1. Technorati – It’s been around for years but as I’m been working on a social media listening piece recently, I’ve rediscovered how useful it is. Essentially it is a directory of most of the blogs out there in the blogosphere and a search engine to peruse each of them. What’s most useful is that it gives an ‘authority’ and ‘rank’ to any blog, both against the whole of the Technorati listings, and within its own specialists sector e.g. sports, medical, travel, etc. ‘Blog Authority’ is based on an algorithm of popularity, links, relevancy and frequency of content and is particularly useful when researching which blogs within a sector one might engage with to do a spot of online PR.
2. Goodsie – This ‘create your own online store’ eCommerce platform looks just amazing and is inspiring us all to set up our own eCommerce businesses! For just $15 a month it provides small businesses with a great platform for their online store. Plus, I love the simple, modern design of the Goodsie website. Nice large font as live text, simple but clever navigation which keeps all the key info on the homepage … beautiful.
3. Pinterest – Yes I know this was the flavour of last month but I finally got my Pinterest invite through and I think it’s fantastic. It’s now easier than ever to store all the beautiful and interesting images you might come across on your day to day web browsing, in your own personalised categories. It looks great too (even if it is a bit girly!).
4. Responsive design – This is the next level in the technique of web design and build for multiple devices. By using some nice HTML5/CSS3 wizardry, and most importantly designing the best user experience for each device the website will be viewed on, means we can create a single website, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate, whatever the device and screen size.My favourite example right now is Smashing Magazine . To see what I’m harping on about, grab the corner of your browser window and resize to smaller and larger screen sizes, right from smartphone, to tablet, to huge iMac type screen and watch in awe as the navigation and content moves to fit the screen size perfectly. We’re currently employing this design on some of Turn Key’s own upcoming sites.