The Bivings Gorup recently launched what is easily, as far as we are aware, one of the most advanced multilingual sites made in Drupal ever built. The International Journalists’ Network, or IJNet can be seen here: www.ijnet.org. The website, built for the non-profit organization International Center For Journalists (ICFJ), leverages Drupal’s built in multilingual capabilities together with a number of custom fixes and changes.

Key challenges included:

• Creating a flexible page layout interface that allowed site administrators to easily create and customize sections in both left and right columns, giving them new colors, any kind of custom or dynamic content, as well as being able to define their own section colors.
• Having full-featured mutilingual social elements on the site, including user profiles, inter-user messaging, user networking, user network activity feeds, user comment posting, user article posting, and many other dynamic social elements.
• Enabling users to easily view the site in right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Persian.
• Creating custom displays of the site for low resolution monitors.
• Creating a platform suitable for managing mutliple mailing lists for use with third party mail systems.
• Allowing the client to easily add new languages to the platform when desired.

The International Center For Journalists administers IJNet and creates its content in five different languages, and counting…

Take a look at the site at www.ijnet.org and let us know what you think!

As if our web developers didn't already have enough standards-fudging and code-juggling to optimize websites for every conceivable end-user browser, Google launched the public release of Google Chrome today — and I was right in line to download it. The Installation .exe file was small (a little over 400 kb), only to connect to the internet and download the entire binary. I am writing this very post using the new browser, and here are some of my initial opinions on the new kid on the block.

Upon installation, I fell in love with its menu bar. I recently purchased an Eee PC 901, which has a maximum resolution of 1024×600 — so screen real estate is of particular interest to me. The menu/navigation is a minimalist's dream: tabs at the very top, address bar, drop-down menus from within the address bar. The extra 50 or so vertical pixels it saves on my screen is quite noticeable on this netbook when compared to Mozilla Firefox.

Each tab in Google Chrome is treated as a different process (at least in Windows XP) when I open up the task manager. I am not really sure what this does in terms of efficiency, but it is a different approach than Firefox (which I have been known to inflate to nearly a gigabyte through the over-use of tabs). If you have an opinion on this technical matter, please, let us know in the comments!

The Chrome's default start page is like the desktop version of iGoogle. It will apparently track the most visited sites, and display them in page previews for easy access. I am not convinced of this yet, but it could turn out to be a great addition to a streamlined product.

I fooled around a bit on Meebo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail, Flickr, and some WordPress installations, all without encountering any glaring errors or compliancy issues.*

Since the blogs and forums I frequent will be all ablaze about this over the coming months, I thought I'd get my limited initial reaction to the product out there with the promise of a full review to come. Something to add? Drop it in the comments.

*Update: The WYSIWYG editor in WordPress doesn't appear to be very compatible with Google Chrome. More comparisons and compatibility issues to come in the full review. 

Yesterday I listened in on a Marketing Profs Seminar titled "Actionable Web Analytics: Unleash the Marketing Power of Your Web Data."  During this seminar Google Analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik gave several straight forward tips on how to better harness web analytics data.

The tip that I liked the most is to look at the bounce rate data for referring pages. Of particular interest are the pages with the lowest bounce rates. A low bounce rate is a good indicator that traffic referred from this site is more likely to convert and accept the site's call to action.

Part of search engine optimization (SEO) is garnering high quality links on other sites that can help drive quality traffic to one's site, and using this bounce rate data is an easy way to identify some great sites to consider requesting more links from.  In fact, this strategy is not only accessible to analytics gurus, even those new to using web analytics programs can quickly find and analyze such data. 

The seminar costs money to view, but you still learn from Kaushik at his blog Occam's Razor.

Anti-drug, non-profit websites have a habit of being either dry or so ridiculously overdone that it can make even a seasoned web surfer's eyes bleed. (Don't get me started on the Sunny Side of Truth website…the left navigation bar still infuriates me.)

Today I have discovered a non-profit website that not only gets direct to the point, but utilizes creative Web 2.0 gimmicks.

Through an advertisement on YouTube's homepage, I found the Full Apologies site, dedicated to stopping drunk driving.  The ad cleverly asked me, "What would you do if you killed your best friend?" and invited me to view someone's apology for doing just that.  Admittedly curious, I clicked on the link.

What I found was a simple, yet effective, site that had taken the time to think of its audience rather than snagging all the latest toys from the Web 2.0 grab bag (which is getting pretty heavy).  Upon first entering the site, there is a view of five teenagers' faces with their biographies under them.  Clicking on one of them will begin playing their "apology" to a loved one for their drunk driving mistake.  The video automatically displays in full screen mode, which design-wise, adds a lot to the overall effect.  It's as if they are talking to me, because there head is the size of my head!

The apologies are…for lack of a better word, intense.  I was expecting the same kind of thing I have seen in tobacco commercials on television, but what I got was seemingly sincere monologues filled with tears, bleeped-out cursing, and emotion.  I had to take breaks in between each of them to gather myself.

After the initial videos, a user is likely to notice the top navigation bar which contains several clever features.  Of course, there are the obligatory help-line phone numbers and information, but the creators of the site got clever with the other parts.

Two digital shorts show what life would be like after you survived a drunk driving accident.  These are just as intense and thought-provoking as the apologies.  A section titled "Visitor Apologies" lets users write anonymous text about their experiences with drinking and driving.  These apologies can be viewed as a list or in a funky 3D format.

Two other notable features that I found unique were the "Responsibility Randomizer" and the "B Safe Txtrs".  The Randomizer allows you the input your cell phone number along with your friends, and the program will send a text message to all the phones, picking someone as the designated driver for the night.  The site claims that everyone will know "who to thank at the end of the night".

B Safe Txtrs is similar to the Randomizer.  The user inputs their cell phone number as well as a message and time.  The program will send that text message to your phone at the designated time, which the creators intend to be something along the lines of "Don't Drink and Drive tonight."  It's simple and mundane, but seems like something that might work.

Thankfully, the site doesn't go overboard with social networking options, which would clutter this simple site.  Users can email the site link to a friend or post a message about it through Facebook.

That's it.  No useless fluff.  No unnecessary style or animation.  Just some jarring testimonies and potentially useful tools.

A few days ago the John McCain campaign launched a new version of their social networking tool, McCainSpace.  Having written about McCainSpace critically before, I figured I’d share some quick thoughts on the tool:

(1) The new version is built using a white label social networking product called KickApps, and features your typical suite of socnet tools: user generated blogs, videos and photos, groups, user profiles, friends, etc.  Kickapps is a nice tool and McCainSpace is professionally done.  However, this is clearly an out of the box solution with generic tools that could be used to power a community of dog lovers or wine aficionados, for example.  There is really nothing about this social network that has anything to do with taking action and winning elections.

The secret of the success of Barack Obama’s social network is that at its heart it is really a social action center.  When you login to My.BarackObama, you are pushed to make phone calls to undecided voters, knock on doors and raise money for the campaign, not to produce content.  Sure, that functionality exists on the Barack Obama website but it isn’t the main point.  The main point of My.BarackObama is to help Obama get elected.  The same cannot be said for the much more nebulous McCainSpace.

Check out these screengrabs of the Obama and McCain tools to see the difference in emphasis.

(2) Even if you disagree with me and like the actual tool set of McCainSpace, I think it is too late in the game to be launching something like this.  Mike Turk summed it up pretty well during a conversation we had with Wesley Donehue on Twitter about the tool:

“Why, oh why? What possessed them to launch a new SocNet with 70 days left? No time to market and they should be beyond that stage.”

Exactly.  Communities take time to build.  This same exact tool launched a year ago might have made a real impact.  This late in the game it seems like too little too late to me.

(3) The McCain campaign’s commitment to their new toy seems pretty weak.  I found out about the new site via an email from the campaign.  However, when I go to the main website and click on the links to  McCainSpace, I’m taken to the old, extremely limited version of the tool people like William Beutler and Mike Turk have been rightly criticizing for the last year.    So there appear to be two versions of McCainSpace running concurrently.I can’t even find a link to the new McCainSpace on www.johmccain.com and there doesn’t appear to be any real integration between the new tool and the campaign website.  Given this, I think the new McCainSpace may  just be a case of the campaign throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, as opposed to a well thought out initiative like My.BarackObama.

What do you think?

Update: Since I wrote my post, the McCain team has updated their site to integrate McCainSpace in a much more cohesive manner.

I'm kind of disgruntled right now with the Obama VP e-mail and text message campaign.  It now seems like a bait and switch scheme to me.

For the last couple of weeks, the political world was abuzz with excitement about whom presumptive (at least for the next couple of days) Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama would select as his running mate.  In a rather smart move, the Obama campaign announced that it would send the news first to its supporters who signed up for e-mail and text message updates.  This encouraged plenty of people to sign up in hopes of getting the announcement before the news broke.

Well, that's not how it really rolled out.  The campaign announced that Obama selected Senator Joe Biden as his choice of Vice President late Friday night/early Saturday morning.  I was up late watching the news coverage of this announcement, but I still had yet to receive my e-mail or text message.  Wasn't I suppose to get the news first?

Let me note that I understand that sending e-mails and text messages to a vast crowd can take some time to complete.  That's the trickle.  In fact, I expected that, but did the campaign and all those who signed up recognize that fact?  Did this delayed release annoy some people?  Maybe that's why the campaign sent this news when many people were either sleeping (particularly those of us in the Eastern Time Zone), drinking, or partying.  We could find out later in the morning after we got some sleep.

Now that the news is out and the Democratic Party is at its convention, it is time for the Obama deluge.  When I signed up for the text message and e-mail list to learn about Obama's veep stakes pick, I simply wanted to get the VP announcement.  However, I've gotten several e-mails from the campaign since the news broke.  Biden sent me a video.  Michelle Obama shared some behind the scenes moments from Denver.  Etc. 

Wait a second!  I didn't sign up for more e-mails.  This is something I didn't expect.  I would think that a campaign savvy enough to collect a massive contact list would understand better than to bombard people who agreed only to receive a single message.  The campaign should have created a separate list for this one-time use.  Hopefully, I won't continue to get more e-mails after the convention. 

At least so far I’ve only got one text message…  The one I wanted.  

Ok, maybe I'm a bad person who relies upon stereotypes too much, but one would think a site for geeks would actually have great features since geeks are so tech savvy.  Wrong.

While browsing through the magazine rack at Borders Books earlier this summer, I came across Geek Monthly with its cover girl, Tina Fey.  Either way, I read the article about her since I like her show 30 Rock and went home to check out the magazine's site.  I was expecting a great site that was graphically designed well with bells and whistles like easy to search sections, forums, great blogs, social media features, and great content.  I expected something like the beautiful site for Backpacker Magazine (since when did backpackers know so much about designing great websites?). However, as you can see in this image, like how the current cover boy (Rainn Wilson from NBC's The Office) is dressed, the site does not look pretty.

Either way, the Geek site has a rather distracting design, no clear navigation, seemingly no access to articles from past issues or from the current issue, no community features, etc.  It does have a blog, but not a great one.  You can also see an article from the current issue, but it pops up as a jpg…  What? 

So, I'm disappointed.  Were my expectations wrong in the first place?

The New York Times ran a story yesterday on the Barack Obama campaign’s aggressive use of text messaging this cycle.  I was interviewed for the article and a few of my quotes made the piece.   The reporter, Brian Stelter, interviewed me via email, so I figured I’d publish my responses in an effort to get an easy blog post out of the deal.  Questions and answers from the interview below.

In general, what do you believe the benefits are/will be to having a campaign reach voters via text message?

The most important benefit of text messaging is its immediacy.  Most people have their cell phones with them at all times, meaning text messages are received by people pretty much right after they are sent, no matter where the person is.  Most people still check their email on their computers, so people won’t get messages if they are out and about.  This means that text messaging is a great way to reach people when you have a timely message that needs to get out right away.  It is great for get out the vote efforts, political organizing, announcing last minute appearances, responding to crisis, etc. 

In addition, many people get an extremely high volume of email messages (spam in particular), which makes a campaign message less likely to be read and acted on, as it gets lost in the pure volume of the dreaded inbox.  Unlike email, most people are only getting text messages from close personal contacts and services they specifically opt in to, meaning there is less noise for the campaign to compete with. 

It is a great way to reach young voters who are heavy users of text messaging and in many cases have turned against email.  For a lot of young people text messaging is a primary mode of communication, supplanting regular phone calls and email.

Text message is still in its infancy as a political mobilization tool.  A lot of people simply don’t use text messaging yet and a lot of the people that do use it are reluctant to sign up to receive mass text updates.  They prefer to use texting solely for personal communication.  Due to this, I would suspect the text message lists of most political campaigns are extremely small.  If Obama or anyone is able to build a text list of a couple of hundred thousand people (or more) that would be a huge asset on election day.

Are there any obvious drawbacks?

Text messages are more expensive for the campaign to send than emails.  Also, depending on plans, people may actually get charged extra to receive the text messages the campaign sends.  I would also guess that people are less tolerant of messages they receive via text than those they receive via email - “don’t text me unless its important.” 

The result of these factors is that campaigns need to be careful not to abuse texting the way they do email.  It should be used judiciously - only send something out if you actually have something important to say.

Recently, we released our 2008 study of the senatorial campaign websites, and there was a particular element that stood out.  Podcasts were being used by fewer candidates than the year before, despite the fact that it seemed to be a very "tech-y" and potentially useful way to get a candidate's message across.

When I inquired to my co-workers about the discovery, one of them replied that he rarely used podcasts, and he believed that they were a "dying Internet art."  At first, I thought that he was alone in his opinion, but the numbers from the Senate report don't lie.

I decided to do a very informal poll of co-workers and friends to see how often they use podcasts.  I simply emailed 50 of my contacts and asked them two questions: "Have you listened to/downloaded a podcast in the last six months?" and "If so, where did you get it?"  All of the people polled were between the ages of 18 and 40, with a balanced gender ratio.

Then, I compiled all the responses and calculated the results.  The graphs (made using ImpactWatch reporting and graphing tools) displaying the data are below.

It's interesting to note that it seems like my co-worker was correct; most people don't really use podcasts.  At least two of the people that I contacted did not even know what a podcast was.

Of those who listened to podcasts, a majority (nearly a 2/3 supermajority) used iTunes to download them.  Several people were unaware of other ways to procure them.  Are users just ignorant of podcasts?  Are they going out of style?  Or both?

I would venture that the rise in the popularity of blogs has killed the podcast.  Reading a blog is quicker than listening to a podcast, and blogs require a MUCH shorter attention span.  Graphs and the spreadsheet of the data follow:

UPDATE: Chuck pointed me towards this report by Universal McCann that displays on page 63 that podcasts in the US are used by 29.5% of users, which is consistent with my poll.

Excel Spreadsheet of Podcast Poll Data

A few weeks ago we unveiled our favorite WordPress plugins. Drupal is another popular CMS platform we utilize here at Bivings. Here's a list of favorite modules we've compiled for it as well. And as always, feel free to signup and contribute to our wiki.

• Embedded Audio Field - Defines a field type for displaying third party music, podcasts, and other audio, such as podOmatic and Odeo.

• Embedded Image Field - Defines a field type for displaying images from third party providers, such as Flickr.

• Embedded Media Field - Provides an engine for modules to integrate various 3rd party content providers, such as Video Neighborhood, Image Neighborhood, and Audio Neighborhood.

• Embedded Media Import - Imports media from certain third providers, such as Flickr.

• Embedded Media Thumbnail - Allows custom thumbnails for Embedded Media Fields.

• Embedded Video Field - Defines a field type for displaying third party videos, such as YouTube and Google Video.

• Active Search - Adds AJAX to standard Drupal search.

• Activeedit - Provides AJAX-based in place editing.

• Activemenu - Adds AJAX-based tree menu to navigation menu.

• AJAX submit - Makes designated forms submit via AJAX.

• Collapsiblock - Makes blocks collapsible.

• JS Calendar - Enables popup calendars for selecting dates using the jscalendar library.

• Tabs - A helper module for creating tabbed pages.

• TBG_NODETEASER - Allows users to write custom teasers for content.

• PMM Main - Stands for Plugable Mass Mailer. Enables users to create an e-mail and pass it along to a mass mailing application.

• Event - Calendaring API, calendar display and export.

• Image - Allows uploading, resizing and viewing of images.

• Image Attach - Allows easy attaching of image nodes to other content types.

• Image Gallery - Allows sorting and displaying of image galleries based on categories.

• Image Import - Allows batches of images to be imported from a directory on the server.

• Organic Groups - Enables users to create and manage their own 'groups.'

• OG calendar - Displays calendars for groups.

• IMCE - An image/file uploader and browser supporting personal directories and user quota.

• Lists - Allows mailing lists subscriptions.

• Private - Allows users to mark content as private, and hide that content from visitors.

• TinyMCE - The most popular WYSIWYG editor for advanced content editing.

• Webform - Enables the creation of forms and questionnaires.

• JQuery Update - Updates Drupal to use the latest version of JQuery.

• Meta tags - Allows users to add meta tags, eg. keywords or description.

• Administrative Menu - Adds an alternative menuing system that makes it easier to access Wordpress admin tools.

People that work in online politics know that a massive email list is the most valuable asset you can have.  A big email list equals fundraising clout and influence.

Yesterday, the Barack Obama campaign announced that they would be revealing his pick for Vice President to supporters via email and text.  The campaign is urging supporters to sign up to receive an email alert to be the “first to know” who the pick is, moments after the decision is made. 

Frankly, the language is a bit vague, as it could be read to mean he will announce his VP exclusively via email and text or simply that they will send an email out as they announce the pick on television or elsewhere, which would be nothing new. 

Regardless, this is a brilliant and novel list building stunt.  The story immediately jumped to the front page of sites like Digg and word of the special VP announcement list is undoubtedly spreading via email and text.  Indeed, after signing up for the list on both text and email you are encouraged to tell your friends and family about the exclusively opportunity to be the first to know about the pick (screen shot below - click for full size). 

I can guarantee you this stunt will help Obama build his list by reaching people who normally wouldn’t sign up for a political list.  A really smart move. 

I read an interesting ebook yesterday titled The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook by Daniela Barbosa of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.  She's a product manager working with the taxonomy and metadata management tool Synaptica.  In this "cookbook" Barbosa argues that companies should use both taxonomies (created top-down with rigid rules) and folksonomies (created from the top-up with flexible rules) to organize their data.

One place where we see folksonomies in play is on social bookmarking sites like Delicious (now sans awkward periods).

Basically, Barbosa argues that folksonomies help create data structures that are easier for a company's employees to use when searching for specific data.  Used in concert with taxonomies, folksonomies can help logically organize data in a flexible manner that creates additional ways to search and sort data.  It's a good read.

A major point of the ebook is that companies should not fret too much about creating rules for their folksonomies to avoid unruly systems.  Barbosa argues that administrators can edit tags, delete offensive ones, create synonyms and aliases, etc.  Further, the existing taxonomy can place tags with multiple meanings in proper context.  Is "mouse" an animal or computer input device?  When the taxonomy for that data item alludes to hardware, then mouse is associated with computers.

I can see how too many rules imposed on a folksonomy can impair its robustness.  If individuals are forced to use tags that are not natural to them, a company might as well stick with its taxonomy.  However, I reckon that companies should institute some basics tagging rules to help their folksonomies function well.

Some issues that rules should address are:

• Standardization of capitalization ("Daniela" vs. "daniela")
• Multiple words in tags ("mouse pad" vs. "mouse-pad" vs. "mousepad")
• Language (an issue for multi-national corporations)
• Use of numbers ("eight" vs. "8")
• Formatting ("080808" vs. "August 8, 2008")

Many tagging sites already have some of these rules.  For instance, on several occasions I have typed in a multi-word tags on a site that said to separate tags by commas only to have the first word in each tag actually used.  Thus, no spaces in tags on those sites.

Now, if you feel so inclined, what do you think?  Would rules like this hinder the robustness of a folksonomy since they could force individuals to think unnaturally?  If not, what are some other useful rules?

A post on ValleyWag recently announced that file-sharing uber-giant BitTorrent would be laying off 12 of its 55 employees.  This accounts for the entire sales and marketing department.  This decision has been made in light of the recent failure of BitTorrent's staff to sell Best Buy its Torrent Entertainment Network for a rumored $15 million.

Since it's only been a year since CEO Doug Walker replaced founder Bram Cohen, it's likely that the entire company may soon be considering a revamp.  After all, Walker commented on making some changes to the store idea last March.

There is speculation that the deal fell through mostly due to the FCC and MPAA's recent crackdown on file sharing.  Outspoken Chairman of HDNet Mark Cuban freshly criticized the MPAA for combating the ‘problem' with prevention instead of promotion (we've all seen those commercials with the hip teens extolling the virtues of not stealing songs).

He claims that movie theaters need to invest in a positive message about the fun of going to the actual theater to watch movies, especially with the ever-growing price of admission.  Author of The Pirates Dilemma Matt Mason agrees with Cuban, saying that theaters should offer a movie-going experience and quality that will never be surpassed by file sharing.

Can you really ever defeat file sharing programs though?  No matter how great the quality and ‘experience', the fact remains that file sharing is free.  And "free" almost always wins.  Unfortunately for them, BitTorrent also recently learned that it's hard to sell something that's free.

As a required companion piece to this post, I have grudgingly crafted a review of the 5 sites that are on the lower end of the design scale. Some of these campaigns have no budget, and others are just a few years behind the times. Some others are just lazy. Although none require any real commentary, I need to take up some space on this blog and I think you’ll agree that I’ve done just that.

Kevin Scott

“Congress is broken and we need to fix it”, states Kevin Scott. At least it says that on his campaign site. This is where I might make a broken site joke, high five Todd and call it a day. But I’d rather focus on the awesome stars and stripes bastardization and glimmering flash treatment that Team Scott chose to waste time on rather than put some actual content on this little gem.

John J. Cina

Interesting. The navigation, by way of some type of…special effects-eye-trickery, appear to be actual three-dimensional buttons, that I can…wait. Oh, it really is just trickery. Well-played, Senatorial hopeful Cina. You’ve won this round.

Chris Lugo

Chris Lugo’s site is named voteforpeace, and his message is reinforced powerfully with the addition of a giant mutant peace flower that defies biology with its star-laiden center. All kidding aside, this is the weirdest Senate campaign site I’ve ever seen and as such is my new homepage.

John Kerry

What the hell happened here? My eye goes directly to Senator Kerry in his hot-pants. I know that wasn’t intended. There is content on the page, but it looks so uninspired. On the plus side, the sub levels are much better than this page. John J. Cina runs excited circles around this page. Then politely sits back down.

Vernon Jones

The flag on top actually waves (or pulsates, rather), the navigation arrows spin wildly on mouse-over, and the garish red fields inspire fear. It’s everything I look for in a campaign website, really, but just then I’m bowled over by…a digital, lifelike Vernon Jones entering stage right to help me through the process. He’s pretty smooth, and the implementation is well-done, but it’s just an unnecessary addition to a rather overblown, goofy effort.

Well, there they are in no particular order. Just 5 examples of perfectly good urls that went to waste.

DISCLAIMER: 4chan contains many images at which you should not look at if you are under 18…in fact, some of the stuff on this site I don't want to look at regardless of my age.  Visit the site at your own risk.

4chan is an addictive little site that is also incredibly useful.  Why haven't you heard about it before?  Well, chances are that you have, but you just did not know it.  4chan is the original source for some of the Internet's best memes, including Rick Rolling, so i herd u like mudkips, and LOLCats.  Yes, those highly time-wasting Internet phenomena all started from the same source.

4chan was created by a 15-year-old boy in his New York bedroom, simply to begin a website to post images and musings on Japanese anime.  This site was to be the mirror site to the Futaba Channel boards of Japan, commonly called "2chan".

Similar to another simplistic website, craigslist, 4chan slowly grew to a website that encouraged creativity in image posting, as well as other kinds of media files.  To participate is ridiculously easy, so much so that the free, anonymous posting ability has led to some raunchier images on the site.  The site contains some amusing, if not honest, ‘rules' that govern what you can do with the site.  Obviously, these have very little legal clout, but they are interesting nonetheless.  Below is a sampling:

1. Do not upload, post, discuss, request, or link to, anything that violates local or United States law. This will be severely punished and strictly enforced.
2. If you are under the age of 18, or it is illegal for you to view the materials contained on this website, discontinue browsing immediately.
3. Do not post the following outside of /b/: Trolls, flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled for catchphrases, macro image replies, indecipherable text (example: "lol u tk him 2da bar|?"), anthropomorphic ("furry"), grotesque ("guro"), or loli/shota pornography.
4. The posting of personal information or calls to invasion is prohibited. Advertising (all forms) is also not welcome-this includes any type of referral linking.
5. All boards that default to the Burichan (blue) theme are to be considered "work safe". Violators may be temporarily banned and their posts removed.

One can only wonder how seriously these rules are enforced, considering the overwhelming anonymity of the site.

Less than a month ago, the site has gained more attention than ever before as the now-20 Christopher Poole revealed his real identity (he went by the short nickname of ‘moot' while on the site).  This led to a lot of folks checking out the originatal website for the first time.

In a recent article, Jonathan Durden discusses advertisement in terms of websites like 4chan.  He describes 4chan rather well as "similar to YouTube, but less polished and more randomly edgy in its content and style."  Durden discusses how these mega communities of Internet users have not been able to cash in on their vast audiences because monetization challenges the very reason that people come to the sites.  Poole himself admits that his sole employee, a programmer, makes more than he does, which is still very little.  In an article in the The Wall Street Journal, Pools claims, "[his] biggest time spent has been convincing companies in marketing potential in 4chan but no one sees eye to eye."

Unlike many other sites of this variety, 4chan is still a modest operation which subsists mainly on the occasional donation drive directly through the website.  Before it can become more than modest, Poole has to get some investors to see his point about the site's advertising appeal, even though somehow the products of the site are more well known than the actual site itself.  I've seen LOLCats for months, but I never knew until recently that it began as ‘Caturdays' on 4chan.

Getting an article on the front page of Digg often takes a lot more than just writing good (or viral) content.   Many of the stories that make it to the Digg front page do so as a result of a mini-PR campaign, with submitters actively recruiting diggs via back channels such Twitter, email and IM, and by embedding Digg icons within the stories themselves to encourage digging.

But lately I’ve seen a few publishers taking their Digg promotion a step further, building sections on their websites devoted to promoting their stories on Digg. 

The best example I’ve seen of this type of integration with Digg is CollegeHumor.com, which has a section on its site where you can view College Humor stories in the Digg queue, stories that have recently made the front page and the all time most popular Digg stories.  A screenshot is below:

The Huffington Post has a similar feature on its site.  On just about every article page on the is a feature listing “HuffPost Stories Surging Right Now”, which lists stories in the Digg queue.  Screenshot below:

I think these features are really smart.  I’m sure there is a hardcore group of people that are willing to sort through the stories in the Digg Upcoming queue to find and vote for that one great story buried in a seas of mediocrity.  However, most Digg visitors rarely venture into the Digg upcoming section, but are willing to digg your content on your site if the story is engaging and you make it easy for them.  This is the rationale for the ubiquitous Digg buttons.  College Humor and Huffington Post take the concept a step further by creating little mini versions of Digg right on their own site. 

Like I said, that’s smart. Steal this idea. 

In putting together the report we released last week, The Use of the Internet by 2008 Senate Campaigns, my co-workers took the time to identify the websites of everyone running for the Senate this year.  Since my co-workers already did the hard part in finding the sites, I figured I’d cruise through the list and pick out my most and least favorites from a design perspective.    Presented below are the best designed homepages of the group, in my opinion.   I’ll write up the worst later in the week. 

(5) Mark Warner (D-VA)

There is no shame in coming in 5th place. My father said that to me after a disappointing 11th place finish in the Pinewood Derby.

Although there is a hint of Obama-borrowing here, I liked this site for its generous use of white space and logical placement of content/actions. The splash page sign-up is of course a real slap in the face but at least the skip through link is not hidden. My eye goes directly from the (only mildly annoying) logo to the contribute option to the actions. Everything on this homepage is easy to instantly recognize and quick to find (and then dismiss in my case).

(4) Rick Noriega  (D-TX)

To come in 4th place is to be a medal winner if one the top three is found to be juicing.

The Rick Noriega site is a solidly-designed effort that grew on me after I got past the turtle popping his head out of the shell portrait on the right. It’s weird and 3-D but at least he’s not staring at me. My eye (twitched, then) went directly to the 3 boldly displayed actions below his image. They are the most prominent graphics on the homepage and it makes sense to boil down the actions to just these three solicitations. I also like the general style of this site and the Texas star as design element. Goofy? Maybe, but no American flag in the huge horizontal blue field up top wins points.

(3) Gordon Smith (R-OR)

3rd place just feels good, doesn’t it? Comfortable, without the pressure of being considered the best by anyone, really.

There is a certain confidence in this design that allows it to look more like a Conde Nast magazine cover than a campaign website. Consider that the photography alone appears to have cost more than a lot of the other candidates’ sites entire budget. One latest news item. One Issue. The contribute button had to actually be searched out. No flags. No stars. Images of Oregon are the stars of this show with Senator Gordon Smith as your very understated MC. How the designers got this one past the goalie, I’ll never understand.

(2) Al Franken (D-MN)

2nd Place. Is there really a sadder finish than 2nd place? Yes there is. 3rd, 4th and 5th.

Al Franken’s site provides nothing new in terms of functionality or grassroots tools as far as I can tell. Why this site rates so highly is the execution and the site’s tone. This site is going for homey and actually pulls it off. The wood panel background? That just shouldn’t work, but because it is so toned down you almost don’t notice it. The palette used is unique for a political site and the layout is a tidy 1200 pixel or so vertical scroll that feels about right. Also of note is the lack of a stop sign red contribute button. It might seem like an insignificant touch, but consider this as an alternative.

(1) Scott Kleeb (D-NE)

Sound the horns. Release the pigeons. Kleeb wins!

Yes, Kleeb is actually a man’s name. Scott Kleeb, and he’s Nebraska’s Brand of Change! Alright, grammatically, that might be a little awkward, but stay with me and embrace the brilliance of this sepia-toned little beauty. Besides being totally different (at first glance) from all the other offerings, the designers spent a little time and money on image. Considering carefully the audience, this effort seems perfectly stylized to me, from the monotone palette to the spot-on photography. “Be a ranch hand volunteer”. Are you kidding me? That shot of the cowboy guy on the windmill? Come on. The logo is a cattle brand! This entire site design was risky and easily could have gone down the cringy path, but good principles keep it well above the fray. The information that is worth reading is well-placed and mostly above the fold, and the calls to action are bold and easily found. I think the page finishes well with the act | meet | more navigation organization as well. I’m in and out of this page quickly and onto whatever it is people actually do on campaign sites.

Tomorrow: The Losers.

Note: We do some political work, but did not consider sites we worked on in putting together this list.

Almost all the sites we build at The Bivings Group these days use Content Management Systems (we usually use Drupal or Wordpress).  However, we do occasionally build old fashioned static sites when we know a site isn’t going to be updated that often and/or it is design heavy and we’ll be charged with managing it.  SEOMoz has a great chart up showing the decision tree people should use in deciding whether they need a CMS or not.  The chart is embedded below and I think it pretty much nails the questions people should be asking.

Via her Twitter account, Katie Harbath recently pointed to a great list of U.S. newspapers with Twitter accounts. The list is being maintained by Erica Smith, who works for the St. Louis Post Dispatch.   She has updates for January, February/March, April, May, June and July. Erica is currently tracking 303 newspaper Twitter accounts, and the average account has 132 followers.

Below is a list of the accounts that have more than 800 followers.  Interestingly, six of the top eight newspaper Twitter accounts belong to the New York Times, which, if memory serves, has been using Twitter for quite awhile.

I wonder how many of these accounts are RSS bots vs. real people?  I’d guess 90% are RSS bots posting newspapers headlines automatically to Twitter accounts.

Check out Erica’s full post.

Update: In the comments, Nick Anstead points out that the Guardian Twitter account has 886 followers.  I updated the post to reflect that my numbers are for U.S. papers only.