Oh Great, Now I Am a Twit Because I'm Tweeterless - Okay Fine

It is amazing how fast things change, for instance three and a half years ago no one ever heard of Tweeting, and now unless you are a Tweety-Bird and constantly tweetering to your fellow tweeties, you may as well not exist. To make matters worse, as I understand it if you do not tweet or if you do not belong to a group of tweeters, then you are a twit.

This is very unfortunate indeed, but I guess I was never a Pepper either. Sometimes, I look at all these people tweeting and realize that since am tweeterless, I am just not in the in crowd anymore. Everyone tweets these days even our new President who is said to be quite the tweet'er with one of the largest followings of little tweeties. Now, I do not mean to make an excuse for myself for not seeing the rationale behind tweeting, as I can see a few very good uses for it actually.

It's just that I and many folks I know, well we do not really have anything that is so important to say that needs to be fast-blasted to all our friends and acquaintances in one-hundred and forty characters or less. Now if someone is a celebrity and uses this for promotion, or if someone has a group of party-animal friends who like to converge like a smart mob on a night club, or if a company has a cult following, well then, yes, I get it, makes a lot of sense.

For me, I guess I am just a twit and cannot be too hip, because I have nothing so urgent I need to say; zip. But if it helps you win friends, influence people and relieve stress then be my guest; as for me, I remain tweeterless.

Why Web Designers Should Focus On Emotion In Their Work

In this day and age, it seems that web designers are too focused on the aesthetics of their work and not enough on the emotion of it. Whilst gradients, colours and contrast are all very important factors in a successful website, but all this will be done in vain if the web designer cannot embody the emotion that goes with the theme of the site. So, how can emotions be more focused upon and why is this so important?

Essentially, emotions are important in design because they are important in everything - what are the three most memorable moments of your life? Your wedding or the day you bought your first home? The birth of a child or the death of a loved one? No matter what moments you choose, it is likely the each of them is going to have been a time that involved a considerable amount of emotion. Web designers endeavour to make their websites as memorable as possible (so that people will return) and, as such, emotion plays a large role in achieving this.

Many web designers become stuck on the graphics and the usability of their websites, but these elements actually form the bare minimum of what any good site should entail. It is time to look beyond these elements by ensuring that visitors to your website develop an emotional attachment to it, but how is this possible? Begin thinking about the type of people who are likely to visit the site and what frame of mind they are likely to be in:

Desire: Make visitors want to browse your website, and want to return at a later date. Use words that speak to the jealous sector of people's minds, such as powerful and revolution. It is in cases like these that the old adage "sex sells" rings true. Sympathy:This is achieved successfully by the multitude of charity websites out there - they instill a sense of sadness and sympathy deep inside the visitor, making them want to reach out and help. Anger:Believe it or not, it has been suggested that some websites deliberately make their visitors angry (by stuffing up orders and so on) so that they can make themselves look great by giving the visitor a refund and sending them the product anyway.

At the end of the day, excellent functionality and usability is no longer going to cut it in this cut throat world of internet obsession - web designers need to look deeper into the emotional state of their visitors and ask themselves what sort of emotional reaction they are hoping to achieve. Being successful in this respect will ensure success across all areas of the site.

Domain Monitor - How to Catch an Expiring Domain

In most cases the domain name is the first touch with the website, and it is definitely also the last. This name is what we remember and what is associated with the website. Therefore, great care is taken to choose the right domain name. Unfortunately, most short, memorable domains are already taken. There are few general-purpose top level domains where we can try our luck, but in most cases we will find that all possible versions of our choice are already reserved.

Fortunately, no domain is reserved forever. For each registered name there is a date when it will expire. It is the responsibility of the owner to take action before the domain expires. Of course, in most cases domain owners renew the registration period before it is too late. But in some cases the name becomes available for anybody interested. The release is not immediate after the expiration date - there is still a short period (about one month long) where the original owner can extend the registration. But when this redemption period is over, the domain is lost - at least for the original owner. Such cases are an excellent opportunity for anybody interested in this name.

If you see a cool domain that will soon expire it might be worth checking if the owner will renew the registration or not. To do this you have to use WHOIS service for particular domain and check the registration data. Unfortunately, this process is pretty simple but it takes time. If there are many domains that need to be checked this would mean that a lot of time would be spent just for checking some data. Since this task could be automated there are few services that keep an eye on a list of domains. Some are offered for free but just for a limited number of domains, while other require some monthly payment.

Fortunately, there is another solution where you can have total control over any number of domains. This solution is domain monitor - an application that runs on your computer or on any other web server. Tiny Domain Monitor is a perfect tool to periodically check domain registration data. When a change occurs the domain monitor sends an email alert. It also generates RSS feed so you can track domain registration data also in your feed reader.

When the domain becomes available you will be among the first to know. All you have to do is to go to your registrar and register this domain before others will see it on some list of recently released domains.