Blog Sales: Blogging Bubble Bursting?: whoever thought that one day blogs would be changing hands, for quite frankly, ridiculous sums of money? To sellers, well done, good on you, for securing the sale. To the buyers, I hope you know what you’re doing, paying up to $20,000, in some cases, for a blog!

Matt Jones who recently sold his blog, Blogging Fingers, ponders the surge in blog sales of late and lists a number of reasons as to why bloggers are selling up. I especially like this idea though:

The Winter Blues. I’m not suggesting they just gave up because of the cloudy climate, but in the UK the “winter blues” are known to cause mass pessimism, which may have been a factor in other parts of the world too.

Winter blues hey? I spent four or five winters in the UK… come on, they’re not that bad! ;) +

Future of Web Design report: by Mathew Patterson who recently attended the Future of Web Design conference in New York.

Maybe this particular post should be called “The future of email design” as Mathew makes some interesting points about HTML email. Either you like HTML formatted email, or you hate it.

If you are a standards based web designer, then chances you fall in with the latter, given the number of non-standard work arounds required in the design process. But…

We (web designers) don’t get to decide how people use technologies - the end users have already voted, and they like using HTML emails.

So what’s a standards’ compliant designer to do? Perhaps the upcoming launch of the Email Standards Project may help to ease the conundrum. +

Vanity publishing is now more attractive: publishing your own book is easier than ever, provided you don’t mind using an online “self publishers”.

If the invention of the printing press liberated books from the monopoly of the monasteries in the 15th century, then self-publishing is freeing us today from the power of publishers.

Victor Keegan compares the Lulu.com and Blurb self publishing systems. If you do everything by the book, so to speak, there could be a book bearing your name as author out there in no time at all.

Who said print publishing was dead? +

Rebecca Newman Photography: a great portfolio and collection of photos by Melbourne based photographer Rebecca Newman. Via the Australian INfront. +

Mobile PayPal - the digital wallet at last? This sounds interesting. Soon we may be able to buy MP3s and movie tickets using our mobile (or cell) phone.

In Australia, PayPal’s Mobile Checkout already has Hoyts and Warner Music onboard. Movies and music are definitely good places to start.

Certainly the ability to purchase movie tickets via a mobile phone, while sitting in a traffic jam, on the way to said movie could be very handy! +