by Mack Collier I consider myself to be a pretty good blogger, and over the past 4 years, my blogging has definitely improved my writing skills. But there had always been once area of blogging where my efforts were failing, and that was holding me back. I could create interesting posts that resonated with my readers, but I struggled to consistently write good headlines. I didn't worry too much about it,

Yahoo! has launched a new note-taking research tool called Search Pad. The tool is designed to automatically detect research intent among people using Yahoo! search. Once the intent is detected, searchers are prompted with an invitation to use Search Pad. The tool uses drag and drop but includes the ability to write free form notes as well. This is a great concept because alternatives require opening separate documents and applications or taking handwritten notes.

Today is July 7, and if you've been paying any attention to the news in the past week, you'd know that that means today is the day of the big Michael Jackson circus out in LA.  At 10:00am Pacific Time, Jackson's memorial service will begin at the Staples Center.  A mere 17,500 fans will be in attendance, and with over 1.6 million fans having applied to win tickets to the service, there is certainly a demand to see the memorial.

Isn't calling attention to yourself' wrong? Some people certainly think so. We are raised to admire the quiet hero, the saint that sacrifices without hope of thanks or recognition, the humble servant that gives the glory to God. We scorn people that brag, take too much credit, or appear to be enjoying their success too much. Then you have another school of thought that rallies around the motto of, "If you don't toot your horn, no one else will.

Last Wednesday, the core development team and a number of contributing developers met in the IRC #wordpress-dev channel to talk about which features should be included in version 2.9, which is now entering the development phase. We’ve been planning to focus on media features in 2.9 for some time, and unsurprisingly, it was media features that dominated the discussion.* A large percentage of the requests we get from users are for more/better media features, so we’ve decided to focus 2.9 on building an infrastructure for improved media handling that we can continue to build on in versions to come. In that vein, we need your input to determine which features to prioritize and build sooner rather than later.

These are the features that we’re asking people to vote on (in alphabetical, not prioritized, order):

Additional Media Filters: In the uploader, you can currently upload an image from your hard drive, link to an image from a URL, or select an image from the Media Library. This proposed feature would add links in the Media Library pane that would allow you to filter images to those that had been used most recently, used most often, and/or marked as a favorite. These filters would be available on the Media Library screen as well.

Basic Image Editing: Enable cropping, resizing and 90-degree rotation of uploaded images.

Better Media Settings: Enable the creation of more default media settings controlled in the Settings section, and allow settings to be overridden  during the individual media upload process as needed.

Bulk Media Import API: Develop an API to allow for bulk media importing by plugins or importers.

Custom Image Sizes: Instead of hardcoded thumbnail, medium, large, etc. image sizes, custom image sizes would allow you to configure the maximum dimensions for each of the sizes.

Easier Embeds: Make it easier to embed third-party content such as YouTube videos, etc. Similar to Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin.

Media Albums: Ability to create and edit photo albums that can stand alone (as opposed to galleries being tied only to a post), including photostream functionality.

Media Metadata: Enable the use of categories and tags on media files.

Photostream: Create a Flickr-style photostream that simply displays images in a chronological stream (as opposed to grouping in galleries).

Post thumbnails: Choose an image to appear as a thumbnail with your post/article/excerpt.

Revised Media UI: Redesign the uploader UI to make uploading and editing media files a simpler, more user-friendly process.

These descriptions are repeated in the beginning of the voting survey, so if you forget what something means you’ll be able to scroll up to remind yourself. Only the first question (pick your top choice) is mandatory. This survey isn’t very long. Question two lets you assign a general high/low priority to each of the 11 feature suggestions, while question 3 asks you to rank the 11 features in order of priority from 1-11. A text box or two allow you to make additional suggestions, and that’s it. The survey is anonymous, and will be open all week, until Friday, July 10, 2009 at 11:59 PM UTC.

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Results of the survey will be used to help developers decide which features to focus on for version 2.9. The 2.9 anticipated feature list will be posted here later in July, after the priority has been determined. How many contributing developers are available to code various features will play a large part in the decision-making process, so if you’ve ever thought of contributing code to WordPress development, now’s a great time to get involved. Developer chats are held each Wednesday in the IRC channel (irc.freenode.com #wordpress-dev) at 9 PM UTC (5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific).

* – Other non-media features that were discussed either were determined to be better held for a future version for technical reasons, or were so widely desired that they were accepted for the 2.9 roadmap without requiring a vote.

The more I perform SEO tasks for myself and my clients the more I realize just how important keyword research is. It is so important that I wouldn't think of doing anything online until I have performed thorough keyword research and I'm satisfied that after having done this step of the process that I can settle on a particular niche or sub-niche based on my findings. Just to be clear,

Google has entered the real estate listings business by allowing users to find property listings on Google Maps . Searchers are still offered the usual business listings but are now also offered the option to see property listings as well. The listings include some basic filtering and the ability to save and share the results. What will be the impact of this change on the Real Estate category? It's hard to say but the following data and analysis offers some clues.

People have been clamoring to get their hands on Search Pad since we showed a demo video earlier this year. Today we are rolling out Search Pad to the public so you can see for yourself how it can help you organize research on the Web. Search Pad helps you track sites and make notes by intelligently detecting user research intent and automatically collecting sites the user visits. Search Pad turns on automatically when you're doing research,

FriendFeed is a pretty nifty service that allows you to both find and talk about cool things you and your friends find on the web, and it's in real-time. Beginning last Thursday, FriendFeed also incorporated real-time search. As you enter a search query you'll now see new results instantly stream in at the top of your screen in real-time, eliminating the need to hit "refresh" repeatedly. You can search across just your friends, or across the entire FriendFeed network,

Users are the most important "elements" (forgive me the " impersonalization ") of any websites (especially social media ones of course): that's them who build content and promote it by spreading the word. Quite naturally, getting the users to join and participate is the first and more important step in launching a (social media) site.