They announced the new 7 Wonders of the World today.

The Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, Brazil’s statue of Christ the Redeemer, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Mexico’s Chichen Itza pyramid, The Colosseum in Rome and India’s Taj Mahal.

What? No iPhone?

Electric Weekend gets a redisgn.

A short, hand-sketched story uploaded to Flickr. (No relation to Steve Jobs.)

[Via Longbrake]

Jeffrey Zeldman

The skills of Marketing, like the skills of IT, don’t necessarily map to what is needed to create great web experiences. For one thing, as anyone reading this knows, the web is a conversation. Marketing, by contrast, is a monologue. It can be a great monologue. But a monologue and conversation are not the same, as an hour spent with your windy Uncle Randolph will remind you.

I had a conversation with our director of marketing this afternoon on this very subject. How can we get a more managable and user friendly website? We landed on the same answer as Jeff, but we didn’t have a catchy post title like his.

From the FeedBurner blog:

Beginning yesterday, two of FeedBurner’s previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free.

What I like about feedburner is (1) you can set it and forget it; (2) easy stat tracking.

FeedBurner Stats PRO You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content.

MyBrand: Lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website’s domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing.

It took me less than a minute to set up the Stat’s PRO on both my sites. It will be interesting to see how their tracking compares with Mint.

I already use Steve’s Feedsmith plugin] to re-direct this site’s feed through feedburner. I’m not sure if the “My Brand” link is worth the touble or not to set up. I had to send an email to FeedBurner requesting to set it up.

after newly activating either of these features or services, you’ll notice a nifty new “PRO” badge next to your feed(s) on My Feeds page.

Their way of now saying that “everyone” is special.

Glenn Wolsey via Pownce:

I’m thinking about implementing a Linked List into my site much like what John Gruber does on Daring Fireball. I stumble across so many cool stories which don’t warrant a full post, but I’d like to make my opinion known on which makes me think it’d be a good idea to implement this feature.

This is 80% of why I started up shawnblanc.net. I read sites like Daring Fireball and Geek & Mild every day — it’s the linked lists (and the accompanying commentary) that make them great and the articles that push them over the top.

Regarding Refurbished Macs

Mactalk:

If you’re after a Mac or an iPod on the cheap, but good as new, take a look at the refurbished products – whatever you may think of buying a resurrected iPod or Mac, you can’t deny the value for money.

I agree. My Mac Pro and 23-inch Apple Cinema Display are both refurbished, I got my bluetooth keyboard from eBay, and everything works and looks perfect.

If you want to build a ship, don’t teach men to build a boat. Teach them to yearn for the wide and open sea.

РSaint-Exup̩ry

I installed Mint about 3 minutes before Announcing shawnblanc.net

We thought someone in our neighborhood was going patriotic on us when they recently painted their house white, the shutters blue and the trim red. But they painted the finishing touches to their garage today and looks like we were wrong – they’re Cubs fans.

I got this email today:

Shawn, I want to send you some awesome coffee from a nearby roaster. The coffee is called Peru a la Florida. It is an organic fair trade coffee. Would you like the beans or already ground? My family and I will be at IHOP for our family vacation in August. Do not forget that we want to take you to Chipotle and Starbucks next store for desert.

Thanks Marc! Whole please. And I never forget Chipotle and Starbucks.