Create a website in minutes

Dale

Looking for an easy way to create a website? Checkout some of the new portal sites that are emerging. Many allow you to drag and drop content onto the page with ease. This might be the perfect place to set up a quick webpage for you and your students.

All of the sites have similar features such as rss readers, email checkers, to-do lists, photo albums, and etc. It’s really a matter of finding one that works best for you.

Here are two that I have used in the past:

Pageflakes
pageflakes

Protopage
protopage

Of course, there are several others– give one a try.

State your name with ClaimID

Dale

Have you heard the story about the student who created a fake MySpace page of one of his teachers? How could you miss it? It seems like it is happening everywhere.

Maybe the folks at ClaimID can help. Their website states, “ClaimID is about letting you have some say in what search engines say about you.”

claimID

ClaimID lets you take credit for the information that search engines associate with your name. It also lets you state what things are not about you. (learn more)

See an example.

Which video service is best for you?

Dale 1 Comment

Flash based video has been popping up everywhere in the past few months. With popular sites like YouTube and Google Video giving this format lots of exposure, I’ve decide to do a mini roundup of what is out there.

First things first—what is it? Flash based video uses Macromedia Flash to play video clips. Several websites have created services that allow you to upload, view, and share your clips. None of these sites will display great video quality but because of the Flash format, your videos can be easily embedded in blogs and other websites.

I’ve uploaded the same clip to each of the following websites:

Take a look at the results.

Google Video: Despite Google’s new web-based uploader, the process was slower than I expected. Also, there is something just ugly about the whole Google Video experience. However, Google’s popularity may give your video clip more exposure.

VideoEgg: You’ll need to download and install the VideoEgg Publisher before you use VideoEgg. Once installed, uploading the video was a fast process. The publisher does give you a few extra features. You can trim your video’s start and end times. VideoEgg will also capture video directly from a camcorder, webcam or mobile device. These are nice features but anyone who is serious about video is going to have their own tools to do this and much more.
YouTube: Again another popular site— perhaps too popular. Uploading video to YouTube took the longest. Like Google, YouTube will give your clip more opportunities for exposure. However, YouTube has had a history of hosting copywrited material. Others claim that YouTube it running out of money due to huge bandwidth bills. I question how long YouTube will be able to stay in business.
Vimeo: This is my top pick. Vimeo was the easiest experience of them all. The upload time with Vimeo went quickly and the whole process was a snap. I also think Vimeo displays their clips the best.

Color blindness: should you care?

Dale 1 Comment

Approximately one out of every twelve males has some form of color blindness. Take a look at how they see the world.

colorblind.JPG

Should you think about this disorder while creating your next presentation or website? That depends on your audience. If the majority of your audience is male, I would let color blindness influence the design of your next project.

Here are a few things to consider when building a presentation or website:

  • do not place red and green together (especially in menus)
  • avoid using color as the only distinction between key elements
  • find a color blind friend to look at your work
  • view desaturated versions of your images to see if their features still can be detected

Some resources:

What’s so bad about email?

Dale

After writing his article, The Good in Email, Isaac Garcia has written a follow-up article— The Bad in Email. The article explains why email is not the best tool for collaboration.

Below are the reasons. Read the full article to see an explanation of each.

  • Email is Silo’ed
  • Email *Perpetuates* Many Walled Gardens
  • Email is NOT Secure (Part 1)
  • Email is NOT Secure (Part 2)
  • Group Email is Really Complicated
  • Email is Not a Document Manager
  • Email Communications Do Not Correspond Priority
  • Email is inconsistent
  • Email is not permission based
  • Spam Filtering is better, but still not good enough
  • Email does not work well for multi-users
  • Email is Prone to Viruses
  • Email makes us lazy

F is a passing grade for websites

Dale

The Nielsen Norman Group has conducted an eye tracking study that has shown that most users read in an F shaped pattern when visiting a website.

f_reading_pattern_eyetracking1.jpg

What should web designers learn from this study?

  • users won’t read your site thoroughly
  • the first two paragraphs are the most important
  • information-carrying words should start subheadings, bullet points and paragraphs

Read more about the study.