Free Book: Getting Real

Getting Real, a book elaborated by the company 37 signals (creators of Basecamp, Ta-da List and others), is already available and free, only online. The PDF version to download still continues costing US$ 19.00.

The book had very good reviews, for what is a recommended reading. It’s not a practical book but rather theoretically (planning, skills, advices and philosophy) that looks for the simplification of the Web cycle development and the orientation to the final user.

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Digg for sale

Digg is for sale and not precisely for bargain. Michael Arrington asks for his creation the amazing quantity of 150 million dollars, something that doesn’t seem to convince the possible buyers, between whom (it is said) is News Corporation.

And even when nobody denies that Digg should be one of the Web 2.0 pioneers, is discussed that they have so much traffic as says. Digg assures they have 20 million unique users a month and continue increasing. But ComScore’s external statistics, registered in September only 1.3 millions unique users, and a growth reduced from April. Of course, ComScore is not excessively trustworthy, but the difference is too big.

The certain thing is that, sooner or later, Digg was going to sell. Simply it doesn’t turn out to be profitable and there is no one who supports the costs of broad band that they suppose. To have an idea, it is supposed that they use 75 servers to do the work of 25.

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Free WordPress with your own domain

This is a very good new for wordpress.com users. From now it’s possible to redirect your own custom domain for only 10 dollars per year and use it in your blog. The WordPress team takes charge of the whole adjustment process.

Free WordPress with own domain

Besides, if you don’t have a domain, you can register in WordPress and add domain mapping for 15 dollars a year. The offer seems to be very good: free hosting that, even with limitations, is ideal for those that they don’t wish or cannot administer a web.

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Google Co-op

Google Co-opGoogle has just throw a new service (in beta), called Google Custom Search Engine (Google’s Personalize Seeker).

Actually, more than a new service, it’s the improvement of ” Adsense for search ” and also looks like the response to a very seemed service that Yahoo! offers. Between Google Co-op’s principal characteristics we have:

  • Define search engine
  • Refine searches (tags)
  • Add logo
  • Change result color and styles (title, text, links, and more)
  • Include AdSense ads.
  • Invite up to 100 collaborators for the seeker maintenance
  • Available API

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CSS changes for IE7

The development team of Internet Explorer 7 have published a post indicating the “improvements” of the new browser. Useful improvements for the CSS design and that only work under the <! DOCTYPE> switch, this to preserve the compatibility with IE’s previous versions.

Between the changes, I find five essential ones:

  • Support of Min/max width/height (ideal for designs with images)
  • To show transparent PNG (alpha channel support)
  • To show: hover in all the elements (not only for links)
  • Fixed Position‘s Support (to support a fixed element in certain position)
  • Background-attachment (to support the background of any fixed element)

And also it is necessary to emphasize the improvement of the support to the <objet> tag (to show multimedia – videos elements).

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The simplest RSS feed reader you could create

UsefulCode have published two small php classes that allow us to have a RSS feed reader in our web site. Actually, I have been testing it and indeed it has several deficiencies and many if we compare it with a powerful class, as Magpie RSS.

Nevertheless, it’s so simple to put it in execution that is ideal to do practices and to learn more about RSS’s managing with PHP.

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Download Internet Explorer 7

The final version or definitive version of Internet Explorer 7 is already available to download, right now only in English. Importantly: The requirement to be able to install the program is to use Windows XP Service Pack 2.

This version is practically similar to beta 2, no change or significant improvement:

  • We already commented the tab use, even when they cannot be reordered.
  • And they also announced that the safety has been improved, but already one has found vulnerability.

What I have noticed is that IE7 has a better speed performance, for what is advisable to download this official version or updated it.

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Delicious vs. Digg

Brian Clark has published in the performancing blog three reasons why Delicious is better than Digg and this in order to a recent publication of him that was promoted both in Digg’s front page and in Delicious’s popular top.

Let’s see the three reasons for which he thinks Delicious is better and also a few own opinions that show the opposite:

3 reasons why Delicious is better than Digg

 

Reason #1: Bookmarks are enduring

Though it is true that we keep a web site to return when we have more time; mostly, the users of Delicious view the page as a resource to which they will be able to return again and again. With Digg, the user simply votes, being able to provide, or not, traffic. Digg has a short term effect.

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How to make money with free services

A business model that VC* adores. Business 2.0 has published a series of advices to make money offering free services. Which is the strategy? The “Freemiums”services. That is to say, services 100 % free that attract users to a basic product, to offer then a special product, with a respective payment.

Examples of this strategy success are many, the Magazine mentions, between others, two examples: Adobe, which started by giving their PDF reader in 1995; and MySQL, the second company in open-source database software, that also offers it for free.

These are nine advices to begin your “Freemium” business:

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