Line 25 offers an excellent guide to usability:

Over time certain conventions and best practices have been developed to help improve the general usability of websites during their design and build. This roundup of ten usability crimes highlights some of the most common mistakes or overlooked areas in web design and provides an alternative solution to help enhance the usability of your website.

Read the full article…

I am very excited to announce that, following several weeks of intense planning and discussion, the pBrain algorithm is now under development.

The pBrain algorithm is being co-developed along with the good folks at Shindig People – web consultants. pBrain will offer a new take on career matching, but for now, that’s all I can say.

The blog has officially moved to http://blog.ibot.tv to make way for a new iBot home page.

From computerworld:

Ask any high school kid — soaring popularity loses some of its luster if more than half of your new friends ditch you after the first month.

And that’s the problem that Twitter Inc. executives are facing.

It seems that while people are joining the micro-blogging site in droves, a whole lot of them don’t sticking around for long. A Nielsen Co. report released yesterday shows that 60% of Twitter users do not return to the microblogging site the next month. And for the 12 months prior to Oprah Winfrey joining Twitter this month with great media fanfare, the site had a retention rate of less than 30%.

Twitter has grown exponentially, no one could dispute this. However, the company’s inability to monetize, combined with a retention rate under 40%, is troubling news for fans of Twitter.

Adapt or Die Marketing has done a great analysis of the new Digg Bar.

This article better explains why I felt the need to create the Digg Bar Killer WordPress Plugin.

In summary:

• Digg has gone to great lengths to not affect the SEO rankings of the original content (yay Digg!)

• The Digg Bar contains javascript that provides additional analytics to Digg. In other words- Digg.com is using the Digg Bar to track your off-site activity (boo Digg!)

• It appears that Digg intends to add advertisements to the Digg Bar (boo Digg!)

Disable the Digg Bar on your WordPress site, and then read the full article here.

Do you hate the new “Digg Bar” feature over at digg.com?

If so, you should check out the DiggBar Killer WordPress Plugin.

Download it now!

What does it do?

DiggBar Killer adds a little snippet of Javascript to your WordPress website to remove any frames or iframes, such as the Digg Bar, which are surrounding it.

Installation

1. Download the goods

2. Unzip to your wp-content/plugins/ folder

3. In plugin manager, activate “DiggBar Killer”

4. Go to Settings => DiggBar Killer for more

Options

You can use the default Javascript snippet, or easily edit it yourself for greater customization.

DiggBar Killer also has a (100% optional) annoy feature. You can choose to annoy users coming from digg.com by showing an obnoxious message.

The default “annoy” folder comes with some ugly animated GIFs and a MIDI file, but can be easily customized using plain-ole HTML & CSS (no PHP knowledge required).

Found a bug?

Let us know in the comments, and we will address it a.s.a.p.

This plugin is released as-is, and open-source. Go enjoy yourself, and modify to you heart’s content. If you find the plugin useful, or improve on it, be sure to leave a comment below.

This plugin was written using ooPHP, tested to work with WordPress 2.7+ and PHP5.

Download it now!

I recently modified the Festival of Beer blog to integrate with the Eventful API.

This will allow users to search for beer festivals, and list new events, without ever having to leave the beer blog.

Help route food along to those who need it. Check out the Hunger Relief app for Facebook.

Most clients request Google Maps integration for custom maps or geolocation, but it can also be used for driving directions.

A handy feature for anyone planning a large event, or a chain store or restaurant with multiple locations.

Some fun for Facebook users: the Deal-Breaker Facebook App.

If the person of your dreams was a perfect 10, BUT- They have a tendency to hump things, much like a horny dog… is that a Deal-Breaker? Vote via Facebook, or submit your own question.