Do you remember the static Welcome pages that were popular in the early days of the web. Just a smiling face and the word “Welcome” in giant type. Then you had to click somewhere to get to where you wanted to go on the site. Fortunately Welcome pages went away, along with frames and irritating animated GIFs. Then during a recent episode of net@night (101), Amber MacArthur, Sarah Lane and Leo Laporte, commented on how adding streaming elements to a “Landing” page might help keep their blogs feel more fresh in spite of long stretches between written blog entries. Nooooooooooooo! Then I started looking at some of the more “successful” sites on the web. Damn.

source: http://www.guykawasaki.com/

source: http://apple.com

source: http://ambermac.com

        

One cool thing with this year’s iPhone release is that I can follow it live on the web, especially iPhone coverage by Leo Laporte on his TWiTlive stream. This year Leo decided to stay “on-the-air” for over 24-hours, beginning with the release of the iPhone in New Zealand around 1PM PST and ending with the Hawaii release. The comparisons with Jerry Lewis’ famed telethons have been abundant. Thank god it’s been very much a dialogue and not a monologue with TWiT favorites Tom Merrit, Cali Lewis, Andy Ihnatko, Amber MacArthur, and Alex Lindsey and Apple Co-founder Steve Wazniak. As if additional buzz was needed, Leo has been giving away iPhone 3Gs which were donated by Audible.com. Thus there have been a few “give me an iPhone” videos such as the following:

Leo’s Kids – A TWiT Charitable Effort from Nick S on Vimeo.

Leo’s own ad for the 24-hour coverage:

I’m thinking that I’ll probably swing by the local Apple Store sometime over the weekend. And the hype continues. jbb

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