Archive for the ‘Interesting’ Category
by David Peralty on May 19th, 2009
Thanks to @problogger, I found out that Eyetrack III had released a study, a few years ago, that you might be interested in if you want to know how your readers are likely viewing your site.
During the study, they “observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content.”
The results are pretty interesting, and a bit surprising in a few places. They talk about the effects of homepage layout on how people read the content of the page, the best placement for images, using font size to increase reader focus and avoid having them quickly scan through text rather than reading it all, and even the effects to paragraph length on how/where people’s eyes drift around the page. It’s all pretty damn cool.
Especially important might be the results of what happens when people get to a break in the text (say, from an ad), that could cause some people to rethink the layout of their ads, and site in general. They actually go into pretty good detail about advertising. The study is worth checking out for that section alone if you run ads on your site.
There is also a bit about navigation placement that could help some sites struggling to get people to drill down into their site past the initial entry page.
All in all, if you want to learn a TON about how people are likely to be reading your blog, and get a lot of tips about how to control the flow of their attention, I’d highly suggest reading through the Eyetrack III study. It’s a bit lengthy, but it’s so packed with useful info that it’s well worth it.
Categories: Blogging Tips, Interesting
by David Peralty on March 11th, 2009
First Web Designer has a nice post up reflecting some logo design trends that they have witnessed.
It is always interesting to me to see how people brand themselves, and I think a logo can say a great deal about a brand, and its goals. That being said, I also wonder if with a big site like LogoPond, if you couldn’t find at least three or four logos in the last few months under almost any “trend”.
I enjoyed the selections though, and would love to hear about any of you using the trends listed on that post.
Categories: Interesting
by David Peralty on January 30th, 2009
Recently, the subject of applications relating to blogging, development, and more have come across my desk more than once.
The first was my own attempt at writing a free college software guide on College Crunch which then was noticed by Online College which built upon the list, adding more things that students (but really anyone) could and should use.
Then, I found another great post, on noupe, one of the blogs I frequent, relating to Mac Applications for Web Designers, and so the question then is, what do you all use as a blogger? I don’t just mean blogging software, but Twitter applications, day to day software. What is installed on your computer that you rarely go a day without launching? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to mention which operating system you use, and please no OS snobs.
Categories: Blog Software, Interesting
by jim on October 1st, 2008
If you’re a WordPress theme developer you may want to keep your themes technically aligned to new commenting features that will most probably make it to WordPress version 2.7. Otto, who is a well-known and respected WordPress community member has published this article regarding his commenting features. Check it out! There is a preview to the new 2.7 commenting system at that page too.
Here are some of the enhancements that Otto covers:
▪ Creating a 2.7 compatible comments.php file
▪ Password protection check
▪ The comments loop
▪ The power of Ajax
▪ Styling
We all know that commenting is one of the great features that WordPress is known for. Apparently the development team is taking this feature a step further by offering important feature upgrades like threading, paging and javascript enhancements.
I bet ‘ya this will result in better blogs as people can now interact intuitively from one comment to another.
Categories: Interesting, WordPress Themes
by jim on September 23rd, 2008
Show your love for good ‘ol WP!
I’ve seen several creative WordPress fan art lately, which brought me to think if there are any official or unofficial collection of all WordPress logos on the net. If you’ve got any WordPress fan art yourself, you may want to consider writing the WordPress team to submit it for all the world to see, or use, or whatever… maybe to just brighten up their day. 
The WordPress fan art above was from WordCamp Philippines. Matt was quoted to “really like this art work”, though I’m sure he favors every fan art made for his WordPress work. We’ve seen this fan art on t-shirts and bags… they really rock!
What makes me wonder though is “can people copy these logos on shirts”, some of them really are cool and would be great to wear a few myself. Is there a way to ask permission to use them? hmmm… of if you would like to make fan art, would that require a permission from WordPress? double hmmmm… wonder how that works? anyone?
Set your browsers and travel to this fan art page … and this one too.
Categories: Advertising, Interesting
by jim on September 16th, 2008
What does placing “ninth in the highest internet users in the world “mean? It means an undisclosed amount by Google purchasing Korean blogging company Tatter, that’s what it means. Google is setting it’s eyes on Yahoo dominated Korea with this move to “Google-ize” the country’s popular blogging software “TextCube” by Tatter. TextCube has been compared to Blogger.com rival WordPress.
“We are excited to welcome Tatter and Company’s engineering team to Google Korea”, announced a Google spokesperson in an e-mailed statement. “Acquiring Tatter and Company will allow us to enhance our online publishing tools in Korea, benefiting a large number of users who already depend on and enjoy Google and Tatter and Company’s products”.
An excited Tatter co-chief executive Chang-Won Kim confirmed the deal on his personal blog, noting that Tatter had been “Googled”.
In a country where it’s all high-speed internet access (mostly), it is no wonder that with this move by Google, all other big names in the “cloud” and the computer industry in general will take a definitive move towards connecting with the Korean market.
Categories: Blogging News, Interesting
by jim on September 12th, 2008
If you’ve been looking for an effective way to communicate those company memos, look no further. Let me introduce you to Digital Memo. Imagine working in an office where the company bulletin board is the loneliest “tool”, the least used. If you’ve got an important message to say, hey, that’s the last place you’d publish it, right? Everyone just breezes by it! Unless you’ve got a memo announcing a bonus, a party or a cook-out!
Now imagine your message as the first thing people see when they turn on their computers? It’s a CEO’s dream. Instant communication from the head down the line.
Digital Memo is a system based on the power and convenience of instant messaging that notifies users each time you add a new post to your blog.
By integrating the RSS feed that is published with your blog into the Digital Memo system, Digital Memo enables you to use your blog as a tool to automatically send memos digitally. Get set-up in 3 steps:
- Administrate your blog RSS feed into Digital Memo
- Install Digital Memo onto desired machines
- Start sending your memos digitally!
This tool has successfully integrated the “user-friendliness” of a blog software and the “formality” of a corporate communication system. Each computer belonging to the company network will surely receive every corporate memo, promptly alerting each user with the attention your memo deserves.
Digital Memo also has an online tutorial if you wish to see a demo.
Now, let’s see how the CEO “work flow” looks like:
Step 1: You come in the office, turn on your PC and fire up (or open) your blog.
Step 2: You compose a short memo informing everyone about something really important, or maybe inform them about their attendance to the company barbecue on Saturday perhaps. Or maybe write everyone a “good job” note for a change.
Step 3: You hit “publish”, and that’s it!
Your blog’s RSS feed will be monitored by Digital Memo and any new blog post you publish will automatically be fed into the Digital Memo system and distributed company-wide to everyone’s computer desktops.
Now I know what you’re thinking – Is this very secure?
Yes it is. You and only you would know what your blog user name and passwords are. Your blog can well reside in the company server, where presumably you’ve got that box all firewalled and tamper-proof.
Is it easy to install? Yes it is. The Digital Memo reader can be installed on multiple systems by using the MSI installer. Full instructions are provided with your documentation on purchasing.
Will the staff really see these memos in a prominent way? Yes they will. Every new memo you post will automatically pop up on everyone’s computer desktops. There’s literally no way people will miss reading your memo. No way.
What if I send say a series of memos in a day, will the staff have access to every one of them? Yes, they will. Digital Memo will appear only as one memo box (or a neatly tucked icon in the system tray) in everyone’s computer desktops with “next” and “previous” memos distinctly accessible with just a click of a button.
What are the other benefits of using Digital Memo?
- It won’t clog everyone’s mailbox
- It won’t trap any of your important messages/memos in crazy spam rules and folders
- People can’t “loose” the memo. There’s no excuse like “I didn’t see that memo” from now on.
- It’s turn-key, you install it and use it immediately
- Oh, and it saves the forest too.. we don’t need to cut down more trees to make paper!
The only sad news is that Digital Memo is only available for Windows XP or Vista. Too bad for Mac users, but hey, if we can create enough demand maybe they can make a Mac version too!
Oh, and another thing … if your company’s communication structure is based on a strong policy that every memo should be “written on paper”… too bad. Maybe it’s time to change the policy?
The Test
We’re only 5 PCs in the company network, I gave it a try, and found that it is very “snappy”. There were no installation snags, the operation “CEO Workflow” (described above) was a 1-2-3 winning combination that even the most cyberphobic CEO would appreciate. Messages were instantly received by every PC.
The Recommendation
I’d encourage you to go and download the trial software, there’s nothing to lose, really. You may want to try it out on the IT department, to start with, and slowly add more departments in due time.
Digital Memo is made by Popuload Software. A company, based in Montreal Canada, noted for their innovative range of software solutions that help change the way users interact with the “usual” operating systems. A leader in providing RSS tools for communicating and tracking information, digitally.
The evaluation version is a fully functional and unlimited version of Digital Memo. The only difference this has from the purchased version is that each distributed post will contain a “trial warning message”. Not bad if you want to see how this new memo distribution method performs in “the long run”.
The full version costs US$195.00, it is downloadable right now by purchasing it online thru your credit card or PayPal.
Program updates are distributed via the Popuload website as well.
Check out the company website at www.popuload.com
Editor’s note: This review was written upon request by Pouload Software.
Categories: Feed Tools, Interesting
by jim on September 2nd, 2008
Honestly, I was both surprised and happy when I heard that Google’s taking on Microsoft head-on by introducing an open-source browser… Chrome. It will be launched tomorrow in close to 100-countries. For now, I believe it’s limited to the Windows beta version though. Rightly so if they’re taking on Microsoft first hand. But for the Mac and Linux fans, there is a promise of a special version for Leopard and beyond.
Google has published an online comics board to explain what Chrome is all about, you can see it right here.
I personally believe that doing a browser program as open-source from ground-up is a good idea. There’s nothing like user power. With the community behind developments we are all sure that every feature will be born out of a real-life need, or a user demand.
Check out the comics they’ve published, I’ve somehow related to my usual wrestles with browser problems.
Oh and do pass by their Wikipedia page for more information.
Categories: General, Interesting
by jim on August 29th, 2008
Seems that Amazon.com is growing their stake in books as they have recently acquired Shelfari (one of the biggest online book community). While it’s widely known that Amazon has been involved with Shelfari since its early beginnings, it is a natural course to solidify the relationship.
According to the Shelfari blog:
Amazon has been a long supporter of Shelfari. They’ve worked closely with us as we introduced readers, like you, to our global community of book lovers. They’ve been there each step of the way as we brought forth new features, like the cool Facebook application and our virtual bookshelf. And now Shelfari and Amazon will work hand in hand to continue to grow our dynamic community and create innovative new tools around the books you love.
The acquisition terms were not made public but it seems that Amazon is indeed cornering the online book cloud. This same month it has also acquired yet another massive online book community, AbeBooks.
What are all these you may ask? My personal opinion in these acquisition series points to the strength of online networks and communities. It would appear that market studies have added an additional “source of influence” for consumers. I remembered a good laugh late 2007 when a marketing questionnaire included the question “Would you change your (beauty product) if a person in your online network suggests you should?”.
Back to Shelfari… I would be interested to see what comes out of this news. While I read that there would be no significant change right now… Amazon must have something up its sleeves. hmmmmm….
Categories: General, Interesting
by jim on August 28th, 2008
Social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia.com is opening its doors to the open-source world. They have announced at Gnomedex 2008 that they would soon distribute their code publicly, akin to how WordPress.com has done for WordPress.org, the latter being a website that the public can download freely the full WordPress code.
This is a much anticipated move for the Ma.gnolia.com team as developments in technology are striding faster than the Ma.gnolia core tech team can handle. With their move to open-source, we will soon see a much improved service offering. Ma.gnolia’s Larry Hallf at Gnomedex 2008 says the following:
Some of the things to look forward to in this next version include:
- A new stream view that shows you the freshest bookmarks of people you’re friends with on one single page.
- Support for both OAuth and OpenID, with the latter making it easier for people to sign into hosted builds of Magnolia.
- Sidebar customization
- Theming
The open-source version won’t be available to developers until sometime in September, with a beta version (read: consumer friendly) on track for December and into the first part of 2009. In the meantime, if you’re a developer looking to get your mitts on the code it will be made available here.
Categories: Blogging Tools, Interesting
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