In May of 2005, the Blog Herald reported on the case of Travel Golf Media, a blog and review site that covers golf courses across the country. The company behind the site site, two of its bloggers and its owner, Robert Lewis, were being sued by a Las Vegas golf course owner Billy Watson for defamation after the site had posted a series of negative reviews.

Though disputes over negative reviews are common, what makes this one unique is allegations that the negative reviews were a form of retribution for an advertising arrangement that ended. In a ruling handed down last month, judge Jennifer Togliatti agreed and awarded the golf course and its owner, Billy Walters, a $9 million award for defamation.

Even as Pay-Per-Post and similar paid-review sites take a drumming in the blogging world, it is easy to forget that the concept of paid reviews are nothing new as is its sibling, review extortion, where the writer threatens to pen negative reviews of a service unless they are paid a certain amount of money.

However, where pay-per-review services are primarily an ethical issue for most bloggers, review extortion also raises serious legal problems, as the Lewis case points out, and is something that bloggers need to be aware of and avoid. read more

Georgia Tech tech-blogger Paul Stamatiou reviews Feedly - a new plugin for firefox at his blog paulstamatiou.com:

Feedly is described as “a more social and magazine-like start page.”

Feedly taps into RSS aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader and socially-oriented sites like Friendfeed and Twitter. The end result is a tight grasp on information overload. Loads of information from feeds you subscribe to and other services you interact with are all funneled into one nicely designed start page.

Feedly is a pretty interesting when used as a startpage rather than Google or another aggregation service. As Paul states, it offers a tight integration of various services into a useful startpage/homepage environment that can be somewhat tailored to your needs.

Liz Strauss released her new ebook, The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog — The Insider’s Guide to the Conversation That’s Changing How Business Works, this weekend to rave reviews.

Based upon the lessons she learned on her own blogs, Successful and Outstanding Bloggers and Liz Strauss, as a long time writer for the Blog Herald, and the work she continues in the popular annual Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon), Liz reveals the keys she used to turn her blog into one of the most successful and social blogs on the web.

Divided into two sections, the 68-page ebook asks two important questionss: “Can You Hear the Internet?” and “Can the Internet Hear You?” If you aren’t listening to your customers and readers, you are missing the blogging boat. Accordingly, if you aren’t writing to be heard, who is listening to you?
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As a new media practitioner, I’m always glad to see companies embracing the use of blogs and other new media not only to market their products and services, but more importantly to reach out to their audience and be part of the community. In this case, fashion and blogging are a good mix, as we can see with the recent launch of the C’N'C Costume National Blog, to complement its existing website. As a new media publication, the C’N'C blog serves more as a photoblog instead of a text-based blog, as the content is mostly photographs of fashion shows, events and C’N'C offerings.

Being a fashion-oriented blog, the C’N'C Costume National Blog does not only have photos of its own events and products, though. It also features what I think is more important in the industry C’N'C is in: the fashion scene around the world, particularly in C’N'C hometown of Italy.

The C’N'C blog also allows users to join the Costume National Community by signing up and signing in with their own accounts. Users can then leave comments to existing posts and photos, with their own gravatars displayed on the comment thread (and also on the front page).

Now that I’ve mentioend Italy being the hometown of C’N'C, perhaps it’s also good to mention that the site is available in English and Italian.

I’m not too fond of fashion shows, but whenever I chance upon runway shows I try to check out the latest trends. After all, being a (wannabe) photographer, fashion photography is one area I still haven’t explored and studied much. The C’N'C blog does feature the latest fashion shows and events, model castings, and other projects.

One comment I have with the blog though is its use of a horizontal-oriented layout, rather than the usual vertical approach of blogs. It’s a bit strange to navigate. But again, with the site consisting mostly of photos, this is an effective use of this kind of layout. Also, I’m not too comfortable with heavy use of dynamic HTML to display pages. It is indeed more interactive, and the animations are appealing. But in terms of accessibility, particularly to those with low bandwidth, and those with difficulty browsing such media-rich pages, the site may be difficult to browse.

Still, with the target audience of the blog being being the young, upscale crowd, a multimedia-rich approach is perhaps appropriate. If you are in any way interested in fashion, do pay the C’N'C blog a visit.

Disclaimer: This review was written upon request by C’N'C Costume National.

If there is one thing most bloggers do not mind getting its traffic. Whether they post for attention or money (and sometimes both), bloggers are usually willing to pay any price (whether time or cash) to ensure their sites are optimized for their audience.

Even though most serious bloggers will make sure that their site is displayed properly in both Firefox (version 2 and the beta 3) and Internet Explorer (version 6, the dreaded 7 and beta 8), many however do not even consider making sure their blog can be displayed on a simple mobile phone.

Having a mobile version of your blog is important, especially if your site is receiving traffic from the eastern world (as the phones there are usually more advanced, as well as more affordable than a PC is in the west).

While most affluent bloggers and/or geeks have the spare change and time to optimize their weblogs, many bloggers do not.

Fortunately for the rest of the population (this author included), you do not have to worry about making your site mobile friendly, as a new startup called MoFuse will do the heavy lifting for you for free.
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So here’s the scenario: you’ve finished hacking away at a week’s worth of design work. You probably estimated that you have around 2-3 websites that are ready for coding. Unfortunately their deadlines are at the very least one day apart from each other - and you still have projects in the pipeline, clients to meet or new projects to review. You need to get those designs coded, but you know you won’t get them done in time.

Stuff like this happens. In fact, this is a familiar scenario I’ve encountered myself more than once. It’s hard managing projects especially when you’re the same guy who does them and no amount of organization can really bulletproof you from design and project management being the inexact science that it is (but this is an entirely different story altogether).

During those tight weeks when I need stuff to be coded and I can’t possibly do them all by myself, I usually ask help from my colleagues - fellow webdesigners or programmers who’s quality of work I trust. Unfortunately people can be less than dependable at times and there are instances where I just can’t find anyone to help me - which brings me to today’s review: PSD2HTML.

PSD2HTML is a paid online service that offers professional grade xhtml coding/templating services straight from your design mockup. Basically the idea is that you send them a copy of your design mock in the usual common design file formats (psd, ai, png etc) or even existing html markup (that isn’t standards compliant xhtml) and after 8 hours they’ll send back to you your design coded in semantic, cross-browser, standards compliant xhtml.

They have several packages depending on the type of coding job you’re looking for are priced as follows:

* Basic Package - $117
- W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
- Table-less CSS markup.
- Compatible with IE, Firefox.

* Professional Package - $153
- W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional Table-less CSS markup.
- Compatible with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari
- W3C Valid Shorthand & Optimized CSS.

* Hi-End Package - $211
- Brings the markup to the highest level.
- W3C Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict Table-less CSS markup under SEO Semantic Coding
- Complete Presentational Separation techniques.
- Special attention to Load Speed optimization.

The Process:
For the purpose of this review I submitted a design mock (of my site) which I’ve already coded myself - just to have something to compare their code to and give some baseline for gauging the quality. After completing the order form for their basic package and uploading my mock (in psd format) I was sent an automated email informing me of my login information to their queueing system.

Support:
Their response to my ticket was very speedy and thorough. They sent me questions regarding on certain CSS related issues and other clarifications on how I would like my design to be implemented - which was also surprisingly cool because these were the same concerns that I had when coding the same design. That says a lot about their attention to detail. More importantly, it also indicates that they tailor-fit their coding approach to each design that gets submitted rather than use indifferent cookie cutter approaches. After a few quick exchanges of clarifications, they informed me that my markup will be available within 8 hours. For this particular test, they sent my markup 3 hours after the last email, which was undeniably fast.

Quality:
The emailed markup consisted of 2 folders (one for images and one for stylesheets), one html page and 2 CSS files (one for IE and one other browsers). Inspecting the markup shows that they’ve done it a very good job in keeping it clean and very semantic. Navigation are link-lists, paragraphs are where they’re needed, proper heading structure and very minimal but apt use of containers such as divs and spans. The overall document structure is very cleanly defined. Apart from a few (personal) differences in choice of html elements for certain parts of the page (I use definition lists in some of my parts) their markup remains very closely similar to how I coded my version. The CSS files are very well organized, and while not optimized for file-size (CSS shorthand comes with the “Professional Package”) it’s still clean and minimal. Having IE hacks on a separate css is also a plus. Considering that this is a service done in mass scale, - the quality of code is really topnotch.

The images are also optimized and they use a variety of image optimization techniques - choosing the right image type depending on the complexity of the graphics involved. I’m personally impressed on the technique they employed slicing up my design - although drastically different from my original approach (I used a lot of alpha transparent 32-bit png files), they faithfully reproduces the layout and look without unnecessary bulk.

Cross-Browser Compatibility:

Here we have screenshots from IE6, IE7 and Firefox.

Internet Explorer 7:

Internet Explorer 6:

Firefox 2.0.0.12:

As you can see PSD2HTML did a good job in making sure the layout was consistent across both Firefox and both versions of Internet Explorer which is very impressive and delivers exactly what was promised in their basic package. Now, let’s see if this consistency extends to other browsers not covered by the basic package.

Here we have screenshots of the same page viewed in Safari and Opera:

Safari:

Opera:

Amazingly, the layout remains intact even in Safari and Opera. However, do note that they do not guarantee cross browser compatibility for the basic package other than IE and Firefox. It may just be that for this design there are very little or no issues in their implementation even on other browsers. But I will say this - more often than not, good xhtml and css practice ensure cross browser compatibility even without browser specific hacks, which says a lot about the quality of the markup that they delivered.

Everything considered, PSD2HTML is a topnotch service for those of us designers who need help in coding our designs but also demand the same high standards we employ in our own work. For the price - the quality and care they put in their code is remarkable. Even with the basic package which we’ve tried, you really get your money’s worth. I’d surely have no second-thoughts on using their services.

It’s no secret that creating sleek and usable interfaces in flash is a big pain in the head. Whether your the average run-of-the-mill blogger who wants to add a little bit of flashy animated navigation or a seasoned web designer working on a tight deadline - creating flash navigation from scratch is almost a death sentence. Unless you really know the inner-workings of animation design, designing visually stunning animation in flash seems far from achievable (or at least not without effort).

Fortunately, there are a number of readily available flash components that you can avail and can make the job of creating professional animated interfaces really easy and fun while achieve quality results. Today we look at one of such components - Flashloaded’s photoFlow.

photoFlow is a flash component that showcases photos in 3d stack effect, complete with realistic physics-based flipping animation and reflection. This is similar to an already loved interface prevalent in iTunes and OSX Leopard. For this review I was able to play around with Actionscript 2.0 version of the component. Here are some of the key features of photoFlow:

• Easily update images using the Component Inspector, ActionScript or an XML file
• Adjustable flip speed, spacing between stacked images and image size
• Customizable perspective view and reflections
• Option to flip images as a slideshow
• Add links/hyperlinks to each image
• ActionScript events to perform an action when an image has loaded, is selected, etc…
• Images can be external or included in the library
• Mouse wheel image flipping (Windows only)
• Optionally display a name for each image
• Option to set the number of images to preload
• Option to automatically scale images to fit or to fill the defined size
• Zoom in on selected image or on all images on mouse over
• photoFlow can open on a pre-defined image
• Customizable background color and opacity
• Option to start flipping from left-to-right or right-to-left
• Supports sound effects for image flipping
• Built-in preloader
• Light weight (weighs only 18kb with the scrollbar)

Setting up photoFlow was really straightforward and easy. It took me less than 30 minutes to get an actual working photoFlow interface after installing it through Adobe’s Extenson Manager. photoFlow comes with very thorough and easy to understand instructions that walks you through a basic setup to explaining more elaborate integration points through actionscript events.

One roadblock that I ran to while setting it up was that I forgot that I had the actionscript 2.0 version and proceeded to make an Actionscript 3 project - in which case I couldn’t find the photoFlow component in the Components panel. So it’s important to double check whether you have the Actionscript 2 or 3 version of photoFlow before you make a new flash project.

Aside from that everything was a breeze in using the component. There are a lot of settings to play around with. You can even opt to either manually load files through the component options or load via xml for more advanced users. Skinning is also no problem as you can customize the look of your photoFlow component. Animation and transition of photos can be tweaked to your liking including perspective and depth of the reflection.

All in all photoFlow is one topnotch flash component. Easy to setup, install and tweak - photoFlow is an excellent tool for those who want to setup quick but elegant photo galleries for portfolios, photo albums and even as navigation for a product catalog. photoFlow would definitely cut your time in figuring out how to do stuff and just get you right to creating and designing. It’s something I definitely would consider next time I had to make a flash-based interface.

photoFlow costs $59.95 for the ActionScript 2 version, and $79.95 for the AS2 and AS3 version. Licensees of the AS2 version can upgrade for $20.

Asst. Editor’s Note: this is a sponsored post written on request by Flashloaded.

Ever since Yahoo! released its Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress I’ve been wondering what Yahoo!’s role in the blogosphere is. The plugin is developed for Yahoo! by Alex King who wrote an impressive amount of popular WordPress plugins. Will this plugin become another success? Responses seem to mixed and vary from “Please God, no more pop-up links” to “Very Cool!”

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While Google’s Blogger platform has come a long way since its rebirth, it may have taken “two steps back” after launching OpenID within their system.

Without warning, Google removed the ability for non-blog*spot commentors to link their domain with their name in the comment section, which made some users very upset.

Blogger users seeking to regain control of their comment section may find outsourcing their comments elsewhere may be the simplest option for their readers, and Intense Debate may prove to be the easiest way to open up their comment system online.
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In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. (Source: Google).

TNX (pronounced “thanks” as in text/SMS-speak) is a new text link advertising platform that targets both publishers and advertisers equally well. For publishers, TNX offers the opportunity to earn TNX points which can be used for various purposes simply by displaying TNX text ad links on their pages. For advertisers, TNX provides a cheap and effective way of getting high-volume, non-reciprocal links from thousands of websites that are part of TNX’s program.

Joining TNX is free for publishers and TNX has made it a breeze to join–only the most basic information is needed. Publishers and advertisers can register at http://tnx.net/register.php. You automatically get 2,000 TNX points upon sign up. TNX also has a promo by which you get an additional 5,000 points free by posting on this thread in the DP forums.

Once you’re logged in, you’re greeted with TNX.net’s main dashboard, which will be your main starting point whether as a publisher or an advertiser. As a note, I think the main page’s design can benefit from a more vibrant color scheme. But otherwise, it’s been setup to be intuitively easy to use.

The sidebar provides the tools you need in starting with TNX.

For publishers

For publishers, the sidebar includes easy access to the TNX code that you need to paste in your blog or site theme for the TNX ads to appear. You also get quick access to site management (adding and managing TNX-registered sites registered) and the TNX-points transfer.

You can monetize earned TNX-points in two ways: either by selling to other TNX users at a price that you decide, or by selling to TNX itself at a given fixed price (currently $0.61 per 1,000 points). TNX will then send you the funds via PayPal. There is a minimum $5 for payouts and a 150,000 point daily transfer limit. As a security measure, users can only transfer up to 50% of his existing balance at a time.

The TNX code page provides code both for Perl and PHP. You have a choice of codes–TNX provides a variant of the PHP code that allows the ad output to be cahed, minimizing server load and bandwidth. TNX also provides an experimental code for ASP and ASPX. All the things you need to get started earning TNX points has been well prepared by the TNX team.

One nifty feature is the earnings calculator that will help you estimate how much you can earn, based on your website’s parameters (PR, link popularity; of course, assuming all your links are filled).

For advertisers

For advertisers, the sidebar gives quick access to starting an Ad Campaign. Thanks to TNX’s well-organized Ad Campaign wizard, creating and ad campaign is easy and intuitive. You can set the parameters for the sites where your ads should appear on: website categories, geo-location, number of Yahoo Backlinks (YB) and Google Page Rank.

TNX even provides a calculator of how many links you will get on based on the parameters you chose and your spending plan (in TNX points)

After setting your spending price and the other parameters, you have to load your actual ad copy to the TNX registry. There are two way of doing that: for campaigns with large volume of links (maximum of 2000 links), you can upload a text file containing the ads; or if you have a few ads, you can use the provided form. TNX also provides excellent tips for an effective ad campaign; starting advertisers can learn a lot from them. It’s also nice that TNX has made this part easy and painless.

Affiliate program

TNX also features an affiliate program that provides an opportunity for publishers to earn TNX points by simply referring people to use TNX’s service. There’s a 13.3% payout percentage from the earnings of the websites of users you directly refer. TNX provides more than one way of advertising options that the affiliates can use: direct links on your sites registered to TNX.net, referral links, or direct links on other sites.

In summary, I think TNX is a great new hub for your text link ad needs and opportunities, catering well to both advertisers and webmasters. The use of TNX points instead of plain ol’ dollars makes things more flexible.