Link of the day

FontStruct is the ultimate playground if you wanna get into creating your own fonts.

Online and all! Go.

Back in 1997 I worked with financial information online. That’s when I first met Mattias Miksche, back then at ETrade, today CEO on Stardoll.

Today ReadWriteWeb made me notice the fact that Nielsen Online has published a study of online Britons under age 23 and their favorite sites. Swedish Stardoll is right up there on top! Great work!

My scotch whisky blog keeps on jumping back and forth from page 2 to page 9 on the global Google.com search engine when you search for ‘whisky’ and it makes me go mad.

I’ve tried every trick in the (SEO) book to keep it steady on that second page since that drives about 1-2000 unique visitors a day. Then today I found the SEO pyramid made by Matt McGee. Now I’m filled with confidence. I will succeed!

You should head over there and climb it.

ps. While you’re at it. Take some time and visit Coach John Wooden’s pyramid of success. That one is a chocolate bar!

Right now we’re rebuilding Foreign.se, the website of the digital communication company that I was a part in founding more than 6 years ago.

While it’s down we’ve placed all our work on Flickr. Thought it was a nice opportunity to send my blogreaders that way too. So, head over there to see a selection of what I’ve worked with through out the years at Foreign.

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It makes me warm to see that companies out there are starting to utilize the possibilities that comes with social media. IKEA has definitely understood how to make good use of web-TV as they started their own IKEA.SE/TV where you are invited to upload your own interior decoration tips.

What’s even better is the fact that they’ve stuck to blogging standards when they have designed the whole thing and not fallen into the trap of trying to do something new and different. According to BuiltWith they’ve used Ruby on Rails to create it. However, I do recognize a lot of plugins, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Wordpress or something similar was stuck in the bottom of the whole thing.

Jacob Nielsen, famouse user interaction dude from Denmark once said: “People spend most of their time visiting other sites”

Thanks Reklamfeber for pointing this one out.

Scott Goodson, founder of Strawberry Frog posted a little piece on how marketeers should do when they are about to select a new advertising agency.

“Better agencies are not suppliers, they are more akin to business consultants and, as such, partners for your business. I stress partnership because the better communications firms are focused more on ideas and solutions and less on the distribution of media.”

Good point!

That’s me…focused.

Since about a month back, Europe’s leading speakers network - Talarforum - has taken me on as one of their speakers. I look forward to my first booking. 

Read more on their website (it doesn’t say I do speeches in both Swedish or English, but I do.)

…anything that has something to do with web development?

Look no further. Agencytool has created the definitive resource list for designing, developing, marketing & maintaining websites. The dashboard is not a 100% resource but it’s damn close. At least if people continue to suggest what’s missing it will be great. It’s definitely listed in my book.

Per Robert Öhlin - Mine Goes to Eleven was sent on a mission by Judith - En timme om dagen. And now I feel obligated to pass along the torch.

The mission is basic and simple. I was picked as one of Per’s favorite blogs. And therefore I should tell the world about my 7 favorite reads. So here we go. (oh, before we start, Mine goes to eleven is one of them, but I’ll list another 7.)

I basically start everyday with logging into my Netvibes account. I read about 70 feeds a day to keep myself updated on everything that has something to do with innovation, digital communication, social marketing, typography, design, inventions, research, datamining, softwares etc etc etc.

But if I’m stressed for time. These 7 blogs would never escape my eye.

ReadWriteWeb - It’s The ONE source if you wanna keep track of what’s up in the digital world.

SwissMiss - Tina Roth Eisenberg from the beautiful little country in the Alps delivers insights into the world of design and creativity

FFFFound - I like images. They start things up in my head.

ILoveTypography - That pretty much says it.

Weconverse - Mostly in Swedish, but a great read. Mr Gatarski also likes to debate. Good.

Techcrunch - “Currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.”

MindPark - Initally when launched It wasn’t one of my favorites. But today the blog contains great posts often with a thought through analysis.

I picked a couple of large ones, so I don’t expect that many torches to be passed along now. But they’re all great reads.

ps. If you like Whisky, my blog WhiskyGrotto.com should probably be in the list.

Business Week posted a great article on the 10 commandments of webdesign.

The list is short but well thought thru.

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.
7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.
8. Thou shalt be social.
9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.
10. Thou shalt make content king.

Got it trough CSS Mania. Go here to read the full article on Business Weeks website.

Lively is this new place where you can create your own avatar and pretty much do what you do in Second Life. What’s different is that you can watch YouTube clips on virtual TVs and share your own photos. Another different is that you join different rooms rather than one world. This means people (or brands) can build rooms rather than buildnings or objects like in Second Life.

The one big difference I see that probably can trigger a younger generation is the styling of the animal avatars and rooms. They’re more in style with the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ than some old virtual 3D dummy. I like that.

Will it be popular? Hell if I knew, they haven’t launched it for Mac OSX yet, so I haven’t had the time to try it out. But, ReadWriteWeb has got a report that is worth reading.