wayback challenge: When was your first site?: Great idea. I'm putting some thought into what my first one was...and drawing a blank. I'd like to challenge anyone who has designed a web page to find the oldest site in the archive that they authored and post the Wayback Machine link ...
Published: January 3, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 809
How to Redirect a Web Page
How to redirect a web page, the smart way: This page shows you about a dozen different ways to redirect a page using a 301 status. I concur. I changed the URL scheme on this site last year, and redirected 4,000 pages using 301 and watched Google update its index ...
Published: June 19, 2006  Geek Popularity Factor: 808
Solutions for Web-Based Form Usability
Forms, usability, and the W3C DOM: A first-class article about one method of simplifying complex Web-based forms by making various elements appear and disappear based on other input. The solution he comes up with is quite ingenious. It has a link to this page with demonstrates a solution to another ...
Published: May 30, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 807
The Microsoft Expression Suite
Microsoft Expression: I knew this was coming, but I just stumbled on the site this morning. This is the replacement for FrontPage, and the supposed competitor to Dreamweaver. Expression Web is a professional design tool to create modern, standards-based sites which deliver superior quality on the Web. Expression Blend is ...
Published: January 23, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 806
The State Pattern and Web Applications
I ve been doing some reading lately on Design Patterns. I find myself trying to relate the examples to Web applications. One of the interesting ones is the State Pattern. This says that an application is really just a collection of states, or situations the application might find itself in. Some ...
Published: June 3, 2007  Geek Popularity Factor: 805
Google and Its Legacy of Text Ads
How Google Tamed Ads on the Wild, Wild Web - New York Times: A good article about how Google changed Web advertising inadvertantly in 2000 by innocently demanding that all ads on its service be text ony. Remember the X10 pop-unders? FIVE years ago, Web advertisers were engaged in an ...
Published: November 20, 2005  Geek Popularity Factor: 805
Voice Sites
Angel.com provides a low cost alternative to VRU (Voice Response Unit) solutions, that can route calls, take messages or provide recorded information. "Voice Sites are like Web sites for the telephone. Web sites have interlinked Web pages, and Voice Sites have interlinked voice pages. To use a Voice Site, you ...
Published: June 8, 2003  Geek Popularity Factor: 805
Flash Web Apps Made Easy
Laszlo Systems: I always get a si