NBD News
July 29, 2009
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Hotter Than July

August (and my upcoming move to Boston!) is nearly upon us -- I hope everyone is having a good summer. This month, I'm pleased to feature one of my favorite projects, Mediations Journal . In the Explainer I'll answer the question: what is Web 2.0? Lastly, I'm taking a break from NBD News Contests (no takers last month), but instead I've got two excellent What's Next articles for you: printing custom merchandise, and online photo editing.

Featured Client: Mediations

This month's featured client is Mediations, the Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Putting this academic journal, formerly a print publication, on the web presented several challenges:

  • We wanted to maintain some visual consistency with the print version
  • The articles are very long, with lots of special formatting, such as footnotes
  • The site has a unique structure, with new issues published twice a year, each containing several articles

To connect the site visually with its print predecessor, we stuck with a fairly minimal design -- each issue features a topical photograph. We decided to use raw html for the articles, to keep fine-grained control over all the special formatting. And after some experimentation, the extremely flexible CMS Textpattern handled the last hurdle brilliantly.

The latest issue of Mediations, published in Mid July, has been viewed in 72 countries!

Explainer: Web 2.0

If Web 1.0 is an encyclopedia, Web 2.0 is a colloquium to which everyone is invited. The term plays off the common practice of sequentially numbering new versions of software -- such as "Firefox 3.5". Though it has many meanings, I think the most important refers to the development of websites which go beyond one-way communication from author to audience, allowing collaboration, conversation, and different types of "user-generated content". The term also encompasses:

  • Websites that have software-like capabilities (like the online photo editing sites described below)
  • Sites that combine and layer data from different sources in new ways (mashups)
  • A certain aesthetic involving gradients, reflections, rounded corners, large type, and an overall "friendly" look

Read more on Wikipedia and Digital Web Magazine.

What's Next: Zazzle.com

I've written on my blog about promoting your website offline (and recommended a few vendors ). One low-cost and fun way to do that is using Zazzle.com or Cafepress.com to print some customized physical products. The advantage of these services over traditional merchandise vendors is that you won't have large up-front costs or boxes of products sitting in your office. You can order one-off customized items at reasonable prices, which you can give to clients or just wear and use yourself. I am most familiar with Zazzle, and have been pleased with their quality, variety, and customer service.

Some items to consider:

  • Your company logo on a shirt or hat
  • Your logo and tag line on custom stamps
  • A fridge magnet with your logo and contact information
  • A bumper sticker with your url

I can easily create products for you with your company logo, or design something more involved. I can also provide you with appropriately-sized logo files if you'd like to experiment yourself. Check out my Zazzle page for some examples.

What's Next: Online photo editing

Thanks to a recent question from Sue Anderson, I've recently tried out several online photo editing sites. You no longer need expensive or cumbersome software just to crop and size an image or two for a blog post.

Picnik, FotoFlexer , and Photoshop Online are all free sites (and there are many others) where you can upload photos and apply a number of effects and edits. You can even bring in your photos from other services, such as Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa. Read my blog post for a more complete description and review of each service, but in summary, for simple resizing I thought Picnik had the most intuitive, fastest interface.