Today’s featured design is that of StylizedWeb.com.

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No, not browser bookmarks, physical bookmarks. You know, the strips of paper you use to mark your place in a book? Here’s the idea:

You print-up some bookmarks branded with your site’s logo and domain name. (You can do this yourself with an inkjet printer and some card stock.) Make them funny/interesting/cool-looking, and put a prominent logo and URL on it.

Now, go to your local bookstores and public libraries, bringing a large stack of the ‘marks. Go through and find some books on the topic of your blog, and put the bookmarks inside the books, like you were reading the book and marked the spot. Now the next person to come along and check the book out, or purchase it in the case of a bookstore, will notice the free bookmark (people like free stuff) and possibly visit your site.

How is this targeted? You put the bookmarks in books that fit your blog’s topic, especially books you’ve read and recommend. It’s cheap, it’s unobtrusive, and it works pretty good.

I’ve mainly done this with business cards, though bookmarks work even better, as people are more likely to keep them, and reuse them while reading other books. In one such case, I put cards in all of the library’s copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released, advertising an HP site with a big “Prepare for the final book” legend, the card’s background being the upcoming book’s cover art. I’d planned to do bookmarks, but didn’t have the time to print them up.

Photo by austinevan.

Do you know what one of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is? Putting too much in their sidebar.

Yes, I know it’s tempting to put as much as you can fit into that column that runs down to the side of your content, but don’t. Optimally you want to put as little as possible there. I try to, and it can be hard at times to keep a clean sidebar, but it’s worth it. It keeps things uncluttered, and improves usability.

What can you get rid of?

• Date-based archives. If you plan on blogging for any length of time, that list is going to get really big, and make your sidebar far too long.
• MyBlogLog
• Valid XHTML/CSS/RSS badges
• Assorted widgets and badges from various sites.

Just a few suggestions. I’m sure you’re case will be different, and you’ll have a unique assortment of stuff in your sidebar that needs pruning.

How can you sort though everything? Prioritize Your Blog Into 5 Distinct Groups.

I recently came across an intriguing script while trying to find a fix for a CSS bug. It’s called IE7.js, and it claims “to make Microsoft Internet Explorer behave like a standards-compliant browser,” and to fix PNG transparency in IE5 and IE6 to boot.

Are you just a couple of scripts away from never again having to find a workaround for an IE CSS bug? Probably not. I haven’t had the time to test the script extensively, but the test pages look promising. It will make things a lot easier for you, but I doubt it will magically make everything work flawlessly in IE.

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• When Twitter Goes Down, You Still Have Twiddict - Twiddict saves your tweets and posts them to Twitter when they come back from a downtime. Sad, isn’t it, that the downtimes are bad enough that someone’s trying to capitalize on them…
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• Offline Blog Promotion Techniques (Part 3 of 3) - I use some of the reader-submitted tips, and some of the others sound like good ideas.
• Firefox 3 Download Day Announced: Tuesday, June 17
• Whats your opinion of PeelAwayAds? - I think they’re kind of cool, and a good sort of ad. As one of the commentators said “peeling over means that there is minimal fuss until peel over, and it is a user generated action that triggers the ads(intentional or otherwise). Much better solution than those huge banners screaming ADS…ADS.” I like the way they stay hidden until hovered over, reducing add clutter significantly. Also, as someone who generally ignores ads, I tend to hover over them, because they’re kind of fun to play with, in a “ooh buttons and flashing lights” sort of way.
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• Elitehost.net - What a Clueless Hosting Company - Daniel Scocco retells his encounter with a “clueless” web host while trying to have a splog post taken down.

The MeeboMe widget allows you to easily accept anonymous instant messages from visitors to your website. It’s good for talking with clients and offering live tech support if you run an online business. It’s also a way to add some interactivity to a blog.

But it only works with Meebo though, right? Nope.

With a little work, you can setup your desktop IM client to receive MeeboMe messages. I will assume that you are using a multi-network client like Adium, Pidgin, or Trillian. This should work with any IM client that supports XMPP/Jabber.

1. Create a MeeboMe widget and put it on your site
2. Start the process of creating a Jabber (aka XMMP) account.
3. Enter the username as your_meebo_id@meebo.org, the password as your Meebo password. Put meebo.org as the server.
4. Find the option that makes your IM client not prompt to allow people to add you to their buddy list (otherwise you’ll get a request for every pageload on your site pretty much…). In Adium it’s “Presence Subscriptions” under the Options tab of the account configuration (set to “Accept”).
5. Set the port to 5222

That should be it.

I’ve talked about Network Neutrality here before, posting a simple explanation I’d written up. This time I’ve done something better. I’ve rounded-up a collection of videos on the topic.

These Net Neutrality videos are worth a watch, whether you know what Net Neutrality truly means or not. (Hint: If you don’t care about Net Neutrality, you need to watch these videos.) They’re interesting, and very important.

Rocketboom Explains Net Neutrality

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The worst part about navigating the WordPress Admin is waiting for page after page to load as you walk through the menus.

Luckily, there’s a better way. Lighter Menus is a useful plugin (compatible with WP 2.5) that restyles the menus into JavaScript dropdowns that reside at the top of the screen.

I just installed the plugin, and was instantly amazed by how much easier it became to navigate the Admin.

Here’s a screenshot from the plugin ZIP:

This is by no means a new post (May 2006), but it’s still relevant. Nobody likes CAPTCHAs. It can be hard to decipher the letters and they’re annoying. They help keep the spam down though.

Well, there’s a better solution than forcing people to enter twisted letters and numbers into a form. JavaScript. The modern web pretty much doesn’t work without JavaScript, so people have pretty much stopped turning it off (the few that do are wackos who wish the web was still the way it was back in the days of the MOSAIC browser).

Safer Contact Forms Without CAPTCHA’s

15 Days of jQuery’s tutorial teaches how to implement an interesting technique that uses JavaScript to generate unique strings that are verified in the form processing script on the server. If the strings are null or false, the script denies the client access. It’s not foolproof, of course, no anti-spam solution is, but it’s a great deterrent, and a far less annoying one than CAPTCHA.

The Web Squeeze has recently published a large collection of recommended places to find free stock photos.

40 Free Stock Photo Sites.

Stock photos are very useful, and of course it’s nice to not have to pay for them. A well-placed photo can liven up a text-heavy blog post, and attract attention from StumbleUpon users if placed near the top. They’re also good for ad creatives, and other things where a photo can improve the overall look.

It’ll probably take you awhile to go through the list, but it’ll probably be worth your while if you bookmark some of your favorites as you check the sites out. Then you can refer to your more compact list of sites the next time you need a stock photo.