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December 31, 2009 • 3:07 am 0
links for 2009-12-30
December 30, 2009 • 3:05 am 0
links for 2009-12-29
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In today’s web design world, so much emphasis is put on SEO, which forces us to design for machines. Even though this is a necessity for web designers, the focus of a design should be on that of the user – the breathing, typing, mouse clicking kind of user. The user experience (UX) design portion of the website building process is often overlooked, usually due to a lack of knowledge in the area. Luckily, there are UX focused blogs out there that are loaded with info, tips, and insights that can help you in your journey to becoming a user experience expert. Here are 11 of the best.
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According to a report by the Danish Center for Accessibility, as many as 25% of the world’s Internet users have some sort of visual, auditory or mobility disability.
Fail to take into the consideration the needs of these people and you are depriving your client the opportunity to connect with a huge audience. Not only doesn’t that make good business sense, but also you could end up breaking the law. For example, if you’re working for an organization that is hoping to do business with the U.S. government, you’re going to run up against the “508 Act”.
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December 29, 2009 • 3:07 am 0
links for 2009-12-28
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This page provides a list of resources available for the web designer or developer who needs to create an editorial style guide for writing web site copy. Definition: "A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for design and writing of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication or organization. A set of standards for a specific organization is known as "house style". Style guides are prevalent for general and specialized use, for the general reading and writing audience, and for students and scholars of the various academic disciplines, medicine, journalism, the law, government, business, and industry. Some style guides focus on graphic design, covering such topics as typography and white space. Web site style guides focus on a publication's visual and technical aspects, prose style, best usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and fairness. The strict implementation of style guide regulations provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document."
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This week ReadWriteWeb will run a series of posts detailing what we think are the five biggest, most cutting-edge Web trends to come out of 2009. We'll be posting one trend analysis per day. Then at the end of the week we'll publish a major update to our standard presentation about web technology trends.
The first major Web trend we're looking at is Structured Data. In prior presentations, this has sometimes been referred to under the umbrella term of 'Semantic Web'. However the way 2009 has panned out so far, it's become clear that this trend is much more than the Semantic Web. In this post, we'll analyze the developments in Structured Data this year and provide you with 3 product examples: OpenCalais, Google, Wolfram Alpha.
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Over the last year I have learned a great deal from women in the field of marketing, social media, branding and entrepreneurship. While there are many female thought leaders in the marketing industry that I may have missed, this list contains the women that have made a difference in my life, my viewpoint, and continue to lead the way for women in business.
It’s up to each of us to find online content we find valuable to our growth and business needs, and then to consume and put into action the advice and tips from the experts. This list is full of women that I have found to be leaders, women that are consistently providing relevant and useful information to the marketing and social media industry. I appreciate each and every one of them and recommend these ladies as the Chicks Pick Best in Blog – Marketing and Social Media 2009.
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Since starting The Design Cubicle, I have submitted many of my quality blog posts to various websites that accept community submissions. In the past year, approximately 900,000 visitors have come via referring sites (statistics provided by Google Analytics on 12/16/09).
While there are hundreds or more websites around the web that allow you to submit, below are the ones that have produced high traffic and successful exposure for my articles and blog in the past year.
*Please note that many of these sites are reader voted or moderated, so I suggest only submitting your best and highest quality articles for approval or acceptance.
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December 28, 2009 • 3:04 am 0
links for 2009-12-27
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Jacek Utko is a newspaper designer. He has designed/redesigned many newspapers in Central and Eastern Europe and won world awards. He believes strongly in “giving power to the designers” and that designers should embed their personal vision into the work they do, even at the expense of being a team player.
Utko’s words and work are compelling, and I especially like his 7 Steps to Success. He is talking about 7 steps to success if you are redesigning a newspaper, but when I first read the 7 steps I thought they were a good jumping off point on 7 Steps to Successful Web Site Design. So I’ve taken his 7 steps and modified them to fit the design of websites:
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Social media has taken communication to a whole new level. Communications outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs are rapidly changing the ways we work and connect. The lines between personal and work lives are blurring, and in some ways, being erased. How elected officials should use these tools to support city work still is emerging.
You’ll explore the possibilities and pitfalls of using social media. You will hear tips for navigating the Public Records Act, the Open Public Meetings Act, document retention laws and other legal requirements.
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This guide is based on the style book which is given to all journalists at The Economist. (See also our Johnson columns.)
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December 27, 2009 • 3:05 am 0
links for 2009-12-26
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Companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a community there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. You can use the tool on this page to get started.
Forrester's Social Technographics® classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation (see short presentation). Based on our survey data we can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers, globally. We also analyze the participation of people who buy technology.
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Workamajig® understands the creative firm. Not the we also walk around the office without our shoes on kind of understanding. No. More like understanding that traffic wants seamless web-based project management, account service needs templates for quicker job setups, accounting longs for easy-to-find electronic statements and creatives, well, they just need to do their web-based timesheets and expense reports. And that's why we developed Workamajig®, the leading web-based project management software for the creative design industry. By the way, did we mention we were 100% Mac Friendly?
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December 25, 2009 • 3:05 am 0
links for 2009-12-24
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The need arose today to merge several PDF files into one long PDF file. I looked at previous hints (1, 2), but they did not satisfy me as they forced me to enter the world of Tex.
Here is the simplest solution I came up with. As far as I know, GhostScript (gs) is included in OS X by default. In the Terminal, type:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf \
source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf etc.pdf
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December 23, 2009 • 3:07 am 0
links for 2009-12-22
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With two decades of popular usage behind it, the second-full-Moon-in-a-month (mis)interpretation is like a genie that can't be forced back into its bottle. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Rather than argue over whether to celebrate the dawn of the new millennium on January 1st in 2000 or 2001, those with the sunniest outlooks will celebrate twice. Why not treat Blue Moons the same way, marking both the second full Moon in a calendar month and the third full Moon in a season with four? "Even if the calendrical meaning is new," said Federer, "I don't see any harm in it. It's something fun to talk about, and it helps attract people to astronomy."
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What CoThrive Is
CoThrive is the unique commitment management system that enables
people to convert their email into explicit work agreements
that can be managed from their inbox for improved performance.
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December 22, 2009 • 3:06 am 0
links for 2009-12-21
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SharpKit is a C#/JavaScript cross-compiler that enables you to:
* Convert your existing JavaScript codebase into C# for improved maintainability.
* Cross-compile any C# code into JavaScript for improved productivity.
* Easily integrate client-side code with C# interfaces of external JavaScript libraries.The result is a rich internet application written in a single programming language, that you can easily maintain, refactor, profile and optimize for cross-browser compatibility.
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CodeRun Studio is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE), designed for the cloud. It enables you to easily develop, debug and deploy web applications using your browser.
CodeRun Studio can be used instead or alongside your existing desktop IDE. You can upload existing code in order to test it in the cloud or for sharing with your peers. CodeRun Studio also enables you to instantly compile, package and deploy your code to the CodeRun Cloud.
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December 21, 2009 • 3:04 am 0
links for 2009-12-20
December 20, 2009 • 3:06 am 0
links for 2009-12-19
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This approach, coupled with Snow Leopard's rock-bottom £25 price-point, has led many to yell 'service pack', but that's pretty ignorant when you consider what Snow Leopard claims to offer. Sure, there's no Time Machine or Spotlight this time round, but there are still dozens of new features, big and small. More importantly, the OS has had large chunks of its guts ripped out and rewritten, which Apple claims should speed up your Mac and even return hard-disk space to you post-install.
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This tutorial reviews the entire set of guidelines, offers suggestions on creating web sites which conform to these guidelines, and shows ways to determine if a web site is conformant with the guidelines. At the end of the tutorial, a list of tools are reviewed which will help you work with WCAG more efficiently.
While this tutorial intends to explain why the WCAG documentations are not as complex as they seem to be, please keep in mind that we can learn to navigate this documentation with ease. Also, it is still a large volume of documents, full of examples, and all possible scenarios.
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When talking about internal social media, bring together the people that have interest in helping shape the plan, as well as the critics and those people that it will directly impact if deployed. Ask yourselves:
* What things can internal social media help us with, either existing business goals or new ones?
* What can it NOT help us do?
* What is the primary need we’re hoping to fill with social media? Information flow? Idea generation and innovation? Networking? Training? Morale?
* How much do we want to weave in personal experiences/interests for employees in their company social media experience?
* What kind of involvement and participation do we want from our employees overall?
* What is success for us? Failure? Over what time period?There are plenty more questions to ask, but knowing what you want out of internal social media and articulating it alongside definitions for accountability is key to long term success.
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"Today’s modern trends on the web are sophisticated, alluring and engaging. Building interactive and amazing interfaces using Flash/Flex or Silverlight has become easier and more accessible to modern-day designers."
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