websites posts

Filed under: Features, Blogging, Web services, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL

So your web host is retiring: How to back-up and move forward

by Christina Warren Oct 2nd 2008

On Monday, AOL (Weblogs Inc.'s parent company) announced that they are shutting down the AOL Hometown and AOL Journals services. AOL Journals members will be able to migrate to a new service, but AOL Hometown users have been instructed to back-up their files and prepare to go somewhere else.

There have also been reports (but Wikipedia is the source, so keep that in mind) that Yahoo! GeoCties has removed or shut-down some of its UK web servers. With Google killing its Page Creator tool and migrating everyone to Google Sites, the free static web host is a dying breed.

So what can you do if you are an AOL Hometown user (or you use another older service that might be on its last legs)? Read on for tips on backing up your content and publishing options for the future.

Tags: aol, aol hometown, AolHometown, web building, web hosting, WebBuilding, WebHosting, websites

Filed under: Design, Internet

mooColorFinder finds web colors

by Cory Bohon May 19th 2008

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.

Tags: colors, design, DigitalColor Meter, DigitalcolorMeter, Instant Eyedropper, InstantEyedropper, Mac, mooColorFinder, web, websites, Win

Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Webnode: create your own Web 2.0 site

by Todd Ritter Jan 17th 2008

Similar to Doodlekit, Webnode is a free (no ads) website creation tool aimed at helping web design novices get a modern-looking website online in minutes. Once you've registered for a Webnode account, you're asked to choose a title and slogan for your new site. Then you select a template and start adding content.

Webnode uses a common modular system which allows you to drag content areas to create different layouts or add content like polls, forums, and photo galleries. There are also widgets for PayPal, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Maps. Like Tumblr, Webnode lets you use your own domain name for their service (instead of somename.webnode.com).

Traffic statistics are also available which show you important things like unique visitors, referring URL's, visit duration, and browser version.

All that's missing is a chic Web 2.0 name.

Tags: create website, CreateWebsite, web design, web sites, WebDesign, WebSites

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Blogging, Productivity, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Sharing stuff through Google

by Chris Gilmer Sep 20th 2007

A new social bookmaking and sharing service has recently had a low profile launch over at Google. Google Shared Stuff. Simply drop a bookmarklet on your browser bar, and click 'Share' when you want to share something that you have come across online. The shared items will then appear on your own unique shared stuff page with descriptions and tags that you associate with the bookmarks.

But that's just one of the options, through Google Shared Stuff not only can you share it on a webpage, but you can choose to email the page to someone else, or share the page through Facebook, Furl, del.icio.us, Social Poster, Reddit or Digg.

Shared Stuff will be accessible when users are logged into their Google account and visit this link. Full link pages can also be shared amongst friends.

UPDATE: You can also check out shared stuff from people you know.
[via GoogleBlogoscoped]

Tags: google, shared-stuff, sharing, social-bookmark, web, websites

Filed under: Business, Finance, Internet

Online ad spends are getting ready to explode

by Chris Gilmer Aug 7th 2007

The internet has proved itself for not only a popular playground, but a source of extremely important information and a viable advertising platform. It took a while for brands to realize that the internet is a far better alternative to say newspapers, TV and magazines for better targeting customers but they have.

It has been projected that Internet advertising could hit close to $61 billion by 2011, far surpassing newspapers to become the leading ad medium. Consumers have also tended to shut themselves down from ad supported media, and spent more time with media they support, like the internet and video games, which saw a rise of 19% in 2006 since 2001. That caused a drop in ad supported media like newspapers and broadcast television of 6%, or 1899 hours per person since 2001. In 2006 online ad spends hit a record number of $15 billion.

How do DLS readers feel about this? Do you prefer to check out ads online as opposed to TV, radio and in newspapers? And do you think the online landscape will be compromised with an abundance of ads given this shift in ad spends?

Tags: ad spend, AdSpend, advertising, internet, money, online, websites

Filed under: Internet, Retrocomputing

This is what the web looked like in 1994

by Brad Linder Jul 12th 2007

Wow. We never thought about it this way before, but if the web still looked like this, you wouldn't need an iPhone with Safari to surf the web on your phone.

Remember back when the web was basically text and an occasional logo or product picture on a plain background? And remember when the idea of buying and selling things online was new and kind of scary?

This promotional video from 1994 does beg one question though. If this company was trying to promote itself, why does it tell viewers to email for more information at the end? Shouldn't they have an amazing web site of their own?

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Tags: 1994, retro, web, web sites, WebSites

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Keep people up to date with mySay

by Chris Gilmer Jul 5th 2007

mySay lets friends stay in touch with friends by recording voice updates and dispatching them to friends.

The update service works by dialing up a special mySay phone number and saying what you're up to, dropping your latest news, making a statement, or whatever you like. Don't want to use your own voice? Upload an mp3 or have the mySay robots say it for you. Friends can then call in to check messages, listen online or by email. If mySay users have a blog, website, or are part of a social network, a widget can be inserted so that visitors to the page can hear what has to be said.

Just another cool service that can clutter up Facebook, MySpace, and blogs everywhere. The mySay service is available is the US, Canada, Ireland, UK, France, Belgium & Switzerland, with new countries are set to be added in the future.

Tags: blogs, mysay, record, social network, SocialNetwork, update, voice, web2, websites, widget

Filed under: Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Social Software

Pownce: Up close and personal

by Nik Fletcher Jul 2nd 2007

We've mentioned Pownce previously on DownloadSquad, but instead of just a little preview, here's an in-depth look at the Kevin Rose start-up that is the object of desire right now for invite-junkies everywhere.

So what exactly is Pownce? Well, it's hard to define in a quick and concise way - but the raison d'etre is simply this: "Pownce is brought to you by a bunch of geeks who were frustrated trying to send stuff from one cube to another". It offers a Twitter-like status of 'What are you doing', but goes even farther to allow even more post types, and even contact groups.

Tags: Kevin Rose, KevinRose, pownce, statusupdates, websites

Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services

Internet Archive has a Wayback bookmarklet

by David Chartier May 25th 2007

Many enthusiastic web surfers know that the venerable Internet Archive is the home of the Wayback Machine, a tool that allows you to go back in time with a particular website to see what previous versions looked like. What we hadn't noticed until today is that the Wayback Machine has a bookmarklet you can use when viewing any site to quickly check if there are archived versions of it. The 'marklet can be had farther down on the Wayback Machine site, and the convenience it adds should prove useful to surfers who are curious about the history of a particular site.

Tags: archives, bookmarklet, history, internet archive, InternetArchive, wayback machine, WaybackMachine, websites

Filed under: Design, Developer, Internet, Web services

53 CSS tutorials anyone can do

by Chris Gilmer Apr 9th 2007

There are many advantages to designing with Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is extremely easy to learn and rework once a basic site framework has been established. Websites, or website components can easily be changed into something totally different just by swapping a single CSS file, or a line within a CSS file.

CSS designers always seem to have a few different elements that they commonly use over and over in all designs, these can include navigation elements and form fields, among other items. Smashing Magazine has compiled a list of 53 CSS Techniques that you couldn't live without, linking out to tutorials on CSS navigation, tabbed navigation, bar graphs, rounded corners, hover effects, image map, submit buttons, custom bullets, and sidenotes. Whether you are new to CSS, or have been in it for a while, these are some great tutorials to have archived as reference materials.

Tags: css, design, designer, dev, development, files, hover, navigation, tabs, tutorials, web, websites

Filed under: Internet, Web services

Track the most popular sites you visit with REKO

by Chris Gilmer Apr 3rd 2007

REKO is a Firefox extension that tracks the most popular sites that you visit and uses the information to find similar users who will have relevant links for you. How does it work? REKO gets sent the domains of the websites you visit, then adds them to your profile and compares them with similar browsers that match your profile. This can also include OPML feeds for RSS subscriptions. From there you can view the sites of closely related individuals, checking out their profiles and seeing what they are visiting.

Sounds like a great option if you are on the lookout for more sites to add on to your daily list. However, there is the privacy issue. Now, if there was a way to turn it on and off, or erase certain sites from your online profile, we could be talking about a great way to check out some additional sites we might like.

The site is still relatively small, with 25 registered users who've decided to trade privacy for shiny magic beans, tracking 4,382 domains.

UPDATE - weirdguy in the comments has let us know that you can indeed exclude certain URLS from being tracked. Thanks for the tip!

Tags: extension, firefox, reko, tracking, websites

Filed under: News

100 million web sites - Netcraft confirms it

by Jordan Running Nov 1st 2006

Internet monitoring company has announced that late last month the web passed a significant milestone: 100 million web sites.

But wait... 100 million? So few? Surely there can't be only 100 million web sites out there! Ah, but let's take a closer look at what Netcraft considers a web site: "There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," says Netcraft's Rich Miller. Ah, there's the rub: According to Netcraft, it's only a web site if it has its own domain name and has content on it. The latter part I think we can all agree with--this excludes, presumably, blank pages, registrar parking pages, Google ad farms, and the like. But what about the domain name thing? There are tens of millions of Blogspot blogs out there, for example, but since they're all on .blogspot.com, Netcraft is counting them all as one. The same goes for every other blog host, and every web site living at Geocities or a similar host. 100 million web sites my butt.

Still, it's an interesting milestone. When Netcraft started counting back in 1995 there were only 18,000 web sites in existence. A hundred million domain-names-with-content in the 17 years since the World Wide Web's birth? If that's not something to marvel at, I don't know what is.

Tags: 100 million, 100Million, internet, milestone, web, web sites, WebSites, world wide web, WorldWideWeb

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Macintosh, Blogging

RapidWeaver 3.5.0: A WYSIWYG editor I'd actually consider using

by Amber Rhea Sep 7th 2006

Realmac Software has released version 3.5.0 of WYSIWYG editor RapidWeaver. The new version is Universal Binary, meaning it will run natively on Intel Macs. New features include CSS-based photo albums, SFTP support, improved blog functionality, and of course, more themes. As in previous versions, there is also easy integration with iLife and .Mac.

Given my general view of WYSIWYG editors (with which you became familiar on Tuesday, if you weren't aware of it already), I tried not to let RapidWeaver's self-congratulatory list of features sway me. I downloaded it with an open - but skeptical - mind.

Well, color me pleasantly surprised! Turns out RapidWeaver is more than just a WYSIWYG editor. You can use the WYSIWYG features if you want, but you can also code by hand. Also, the pre-set templates are much more robust and useful than I've seen in any other site creation tool. For example, the Contact Form template requires PHP - but those who are wary of server-side programming don't have to do the dirty work themselves.

But let's get to the code generated by the WYSIWYG interface, since that's always my bone of contention with "web site creation software." I can hardly believe it it myself, but... RapidWeaver doesn't use tables for layout. And it also doesn't make up for the lack of tables by resorting to divitis. It's not perfect, of course; but then neither is every piece of code I've ever written by hand. All in all? It's as if RapidWeaver is actually an editor of the 21st century.

Tags: css, html, RapidWeaver, RealMac, web sites, WebSites, WYSIWYG

Filed under: Web services

15 web sites that changed the world

by Adam Maras Aug 14th 2006

Guardian Unlimited is running a great article called Websites that changed the world. It's odd to think of things we take so much for granted as having changed the world, but it's true, they did. Among the world-changing web sites are Wikipedia, Blogger, MySpace, Amazon.com, and, of course, Yahoo! and Google. One odd choice is Napster, which of course had a web site but was not itself a web site, but it was, indeed, disruptive enough that I think we can let it slide. It's also interesting in that Napster is the only item on the list that is only a shadow of its former, world-changing self.

Tags: guardian, list, top15, web, websites

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures

Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party

Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

Download Squad bloggers (30 days)

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Jay Hathaway	112	5
2	Lee Mathews	77	34
3	Sebastian Anthony	49	163
4	Brad Linder	38	7
5	Jason Clarke	32	0
6	Grant Robertson	8	10
7	Dolores Parker	7	2
8	Victor Agreda, Jr.	7	1
9	Nik Fletcher	4	0
10	Matt Heerema	3	3
11	Paul O'Brien	2	0
12	John Burke	1	0
13	Download Squad Staff	1	0

More Tech Coverage

Control Shift It's all about the experience
Somewhat Frank Perspectives on tech as it fuses in everyday life
Switched Gadgets, web news and commentary
Urlesque Exposing bits of the web

Download Squad