I got a notice today from the Web Marketing Association that the 2007 WebAwards is now open for early entry for past participants. The official call for entries is not until Monday  April 2nd, but the entry form is now up on the web site. So start thinking about which sites you want to enter! I believe the deadline is sometime in late May or early June.

Okay, word on the street is that Internet Explorer 7 has already gained more browser market share since launching in January than Firefox currently has. This means that if you are not designing for IE 7, you should be. IE 6 still has the majority, but according to Microsoft, IE 7 is around 25% and growing. I believe this since I have actually seen statistics backing this up.

So, I am now checking all sites that I build in IE 7. And yes, I am discovering that, while IE 7 is a huge improvement over IE 6, it still has problems rendering CSS. So much so that on my latest project, I had to create 2 IE only stylesheets, one for IE 6 and one for IE 7.

If you are using Firefox, which I hope you are, you may know about the web developer toolbar for Firefox. This is an extension for Firefox that gives you tools to easily debug all kinds of problems with web pages. Today I found a similar tool to help debug IE 7 display problems.

IE 7 copied many of it’s new features from Firefox, including the ability to add third party plug-ins called add-ons. You can find a directory of these add-ons here. The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is similar to the web developer toolbar for Firefox. It is not nearly as easy to use or as functional, but it has many of the same functions and can be useful for debugging in IE 7. It is a big improvement over debugging for IE 6.

Incidentally, one thing I noticed is that while this add-on is free, Microsoft charges for many of the add-ons on this site. I saw some as high as $300. While I don’t necessarily agree with that, it could be very lucrative for developers, if you are so inclined. That is if Microsoft is sharing the revenue.

I also see how it could give Microsoft an edge over Firefox. If they are sharing revenue with developers to build extensions and Firefox is not, they could in theory build better extensions and take more market share away from Firefox. Somehow though, I don’t see many people paying for browser extensions, so maybe not.

I worked on a one page portfolio this weekend. Here it is.

http://designbycss.com/portfolio/

Let me know what you think. Also, here is a directory of one page portfolios. I found lots of inspiration there.

Okay, among other things, I have an online store which is powered by X-cart, a pretty decent and reasonably priced e-commerce software solution. One of the things X-cart does is lets people sign up for an e-mail list for your store. Then, you can send e-mails through the software to the people subscribed to your e-mail list.

Well, because I am trying to operate the store on a tight budget, I save a few bucks by sending out e-mail newsletters through the store software. Recently, these e-mails have been getting blocked for spam, even though I have been sending them for more than a few months.

Now, these e-mails are automated, but they are not spam. I am sending product updates to my customers who have signed up voluntarily to receive e-mail updates. I have gotten blocked by at least 2 e-mail providers, Hotmail and Comcast.

Comcast however, provides you a link in the returned e-mail, http://www.comcastsupport.com/sdcxuser/lachat/user/Blockedprovider.asp, so that you can request to have your IP address removed from the blocklist. Well, I filled out the request form and explained what had happened and what I was doing. I received a response within a few hours that my IP address had been removed from the blocklist. So, it does pay to contact them if you believe you are being incorrectly blacklisted.

I do think Comcast is going overboard on the spam protection. I am a Comcast subscriber, and have almost all automated e-mails blocked daily. I think they have the dial turned up a little too high and left that way. It should not block e-mail that you asked to receive even if it is automated. They need to provide a way for subscribers to white list certain domains. It has gotten to the point where it is blocking e-mail receipts from online stores that I shop at. Not to mention that unsolicited e-mails are still getting through occasionally.

So I signed up for Gmail. Apparently, Google is much better at blocking e-mail spam that Comcast. It lets automated e-mails I want through, and I don’t get any spam.

I just had a thought of a cool widget that Askimet could make to put on your Wordpress blogs. It could be a badge that you add to your sidebar or something that displays a running count of how many comments it has blocked on your site for spam. Everyone would use it, plus, as a widget, they could add a link back and get traffic and link popularity. Also, it could help deter comment spammers. Although, I don’t know how many comment spammers actually go to the sites they spam.

Well, here is my current comment spam count for just this blog. Akismet has caught 5,563 spam for you since you first installed it.

Another fun fact, if you rearrange the letters in Askimet, is spells MISTAKE. I think Matt Mullenweg, the creator, said he came up with the idea by accident and that is where it gets its name from.

I have been using Digg more and more lately. One thing I have noticed is that Digg’s search engine pretty much sucks at finding anything related to what you were looking for. Maybe I am missing something, but when I use it to try and find stories about certain topics, the results I get aren’t very relevant at all.

For example, before I submit a story to Digg, I do a search to see if anyone else has already submitted the story. I don’t find anything, so I submit my story. Once I submit my story, Digg tells me the story looks similar to other stories. The stories it finds are very relevant and much different from the results I get using the search engine to find related stories. How come I couldn’t find those stories when I searched for them earlier?

My point is Digg has the technology to improve it obviously, so why don’t they? All they have to do is use the same technology they use to find related stories on their search engine. It seems that you would be able to get much better results that way. Is there a reason they are not doing this? Would improving their search engine make it easier to game Digg?

What bothers me about this is that I think a site like Digg could be the next Google potentially if their search was improved. It’s likely that a lot more people, myself included, would use it more if they improved the search engine. I could see it even being used for serious research.

From a marketing standpoint, it is a great tool as it can drive a ton of traffic to your sites, but imagine the residual traffic you could receive from people finding your site through the search engine. Today, you get tons of traffic for a few days if you get to the front page and then nothing.

As it is right now, Digg has a lot of potential, possibly tapping into the massive base of Google users, but until the search results are fixed, it is not much more than a novelty site to pass the time.

I was on Digg this morning, and all of a sudden I started getting an “out of service” message at 9:15 AM ET. I have no idea why, but I suspect they could be implementing some more anti-spamming changes.

Update: 9:25 AM ET As soon as I hit submit on this blog post, I checked Digg and it is back up again.

I didn’t think this day would ever come. I started on the build of this site in November 2006. But, the waiting is finally over. Singerco.com is finally launched today. Click the thumbnail below for a screenshot.

From a design standpoint, I guess I am proud of this web site. From a code standpoint, I am disappointed. I was extremely proud of my original build. But the site was a redesign and a rush job. It was merged with existing programming, and in the end, the designer, plus at least three different programmers all had their hands in it. It also had to be merged with existing content, which was all in tables.

The result is a mish-mash of code that does not validate and barely resembles the original build. It looks good though and will most likely be an award winning design. In the end that is all most people care about. And they should. The client is happy, and we win shiny plaques to display in our office to show off to clients.

The code does matter though to people that do what I do everyday. And I can’t help but wish we had more time to build it and program it the right way. You can check out the new Singer web site right here.