Posted by telecommatt on September 13, 2007
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” - Douglas Adams
Any designer that begins an article with Douglas Adams scores instant points with me! Even without the great opening quote, this is a really good article. Very thought provoking. How often do we really think about feelings during the design process?
Part of being a web designer is trying to understand and make sense of how people are using your design. Therefore, being empathic, or having the ability to share and understand the feelings of another, is a valuable trait to have.
You can find the full article, as well as a few additional thoughts, here.
http://jkn.com/View?j=849189.237405250571
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Posted in Quotes, Social Web, Webdev | No Comments »
Posted by telecommatt on June 21, 2007
Posted in Webdev, web2.0 | No Comments »
Posted by telecommatt on June 11, 2007
More backlogged links! I’m especially excited about Remember the Milk being available offline. Most everyone knows I’m an RTM addict, and I am still convinced it’s the most flexible way to manage your GTD-life. Now, I can “remember the milk” from my PC online, from my laptop in line, and my mobile handset where ever. Sweet!
Firefox Extensions For Bloggers
LifeHack.org has a useful post today with 17 Firefox Extensions That Make Blogging Easy - broken down into Collecting, Writing and Images.
I hate lists like this - I end up spending half my day having to
install and test great new tools which are supposed to make me more
productive but in the short term which are wonderful distractions!
PS: The Split Browser
extension is going to be VERY useful. I quite often wish I didn’t
have to flip back and forth from one tab to another while writing a
post or newsletter in one tab and researching what I’m writing i
another. This is great - why didn’t anyone tell me!
What else don’t I know about?!? What are your favorite Firefox extensions?
burstcast
burstcast
Using
any camera phone you can quickly and easily send photos where everyone
can view them. Don’t just tell your friends about it, burstcast
it.
Web As Desktop: Remember the Milk gets Gears
The popular online todo list Remember the Milk has paired up with the spanking new Google Gears to offer a seamless online/offline experience for RTM.
Remember
the Milk’s Google Gears integration is really impressive, offering the
entire RTM experience in offline mode—meaning that you can view
your todo lists, add tasks, edit tasks, search your tasks, create Smart
Lists, along with anything else you like to do with RTM. As far as I’ve
seen, RTM is the first popular non-Google app (and the second app
outside of Google Reader) to offer offline access and synchronization
with Google Gears, and it’s done a helluva job. Looking forward to
seeing more of this.
The Week in Sustainable Mobility (6/3/07)
Editor’s Note: Check out Minnesota in the eco news! We don’t often make headlines here. Must be that Minnesota Nice thing…
A Final Batch of Productivity Tips
During my mini-hiatus after the birth of my son a few more productivity tips did come through for the Ultimate Guide to Productivity.
They
seem to have stopped at this point so maybe the Ultimate Guide to
Productivity group writing project meme has played out its course.
That’s totally fine. I’ve listed the remaining submissions
below.
You can still submit a post if you’d like - just tell us your best productivity tips!
In
the meantime I’ll start the huge task of reviewing all the posts
again and preparing the much-promised e-book. I can’t give a
deadline at this stage, and as soon as I get a handle on the work
I’ll call for help from others. But here goes nothing!
- Tag, I’m It! by Christina Haas
- Number 1 productivity tip by Shannon
- Productivity: Snooze It or Lose It by Connie Reece
- Automation: My Ultimate Guide to Productivity by Alaeddin
- Meme Week: My Secret to Productivity by Mark Goodyear
- Cutting Out the Bull: Information Overload and Productivity by David Bohl
- Fear - The Ultimate Productivity Blocker by Shaboom
- Ultimate Guide to Productivity: A Tip the Worx by In The Worx
If I’m not mistaken, this brings our total number of submissions to 137!
I’ll
be posting the full list shortly so there’s a single page to
access all of the great productivity tips. And again, you can keep
sending them in if you’ve got them…
Lala
Upload and play your iTunes library and all your digital music online.
Easy download to your iPod or PC. Safely share music and playlists.
URL: Lala.
Rouxbe
An online instructional cooking site that walks you step-by-step through each recipe with video tutorials. URL: Rouxbe.
Mind42
A browser-based online mind mapping application. URL: Mind42.
Make your site mobile friendly
A nice introduction into the world of the mobile web. Personally it
felt it played down the challenges in places but it still gave some
nice advice.
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Posted in Betas (as in not-the-fish), Blogging, CSS, Energy, Environment, GTD, LinkRoundup, Mobile, Music, Politics, Software, Webdev, Websites, web-based services | 3 Comments »
Posted by telecommatt on May 12, 2007
Codswallop » The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for Everything You Will Possibly Need Annotated
Running a business for yourself means you have to be inventive and always on the lookout for a new and better way to get things done. Innovation junkies, take note: the Internet has a lot to offer. From invoicing to marketing, these are tools that freelancers need to know about.
pic2color
- Returns a color scheme from a photo. Very useful tool.
- post by telecommatt
Textorizer - vectorise a picture using text strings Annotated
textorize a picture
ajax13 - Welcome to ajax13
- AJAX office suite. Read/write MS Office files from a Web2.0 interface.
- post by telecommatt
WebSnapr - Website Thumbnails For Your Site Annotated
WebSnapr lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. Let your visitors
to instantly visualize any web page before clicking. Increase site traffic, click-through
rate and site stickiness.
CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software Annotated
Free Streaming Video Software
WebShotsPro.com : Website Screenshot Generation - Website Thumbnail Service
URL Investigator
- Easy way to check your Pagerank, Alexa rank, etc. Shows linkback too.
- post by telecommatt
Remember The Milk - Blog
- For those who don’t know, I use www.rememberthemilk.com (RTM) as my task manager. I haven’t done a full review yet, but I do highly recommend it. Part of what I like is the flexibility. I clipped this list of custom searches mostly for myself, but thought other RTM users might see some use in them as well.
- post by telecommatt
WordPress Theme Generator Annotated
- Very cool. If you’re not looking for any TOO unique, this is a pretty sweet tool!
- post by telecommatt
This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge.
Posted in CSS, Freelancing, Webdev, Websites, web-based services | No Comments »
Posted by telecommatt on April 13, 2007
Freelance Writers - Expore the Freelance Writing Jobs at LifeTips
- Become a Guru, post tips or publish a book. Get paid.
- post by telecommatt
Helium - Where Knowledge Rules
- Get paid for your writing if you get rated high enough.
- post by telecommatt
Associated Content Frequently Asked Questions
- pays $3-$20 for freelance writing.
- post by telecommatt
SplashCast: Channel Yourself Across the Web Annotated
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design [Design Principles]
SQL - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks
FreeComputerBooks.com - Free Computer Books, Tutorials & Lecture Notes
eBookSpyder
Best Places to Get Free Books - The Ultimate Guide | Friedbeef’s Tech
MyGADs
- This seems like a really cool and potentially useful app! It’s basically a web bot that allows you to store, add, and edit random bits of information via their website or via sms. For example, you have what they call a GAD that lists your coworkers’ birthdays by the month. You SMS MyGads “May birthdays” and it sends you back the GAD that lists your coworkers who have May birthdays. This has some serious GTD potential too!
- post by telecommatt
Children bear brunt of climate warming: report - Yahoo! News Annotated
- This is a chilling thing to think about, that our children, who look to us as their protectors, will suffer the most from climate change. And it’s too late. There is nothing we can do to take this thing we’ve helped create away from them. Yes, we can stop what is happening from getting worse, but we can’t stop what is already in motion.
- post by telecommatt
LONDON (Reuters) - Children will increasingly bear the
brunt of global warming, a report said on Friday, while another
said the climate would continue to heat up in coming decades
regardless of efforts to curb emissions of carbon gases.
UK policy body wants health warnings on flights - Yahoo! News Annotated
LONDON (Reuters) - Advertisements for flights, or holidays
that include flying, should carry a tobacco-style health
warning to remind people of the global warming crisis, a
leading British think-tank said on Thursday.
Posted in Betas (as in not-the-fish), Ebooks, Free/Open Source, Freelancing, Green, Our World, Podcasts/Podcasting, Politics, Webdev, web-based services | 1 Comment »
Posted by telecommatt on April 1, 2007
Workspace Launches Web-based Access to FTP
Mashable is Hiring Writers
Free CSS Editors : lxpages.com blog Annotated
We’ve come up with a list of FREE CSS Editors that you can work with to improve your website design with with CSS by wasting the least amount of time.
tweako: digg-like tech site: etc: quick links to good stuff Annotated
tweako is a brand new, digg-like, user-powered site, and social network “serving guides, tutorials, and more in all categories of computing, technology, and the Internet.”
Categories include gadgets, graphics, hacks, hardware, internet, linux, Mac/Apple, multimedia, networking, programming, software and windows , all in a digg-like
Posted in Betas (as in not-the-fish), Geekstuff, Webdev, Websites, web-based services | No Comments »
