“[N]ow you can use any image on the web for your placemarks,” explains Keith Golden, a Google Maps software engineer, on the Google LatLong Blog.  “Just click on the new ‘Add an icon’ link in the icon menu, type the URL into the dialog box, and you’re good to go.”

Golden goes on to give an example involving a turkey, writing, “I typed in http://google.com/mapfiles/turkey.png to get my majestic bird.”  Right.  Well, turkey farmers and Ben Franklin fans might appreciate the image, anyway.

But for those who feel like displaying something entirely new, Golden continues, “You can also make up your own icons.  Although many image formats will work, PNGs with transparent backgrounds look best on the map.  Another idea is to use photo thumbnails.”  This might work out quite well, really, when creating directions to and from people’s houses.

And that’s about all there is to this story.  The development is just a small improvement, but it should make Google Maps easier (and more fun) to use.

I use quite a lot of screenshots when blogging as I find the old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" very appropriate.
Michel Fortin also pointed out in his top plugins and blogging tips article today how graphic icons with each post help with clickthrough. He has been using eye tracking software to prove it, and is a fanatical tester.

No Excerpts = Less Comments?

This concept just came to me while writing this post, maybe I will write about it again tomorrow in more detail.

I use full content on the front page currently because I like the idea of having my cupboard open to encourage people to read what I have written, like it, and thus subscribe.

The vast majority of my readers are via subscription, thus when they click through, they read the single permalink page, which has a comment box.

I do however get a large amount of casual traffic. If they click through to the front page, and get to read 10 articles, they are less inclined to read the comments on a post, where typically on my best content, there is a lot more discussion, that often is worth more than the original post.

Maybe there is a measurable benefit in only showing excerpts in increased comments from more casual readers, and readers on their 2nd page view. They wouldn’t have to take an additional action to place a comment.

The problem is in testing this you introduce more variables, because you might get more or less subscribers by showing less content.

Enough of the wandering mind…

Pictures in Communication

I have had a few people mention that my pages don’t look quite right. I had done a number of tests using both Firefox and Internet explorer, and had continued to do so. Some things aren’t perfect under Internet Explorer, but I am not a designer so I will have to live with them and tweak things as they go.

I was shocked when I saw this

Michel dropped me an email today with a screenshot attached (I have reduced it in size)

I think Michel might be using Internet Explorer, I primarily use Firefox, and only check things on IE typically when I am playing with page layout. I didn’t think about how a plugin might break under a different browser.

This is how this looks under Firefox

By communicating with a picture, I was able to fix the problem in about 2 minutes by simply switching off the plugin and clearing my cache.

As a p.s. I think both me and Michel use a little tool called SnagIt for grabbing quick screenshots. I am not an affiliate in any way, and I still find bugs with it (scrolling pages never seems to work), but find what it does do very useful.

Comments

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

At first it was the cute Ads by Gooooooooooooogle stuff. Then they started marketing Google Checkout heavily by offering $10 off coupons. Then they started syndicating flash and video ads for Gmail, then Google Pack, and now they are placing Google Checkout icons in the AdSense advertiser ads.

It’s a nice deal for Google that they smart price some of the inventory down to virtually nothing, then buy it off themselves.

Given that they have no real competition could you fault them for doing so? Even classier of them to put ads for their own products inside ads that advertisers are paying for. But their marketing is good enough that nobody cares. Who else could do that?

Comments

Instead of bloggers placing a few buttons at the bottom of each blog post, it seems that many enjoy offering their visitors all possible options.

I guess the question is, why shouldn’t you be giving tons of options to your website visitors? It may seem like a good idea at first, but your ever so curious visitors will end up clicking on random buttons which will take them to sites that they are not familiar with and then they will not bookmark your content. Even your most tech savvy readers don’t have accounts at most of these social sites, so why drive them to sites where they will not bookmark your content.

The other thing about many of these bookmarking sites is that they have algorithms (basic to complex) where the more bookmarks your site gets the more visibility it will be given. In essence the goal is to get your story bookmarked multiple times on the popular social sites, which usually results in your story getting picked up by the smaller sites. By giving your visitors too many options you may end up getting 1 bookmark on 10 different social sites instead of 10 bookmarks on 1 social site, which can hurt the amount of traffic you get from these sites.

So if you want to leverage the popular social sites on the web, don’t add tons of social bookmarking buttons on the bottom of each of your blog posts. Instead select the popular ones such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Newvine and Netscape or select the ones that have audiences that are most likely to bookmark or submit stories related to the topic you usually write on.

Comments

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Neil Patel is an Internet marketing consultant for ACS where he has lead Internet marketing strategies for companies such as Hewlett Packard and Samsung. Currently Neil blogs about his marketing experiences at Pronet Advertising.

I still haven’t seen a better demo this year.

Anyway, I’m not just into bashing Microsoft when it deserves it, but other companies too. Adobe got on Fred’s radar screen with the new Photoshop icons.

Using ASCII characters in an icon? Come on Adobe. You’re the king of using graphics and photos. Put a freaking photo onto the icon. It’s “Photoshop” remember?

But, icons are branding opportunities and tell me one thing. Will this “brand” do well in, say, China? How about Japan?

No.

Adobe should invest in imagery and iconography that’ll transcend cultural, language, and other barriers.

The problem is you should have a single icon that works everywhere for training purposes.

I remember when I was in China at a computer show and I needed to demonstrate NetMeeting. I could do it cause I knew what the icons looked like.

But, even better, look at how Firefox uses its icon to market itself. It’s on Tshirts. Stickers. Posters (one was hanging in a company I interviewed at yesterday).

I look at the XML icon and that’s a bit different. First of all, RSS and XML were aimed at geeks for the first few years of their life. So, they needed to communicate a bit about what was underneath (note that the newer Feed Icon is becoming much more popular – partly cause it doesn’t look so darn American-centric on, say, Chinese Web sites).

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Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

And according to a screenshot taken out of the eBay Developers Conference, eBayers will soon be able to send and receive money via Skype as well, though an integration of PayPal into Skype Version 2.5.

Chief Executive Meg Whitman told shareholders yesterday of “the power of 3,” the theme of eBay’s push to integrate and cross-promote eBay, PayPal and Skype.

“We want to build synergies. . .” Whitman said, ” so that one plus one plus one equals a lot more than three. I think we have three out of five of the best brands on the Internet today,”

With the “Skype Me” icons, buyers can call or text the seller with a new feature eBay calls “Ask a seller a question,” a free service that allows buyers to get quick information before a purchase is made.

“Skype represents a tremendous opportunity for our sellers to connect even more closely with their buyers,” Cobb said in a statement.

The “Skype Me” links will be available after June 19th to sellers in 14 eBay categories, including cars, jewelry, real estate, and collectibles.

According to VNUnet, Whitman told analysts in May that the average selling price of items sold in Chinese auctions was twice as high when Skype was used alongside the sale.

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Drag this to your Bookmarks.

Add to DiggThis Yahoo My Web

The crme-de-la-icons is the Top 100 button that appears next to blog names that make the most linked-to list. In a search results page, like this one, you’ll notice Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog is in this elite group. Rubel is number 67 with 9,763 links from over 2,500 websites.

The A-list of the A-list, though are Boing Boing, Engadget and dark horse favorite PostSecret, a blog made up of anonymous user-submitted post cards spilling the beans about something horrible (or not) they’ve done but haven’t told anyone.

The second new icon is a faded Technorati talk bubble signifying no link love whatsoever, like a couple of these poor shmucks.

Kennedy says these icons are the first of new features for 2006.

1. When you buy a computer, many vendors place icons to selected products and services on your desktop, such as links to high-speed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or add-on services vendors think you may need.

2. As you install software on your Windows machine, icons may appear, either to start the application or link to the manufacturer’s website. Installing just one program could add three or more icons to your desktop!

3. It’s easy to accidentally drag a Favorite, bookmark, text file, or other icon to your desktop, creating an icon.

Normally, it’s easy to delete Windows desktop icons. Just place your mouse pointer on the offending icon, then right-click it and choose “Delete”, clicking “Yes” to confirm if prompted.

However, what if the rogue icons are for adult websites, unfamiliar search engines, or other websites you don’t recall visiting? You may try removing these icons but get an error, or after removal they still reappear again and again and again!

If so, then more than likely spyware, adware, or other malware has infected your machine. It may have been through file trading software, an inadvertent “yes” click when a popup window asked you to install software, ‘freeware’ that included adware, or other means. To remove the rogue icons, you need to remove the malware creating these icons.

Removing spyware and adware can be a time-consuming process, fraught with potential disaster as it is possible to accidentally remove files that render your operating system unusable. However, the following software products can help with this process as long as you read the instructions carefully, make backups, and get expert advice if you’re not completely sure about removing what they ask you to do:

So, how can you prevent these icons from appearing in the first place? Practice safe computing.

By practicing safe computing and using spyware-removal software, you can help remove rogue desktop icons from your desktop and keep others from appearing.

Andrew Malek is the owner of the MalekTips computer and technology help site. Visit his anti-spyware page for more advice on removing adware, spyware, and other malware.

Points to consider for improving web usability

1.) Give your visitor what he is looking for

A visitor means business; he is looking for information and will stay in your site only as long as he gets what he wants. So provide only relevant information on your homepage that is specific to your end users. Web logs are the best means of finding out which keyword your visitor used and for what purpose he could have visited your website.

2.) Tell your visitor what your site is all about

Often websites are crammed with information in no specific order making it hard to figure out what the site is all about! Your site should give information about what it can offer a visitor on an instant basis. You can do this by providing relevant information on the homepage. You can also provide links like `about us’ or `about this website’ for further clarification.

3.) Provide site wide links

Site wide links are very important in any website. They allow easy navigation to all pages and reduce time consumed on browsing the pages. Your user can have instant access to what he is looking for from any webpage using the site wide links. They also allow the search engine robots to cache your pages efficiently. Site wide links can be provided at the bottom of all web-pages.

4.) Provide a sitemap

A sitemap is the mark of a good website. Sitemaps give the skeleton of an entire site on a single webpage with all links. As site maps are specifically meant to provide site information they can lead to efficient browsing.

5.) Ensure that your website loads fast

No one likes pages that take long time to load. Your website visitor takes decisions in seconds and it won’t take him long to press the back button or type another address to access other related websites. So make sure that your site loads fast.

The possible reasons for long loading times are

a.) Use of large graphics, java applets, flash programs or ad banners

b.) Inappropriate use of tables, like placing the entire page under a table

c.) Placing too much information (more than 50K) on one page

d.) Use of free or inferior hosting services resulting in slow data transfer

e.) Use of bad or junk html codes

6.) Improve site’s navigation using icons

Site navigation is an important aspect of web usability. Making use of unique XP style icons can really make your site appealing at the same time adding to easy navigation. Some businesses that offer XP style icons are http://www.icongalore.com , iconpharm.com etc. Icongalore.com offers the best XP style icons at costs as low as $3/icon.

7.) If your site has too much content ensure readability

Poor readability can cause your users to leave. Poor readability occurs due to use of small fonts, poor color combinations, long sentences, repeating background images and improper headings.

Tips to improve readability

a.) Make use proper font size. Generally a font size of 10 to 12 would ensure fast reading

b.) Make use of proper font types and make sure to use only one font type through- out the page. Verdana or Arial fonts are best for online reading

c.) Avoid using long sentences. Break your long sentences into shorter and interesting ones

d.) Avoid making use of static and repeating background images

e.) Give proper headings and provide strategic links

f.) Keep your content free flowing and explain you point by providing proper bullets. Shorten your paragraphs in two or three

g.) Avoid justifying your content

8.) Test your site before launching

Testing your site before loading is very important. You should pick up information like site load times, navigation, information availability, content, browser compatibility etc while testing.

a.) Test to see if your site loads in all browsers

b.) Test all links and see if they are working

c.) Test for site errors if any

d.) Test for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors

e.) Test the site load times

9.) Check your server log data regularly

You server log data is perhaps your best information source to improve your website’s usability. You weblog can give you information like keywords used most often to reach your site, website downtimes, pages most visited, exit pages etc. By studying your weblog you can find out the pages that a particular visitor accessed and the page at which he exited. This can help you optimize popular pages and give special attention to pages that seem to have the most exists. Overall studying the server log on a daily basis is very important.

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