A Blog About Accessibility, Digital, Marketing, and AI
Stan is a seasoned digital strategist professional with broad Fortune 1000 and financial services sector experience. His specializations include accessibility, digital strategy and product roadmaps, large-scale digital projects, complex web redesigns, and enterprise website governance. Stan is also a published author and active innovator.
Need a blog theme for WordPress?
WordPress 1.5 uses a new system that takes the template to the next level -- themes. Not only are there many themes which are freely available to download and use in your own blog, but you can use Ryan Boren's ThemeSwitcher plugin to allow your weblog visitors to change your blog's theme on the fly.
See the themes themes.
A great resource for anyone needing to build a WordPress theme:
Turns out the Hipster PDA paper system has an old precedent:
There is nothing new under the sun!
This article give a great overview of Getting Things Done using Thunderbird and other email clients:
I've assigned my labels as follows: Delete, Archive, Action Required, Wait, Defer. Since Thunderbird assigns these as keyboard shortcuts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I can go through my inbox and quickly triage items with an appropriate label. The color coding makes it easy to pick out stuff that needs attention.
You can do similar things with Apple's 'Mail Tags' or using 'Categories' in Entourage or Outlook.
Read more: Using Thunderbird to Get Things Done
Is the goverment doing all it can to deal with internet crime?
In extortion e-mail's broken English, someone identifying himself as Tony Martino proposed a classic organized-crime protection scheme. "You should pay $10,000," Martino wrote. "When we receive money, we stop attack immediately." The e-mail even promised one year's protection from other attackers for the $10,000 fee.
Read full article: Internet sieges can cost businesses a bundle
Google comes out to compete with Yahoo and Skype, offering a free, minimalistic IM client that integrates VoIP. Requires a GMail account. Need a GMail account? Anyone that joins LinkedIn and adds me as a contact (search on Stan Shinn with email 
can email me and I'll send you one.
Read more about Google's new software at Google Talk.
Book blogging -- writing books using the blogging process -- is starting to show promise. Note these blog efforts that are making it into print:
Julie Powell's "Julie & Julia" is the season's most unusual memoir -- a writer's efforts to master the recipes of Julia Child -- and a possible breakthrough for bloggers. Based on postings from Powell's blog, the book will be published by Little, Brown and Co. (a division of Time Warner, as is CNN) and stores expect strong interest.
Other bloggers with recent deals include Stephanie Klein, who calls her very personal blog, "Greek Tragedy," and Dana Vachon, an investment banker known as "d-nasty."
Doctorow E.L. Doctorow's "The March" is considered a possible breakout novel. "The criteria signing 'Julie and Julia' were very similar to what we would use for any book proposal: There was a strong voice, there was a freshness, and a novelty to what she was doing," says Little, Brown's Shandler. "This isn't just a blog that has been printed out into a book. People aren't interested in that because they read blogs every day. They need to see if the blog can be transformed. You could say that a great blogger is like an excellent guitar player, but the book is like playing piano. Bloggers have a head start because they know music, but they still have to make the adjustment."
Read more at CNN.com
Should be interesting!
Google is set to introduce its own instant-messaging system, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. Such a move would mark an expansion by the Web search leader into text and also voice communications. Citing unnamed sources "familiar with the service," the Los Angeles Times said that Google's instant-messaging program would be called Google Talk and could be launched as early as Wednesday.
Read more: CNET News.com
Don’t let the odd name fool you—this is a nice survey package that is free for limited use. It competes well with other well known survey packages such as Zoomerang.
Survey Monkey offers a free limited account that stores 100 responses. The “Professional” subscription ($19.95 per month) allows 1,000 responses. If you exceed that amount you’ll pay $.05 per response. With a Professional account, you may create unlimited surveys with an unlimited number of questions.
Read more: Survey Monkey
Wikiwyg is a very cool way to add Wysiwyg editing to your existing Wiki frameworks. Check out the demo -- very nice!