Links: Where The People Are

Collaboration and Convergence in Marketing and Networking

In Internet marketing, it’s not about how cool your site is, it’s about what your site has to offer and if people can find that offer. If you are in a niche services or products industry you must go to where the people are:

Classifieds Listings – Like Craigslist.com, where people are actively searching for a variety of products, services and trades every moment of everyday.

Party Ideas – BestParyEver.com’s business listings directory and premium sponsorship opportunities allow anyone who performs, manages or supports a party to get in front of their audience.

Small Business Networking – Biznik.com is a community for people who are building their own businesses. It’s more about sharing ideas than posting resumes and it’s where the conversations about business and entrepreneurship are taking place.

Music Recommendations – Last.fm is a community to share what you listen to with others. By viewing tastes of people that listen to what we do, we find new music all the time…by browsing randomly through Last.fm profile pages we find even broader music to explore. Advertisers could take note, that if music or related products need to build awareness, here’s your worldwide captive audience.

Being where the action takes place is not new. This principle is not limited to the online space either. Have you ever seen an intersection with four hamburger joints or 3 gas stations? You need to be where people are looking for what you have to offer. The same idea holds true for growth and learning. You can learn on your own, but combining forces with like minded people accelerates that growth.

Environment for Innovation – The Drawbackwards office is now at Gangplank, we are working on collaborative projects and advising others as an anchor tennant at this new Tech Incubator that also serves as the premier Metro Phoenix Co-working campus for web development.

Date
May 24th, 2008
Author
Ward Andrews
Category
Business, Design, Links, Marketing
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Links: August 12th – 18th, 2007

Netflix: How to build a Killer Community – WebWare takes a look at the features that make Netflix’s online community successful. At Drawbackwards, we like how Netlix shows you who you are similar to. Similarity builds initial trust and makes people more likely to contribute.

Why fonts look different on Mac and PC - Joel on Software explains the font rendering decisons of Apple vs. Microsoft. We prefer the font rendering Apple chose, in an attempt to more accurately render the letterforms. We believe that as hardware and OS resolution increases in the future, people will prefer type that is more accurately presented.

iPhone launches iPhoto No More! Thank you Scott for this tip on removing iPhone’s most annoying OS X habit.

Graphic Design at 70 M.P.H. – Khoi at Subtraction talks about the refined typeface that will be used in future highway signage. What really shines here is mainstream media breaking down design decisions with a great understanding of type and care to inform readers who may not understand typography concepts.

Tab vs. Primer – 37Signals shows why a tabbed introduction to a web application works far better than a built-in primer area. We think the best thing about a tabbed introduction is you can hide it and pull it out whenever you want. This is a huge improvement.

Date
August 20th, 2007
Author
Ward Andrews
Category
Business, Design, Links
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Links: August 5th – August 11th 2007

Endicia – Endicia Internet Postage lets you print postage with just a computer, a printer, and an Internet connection. Integrated into over 60 applications.

Strategic Skills of Designers – LukeW outlines a nice list of skills designers need to apply strategic thinking to design.

Basic Definition of Organization – A group of people intentionally organized to accomplish an overall, common goal or set of goals.

GMail: A Behind the Scenes Video – Great, simple viral marketing.

Date
August 13th, 2007
Author
Ward Andrews
Category
Business, Design, Links
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Links: July 22nd – August 4th

Quantcast – An internet ratings service.

YSlow for Firebug – A plugin from Yahoo for Firefox that gives letter grades to your website’s code (though getting an F for not having media connected to a CDN seems a bit harsh for smaller sites).

Champions Pay the Price – 37Signals on championing a cause to make something better (like using OpenID for their app logins). Why it is hard and why it matters.

Product Design at Apple – LukeW says: “The design team needed to own design language and educate the rest of the company about it.”

Date
August 7th, 2007
Author
Ward Andrews
Category
Business, Design, Links
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