post-next -Ted Drake’s sketchbook

There’s a great conference coming up in London in June. The @media 2005 conference features great speakers and lots of fab lectures.

Speaking of speakers, Jeffrey Zeldman and Joe Clark will be discussing web standards. If you look at their photos, do you think they were separated at birth?

I’m counting my pennies and hope to see you there.

I’ve just finished setting up my Google Ad Sense program and am proud to be a part of BlogAid, a fund raising effort for the victims of the tsunami. I will donate any Google AdSense revenue for the month of January to this recovery effort.

This program points out a weak spot in our hearts. We want to help the tsunami victims. Since web sites are dedicating their Google revenue to the victims, let’s click on the ads and send more money. I’ll admit it, I thought of doing this right off the bat.

But let’s think about what we are doing. You are saying, I want to donate 3 cents to the victims. I’ll click on the link, charge some company 40 cents for my click, Google gets 37 cents, the victims get 3 cents, and the company that paid for the ad, hoping to get a quality visitor, gets the shaft. Now who’s the victim?

So please, use the Google ads on my page, but do so responsibly. If the web site looks interesting and you’d like to see what they are selling,… click away. But don’t go to all of the BlogAid web sites and click randomly. If you really want to help, volunteer with your local relief agencies, sign up for your own Google program and donate the proceeds, or donate some money directly to one of the following agencies.

Here’s a list from the BlogAid web site of tsunami charities:

• The Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)
• The United Nations World Food Programme
• International
  Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
• American Red Cross  (via
  Amazon)
• Medecins Sans Frontieres
• The United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef (UK Page, US
  Page)
• The UN refugee agency, UNHCR
• Oxfam (UK
  Page, US
  Page)
• Save the Children
• Anti-poverty organisation Care International (US Page)
• Cafod, the Catholic Agency for Overseas
  Development (UK)
• Christian Aid
• Concern
• The International Rescue Committee
• Action Aid
• Action Against Hunger

I’m setting up an ad-sense account with Google. I figure it could help pay for some of my adwords expenses. As an extra, they offer html coding tips. Well, I’m not one to pass up the opportunity of some good advice. The link takes you to a google search for great website design and this is the wonderful page that tops the list: http://www.unplug.com/great/

I’m not going to put a link to it, I don’t want to help this site gain any more prominence in Google.

Ouch, the tips are out of the stone-age. There’s even a link to a ripped off summary of an ancient David Siegel tip ala 1997.

In the interest of sanity, I thought it would be a good idea to googlebomb the world with a more appropriate link. So, here it is: great web site design. I think alistapart.com would be the better answer to great web site design. Feel free to follow with your web sites.