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As if traveling for business or pleasure hadn’t become miserable enough of an experience in the past 10 years, now you can’t even get a travel agent to book an itinerary for you without paying through the nose for it. So, in order to save yourself tons of time and aggravation in running around between hotels and airlines to make your travel plans, it makes sense to find a reliable single source where you can arrange all of these things. Check out TravelHERO.com, which can book air, hotel, cars, and vacation packages for you all from its website. They also can help with discount reservations for sought-after destinations such as Disneyland hotels. Put them in the mix for your next trip.

I’m a fan of the Jakob Nielsen’s web usability reports - he tends to reveal useful insights and guidance for web design, based not on opinion but on research and scientific studies.

Now he’s just made available for free a 148-page pdf report for which he normally charges $124. Good deal, you can’t go wrong with free. Check out Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities (75 Best Practices for Design of Websites and Intranets, Based on Usability Studies with People Who Use Assistive Technology ).

When you download the pdf, be sure to take note of this best practice– he doesn’t require you to register, or provide an email, or provide a credit card number, or any other sleazy ruse which always tends to result in tons of unwanted cold calls. Good deal, I hate when whitepaper and pdf offers make you run a gauntlet. I have enough people cold-calling me every day, I don’t need more.

I downloaded the pdf; haven’t read it yet, but plan to do it on a flight after the holidays.

If you have a growing web business which ships physical product, you will eventually outgrow UPS and the like– especially if you need to ship larger quantities, or skids, of product. That’s where LTL (less than truckload) shipping and full truckload shipping comes in - you can use a freight shipping company such as LGI Inc, which specializies in over-the-road trucking within the US, Canada and Mexico. It’s good to educate yourself about your LTL options, since this can save a ton of money over the cost of UPS. They even have the capability to do ‘heavy-haul’ jobs, which would include moving big pieces of equipment and other things which don’t fit in normal trailers.

Any discussion of design which attempts to rank a ‘top 10′ is by nature subjective, but it’s still fun to make a list and state an opinion. Here is a post on 10 great Web site designs/redesigns of 2007 which works as a nice state-of-the-web circa 2007.

And the state of the web circa 2007?

• clean, (deceptively) simple designs
• rounded corners, rounded corners, rounded corners
• big chunks of simple Fisher-Price colors
• social elements everywhere (let the readers participate)
• for god’s sake, you need an Avatar

While I’m on the topic of long tail and other modern business concepts, let’s think about the power of the technolocally adept business. Why would you want to go to the trouble of setting up and furnishing your own warehouse, with all the cash outlays and risk involved, without equipping it with a warehouse management system such as that offered by Cadre? You want to make sure that you have a firm  hand on your supply chain and fulfillment process, since that’s where the ‘rubber meets the road’ as you deliver products to customers. They say ‘Speed Kills’ for a reason- you want to be able to handle your customers’ orders as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. Cadre’s system is idea for web-businesses - you can take your orders in real time and automate your shipping process. That’s smart - take as much physical (and expensive) human effort as possible out of the process, and automate all you can. That leaves more time to work on pursuing more business. Let the experts at Cadre help you reach your goals.

Web marketers hearts are a-flutter with the Long Tail concept this year. The whole idea that the internet enables you to make money from even obscure groups and needs is very powerful. However, The Myth of the Long Tail and the True Value of Blogging argues that it is easy to misinterpret the long tail idea to your detriment. For example, you wouldn’t want to launch a business specifically targeting an extreme niche audience unless that niche is large enough to sustain your business.

So, in other words, you wouldn’t want to establish a business specifically and solely targeted to fans of fantasy literature about 3-legged squirrels.

Where the long tail concept works better is where you can leverage your pre-existing products and offerings to a broader market consisting of lots of little niches. For example - you’re Amazon, you’ve got lots of books, you can profit by using SEO to make sure your books are easily found by the niche groups who might be looking for them. So you can profit from the (small) number of people interest in fantasy literature about 3-legged squirrels.

A domain registration is worth peanuts if there is no option of online backup. Often file sharing does not end in desirable results, which is when hard drive data recovery becomes essential. This is why having an effective back up server is so important. From incorporation of ip phones to web templates, all such changes should be preceded by refreshed backup. The data recovery programs serve a much higher purpose.

If your business is new, or expanding, or you have a sudden need to set up operations in a different city, you can avoid signing long-term leases and commitments by instead renting executive office suites. BusinesSuites provide flexible, fully furnished office space. For example, if you have a sudden need for Dalllas Office Space, then turn to BusinesSuites. It’s pay-per-use rather than committing yourself to space you may not need, or may outgrow.

Copyblogger recently had posted an article pointing out how copywriters could ‘repurpose’ headlines from Cosmo - using that distinctive Cosmo style to create some inspiration and attention-grabbers. OK, that’s a great idea. Now they’ve posted Cosmopolitan Link Karma, which links out to a whole bunch of posts which picked up on that idea. Check out the list for some good examples of how this can work.

A few of my headline observations and tips:

• Ask a question, which makes the reader want to know the answer (How do carpenters avoid falling off the ladder?)
• Insinuate the reader is missing out on something (5 things your neighbor knows about lawncare that you don’t)
• Appeal to the natural human sense of paranoia (What THEY don’t want YOU to know about your health)
• Be specific, and use lists: 5 things, 3 ways, 22 secrets.

What do you get for the man who has everything? Well, the odds are pretty good that he still doesn’t have a rhino head above the fireplace and a leopard-skin rug. So you can start there. How about a South Africa hunting safari? Your novice hunter would be paired up with Crocodile Dundee-type guides (ie people who know what they’re doing) and sent off into the bush to hunt big game. Lions, elephants– they’re not kidding when they say big game. These hunting tours are sponsored by the T. Jeffrey Safari Company. Check out the website for lots of info, pics and prices. Next thing you know, your Papa Bear could be living his dreams on safari.

I’m always a sucker for lists of web design tips and mistakes. With that in mind, check out this one, which is pretty comprehensive: 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid. Hopefully, it’s not the first time you’ve heard many of these, but it’s good to check Do/Don’t lists once in a while just to be sure you haven’t fallen into any bad habits. I know I’ve been guilty of some of these in the past on my sites, and may still have a few problems here and there with a few things hanging around. Eventually, we’ll weed them all out. No one is perfect, but at least you can strive for perfection and keep getting better.