As many of you know, we’ve been working hard on “The eduStyle Guide to Usable Higher Ed Homepage Design“. We’ll be launching it either late February or early March. We know you’re probably getting sick hearing about it, so we’re gonna give you a little reward for your pain. 

If you’re one of the first 100 people to buy the book we’ll enter your name into a draw for a new iPod Touch. If you buy a team edition we’ll give you three entries. (If you’ve got money to burn, buy 100 copies and lock it away.)

So what’s the best way to know when it’s released? The are two. First, get on the email notification list here. By adding yourself to the list, you also qualify for a nice discount. The second way is to follow any (or all) of the following Twitter users: edustyle, circa1978, or codyfoss. We’ll be talking about it non-stop once it’s out.

We believe this is a great community and we’d like to give back to those of you who work so hard to promote us. We’re planning to set up an affiliate program so you can make a little cash while spreading your goodwill. If you’re a blogger and would be willing to review the book, we’ll also provide coupon codes for your readers. Contact us here if you’re interested in either.

For those that haven’t come across EDU Checkup yet, it is the idea of Nick DeNardis who is the Associate Director of Web Communications at Wayne State University. We blogged about it here when he first launched the project. One of his tasks at Wayne State is to review and benchmark other university web sites. In October he started recording his impressions in a regular video podcast. He’s doing great work in spreading awareness of best practices and we’re pleased to be able to share those with the eduStyle community in a regular feature on the eduStyle blog and in our monthly newsletter. Once a week we’ll share the links to the latest EDU Checkup video reviews of sites from the eduStyle gallery. We hope you enjoy. Here is this weeks reviews.

• Harvard University
• University of North Carolina – School of Pharmacy
• Regent University
• Kaplan University
• Texas A&M  – Engineering
• University at Albany
• Gettysburg College