Wordle What?

This is a pretty neat little gadget.  You just go to this site, (http://www.wordle.net/) enter some text, or a URL, and the program generates an image with the words from that URL, or text that you entered, and the size of the text is a relation to how often it is used on your page.  This is a Wordle of this blog page.

You can also customize it by changing the colors, layout and font type, like this:

Neat PowerPoint presentation about social networking.Social media around the world 2011

View more presentations from steven van belleghem

Google knows everything.....just saying

http://www.google.com/intl/en-US/policies/privacy/

Here's Google's privacy policy.  I think they put in in fairly plain English that they know everything about you and your internet traffic, what you like, where you are.  They say the do it to make their services better for you, and to cater advertising to your liking.  A long, long time ago in a world we once knew, people had privacy.  The internet, and especially Google, has changed that.  20 years ago I could like peanut butter and no one would know unless I told them, or they asked me in a conversation.  Now, all peanut butter manufacturers know that I like peanut butter and they can bombard me with lots of peanut butter advertisements.  Thank you, Google, for breaking down a person's identity into search terms.  Where Google fails is that people's likes and dislikes change.  One day I may hate peanut butter, then what?  You are not only what you eat, but you are the many key clicks of your internet surfing.  And, Google, sometimes we end up on the wrong website, so being on a website doesn't really mean it's a personal interest.

What is up with templates?

I was cruising through craigslist and found a listing in computer jobs from a person who started to make a website on trendy sites.  This person did not know what they were doing and needed someone to help put the site together.  This article that I am linking has useful information about templates.  The bottom line, in my opinion, is that the design could be the easiest part of making a website, the part that takes time and attention is adding your content, and placing the content where it should be, and making sure the website is programmed to function in a way that is helpful to your business.  This article makes a few good points both in favor and not of using templates.  One thing that I saw in the downsides is that a template is set for specific sizing, and if you have more content for one area than the template allows, it could misplace everything on the page.  For instance, if a template has a space for an image that is 72px by 72px, and you try to put an image that is 225px by 225px in that spot, your image will take up a lot more room on the page than the way the template shows.  If you find a template style that you like, you can always show that to a designer and developer, and they can make a site for you that looks just about the same.
Advantages and disadvantages of using web templates or WYSIWYG editors for web designing.