Been a busy week, with more ideas for blog entries than time to write them. Here are some of the things I wanted to write about this week but didn’t get to:

Facebook Toast? Hot Today, Dead Tomorrow–Like AOL?

Article from Silicon Alley Insider on some of Facebook’s challenges. I “get” Facebook conceptually. I see the power. But on a personal level I’ve never truly enjoyed it. To me the whole idea of going to some closed destination site every day just seems kind of old fashioned and doesn’t fit the way I want to use technology. From the article, it sounds like at least a few others are with me.

A Sneak Peak at Wordpress 2.5

The Wordpress folks have put out their first release candidate for version 2.5. It looks promising. Hopefully they’ll have a final release ready in the next few months. (more…)

Christmas is on Tuesday, and I'm flying across the country to see my family.  This evening I will be busy as millions of my closest friends and I decide to fly somewhere this weekend.  Here are five things I'm doing on-line to help me cope:

1. Check in for my flight

Yes, I checked in for my flight last night on the airline's website.  It was great.  Now, with boarding passes in hand, I don't have to wait in line at the ticket counter and was able to move my seat to an aisle on both of my flights. 

2. Check the weather

There are many sites that provide weather information, and fortunately, the weather at all three airports I'll use tonight looks fine.  That should lower chances of delays.

3. Download podcasts

With several hours on a plane ahead of me, I downloaded several podcasts for my listening pleasure.  Hopefully, they're interesting…

4. Preview in-flight entertainment

Let's go back to the airline website.  If my iPod gets boring, will I get to watch a movie?  No, but the airline I'm flying today offers complimentary satellite radio.

5. Forward my itinerary to the family

There's no need to confuse flight numbers and arrival times when you can simply e-mail your itinerary to whoever will pick you up.  In my case, up until a few days ago both my family and I thought I was flying at a different time.  Good thing we checked my itinerary and can e-mail each other the exact details.

What do you do on-line to better cope with holiday travel? 

It seems like at least a few major news sites have launched redesigns over the last several weeks.  Here are five that I've noticed:

1. Newsweek magazine

I like how the sister sites for Newsweek and MSNBC are now much different from each. 

Check out the nifty multimedia page header that can collapse or expand on each page on Newsweek's site.

2. MSNBC

While I'm glad that this site has deemphasized its horrid navigation bar on the left, it is still there as "Categories." 

3. New York Observer

The Observer Daily is a blog that is now at center attention on the homepage; this weekly newspaper probably wants to focus more on day-to-day reporting to keep site visitors coming back to the site. 

On a sad note — at least for me — the gray background that used to surround the main content area of each page is now gone. 

4. Reader's Digest

I like the concept of the four main homepage boxes — The Daily 5, Daily Laughs, Your Photos, and Featured Story — but does this emphasis on fresh content distract people from the other great content in the site? 

5. Fortune magazine

The new design seems clean and uncluttered — a major plus.  Further, the table of content pages for magazine issues is pretty straightforward.

I know it isn't Friday. But since I wasn't around this past Friday, I decided to catch up today (Monday).

This time of year, so many people are searching for the best gifts for their techie family members and friends.  I got to thinking…why not combine the love for gadgets with a philanthropic spirit?  Here are some great technology-inspired gifts that have the added benefit of helping others.

One Laptop Per Child.  Through December 31, 2007, you can participate in OLPC's "give one, get one" program.  For $399, you get one of OLPC's laptops for yourself, and an additional unit gets donated to a needy child in a developing country.  

Oxfam America Unwrapped. On Oxfam America's website, you can purchase items in the name of your friends or family members that people in any of Oxfam's 26 operation countries need. For example, you can donate the purchase price of a camel. Your friend gets a personalized card with a picture of a camel on it, and an impoverished village will receive the camel or other needed items.

Kiva Gift Certificates. We've mentioned Kiva on TBR before. It's a great website that helps individuals "connect with and loan money to individuals and small businesses in the developing world."  Now, you can buy your friends Kiva gift cards. These allow you to donate money to Kiva, while the recipient of the card determines how it is spent and what project on the site will get the loan. (You can find a similar program at GlobalGiving.com)

Send an eTree. Have a friend who's into virtual reality? Send them an eTree at Mokugift.com.  Here, you send someone an "eTree" (sort of like an e-card) for $1. Your friend gets an email with some info about the tree and access to their eIsland, where all their eTrees grow online.  At the same time, Mokugift plants an actual tree in the real world, helping the environment.

And since this post is about giving, I'll give you a bonus link:

NonProfit Shopping Mall. This isn't actually a gift…but it's a place where you can find gifts for others. This site aggregates products from online stores where you already shop, like Amazon.com, iTunes, and Target.  These stores then donate a percentage of the purchase price to a charity of your choosing.

Good luck with your holiday shopping. Maybe this year you can combine your love for technology with helping others. 

(1) Will Social Networks Impact the 2008 Election? I think NOT.

Sanford Dickert has a good post about the seeming lack of impact social networks have truly had on the 2008 elections so far. He writes:

When I go to the local mall, county fair, outdoor market - I can often see the ardent supporters of candidates “tabling” in the flow of traffic - holding their campaign literature, sign at the edge of the table, looking for eyes that are ready to learn more about the person running for State Senate, Congress or even President. You and your friends are there, giving each other moral support as the throngs of people walk by - nary paying attention to you, until a person walks up and says, “So….tell me about Senator X.”

Where does this happen on social networks? Can I put up a “table” and engage in a conversation? Where is the flow of people that are milling about that can be “chatted up”? Certainly not on MySpace or many of the other social networks.

And he closes by asking where the “virtual tablers” are:

This is where the campaigns can use their volunteers and give them the power to reach across their own networks and chat up people when they are interested in learning more about the candidate. But, it is not easy to go and “speak” to someone in Facebook since all of the communications are not interrupt-driven (as a face-to-face might be), they are addressed whenever the receiver wants to. How do you get people to accept the interrupts? Usually, that is the sense of presence - of human contact. Once that magic ingredient is “captured” and enabled, then I could see social networks truly engaging people.

Interesting stuff. My thought is that the official campaign presences won’t have much of an impact this cycle - it is the the ad hoc organizations created and managed by supporters that are the potential game changers.

(2) Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again?

Wall Street Journal story about attempts by email carriers to add social networking features into their products to help compete with Facebook.

(3) Life At

This is a social networking site aimed at allowing people living in apartment buildings to network with each other. What a great idea.

(4) How to Raise $1.8 Million in 3 Days

Ruffini does a deep dive into how Obama recently raised $1.8 million through a single email push. I wonder how much was raised off the initial email from Obama and how much was raised from those peripheral emails sent by supporters to unsuspecting Obama list subscribers.

(5) Is Mint Ready for Your Money?

Lifehacker takes a close look at the white hot money management tool Mint.

For me this was definitely one of those weeks where I had more ideas for blog posts than time to write them. So here are the five topics I would have written about if time weren’t such a limiting factor for me right now.

(5) Top 40 Drupal Projects

I have a pretty good grasp on what the best Wordpress plug-ins are but less knowledge about the various Drupal modules. This list and accompanying podcast are a great place to start. Of the ones I haven’t played with before, the Video, Simplenews, e-Commerce and Audio modules look particularly interesting.

(4) Thompson Campaign Live Blogs Debate

Obviously I’m an interested observer here, but I thought it was pretty cool that Jon Henke live blogged the Republican debate for the Thompson campaign. I think a lot of poli-tech pundits spend too much time focusing on the shiny new toys (Facebook applications, Eventful, whatever) and not enough on fundamentals (I think blogging should be a fundamental at this point). The fact is that most campaign blogs are really bad and this is an example of a good use of the medium.

(3) Splash Pages - Do We Really Need Them?

More than you’ll ever want to read about the use of splash pages on websites. I’m firmly on the use them very rarely side of the fence.

(2) Social Networking is a feature, not a destination

Chris Anderson writes about whether the future of social networking lies in large, destination sites (MySpace, Facebook) or in smaller communities distributed on niche websites. His conclusion: “I think focused sites that serve niche communities will extract the best lessons from Facebook and MySpace and offer better social networking tools to the communities they already have. I’m sure huge and generic social networking destinations will continue to do well, but I’m placing my bet on the biggest impact coming when social networking becomes a standard feature on all good sites, bringing community to the granular level where it always works best.”

(1) Facebook Reality Check: It’s not worth $100B, and it won’t crush MySpace or Google (but it does rock)

Buried in this long rebuttal against Facebook hype by Jason Calacanis is the following tidbit regarding reports that Facebook usage is falling: “I’ve heard some inside information on focus groups that were done by a VERY credible source outside of Facebook that found that students coming back found the applications to be annoying–the equivalent of spam.”

While that is a bit more extreme than my current opinion, my enthusiasm for Facebook applications has definitely waned in the last few months (both from a user and developer perspective). As a user, I find most of them banal. As a developer, you have to face reality and realize that most people probably aren’t going to use the ap you build.

Unless there is really compelling case, I think building a Facebook application is a flight of fancy you pursue only after you’ve got all the fundamental parts of your web program nailed down.

After all the work I've done on newspaper websites and talking with a group of newspaper publishers last week, I realize that I get asked the same questions quite often.  There are some common misconceptions in the newspaper industry regarding the Web, and I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight and correct these typical mistakes. 

1. The Internet is the Enemy.

This is a big one. As newspapers continue to lose print circulation, the Web is becoming the scapegoat.  Newspapers should know that the Internet is only an enemy if they fail to use it correctly. Largely, the web is an untapped resource for newspapers.

2. We must display all of our site's content all over the homepage.

If you look at typical newspaper websites, the content is often strewn all over the place without any sense of organization. Newspapers often feel the need to display all of their content on the homepage.  This is a mistake–too much content can be overwhelming.  Littering a homepage with buttons and links distracts people's eyes and prevent them from focusing on anything.  Newspapers are better off leading with a couple of big headlines and pictures, letting a strong navigation do the rest of the work.

3. People will pay for content online.

If the current situations at NYT and WSJ aren't enough to prove this, I direct you to Mark Glaser's posts over at MediaShift here. People don't want to pay for average, generalized content online. They might pay for personalized and unique content that provides a specialized service.  But charging for run-of-the-mill stories just isn't going to work. Unless you really have something superior to offer, registration barriers are only going to hurt your traffic. Newspapers are better off offering their online customers the ability to create an optional user profile–in this way, newspapers can get demographic info valuable to advertisers, and users get something in return. 

4. We can't compete with Craigslist and other classifieds providers.

This is just wrong. Newspaper can compete in online classifieds. But to do so, they need to revamp their systems for creating ads and make them much more user- and web-friendly.  Here's an example of how this can work.

5. Websites are complicated and we don't have the time to deal with them.

While #4 was just wrong, this is just silly.  Barriers to entry to the online world–costs and technical requirements–are dropping everyday.  The Web is getting easier and cheaper as we speak.  Sites like the New York Observer (built in free, open-source Drupal), are examples of how newspapers can build great sites using technology with low technical and cost barriers.  No excuses! 

I started to write about the top 5 sports blogs, however I feel I wouldn’t do that post justice. The fact is, I grew up in San Antonio, TX, which, in terms of pro-sports, has the Spurs as the only game in town. So for this weeks Friday’s Five I bring you the Top 5 Pro Basketball Blogs using the only metric that makes sense, my opinion.

The Best

TrueHoop

Henry Abbott has a background as a journalist and the quality posts on TrueHoop show it. Anybody who loves the NBA and thinks little is happening during the off-season should start reading this blog. The original reason I started reading was very simple, I was tired of getting the same stories about the same things over and over again in the mainstream media. TrueHoop was an island in the storm providing great insight from true basketball fans both in the posts and the reader comments.

When Henry is on vacation or assignment, the backup bloggers, led by Kelly Dwyer , continue the great posts. Recently Dwyer has been doing a series called KD’s DVDs where he goes back into his archive of game film and gives his comments on the games of yesteryear, reminding readers of the epic games that made them become basketball fans in the first place. And all this greatness exists despite the fact that TrueHoop has become part of the ESPN Empire .

The Rest

Basketbawful

This is a basketball blog with an “it’s funny ‘cause it’s true” brand of humor. With posts about the trials and tribulations of what to wear and how to survive pickup basketball, and words of the day like “Circus Shot,” it’s easy for a longtime hoops fan to relate. Add in some old school highlights and commercial clips and you’ve got pure gold.

Basketball Jones

This is a great basketball blog with an even greater basketball podcast. In fact thebasketballjones.net podcast is currently ranked number four in the category of Best Podcast on the Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Agent Zero: The Blog File

More and more players are starting to blog their thoughts about basically everything. Gilbert Arenas blogs about his workouts, his games, players, video games, his home life, shoes, and whatever else pops into his head. Arenas is a funny guy and the NBA, who hosts the site, lets him be himself. Anyone in the public eye wanting to start his or her own blog should take a lesson in transparency from Agent Zero.

SB Nation

Team blogs. It stands to reason that a lot of the basketball blogs out there are fans writing about the team that they love. As a Spurs fan, all of the Spurs fan blogs would tie for a place on this list. But there are a lot of other great team blogs out there and several of them are part of the SB Nation blog network. The “recent posts” section combines all of the member site headlines, and if you want to stray, the network also includes baseball, football, college, and the catchall “other” category.

Get ready for the NBA blogs to explode in the coming weeks. Opening night is Tuesday October 30th 2007 .

This one is probably better titled, five more great Wordpress plugins, as we’ve covered this ground before. So here are five more great plugins for your blog:

(1) Wp Poll

Add swank, Ajaxy polls to your blog.

(2) Brian’s Nested Comments

Add threaded discussions to your comment area.

(3) WP-Sticky

This plug-in allows you to stick important posts at the top of your blog, breaking chronological order.

(4) Count Comments

This plugin counts the the number of comments each poster has made on your blog.

(5) Official Comments

Presents posts from the authors on the blog in a slightly different format of that of other commenters.

We're starting a new series here at TBG–Friday's Five.  Every Friday we're going to publish a top 5 list.  The topic of the list will always change, but the five items featured in the list will always be related to one another.  For this week's list, we're going to build on our recently published magazine study and run down our five favorite magazine websites.

This list was pretty difficult to build. Many of the magazine websites are extremely similar, so picking the 5 best was a tricky process.  Making matters more complicated, some of the most robust sites are part of larger online networks (such as Money Magazine, which is part of CNN.com or Martha Stewart Living, which shares content with the larger Martha Stewart network).  To be fair, our list only includes websites that are unique to a particular magazine.  Here goes nothing.

1. TV Guide.  Not only does this site have tons of content related to TV and movies, including reviews, previews, video snippets, and listings, but it also has some interesting blog features.  The 40+ celebrity blogs (comments allowed!) are augmented by community blogs maintained by readers. The site has a solid design and navigation, and is all together well-done.

2. Rolling Stone.  Photos, videos, and blogs.  User reviews and ratings of movies and cd's.  Those features alone would be enough to get RollingStone.com on this list.  The site really surprised me with their section for listening to music.  After just a quick download of a mini-Rhapsody player (no registration required!), users can listen to music featured in the print edition of Rolling Stone.  Another cool feature are the celebrity playlists. I mean, who doesn't want to know what Carrie Underwood's favorite songs are? 

3. Better Homes and Gardens.  Pulled in by the shnazy feature box on the homepage, BHG.com has lots of nifty features that you might not notice right of the bat.  The "clip it" feature lets you save tidbits of information ("just like tearing a page out of a magazine") in your myBHG.com account so you can use them later.  This was also the only magazine site I noticed that has a downloadable widget that you can put on your desktop to get updates from the website.  The site also features several interactive home design tools, which are pretty fun to mess around with.  One downside-the features are only available if you register for the site (it's free).

4. Family Circle. From the same network as BHG.com, the Home and Family Network, Family Circle offers similar functionality as BHG.com–reader comments for articles and features, bookmarking articles and features in their site accounts, and a tag cloud linked to message boards appears on the main site.  There also are many up to date blogs and links to blogs on other sites within the Home and Family Network.

5. US News and World Report . Nothing too earth-shattering here.  However, I appreciate the site's design, which is much more organized and "sane" than most other magazine websites on our list.  The content is professional, interesting, and easy to browse.  There are lots of blogs (although you can't comment on them, so let's instead call them 'columns'), and there is a section where they publish letters to the editor, which can be emailed to the site.  I think the key here is that this publication has really made an effort to make some of its highly valued content (primarily in the rankings section of the site) available to a larger audience by publishing this info online.  It also sets itself apart from other magazine websites by keeping things simple–the site isn't overcrowded, loaded with doohickeys, or cluttered with too many headlines.

What do you look for in magazine websites and what are some of your favorites?  Share in the comments.