Here’s a good post up on Smashing outlining a few ways to extend WordPress’ custom fields to do much more that you’d initially think, “Extend WordPress with Custom Fields“.

WordPress’ popularity has grown exponentially as of late. This rise in popularity is due in part to WordPress’ custom fields. Custom fields allow you to add little bits of data to posts. They have changed the way people look at WordPress. A couple of years ago, WordPress was a blogging platform — a good one, but a blogging platform nonetheless. Now it’s widely considered to be an excellent simple content management system. How did it evolve so quickly? Custom fields, that’s how.

All in all a good read with links out to additional resources.

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This is an old post from the SEOmozBlog called My Personal Opinion – 90% of the Rankings Equation Lies in These 4 Factors that’s still well worth the read.

I think that sometimes, we in the field of search marketing try to make the concept of ranking more difficult than it really is. True – there are hundreds of ways to build a link, an infinite number of keywords, thousands of unique sources to drive traffic along with analytics, design, usability, code structure, conversion testing, etc. However, when it comes to the very specific question of how to rank well for a particular keyword in standard organic results at the engines, you’re really only talking about a few big key components.

The author contends that in his opinion the following four factors make up 90% of the ranking equation. I happen to agree and work with that as the framework everyday I’m involved in Search Engine Optimization work. The four primary factors responsible for SEO rankings:

1. Keyword Usage & Content Relevance
2. Raw Link Juice
3. Anchor Text Weight
4. Domain Authority

As with all good blogs, the comments section is well worth taking a look at.

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Here’s an open competition by Nokia called the Make My App competition in which you’d submit an idea to be voted on by a panel of judges, in which the winners’ apps would then be then developed and distributed on their App store.

Make My App competition is an exciting opportunity for anyone to submit ideas and compete for a chance to have their idea turned into real apps. Each week 10 most voted ideas are shortlisted. Our guest judges will then choose 3 winning ideas from each category.

These final 12 winners will win a trip to a Nokia event in September in London, where their ideas are turned into real apps by professional developers. When the Nokia N8 hits the stores the winners will receive a brand new Nokia N8 with their app installed.

The winning apps are also made available in Ovi Store for everyone to download and enjoy.
The submissions close on June 27th.
All you need to do is come up with the idea – Nokia will provide the developers for winning ideas.

The Prize works out like so:

Three winning ideas from each of the competition categories will be invited to the to Nokia World 2010 event in London on September 14-15. At the event, professional developers will turn these ideas into real apps within 24 hours.

The winners will also receive a new Nokia N8 device when it is available in stores with their app installed on it. The apps will be made available in Ovi Store for everyone to download and enjoy.

It looks interesting and I’ll be sure to follow their Make My App competition.

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A very good overview of best practices for speeding up your web site from the Yahoo! Developer Network.

Very good resource:

• http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

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A pretty well done infographic covering SEO. Every client of mine should see this (be sure to click through to the full sized image):

http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2010/04/13/seo-in-pictures-our-seo-infographic/

The image covers everything from basic keyword research concepts, through site architecture, page optimization, link building, SEO tactics, social media, and some basic SEO and PPC clickthrough stats and explanations.

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A well written post by Adobe’s Mike Chambers in response to Apple’s latest policy restricting its applications. He seems to be angling it as a Flash vs. iPhone issue while somepoint out that it is actually a Flash vs. HTML5/CSS3 issue, which also comes with its own set of problems. The winner in this pissing match might just be — Android.

Essentially, this has the effect of restricting applications built with a number of technologies, including Unity, Titanium, MonoTouch, and Flash CS5. While it appears that Apple may selectively enforce the terms, it is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5. Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store.

We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2010/04/20/on-adobe-flash-cs5-and-iphone-applications/

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Our Hayes Valley location locates us at the center of San Francisco’s creative and business community allowing us to continually improve and refine our skills to better serve our clients. If you are in need of a Hayes Valley Web Design and Development firm Kliky.Com should be the first firm you contact.

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There’s an interesting company out there building upon its widget technology to allow publishers to create ad supported mobile versions of their Web sites.

From their own site:

ClickTurn enables people to create and sell high-impact ad units that marry brand content with content generated by both the publisher and their community.

We provide an end-to-end solution that empowers ad sales teams to delight customers, quickly deliver campaigns, and reinforce the value of the publisher’s inventory, audience, and content.

It’s worth taking a look at ClickTurn to read a bit more about what their doing here.

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A video explaining how this magazine put an ad up on early morning television (off-peak-hours) on certain cable news channels using Google TV/Video ads. It’s a pretty cool video to watch:

http://gawker.com/5498938/buying-an-ad-on-fox-news-is-easier-than-you-think

Buying an Ad on Fox News is Easier Than You Think

And cheaper, too. Say you have some life-altering product that needs advertising to get off the ground, using Google TV Ads, you can buy TV ad space whenever/wherever you want. Slate tested it out, and the results were surprising.

In the end, they did mention that they ended up paying $1700.00 on the experiment, but that did include a couple million 4:00am Fox News viewers. That should be good for something.

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