In this inaurgural version of “This Week in Review”, I‘m reviewing a few links that were particularly interesting to me. In other “TWIR”s, I’ll be reviewing other things — posts, websites, tools, events — which tickle my fancy (or particularly important).
July 30 - Aug 7 (In Canada, its a long weekend — Long Live Simcoe Day!):
ACME Made Bags: Based out of the West Coast, these designer bags for laptops are quite frankly, damn sexy. Of course, you’ll pay a premium for these good looks, but from up to six different designer styles, high quality textiles and 1 year warranty there are enough reasons to get excited. Unfortunately, shipping to Canada’s a bit expensive, but there are other resellers which do sell them off-line.
How to Measure Your Web App Success : Michael McDerment of Freshbooks pens a great article at Vitamin how how to measure your success. Of course, metrics, an the ability to measure your traffic, conversions, and sales and so on are some of the greatest strengths when it comes to doing business on the Internet. When it comes to Web Apps and the Web2.0, there’s no difference. Mr. McDerment goes on to mention the importance of the funnel effect, and how it applies to Web Apps — and more importantly, how important it is to measure success at every step of that funnel. The metric changes with every step, and it *can* be measured. What can be measured can be changed — and what can be changed, can be improved!
The Wall Street Journal’s Power List for New Media: From the top-linked bloggers, to video podcast stars, to the Web’s anchorwoman (Amanda Congdon, ‘natch), this great article not only lists some emerging power players in the web2.0 blogosphere but also highlights some interesting phenomena — how virtual unknowns and some semi-professionals who almost made are the life of the “new media”. Video clearly plays an integral part as the cost of broadband has dropped, penetration has skyrocked, while Youtube and its also-rans deliver adequate-quality materials, legal and otherwise. Social Networks have also provided the fuel for this new explosive area of the Internet, creating a crucible for new media stars who have seemed to have been in the right place at the right time. Quirky characters, some original, some derivative, and of varying quality, all have a new home on the web, and have made stars out of some very ordinary people.
Lifehacker’s Introduction to 90 Online File Storage Services: Its interesting how file storage services have proliferated once again after many of them got scuttled after the first bubble popped. With the ongoing drop in the price of storage, its clear file storage in and of itself is a commodity, rather than a real feature that new or existing companies can claim as an advantage. To wit: After google changed the email scene with offering 1gigabyte, then 2gigabyte storage, Lycos, and then AOL are offering larger and larger storage features. With this list by Lifehacker, you can see how much this phenomena has really proliferated. The key is often how the storage is restricted: by bandwidth? (how many gigabytes or terrabytes per month?) by filesize? (each file needs to be how small?) by storage itself? (total gigabytes?). I like Pando personally, but there are a lot of services for different purposes. Ones for backing up, others for transferring, and others yet for sharing. Now that there are 90+ services, it’ll be interesting sorting through them all!
