10 days ago there were lots of rumors flying around about toolbar based social network StumbleUpon getting acquired by eBay. On the same day Google released their own version of StumbleUpon with their Google Dice feature (Searching Without a Query). Many people looked at this as a way for Google to rain on the StumbleUpon parade and also possibly usurp them at their own game. So you can imagine my surprise today when it came to light that StumbleUpon was running Google ads on their user pages. Here is a screenshot that a user grabbed:
I’m not sure if this has been going on for awhile but its the first time I have ever seen it. The ads only appear if you aren’t logged into your StumbleUpon account. The other interesting note is that it simply says “Ads by” not the typical “Ads by Google”.
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How To Get Your Work In MOMA or the Louvre…the easy way!
Apr 26, 2007 by Patrick Winfield | Design, TutorialOK- so you have some cool new images you have been working on or maybe the latest photos of the family, and you feel the world should be able to see them.
Instead of risking imprisonment and going into your local museum with a framed piece and a tube of glue like Banksy (more here) you could follow this tutorial and send the images off to your friends and family and say, “Hey-My works in the Louvre and MOMA!”. Then they will say, “Yeah-right…” and you can all share a laugh.
You will need a photograph of some people in front of paintings or framed work at an exhibit from a museum or gallery- the more famous the better (museum not the people)! But this can be tricky since most museums do not let you take photos inside. Some cool ones do, but for ridiculous reasons most don’t. You can always sneak one or two in before the security gets all up in your face.
Next you will need that photo/art work you want to share with the world-ER…museum goers.
I just love this photo of my niece Isabella and her dog Mookie.
I grabbed a few from my trusty subscription based stock photography site, also Flickr is a good place to look, search under Non Commercial and the Flickr Creative Commons pool. On that site, you can search through 22 million photos for shots that are being legally shared by photographers, under flexible copyrights licensed through and you can use them worry free- unless you are selling something with the image.
Step 1. Set up the document. Place the photo of the museum on the bottom layer and the image you want to composite on top of on the layer above.
Step 2. On a new layer create the shape of the picture and the people. This can be done in Photoshop with the Pen Tool. Make the trace clean and precise, all you want is the picture-not the frame and the part of the people that is in the picture plain.
Step 3. With the photo or art work you want to composite on the top layer, click on the layer in the Layers Palette and select Create Clipping Mask. This will allow you to move the photo around and position it anywhere within the shape defined in the layer below.
Final: Adjust the colors and Levels to make the illusion complete. Image/Adjustments/Levels or Auto Levels will make your blacks black and whites white. An Adjustment Layer may be good to throw on to the final piece as well to make it seem cohesive and not so obvious.
Have fun!
If you do not have a picture of a museum and you can’t find one anywhere you can always go to this nifty little site Museumr that will do all the hard work for you. They only have a few photos to choose from, but they come out nice and clean just the same! Give it a try- takes a second.
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The Cluetrain Manifesto and What it Means for Your Business
Apr 26, 2007 by Tamar Weinberg | Blogging, Social Networks
On the Internet, information gets outdated pretty darn quickly. Months pass and old blog owners consider pruning old posts that seem outdated. However, there’s one piece of information that has remained true and current for over a span of nearly a decade. The message comes from the Cluetrain Manifesto, which was written in 1999. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written well before its time; it is a precursor to social media of today. The Cluetrain Manifesto’s message is simple yet extremely powerful: markets converse with each other and the Internet facilitates that communication.
Here’s the opening paragraph to their key 95 theses:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
Eight years later, the Internet is laden with social networks and corporate blogging is considered a must. Social networking is mainstream. Businesses are talking to consumers in ways previously perceived to be unimaginable.
And still, more “traditional” businesses are treading carefully, afraid to take a plunge that could substantially improve relations for their businesses. But the Cluetrain Manifesto’s point is so important. Customers talk and the audience listens. Don’t believe me? One of the most pivotal examples is Consumerist. A recent blog post describes a man who wrote about the lousy maintenance performed when a Comcast technician installed wiring in his house. Consumerist, a very well known blog, picked up the story and Comcast fixed the problem.
On the other side, from a business perspective, Peter Da Vanzo writes about how opening communication through blogs has changed his life. He writes about the perks: job offers, conference speaking engagements, business opportunities, insider information, and of course, a bunch of friends, among other benefits from sharing your breadth of knowledge with your audience.
This could be you. This should be you.
If it isn’t, what are you waiting for?
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Class is Almost in Session – Will You Be There?
Apr 25, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Conferences and Events
When I got back from the latest Search Engine Strategies show in NY, I was talking to my colleagues about the fact that in order to truly learn at a conference you really need to be in a smaller, more individualized setting. SES, Pubcon, AdTech, etc are excellent conferences and well worth the money but for many reasons besides intense learning (networking, learning new ideas, seeing new products). That’s why the smaller conferences that are popping up are successful and well worth the money.
SEO Class is the first one that I can fully endorse because I know most of the people behind it quite well. Michael Gray (Graywolf) is someone I talk to on an almost daily basis to brainstorm and I have actually had him come in to work with my company. Todd Malicoat (stuntdubl) is one of the most creative social marketers on the web today and someone that I can speak to about social networking & know that they actually get it. Greg Niland (goodroi) is the founder of IM-NY, a group that I am very proud to be a part of, he also is someone who practices what he preaches. Rae Hoffman (sugarrae) is someone who I recently met (virtually) but her understanding of Facebook made me a believer 
. Oh yeah, then they threw in one of the leading PPC experts in the world in Brad Geddes (eWhisper).
SEO Class provides businesses and organizations the opportunity to interact with search engine optimization and marketing specialists in an intimate setting. Hear leading experts share tips and best practices that will help you get your website listed and improve your rankings. Get the latest information without any of the sales pitches – SEO Class is one hundred percent sales pitch free, guaranteed.
That last statement is extremely important. If you really want to take your skills to the next level, you want to be sure you are learning from the right people in an unbiased atmosphere. This is one place that I can say will help make that happen.
Here’s the details for the 2 day workshop:
What: Unique two day SEO training session
When: May 17th and 18th
Where: Helmsley Hotel – Midtown Manhattan
Why: To learn from folks experienced in a broad range of SEO topics to create a better action plan for your site or sites. We will be covering both conceptual and tactical topics. Each attendee will get some time in the “SEO bullpen” with one or more of the presenters one on one, to review their most pressing issues with regards to search engine marketing.
How much?: The cost is $2999. Super Secret for 10e20 readers, if you register by next Friday (5/4/07) you will save $500. On top of that additional people from the same company will be priced at $1800 (40% off).
So if you want to elevate your SEO, social marketing & PPC skills in two short days (or do the same for one of your employees) don’t be late for SEO Class and register today.
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This morning I finally had a chance to look at the recently launched MySpace News service and my first impression was – is this it? Labeled by many as a potential Digg killer (just like Netscape was to be) MySpace News combines elements of Digg, which is based on stories submitted and ranked by readers, and Google News, which organizes news according to subject matter. The URL is even modeled off the more traditional subdomain news.myspace.com a la news.google.com rather then having it as a new service www.myspacenews.com.
The service, now in beta testing, aggregates news from around the web and provides MySpace users with the ability to vote on what they think is most interesting. Stories are then ranked according to MySpace member votes. So let’s take a look…
When you arrive at the homepage you see a lot of extra “noise” before even looking at the first story (which is to be expected from MySpace) – my monitor is set at 1280 X 800 and I am looking at it on a 17 inch notebook screen but here is all I see above the fold:
Now to be fair with Digg I can only see two of the top stories but the difference is that I can also navigate throughout the site due to their topbar navigation:
MySpace News has the categories listed on the right hand side of the page below the fold. They have 25 main sections broken down into 300 sub-sections. For example, Animals is one main category with Cats, Dogs, Pets & Wildlife all listed at sub-categories. By default the main navigation only shows the Popular categories which is currently 20 out of the main 25:
The expanded categories are a nice touch and in stark contrast to Google New’s very limited categories (currently only 7 main categories with no sub-categories) and even much more then Digg’s own categories (ever tried figuring out where to submit a story about copy writing to on Digg)? But at the same time, 300 seems to be a bit overkill especially right now when there doesn’t seem to be much activity at all on the site. Also if you read their FAQ they state that they would like to have pages for nearly all topics. We can create a new topic page if it’s appropriate and if there is quality news available online on your topic. That could get really messy.
Currently the most popular story on their homepage has 5 votes while the most popular story on Digg has over 1909. Google News does not allow votes on their stories. MySpace News has an Article Rating system on a scale of 1 – 5 (1 = Useless, 2 = Boring, 3 = Average, 4 = Interesting, 5 = Must Read). Rating an article tells the News system how much you liked the article and user’s opinion influences which articles and in what order various items appear on their News pages. Hence, the more an article gets 5’s the more likely it is to appear on the homepage.
Before rating .After it has been rated
One important note is that just like Digg, you must be a member before you are able to vote or interact with the articles. If you are not a MySpace user, you can still view and read all the articles but you just can’t vote. The interesting part though is that your vote shows whether you are logged in or not. Loren from SEJ notes that is because MySpace is tracking votes by user IP or Cookie so don’t try spamming MySpace News via multiple MySpace accounts.
When you click through to an article, you are shown the article within a MySpace News frame (unlike Digg where you are brought directly to the article in a new window or Google News where you are brought directly to the article within the same window/tab). Via their FAQ they state that the reason for the frame is to allow you to vote for an article while you are reading it. It also lists linked headlines of other news articles. If you want to make it go away, just click the permalink 
on the upper left side of the frame. By showing you the content within the MySpace News frame they are able to keep you on MySpace and keep control of your experience.
Getting listed seems to be a very simple process that starts with their Submit Feed form:
It seems like they have some guidelines and won’t just be letting any sites or blogs in:
We’re looking for the best from a variety of categories. Some factors include: Is this source topical? Do they publish regularly? Is there a core audience? Do other news sources link to this site?
The technology behind MySpace News is based on Newroo, a company they acquired last year – at its heart the engine indexes and groups blog posts based on topics in order to show emerging news in near real-time and to show distributed discussion in a single place (ie Techmeme or Megite). Like Google News, MySpace News will pull news items from a number of trusted sources via their RSS feeds. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch speculates that user submissions (what Digg is built around) will be coming down the road.
One area that might be very important for smaller businesses is the Local section. Many smaller, locally based businesses often express to me that they have a hard time leveraging social networks due to geographic limitations, this new local section might be an interesting way to overcome that (especially if you have products or services that will appeal to the MySpace crowd). On top of the local section there is also a Local Events section (which is featured on the homepage and every subpage) – in this section they list events from 12 major US cities:
Another strong promotion spot is the Featured Blog which doesn’t seem to be sponsored (it’s a straight link without no follow or even any ad tracking). I am not sure when this changes because today it is the ultra-popular gossip blog run by Perez Hilton and looking at the cache from April 20th it was also Perez’s site.
One very surprising ommission is the that there is no ability to search. For me I rarely use Google News except if I am searching specifically for a story. Interestingly enough Google powers the search engine for MySpace but searching through MySpace News is not an option:
When it really comes down to it, MySpace News is very different then Digg, the main similarity seems to be the fact that you can vote on stories on each site and that they are both extremely popular social networking sites. Calling it a ‘Digg killer’ is a good way to get press but its not even close to the truth. Digg is much more interactive (submitting, voting, commenting, tracking) while MySpace News is much more one-sided (at this point). The comparison with Google News are a closer fit but until you have the ability to search for what you are looking for that’s not a fair comparison either.
With that being said, MySpace News is something to watch simply due to the sheer number of MySpace users and the potential to reach many of them at one time much easier. If this was Company X’s News service that had just launched, most people would not even bother writing about it but when you are talking about one of the most popular websites in the world you have to take notice. One point to remember is that Fox/MySpace have a ton of information about their users (age, sex, likes, dislikes, etc) and they will most likely use that to shape the news that is shown (is the typical MySpace user more concerned with NATO or the latest Britney Spears drama?). Oh yeah and eventually they will actually start promoting it to their users (with a link from the homepage and their topbar)….
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When the seasons change I like to get new shoes (actually I like to get shoes at anytime but the season’s changing is always a good excuse)…
Up until recently when it came to shoes I’ve been an avid brick and mortar shopper, having to go into the actual store to try shoes on, I order everything else online but for some reason I need to try the shoes on in person before buying. But lately I am frustrated with that whole shopping experience, going from shop to shop when I can easily open several tabs at a time just seems to be a waste. Walking around a whole store where nothing is organized or really categorized doesn’t work for me anymore. I order my food online, my clothes, my makeup, my insurance and just about everything else – so why not my shoes?
So when Rae posted a review of endless.com I felt compelled to check them out. I’ve been seeing their banners on the various blogs that I read for fun (Perez, I’m Not Obsessed, Cute Overload) advertising “Overnight Shipping: Negative $5″.
My first impression when I got to endless was that it was super clean and airy.
The cluttered look of the reigning shoe queen zappos sometimes stresses me out.
I was looking for closed toed black pumps that I could wear to work or a night out with some jeans. Navigating around endless is so convenient compared to other shopping sites. The inventory narrows down with a few clicks. As Rae pointed out, a great feature is the ability to browse multiple colors and sizes. If I want to search shoes that are black or silver and sizes 7, 7.5, and 8, I can narrow down my selections and have them all in front of me in a few seconds. (As a recent bride I appreciate that feature).
There’s a neat feature where you can also choose the price range that you want to shop within. As you use the slider the selections change:
Much like shopping in a store, you have the ability to save an item to review later, which means you can pull the shoes or bags you really like to come back to later and you are reminded of how many items you’ve saved.
Later you can come back and browse your own little category that you’ve created.
Zappos has this feature as well but it’s hidden within all the text, and once you add something to your favorites you’re not reminded of it at all.
All in all, I found this site to be fun to use, fast, (really fast actually) and convenient. But at the end of my little investigation, I wound up buying from Zappo’s. They just happened to have what I was looking for. It took me a lot longer to find the right shoe, which kept me on the site for a long enough time to be annoyed at how cumbersome it is, but for the time being I just think they have a better selection of shoes. Yet here I am excited to browse on Endless again and it’s definitely going to be my first stop going forward.
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“Drop That Shadow!”: Creating Cast shadows in Perspective
Apr 20, 2007 by Patrick Winfield | Design, TutorialPhotoshops Drop Shadow Layer Style is a great tool to add a quick and easy cast-shadow on something. However the tool assumes that you are adding the drop shadow to a flat surface, which is not always the case.
Sometimes you will need to add a different Perspective to the drop shadow layer.
In this tutorial I will show you how to create a realistic drop shadow that can be applied to any layer.
Step 1. Create the document and place the object you want to add the Cast Shadow to on its own layer.
Step 2. Apply the Drop Shadow to the layer by going to Layer/Layer Style and then select Drop Shadow. Just create a general shadow and be sure that the Distance is greater than a 1.
Step 3. Separate the Drop Shadow from the Layer. Go to the Layer Palette and right click on the Layer Effects icon, fancy lowercase ‘f’ in a circle to the far right, and select Create Layer. This will put the Drop Shadow on its own layer just below the original layer.
Step 4. Transform the Drop Shadow layer to the new perspective that you would like it to be in. Go to Edit/Free Transform, you may also want to use Skew and Perspective also found in the same place. By moving the box around the selected layer you can transform the shadow to the appropriate angle and perspective.
Step 5. Finishing touches on the shadow may involve a bit of Blurring. Go to Filters/Blur/Gaussian Blur and apply a slight blur to the layer. You may want to play with the layers opacity.
10e20 designer (my brother) Patrick Winfield’s amazing picture is featured on the cover of Polanoid. He got all the graphic talent in the family. Click the image to the right to check it out:
Todd (Stuntdubl) made a post that has become required reading for anyone that works with me. Check out his “advanced beginner’s guide” to SEO.
10e20 contributor and friend Maki is running an experiment to see if he can become the most favorited blog on Technorati and then to see if this will actually bring him traffic. Do me a favor and add him to your Technorati favorites…
Stephen Juhl’s stupid easy approach to competitive link buying.
When Google bought DoubleClick they also bought an SEO company. Discuss…
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At SES NY, there was a surprising amount of people who I spoke to who were not embracing social media as much as they could, which I feel is a huge mistake. Rand Fishkin presented some very compelling reasons to pursue social media. From his examples, articles that had good content and subsequently were made popular on a variety of social sites got a burst of traffic, and as articles hit the front page on a regular basis, he saw an increase in rankings for particular search terms. Some numbers that were thrown out: Digg is a site with 2,000,000 million daily visitors. A Digg, once it hits the main page, can bring anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000+ visitors and over 1,000 links after three weeks.
It is no surprise, then, that an earlier survey by JupiterResearch reported that 48% of Internet Marketers intend to take the plunge into social media this year. More important is a very recent study performed by iProspect that tried to understand the behavior of social network users. Jordan has a great summary of the findings, all of which are important. Among these findings are that:
- 33% of Internet users have made purchases based on social networks
- 25% of Internet users visit the popular social networking sites at least once a month
What social networks were reviewed? MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, iVillage, Yahoo! Answers, TripAdvisor, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Craigslist, and Amazon. All of these sites have user generated content and community elements, though one might wonder if some of these are truly the same kind of “social networks” that we are familiar with.
Another recent survey that I covered on the use of web 2.0 sites generated different results (which is likely due to demographics) and found that a whopping 43% of employees at large companies (>1000 employees) engage in social networks. That’s a huge number! This number is likely to grow — not diminish — as more and more people become more comfortable with online social interaction.
We are in the second quarter of 2007. I’d imagine only a small fraction of those 48% companies surveyed by JupiterResearch have started seriously using social media. It’s not too late to get involved, and you should, sooner rather than later. Leveraged properly (read our past coverage on being a power Digg user, being a power StumbleUpon user, and being a power Reddit user), social media can do wonderful things for your website, your business, your product, and your message.
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Google wanted to buy toolbar based social network StumbleUpon according to TechCrunch & Gigaom but unfortunately they lost out to eBay (allegedly). So if you’re Google what do you do? Simply build your own “StumbleUpon” into your extremely popular toolbar – and it looks exactly like that’s what they did. In a blog post tonight called Searching Without a Query they explain:
The first is a recommendations button on the Google Toolbar that looks like a pair of dice. Click on the dice, and we’ll take you to a site that may be interesting to you based on your past searches. If you want another, just click the dice again and we’ll show you a new one. We’ll give you up to 50 new sites per day that might be of interest. Just add the button to your Toolbar. (In order to use this feature, you need the latest version of the Toolbar.)
Oh yeah and to use this – you better be signed into your Google Account or its not going to work. Cool feature or another way to make sure you are always signed into G? I know at least one person this will bother…
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