Web 2.0 Blog Logo

How to get through today with Google Reader

So, we all know what today is. And, unfortunately, many tech and web 2.0 sites like to take full advantage. So, I bring to you a technique for avoiding all this silliness using Google Reader. Its quite complicated, sorting the wheat from the chaff isn’t easy at the best of times, let alone today, so bear with me.

Ok, first, bring up Google Reader in your browser.

Then, click this button Google Reader View All . This ensures that whatever you do next will be applied to all posts.

Next, click this button Google Reader Mark All As Read Button .

And that should be it, all done. You will, however, have to apply the same “fix” every so often for the next 24 hours.

Enjoy a peacefull Sunday.

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

Information Overload

This post is probably a few days late, but I thought I’d point you in the direction of this post by the To-Done blog on Information Overload (via Lifehacker). Over the last few days I’ve been seriously suffering with information and news overload. With CES, MacWorld and the Detroit Motor Show all cramming themselves into a week, my current feed reader of choice (NewsFire) has been aching for my attention on a constant basis. I find myself opening it up to, and you may want to sit down for this, 600+ items a day, at its peak. Luckily, its died down a bit now that everything is slowing but its still hovering at around the 300 mark. And thats every day. At times, it can feel a bit relentless, so this article really helps.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Positive Side Effects Of Web 2.0 Applications

Whilst looking for some resources earlier I discovered a fantastic way of using Web 2.0 services to my own end, and not in the way they were intended to be used. I was looking for some free fonts for a projects and the usual avenues of investigation weren’t really fulfilling my needs. So where do I go? What do I do? The answer was to utilise the Web 2.0. So I headed over the delicious and digg and searched for free fonts. Through utilising these tools I found exactly what I was after, and much more. The simple fact is that by leveraging some of the social aspects of the Web 2.0 you can really enhance your browsing experience. The idea is, however, to think a bot outside the box.

What I mean by this is putting a slightly different slant on some of the popular Web 2.0 services. The example I used above was Digg as a search engine. And it really works. The results you get from Digg are better than the results you get from Google. You can further filter the results by the number of Diggs the entry received, or if your really clever, by the people who Dugg it. For more general searches, delicious works just as well, just watch for entries with few bookmarks, they may be adverts.

So what other information can we garner from Web Applications by slightly changing our approach? Bear in mind that you will have to use some common sense and maybe exert a bit of effort to get the most out of Web Apps, especially when your not using them for their intended purpose. Take ebay for instance. If your looking to buy something, say a TV, when why not check out ebay first. Not to find a cheaper price (remember to factor in warranties and buyer protection etc) but to see how many are up for sale, by ordinary people. If there’s a large number of the model your after showing up then the chances are people have bought it, but aren’t very satisfied. Of course you’ll have to do a bit of legwork to make sure the sellers aren’t high volume sellers of that sort of product, like I said, a bit of legwork. Another good way of getting some information about a product or service you’re considering is to take a look at forums associated with it. Should it be official forums, you may get a chance to see the customer service in action. Another possibility is using flickr to check out your next holiday location, sometimes including the hotel!

So in what other ways can we use Web 2 services in new and inventive ways? I’ve heard people using blogs as diaries and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting uses of the Google Maps API out there. Open your mind, and think outside the box.

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Object Focused Design Versus Function Focused Design

This is the first in a series of posts on usability, attacking the basics of Web applications, and covers breaking down your menus based on the approach your site is taking.

I’m going to use two terms in this article and discuss the merits and drawbacks to both approaches.  The first term is Object Focused Design.  This is a way of navigating a sites functionality based on objects.  To the user, this means that they select the object and then select the action they want to perform on that object.  A Function Focused Design is where the user selects the function they want to perform and then chooses the object they want to perform the action on.  Two examples are below:

I’m sure you can all come up with examples of both approaches and probably situations where one was used but it should have been the other.   So in what situations should each approach be used, and should there be overlap?

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Updating my Web Design Toolbelt

I’ve just embarked on a new project and I thought it was time to update the tools I use, just to streamline things a bit and make sure development is as easy as it could be.

First up is the editor.  As a recent Mac convert I needed something to take the place of Notepad++, my Windows editor of choice.  Well that was fairly easy, I had a look round and kept coming across Text Wrangler, BBedit’s little brother, and its fantastic.  In fact it easily surpasses the usability ot Notepad++.  Could I find a replacement for my favourite FTP client, SmartFTP as well?  Again its a resounding yes!  Initially I started using Transmit, the award winning Mac FTP client, and yes, I can see why its award winning.  In fact it’s as easy to use as finder and shares much of the functionality.  Eventually though (read 30 days trial ran out) I moved over to Cyberduck ftp which actually comes close to matching the functionality of Transmit, and only falls slightly short in terms of stability and usability.  But its free and unlimited, which suits the tightwad in me.  There is also the integration with Text Wrangler, which means that if you open a file in Text Wrangler, through Cyberduck, saving the file will save it on the server, which really streamlines the ediitng process.  Text Wrangler itself offers saving over FTP but you will always need a fully featured FTP client at some point.

The next items I added to my toolbelt were FireFox extensions.  I already had the Web Developer Toolbar, which, if you don’t use it, is simply astonishing.  It just makes everything you could ever want to do so simple.  I simply could not live without it.  Iw as dissapointed to learn that the eyedropper mode of color zilla does not work on Mac, which means I’ve had to drop that from my toolbelt, which is unfortunate as it was really usefull.  I thought it would be worth seeing what else was out there, and boy am I glad I did.

The first extension I came across is called Fangs.  Fangs does a great job of visually interpreting the output of screen readers.  This is a must have if you care about accessibility, of course to be used in conjunction with this article on accessibility.  Next I came across an extension called View Source Chart, which visually formats source code by grouping block elements and their children together and highlighting them in colour.  It may sound fairly trivial but it really helps you find errors quickly.  You simply would not believe how much of a difference using this entension, in conjunction with the highlight block level elements feature of the Web Developer Toolbar, makes debugging your HTML.  Especially if you use dynamically generated code from a CMS, Forum of Blog.

In addition to these tools, I use the Gimp for images, Safari for testing and IE on a seperate Windows Machine for testing.  I also tend to use the superb script.aculo.us scripting library and a set of key PHP classes that I wrote a good while ago and have been serving me well.  Theres also a whole host of bookmarks that I’ve got that help me out with colour schemes and commonly used layout techniques, including my own.
Whats your development environment like?  Any tips for a recent Mac convert?  What can’t you do without?  One thing I will say, however, is that I simply cannot get a working PHP/MySQL/Apache environment working on my machine, and I’ve tried everything.  Anyone with a familiar experience?

Permalink Comments (3 Responses) TrackBack

Hiring a web developer? Equip yourself first and don’t lose out

Web developers are the mechanics of the 21st century. They perform some voodoo magic under the hood of your site and everything comes up rosy, right. Right? Well no, not always. There was this technique mechanics used to use to make an engine sound smoother than it really was, they used to put sawdust in the oil. Sure it used to run fine for a few miles but then BANG! It would lose most of its engine all over the side of the road. The entrepreneurs out there who are looking to hire a developer may end up with a bum deal. How can you prevent this? Read on…

(more…)

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

Why accessibility should be about stopping screenreaders

This is a bit of a rant about the current state of accessibility in the web.  I constantly hear people go on about accessibility and making sure that users who rely on screenreading software can access the information on the site.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they seem to be missing the middle bit, the reason why some users need screenreaders in the first place.  My argument would be that some of the users who currently rely on screenreaders, probably wouldn’t need it if sites were designed with true accessibility in mind.

More after the jump… (more…)

Permalink Comments (4 Responses) TrackBack

The Number 1 Web Application Success Theory (so says I)

I’ve written previosuly about web applications trying too hard to be desktop applications, things like AJAXWrite but then something comes along that changes your perspective on it all. Well, OK, its not really changed my perspectives, web applications should be just that, web applications, but its certainly helped me forge my opinion on why some things just work.  Its all about skimming the top 20% percent.
More after the jump…

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

Build your own AJAX RSS Reader

As a way to really throw the car amongst the pigeons in the world of personalised homepages and feed readers, IBM Developer Works has an excellent article on how to build your very own AJAX RSS Reader. So go ahead and give it a try, you too can own your own Web 2.0 Startup, all you need is a niche, how about a green logo, I’ve not seen any of those recently…

Permalink Comments (One Response) TrackBack

The Top 5 Web 2.0 “Rules of Thumb”

In order to write this blog I test out many, many Web 2.0 applications, services etc etc. During this trawl through some of the better, and some of the worse Web 2.0 services I thought I’d knock up a quick list of problems I see with the Web 2.0 as it currently exists. Some of these are a bit on the vague side but as the Web 2.0 is such a diverse landscape its hard to be specific without naming names (I’ll save that for later).

So on to the list: -

(more…)

Permalink Comments (No Responses Yet) TrackBack

« Older Posts