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Support of Web Standards - 4th Blue Beanie Day

Blue Beanie Day - John W. Furst
John on the Fourth Annual International Blue Beanie Day

Today, on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010, the Fourth Annual International Blue Beanie Day ought to remind the Internet community to stick to Web standards.

It will make on-line life so much simpler then.



Imagine how much easier development could be if you could trust your code to work on all major platforms.
  • It's a call — an outcry — to the big guys like Google and Facebook to make sure their APIs, widgets, and plugins are within the standard and pass validation.

  • It's also an outcry to the standards committees to adopt innovative ideas and integrate them into the standards more rapidly.

  • Two examples:

    • The relatively new social plugins from Facebook, e.g. LIKE button, comments, …, does not validate to the (X)HTML(5) standards.

    • Same is true for the embedded YouTube Player.

  • And I could go on, and on, and on …

  • You might say it doesn't matter if a website doesn't validate 100%. However, one could detect true and serious issues with the code with less hassle in the absence of all those defacto standard violations.



Please, participate by doing the following:



1. Take a self-portrait wearing a blue beanie (toque, tuque, cap) and upload it to the Blue Beanie Day 2010 (↑) pool on Flickr.

2. Add a blue beanie to your social network avatar on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc.

3. Write a web standards haiku and post it on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4 for your chance to win web design books from Peachpit and A Book Apart in the Blue Beanie Day Haiku Contest.

4. No blue beanie? No time for Photoshop? Try face-sticker.quodis.com (↑) to the rescue!


Have a nice “standard” day.

Yours
John W. Furst

Email Marketing Tips - Edition 9

Update on Feb. 8, 2013: Deleted all entries with outdated tips or broken links.

Welcome to the ninth edition of email marketing tips on September 15, 2008.

I am publishing this edition two days earlier, because the carnival is featured on the homepage of blogcarnival.com all day long today.

Hurray!

We have the following categories today.
  • Copywriting
  • General Tips
  • Strategy

And I am continuing to feature the series of articles by A-list blogger and consultant Chris Garrett.
Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related Blog.
  • Get your Blog more exposure!
  • It's easier than you might think.
Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.
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Squeeze Page: Straight or Reversed?

Squeeze Pages? Did you ever hear the term “Reversed Squeeze Page”? Not too long ago, I was asked, whether a squeeze page or a reverse squeeze page performs better for generating opt-ins for a promotional type of email newsletter.

Of course my answer was,
“It depends!”

But let me start slowly here, tell you a bit about the history of squeeze pages and why using them at all is a good idea.


Squeeze Page History

The traditional squeeze page is said to be invented by Eben Pagan, who has become a perfect role model for the typical Internet marketing success story. Eben's original idea was to tease Web visitors with valuable information, but not giving it to them directly. Eben was the first one who asked for an email address in exchange (or the first one, who became famous for it).


Purpose Of A Squeeze Page

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Colour tools, palettes, schemes and theory - Thanks David Airey!

(Photo: David Airey) Just a quick post, but I thought I should share those wonderful resources with you. So far I did not get any complaints that I wrote some Web site development related posts lately. Okay, here is another one.

Graphic Designer David Airey wrote a post about resources for anything that has to do with colors.
  • Colour palettes and combinations
  • Colour theory
  • Colour tools
→ Colour tools, palettes, schemes and theory

I did not count them, but for sure there are more than 50 different links, each with a short description.

Wow, thanks David!

Now, there is quick release, if you have the “color block”... Check it out and bookmark it with your favorite social bookmarking tools.

Yours
John W. Furst

Serendipity Weblog Software - Finally it's in a Book

(Photo: Serendipity Book Cover)
Did you notice that I did not write about Web site development related — more technical issues — lately? For a simple reason:
“The technical stuff on this Blog simply works!”
Long live Serendipity “s9y” Weblog software

That’s exactly how it should be, unless you are a developer, who deals with LAMP (*) issues on a daily basis. Since I am not a developer (anymore) my focus has shifted towards marketing and business related topics with occasional sidekicks to personal development.


Why do I want to tell you about Blog software today?

The reason is simple, the core developer Garvin Hicking released his new book on Serendipity only a couple of days ago.
“Congratulations,
Garvin!”


Why should you buy this book?

Let me give you a couple of reasons (in arbitrary order).
  • Because it’s the ultimate

    “How to successfully cheat on Wordpress and get away with it guide”.

  • It feels good to have a hard copy in hand.
  • Only 5 hard copies are available for free. Sorry, purchasing is the only way to ensure you get a hard copy.
  • To improve your German skills. :-)
  • To show appreciation for Garvin’s and the teams’ efforts. Yeah, they are real people.
  • Besides all the s9y issues on the surface, you might also get lessons of a great programming style and software design (if you are interested in that).


What’s in the book?

Lots of stuff — 750 pages — covering all technical aspects of working with Serendipity. No matter, if you are a s9y beginner or already an advanced professional user or developer. This book nails the facts. Actually you can check it out in more detail yourself, one chapter and the complete table of content (toc) is available online in German language. The toc itself has 18 pages! Okay, what's in the book in a nutshell.
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Webmaster Articles Carnival - December 03 2007

Welcome to the December 3, 2007 edition of Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival!

Carnival Loogo


My name is John and I am your host. This edition is packed with a great variety of articles. You'll meet “old friends”, as well as new fellows in the carnival scene. I am hosting this carnival for the first time, and I was pretty much impressed by the high quality of the submitted posts and Blogs. No problem with Spam Blogs (Splogs) at all. Might be the technology part of this carnival that doesn't attract so many spammers as compared to the business related carnivals.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.



Each of the 41 articles below is handpicked. I suggest that you do not only look at the articles, look at those Blogs, too. I have found a lot of great recent posts on those Blogs, too. Check it out. Maybe this carnival should be run at least every month. My comments are open, so just say what you think.

Question of the day: Who will be the next host for this carnival?
Write a note to the organizer (↑).
Get more exposure for your Blog
Volunteers preferred. :-)

You also can submit your article to the next edition already. More info at the bottom of this post.

We have the following categories today: Design, Monetization, Traffic-Building, and General → Continue reading: