Archive for July, 2007

Welcome back to Websites Through The Years! Today we tackle CNet, one of the oldest tech sites. We’ll start with the earliest design the Wayback Machine could find: October 1996.

October 22, 1996

Nothing says “90s” like a design like that! Okay… The yellow is a little hard on the eyes, but other than that it’s not too bad for the ’90s. My biggest complaint: Their shameless touting of Internet Exploder, er Explorer. Obviously I maniacally support Mozilla Firefox (download now, quantities are unlimited!). (more…)

After the success of Web Sites Before and After, I decided to start an article series going more in-depth about the various websites. In Websites Through The Years, I’ll be picking some designs and, with the help of the Wayback Machine, going over the various stages of the sites’ lives. We’ll start with Yahoo.

October 17, 1996

This is as far as the Wayback Machine goes. As you can see, Yahoo wasn’t a “portal” like it is today. Back in ‘96, it was just a web directory, albeit a very popular directory. Take a look at the design. Reminiscent of Google, with just a logo and a quantity of links, it’s a very simplistic page by today’s standards (being a mid-90s design helps…). Yahoo has since ditched the minimalistic method of design, opting for a more image-heavy design. (more…)

Pageflakes has just released their new “Blizzard Release.” Still going head-to-head with their competitor (Netvibes), Pageflakes has been busy. The new build has not just caught-up with Netvibes, but it’s gone beyond it.

You can now customize the heck out of your Pageflakes pages, changing themes and creating your own. You can change pretty much any theme element…and even edit the CSS if you choose to. To top that off, you can make themes publicly available to other users.

Also introduced is the new Pagecasts feature. It’s sort of like the Netvibes Universes, but anyone can create one. See for yourself, here’s the NTugo Network pagecast. You just add a new page to your Pageflakes account, add some content, choose or create a theme, and choose the “Make Pagecast” option.

Take a look at Pageflakes’s updates. Even if you use Netvibes, you may consider switching. The speed on Pageflakes seems to have increased significantly, and with all these new features…

Personally, I don’t really use either. I read my feeds with MyNT, and I don’t have much need for most of their features. I use Yahoo Widgets, and that offers most of what the web-based thingies do.

• Verizon Gets Out of the Copper Business
• I can’t believe this: Google wrote an AdSense check that bounced! Scary.
• Someone at Sears isn’t too bright. Have you heard of the Sega XBox?
• Every Wordpress site has the same boring login page. Ever wanted to change yours? It’s as easy as editing two images. You can view a tutorial by DavidAirey.com.
• The Open Source Web Toolbox: 100 Tools, Resources, and Template Sources.
• OpenAddict.com has started blocking Internet Explorer users. Try it yourself! Learn how at ExplorerDestroyer.com or use server-side techniques.
• Link Posts - Rediscover Your Blogging Groove Day 4

Are you a beginning podcaster on a budget? If you need a place to host your large audio files, give Switchpod a try. What do they have to offer? They have a free plan with 450MB of storage, a $5/month plan with 500MB, a $10/month plan with 1GB, and a $30/month plan with 2GB of storage. For more experienced podcasters, LibSyn is probably a better deal, but for beginners, you can’t beat Switchpod.

Though they offer to create a website for your podcast, I prefer to do that myself with good-old WordPress.

What have websites looked like over the years? With the help of the WayBack Machine, we’ll take a look.

Below are eight sites. Each has a prior design on the left and the current on the right. Nice ‘n easy to compare. (more…)

Welcome to the July 18, 2007 edition of the Webmaster Articles blog carnival. You may notice that we’re publishing a little early, but are you complaining? We’ve got a nice collection of articles this time around, so let’s get started. (more…)

If you’ve spent any amount of time on the web, it’s likely you’ve heard of the Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly known as Konfabulator [before Yahoo bought it]). With YWE, you get a Mac-like heads-up display that overlays your screen (activated by a hotkey), displaying your widgets. The widgets can also float around on your desktop, but generally I stow them in the heads-up display. YWE is not just useful, it’s pretty cool. Check it out if you haven’t already.

After installing YWE, you’re not-so-subtly steered toward the Widget Gallery, a place where you can search/browse for new widgets to install. A lot of people’s first thought is “Whoa, that’s a lot of widgets.” How do you sort through them all? I can help.

If you’re a blogger, or just a webmaster, I can recommend some widgets. Here are some of my favorites in the “webmastery and blogging” category. (more…)

Hello, and welcome to the July 13, 2007 edition of BlogBuzz.

• Digg iPhone Beta launched, interesting story behind it. A free iPhone for coding it in 48 hours? Cool. Wait… Does that mean he didn’t have an iPhone to test it on?
• The courts have declined the request to postpone the increase in internet radio royalties. However, SoundExchange (the morons behind the whole thing) is offering a “temporary reprieve” until a “more equitable rate schedule” is agreed upon. The whole thing is insane. SoundExchange, besides raising the royalty rates by a lot, is demanding a $500 per channel (annually) “administrative fee”. Then they want the rates doubled by 2011. That would kill Pandora, and other sites of the like.
• The personal data of over 1 million Ohio state employees, taxpayers, and lottery winners was stolen recently.
• Australia sues Google over sponsored links for “deceptively” close placement of search results and sponsored links. What’s their problem?
• Mozilla attempts to combat phishing by highlighting the domain in the address bar…and fading the rest to a light gray. They’d better include an option to turn it off! I’m not some clueless newbie who can’t tell which site I’m on. All this new “feature” would do is annoy me. I do a lot of PHP development, which often involves passing variables through the URL. I need to be able to see the rest of the URL easily, not just the domain.
• Wi-Fi iPods coming soon. Apple’s patenting some stuff again. Hopefully they’ll let you sync your ‘pod through your Wi-Fi network. I hate using cables to load my current MP3 player with music. If they build a Wi-Fi equipped iPod Nano (with wireless syncing), I’d run out and get one.
• Wordpress MU Development Premium (WPMUDEV) released. Doesn’t sound like it’s worth $50 (yearly) to me. I’ll stick to Wordpress and the standard Wordpress MU.

This is one cool video! Everyone should be required to watch this. The video is composed of video screen captures (and shots of a sheet of paper), edited into a short film that pretty much sums-up the internet and Web 2.0. It’s…right.Watch the video, and send it to anyone who doesn’t seem to get what Web 2.0 is all about. It’s a good introduction to the term.