Your resume is boring. How do you expect to stand out in a crowd of job seekers when your black-and-white, list-formatted resume and formulaic c…

Upscale fashion designer Derek Lam unveiled Wednesday a new, 16-piece collection designed exclusively for eBay. The designs debuted simultaneo…

Getting a case for your iPod touch is win-win. It lets you add a bit of personal style to your music device and protects it at the same time. Ho…

Real estate website Zillow has introduced a new feature that allows home buyers and sellers to search for local real estate agents based on ratings and reviews.

When people use the Zillow Directory to search for a real estate agent in their area, results are sorted by local agents with the highest overall ratings and the largest number of reviews.

Overall ratings are based on recommendations on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “very likely” and 1 “very unlikely.” Users can compare agents’ overall ratings, as well as ratings across a number of categories including: process expertise, local knowledge, responsiveness and negotiation skills.

"Zillow was created to help people make smarter real estate decisions, and choosing an agent is one of the most important decisions a buyer or seller can make," said Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff.

"Agent Reviews are another huge step towards transparency for buyers and sellers. For good agents, it’s a terrific way to stand out from the crowd – the next best thing to a referral. "

Although it came early to an address or two yesterday, Apple’s “magical” tablet is today officially available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the…

Yahoo is out with interesting findings concering the demographics of iPad owners. The service analyzed the behaviors of Yahoo iPad users and found that men outnumber women two to one, Flickr usage is 143% higher than average, and international traffic accounts for 10% of all traffic (despite only being available for purchase in the U.S.).

The other stats Yahoo uncovered are fairly obvious. 48% of Yahoo iPad users own an iPhone (based on the fact that they visit Yahoo via iPhone recently), and 94% of them are considered affluent “with solid wealth and strong incomes.”

Yahoo data also seems to backup the notion that the iPad offers a superior browsing experience. The company estimates that the “demographic profile of the iPad Yahoo! user closely followed the interests on Yahoo! that we would suspect,” but with usage of Flickr, Finance, News, and Sports properties showing much higher than average traction on the iPad.

Another interesting finding: Yahoo consumers ages 35 – 44 were over-represented by 36% on the iPad, while the under 30 crowd happens to be vastly under represented.

Of course all this data does is point to Yahoo user demographics; it is not representative of the greater iPad population. Still we can make some safe conclusions from these findings: The device is popular with men, appeals to individuals with disposal income and offers a desirable browsing experience.

[Img credit: tyle_r]

For more Apple coverage, follow Mashable Apple on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Tags: Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ipad, stats, Yahoo

Bryan Zmijewski is the Chief Instigator at ZURB, an interaction design firm that has helped 100+ startups design better products & services. ZURB is the creator of Notable, the easiest way for teams to give website feedback.

According to the recent Netcraft survey, there are over 200 million websites on the Internet today, all trying to communicate their value and stand out in the crowd. Despite a vast difference in the things these websites are expressing, they’ve all faced similar issues during the design process.

One of the major challenges for designers is the difficulty in soliciting feedback from team members and clients. After all, we’re emotionally invested in our work, and it’s hard to separate constructive negative feedback from what feels like outright rejection. We want to serve our clients and coworkers, but at the same time, we don’t want to disrupt our own creative vision. It can quickly become a frustrating communication issue for everyone involved.

Here are five tips for designers to solicit useful feedback so that your project can move ahead smoothly.

1. Direct Questions to the Right Person

Choose specific people you’d like answers from so you get feedback from those with truly helpful advice. Don’t be afraid to mix it up a little. Be direct — and proactive — by calling out specific people for different types of responses.

2. Specify the Answers You Need

Highlight exactly what answers you’re looking for instead of leaving the question open-ended. If you’re meeting in person, give your client or coworker a written outline of the feedback you need for before showing a concept. Explain each module’s benefit every step of the way, and how it fits into the larger design concept.

3. Keep it Brief

Complete, clear, and concise statements help convey the meaning in your message, so keep comments tightly focused. Break down the feedback into small, manageable chunks that are easy to understand and act upon.

4. Light a Fire to Get a Response

Once you’ve explained the feedback you need, offer motivation to elicit a response. Make sure everyone on the team understands why the feedback you’re seeking is important and how it will help move the project forward. Assure others the suggestions they offer will be heard and incorporated into the final design if possible.

5. Does it Relate?

Feedback you can’t use is worse than no feedback at all. Make sure the feedback you get is directly related to moving the project along. There’s no need to rehash issues that have already been resolved or bounce around advice that has little or no relevance to the design issues on the table.

Conclusion

Opening yourself up to potential criticism by asking for honest feedback is never easy. It’s an important part of the design process, though. Remember, you need constructive feedback to make sure your vision is aligned with that of the overall goals of the project. Just ask specifically for what you need to know, and don’t take any of it personally.

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More design resources from Mashable:

- 9 Essential Social News and Bookmarking Sites for Designers

- 10 Essential Design Tools for Social Media Pros

- 8 of the Best Chrome Extensions for Web Designers

- 10 Fantastic Places for Finding Designers Online

- HOW TO: Build a More Beautiful Blog

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kryczka

Tags: business, design, feedback, List, Lists, user feedback, web design, Web Development

Facebook will host its F8 developer conference this Wednesday, announcing plans to spread its roots through the web.

Those plans include a web-wide “Like” button and a social toolbar to be placed at the bottom of your website, reports the NYTimes.

It’s all part of Facebook’s plan to follow you around the web, and perhaps avoid the same fate as MySpace.

The Starbucks of Social Networks?

Previous social networks, you’ll remember, were destinations. As soon as Friendster became slow and unreliable, an exodus to MySpace began. Once MySpace pages became bloated and unwieldy, the crowd hopped over to Facebook. Zuckerberg is well aware of the threat: If you build a destination site, users will hop over to the next cool hangout in no time at all.

That’s why Facebook longs to become a sturdy platform: The more businesses rely on Facebook, the less likely it is to fail. Zynga has already built a $1 billion-plus company using Facebook as a platform, and thousands of websites now use Facebook Connect for their login systems. The toolbar and web-wide “like” button are the next phase – by providing yet more distributed services, Facebook becomes invaluable. Credits, Connect, toolbars … these are all distributed plays that try to weave Facebook’s social graph throughout the fabric of the web.

Rather than being the coolest bar in town (and losing its clientele when they leave for a hipper spot), Facebook plans to become the Starbucks of the web, with a Like button on every corner.

Facebook’s Achilles Heel

Like all great plans, however, this one has a loophole: It relies upon Facebook owning the “social graph” — your network of connections (and, with the addition of “Likes”, your preference data too).

It’s in Facebook’s interests to lock up your social graph, and it’s in your best interests that they don’t. If Twitter, Google or another player were to make your social graph portable, you wouldn’t be siloing all your information in Facebook — you could do whatever you please with it.

Perhaps Facebook need not worry. Most users neither understand nor care about social graph portability, and ideas like Facebook Connect, Likes and toolbars give just enough access to the data to satisfy developers and all but the most discerning web user.

The question that will decide Facebook’s fate: Can it keep the social graph locked up forever?

[img credits: retroart / Zazzle, jimg944 / Flickr, SoulRider.222 / Flickr]

Tags: facebook, like

At the “Bigg Digg Shindigg” event at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi), Digg CEO Jay Adelson revealed that the popular social bookmarking site is getting a major overhaul, teasing the audience about new features such as personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard.

The new version of the website is not yet available. However, if you visit New.Digg.com, you can sign up for the alpha and see a preview of what the new Digg will look like in the background. Mr. Adelson told the crowd that the site was “five years in the making.”

While the company didn’t reveal much about the new website, it seems that there will be a cleaner interface, more personalization options, the ability to submit news items with one click, and brings back the leaderboard for top users.

Digg’s famous website buttons are also getting revamped. In fact, if you Digg an article on Mashable, you will see the new buttons in action, as we are currently testing them.

We’re going to try to put up a video of the announcement, along with more details on the new version of Digg as soon as we can.

Reviews: Digg, Mashable

Tags: digg, New Digg, trending

I have a website that is only very small ( 4 pages ) and there isn’t that much text on each page so I suppose SEO wouldn’t be very effective with this website.
What other alternatives do I have? What is the most effective thing you have ever done to your website?

Ok, time for the truth. Content is not king, no matter what someone tells you. That was a gimic by content writers to sell their services. As long as your pages are targeted and some good onpage is completed, quality links will get you top positions in the major search engines.

I have always said that "king content" has no kingdom online without a throne of links.

I have argued with the so called "guru’s" over the years and called out many. Let’s compare traffic and bank accounts of the "king content" crowd against my throne of links and we can settle this dispute once and for all. I have never had a taker, not one! because it is lies and deceptions.

You have 2 options for traffic that will convert, that is SEO or PPC. The reason for this is because it makes YOU the target, not the other way around.

Would you rather be looking for money, or money looking for you?

When you do banners, social and other marketing, you are looking for money in the general population of the internet. With PPC and seo, you are in the right place at the right time every time, so they are looking for you "by keyword search".

When you place an ad on the radio, you are betting that a small precentage of people are interested in what you have to say or offer. This is mass marketing and has a very low return on investment. This is the same as "other" marketing plans online, like banners , social and all of the other crap these other people are telling you to do.

Now, PPC and SEO are like having the first ad in the yellowpages for what you offer, and that is HUGE because they are hunting you.

So when you have an active potential customer that is directly interested, your conversion rates will go through the roof.

I would rather have 200 keyword specific visitors thn 2 million non keyword visitors.

Your title is the most important onpage factor for seo, and you can have limited content and gaine some great traffic that will convert. So don’t buy the lies.