Useful links
Here's a list of my most recently-bookmarked web pages. Click a category in the menu to filter by that topic.
- 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing
The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. Now that the search engines are all pretty geeked up over real time search you can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter. - The Complete iPhone Development Toolbox
Everything you need to get started; books, tutorials, software resources, screencasts, podcasts, blogs, forums, conferences, software libraries, design kits, icons, and even where to hire a developer if you decide not to go it alone! - Social Networks Play a Major Part in How We Get News
Based on a sample of 2,259 adults, this study reveals that 75% of the people who find news online get it forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites. - Usability Review of Charity Websites Taking the Lead
A look at charity websites which have successfully developed their online brand using modern and creative ideas, and how each charity website can be improved in terms of design or usability. - 10 Tips for Successful Twitter Fundraising
Twitter has been used to raise hundreds of thousands for charities and charitable causes, and has been used to spread awareness about social issues. - The Missing Google Analytics Manual
A collection of links to implement, configure and get insights from Google Analytics. - 10 things never to leave out of a web design brief
Brief writing really is a tricky skill to master, but you can still write a detailed brief by following these simple steps, and vitally by knowing your own business. - 25 Examples of Convincing Call-To-Action Buttons
A look at 25 of the most convincing call-to-action buttons found on the web and why each individual button is so successful. Hopefully, they’ll give you an idea of some basic does and don’ts and help inspire your own designs. - Creating the Future of Media: 4 Driving Forces, 4 Strategic Issues, 4 Essential Capabilities
It is our role and responsibility to create the future of media, rather than to let it happen to us. To do that, we need to examine the most central driving forces, strategic issues and capabilities in the evolving media landscape. - Web Writing: Simplicity is Key
Writing for a website is a very different skill from writing for radio and television - it's even different from writing for a newspaper. Tips from the BBC College of Journalism - Strategizing Web Content - Writing for the Web
When it comes to designing a website, content is often overlooked, but why? Users come for the content. Not giving them what they want with poorly written content will frustrate users. - data.gov.uk
This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data to developers outside of government who have the skills and abilities to make wonderful things out of public data. These are the government's first steps in building a collaborative relationship with developers. - BBC Democracy Live
- The 20 Best Productivity and Personal Development Blogs
It’s time to take control of your career and get things done, faster and more effectively. Here's a list of some of the best productivity and personal development related blogs on the web. - 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
FiveSive advanced strategies for small businesses that may already have small online communities and understand how to create an online presence, but don’t know what to do next. - Rock Solid HTML Emails
There are a whole host of ingredients that contribute to a good email marketing campaign. The biggest challenge for designers still remains building an email that renders well across all the popular email clients. - How the 2010 election will be won by blogs and tweets
- 13 Twitter Search Examples for Nonprofits
Here's some advanced Twitter search examples so that nonprofits can get the best out of the world's fastest-growing social network. - 7 Ways News Media are Becoming More Collaborative
News organizations are partnering to produce the news, while journalists are working with the audience to bring them content that they demand. - 11 Blogs to Help You Become a User Experience Expert
There are UX focused blogs out there that are loaded with info, tips, and insights that can help you in your journey to becoming a user experience expert. Here are 11 of the best. - How to Find Anything Online: Become an Internet Research Expert
By learning how to research, you can quickly and fairly easily become knowledgeable about just about anything. And with the Internet, almost anything you could ever want to know is at your fingertips. You just have to learn how to access it. - 10 News Media Content Trends to Watch in 2010
News in 2010 will blur the lines between audience and creator more than ever in an era of social media. This article looks at several trends in content distribution and presentation that we will likely see more of in 2010. - 4 Social Good Trends of 2009
In a world where technology and innovation is driven almost exclusively by profit, web 2.0 users have brought the spirit of giving to the fore. Here are some great examples of 2009’s social good trends. - Mag+, a concept video on the future of digital magazines
Magazines have articles you can curl up with and lose yourself in, and luscious photography that draws the eye. And they’re so easy and enjoyable to read. Can we marry what’s best about magazines with the always connected, portable tablet e-readers sure to arrive in 2010? - 10 Rules for Increasing Community Engagement
Here are 10 tips for increasing user engagement that work for news community web sites, but can apply to all types of online user-engagement communities. - Reporting poverty: an online resource for journalism educators and students
A website from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation bringing together a range of resources to help journalism tutors, trainers and students to understand the issues and sensitivities involved in reporting poverty in the UK, with practical guidance and examples. - The idiot's guide to Google Wave
Google Wave is a revolutionary new way to keep in contact with people and collaborate on documents and could completely replace email. But how does it work? - BBC College of Journalism
The BBC's dedicated centre of excellence for training in journalism, production, leadership and technology covers craft skills, ethics & values, with hundreds of video and audio examples. - Event Planning Online: 14 Essential Social Media Tools
Free tools make planning events easier than ever. From the first stages of planning through post event followup, there are tools for every detail. - Seven Steps to Compelling Testimonials for Nonprofit Organizations
It’s challenging to get the right testimonials from your network. But you can count on getting strong material when you ask questions as soon as possible after an individual’s interaction with your organization. Here's how. - The Most Powerful Marketing Copy in the World - Testimonials
Nothing you can say or write has as much impact as comments from your audience, to their peers. Testimonials are as authentic as you can get. Yet, many nonprofits don’t put testimonials to work. - The Social Media Marketing List: 45 things you should be doing but probably aren't
When discussing social media marketing, people say things like 'be authentic' and wave their hands around. But what does that mean? Here's a list of 45 specific things you should be doing. - 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow's Journalist
2010 will likely be a time of transition as today’s journalists catch up to learn the multimedia, programming, social media, and business skills they’ll need to tell their stories online. - The Shutdown of UWIRE and the Implications for College Media
"UWIRE, a popular service that aggregated articles from student newspapers across the country, promoting student journalism both within higher education and to the outside world, has disappeared." What are the implications for college media? - New content-sharing site for student journalists
An Ohio University college-journalism content-sharing cooperative hopes a new wire-service-style Web site can help fill a hole in the student press. - The Content Strategist as Digital Curator
As businesses become ever more comfortable using the web to bring their product and audience closer, the techniques and principles of museum curatorship can inform how we create online experiences - particularly when we approach content. - Viral Marketing For Entrepreneurs
An interactive and technical tutorial about how viral marketing growth works and the lessons learned from the model. - The 4 Cornerstones of Social Media Monitoring
The four cornerstones of social media monitoring are Competitive Analysis, Product Development, Reputation Management and Outreach. Learn more about each here. - Mashable's Social Media Guide for Small Businesses
Whether you’re just signing up, or primed for some advanced social marketing, the posts included here have all the tips, tricks, and wisdom you’ll need to take your brand to the next level. - How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
Sometimes the path of web design doesn't run smooth. Here's how it can go downhill fast. - 10 Things to Consider when Writing for the Web
Writing for the web is a challenge. There are usually word length restrictions, the fact that users scan rather than read every word, and sometimes style guides to adhere to. Here are 10 useful tips. - How To Create The Perfect Client Questionnaire
Creating a client questionnaire isn’t complicated, though it can be a bit time-consuming if you don’t know where to start. - Essential tools to start a social enterprise.
A compilation of the best resources to help you get your social enterprise planed, designed, launched and creating a sustainable impact. - 15 Useful Resources to Get Clued Up on HTML5
Check out this collection of some of the best resources from various blogs and websites in the industry. Each one gives an interesting insight into what HTML5 has in store with detailed write-ups, tutorials and handy cheat sheets to help you along your way. - The Ultimate Toolbox for iPhone Development
70 tools, tutorials, and resources to help you get started developing your own iPhone apps - everything from basic tutorials to templates to resource libraries to help you on your way. - COI Usability Toolkit
The Central Office of Information have developed a usability toolkit to help Web editors and Web content developers incorporate the basics of usability across all public sector websites. - What is Good Content? A Working Definition and Some General Principles
Good content is a necessary foundation for most successful blogs. High quality content makes it easier for someone to recommend it to friends or other potential readers. - 11 Ways to Influence People Online and Make Them Take Action
Influence can be defined as the power exerted over the minds and behavior of others. A power that can affect, persuade and cause changes to someone or something. - Twitter - is it a help or a hindrance to journalism?
Can Twitter help curate journalism as well as feeding it? - After Fort Hood, another example of how "citizen journalists" can’t handle the truth
Has social media and citizen journalism turned us all into inhumane egotists rather than journalists? - How to set up an e-commerce site using PayPal to process
Want to set up your own online store instead of dealing with eBay? There's an easy way to get started that uses PayPal as a credit card processor, allowing you put together a simple store without major monthly commitments. - UK journalists on Twitter
Here's a resource you might find handy. A simple list of journalists who Tweet. Browse it, dip in, follow a few, find out how the pros are doing it. - A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples
- How-To Influence Influencers - Bloggers, Tweeters & Others
This article pulls together resources, tips and advice that can help you identify influential bloggers and other social media users and develop strategies to engage your targeted influencers in ways that will help you achieve your objectives. - Digital Storytelling: A Tutorial in 10 Easy Steps
Digital storytelling is a craft that uses the tools of digital technology to tell stories about our lives.Digital stories come in all sizes and shapes, from a simple video blog that recounts an interesting episode to a more sophisticated treatment that follows a narrative arc and relies primarily on images and found materials. - Twitter Guide Book by Mashable
Where do new Twitter users go to learn about Tweeting, retweets, hashtags and customizing your Twitter profile? Where do you go if you want to know all about building a community on Twitter, or using Twitter for business? How can you find advanced tools for using Twitter on your phone or your desktop? Find out here. - About Web Journalism
About.com's comprehensive section about journalism contains links to articles about web journalism. What is it, how can you use it to find sources for stories then distribute the results, and what are the best tools to use? - How Local Politicians are Using Social Media
It used to be that most of us couldnt point out our local representative, councilman, alderman, or public advocate if we tripped over him or her, but thats starting to change, thanks to social media helping us raise our civic literacy levels and altering the way politics are done. - Jan Moir, Trafigura and the power of online social networks
The public online response to the Trafigura super-injunction and then Jan Moir's article on Stephen Gately highlighted the power of networks such as Twitter to exert pressure on news organisations, the law and advertisers. - Mashable: The Social Media Guide
Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what's new on the web and offering social media resources and guides. - How to run a one-person web design agency
"Knowing yourself, working hard, playing even harder and being able to quickly switch between different tasks is a start". A look at how a one-man-band achieves a great working life. - How To Track Twitter Stats, Clicks, And Trending Topics
With all the fuss about Twitter, we thought you might be interested in some ways to track your Twitter statistics, including ways to look at your account stats, some options for tracking Twitter trends, and several different ways to track your Twitter traffic. - The History and Evolution of Social Media
This article reviews the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day. - Social Media Sites Demographics
Who are all these people that spend time on social media? Are they your customers? Do you want to engage with them? - 100 Online Tools for Non-Profits
Here are 100 different applications to help you out with a variety of tasks from project tracking and collaboration to donor and membership management, and from building your non-profit website to tracking its effectiveness. - How To Set Up a Winning Facebook Fan Page
If you’re a business owner, you really need to set up a Fan Page, or else you risk being left behind as more businesses shift to social networks like Facebook. This post is a beginner’s guide to setting up and getting the most out of a Page on Facebook for your business. - Interviewing Web Developers - 20 Good Questions to Ask
A list of web development related questions, not specific to any particular type of development position, but balanced between the design/html/usability side of things and the back-end/database/programming side. - Internet Manifesto
How journalism works today. Seventeen declarations. - Corporate Social Media, from Macro to Micro
In the past, the official position of a company was the only public position a company would have. Today, a company's public face is a composition, a myriad voices, all different, yet all on the same cultural page. - 51 Great Sites For Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability
A list including "must-have" websites, blogs, resources and people to follow on Twitter, all about Corporate Social Responsibility. - Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: Twitter Postings
Optimising Twitter postings through five rounds of iterative design - 20 Ways to Change the World in Only 15 Minutes a Day
If you can find just a small amount of time per day, you can give back to your local or global community in a way that can reap benefits to your mood and psyche that far outweigh the time you’ve "given up" from another hobby or habit. - The Nonprofit Social Media Listening Primer
These are very short pieces about the art and science of social media listening techniques from the lens of nonprofit organizations. As you read these brief pieces, think about how you might use some of the techniques. - The brave new world of slacktivism
Slacktivism describes feel-good online activism that has zero political or social impact. It gives those who participate in slacktivist campaigns an illusion of having a meaningful impact on the world without demanding anything more than joining a Facebook group. - How to Create Your First iPhone Application
This how-to guide is supposed to walk you through the steps to make your idea for an iPhone app a reality. This post presents various ideas, techniques, tips, and resources that may come in handy if you are planning on creating your first iPhone application. - New to Nonprofit Technology? Here's a Brief Overview
If you’re New to Nonprofit Technology, Heather Carpenter offers an overview of major sites and resources with links sorted into categories including web presence, using technology to fundraise, social media, books & reports - NonProfit Technology
Ten highlighted articles chosen to represent a variety of viewpoints and usable information about nonprofit technology - 20 SEO Tips That Every Web Developer Should Follow
One aspect of web development that is many times overlooked is search engine optimization. This list outlines some basic SEO techniques that will help you make friends with Google, and increase your page rank. - The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers
These free books offer useful advice, strategies, and resources for people considering a career in the nonprofit sector. - A councillor's guide to social media
this wiki has been written to build some concise guidance on how councils and councillors can use social media to improve services and connect with citizens. - Free Ebooks on Marketing, Social Media, Business, Blogging and More
These books range in topics, from blogging tips, marketing, networking, feature writing and more. - 100 Incredible Philanthropy Blogs
These blogs will help you get a clearer picture of philanthropic projects large and small, and ways that you can get the greatest result from dedicating your time or money. - The essentials of information design
By co-ordinating a range of design, language, evaluation and technical skills, information designers play a vital role in making complex information easy to understand and use. - Knowhow Nonprofit
Everything you need to know about setting up, growing and running a nonprofit, including information about people, funding, training, governance, amrketing & campaigning. - Campaign Central
Campaign Central offers free resources for charities and community groups that want to lobby for change, providing free guidance for campaigners on topics such as how to use the media and how to stay within the law. There is also an online community to enable charities involved in campaigning to discuss their work. - The Journalist's Guide to Facebook
Journalists and the institutions they write for are finding Facebook to be an important resource in conducting the reporting that they do. Reporters and media companies are using Facebook to engage with their audience, connect with sources and build their brands. - A Guide to Crowdfunding Success
Here’s what you need to know before diving into a crowdfunding program and how to succeed. - A Nonprofit’s Guide to Building Simple, Low-Cost Websites
Guidance on how to plan a new website and how to maintain an online presence using tools that you don’t have to be a web developer to master, including tips for finding volunteers with web expertise who can help along the way. - In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero
Social media can drastically reduce much of the overhead involved with higher education and open source or reusable and adaptive learning materials can drive costs down even further. - Fundraising through the mobile phone
With 6.6 billion people in the world and over 3 billion mobile devices, there are more mobile phones than credit cards, cars and televisions. - A Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools
This is an easy to read guide that will help you understand and use the full power of Google Analytics, including its many under-used features and reports. - 10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media
Instead of focusing their attention on promoting information to mainstream media, some university public affairs offices are using the power of social media to engage the community directly. - The Brave New World of Social Impact Data
A practical explication of systems for social impact data collection and reporting. - 7 Excellent Open Courseware Collections for Digital Photographers
The following open courseware collections aim to help students move from just playing around with a digital camera to creating works of art. - Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
Yahoo's Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 34 best practices divided into 7 categories. - 100 Best Blogs for School Librarians
School librarians, whether they work small college libraries, large research universities and departments, or elementary schools, need to stay current on the latest in technology innovation, reading lists, the publishing world, ebook trends, special project and lesson ideas, and a lot more. - Top 8 Social Media Tracking Tools
According to Omniture, over 200 million searches are conducted every single day and 78% of people trust recommendations by peers. But how should nonprofits track their social media? What tools should they use? - 80 Corporate Website Designs For Design Inspiration
A perfect layout, A good design and nice resource can produce a creative output. Layout, textures and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. - 80 Creative and Well-designed Logos
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and that is definitely true when it come logo design. A memorable logo is always a plus if one wants to ensure first-time visitors to their websites will return in future. - 10 Tools to Improve Your Site’s Usability on a Low Budget
Testing the usability of your site is one of the smartest things you can do. Usability involves making a website’s interface easier to use and simpler to understand, so that the user’s experience is as enjoyable as possible.