It’s a Small URL After All takes you through the process of using open-source Yourls to create your own personalized URL shortening service similar to tinyurl.com and bit.ly. This deck was presented at BarCamp Memphis by Bob Hazlett of www.onehalfamazing.com and Daniel Pritchett of www.sharingatwork.com.
Facebook let it all hang out to a select group of members to test their new search interface. The system would allow members to search their news feed for recent updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared on friends’ profiles and fan Pages. Users who have made their profile and content available to anyone will also be searchable.
SEOMoz yammers it up during Whiteboard Friday to talk about visualization. I think visualization is one of those new and sexy fields that you’ll hear more and more about in the near future.
SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Visualization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
12seconds is updating their iPhone app to take advantage of the new OS 3.0. The app, which should be available soon, will allow you to send short video messages directly to your friends via twitter.
Back ‘dat thing up and pick up some great tips about landing page design through CopyBlogger’s Landing Page Makeover. Their most recent tutorial covers CarsHelpingAmerica.org.
If you’re a fan of Indie Rock, I highly recommend The Veils – Sun Gangs. Rock out this weekend.
Here are the interesting posts at the top of my reading list this week.
The fine folks at the Red Cross are working diligently on crafting a Social Media Policy Handbook. They’ve got a great start and are light years ahead of even most for-profit businesses. As it should, its available online for your viewing pleasure.
Staying with the non-profit side of things, NPR has a great feature of The Extraordinaries. Its a micro volunteering iPhone app that allows people to give small blocks of time (< 5 min) and knowledge to a non-profit. Some of the first tasks available are tagging images for the Brooklyn Museum building a map of childhood playgrounds. It’s a beautiful concept.
SEOMoz updated their SEO Best Practices to account for new industry data. They clear the air and a lot of confusion in regards to new search engine optimization standards. The synopsis is H1 tags are not all that necessary anymore, stop trying to sculpt PageRank with nofollow, use footer links, java and flash sparingly, traffic to a site doesn’t determine its ranking and quite a bit more.
Smashing Magazine compiled a great list of web design checklists and resources that will help improve your writing skills.
Rumor has it that Google is experimenting with product ads that would would work very similar to AdWords, but display an image ad along the right hand side of the SERP when the user searches on a particular term. These ads would run on a pay-per-action basis rather than a pay-per-click (PPC) basis.
Google releases geo-performance reporting feature
10 Web Applications for FriendFeed
Social Media Breakfast #6 Memphis and an update from Sharing at Work
On Demand WordPress Theme and a nice Thesis Update
The Most Brilliant Outdoor Campaign Ever
How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business and 40 Creative Design Layouts from Smashing Magazine
I also ordered two books: The Leader of the Future 2 and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
I’ve just added a new section to my site called “Where I Go.” It’s very similar to the old Links page that many sites used to contain. Within it I’ve added a list of blogs, podcasts and sites I love. These sites are the community and the people who share ideas, push the world forward and make the story better in the end. If you’d like to be part of One Half Amazing, then you should be on this page. Email me and give me your URL, and your RSS feed.
