The ExpressionEngine versus WordPress battle.

Processing

The core distinguishing factor  between WordPress and Expression Engine is how publishing content is processed.

In regards to WordPress,  a new post includes a content section, however these can include custom fields which are either pre-defined defined (template framework) or built instantly by the author.  As a result when a post is published,  it will be subsquently displayed depending on the category or its sub-category.  In this whole process the author or editor will always see the same input screen.

Expression Flexibility

ExpressionEngine, processes its content on user defined channels.

For every publishing channel, it can be considered as an independent part of framework as opposed to wordpress.

Naturally, this is processing architecture is invisible to most users or well understood by editors or authors.   The site editor/publisher normally only has access to the “Publish” and “Edit” sections of the website, which can also include restrictions on other components like modules.

ExpressionEngine Advantages

Many web designers choose the ExpressionEngine, as this framework allows a wider site control.  It follows that many people don’t have a WYSIWYG editor on their website.  The ExpressionEngine is built on codeigniter php framework which offers excellent API power.

Wordpress Advantages

Most people are capable of  setting up a WordPress blog or website with very little knowledge of PHP, HTML and CSS.

New Version ExpressionEngine 2.0

The new version 2.0, new functionality was added which allows editors to upload HTML and CSS files into folders using naming conventions (blog.group, main.group, portfolio.group, etc.), and thus creating a rendering process much like wordpress.

The new versiong has a a new file named default_content.php, which is required to install a theme.  In this file it specified all components such as default content, channels, custom fields, etc.  The only slight concern is that the file is less logic based code but rather requires editors to understand SQL language in order to successfully build the default_content.php.

Site Theme Flexibility

With WordPress, administrators can easily change or update the design quite fast.  However, the ExpressionEngine only allows a theme to be added at the point of installation.  Subsquently, an administrator of an ExpressionEngine is required to maintain the HTML, custom fields and other elements and only then be able to change the CSS and images, unless they start over with all site definitions but this is an intensive job and most administrators would never do. As a result, themes in WordPress typically all handle content the same way, on the contrary themes in ExpressionEngine are less flexible.

To Sum up

WordPress is considered a core framework for PHP developers as it can be manipulated at their will or even group processes. Furthermore, custom fields can be added and modified.  The other advantage is that most people can can set up a website easily, and the design flexibility allows them to change themes quite fast and easy.  Also, widgets and plug-ins add instant functionality to any site running wordpress.

ExpressionEngine is most useful for designers because as there is no need use a programming language for operational flexibiliy.  It is not diffcult for any competent designer to use HTML and CSS to use the simple framework and its expressions.

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Redesigning a website, or even a single page, can be a tedious and time-consuming process.  However in this post we present a quick solution for any website owner predictaments, particularly on increasing website conversions from visitors. It is shown a timescale as a guide on how to quickly invcrease and re-design any website.

0 to 5 Minutes

Select a page where you can have the greatest impact

Surprisingly, this may not always be your homepage. Instead of trusting your gut, a little digging in Google Analytics (or your favorite analytics tool) can show you exactly where to start.

Here are some ideas on finding pages that you can work on:

Navigate to your “top landing pages” or “top entrance pages” report (in Google Analytics, this is found under “Content” on the left sidebar).

Use a filter to remove pages with minimal traffic (see the “Advanced Filter” link at the bottom of the table).

Sort your pages by bounce rate.

Select the biggest loser: the page with the most potential for improvement (a combination of high visits and bounce rate).

5 to 15 Minutes

Use free (or cheap) tools to determine which areas on the page need the most attention

If you really want to stick to 45 minutes, you won’t have time to use a lot of tools, but even using one will give you the insight you need to make an improvement.

Here are some tips and tools that you can help up your conversion rates:

Get free advice from the design and development professionals on Concept Feedback. You can find more tools like Concept Feedback in my previous post “10 Excellent Feedback Tools for Web Designers“.

See how people interact with your site using Userfly or ClickTale (extra credit: set up an informal user test with your neighbor, or use a remote testing service like UserTesting or Feedback Army).

Use heat maps to quickly see what’s popular and what’s overlooked. CrazyEgg and clickdensity both provide heat map tools.

Setup a quick survey with Survey Monkey, or a poll with PollDaddy to see what your users want.

Still need help? Here is a quick list of high impact items you could be testing:

• Headline copy
• Buttons (size, color and location)
• Calls to action
• Whitespace
• Advertisement density
• Value proposition
• Text size
• Images
• Color scheme (There are many tools for picking colors)

15 to 40 Minutes

Define the top 3 items from your research and implement the changes

Chances are that you’ll discover a hundred different things you could change, but remember, the key is incremental improvement and not a complete overhaul. So choose the items that you believe will have the most impact, and start there.

Keep in mind that the changes you make don’t need to be perfect—this is going to be a work in progress.

As soon as you’ve narrowed down your list to three, develop the content and code a test page right away. Limiting your list to three items keeps the project manageable. Don’t try to overdo it: you’ll be surprised how much impact just three seemingly minor adjustments can make.

If you get done with three and still want to try new changes—great!—this needs to be an ongoing process. However, don’t let an overwhelming list of ideas prevent you from action.

40 to 45 Minutes

Split test your new page, rinse and repeat

Once your new page is ready, set up a test Google Website Optimizer to track the results. Make sure to select a conversion page that accurately reflects your primary goal for that page.

Depending on the amount of traffic your page receives, you should be able to determine relatively quickly (anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks) what effect your changes made. If you’ve done your due diligence, you’ll most likely be rewarded for your effort with an increase in conversion rates, and sometimes your tweaks can result in substantial improvements.

However, you may find that your new page performs about the same, or in some cases, worse. But that’s the beauty of testing! Every test, whether successful or not, provides you with new knowledge about your site: what works and what doesn’t.

About the Author

Andrew Follett is the founder of Concept Feedback.

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We tend to rely heavily on our favorite desktop applications like Photoshop, GIMP, Audacity, Adobe Premier and so on when it comes to dealing with multimedia files. What if we are on a public machine that doesn’t have the software we need, or worst, what if these public machines prevent users from installing applications? That is where web applications are advantageous.

Web applications have gained much attention and popularity over the pass few years. Below a list of free web services that allows editing of multimedia files (photo, audio and video) online.

Photo Editors

1. flauntR

   flauntR is rolling out a unique online imaging service that combines photo editing, printing, sharing and storage in a single seamless service.

   

2. Picture2Life

   Picture2Life is a powerful, but simple and easy-to-use online image editor which also allows you to create collages and animated gif’s (or animations). It works great with your pictures that you already have online!

   

3. Improve Your Image

   Improve your images free online tool.

   

4. LookWow

   The LookWow service is a feature-rich offering that includes basic editing functions, such as Crop Photo, Resize, Clarify, Remove Red-Eye and Sharpen Photo.

   

5. MakeAGif

   Create animated gifs the free and easy way!

   

6. Photoshop.com

   Photoshop.com is your online photo sharing, editing and hosting resource. Upload, organize, edit, store (up to 2GB free) and share your photos.

   

7. Online Photo Tool

   On Onlinephototool.com you can edit and save your images, screenshots and photos online.

   

8. PicMagick

   PicMagick is an online photo editor that enables you to make ordinary photos look wonderful within a few clicks.

   

9. 72Photos

   72photos lets you do amazing things with your photos and store them in a safe space online where you can access them from anywhere.

   

10. Dr.Pic

    Crop, Resize, Add Text, Special Effects, and Host your pictures online for free at DrPic.com.

    

11. EasyCropper

    EasyCropper is a simple way for you to crop any image for use on the web. It’s a free tool, so use it at your own risk.

    

12. FotoFlexer

    FotoFlexer is the world’s most advanced online digital photo editor. It performs advanced effects previously only available to professionals using expensive software.

    

13. Picnik

    Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.

    

14. rSizr

    rsizr is a Flash application that lets you resize JPG, PNG, and GIF images online intelligently.

    

15. Splashup

    Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. It’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once.

    

16. Sumo Paint

    Sumo Paint is a full featured photo editing / painting application, which works right in your favorite web browser!

    

17. Web Resizer

    Web Resizer helps you optimize photos for web or email. Easy to use. Amazing results!

    

18. Aviary – Phoenix Image Editor

    Aviary – Phoenix Image Editor is a powerful creative application for image editing that you can use right in your web browser.

    

Audio Editors

1. Electro-House Blender

   Electro-House Blender is an amazing online music mixer that allows you to create your own music tracks by blending variety of provided sound loops.

   

2. Aviary Myna Audio Editor

   Use Myna to remix music tracks and audio clips. Apply sound effects and record your own voice or instruments!

   

3. Looplabs

   Looplabs is the web’s premiere online music mixing application and platform.

   

4. Jamglue

   Jamglue allows users to upload music in multi-track format for others to remix.

   

5. Mad Creator

   Mad Creator is a free service that lets you create a ringtone from your favorite song or YouTube video.

   

6. Chirbit

   Chirbit enables users to record, upload, listen to and share sound bites easily.

   

7. Soundation Studio

   Soundation Studio is the web based sequencer that enables you to make music, ringtones and audio clips directly from the internet without downloading any software.

   

Video Editors

1. CaptionTube

   With CaptionTube you can create captions for your YouTube videos. It’s easy to use and it’s free.

   

2. Animoto

   Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music.

   

3. Photobucket

   Set up a Photobucket account and start remixing video instantly!

   

4. JayCut

   Online video editing, unlimited upload. Create your own movies, for free!

   

5. One True Media

   One True Media helps you turn your photos and video into awesome slideshows and video montages for free.

   

6. EditorOne

   Editor One is a full-featured, timeline-based video editor can be used for online or floor exhibits, video contests, or for experiential Websites.

   

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Ten years ago, web companies didn’t generate much revenue. These days, web companies are some of the most profitable around. Online video is where the Web was ten years ago: in investment mode as video companies that are generating high revenue are not necessarily the most profitable.

Are those companies suffering low margins because they’re investing in the future or are they fundamentally lower-margin businesses?

Ad Networks Are Low Margin Businesses

This week, video ad network Brightroll raised $10 million from Scale Venture Partners. Ad networks aggregate audiences and sell ads to marketers, sharing the proceeds with publishers/producers. Scale’s Rob Theis’ argues: “the most strategic Internet investments are those that compete not with other Internet businesses, but with the much larger amount of money still being spent offline.”

Brightroll’s CEO Tod Sacerdoti added: “I think by this time next year the majority of the top five to ten video properties by any measure will be aggregator networks. The best example for this is display advertising.” Indeed, networks have an unmatched ability to scale but can also crash to the ground awfully fast.

The low margin is the least of their problems; differentiation and defensibility are. Blue Lithium and Right Media hit jackpots by selling to Yahoo! But those who didn’t sell (Tribal Fusion, Valueclick) suddenly found themselves under pressure from search advertising on performance and video on branding.

Content Networks Have Little Differentiation

Similarly, aggregators gather videos from content providers, sharing ad revenues. iFilm (sold to Viacom, renamed Spike), Guba, Grouper (sold to SONY, renamed Crackle), Revver, YouTube (sold to Google), Veoh, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Viddler, blip.tv, are all vying for content, audiences and dollars.

YouTube is master of this domain. Hulu is giving YouTube a run for its money, but the business model is anything but certain and its long term exit strategy is murky (Disney, News Corp. and NBC Universal/Comcast are shareholders but also competitors).

Ultimately, ad and content networks operate in a high-risk, winner-take-all game. For publishers, it’s a lower risk world. Consider the two acquisitions News Corp. made in 2005: Rupert Murdoch paid more for IGN ($650M) than for MySpace ($580 million), but MySpace’s subsequent growth made him look like a genius (for a while). Today, MySpace is searching for its raison d’etre while IGN treks along as an unstoppable force in its sphere.

The Myth of Hyper Distribution?

In online video, producers are agnostic to distribution channel or platform. To reduce risk, they diversify distribution, but the jury’s out on whether hyper distribution bears fruit. Hyper distribution refers to syndicating one’s content as broadly as possible with little or no restrictions.

When it comes to generating revenues, is hyper-distribution wise? Not according to Chris Pirillo, a prosumer video producer who leverages video to promote his empire but only counts YouTube as a commercial platform: “YouTube offers the largest audiences and generates most the revenue. If you’re not YouTube, you have challenges in creating value for content producers”. If that changes, look out for Freewheel, which according to CEO Doug Knopper allows “media companies and content owners to be able to monetize their video libraries across multiple channels and devices”.

Advertisers Follow Audiences…

Ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner doesn’t pretend to know how the industry is going to play out, but he’s got no doubts what the end result will be: “I don’t know if the growth in content made for the Internet will be evolutionary or revolutionary, but it can’t not happen: a death march has been going on for other media who are in trouble because there is a more efficient way to share content around the world with the Internet.”

Business Models Take Time to Develop

Eisner made his fortune in television. One VC who’s made his online has another opinion. In Fred Wilson’s influential 2005 post “The Future of Media (aka Please Take My RSS Feed)”, he suggests to:

1 – Microchunk it – Reduce the content to its simplest form.
2 – Free it – Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.
3 – Syndicate it – Let anyone take it and run with it.
4 – Monetize it – Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk.

In theory, in the future when video streams monetize the way search queries have (whereby a search query is always associated with some kind of paid listing) then perhaps Wilson’s thesis will prove right. But in practice, at least in the five years that have passed since the post, it’s been a recipe for financial disaster.

Hyper distribution is great for promotional purposes but not necessarily for commercial purposes. Marketers do pay more attention as an audience grows, but they also pay a premium for scarcity and exclusivity.

This is the fundamental conundrum facing new media producers who rely on hyper-distribution to build brands and audiences but who weaken their pricing power and ability to secure guaranteed dollars by giving away their videos. This can work if you can build ad-supported businesses, but that takes time and money.

Today, a few new media producers have managed to build ad-supported businesses, namely Revision3 and Next New Networks. But between the two, they have raised over $30 million in venture capital. Most producers don’t have that luxury. For those others, I recommend creating content that other media companies will pay for, to buy them enough time to build a syndication business and eventually, a fully ad-supported business which commands the large ad dollars.

An imperfect but useful analogy I use is the banking model, where retail, corporate and investment banking fees can create a large business.

This diversified strategy provides:

• a safe income stream: licensing, like retail banking, provides a recurring and non-volatile revenue base.
• a growth business: syndication, like corporate banking, requires other companies in the ecosystem to do well. This can provide higher CPM rates by placing content in the right context.
• a wildly lucrative stream: advertising, like investment banking, takes time to develop, is speculative and seasonal, and risks drying up abruptly. Notice how advertising revenue spikes each fourth quarter, for example.

The reason why I place content producers in the highest Profitability circle over time in the first chart above is because only they can build such a business. (The Profitability Index represented in the chart takes into account operating margins and total return on investment, including likelihood of a liquidity event). And, yes, I am completely biased, since this is the kind of business I am trying to build with WatchMojo. Aggregators and networks are solely advertising based businesses; just ask YouTube who generated $10,000 in a paid model test, even though it can generate billions in simpler ways. Video advertising will be a bigger business, but not necessarily a higher-margin business.

Video will be Everywhere: on all Websites

Video on the Web is no longer just about entertainment. It is also about marketing, instruction, and conveying information of all kinds.

• Content bellwether Wikipedia announced it will be rolling out videos soon enough.
• e-Commerce leader Zappos encourages users to submit their video experiences which increase sales 6% to 30%. In 2010, it will create 50,000 videos.
• It won’t be long before organizations feature their accountants, lawyers, management, VCs in videos too.

Video will be Everywhere: in Ads

Videos won’t simply be on all websites; video ads will converge with rich media and display banners. Publishers and ad networks will swap out low yield ad placements for videos that sell at a premium. Rupert Murdoch is right to say that there isn’t enough advertising to make all publishing online profitable, but if you insert a video-enabled ad where a display banner exists today, maybe it will become more profitable, as video rates tend to generate a tenfold premium over display banners. Of course, the flip side of that argument is that if video ad inventory lost all scarcity as display banners have, then it rates would also see a steep drop.

Video is the Anti-Search

Google’s dominance of the Web today stems from a perfect storm. Search benefitted from low expectations. Whereas Google’s competitors threw in the towel to focus on portaldom (or outright handed them the business), online video companies’ war chests seemingly have no bottom as they wage the war for the online audience.

With YouTube being a unit of Google, it’s hard to compete being a pure video aggregator. Those who have tried are flailing badly. Yet video’s expectations have always been high and will only get higher.

History Repeats Itself

Video will follow search in two ways though.

Search is software and Google is the only successful ad-supported technology company. Video is media, which has a natural disposition to embrace ad-supported models. As such, advertising will monetize video streams. In fact, as large ad agencies and marketers shift online, they’ll embrace branding campaigns and push video advertising could eventually top search advertising. Once that starts, online advertising will surpass television, it’s already happened in the UK.

Search for The Leading Ad Format

Everyone agrees that video advertising will be huge but what will the prevailing ad format be?

Stakeholders are obsessed with finding the ad format likely to follow television’s 30-second ad spot and search’s paid listings.

What might lead the way?

Pre-rolls are the equivalent of pop-ups (and mid/post rolls the equivalent of pop-unders) in that users hate them, but unlike pop-ups, I actually think pre-rolls won’t disappear, mainly because

• They’re the most in-demand ad format (according to Brightroll CEO Tod Sacerdoti)
• It is easier to include a pre-roll when you’re syndicating to other websites and platforms (says blip.tv co-founder Dina Kaplan)
• But largely because they’ll get more user-friendly: the 30-second ad will make way for 5-10 second interactive pre-rolls (SpotXchange CEO Michael Shehan).

However, there will always be properties which will forego pre-roll revenue to improve the user experience in order to build audiences, and all else being equal users will migrate to those sites. So I’m not sure the pre-roll will remain all that ubiquitous. The other problem with pre-rolls is lack of attention. When a pre-roll starts, I tune out and look for my headphones or go grab a coffee.

That’s why I like the contextual display banner (and not necessarily the companion banner). A companion banner comes bundled with the video pre-roll, but sits alongside the video A contextual banner comes without the pre-roll. Whereas most banners disappear quickly next to text with one downward scroll of the mouse, alongside a video player, that banner becomes quite valuable and top-of-mind since people are just staring at the video.

We’ve also seen the rise (and fall) of overlays, which is basically an expanded Picture-in-Picture (PIP) format; we know how that fared.

Of course, content producers are also salivating over branded content (more than product integration and product placement, the brand becomes central to the story) or outright sponsorships.

Finally, there’s the Web’s favorite offspring: the viral video. Viral video is not an ad format, of course, but it is not quite branded content nor is it supported by ads. As these become more common, achieving success with content alone becomes a sure-fire recipe for failure. All content will need to be supported by a media buy or some kind of promotional push. After all, on TV you spend millions creating an ad but you need to buy media spots to promote it. It’s not going to be that different online. Yes, it’s a meritocracy, but it’s a loud, cluttered one.

Sum up

There won’t be a single dominant ad format but the holy grail will prove simpler than expected. It always does.  Remember Don Lapre’s infomercials? He would go on and on about placing “Tiny Classified Ads” in newspapers.

Article by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the founder and CEO of WatchMojo. First published at crunchbase.

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The Realtime Web is difficult to analyse as it includes data from feed readers, desktop clients and mobile phones.  Furthermore, socialmedia applications like Twitter and Facebook are also just a component where third party applications like  TweetDeck and Seesmic can produce realtime search on Google and Bing.

Following Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams,  the data is not extensive enough.

However from the Twitter data, it can be  noted that about 50 percent of Twitter API calls are outside Twitter.com.   This percentage represents data going back and forth, not people, and includes data from bots and machine clicks. In order to get a better estimate of the size of the overall reach of Twitter, we need to take Google Trends data for Twitter and “key clients”.  As a result,  the chart above follows, where it is shown the Twitter ecosystem reaching about 60 million people, with 20 million coming from Twitter.com and 40 million coming from elsewhere. From this data, the ecosystem is twice as large as Twitter.com itself.

Applications like TweetDeck can surpass 4 million updates in a single day.  Furthermore, twitterfeed now supports more than 800,000 feeds from more than 400,000 publishers.

When we add other data points into a single chart (as it can be seen below) it shows the relative growth of the Realtime Web compared to the established Web as represented by Google and Amazon.  The chart also includes Facebook and Meebo, both of which are growing much faster.

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Since Facebook redesigned their privacy settings, many users have become confused with the difference between wall posts, tagging, commenting and how to control the visibility. In this post, it is explained the best practices for posting updates.

Wall Posts Public

Wall posts are a form of public message. When you visit a user’s profile, you can leave them a note which they will see as well as all of their friends.   Any mutual friends that you have will also receive a news feed story which notifies them of the wall post. It´s not possible for wall posts that are made on friends’ profiles to be private, as they are intended to be public. If you want to make the message private, there are two alternatives: send a message or post a private update to your wall and tag your friend.

Private Updates

Many users do not fully understand how to control the visibility of  posts especially private updates.  However, you can play with the settings so that the posts will have limited visibility so that your friends won’t be able to read them.  Furthermore, the news feed story generated by your wall post will not be visible to others on the customize option link.

The visibility of generic wall posts on your friends’ profiles right now cannot be hidden, however the purpose of wall posts was originally to make them public. If you have something that you want to keep private, you can use the publisher privacy settings or you can send a private message directly to your friend’s inbox.

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In this post is presented amazing internet stories that made a mark, just as the first decade of the new millennium ends.

1. Climategate

When hackers gained access to a server used by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, they leaked over a thousand emails and other documents that call into question much of the data that has been used to support climate change models and predictions.

This controversy is still ongoing, with one side calling it a smear campaign, and the other, asserting that it shows collusion among scientists to manipulate data. Some have even begun to contend the validity of man-induced climate change.

The situation challenges the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, and whether this is an isolated incident or rampant practice among all fields of science.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Climatic Research Unit E-mail Hacking Incident – Wikipedia
• Climategate Computer Codes are the Real Story – Pajamas Media

2. The Great Firewall of China

Censorship has always been a hot button issue in society. China is probably the most notorious country to practice strict online censorship garnering the moniker, “The Great Firewall of China”.

Other sites have cropped up to try to get around the censorship and provide access to blocked sites. There are also sites that let you test whether your site is blocked.

Censored material includes sites that incite Chinese citizens to resist or break their constitution, criticism of laws or regulations of the Chinese government, sexually suggestive material, talk about gambling and violence, and more.

The censorship has come under fire from governments around the world. President Obama has openly criticized China’s censorship programs. The biggest event that brought the situation to light occurred during the recent Beijing Olympics, where foreign journalists’ ability to report freely was blighted.

More coverage:

• The Great Firewall of China – BusinessWeek
• Opera Plugs Hole in Great Firewall of China – The Register
• Slipping Over the Great Firewall of China – The New York Times

3. Amazon removes sales rankings of gay and lesbian books

In the spring of 2009, a number of authors and site users were outraged when they learned that Amazon had stripped the sales rankings of thousands of gay and lesbian oriented books on their site. This meant that books aimed at gays and lesbians would not be able to show up on Amazon’s search.

The issue was proclaimed as a technical error that affected more than 57,000 books in other categories. Amazon issued an apology and restored the sales rankings.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Amazon Follies – Mark R. Probst
• Amazon Error Removes Gay, Health Books from Search – Wall Street Journal
• Why is Amazon Removing the Sales Rankings from Gay, Lesbian Books? – Jezebel

4. Google Street View invades privacy

Google Street View takes photos while driving through various towns and cities around the world, creating an alternate view within Google Maps.

via Google Sightseeing

That also means they’re snapping photos of people, often on their private property, and sometimes in not-so-flattering situations. While so far Google has prevailed in lawsuits targeting the service, it does raise a number of interesting privacy issues.

More coverage of the controversy:

• All-Seeing Google Street View Prompts Privacy Fears – Times Online
• Google Zooms In Too Close for Some – The New York Times
• Swiss Say Google’s Street View is Too Revealing – The New York Times

5. Google Books indexing copyrighted material

When Google announced in 2004 that they wanted to index the content of millions of copyrighted books from university libraries as part of the Google Books project, publishers and authors took to protesting the decision by claiming copyright infringement.

In 2005, a group of publishers and authors, including Penguin and McGraw-Hill, sued Google over the project. A settlement was reached where users will be able to purchase out-of-print books in digital format through Google or access them in subscribed libraries and universities. The settlement has been given preliminary approval, though final approval is still pending.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Google Settles Books Lawsuit – The Washington Times
• Publishers Battle Google Book Index – Boston.com

6. The Net Neutrality debate

The prevalence of Net Neutrality is a big concern to people who use the Internet. In the U.S., net neutrality is practiced universally though there are no laws in place to guarantee that it remains that way. Nothing prevents Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from charging consumers different rates based on the sites they visit or the services they use.

via Looking Glass News

There have been five different bills in the U.S. Congress over the past few years, and heavy lobbying by corporations on both sides of the debate. So far, no laws have been passed regarding net neutrality.

For the most part, many technology bloggers and other sites have come out in favor of protecting net neutrality.

Full disclosure: the loss of net neutrality affects websites such as the one you’re reading now. Help us by reading up on the issue and being proactive in voting for government representatives that support your rights to a free Internet.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Network Neutrality in the United States – Wikipedia
• Save the Internet – Coalition in favor of net neutrality
• The Net @ Risk – Moyers on America, PBS
• We Are The Web – Another coalition in support of net neutrality
• U.S. as Traffic Cop in Web Fight – Wall Street Journal
• McCain Moves to Block FCC Net Neutrality – PCWorld
• Facebook and Twitter Founders Join Net Neutrality Wars – Wall Street Journal
• The Net Neutrality Debate All On One Page – TechCrunch

7. Internet Service Providers throttle bandwidth consumption

Bandwidth throttling is a common practice among some ISPs to restrict excessive consumption of service resources, specifically when they’re using file-sharing services. ISPs proclaim that it helps ensure all their customers have reasonable bandwidth access, but critics assert that it’s unethical and unfair to consumers that have to pay the same price for less service.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Google Launches Tools to Test for Bandwidth Throttling – Sitepoint
• Comcast to Throttle Biggest Bandwidth Hogs – PCWorld
• 5 Questions About Comcast’s New Bandwidth Throttling Plan – GigaOm

8. The Digg Revolt

In 2007, Digg users posted the encryption keys for HD-DVD. Digg took the keys down on advice from their legal team. Digg’s users revolted, posting links to the codes and voting them up to the front page.

In the end, Digg listened to its users, stating they’d rather do what their users wanted, even if it meant the site would be shut down.

• Digg Suffers User Revolt – Wikinews
• Digg Surrenders to Mob – TechCrunch
• Looking Back on the Digg Revolt – The Huffington Post

9. Pedophiles on MySpace

MySpace has long been popular with teenagers. Underage children use the social networking site to share photos, post videos, and document their events in their lives. At one point of MySpace’s existence, adolescent users could make their profiles public, accessible to anyone.

Parents, and those concerned with child welfare, were outraged when incidents emerged of adults preying on young users of the social networking site. As a response, MySpace took measures to protect users under the age of 16 by making site adjustments such as restricting anonymous viewing of their user profiles and blocking unknown users from sending them messages.

While the problem won’t be resolved completely, MySpace has taken a more proactive role in ensuring the safety of its younger participants. Of course, MySpace is not the only social networking site out there that is experiencing this problem.

More coverage:

• Why Parents Must Mind MySpace – MSNBC
• Parents Fear MySpace is Playground for Pedophiles – Dallas Morning News
• MySpace Predator Caught by Code – Wired

10. Prostitutes on Craigslist

Craigslist has an adult services category that allows users to solicit adult-oriented services from site users. It’s really no surprise that prostitution rings conducting illegal activities would eventually take advantage of the favorable situation of anonymity on the web. It has made the job of cops so hard that some have sued the site for being the largest source of prostitution.

Though Craigslist’s purpose for the category is well-intentioned, promoting free speech and a fostering an open-minded community, the Internet is the biggest magnet of unscrupulous characters, and it was only a matter of time before the situation would escalate into the eyes of mainstream media.

More coverage:

• As Prostitutes Turn to Craigslist, Law Takes Notice – The New York Times
• 7 Charged in Alleged Prostitution Ring on Craigslist – CNN
• Judge: Craigslist Not Liable for Prostitution Ads – CNET

11. Filesharing gets hammered down for copyrighted materials

Online file sharing has been happening since the early days of the Internet. But 2000 brought the first major lawsuit and take-down of a file-sharing service. Napster was sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for facilitating the transfer of copyrighted material in December 1999, and was finally shut down in July 2001.

Other popular P2P services have suffered similar fates. The Pirate Bay, a torrent-indexing site, has been involved in a number of lawsuits. The site’s servers were raided by Swedish police in 2006.

In 2009, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were all found guilty of “assistance to copyright infringement” in Swedish courts and sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of over $3.6 million.

More coverage :

• Judge Expands on Napster Shut Down Order – CNET News
• Napster Judge Calls for Major Copyright Reform – Wired
• Pirate Bay Trial: The Hottest Ticket in Stockholm – Wired

12. Protesters use social networks during Iran elections

Iran’s election protesters and demonstrators took to Twitter and other social networking sites in the wake of the 2009 election to organize themselves and garner support for their cause. Though the situation precipitated out of the web, it was escalated and brought to mass media attention via the Internet.

More coverage:

• Iran Elections: A Twitter Revolution? – The Washington Post
• Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement – TIME
• Iranian Election – The Huffington Post

13. Facebook’s Privacy Policy changes

In February 2009, Facebook altered their Terms of Service to allow them to use and retain any content posted to user accounts indefinitely and without limitation, claiming ownership of its user’s content once it’s uploaded to their site even after a user’s account is deleted.

Unsurprisingly, this caused quite a stir among users. Others formed groups on the site itself, calling for the ToS to be reverted back.

Facebook asserts that they never intended for the change to be that far-reaching, and that it was a misinterpretation of the new terms.

Users weren’t buying it, and in the end, Facebook changed the ToS back to the original version, and has seen sought user input before implementing changes.

More coverage of the controversy:

• Facebook Changes Terms of Service to Control More User Data – CNET
• Changes to Facebook Terms of Service Outrage Users – Mlive.com
• Facebook Yields to User Outrage, Reverts to Old Terms of Service – Macworld

14. Facebook deems breastfeeding as offensive

Facebook has a strong policy against what they term “obscene” content, something most parents would embrace. But many mothers went crazy when photos of breastfeeding moms were removed from the site due to the policy of censoring obscene content. It sparked boycotts, user groups, and even a protest (a “nurse-in”) at Facebook’s headquarters. The most popular group, “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” has nearly 250,000 members.

More coverage:

• Breastfeeding Protest Over Facebook Policy – ZDNet
• Facebook Won’t Budge on Breastfeeding Photos – The New York Times
• Facebook Nudity Policy Angers Nursing Moms – MSNBC

15. Blogger, Dooce, gets fired for blogging about work

In 2002, Heather Armstrong, aka Dooce (also the name of her blog), was fired for blogging about the company she worked for and some of her coworkers in a less-than-flattering manner. She’s possibly the first person ever fired for blogging, and definitely one of the most well known. There’s even a term that spawned from her experience: dooced (which means to lose one’s job because of one’s website according to Urban Dictionary).

Since being fired, she’s turned Dooce into the sole source of income for her family. She was even named as one of the most powerful women in media by Forbes. The site still drums up plenty of controversy, as her posts are brutally honest.

More coverage:

• 7 People Fired for Blogging – Mental_Floss
• About Dooce – Dooce.com
• Dooce’s Dilemma – Forbes

Conclusion

It’s unlikely the Internet will ever be controversy-free. And would we really want it to be? Many Internet users enjoy (at least in part) the controversy that is so prevalent on the web. We all have a chance to be heard, whether it’s in matters of global importance or the latest celebrity gossip.

About the Author

Cameron Chapman is a professional web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience in the industry.

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Email newsletters are great. They can be a great extension to your business communication toolkit and offer you and your clients an excellent channel by which you can reach potential and existing customers.

In this article, we’ll explore common design patterns of email newsletters and learn which approaches work well, so that you’ll be prepared to create one for yourself and your clients.

We’ve also included a compilation and analysis of different newsletter designs so that you can learn from them as well as tips on what to do and what not to do.

If you know of any other tips, please share them with us in the comments area.

Which Came First: Chicken or Egg?

Before you create and send your email newsletter, you’ll need subscribers. Making this process as easy and intuitive as possible is important. After all, users are giving you permission to contact them. You wouldn’t want to mess that opportunity up!

Not Too Many Fields

You don’t need a user’s social security number to send them an email! It’s most frustrating when someone signs up for an email newsletter only to be confronted with a form that asks for their address, age, phone number, mother’s maiden name, favorite pet… All we really need is their email address and, if we want to push a bit further, their name.

Seth Godin, in his article Permission Marketing, offers good insight into getting viewers to sign up and follow you:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

In other words, the viewer wants to listen to you. They are giving you their attention, so at least respect them and don’t ask for unnecessary data.

With that in mind, let’s look at some examples of good newsletter sign-up forms:

Joshua Porter’s sign-up form is an excellent example of what to do right. First, he puts the sign-up form close to his social icons, indicating that this is an extension of his communications with you, the user.

Next, he offers a short blurb explaining what the newsletter is about. This gets you and your users on the same page, so that they’re clear on what to expect from your content.

Finally, he asks only for the user’s email address and name, followed by a big button with a verb label: “Subscribe.” Very simple, yet packed with just the right information!

Threadless also puts its newsletter sign-up form in the social area of its home page. The location is prominent, and Threadless provides information on how often and when the newsletter will be delivered. Also, notice the simplicity of asking only for an email address: no name, no social security number, no favorite pet!

We’ve Got Subscribers!

Your sign-up form is now a success, and you’re ready to send out some content!

Before we move to the design stage, let’s figure out what the focus of our newsletter is. For example, if you are giving away coupons, you could use more graphics and buttons than usual. If it’s text-heavy, you’ll want it to be as readable and scannable as possible.

Let’s examine two newsletters with different goals. The first is from Barnes and Noble, offering promotions for its stores. The second is from Sitepoint, which gives its newsletter a magazine-style layout and structure.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Barnes and Noble newsletter is that it is designed like a website. It’s literally an extension of the main website, complete with top-level navigation.

You’ll also see that it’s timely; right next to the logo it says “This week,” reminding you that the offers are for a limited time only and that you should make your purchase quickly.

Notice how easy it is to scan the page. All of the paragraphs are short, and the images and content hierarchy make the design feel comfortable even in your email browser!

Finally, the designers have put a clever call to action at the bottom of the page. The numbers in big red type attract your attention, sitting beside buttons with verb labels, pushing you to take advantage of the promotion.

Sitepoint goes for a completely different layout because it has a different goal. Its goal is to build a following for its content, to be able to extend its advertising space.

It adopts a magazine style, starting each issue with a letter from the editor, followed by a table of contents (in-page links) that guides you to the concise articles in the email.

One important design decision made by Sitepoint was to include a photograph of the editor at the top of every email. This approach makes the email feel more personal, like it’s coming from a human who took the time to organize the content.

HTML or Plain Text?

Now that we’ve discussed your business goals for the email newsletter and how to support it with the design, let’s briefly consider the construction.

Back in the old days (i.e. three years ago), composing email newsletters in plain text was safer and more common. You would also see full-length articles incorporated in the email (as long as today’s blog posts).

Since then, people have discovered that they don’t really like reading long emails, and that scannable content that functions as a gateway to the main website makes more sense.

With this in mind, the most logical design would be a hybrid of images and HTML text. Jakob Nielsen has this to say about how much time users spend reading a newsletter:

Users spend 51 seconds reading the average newsletter. The layout and writing both need superb usability to survive in the high-pressure environment of a crowded inbox.

Once you’ve got a good hybrid design, you will have to dive in and code the newsletter (unless you have a great coder sitting next to you). A great resource for best practices and insight on the state of HTML emails is Campaign Monitor’s tips area:

Not only can you get started with one of the templates, but you can also consult a comprehensive checklist of supported CSS and HTML features in all modern email clients.

Email Newsletter Software

Now that we’ve got a solid grasp of what’s involved in creating an email newsletter that serves our business goals, we will choose the right software for our design.

You could, of course, manually write the scripts to create the newsletter, subscribe users and send out the email. But you likely have a business to run, and using tools that were created for these tasks would save you a lot of time.

Here are the three most popular email newsletter services today. They are all low-priced and feature-rich:

Campaign Monitor, which we mentioned earlier, not only has great resources for designers but also great prices: a flat delivery fee of only $5, plus $0.01 for each subscriber.

Mail Chimp is another popular email campaign service. It has a great analytics feature for your email newsletter campaigns and a free plan!

Emma offers email marketing with style. It even plants five trees for each customer who joins. If your business is growing, Emma allows you to easily adjust your pricing plan.

Inspiration

By now, you should have a good understanding of what’s involved in creating an email newsletter campaign for you or your client.

Now for some more fun. Let’s look at some email newsletters for reference and inspiration…

Apple looks good, as always. Its email newsletter is fresh, scannable and beautifully balanced. Notice the attention to detail, specifically how the buttons are color-coordinated with the images.

Zappos’ approach is similar to that of Barnes and Noble: its navigation at the top is an extension of the website, and it highlights its popular free 365-day shipping service.

Target also focuses on scannablilty and clickablity. Notice the email discount, rewarding you for following the newsletter.

Personal success guru Brian Tracy offers a clean, easy-to-read email newsletter. His approach is simple yet focused on his brand and main goal: helping you to achieve success.

Master chef Jamie Oliver has a more artistic email newsletter, keeping the visual language consistent with his upbeat and personal approach to cooking. The buttons match the background nicely and create a fun feel.

Think has followed sensible art direction for its newsletter. The design is consistent with that of its blog.

Clarus Wines beautifully illustrates its newsletter, giving it a human touch. The soft gray offers respite from your cluttered inbox.

A great example of borrowing real-world analogies (in this case, an event poster) and translating it to the web, Blick Shared Studios offers an attractively designed email newsletter.

If your interested in seeing more great examples, check out Campaign Monitor’s Inspiration Gallery.

When Should I Send?

We’re almost wrapped up, feeling inspired and ready to extend our communication with clients through an email newsletter! Just one more topic to cover, and that is what day to send it. 37 Signals has a humorous take on the question:

Want something to blow up? Tell the world about it on a Tuesday morning. Avoids the Monday avalanche people face and gives you the rest of the week to get play.

Written by Noam Almosnino

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If you decided to build  a site with WordPress. You’ve probably installed a pretty good free theme. Once you feel more confident you start to look for some creative ways to make your blog stand out from the crowd.

Here, we will help you on your journey by showing you the 16 best places to find WordPress tutorials, hacks, themes and design inspiration to take your blog to the level it deserves.

1. Yoast

Yoast is the home of blogger and developer Joost de Valk. He has released over 20 WordPress plugins on his site and several other tools for webmasters and online marketers. If you are looking for a plugin for SEO or to track your site visits, Joost will certainly have exactly what you need. You can find all his plugins on the WordPress page of his blog. If you consider yourself a more advanced WordPress user, then I suggest you read through his “Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog“. You will certainly see a difference in search engine traffic if you implement just a few of the tips that Joost shows you. I personally use the Breadcrumbs plugin and have implemented almost everything he has mentioned in that article.

2. WPBeginner

Are you a total WordPress novice? Perhaps you’ve been using another publishing platform such as Drupal or Joomla! and want to see what the fuss is all about with WordPress. Have I got the perfect site for you. WPBeginner offers tips, tools, resources, and suggestions to WordPress users. Check out the Tutorials section for all the help you will need when doing customizations to your blog. If you need help with installing WordPress, then WPBeginnner also has a service where they will install your blog for free. Prefer to learn about WordPress on your own? Visit the Beginners Guide and you will be an expert before you know it.

3. WPSwitch

WPSwitch is kind of like a Premium WordPress Theme on crack. In other words, if you’re searching for a sweet theme for your blog, design tips, or WordPress hacks or tutorials, this is the place you need to be. WPSwitch has all the top Premium WordPress themes from the most prominent designers in the world. You literally need to go nowhere else. Be sure to pay this one a visit whether you are a complete newbie or consider yourself the king of all that is WordPress.

4. WordPress Tavern

WordPress Tavern is a thriving community focused on all things WordPress. Those interested in the software can hang out with fellow WordPress’ers to engage in enlightening discussions. On WordPress Tavern, you’ll find reviews, news, screencasts, guest blog posts from some great community members and much more. Be sure you hook up to the WordPress Weekly podcast to keep up with all the latest hot WordPress topics.

5. WpRecipes

WpRecipes is a great place to find quick, clear and concise WordPress recipes. When you really need that little piece of code to do a certain thing, these handy, little snippets will do the job. I consider this site to cater to the more advanced WordPress user as a lot of these recipes involve diving into the code. There’s also a forum where you can ask a question to get help or even request a recipe.

6. WordPress.tv

WordPress.tv is “Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress”. There are hundreds of How-To videos that cover a range of topics to help you have a better blog. If you missed any of the Wordcamp’s, you can also view some of the speakers lectures at the events.

7. WP Topics

As WordPress has become mainstream, the number of news sources and tutorial blogs has become overwhelming. WP Topics only publishes feeds from established WP sites that provide useful, meaningful content on a regular basis. Here you will find the most relevant WordPress news, useful tutorials and influential voices in the WordPress universe — all in one place. This is a must-see resource for those who need to be in the loop of the latest WordPress trends.

8. Weblog Tools Collection

If you have ever used WordPress, you have more than likely seen this feed coming through your admin page. Weblog Tools includes the latest plugins, theme release and general WP news. This is great for the beginner, as you stay updated with new themes and potential plugins that make blogging even easier. I highly recommend keeping this site in your admin arsenal.

9. WordPress Hacks

WP Hacks is a place to discuss all things WordPress. In addition to featuring a large variety of WordPress themes and providing reviews of WordPress plugins, WordPress Hacks was set up to cover the world surrounding WordPress, including the latest WordPress hacks, news, tips, tricks, and how-to’s of the popular open source blogging software.

10. Hongkiat WordPress Category

If you are any kind of Web guru, you have at one time or another visited the blog of Hongkiat. When visiting this popular design blog it is an absolute necessity to take a trip to the WordPress category. Hongkiat covers a wide range of topics from inspiring blog designs, all the way to the detailed hacks. If you are a fan of WordPress at any level, this is definitely a place you want to go.

11. Pro Blog Design

Pro Blog Design writes about web design (blog design in particular!), coding, and WordPress (Yay!). They cover all the technical bits that bloggers should know, so they can get the most out of their blogs. For sake of this article, you should definitely browse their WordPress category as it offers numerous hacks, the best plugins to use, and super design techniques relative to your WordPress blog.

12. WPSeek

A WordPress search engine for developers and theme authors is what WPSeek.com is all about. You can find all kinds of code snippets for WordPress using this search site. This includes various WordPress functions, template tags, function sources, and random user notes. I would definitely say that this site is for the advanced WordPress developer.

13. WP Engineer

Three WordPress Junkies who love WordPress, created WP Engineer. They show various ways to make WordPress a little bit better, more convenient, more flexible or in short – just awesome! You’ll find some very in depth tips and tricks to really build a better blog. Some of these are very simple for the beginner and some can get pretty in depth to the WordPress core.

Where to find WordPress Design Inspiration

These sites are showcases of WordPress-powered sites to inspire your next blog design. They all feature an up-to-date collection of websites created using WordPress.

14. We Love WP

15. WP Inspiration

16. WP Float

About the Author

Matt Alexander

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Twitter Lists are a recently released Twitter feature. They are an easy way to categorize and organize the people that you follow on Twitter.
In todays news we have useful articles to help you better understand, how to use and what you can do with your Twitter Lists.

HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists are Twitter’s long awaited “groups” feature. They offer a way for you to bunch together other users on Twitter into groups so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to.

HOW TO: Use Twitter Lists

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

Savvy individuals are looking for ways to use lists to further their personal/professional agendas, and while we are all still learning how to harness the power of this new feature, here are a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists

Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

Listorious is a simple to use and very useful new web service for discovering the best Twitter lists. Simply, select a tag and you will be presented with the relevant lists.

Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

Author:  Paul Andrew.

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