Lesson From Andrew On How Not to Blog
How to piss your reader off in no time?
John Chow wrote a review about a blog called AndrewTalk.com. It is quite entertaining review as Andrew, the owner of AndrewTalk.com, ordered USD 400 to John Chow to review his blog hoping that John Chow will give him a good review, and therefore increase the traffic to his blog.
Well, the traffic did increase, but not in favorable way. In the review, John Chow slapped Andrew’s face because John Chow found out that Andrew’s blog contained articles copied from John’s blog and other blogs! Since Andrew has stolen John’s blog contents, it remains a mystery to me why Andrew ordered a blog review from John. 
After this incident, Andrew decided to remove all pirated articles and decided to start anew.
In my opinion, it is not necessary for him to quickly remove all contents. As Guy Kawasaki quoted in By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09, there is no such thing as bad PR. Since many people visited his blog after this incident, Andrew can just continue his blog and fight back with John Chow. The traffic will increase even more (in evil way) for sure. 
Please don’t do what Andrew did. I am against copying other people’s content as-is. I encountered too many blogs owners just copy and paste other people’s blogs without modification at all, and yet the-so-called-author claims that he/she wrote the content. It shows that the author has no creativity and too lazy to think. Good blog, in my opinion, should be original, and yet it educates and entertains its reader.
Unobstrusive AJAX Rating Star Bar
Ryan Masuga came out with an unobstrusive AJAX rating star bar. It allows user to rate things and since it uses AJAX, user won’t see page refresh after rating is done. You probably has seen it in Amazon, Netflix, or Web-2.0-style web site.
You need PHP and MySQL to implement this AJAX Rating Star Bar. You can set the number of rating units you want to use, i.e. 4 stars, 10 stars, etc. The web site also teaches you how to customize the script, e.g. changing the graphic size, integrating with WordPress, etc.
AJAX Rating Star Bar is under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Create Site Tours
According to 37Signals in their book Getting Real, one of the powerful method to promote your web site is to give your customer a site tour. A site tour guides site visitors through various features available in the web site with some screen shots and/or interactive demo. By guiding your site visitors, you improve the usability of your web site.
Writing a good site tour can take a lot of time. Fortunately, you can use Amberjack, a a lightweight Javascript library to create a cool site tour easily. Best of all, you don’t need to install or learn anything. You can use the Tool Wizard to help you quickly creating your site tour.
It is under a LGPL license.
Add Image Reflection
What is the best way to add reflection to an image, as it can be seen in many Web 2.0 logos, without touching the image?
Reflection.js 1.6 will do the job for you. It uses an unobtrusive Javascript to keep your code clean. It works in all major web browsers: IE 5.5+, FireFox 1.5+, Opera 9+, and Safari.
It is freely distributed under an MIT license.
Feed Icons
A nice collection of 34 feed icons in PNG format (32 and 16 pixels).
It is distributed under Creative Commons License v3.0.
CSS Blueprint
How many times you need to reinvent the wheel because when you create new a web site, you code again and again the same basic CSS? Using a blueprint can help you to reduce your development or design time.
CSS Blueprint is a new-kid-on-the-block in CSS framework, which is distributed under a modified MIT license. It is developed by Olav Bjørkø and gives you basic grid layout, typography, print stylesheet, and more.
You can click here for view a demo page developed using CSS Blueprint.
Of course it cannot be compared with more mature framework. In Web 2.0, you need to build a complete features-rich and interactive web application that can attract your site visitors to come. You might want to turn your head to The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), the more complete framework developed by Yahoo. Besides CSS framework, it has set of controls built using DOM scripting, DHTML, and AJAX.
Nevertheless, CSS Blueprint looks like a nice framework. I will give it a try.
How to Choose Domain Names (Part 2)
Today I continue the same topic that I compiled from various sources on the Internet.
- Brainstorm top 5 keywords. Usually a good domain name is a result of combination of various keywords. Try to come out with the top 5 keywords and try to combine them, pluralize them, etc. For example, if you want to have a domain name related to “tuition”, you can think of “tutor,smart,school,teacher,subject”.
- Dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia are your good friend.
- Make it easy to type. Avoid number 0 and letter O, number 1 and letter L, etc., since they look similar and cause confusion to your site visitors.
- Avoid words that are difficult to pronounce. People won’t mention your web site name to their friends if they are not sure how to pronounce it. They will feel it is better to be safe rather than embarrass themselves.
- Keep the name as short as possible and domain name with energy sounds appealing, e.g. Yahoo!
- Make sure the domain name represents the value you offer to your customer, i.e. deliver branding.
- Avoid copyright infringement. Although it doesn’t happen too often, you make sure you do research, e.g. visit copyright.gov, before you buy the domain name.
- Use a reputable company for registration. Personally I use Aplus.net and the roll-royce-price NetworkSolutions.
- Last but not least, be careful with domain name search service offered by some web sites. Some of them buy the domain name that you’ve entered. As a result, the domain name you want to buy is not available anymore and they hope you will buy it from them with high price. This happened to me before.
How to Choose Domain Names
Choosing a good domain name is not easy nowadays. You need to spend time to think through and research for you domain name because short and memorable domain names are usually taken.
Some tips when you choose a domain name:
- Domain name must be highly brandable or it has your primary keyword in it. You can research the keywords using free services available on the Internet, such as Keyword Discovery, Word Tracker, or Google Keyword Tool.
- If you cannot find a domain name with your primary keyword, then you choose a domain name that is short or easy enough to remember. A memorable domain name is a key to success.
- You might want to consider .net if your desired domain name in .com is not available.
- Important: don’t forget to research the domain name using Google or Yahoo, find out whether the similar domain name or similar keywords are already taken or used for other purposes. Also, check the meaning of the domain name in foreign languages.
Bust A Name is a free service on the Internet to help you to choose domain name. It allows you input several keywords and it will generate list of domain names based on keywords you entered. It can even check whether the domain name is available.
Compelling and Accessible Form
Form in a web site or web-based application allows user to input, edit, or delete data. Without form, we wouldn’t able to log in to web-based email accounts, purchase tickets online, or trade stocks online.
Form has an important role in the web pages. It should be part of integral design of the web site. Form, by default, is ugly due to the generic way web browser displays them. Without a compelling and accessible form, user might not want to input data, which translates to lost of customer and revenue.
Now, what is a compelling and accessible form? Form comprises input elements, such as text fields, check boxes, and action buttons. First, you should use CSS to format the layout of the form. Make the form stands out the crowd by changing the beveled input and boring-looking buttons.
Second, all input elements should in grouped and positioned in logical way. According to HTML: The Definitive Guide, input elements should be organized in logical groups so that user’s brain can process the form layout in chunks of related fields.
There are more than one ways to design a good form. Below are non-exhaustive list:
1. Web Form Design Best Practices
2. Web Application Form Design
3. A List Apart: Prettier Accessible Forms
Color Inspiration
If you are a designer, you will need a handy tool to select colors for the web, ad campaigns, product design, etc. Selecting the right color is part of design process and it is important as it communicates the brand vision to outsider.
Meet COLOURlovers. It is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. It is also a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, read color articles, and submit news and comments.
