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The SEO Blog has a great article on the Top 10 Fatal URL Mistakes and includes this great list of tips for doing URLs right:

 My 10 URL design rules are quite simple:

1. Make the URLs clean
2. Make them simple
3. Make a URL human and machine readable
4. Use one URL per page
5. No special characters besides a minus/hyphen “-” ideally
6. Use slashes like real directories
7. Enhance URLs with numbers but don’t rely on them
8. Skip the date, it’s not the most important info
9. Do not ever change URLs once set
10. If you have to change URLs move them with a “301 permanently moved” redirect

I'm on a search engine optimization kick as of late and this article from SmileyCat web design blog hits one of the important subjects in Search Engine Land: The Meta Description.

Certainly, the <title> tag, as it forms the clickable link for a search engine result, is key to get right.

However, the snippet provides an opportunity to deliver a targeted call-to-action to the searcher that supports and builds on the text of the main link. It can also differentiate your result from those around it.

Not writing a good meta description — one that at least summarizes the content on the page — means that you're giving up free traffic from organic search engine rankings.

Read More About Meta Descriptions

 

 

 

Josh Levy at TechPresident has this great observation on hits v. site attention:

Data digger Matthew Hurst has another update on Compete.com’s tracking of visits to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s websites. Starting with a deceptively simple chart showing that, since December, Obama’s site has received more traffic than to Clinton’s, he explores something more interesting. More people may show up at Obama’s site, but the trend has been to spend more time at Clinton’s. And Clinton also has a bigger share of “attention” — Compete’s way of measuring online engagement. It’s tough to say what this all means without analyzing more data, but while Clinton may not be scoring social media points, voters are getting deep on her site.

This makes a lot of sense to me as someone who spends a lot of time on the presidential candidate's sites looking for new ideas. Obama has a spiffy site and a trendy design, but it's really short on substance. Clinton's site, while conforming to traditional political styles is heavy on substance and innovative ideas. Yes I am biased on what constitute innovative ideas since I am a Clinton supporter, but take a look for yourself and decide which site is more compelling when reading. Content is King or in this case Queen!

Sad news today, my Microsoft Comfort Mouse is broken. My left mouse button sticks ever so slightly which for most people wouldn't be a big deal but in applications like Photoshop and Illustrator the rebound time of a mouse button is critical. With this in mind I'm taking this opportunity to upgrade my mousing technologies! The decision? The Logitech MX Revolution. Check out the below video and review.

 

Just Creative Design has a great list of 101 sources for graphical design inspiration.

You may know it from CNN's primary election coverage as the "Magic Wall", an 8 by 3 foot touch sensitive video screen. The magic of this video display is the ability to manipulate graphical information, scale, rotate and get the big picture of a concept.  According to a report from the NY Observer the jumbo pricetag on this jumbo technology is $100,000 with only a handful of units in existence.

This presentation format will decrease in price eventually and arrive in businesses, government, educational institutions and even the home. The beauty of this technology isn't that its a giant touchscreen, it's the ability to mashup data from multiple sources and form useful displays of information. The hand manipulation boosts our cognitive abilities to absorb and process this information into knowledge. 

Sean Hodge at PSDTuts has a practical guide to getting into the creative flow. I know from my experience there are times when its difficult to get the creative thoughts flowing from mind to mouse. Here's his four steps:

1. Create your optimal environment for working on your creative projects. For me it's my office, mine is like a cave, or a big closet. It's as removed as possible. Situated in a far corner of my house. That way external distractions are minimized and I'm able to focus.
2. Each day prioritize your tasks. Arrange them so that you have time to focus on the creative part of a project. Schedule this time of day during your peak performance hours. For me that's in the morning. Fully commit to this time. Turn off your email, your phone, and your feeds. Don't allow anything to break your concentration. Lock the door if you have to and turn on some music.
3. Start creating. Fully enjoy this creative time and be in the moment. Allow yourself to ignore your internal needs. Let time and worries drift away from your conscious. Focus deeper and become completely absorbed in your work.
4. Continue to push and challenge yourself in your work. If a problem presents itself that is to complex. Quickly break it down into manageable parts and keep working, keep flowing, and keep creating.

 

I recommend reading his full guide to finding your creative flow.

 

TechPresident's Micah L. Sifry points to this potentially groundbreaking site: VoterVoter.

This new service lets you produce a campaign commercial, raise money/seek sponsors, and purchase airtime with their contributions. This whole process used to be an insiders game, forcing small grassroots activists to avoid the expensive and complicated task of buying airtime.

As this tool matures I think we'll see more and more amateur commercials getting more professional attention.

I am loathe to report on good things about Republicans but J. McCain's site sports one very innovative feature: Donor Lookups. I have long been a proponent of integrated donor transparency applications. Features like this one build trust and suggest that a candidate's donors aren't anything he/she wishes to hide.

Don't get me wrong, I am sure John McCain's donor's are shady, but this feature is illuminating and a step in the right direction for online political campaigns. Democrats and candidates on the local, state and federal level should learn from this tool and implement their own lookup. The tool need not be as sophisticated as McCains, rather a simple link from their campaign page footer to a third party donation database website is a substantial step in the right direction.

Joshua Levy at TechPresident has his take on the McCain web campaign's email tactics:

...his most recent email clocks in at a whopping 497 words, or 3.55 Twitter posts that reach the 140 character limit (maybe we should use a "TWT:EMAIL" ratio to describe the brevity of candidate emails).

But the length is just half the problem. A campaign email is centered around the ask, which needs to be front and center. Yet this email scans very badly; it's hard to tell what Sen. McCain is asking for, and how to do what he wants. It comes across as a vague thank you and a rambling description of why he's running his campaign, accompanied by a nice picture that you click on to get a special message...

 

Campaign email communications face any number of challenges in their journey to the readers eyes and the McCain campaign adds one more hurdle in by making his emails too long and too dependent upon images. If you have a contribute link as an image, and only an image a vast majority (70% according to some sources) won't even be seeing the contribution ask. Why? Email clients are by default set to turn images off, additionally spam filters are likely to strip out images or reject emails loaded with them entirely.

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