My attention was grabbed by an article at copyblogger entitled Catablogging: Blog-Based Ecommerce and Affiliate Marketing. The term catablogging certainly caught my attention and enticed me to learn more about what it is.

Catablogging is blogging by mixing content and commerce deliberately. It is not just a blog that will attract people to buy stuffs from the site but also a blog that will attract people who are interested with the lifestyle surround the products.

For instance, if you are selling fashion products, write an article about the upcoming spring fashion and relate it with your fashion products!

This is catablogging.

I remember a McDonald billboard that says “The number that comes after FREE is $1.00″. Together with this text is the tempting and delicious 4 chicken nuggets.

However, this is totally different in the digital world. Chris Andreson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, wrote an article “Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business“. In the digital world, the number that comes after FREE is still F-R-E-E.

The article outlines the reasons why FREE is the future of business:
1. Freemium: provide some free trials with limited functionality just to entice users to subscribe on the paid functionalities. (e.g. Flickr free account vs. Flickr premium account)
2. Advertising: free content and everything but money is generated from advertising.
3. Cross-subsidies: provide one thing free so that you can sell another thing related to this free stuff.
And many more can be found in the article.

What amazes me most is “FREE changes EVERYTHING”. The cost of bandwidth, storage, and processing power in the digital world is falling down to the FREE level because of Moore’s law. This changes how business is conducted in the digital world. We can see that while Google gives so many free (and great) applications they still prosper (through the Advertising). So, FREE is no more an anomaly in the digital world - it starts to become the norm. I guess in the near time, we should be thinking “How can I make my online business FREE?”.

I remember the first carousel ride that I took when I was a small kid. It was totally fun! I would not stop riding on it.

Amazingly, the web has this carousel like widget, too. Fabio Zendhi Nagao has created this widget, iCarousel, using javascript and html that complies to the web standard. When I visited his site and saw the demo (Mac lovers, you should see this demo), I just fell in love with its interactivity.

Therefore, I did an implementation of this iCarousel widget into our portfolio. So, check it out!

But, please do not play too long, mommy is going to be angry! :p