Top Ten-A-Palooza

This Seth Godin post gives me some good ideas. How about a search for the phrase "Some of my favorites..." or "Some good ideas for getting started..."

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/02/the_top_10_ways.html

The Best Yahoo! Widgets

I, like many, have grown to love widgets. I was just starting to use Konfabulator when Yahoo! bought them and I was glad to see Yahoo! did nothing to ruin them. I tend to visit the Yahoo! Widget Gallery a few times a week to see if there's anything new and useful, but I find the interface for finding Widgets a little annoying. Like I wish they had an advanced search that let you filter based on user ratings. That would save me a lot of time sifting through a lot of sub-par widgets. However, I recently found a site called "The Most Downloaded Konfabulator Widgets" by Jon Aquino, which lists all the widgets by popularity and helps hunt down the cream of the crop. Why won't Yahoo! do this?

Anyway, I will likely spend some time hunting down more to add to my cadre. For now, here's what I use now:

• Yahoo! Weather A beautiful looking widget that shows everything you need at a glance.
• NY Times Reader Another attractive interface with a lot of customization.
• MultiRSSFeed A little on the ugly side but crams a lot of feeds into a small space.
• AllRecipes.com Recipe Finder VERY slick design from a terrific recipe site.
• Acura RDK Traffic A very polished interface with great traffic information.
• Yahoo! Notepad Access to quick notes from all your PCs. Very handy.

Most of Yahoo!'s own widgets are very well done and really take advantage of having a Yahoo! Account. It's also nice to see companies like Acura and AllRecipes.com creating more than just ads for themselves, but actual useful tools. That's good branding.

100 Ways to Finds Stuff

Charles Knight breaks down the search engine landscape and you're sure to find some great new search tools. I'm already digging Music Map and The Find and they're just in the introduction. I'll plow through the list and see if I can come up with a Top Ten from his Top 100.

MMMmmmmmm, search.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_100_alternative_search_engines.php

Is Flickr Editing Your Photos?

An interesting discovery by Kara at the Colors...Pretty blog. Apparently, she alleges, Flickr sharpens and improves images when you upload them to their service. Nice for amateurs, but possibly annoying for professionals. What if you intended a photo to look blurry in parts or altogether? Some Photoshop mavens might also prefer to do their own sharpening as well. Does Flickr use an unsharp, a sharpen, a smart blur, contrast enhancement? As Kara points out, this should probably be up to the user.

Colors...Pretty

Seth's Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint

While I can't completely agree with all of Seth Godin's points in his "Really Bad PowerPoint" post, I think he definitely makes some great points. You need to pass out detailed handouts after you present, which means you don't have to cram everything you want to say into every slide. Tell a story and use visuals to back it up. However I don't think bullets are evil and I've seen "minimalist" slides that simply don't work.

I like the concept of giving folks a visual and then letting them wonder what the heck it has to do with what your talking about, but you can't do that on every slide. Bullets help people who may have zoned out momentarily and unless you're the most compelling speaker in the world, zoning will happen.

However, I know a lot of consultants that could learn from Seth's guidelines.

Seth's Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint