Entries from January 2008 ↓
January 31st, 2008 — iPhone
Over the last few days I’ve been gathering iPhone web development links to share with Ada Lovelace, my favorite web professionals group. And here (drum roll) is the final list.
January 30th, 2008 — Google
Google is astonishing. The latest wonder I happened across is their experimental timeline search.
They give some great examples on their intro page. The Civil Rights Movement particularly appealed to this Unitarian Universalist, though I can’t help but wonder if a UU wasn’t behind this set, since the first is Thomas Jefferson.
To do one of your own, all that’s required is adding “view:timeline” to a regular Google entry. Here are some of the timeline searches I tried.
Such fun. I certainly hope timeline is a keeper.
January 29th, 2008 — Analytics, Events
After weighing the pros and cons of a number of excellent web conferences, in the end I chose the University of British Columbia’s Introduction to Web Analytics online course.
The deciding factor wasn’t the cost, the distance or even the speakers. It was the need of the Cancer Center. While I can’t say we have an expert at either search engine optimization or usability on the staff, nonetheless those are better covered then analytics.
And analytics really matter — in a way that reminds me of budgets. They are both about numbers, and numbers can be used to help management understand better what’s needed and why.
Needless to say, once I learn more, I will be posting more on this subject. For now, all I can say is get Google Analytics. It’s by far the best website number-cruncher I’ve used, and I’ve tried quite a few.
January 28th, 2008 — WordPress, iPhone
While preparing for a meeting on designing for the mobile web, the old memory banks suddenly kicked in, and I remembered there was some tool that made it a breeze to optimize WordPress for iPhones. Since I’m on an iPhone tear, I took the time to research it.
Sure enough. There are quite a number of promising plug-ins, in particular ContentRobot’s iWPhone. It’s a nifty skin for WordPress that doesn’t alter your blog on computer screens — only on iPhones. Even better, it only took me three minutes start-to-finish to get it working.
Of course, being me, I couldn’t leave it at that. I had to personalize it for this very blog. The default is blue, and I’m getting a tad sick of blue and gray sites for the iPhone. (Drab blue and drab gray. Sounds like the Civil War to me.) I changed the colors to red and yellow and added one 4KB GIF, which doesn’t slow things down appreciably. Beyond that, I went into header.php, and added links for the archives and about page.
In truth, I’ve been hovering on the edge (so to speak) of true iPhone design, but this was my first real foray into it — and it was a blast.
January 27th, 2008 — WordPress
This is a tip for my long-suffering friends who are so good about updating the various blogs I’ve set up. I just knew there had to be a better way. Better late than never, right?
Oh my heavens. It turns out it’s really easy to strip Microsoft Word and other blog-breaking formats out of WordPress. It only takes three clicks. Here’s how.
Step 1. In the Word-like tool bar for the “Post” field, at the right end there is a mysterious square icon with dots. (See the picture above.) Click it. A second row of icons magically appears.
Step 2. In the middle of this second row is an icon of a yellow folder (I think) with a T on top. Click it and a “Paste as Plain Text” dialog box pops up.
Step 3. You guessed it. Paste your text in this dialog box and click the insert button in the lower left.
That’s all there is to it. No more weird looking blog posts. No more broken home page. (Or at least it will reduce such things.)
January 26th, 2008 — iPhone
My favorite thing about the latest update to the iPhone (1.1.3) is the say-so it gives me over the home screen. Before this release, those precious few inches of real estate were totally controlled by Apple. Now there are still 17 icons that are Apple-chosen. The difference is they are no longer Apple-frozen. Even better, I can add icons for favorite web pages.
What have I added? Very little. It truly is prime real estate, and I’m experimenting right now. There’s one though that’s there to stay, and that’s Weather Underground’s iPhone version — set to my zip code.
Now every morning as I dash into my closet, I do it with iPhone in hand, clicking my Wunder icon. It quickly pulls up a clean, informative page of just what I need to know.
Today, for example, it reported 29.8°F and said: “Winter Weather Advisory in effect until 10 am CST….. Freezing drizzle has produced icy Road conditions …. As of 700 am…icy roads were responsible for 12 wrecks in Stewart and Benton counties…. Remember…it only takes a thin glaze of ice to produce an accident.”
It sure beats the anemic weather information that comes with Apple’s icon. I’ll give you one guess where that icon is now on my iPhone.
January 25th, 2008 — Events
Lucky diva that I am, I recently was told that I could go to any conference I wanted to (within reason, of course). It was one tough decision, though. The last few days I’ve been the proverbial kid in a candy shop.
To help (at least in theory) I came up with a process. First, I gathered a folder of possibilities. I’ve actually been doing that for several years. Every time I see a conference that interests me, I put it in the folder. As well as going through those, I also reviewed Laura Carlson’s terrific list of web events and conferences.
Next I brainstormed possibilities with my supervisor, focusing on what the Cancer Center needs most. The topics we came up with were: Search Engine Optimization, Analytics, and Usability.
Finally I narrowed the list down to these five, including several training opportunities as well as conferences.
For Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
(1) Search Marketing Expo
This conference is run by Search Engine Land, my favorite newsfeed on SEO. I’ve been following Danny Sullivan for years. As far as I know, he’s the foremost expert on this topic. Three days in Santa Clara cost $1195.
For Web Analytics
(2) Introduction to Web Analytics
The University of British Columbia offers four online courses, building towards certification called the “UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics.” The Web Analytics Association highly recommends this series. Each course is four weeks and participants usually spend about six to ten hours per week on it. The cost is $675.00 (Canadian), with no travel or lodging expenses.
For Usability
(3) Practical Usability Testing
Human Factors International offers four 2-3 day courses in various cities, including Atlanta, Columbus and Chicago, which are all reasonably close to Nashville. A friend of mine went to one of their courses last year, and not only raved about it, but came back with a huge notebook of information I drooled over. The cost is $1195 per person.
(4) Usability Week with Jacob Nielsen
Jacob Nielsen is THE guru of usability. I’ve been reading his useit.com since its inception, and find his insights and research remarkably helpful. His Convince Your Boss page is compelling not just for management, but also people like me trying to decide what to attend. The cost varies depending on how many days you attend: 1 - 6 days, $776 - $2,999.
General Web Conferences
(5) South by Southwest Interactive
I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve read about SxSW. People clearly love it, and I can see why. Five days in Austin in March is a pretty powerful draw just in itself. Add to that that it’s only $400, plus I have dear friends who live in Austin, and you can see why it’s in my top five picks, even if it’s not as on topic as the other four.
Which would you choose? I’d tell you my choice, except I’ve already gone on too long. So stay tuned, and I’ll let you know soon.
January 24th, 2008 — Drupal
This is one of those things I’m going to forget and it’s drop-dead simple. So for others new to Drupal and before it slips my mind….
Go straight to “Administer” / “Administration theme” and change the theme in the dropdown from “System default” to a theme that you know is stable. With version 5, the best choice is “Garland.”
Then one day when you make some hideous mistake in the custom theme you are developing and it blows up your ability to get to much of anything, your administration panel is safe.
For the rest of the time, your home page and content areas, even when you are signed in as an admin, have the (hopefully not hideous) look-and-feel you are developing.
January 23rd, 2008 — Web Diva Fashion
Look what I found on one of my favorite geeky blogs — Search Engine Land. It’s Google-inspired fashion. Oh my stars. Specifically it’s the “Oogle sari” from Satya Paul’s latest collection.
I’ve been known to wear a hard drive as jewelry, but don’t you think this is ever so much more web diva?
Fortunately for my budget, white is not particularly becoming on me. But what if he comes out with an OS X line? Or how about an iPhone sari? I can see it now. Yards and yards of black and gleaming silver with a smattering of handsome icons, plus matching dangle earrings, which are, in fact, ear buds.
January 22nd, 2008 — Web Tools
Last summer I kept hearing how awesome, marvelous, superb, etc., etc., Firebug was. I could tell this Firefox extension classified as a must-have for all web developers. So I installed it, twiddled with it a little, and assumed that with a bit of use I’d catch on to why it was so great. But then I forgot about it.
Recently I started bumping into more Firebug kudos, including some video tutorials. I looked at the tutorials, but they were too fast. Nonetheless they caught my interest and motivated me to try again.
In my search for a decent tutorial, I returned to the Firebug home page. It turned out that’s all I needed in the first place. So my advice to web developers who haven’t tried Firebug is to install it and give yourself about 10 minutes to review its home page. Specifically, click on the “learn more” links and work your way through as many tips as your brain can handle.
You’ll be amazed. You can alter the look of any page. Do you want to turn Google’s home page black? You can do it with Firebug, albeit fleetingly and only in your own browser window.
More to the point, you can quickly test adjustments to pages you’re working on. Just try turning off lines of CSS on the fly, and I bet you’ll be hooked too.
