Category: Site of the Day

Here’s Greg Verdino’s look back at trends that defined the marketing world in 2007.

Last month, my buddy Tim Spangler celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Max Headroom incident on Chicago television.

Martin Reed goes over some common mistakes people make when they build online communities.

Fellow Future of Chicago blogger David Armano talks about why Fox kicks butt when it comes to mobile content.

Fellow Medillian Matt Bigelow liveblogged the Search Engine Strategies conference held last week in Chicago.

How yummy do these look?

Jesse Nachtigal from CigarJack wrote about a recent cigar mishap. Poor little him.

Still undecided for the presidential primary?

YouTube is now hosting video clips of all of the questions answered by candidates in both its sponsored Republican and Democratic debates.

Check them out! (Thanks, Todd.)

You absolutely have to check this site out. FreeRice, a sister of the World Poverty site, is pretty damn cool.

On it, you’ll find a Web-based, multiple-choice vocabulary quiz, and for each word you get right, site advertisers donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help fight world hunger.

I just got a chance to look at CrazyEgg, a great way to track clicks on your page. I signed up for the free version, which allows me to track four pages, with up to 5,000 visits a month. (I’m not quite there yet, but maybe someday…)

CrazyEgg offers site click visualization in three ways:

1. Overlay – Markers tell you where all the site clicks were.
2. List – Duh.
3. Heatmap – You can see where the clicks are concentrated on your page. It’s very simple.
4. Confetti – A Flash visualization of all site clicks. Very cool!

I definitely recommend using CrazyEgg, at least to supplement your Google Analytics.

Check out Chicago’s new events site, Chicago.Going.com, for which I’m currently a contributor. It’s pretty trendy looking and, while still new, has a lot of events and social networking tools. It’s still no Metromix, but watch out!

It’s about time I included my friend Tim Spangler’s Web site as one of my “Sites of the Day.” Tim’s a good friend and classmate of mine and his site is starting to gain steam.

He titles it, “Confessions of a J-School dissident” and he is that, to say the least. Imagine a programmer in a room full of journalists. (Journalists – a group that can be semi-egotistical – are afraid of programmers, really.) So he has some crazy thoughts that go through his head.

Thing is, he really is a journalist, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it. He can write up a storm and he offers up good content for Web entrepreneurs, programmers and some cool videos. To top it off, Tim Spangler is giving away free .edu links to anyone who writes a review of his blog.

Go give it a read!

I’ve been checking out Todd Andrlik’s site, Todd And, for the last week or so. Andrlik is a Chicago-based Marketing and PR wiz.

He recently posted his first Power Profile, an interview with Darryl Ohrt of Brand Flakes for Breakfast, a site for marketing managers.

While only some of the marketing content is useful to me, I’ll check out his media and social marketing posts.

The other stuff up on Andrlik’s site is pretty cool, too. He’ll post amusing videos and photos that work well with his content. I recommend at least taking a look at his site.

If you’re looking to build any sort of online community, I suggest checking out Community Spark, created by Martin Reed, who seems to be some sort of freelance Web marketer.

Reed offers up all sorts of useful advice, from interviews with Web developers to profiles of new Web tools to the importance of ad selection – and placement – on one’s site in an attempt to dispel the myth that all ads are bad.

Overall, it’s a pretty cool site, and it’s ad-free – at least for now. But I suggest checking it out.

Mmm. I’m really hungry. Maybe I shouldn’t do this, but the food listed on the Culver’s menu sounds really good.

What I’d give for a ButterBurger right now…

If any of you are designing anything – a Web site, a magazine, a room, whatever – check out Kuler.

Created by Adobe, Kuler is a Web-hosted app (it’s linked to Creative Suite 3) that configures color schemes inside your browser. Basically, it’s an awesome site and worth bookmarking.

If anything, checking out Kuler online is cheaper than buying the full suite, which starts at about $1,200. Yowza!

Here’s a video about it.