Cameron Olthuis

The Color Wizard is one of my favorite tools for web design. I’ve been using this nifty little guy for years and it’s always there for me whenever I have color block (think writers block). It’s super easy to use and always spits out a color that I can end up using.

The Colour Wizard lets you type in the value of your colour and get an automatic return of that colour’s complementary colour, split complementary colours, analogous colours, chromatic variations, shade and tint variantion and saturation variation.

If you’re into web or graphic design you need to give The Color Wizard a try.

They also have another tool on the site called The Color Wheel. The Color Wheel generates random colors if you need some color ideas.

In addition to helping your web site get good rankings in the first place your title tags need to entice users to actually click your listing. Your title tags are a selling point that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Getting top rankings in the search engines is one thing, getting the user to click on your listing is another. Just because your site comes up in the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) doesn’t mean anyone is going to click through. What sets your title apart from the others? Believe me, if they don’t see something they like you’re going to get passed up. It doesn’t really matter if your ranked #1, 2, or #50, if they’re not sold by your title they’ll go with someone else.

Make sure this is taken into consideration when you’re first writing your titles. These are last thing you want to change once you’ve got good rankings, it’s a big risk you don’t want (or need) to take.

This also applies to your Meta description tag, as they often show up just below your title in the search results.

FireFox 1.5 is now out. Do yourself a favor and download it.

Someone from a well known search marketing firm told one of my friends last week “to get top rankings on Google you need to have at least 60 pages of content”. When I heard this I started laughing. Who would come up with something like that? And does this person actually believe it themselves? If you happen to be one of the people spreading these nasty rumors please stop.

This goes hand in hand with a couple of posts from Matt Cutts: Here, Here, and Here.

No matter what anyone tells you there is no cookie cutter approach for SEO. The number of pages it takes to rank well for one keyword is different than another. It might take you 10 pages and it might take you 5000. But wait, is that really the point? No! The point is that it doesn’t matter how many pages you have, it has nothing to do with your rankings. The search engines don’t look at your site and say “example.com has 300 pages of content, lets give him position #2 this month”. What they do look at is the whole picture.

It’s true that content is a big part of SEO, but that doesn’t mean there is any magic formula for the number of pages you should have. Yes, one of the things you need is some well written and unique content, but like I always say make sure it’s best for your user first. Don’t just add content for content sake, add it because it provides a value to your site.

Bottom line is that your page count doesn’t directly affect your rankings. You won’t rank better than your competition just because you have more content pages.

Don’t believe the hype crap.

Evan Williams has a great writeup called “Ten Rules for Web Startups” on his blog.

Rule #5 is the one that stands out most to me.

#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board. Better to iterate a hundred times to get the right feature right than to add a hundred more. The point of Ajax is that it can make a site more responsive, not that it’s sexy. Tags can make things easier to find and classify, but maybe not in your application. The point of an API is so developers can add value for users, not to impress the geeks. Don’t get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

I see this abused all to often, especially with search engine optimization. For some reason a lot of the so called SEO experts have never figured this one out, they tend to put the search engines before the user.

Remember, even when it comes to SEO your users must come first. Never, ever do anything that isn’t in the best interest of your users. You can worry about the search engines later, they’ll always follow.

Parents Weigh When Kids Should Get Gadgets [Source: Yahoo! News]

“Now you have all these kids plugged in and tuned out. And it is a real concern,” said Glasser, a mother of three who has heard of 3-year-olds having iPods.

Adalyn’s had her Portable DVD Player for close to two years and watches it religiously.

If you have FireFox take a look at MSN’s BETA Home Page. Did they design this using FrontPage or something? I find it hard to believe that MSN can’t get this page the render properly with other browsers, which leads me to think this is on purpose. But why?

I forgot to mention in my entry (Most Home Pages Really Do Suck) that it’s a must your home page properly renders in all major browsers.

Thanks to Guillaumeb for the tip. He’s also put up a screen shot if you’re still using Internet Explorer.