Maybe you’re already familiar with web sites that let you create your own, basic site for free and without having to know any programming, using pre-made templates. Places like Google Sites, WordPress.com, Tumblr and Blogger are all popular. If you want to check out another one, look at Onepager. It lets you use a custom domain name (like www.mycompany.com) and includes analytics, so you know if you’re reaching your target audience. And did I mention they just raised $350 thousand in financing from angel investors? It means that something must be in the works, there.

On Saturday, Google+ (still in beta) deleted user accounts en masse, and started enforcing contradictory policies. Anyone who wanted to be anonymous — many with good reason — had their accounts deleted without warning. Some celebrities and VIPs got personal service to restore their accounts, but most ordinary people were in the dark and had to appeal to the faceless bureaucracy.

If Facebook and Linked In were frightened of Google+ before the weekend, they probably aren’t, now. Read the scoop on ZDNet.

If you’re on YouTube or Vimeo and click an Embed button to get the code to embed a video on your site or on your blog, you might notice something new: the code they give you is a simple 1-line iframe, rather than the long, complicated object and embed tags.

Years ago, people predicted that iframes would go the way of the dodo, but developers still find them useful. The reason YouTube and Vimeo are now using them is that the iPad and iPhone don’t support Flash, and that’s the format these videos are coded in. But when you insert an iframe, the video sharing service can insert something more compatible. The iframe code also has the advantage of being a lot more simple, and it’s easier to re-size the video to fit your web page.

If you still need the old method for backwards compatibility, both sites let you click a button to get the legacy code.

On the official Delicious blog, Yahoo (which owns the service) posted an article titled What’s Next for Delicious?, saying “‘No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is [an] ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.”

That sounds like CorporateSpeak for “Anyone want to buy it?” If you have an account, it’s probably safe for now, but you should probably back up your bookmarks, just in case.

Three months ago, Microsoft announced that it was discontinuing Windows Live Spaces, their free blogging and social networking service. Live Spaces simply didn’t have the functionality of its competitors, and Microsoft decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to create yet another blogging platform.

Microsoft reports that since the end of November, they have helped Live Spaces users convert over half a million blogs to WordPress.com, the free service provided by Automattic, the company started by Matt Mullenweg, the original developer of the WordPress blogging and CMS software (which this blog uses).

Flickr (www.flickr.com) is a great photo-sharing service, with both a free version and an inexpensive paid version. To embed a slideshow of your photos in WordPress, simply paste the link of the slideshow itself into one of your posts. Here’s a sample: