Blog Roundup for October

Here’s a sampling of some interesting posts around the web concerned with our little web development industry.

Canned Responses – Official Gmail Blog
Oh I like this one! Our support team here has quite a task of replying to lost password requests and the like that require essentially sending the same email over and over. Since we use (and love) Google Apps for Small Business here in the office, we get the benefit of canned responses!

The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO Spending – SEOMoz Blog

The heat map says it all. Why would you be spending money on Pay Per Click when organic SEO gets so much better results?

Usability Testing Report: 2.5 and Crazyhorse – WordPress Blog
This is the kind of testing I love to see. Although we don’t like to be tied to any one tool or Content Management System, we are suckers for WordPress. Usability is not something that is synonymous with programmers. It’s nice to see they are keeping up and doing a good job. Now if they will stop releasing updates every other week. Sheeesh!

Halloween easter egg: Google protects itself from zombies – Matt Cutts
Zombies are disallowed from accessing /brains. Just one other way nerds have saved the world.

Amazon launches Frustration-Free Packaging – Amazon.com
Not necessarily related to our industry, but damn, it’s about time. I bought a stapler from Sam’s Club yesterday that took about 2 hours to open because of the packaging. “The Frustration-Free Package (on the left) is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties.”

Top searches on Election Day (part 1) – Official Google Blog
Not only are search statistics fascinating, but they give us great insight into browsing habits on the internet, and help us with our SEO strategies. Google reports on top searches on Election Day. There’s also a Part 2 and Part 3.

Writing Content that Works for a Living – A List Apart
Creating or obtaining content for projects is almost always a difficult task. Making that content work on the web is even more difficult. Nice article from our friends at A List Apart. If you’re a web developer and don’t read every article they publish, you’re really missing out. But you knew that already, right?