You know how pretty much every web address starts with http:// or https:// or something similar? After the first few hundred times you probably stopped thinking about it. And most modern web browsers don't even require you to type it at all. But if you add up all the seconds people have spent typing http://, you'd probably have a lot of seconds on your hands. And it turns out, there's no really good reason for it.

Tim Berners-Lee pretty much created the World Wide Web as we know it. And looking back, he says that while the "http" part of a URL makes sense, there's no particularly good reason for typing the double-slashes.

While Berners-Lee laments that many trees and work-hours could have been saved if he had left out the unnecessary // marks, I'm guessing that nobody was really all that hurt by their presence. But I guess it does show that in hindsight, pretty much anything could be done better.

via Slashdot

Remember back in the early days of the web when all you had to do was punch a monkey to win? Millions of pummeled simians later the online ad industry had to evolve... And evolve it has, with two distinct paths for display advertising:

1. In-your-face gigantic ads or ads that "do something" significant to distract you. Common examples include full-page "interstitial" ads that interrupt your browsing, anything that flies around the screen or busts out of its little box or anything that expands when you hover over it.

2. Creative, "viral" ads that are so clever, weird, gross or unusual that they are passed around despite their more than obvious marketing nature. Let's look at some of these, shall we?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I prefer the latter. Unfortunately tracking down "weird" ads isn't easy. Ad campaigns, by their nature, are dynamic and ephemeral. The Internet Archive doesn't cache dynamic ads, either, so some of those golden oldies may be lost forever. If you snag a pic, please let us know in the comments.

A few of the more clever online ads are presented for your consumption on the next page.

Google's blogging about making the web faster, and they're backing it up with Page Speed, a Firefox add-on that makes sure your webpages use best practices to load as quickly as possible. Page Speed was quietly launched earlier this month on the Google Code blog, but now it's mentioned on The Official Google Blog, in a post that lays out some factors that slow down the web, and how Google thinks they can be fixed.

The Google plan for a faster web includes stuff like HTML5 support, more performance diagnostic tools like Page Speed and Yahoo's YSlow, and greater adoption of broadband. So, what are some of the best practices that Page Speed might suggest? Mostly, minor code tweaks like cleaning up your CSS so you only use each declaration once, or removing unnecessary tags from your HTML. There's some more advanced stuff that gets into PHP and JavaScript as well.

One note: Page Speed also requires the Firebug add-on for Firefox, which is very useful in its own right.

With all the URL shortening sites that have been popping up lately -- and even services that let you make your own -- I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at the link-shrinkers we've covered in the past here at Download Squad. Some of them are legitimately useful, while some of them are complete novelties that you'd only break out as a joke. You'll also have to forgive some of our references to getting Rickrolled -- it was a legitimate concern back then! So, without further ado, here's a big list of ways to create very small URLs:

NSFW.in is designed for sharing links that are Not Safe For Work. Its unique feature is a warning page, in case the person you're sharing your link with doesn't want to see it after all.

Bit.ly is still one of the best link shorteners around. It scores points for tracking the traffic to your shortened link, and letting you see if anyone else has made a bit.ly link to the same URL.

U.nu is a fairly recent entry with a super-short base URL, and the added bonus of generating links that are easy to read out loud to someone or type out from scratch.

Old-school gamers remember the Konami Code, a famous sequence of buttons on the original Nintendo controller that unlocked powerups or extra lives in practically every game Konami made. The code seems to have come back into fashion on the web recently, with a lot of sites hiding odd surprises for folks who think to type it in via keyboard. For a while, you could even add some very unsportsmanlike sparkly unicorns to ESPN.com with the code.

Now there's a site just for tracking these online Konami Code easter eggs: KonamiCodeSites.com. Go check out their list and test out the ones they've found. If you're ambitious, test the code out on some of your favorite sites, and submit any secrets you find to the KonamiCodeSites list. Some of the biggest sites that have easter eggs include Facebook and Google Reader. Hooray for nostalgic fun!

Oh, one more thing: fittingly enough, you're going to need to know that code to access the list at KonamiCodeSites. For the uninitiated, it's up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, and enter.

If you're a web design who works with grid systems all the time, it's handy to have a way to put a customizable grid over any website. I wrote about Slammer, an OS X tool for gridding up any window, and readers asked if there was a non-Mac alternative. Here's one: the web-based 960 Gridder. It's a bookmarklet, so it's cross-platform and works in all major browsers.

Once you turn on 960 Gridder, the default grid will be displayed on top of your browser window. To change settings, go to the 960 Gridder sidebar over on the left, and adjust colors, opacity, gutters and spacing to your liking. There's even an option to reverse out the grid, in case you switch from a light to a dark page. 960 Gridder isn't a perfect solution, but it's a free one, and it helps in a pinch.

In some ways the olfactory (aka "smellable") web began 10 years ago. In other, more real ways, not so much. How many of you are able to smell your favorite websites today? Of course, among all the protocols and basic hardware required of modern computers, the ability to produce smell never quite earned a spot in the spec sheet. Too bad, maybe, as smells are powerful triggers in our brains.

I remember way back in 1999 when I worked for a now-defunct dot-com startup, as we suffered endless PowerPoint pitch sessions with folks looking to do business with us. One company was DigiScents, makers of the iSmell. Yes, it was seriously called the iSmell. Perhaps that is why DigiScents' website is now a blog, and not a very updated one at that. It could also be that only a few people wanted to smell the web. PC World Magazine (whose karmic retribution may be going completely virtual) called iSmell one of the 25 worst tech devices of all time way back in 2006, and since then the technology has fallen into obscurity. Sad, as in 2001 they seemed to be making all the right moves. Unfortunately I don't think people wanted to pay $200 for a USB device that made smells, no matter how "rich" the web experience could become. That's probably still true.

Or has it? I may be one of the small percentage of people actually wanting this technology, but I find it strange that we demand better graphics for games, louder and more realistic sounds, even exploring force feedback systems to immerse ourselves in online worlds, but we leave the powerful sense of smell alone. It could be that most games would smell pretty terrible (gunpowder and guts don't mix well with Cheetos and Red Bull), or it could be that people just haven't thought about it that much. NTT appears to be the only company thinking about this now, and all I've seen commercially available are some phones that stink.

And now, for your Moment of Zen: the Olfactory Transmission Protocol page from 1997.

$timator is a site that purports to estimate the true monetary value of your website. Simply enter a URL, and $timator goes to work, analyzing things like search engine placings, back-links, and site structure to come up with an ultimate dollar value.

When I tried it for my 5 year-old personal blog, it came up with a relatively modest $1979, which to be honest feels a little generous (but I'll take it). However, Download Squad is apparently worth well over $31 million, which seems more than slightly absurd, particularly considering that based on this screenshot google.fr is valued at just over $18 million.

These "your website is worth x amount of money" have to be taken for what they're worth: a fun tool to play with and dream about how you could buy a few extra cases of beer if you were to sell your site. If Download Squad were for sale, can you imagine the party we could throw if we sold it based on $timator's valuation? You're all invited.

Earlier this week I had a conversation with CEO of Healthshoppr, Dr. Vijay Goel. The site went into public beta today and the premise begs the question: why hasn't this been done before? Healthshoppr leverages the ability of the internet to connect (and rate) health and wellness providers with people seeking those services. It is billed as "transparent health choices" and I'd say it delivers just that: transparency when choosing a healthcare provider. In the beta, the example is massage therapy. Dr. Goel walked me through a typical experience, which you can see in the gallery. It's much like Expedia for health services, and borrows many of the "atomic connections" you see in services like ebay and yelp.

As I said, using the power of the internet to connect buyers and sellers of health services seems so natural. If you've ever had to choose any health service, what do you go on? The phone book? Friends and family? Now think about selling stuff like collectibles (ebay) or finding restaurants (yelp) -- harnessing the power of the network you're instantly able to gather multiple reviews and browse myriad potential sellers. Thus, Healthshoppr's angle.

The beta is currently focusing on massage therapy in the Los Angeles area. But finding a therapist in the 90401 area code gets simplified when you're drilling down into specialists or looking for someone with a particular skill. For example, the filtering controls allow fine-tuning by style (Alexander Technique), add-ons (aromatherapy), special needs (carpal tunnel) and special equipment (heated table). Again, by using computers to do the filtering you've eliminated a lot of the grunt work in choosing what you need. You can also sort by gender, philosophy, etc. Much in the same way ebay would let you drill down into Beanie Babies. Imagine doing this via recommendations from friends or the phone book.

If you're tackling some graphic design project or maybe even your wall decor, getting color hints from ready made color templates from professional designers can be useful. Below are 10 of the better sites to help you out on your design challenge.


ColorCombos - nice color palettes to choose from. If there's a particular website whose colors you want to snag, check out their "Grab Website Colors" engine. You just input the URL of the site you're reviewing and ColorCombos extracts the palette for you.



COLOURlovers - this is pretty close to color mecca. This post should actually be filed as a Timewaster because you can spend hours checking out the various palettes and patterns and rolling your own. The site is full of features such as create your own palette from a URL you're inspired by, join groups devoted to colors (srsly), shore up on the latest color trends, contribute your own content and vote on others.


ColorExplorer - another site that's feature rich and full of color goodies. Color import from images, palette export to most programs, convert any number of colors into a matching palette, 1 click palette filters and adjustments, plus no requirement for site registration.


Kuler - not surprisingly, Adobe has a fetching web app to help you generate color schemes and if you have Adobe's Creative Suite 4, Kuler is built in. Kuler has great tools such as color extractor from an image, theme creation from 1 to several colors, as well as a community you can join and give and receive comments on yours and other's creations.


ColorJack - very nice color site featuring several apps such as Color Sphere which allows you to choose the right color scheme supporting 18 formulas and 9 color blindness simulations. There's also Color Galaxy, an online color visualizer with colors from 27 libraries including everyone's favorite forever and ever, Crayola.

Keep reading for more...

Some of us aren't good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it's just not our forte.

Sure Windows and Macs have built in calculators but we're web people so we need something on the web to make us not feel like we're totally mathstupid.

Ecalc to the rescue. It's not just any calculator though.

It's pretty and webified.

They also have a scientific calculator for those who are past just trying to add up this months shopping list with the rent, which is as far as some of us go.

All kidding aside, scientific calculators are expensive...so it's pretty cool to have this tool available online.

They also have a rundown of all types of calculators if you're really into that.

So go be a mathematical genius...we're counting on you.

Get it? Oy.

Maybe you've taken some time and fooled around a bit with Quanta Plus and Bluefish and decided that they weren't for you. Maybe you just looked at the features, and the GUIs and thought, "I'd rather pluck my nose hairs out than use those."

That's okay. We're not about to pass judgment on your taste in HTML editors, or your strange penchant for self-inflicted pain. And while we may never use the tweezers in your house, we will gladly point you in the direction of alternative HTML editors.

This week we'll take a look at Screem and Amaya in brief. These two editors are frequently found in distribution repositories (and are also, of course, available as source code). Both of these editors have a very different take on what their users hope to accomplish with them. We hope at least a few have earned your badges of dorkdom, and are presently happily pondering the irony of applications that do the same thing to reach different ends.

Whether you like the idea of handcoding growing the hair on your chest (as opposed to your nostrils), the moral highground of browsing and coding with standards compliance, we've got you covered.

Next week, we'll take a closer look at our final two editors, suggested by our noble readers at the beginning of the series.

If you're in the business of pirating colors from websites, then mooColorFinder is here to help you. Just type in a web address (say, your favorite blog) and mooColorFinder will return the colors used on that website. The colors are display as little tiles of color; which you can then mouse over to get the hex color.

Now, we should note that this web service doesn't seem to always work correctly on certain websites. We believe it has to do with the way in which the site was coded.

If you prefer desktop applications to web apps, you could always use DigitalColor Meter.app (Mac; found in /Applications/Utilities/) or Instant Eyedropper for Windows.