wednesday

It takes a lot for a website to impress me. It’s not about user generated content, in fact my favorite site has been criticized for not letting everyone play. It’s not about doing something that no one else does, my favorite site of the year has two very solid competitors. It’s just about delivering, and this site does it better than nearly any other and does it every day. My favorite site of the year is Techmeme.

I won’t claim that it’s perfect or for everyone, and I won’t say that there aren’t things I’d like to see added, but no site has had a bigger impact on me this year (excluding my own) than Techmeme.

Some wondered about the business model for Techmeme, and Gabe (site founder) delivered in a way uniquely fit to his business by creating an entirely new model based on blog posts. I was annoyed with the display of the site on my cell phone, and again Gabe delivered with a mobile version (I even checked it out in line at Chipotle today). Some have criticized the lack of international sources, and called it a blog country club, but don’t we want that for some things? I don’t think techmeme should include every blog linking to every story on the site, just give me what’s relevant - and that, more than anything, Techmeme has delivered.

Techmeme is not perfect, I’d like it to be opened so that more memes could be created. We know that Gabe can do the verticals of his choice (Ballbug, We Smirch, and the original memeorandum), but what if I want an Akron-meme? I doubt that’s in the pipeline, even if a Silicon Valley local meme is (not that I’m saying it is). I’d also like a plug in for my blog that shows related posts from across the web. But those things can wait, for now I’m just enjoying the brilliance that comes from the relevance of my favorite site of the year.

Techmeme

So yesterday I said I had a big bag of new sites to blog about after my little hiatus, and today I give you a site that has its focus elsewhere. In fact the focus is reaching people when they’re not online. TextMarks, launched not that long ago and it has received some attention, but not enough. The concept is simple, people subscribe to a keyword by sending a text message with the keyword to 41411. After that, the owner of the keyword can send out a mass message to all of the people that have subscribed.

I like the service because it is amazingly easy to sign up for and use, and delivers an extremely clear message. I’m pretty sure Mozes is competing in this space, but I’m never really sure what Mozes is all about. Mozes really should have the edge, it is well designed (though I hear slanted stripes are on their way out) and has a musical slant with plenty of influencers on board. But, I’m still not sure what it’s about.

I guess there are two ways to view these services. 1 - they’re for people that are always connected to a group and want updates all the time or 2 - they’re for people in groups that don’t associate with each other all that often. I’m using TextMarks for purpose number 2 - at least in my first usage of it. I’ve been delegated the task of updating my old high school class website, and to me that’s pointless because no one ever goes to the thing. All we want are the occasional messages to tell us what’s going on. For that TextMarks will work great - so would a blog, but my guess is a lot more people would want this info to come from a text rather than an RSS feed (and I don’t have to explain that your MyYahoo page is made of RSS feeds).

Update: Dorrian from Mozes posted a couple of comments that are worth reading if you’re interested in this area.

Update: This has been corrected.

Welcome to Akron, where spelling doesn’t count. This week for website Wednesday and Marketing Thursday (I have to take the day off for Turkey Day) I’m going to point you to the Downtown Akron website and its glaring spelling error. The Homepage if fine, but for the “Do Downtown” portion of the site Downtown is spelled Downtow in all of the Title Tags - yikes. That may seem like a small mistake to you (though I wouldn’t stand for it, ever) but it becomes more important when you consider that the “Do Downtown” portion of the site is the likely the main draw. Many downtown businesses are listed on that part of the site, and the pages do fairly well in Search Results… so it’s not just in the title of the page that shows at the top of the browser - it’s in the search results (I know my technical readers will be familiar with that concept, that’s for the less techno-savvy readers). Googling Downtow Akron will give you a good idea of the real problem.

Worse, today the Akron Beacon Journal is promoting this website as the first step in the plan of the new head of the Downtown Akron Partnership.

I like a lot of what the city has done to revitalize itself, I like the “Do Downtown” concept - but you have to hit on all cylinders if you want to earn respect.

Thinkature is a new app that combines collaborative productivity tools with instant messaging. It’s really pretty cool, I’m just trying to figure out who will use it.

Thinkature gives you an open workspace on which you can use the mouse to draw on screen, upload photos, and attach notes in a style very similar to how MyStickies works. Since you can share the workspace and simultaneously work there’s also a very useful built in instant messaging feature (something more sites should have). The focus on images and drawing would seem to imply that this will make its inroads with designers - but the potential is way beyond that.

I like the combination of elements, but to really be successful I’d like to see it do even more. I can add photos and little notes, but I’d also like to be able to add a table. Drawing on screen is cool, but I’d like to be able to erase parts of what I’ve drawn (you can delete an entire section, but not parts) and I’d like to draw in different colors.

It’s actually really an amazing product and things seem to be working very smoothly, I just want to see a few more things added so that Thinkature doesn’t get swept away as a feature rather than a company. Right now it seems to have a few things that other online collaboration tools are missing, but it’s missing some that the others have.

Grade: This will change how I use the web, though it might not be with this particular site.

I didn’t want to miss two website Wednesdays in a row - so here’s a quick look at a service I recently started using. Warning: I have no idea if this works in ie, though I imagine it does. Warning 2: If you’re using ie, stop.

MyStickies is a newish service that lets you put sticky notes all over the web. When you hear that it may seem kind of boring, but it’s really helpful. I’m using it to help critique both my own sites and sites that I’m helping people with. It’s a great on the fly way to make notes of things you would (or need to) change on a page without having to actually do the editing - very helpful if you need a client’s approval first. I’m sure there are other uses, but I’d bet this would be the most helpful, and where MyStickies will find its niche. I don’t know if MyStickies knows or thinks that - the site itself says ’say goodbye to bookmarks’ - but I have no intent of using this as a bookmarking system.

So far I really like it and if you’re in the business of web consulting or SEO/SEM I think it’s a must have.

Grade: This will change the way I use the web.

Smalltown.com launched the other day, and I’ll call it Yalp! Yalp, is an acronym for “yet another local player” - but unlike some of the good local players I don’t really like what Smalltown is doing.

To me it just doesn’t make sense. Smalltown is built in Flash and can be an intense page load. Yet it’s targeted at small towns. Sure small towns are coming around to this whole broadband thing, but in general people in small towns spend less time online and are more likely to have dial-up connections. Furthermore, flash is a tricky issue for search engines. Smalltown seems to have some of that figured out, but with such a heavy amount of local traffic coming from search I don’t think it makes sense to risk the search optimization.

My website wednesdays can only get one of two grades either “this will change how I use the web” or “fail”

Grade: Fail.