Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Internet 101



It just came to my attention that all Design Mom readers don't necessarily have brothers like mine. Brothers that keep me in the know and tell me all about the new and cool sites available to make my internet time extra-super-productive.


Here are some of my favorites — and I should mention, these are all absolutely free:



1) del.icio.us
Sign up at del.icio.us and you'll get instructions on how to add their bookmarking buttons to your web browser (I use Firefox). When you see any webpage you like you'll hit your tag button. A window will come up where you can add a note about why you're tagging the page. For example, I might find some new baby shoes I want to blog about. So I'll tag the page and write a note — someth
ing like: cool baby shoes to blog about, I especially like the pirate ones.

Whenever you like you can hit your del.icio.us page (the icon with the black and blue squares) and every page you've tagged will come up. You can search your del.icio.us page with standard search functions or organize it by key words.

I use del.icio.us every single day.


2) Stumble Upon
Stumble Upon also adds some icons to your web brower navigation bar. And the whole concept is genius. Bascially,it helps you discover new sites that you'll love. When you sign up, Stumble Upon asks you to indicate your interests and hobbies, then when you're bored and looking for something new and cool on the web you'll hit the Stumble icon. Using your interests as direction, Stumble Upon will introduce you to pages you might like. You can then hit thumbs up or thumbs down icons, and Stumble Upon will be better able to narrow down to just the pages you'll like best.

I can always find something interesting using Stumble Upon.


3) Digg
I don't actually use this much, but my husband does and my brothers use it religiously. Digg is geared to a male techie audience, but the idea behind it is incredible. If you've heard of web 2.0, Digg is a good example. There is no single "author" behind it. Anyone can add to the content. At Digg, users sign-up (for free of course) and can then post a link and description of anything on the web they find interesting. Other users can then "Digg" the post (sort of like voting for it).

If the item gets enough Diggs then it will be moved to the front page. This ensures there is always new and really good content on the front page. You can also post comments on an item, like you do on a blog. The picture shows a Digg entry with 119 "Diggs" and 11 comments. (I'm looking into doing something like this but for a Design Mom kind of audience — but more on that later.)

If there was a Digg featuring topics I'm interested in, I would go there first when I sat down at the computer.

4) StatCounter or Tracksy.
For you bloggers, if you're not using some sort of tracking software you might want to give it a try. There are several available. I use StatCounter and Tracksy. They help you see all kinds of things about your readers: how often they come, how long they stay, which part of the world they live in, if they're using a mac or pc, if they found your blog through another site. All kinds of things.

When you sign up, they will give you directions on how to add a line of html to your template, and the tracking starts immediately. It might sound intimidating to add the html, but it's actually very easy.

I love checking in to see how many visitors I've had that day or to see how the readership is growing.

Please enjoy these suggestions and let me know what you use to make the internet a little smaller.

top pic via getty images

add to kirtsy

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've been wondering what some of these site/programs do. I see del.i.cious all of the time but never took that time to look in to it. Now I will.

Thanks.

Blessings,
Karla

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 9:52:00 AM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I use del.i.cious for ideas, I love it. I have lots of recipes on there too. Also I use google reader to keep track of all of the blogs I like to read. It keeps all of my blogs in one location and lets me know when each of them has a new post. It's definitely a time-saver.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 2:27:00 PM EST  
Blogger Gabrielle of Design Mom said...

Heather, thanks for the tip on google reader. I'm going to check it out.

Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 10:24:00 AM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK, maybe I'm weird, ignorant or psuedo-paranoid, but that Tracksy site sounds creepy. I don't want other people to be able to track my internet habits - too Big Brother for me. Sorry Gabby - you know I luv ya.

Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 11:47:00 PM EST  

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