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Link list

Sometimes I provide a link list of stuff I´ve read on the web. More often, I don´t. The reason is simply that there might be not so much value in providing those lists for the readers. It´s simply repeating content that was posted elsewhere. Sure, it´s kind of a filter, similar to the filter your newspaper does when presenting the daily printed news for you. But with online media, this is just repeating what you might have read anyway elsewhere.
So, anyway, here´s today´s list:

• Interview by Eric Enge with Matt Cutts from the Google Webspam team about robots.txt, NOINDEX and more. Interesting for understand the various options for optimizing web content inclusion in the Google index.
• Jeremiah Owyang´s Japan 2006 photo set. Exciting - reserve some time for watching over 400 photos.

Clever recommendations

Amazon has some clever recommendation pages. No dull reloads when changing an item, recommendations for those categories where you already bought one or the other item or have stored a product in your wish-list; no recommendations, but information on new or popular products in the other categories. A simple modell with simple navigation and usage, yet very powerful.

Subject, verb and object

Just found this on the W3C website (related to TBL´s work, see previous post): web/URI terms are related and remind my about what we know about languages (linguistic typology) - excerpt below (typo is theirs, not mine):

All knowledge is just a set of statements

<#pat> <#knows> <#jo> .

• Evrything is identified by URI
  Here a local URI but could point to ANY document
  Verb known as predicate in the statement
• The thing you use a predicate is a Property.
• Don't forget the period.

Don´t forget the period. Yeah!

Ajax

Scott Andrew has a good overview what AJAX is (via ajaxian), now that, because of DHTML features entering the sites of Google (Maps, GMail and Google Suggest), Flickr and others, Ajax has become a buzz word.

Essentially, Ajax (= Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) is a methodology (fetching small pieces of data), a technology (DHTML, JavaScript, XML) and a implementation (boring code hardly anyone but a few experts understand).

More: Jesse James Garrett of adaptivepath explains Ajax | find it at Wikipedia [there´s no german page yet]

No flash!

Finally! (12 May ´05, 2:17pm) Flickr trashes Flash, get´s DHTML instead (or call it AJAX, more here). (via Flickr: News).

It´s really cool. "Add notes" without Flash!

Importance of website redesign

Kottke emphasizes the need for website redesign (in the case at the NYTimes) for building page impressions:

A quick change in the location of the "mail this article to a friend" link could result in 30% more mailings, which may translate into 20 million more hits down the line.

HTAs

Useful link: Introduction to HTML Applications (HTAs). This link should (rather) be  opened in Microsoft IE, not in other browser (toc won´t appear).

Icon search

A question to my readers: What/whose icon is this? It´s the favicon I found on the RTR´s website (the local Austrian telecoms regulator), but it doesn´t look like their logo. Is this from their webserver - Lotus Domino? Probably another favicon mix-up.

Tux at Telekom Austria?

Did you notice that Tux is working at Telekom Austria´s website - as a favicon! Apparently the site administrator forgot to change the default favicon of the server - running Apache/1.3.20 (Unix). Should have used a Telekom Austria branded icon instead. No big deal, but I didn´t expect Tux the penguin to appear right there in my browser.

Update 25/02/05: Now they have a generic icon - they´ve deleted the file at http://www.telekom.at/favicon.ico. The power of bloggers :-)

Favicon

Note to myself: Get a favicon (for this blog and it´s RSS feed). Caveat: doesn´t work with the current Typepad set-up - wouldn´t it be great if a Favicon tool would be included in Typepad? (via Lifehacker).

Update: it works though.

Embeded audio

Michael Preidel explains how to embed an mp3 file (or a audio file in general) into a webpage (without preloading it) using Quicktime. In German: Tutorial: Audiodatei nachladen.

Captcha

A Captcha is a anti-spam tool (or a tool to prevent automated entries - from bots - to website forms). It´s an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart").

Cool designs

Razsurcamp is a cool multimedia website of a spanish surf school and has a great intro. The active desktop from the download section of the Scania R-series site is cool, but why would you like to have a truck on your desktop? Or enjoy some turkish fashion - you wouldn´t expect that, would you? (via DesignBlog)

Great fonts

Mark Simonson Studio has some great fonts, including Grad, which I found by following a link by web designer Michael Preidel. Another great way to spend some money (after Apple´s iTMS); there are some freeware fonts, too.

Styled soldiers

Try to find that in Austria! Or this! (via PAGE-Weblog)

Good design

Interesting (PDF):Six Design Lessons from the Apple Store - from ChangeThis via fscklog.

Application security

heise Security has an article (in German) on penetration tests for web applications (using proxy tools) and a introduction (in English) to W32 exploits (in Windows applications).

Get rid of tables

I´ve kept Helge´s post on standards-compliant, accessible and effective webdesign in my RSS reader to remind myself of the important and clear advantages of CSS/XHTML based web sites. In the beginning - ok, this sounds like in the bible - Douglas Bowman had some ideas on redesigning microsoft.com (which they actually turned into reality).

Here´s the list of advantages:

• 1) file size reduction of 62% resulting in estimated bandwidth savings of 329 terabytes per year and doubled download speeds
  
• 2) replacement of the current two versions (one for IE, one for all other browsers) by just one - resulting in less maintainance effort
  
• 3) reduction of about a billion image server requests per month by removing the anachronistic spacer gif
  
• 4) full standards compliance and accessibility for disabled people
  
• 5) separation between content and layout (very important for alternative clients such as mobile phones) - e.g. no html-tables!

These are clear advantages for every site (except item (2))!

For the english-challenged, there´s now also a german version of Douglas Bowman´s article.

The homepage rocks!

Now that the Microsoft.com page has been redesigned, it looks much better and is standards complaint too!

MS site relaunch

That´s cool: Douglas Bowman reviews microsoft.com (on 27th July 2004), Microsoft relaunches (around the 20th August 2004), Douglas Bowman reviews it again.

Result: better code, less tables, more DIVs, less code, faster loads, less traffic, save money (Helge had it too). I guess eventually all sites will be redesigned to this, but when?