Welcome to the March edition of ZooNews, brought to you by professional Web site design company Zoonini Web Services.

Both human visitors and search engines like to see sites with frequently updated content – whether it's company news, updates on products and services, or articles with useful information for your target audience.

Not sure how to keep your site fresh? Consider a blog, company news updates, an archive collecting past email newsletters, or a randomizer that rotates quotes, customer testimonials, or industry-related tips.

The homepage of our client Organized Success prominently features an organizing tip which we've set up to automatically change monthly, both saving on maintenance costs and ensuring that the new tidbit of practical advice is always displayed exactly on the first of the month. You can read more about Organized Success's recent remake in Liftoff below.

Our client Beyond the Box wanted to inspire potential customers with creativity-related quotes from notable people. But they had collected over 100 of them! How could they possibly all be displayed in a readable way? The solution was a randomizer. If you scroll down to Creative Insights at the bottom of the page in the left-hand sidebar and click your browser's "refresh" button or use the F5 key to reload the page, you'll notice that the quote changes each time the page is refreshed, giving visitors something new to see each time they return.

The two buzzwords I've heard most often so far in 2007 have to be: Web 2.0 and social networking. So I guess it's time to tackle these two interconnected subjects!

Social-networking Web sites let people interact with each other and easily share and comment on everything from videos (YouTube), to music (MySpace), and photographs (Flickr). Social-bookmarking sites are a sub-genre that allow participants to recommend their favourite Web sites, including specific articles and blog posts. Just a few sites that fall into this category are DIGG, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, and Reddit. Some sites – particularly blogs – provide links to allow visitors to quickly add them to their social-bookmarking collections. For an example of this phenomenon, see the links beneath our client Box of Crayons' Eight Principles of Fun Flash movie.

Web 2.0 encompasses social networking sites along with other sites in which groups of people contribute, collaborate, and communicate, such as group-edited compendiums like Wikis, which we discussed in ZooNews #16's GeekSpeak. Apparently first coined in 2004 by O'Reilly Media, the term Web 2.0 refers to "a perceived second generation of Web-based services" and also covers things like RSS feeds and podcasts, two phenomena we'll look at in future issues of ZooNews.

How hot are Web 2.0 and social networking? Well, here's one example that demonstrates the power of both: a four-and-a-half minute video created by an American cultural anthropology professor called Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us has been "seen by over 1.7 million people, [...] translated into (at least) 5 languages, and [...] shown to large audiences at major conferences on 6 continents within just one month of its creation," says its maker Michael Wesch. All this, thanks to the magic of social-bookmarking site YouTube, on which he'd posted the video as part of a University of Kansas project.

To learn more, check out Wikipedia's definition of Web 2.0 and list of social networking sites.

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

Launched this month, our site remake for Montreal-based Organized Success details the services offered by Susan Portnoy's professional-organizing team members, who run the gamut from filing, decluttering and time-management experts, to a personal concierge, home stager/interior designer, photo organizer, computer whiz and even garage-makeover specialists. Visitors can meet these organizing gurus, compare before-and-after pictures, learn how to sign up for workshops or submit an inquiry through the contact form. Zoonini brought a clean and fresh look to the site that complements the firm's pre-existing corporate logo. The judicious use of appealing stock photos lets viewers sense the feelings of calm and control that getting organized can bring to one's life.

Since our goal is always to ensure that our clients are more than happy with their sites, we are so pleased that owner Susan Portnoy reports: "I have to say that I am absolutely THRILLED with my new website. The feedback has been great!!! Kathryn and Charlotte [Riley, Zoonini project manager and content specialist] were a pleasure to work with. They instantly knew what I was looking for – the colours, the clarity and the uncluttered, calm look. My position as Number 1 on Google I owe solely to them."

As I was Googling my name the other night (admit it, you do it too!) I came upon a list of over 4500 people belonging to a massive family tree that Torontonian Neil Richler has compiled and put online using genealogy software. And there was my name among them. There was even a picture of my maternal great-great-grandfather, Matityahu Yacov Meyerovitch, born circa 1845, Kishina, Moldavia. Who knew?

The site asked anyone who found their name on the list to write to Neil. Seeing the late Mordecai Richler's name among the group I was too intrigued not to send him a note – I had to know if I could claim to be related to this (in)famous Montreal legend!

While I waited for a reply from Neil, I started experimenting with a fascinating feature of the Web-based genealogy software: if you plug in the names of two people in the system, the site will generate a tree mapping their relationship. When I entered my name & Mordecai's, the system churned for a while, then spit out a message that the software had timed out while trying to establish a relationship. This did not bode well.

À la prochaine,

kp
aka Kathryn Presner