It is interesting to see that the top searches by country vary just as much as the countries that make up the Top 10 countries on the internet. They do have one thing in common, there is at least one social network in each of the top 5 searches. I have to say though, one thing that always stumps me is why people search for sites like Facebook and Google instead of just going there directly. It is a mystery that will most likely never be solved.

There are tons of tools out today for cleaning up your Windows based PC, so many that it is hard to wade through the good applications and the garbage. I will run through some great applications that I use myself to keep my PC spotless. Best of all, these applications will not cost you a penny! All of the items I will talk about can be found at their developer’s website or through a site called FileHippo.com, which is a great centralized hub for free software.

The Internet has become the home of an increasing amount of April Fool’s jokes and pranks thanks to its wide viewing audience. Many popular website such as Google have routinely played pranks on their users, and they did not disappoint this year. A lot of big names played jokes on their website visitors this year along with Google, including Hulu, Toshiba, Kodak, Blizzard, and even NPR. Many communities also ran their own little jokes that amused many members, but would not be fully understandable by the public. Therefore, here’s a rundown of many of the public April Fool’s jokes that appeared on the internet on April 1st, 2011.

You just finished what is, in your opinion, the most beautifully designed site you have ever worked on. Not only are you finished but you are ahead of schedule by a week, might as well launch the site and let the kudos from the customers pour in. As you expected you get a phone call minutes after the site goes live from your client and you answer it with joyous confidence…then the yelling begins. How can this be? The site design is awesome in every aspect, but apparently one. You forgot to update the alt tags from your filler, alt=”clients naked wife”, to what it should actually be. If only you had taken that extra week and poured over the site with a fine tooth comb this would not have been an issue. Here is a list of things to check and help you avoid this scenario.

Web analytics tools are abundant, but in order to use such tools effectively, you need to decide what information you need and how to interpret it correctly. After that you then need to make the necessary changes to your web site in order to attract more visitors and improve your search engine rankings.

Today I am pleased to bring you Volume 2 of the interesting links I have gathered. If you are at all interested in anything web design/development related I am sure you will find a link or two that interests you in this list.

Most people in IT work WAY too much. We can make this time more tolerable by listenting to music or a favorite podcast. Most people will agree spending most of your life online can’t be healthy, see me as a prime example of internet health. In spending all of your time online you do pick up vast amounts of seemingly useless information along with minute chunks of data that might be useful. I figure I do have some minute tidbits of useful data that would be of value to share with the rest of the internet and since I am in a kind mood I will share them!

The term web 2.0 graphics has no proper definition. But so far, as we have throughout the entire Internet, have seen those glossy graphics, shiny 3D buttons, logos, bubble like icons. All have a common factor which is the distinctive shine or gloss, and the 3 dimensional illusion bubble effect. In this project and tutorial, the words shine and gloss will be greatly overused.

In today’s competitive world, a lot of things depend on how highly people think about your skill levels. You may have worked in a field for a number of years, however, the charm a certification holds over potential clients or employers is an entirely different phenomenon. To be fair, it does seem to provide a baseline against which people can measure your skills.

It is Friday and I have another huge list of links for you. There is some great stuff here, including a CSS Spritemap Generator, tons of Photoshop tutorials, web design and development tools and a lot more. Check them out!

WordPress is unquestionably the most popular blogging platform today due to its excellent functionality and simplicity, and its latest 3.1.2 version has come with even more exciting features that are likely to make posting, updating, and managing comments even easier. However, the platform is not SE-optimized off the bat and instead of manually tweaking the permalinks, the code, or the different elements, you could use a number of WordPress plug-ins that can increase your site’s chances of higher rankings.