Welcome to the December edition of ZooNews, from Montreal professional Web site design company Zoonini Web Services.

In last month's Tip for Tat I made the case for avoiding user confusion by never underlining text that's not meant to be clickable in emails and Web pages.

This time, I'd like to suggest the simple corollary: if you want a URL (Web address) to be interactive in an email, make sure to add http:// in front of it so email programs will recognize it as a link and make it automatically clickable. If you don't – for example, say you write www.mydomain.com in your signature at the bottom of your email – it won't be clickable in most people's email programs and you'll force readers to copy and paste the URL in the browser's address bar to get to the site.

Remember: to make it easy for people to visit your site – and any others you reference in your messages – simply add http:// before all URLs.

The very first ZooNews back in May 2005 shed light on the term blog. By now, I'm guessing that most of you are probably aware of the blogging phenomenon, since it's exploded in so many different spheres, so I thought I'd share some of the blog-offshoots that have cropped up:

Flog – fake blog. A "ghostwritten" blog usually paid for by a company to bring positive spin to their product or service.  A recent – and mostly backfired – example of a flog is Wal-Marting Across America, in which a couple chronicled their Wal-Mart parking-lot RV camping adventure... unfortunately without revealing that Wal-Mart was sponsoring the trip and that the couple were professional writer/photographers (with perhaps naively good intentions). Read more about the controversy here.

Splog or Blam – automated blogs consisting of spam links, in a attempt to boost search-engine rankings for the spam sites, since Google tends to favour sites mentioned in blogs. Read more here.

Bleg – a combination of blog and beg; a blog in which the blogger is asking something of its readers, sometimes assistance or money

Plog – political blog

Clog – blog with posts contributed by a community of contributors

There are tons of other terms in the ever-growing blog vocabulary... check out more definitions here.

Got a technology term you'd like demystified in ZooNews? Send it to questions@zoonini.com.

The last month was one of Zoonini's busiest ever, with the launch of two brand-new sites.

Destineering runs luxury life-coaching retreats in beautiful locations from the Canadian Rockies to Umbria, Italy, and aims to inspire people to change their lives and make a difference. The site launched just in time for the founder's interview on CBC Radio's national show Sounds Like Canada, which brought a flood of inquiries from listeners across the country. Destineering.com's clean, elegant look integrates graphic design elements from Resolve Design and the text features a wealth of optimized copy from A.C. Riley Communications.

Poetik Gifts sells unique, personalized corporate gifts from picture frames to miniature games. To coincide with AIDS Awareness Month, a plush velvet frog called Lulu is on sale for a limited time to raise funds for AIDS relief in Africa. The bilingual English-French site includes a PayPal-powered online ordering system, more optimized copy from A.C. Riley Communications, and a funky, colourful, modern design inspired by their contemporary logo, which was crafted by Mobius2.

Time Magazine has named you 2006's Person of the Year. This year, the magazine bestowed its annual honour on all Internet users, inspired by Web-based "community and collaboration on a scale never seen before" (Source: Time), citing video-sharing behemoth YouTube, the "social networking" hub MySpace, and the oft-cited-in-ZooNews Wikipedia. Read an overview of the issue at CBC.ca. Congratulations to us all!

Zoonini offices will be closed from December 25, 2006 through January 2, 2007, inclusive. For any emergencies during that time, please call 514-488-7067 and leave a message.

I wish all ZooNews readers a fun, stress-free holiday break! See you all in the New Year.

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner