So you’ve added your site to Yahoo Directory, maybe paid the fee for a fast response. But now you have a question about your listing. Think you have to wait to get an answer via email? Think again!

Now, before I tell you what cool thing the Yahoo Directory team is doing on Twitter to help you, please remember the following. I will highlight it for emphasis, as it comes directly from the person behind this Yahoo identity on Twitter:

the quickest, most effective way to get a site reviewed for listing in the Directory is here - https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/

Please don’t tweet them requests for inclusion. Because if I find out, I will personally shame you in public. And no, you won’t get a link out of it. Nothing but embarrassment and shame.

Okay, with that out of the way, follow Yahoo Directory on Twitter for updates, @ them for help. Oh, and if you don’t know how to use Twitter effectively, reply and I will make you guys a list of free resources for learning.

Who else have you encountered on Twitter doing awesome customer service?

photo credit: bitmask

I’m looking at what feeds to keep or delete in Google Reader and I discovered something.

I can pretty much tell what a site is about if I look at it in list view, which just lists the headlines in a feed. That’s helping me categorize un-categorized feeds. Which blog I’m writing in determines what I’ll prioritize reading that day, so being able to tell at a glance what a blog’s “voice” or “message” is strikes me as important.

You know how I think — would my blog pass that test?

And sadly, (though not surprisingly, given that I’ve been quiet in anticipation of my “retirement” next month), even if I take out our special Friday editions, I can only give a qualified yes to answer that question.

IF the person subscribing already knows a bit about traffic, they can tell my posts are on that topic from the headlines. If not, you can’t really tell.

Granted, I like to get creative with my titles. But headlines are everything. Am I losing the core audience this site was built for by leaning too much towards witticisms?

Could you gain more visitors by tweaking your titles?

Try this exercise on your own site and tell me what you found out.

Here’s a handy piece of information from on of the reviewers - “Best gesture add-on out there. Definitely go to Mousegestures.org and get the latest version (2.0.1 or higher) for FF3 compatibility. Works Great”

So go get your Mouse Gestures!

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All actions can be invoked by toolbar buttons, shortcut keys and context menu items.

Here’s a comment from one of the reviewers -

‘Brilliant !! I was looking for something like this. Very handy thanks!”

What more can you ask for?

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Here goes!

This extension allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures, rocker navigation, scroll wheel navigation and page scrolling.

That’s it!

WIth 13,403 downloads a week and a total of 2, 403,725 total downloads - how can you go wrong.

Here ’tis.

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photo credit: knitsteel

I really only enough about web design to be dangerous- I’ve just been far too busy/lazy to learn how to be a good designer, and there’s really no point in aspiring to mediocrity. Except of course, to know enough about whether you’re hiring a good designer.

Nowadays, I am still able to tweak a pre-packaged design, but i frequently get annoyed by two things.

1. Not knowing what a particular color hex code combination corresponds to in the browser
2. Not knowing the hex code of a color or group of colors I’d like to use

The two tools that helped me were Color Combo’s color combination tool and a color chooser.

The color combination tool not only gave me suggestions of what colors play nice together, but also let me cut and paste different colors in and displayed them - this helps a lot in that situation where you want to get rid of one grey but not another.

The color chooser made it easy for me to find more colors to fill in the gaps when switching out one color for another that fit better into my design ideas.

What kind of tools do you use when you’re messing around with your blog design?

photo credit: *fotopiti*

WP Remix turns out to be much better suited to the redesign of our corporate sister sites. For now, we’re using a modified version of the lovely, simple, professional, yet still light and cheery Silhouette by Brian Gardner.

Yes, a lot of people still use this version of the theme, but by some simple color changes (and eventually a logo as well as a future addition to the header) it was easy to make it distinctive and specific to our needs.

As you can see, this looks a lot more like the original design of the site, and after modification uses our company colors. Seems to load faster, but then again, I just upgraded to business class speed. Reply if you notice a difference, or just want to say how great I am.

photo credit: alanwoo

I like our present theme a lot, especially because it’s so close to our company colors.

However, not only are there now too many other sites using it, there are certain things it can’t/won’t do to my liking. Plus I want to give the site a slightly more serious look, and when our new company logo is done, incorporate it into the look.

So, pardon our dust today while we move from this Misty Blue theme to something a little different, based on the WP Remix package - hopefully this will allow us to have a theme that is both familiar and unique when all is said and done.

Ever heard if Roboform?

Well, you will now.

See that little doohickey in your tool bar that looks like a robot?  Okay. Here’s the poop.

RoboForm is the top-rated Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password management and form filling.

Features:
- Memorizes your passwords and Logs You In automatically.
- Fills long registration and checkout forms with one click.
- Encrypts your passwords to achieve complete security.
- Generates random passwords that hackers cannot guess.
- Backs up your passwords, Copies them between computers.
- Gives you one set of bookmarks and passwords for
IE, Firefox, Mozilla, AOL, MSN, Avant, MaxThon browsers.

Named PC Magazine Editor’s Choice, and
CNET Download.com’s Software of the Year.

Not a bad pedigree.

NOTE: You need to download and install RoboForm Password Manager to use extension.

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Okay, I’m easy - but this is just too cool.

I’m talking about FoxSaver 2.2.6.7!

Long Description

* Turns Your FireFox into ScreenSaver!
* Turns Your FireFox into Digital Photo Frame!
* Turns Your FireFox into Media RSS photo viewer!
* New Pictures Everyday!
* Share good pictures to all FoxSaver viewers.
* Easily toggle on/off.
* Full Screen if FireFox is maximized.
* If you have dual monitor, you can move your FireFox to another screen and enjoy the view while working!
* Hide your personal stuff from colleagues and bosses if you leave your desk for a while.
* Search with a picture! OK. It’s just showing a picture on google,yahoo,msn’s simplistic search page, but it won’t cost you any bandwidth!
* Options to display a webpage! This could lead to many creative usage, like linking to any animated HTML page you can imagine! Sky is the limit!

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YouPlayer is a video player with playlist similar to the one in Winamp. You may add/drag a YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe or MySpace link into a playlist window. When you double-click on it, it will be shown in the video window. You may now even drag local files from hard drive into playlist and watch them! You may drag a link to a browser window or right-click it and open in a new tab. You may also add/drag other links, thus the playlist will work as a bookmarker.

YouPlayer also allows you to download video files! Just right-click it on the playlist and select ‘download’.

Currently supported sites: Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace and YouTube. You may now even drag local files from hard drive into playlist and watch them!

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photo credit: pfala

I won’t go into all of the details of it here, but VideoEgg has come up with several options that don’t lean on pre-roll and post-roll. In addition, to emphasize engagement, you don’t have to pay for the ad unless the person watching it takes an action. If they don’t interact with the video ad, it costs you Nothing. Think of what that can do for your branding.

The way the ads are displayed in the examples, you can also see how the ads, muted but playing when the visitor arrives, can be served on regular web pages.

That got me thinking about the series I did on Web Video last year (and earlier on web video and traffic), and how publishers may now be at the tip of a movement that makes the ability to generate income from web video content a reality.

Right now Video Egg isn’t taking the average web publisher - they are specializing in those who run social networks, popular Facebook apps, some gaming sites and large-audience video publishers with their own flash player.

But the possibility that VideoEgg’s concept, or one like it by another advertising network, could allow you to place these eye-catching, targeted ads within your site’s content is exciting.

< sidebar >I love articles that write themselves. Too bad I was too scheduled to do it yesterday as I would have liked.< /sidebar >

For my pals who are new to Twitter and similar services, there are several different types of Twitter spam, but today, I’m addressing/complaining about/making fun of people who create false profiles and follow several thousand people in order to try and get traffic to a link.

Here’s why they’re stupid.

1- Veteran twitterers can spot you easily. You are followed by 2 people, but following 2000. The link on your profile is to bogus crap, and a smart person doesn’t have to click it to find out. It’s called hovering. Even my Mom knows how to hover over a link and look at what shows up in the status bar.

2- Even if you could pull domain mapping or a re-direct to get someone to click the link… hm…. how can I put this delicately….?

No. One. Cares.

And Everyone will remember your obvious attempt to screw them out of the precious seconds of their lives.

3- Let’s see, you’re not getting clicked by most people. Those who do aren’t going to say, “oh wow, the Cash Surprise Viagra Pyramid Scheme! I’ve been Waiting to try it! Thank you Mr. Spammer!” So it’s still a stupid waste of time, even the false logic of “it only takes a few minutes so even if I can get one person to buy it’s worth it”.

And now, I hate you and that company for wasting MY time. Because mine, unlike yours, actually IS money.

So, this is a shout-out to anyone who is essentially a good person but in a moment of weakness thought that spamming a social network was a good way to get some fast clicks and make some money.

No.

And to the rest of you, if you think it’s not happening on your favorite social network, think again.

Never bookmark or save a page again! WebMynd is like a DVR for the web — It is a web service that records a visual browsing history — Search your web history and Del.icio.us bookmarks from Google — Access your history offline — Perfect for research or just for fun!

WebMynd stores thumbnails and a full snapshot of the HTML locally so you can access them offline. The meta-data and full text content are uploaded to our servers so we can offer full-text search and the visual interfaces on our website.

Here’s a unsolicited comment:

“WebMynd Could Change the Way You Bookmark Websites… After testing this I can tell it’s a service I’ll continue to use to quickly find sites I visited.”

TechCrunch, Michael Arrington

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