I must admit that on my first visit to You Cubez I wasn’t to sure about the concept.

Advertisers buy a link to their website in the form of a colorful but otherwise generic looking cube which is then displayed alongside another few hundred similar looking cubes.

Nothing really compels a user to click on an individual cube as they have no visual clue as to what kind of site is behind the link, and as some of the cubes appear on separate pages (not the homepage) it is difficult to see the value.

However once I started to read more into how the site works I began to realize that there is actually a very clever concept behind it -

Advertisers can improve the value of their cube by linking to www.you-cubez.com from their websites, for each referrer more value is added to the cube - the higher the value, the better position the cube gets, which in turn improves the chance that the cube will be clicked on.

Cubes can also be sold on, so when you consider it only costs £1.00 to buy a standard cube the whole idea suddenly becomes much more appealing.

As people try to improve the value of their cube this in turn brings more traffic to the You Cubez website improving it’s visibility and adding value to other advertisers.

The design of the site is very good, it has a web 2.0 feel to it which is reinforced by the fact there is a certain amount of user interaction - when you buy a cube you become a member and there is also a forum where various topics can be discussed.

Please feel free to add comments on this website, I would be also be interested to hear from anyone who currently has a cube.

Today I added a couple of new flyers for Apple related sites to the wall -

Woz.org is the personal site of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak.

And the Apple Blog is one of the best and most frequently updated Apple/Mac blogs out there.

Please share your favourite Apple related sites with me.

I recently added 3 new flyers to the wall, these are sites I visit on a regular basis -

Smashing Magazine is the ultimate web designers resource, whenever I need inspiration or ideas on how to do something this site has become my first port of call.

CSS Remix is one of the best CSS showcases out there, constantly updated and the featured sites are always of a very high standard.

Boagworld is full of articles offering advice on managing and building websites, it also has an associated podcast which I recommend listening to.

Please share your favourite web design and resource sites with me.