Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

We take a short break from design blogging today to dive into some extreme geek blogging. Apparently you can buy a Windows Vista upgrade for your Windows XP, COOL! But in typical Microsoft manner they actually literally put the upgrade OVER your existing install, BOO!
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I have recently been talking about how there are many blogs all over the world and naturally some are good and some are, well, not so good. Invariably the quality of the blogs apparently falls into a few categories. Just like actors you have A-List, B-List, C-List and D-List blogs.
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Well the only way you can get that many people from around the world together in one place is on the internet!
Warning slow loading after the you click for the “Jump”
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Following on from my last post on this amazing viral blog meme, I felt that such great piece of work by Purple Wren needs to be somehow immortalized. As most of these blogs are pretty good, I like to somehow turn this Z-List into a blog network that follows the likes of 9Rules et al. So as a start, I’ve turned it into one of my blog pages, partly for all to see and partly for me to examine each blog in my own time. Also if anybody knows how to set up a blogging directory or network please let me know?

Now behold the Z-List Network!

Recently I was in a discussion with a good friend of mine who is a database management expert. We concluded that site tracking and SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an important tool for any successful website
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Edit: Thanks to a long time reader and friend Niblettes, this blog is actually version v3.0. I must be getting old…

I’ve taken some time from blogging this week to do some long overdue spring cleaning at designsojourn.com.

You may notice dear reader that I have re-organised my blog page listings, categories as well as removed a lot of my “Chicklets” on my sidebar. I was told by the web designer that I had engaged that my page loading times are over the roof. Visitors such as you were experiencing a long wait before you got to what you were looking for.

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Sorry for the slight slow down in the postings. I have been busy mucking around and doing the following:

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I’m a graphical person, and this I dig! Website as graphs has a great little Java script that will analyze your website and generate a graph based on what it finds.

The graph generated is just an amazing piece of mathematical computer generated art! Try it for yourself, its an experience watching it bloom!

Oh how amazing the web is evolving!

First it was mybloglog, and now thru the web grapevine, I’ve discovered THE new leader in website tracking and statistical information. Launched Aug 21, “Crazy Egg“, not sure what exactly it means, is a website tracking system that uses Ajax (a web thingymajig) to create visual maps of visitor’s viewing and clicks on your website.

Just yesterday I had 324 visitors with 51 clicks on various items on my blog. That’s about a 6.35% click thru rate. Not too bad I must say. But what was amazing is that its all laid out in a very cool graphical manner.

I highly recommend you try it, even just for the experience sake, but for me it has given me valuable information on how to improve my website.

The free service is fairly good, for basic bloggers like me, but the paid service is quite amazing and very useful for those of you hardcore blog monetizers.

Know thy enemy and know thyself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know thyself but not thy enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not thyself, wallow in defeat every time. ~ Sun Tzu

Well in our case it’s not really the enemy but our competition. From our last article, we know a little branding goes a long way. But it’s not only about differentiation, which means to be different, what we need to now is to have distinction, which means to be better. So we need to study our competitors in the web 2.0 world and their branding standards they subscribed to.

Thanks to Uniquely the epitome and The Font Shop.

This is an absolutely amazing collection of all the best web 2.0 logos out there. Well it looks like the Design Sojourn logo still needs a lot of work, or does it? At least now we have a much better idea and direction on where to go.

The big question really is to follow or not? Its seems the Web 2.0 logos today all have a similar feel and you can easily create your own if you follow this list:

1) Bevelled edges



2) “Chicklet” or rounded corners



3) Bright colours or a range of complimentary colours



4) Glossy highlights



5) Clean fonts



6) Drop shadows



7) Ground and horizon reflections



8) Gradient fills

So do you want to differentiate or have distinction, follow or innovate? I’ll leave that to you to decide.