Stuff My Dad Says – one of the hottest viral sensations right now, Justin (a 28-year-old who moved back home with his dad) tweets everything his dad says. Let’s just say that his dad says some pretty vulgar but funny stuff which could be considered “synonymous with human waste that is unsuitable for a family publication”.
Some eCards – eCards for when you care enough to hit send. A fantastic collection of eCards that say it how it truly is.
DZone – Fresh links for developers. It’s a “Digg” like website for coding and web development.
10 Things to Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS – A major task like choosing a CMS is often skewed by sales pitches and lopsided marketing tactics from CMS companies. This is a great rundown on the basic principles of choosing a CMS.
Open Source CMS – Try before you install. A nice little website that allows you to test out some basic open source CMS’s.
CNBC Gives Financial Advice – Gotta watch this! This is one of the most viral web videos jumping across the web over the last couple of weeks. Jon Stewart tells it how it is.
Xinu Returns – A site that tells you how socially connected your website is.
Realtime Twitter Search Results on Google – I usually don’t recommend GreaseMonkey downloads but this is a huge exception. This download embeds Twitter search results into your Google search. Since Twitter has been argued to have the most up-to-date search results, this is a fantastic add-on.
Check User Names – Finally ready to dive into social media (cough – Chuck)? Well you’re going to want to make sure you have a unique alias that you can build your own personal brand. Find out here.
Forrester is Wrong About Paying Bloggers – Forrester got attacked from all angles after posting an article about the benefits of paid blogging. The point of the attack was because they highlighted the benefits of paid blogging while not emphasizing the risks involved – example: websites can get blacklisted by Google. Read on…
Some great links to start your week out with bang!
PopURLs – Need a quick fix on the latest web buzz. This fantastic site grabs the top items from some of most popular tech, social, and news sites and compiles it into a neatly laid out “plate of information goodness”.
Twitterfall – If you’re still scratching your head on the whole idea of Twitter, then I don’t blame you. What I’ve come to learn is that the tools around Twitter are really what makes it great. Twitterfall is a tool that was built to filter out tweets across all of Twitter. It’s amazing for Reputation Management, Tweetup discussions, and real-time updates for major events. The main Twitter trends are in the left window. Yesterday’s big trend across Twitter was #snowmageddon, which was the big snowstorm we received last Thursday.
Fireclick Index – I always encounter clients who ask me to give them an idea of how their website is doing in comparison to other companys’ websites. While it’s tough to give a good answer on this, I found some great benchmark metrics which I can pull out when needed. Fireclick (a web analytics vendor) has created a publicly available index providing benchmarks for key web analytics metrics that it has collected from all of its customers.
[viral] Colbert Dials Up the 1997 Internet – This awesomely viral video from a Colbert Report has been floating around this week. “I did some pretty embarrassing things in 1997, but it all pales in comparison to what the internet was doing in 1997.”
Slife
Slife is a downloadable application that tracks your own computer habits and then helps you to create goals around how you can work more efficiently and productively. If you’re like me and have a little trouble entering your time at the end of the day, then this is the tool that will help you.
History of the Internet
An awesome online animated documentary about the history of the internet. It was brilliantly done with a whole textbook of information crammed into a nice 7 min video. Enough nerdy information to make yourself the life of the party tonight.
Google Maps: 100+ Best Tools and Mashups
It’s crazy how much you can do with Google Maps. This is pretty sweet column highlighting some of the Google Maps mash-ups around the web.
[for fun] Church Sign Battle
A funny religious debate between Catholics and Presbyterians carried out via passive aggressive church signs. (yes its fake)
Low Cost Usability Testing – http://www.usertesting.com/
You pay $19 per person to have them review/test your website. You get a video of the user speaking along with a written review.
Flowgram – http://www.flowgram.com/
Free tool where you can assemble and annotate web pages, photographs, videos etc on any topic, and add a voice narrative which provides context, emotion and consistency. The flowgram can be shared as an embeddable widget, email or as a link to either a private group or with the world. Flowgram recipients can interact with any of its pages by, for example, clicking on links, and playing and pausing videos.
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