Web Design Cool

What I learned by activating my online influence (without the help of Ellen DeGeneres).

Outovation. That’s far-out innovation.

While you were sleeping, innovation was getting sweary and looking for a bunker to hide in.

1. We all know that, in life, timing is everything. And so, what to make of the fact that, as the British Labour party goes to the polls to determine its new leader, the party’s most successful leader, Tony Blair, releases his memoirs. Anyone looking eastwards towards Blighty may see a slightly putrid cloud arising above the island. That‘s what bombshells being dropped look like.

This winter, skiers and snowboarders will be hitting the the slopes in a whole new way. Rather than just flying through moguls or sailing off half-pipes, mountain-goers might soon be “checking in.”  Read more... (480 words, 9 images, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

This interview is part of our ongoing series related to The Influence Project.  Read more... (978 words, 8 images, estimated 3:55 mins reading time)

Glam Media is a rather glamorous operation in this down economy. The media network, which includes more than 1,500 women’s blogs and media sites, turned a profit in October, snagging ad dollars where others struggled. The five-year-old company has $40 million in the bank, and has built its own ad tool to rival Google’s DoubleClick.  Read more... (823 words, 7 images, estimated 3:18 mins reading time)

Shaquille O’Neal is a basketball legend (four-time NBA champion and a 15 time All Star), a multi-media everyman (he raps, he acts, he writes books), and an inspired linguist (during an MTV Cribs episode he revealed a home name nearly as cool as Graceland: Shaqri-La). His creative use of language has earned him the nicknames The Big Aristotle and The Big Shakespeare. Combined with his fame and playful nature, it’s no surprise he’s found social media to be a natural communication outlet, particularly when addressing his more than 3 million Twitter followers. Just before the season premier of his ABC show Shaq Vs., the man with the TWISM tattoo (The World Is Mine) exchanged thoughts on why he encourages his fans to touch him, what it’s like to duet with Justin Bieber and why he’s participating in The Influence Project.  Read more... (1312 words, 3 images, estimated 5:15 mins reading time)

On a daily basis I take notice of how people’s use of the Internet is changing the world and how everyday users are allowing the web to infiltrate new areas of their lives. The technology around the web has evolved very quickly over the past few years and users are now heavily reliant on the web for everyday tasks and communication. Social media is not a new term in relation to this rate of change and adoption and it’s already so powerful for users and for businesses.  Read more... (617 words, 1 image, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

Some thinking about online advertising spend in 2010 suggests that this year it’s going to see serious growth, which is fabulous news for new media. But it’s potentially bad news for traditional publishing. 

The analysis is coming from ZenithOptimedia, which has been revising its estimates for online advertising spend in 2010 upwards for several months now. Its latest piece of thinking has attracted some attention in the online media itself because it predicts that the spend in 2010 will rise some 13.1% throughout this year, and even zoom upwards another 16.1% in 2011. That figure is an amazing indicator that the economic downturn really is over, as ad spend was one of the big indicators that the recession was biting deep.  Read more... (399 words, 2 images, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

CSS3 continues to both excite and frustrate web designers and developers. We are excited about the possibilities that CSS3 brings, and the problems it will solve, but also frustrated by the lack of support in Internet Explorer 8. This article will demonstrate a technique that uses part of CSS3 that is also unsupported by Internet Explorer 8. However, it doesn’t matter as one of the most useful places for this module is somewhere that does have a whole lot of support — small devices such as the iPhone, and Android devices.  Read more... (2478 words, 13 images, estimated 9:55 mins reading time)

In our earlier story (Corporate Social Media Policies: The Good, the Mediocre, and the Ugly), we asked you to send us more corporate social media policies, and you delivered. Here is a second batch, with good, mediocre and ugly guidelines.  Read more... (1305 words, 2 images, estimated 5:13 mins reading time)