Month: August 2007

Web 2.0 Layer Styles For Photoshop

DezineFolio LogoThis is actually a few months old but it’s news to me. DezinerFolio has released 131 Web 2.0 based Photoshop Layer Styles. The layer styles give designers a head start when it comes time to create slick, new Web 2.0 based graphics. The layer styles were created using Adobe Photoshop CS2. I’m not sure if the layer style is backwards compatible or not. If you get the file to work with anything before CS2, be sure to let us know.

The following image is a preview of the various types of styles that are found in this style pack. Click on the image to visit the download area. Thanks to NavDeep for putting this together.

Web 2.0 Layer Styles Preview Image

SHOULDdoTHIS – The Internet Suggestion Box

Should Do This LogoHere is an interesting site I came across the other day. It’s quickly being referred to as the internet suggestion box. SHOULDdoTHIS resembles Twitter with unique spin on the micro-blogging idea.

This is one of the few services I have come across that supports logging in by using my OpenID user account, which made creating a registered account a breeze. I wish more sites would include this type of login access. In my opinion, OpenID will play a big role in creating a unified login across multiple sites. So the more sites that support OpenID, the better.

ShouldDoThis Text Box

While Twitter provides an avenue for you to tell the world ‘What Are You Doing?‘ SHOULDdoTHIS allows you to give your opinion as to what should be done, and who it should be done by. For example, in the ‘Someone Field‘ I typed in EA. In the ‘do something great field‘ I typed in ‘Should release one last major patch to Battlefield 2‘. Unlike the 140 character limit found on other micro-blogging services, there doesn’t appear to be any limit to the amount of text that can be placed within the ‘Do Something Great‘ field. After I clicked the submit button, my suggestion was published to my account where users can do a number of different things.

On the right hand side of the site, users can choose whether or not the suggestion is likely or unlikely to happen. Underneath of that, users can guesstimate when the suggestion will take place. Suggestions can be tagged but as I was browsing around, the tags feature didn’t appear to be used by quite a few people. Just like Twitter, each user has an RSS feed attached to their account. After adding a suggestion, there is a text area which appears at the bottom of the post which lets users give a detailed explanation as to their suggestion. I believe this is a nice touch as quite a few suggestions can not be explained in a short amount of detail.

My suggestions so far

Final Thoughts:

Everyone has an opinion, and this service let’s you get your opinion out in the open. If Robotcoop releases a public API for SHOULDdoTHIS, I see no reason as to why sites and services, especially those with actual products wouldn’t use something like this as a suggestion box. SHOULDdoTHIS is not a Twitter clone as I feel the service has taken the micro-blogging idea and put a very nice twist to it. Considering there are sponsored ads that appear on user account pages, this site already has a monetization model, but if they charged a price to use their service for commercial use, I think they would do very well.

If you sign up and give the service a try, let me know what YOU think.

Cagora – Interests Groups 2.0

Typically, if you want information on a particular subject, you fire up your favorite browser and type in your search terms into Google. Depending upon your method of searching and the popularity of the specific topic you are searching for, Google may or may not provide you with the most helpful results. Cagora hopes to change this by creating a site where hundreds of communities and special interest groups will be able to provide you the information you need.

Track Web 2.0 Startups With StartUp Search

StartupSearch.org LogoTrack the crazy Web 2.0 startup race from an investor perspective by using StartupSearch.org

StartupSearch.org is a directory of startup companies, products and investors that are changing the landscape of the web. At the time of this writing, there are 76 companies, 86 products, and 136 investors that are being tracked. StartupSearch takes information about new startup companies and compiles the information into easy to digest profile pages. Let’s use Twitter as an example.

Twitters profile page displays information such as, company founders, funding, photos tagged with Twitter, company address, Twitter specific news brought you by an RSS feed, and a Googlemaps image showing the location of their headquarters.

Twitters Startup Score

Each company that is profiled on StartupSearch receives a Startup score. A Startup score is made up of two parts, buzz and traffic. The buzz score is a measurement of the conversations taking place on the net involving the product. StartupSearch tracks unique citations excluding the originating site, total and unique links from the blogosphere, mentions within blog posts, and other mentions.

The traffic score measures a site’s visitors as well as the site’s visitor behaviour as reported by StartUpSearch’s traffic sources. Here are the elements that make up the traffic score: total unique users, total visits, visists per users, and other metrics which help to determine the overall behaviour of the site’s visitors.

One last thing to mention before I let you go. StartUpSearch provides an RSS feed which contains a weekly wrap-up of news related to the companies being tracked. This could be a nice addition to your feedreader to stay ahead of what’s happening.

Overall, StartUpSearch does a wonderful job in presenting company specific information. I have to imagine that there are more than 76 companies online that need to be tracked but because the site is maintained by only one person, it’s probably a moot point in trying to track every startup company that comes online.

If you happen to visit this site, let me know if you like the way StartUpSearch displays company information when compared to CrunchBase Techcrunch’s version of company profiles.

Protect Or Sell Your Content Via QuickInsert

QuickInsert.com Logo

Kick Adsense to the curb and use QuickInsert.com to sell content directly to those who want it. Or, use QuickInsert to protect your goodies from prying eyes.

QuickInsert History:

QuickInsert.com is founded by Alex Schliker, who is also the founder of Coderam.com, and Fantasticscripts.com. Alex is a bootstrapped entrepreneur which is interesting considering most of the other startups have venture capitalists backing them.

Synopsis:

QuickInsert harnesses the power of widgets, allowing webmasters or content authors alike to easily plug the service into their site. Copy the content you want to protect and place it into your QuickInsert account. QuickInsert will then provide a line of javascript code which needs to be placed onto your site. One of the nice features of QuickInsert is the lack of having to browse the actual QS site itself, to access protected content.

The Nitty Gritty:

How does it work? QuickInsert acts as a third party content protection service. Once you create an account, any of the content you place into that account becomes known as ‘protected content‘ and is unavailable to non-users. When a user registers on your site, they are presented with a Google Checkout/Paypal page, or their accounts are activated immediately. Once this is complete, users can then access your protected content.

QuickInsert touts the following features:

  • Quick and easy content protection!
  • Hosted content storage
  • One line of code to protect your website
  • Secure storage of your site’s content via SSL
  • Management tools for you and your users
  • Payment gateway support for Paypal and Google Checkout
  • Membership Is Free

Registered QS members will be able to access a fairly decent control panel which gives you all of the options you need to protect your content. From within the control panel, you have the ability to edit gateways, edit sites, edit users, edit content, edit your own account, suggest features and last but not least, pricing options.

How They Say It Works

Adding protected content to QS is like writing a blog post. QS provides a fully accessorized text editor to ensure your content can be properly formatted. I gave the text editor a try by pasting this review as it was formatted in OpenOffice Writer, and the editor did a pretty good job in maintaining the formatting. If you have a document or PDF file that needs to be protected, you can add a download link which will also be protected along with the article. Once your content is copied into QuickInsert, simply click on the javascript button which will provide you the appropriate JS code to add to your site.

My Thoughts:

I think Alex’s idea is a good one but it comes at a time where everyone on the web is expecting everything to be free. Your content also has to be pretty unique for anyone to consider buying it. If you feel your content has what it takes to pay your bills, give QuickInsert.com a try as it may be the easiest way to manage your protected content.

Reader Feedback Answered

Your Feedback, My Answers

Mark, an email subscriber, emailed me some feedback in regards to this site. He also asked me a question which I decided I would answer in the form of a blog post.

Hi Jeff,

I’m very much enjoying your blog. Very educational and “present”. I’m curious how you got into this game and if this is a full time gig for you. Continued success to you :)

Cheers, Mark.

Well, to tell you the truth Mark, I’ve been blogging since 2004 but only recently have I decided to take things a bit more seriously. I use to post on a blog located on the EFx2.com network which I somewhat consider to be the WordPress before there was WordPress. Back in 2004, I used the blog to share things that were going on in my personal life such as photographs, news and events, recent trips I took and various other musings. I essentially used the blog as a diary for a long time.

In late 2006 into 2007, I decided to concentrate on sharing my thoughts on general news items I was discovering across the web. I would merely post a quote of the article, include my thoughts and then provide a link to the article in question. This formula worked rather well as there always seem to be a few comments left on every post. This eventually bored me. In early 2007, I decided that somehow, someway, I was going to break away from the self serviced blogging platform and do things on my own. I just didn’t know exactly what my niche blog was going to be about.

Then, one night in Talkshoe, I was participating in a LIVE podcast when I met Pete Balasch JR, otherwise known across the net as xyour925job. We started discussing various topics during the show such as SEO, blogging, web2.0, ect. Pete told me that there were quite a number of people who still didn’t understand what Web 2.0 is. He suggested that I start a blog around the topic of Web2.0 to see where it would take me. Up until this point, I watched the Web 2.0 space from the sidelines, never really caring about what was coming out of the gate next. I had a general idea as to what Web2.0 was all about, so after sharing a few of my ideas with the crowd, I ended up choosing the domain Jeffro2pt0.com My actual name is Jeff, but I think Jeffro2pt0 just has a nice ring to it. I just hope web3.0 doesn’t arrive sooner than later, or else I’ll look really outdated.

https://i0.wp.com/jeffc.me/images/jeffrobannerDARK.png

I purchased everything I needed during the month of May. That included a domain, hosting, and a few other tidbits. I had a general idea as to what I wanted to accomplish with the site and the way I wanted it to look, but I had no idea on where to begin. WordPress was suggested to me numerous times and even Pete suggested that I use WordPress, so that’s what I did. Initially, I couldn’t for the life of me, figure out the templating system within WordPress. I gave up and decided to use Joomla, as I had a good amount of experience with the CMS. I quickly realized, Joomla was too much of what I needed. I ended up giving WordPress a second try and since then, I have never looked back.

The first post published on this site occurred on June 4th, 2007 New Fan Of Tumblr Since then, I have provided a number of reviews on different sites and services, offered tips on blogging, covered various news items and plan on doing even more. This particular site has been online now for only 3 months, yet I am achieving personal milestones that I didn’t think I would achieve until much further down the road.

Concerning the advertisements. My blog is relatively new and at this stage of the game, I am trying to establish a reader base, aka an audience. Once I feel I have accomplished this and after I do some research into the different methods of monetizing a site, I will begin to dabble with those different methods to try and turn blogging into my second job, which is one of my goals.

It’s nice to know that folks are actually reading what I write. Makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time. Other than turning the site into a second job, my other major goal is to create a community of like minded users around the site using forums and other methods. Once I accomplish these goals, I’ll be in blogger heaven.

Thus the short answer to your question Mark. This is a part time gig with full time possibilities.

Contest Deadline Extended

It’s nearing the end of the month and so far, only one person has submitted an entry to the Web 2.0 Real World Photography Contest. I can’t seem to bring myself to award one individual the prize without some sort of competition. So, I have decided to extend the deadline of the contest to the end of September. I’m hoping that word about this contest will be spread around and hopefully, more entries will be posted before the end of the next deadline. If not, I’m going to assume that Web2.0 truly is an online phenomenon that doesn’t exist outside of the interwebs.