Web Apps Archives - Page 7 of 9

Useful links: Hyperlocal news, free websites, HTML5

Patch vs. Media News: One Little Instructive Story is about the AOL hyperlocal news service called Patch. The landscape is shifting under our feet. Pay attention.

I’ve written about a lot of “build a website, free!” sites, especially for eHow. Now there is a company in the field that has found a way to make building a website into a game, with points and rewards. It’s called DevHub. You can get a fast idea of what DevHub is doing in this article by Jason Kincaid. As an educator, I’ve never worried about places that offer free web sites–no serious web developer would be tempted by them, and no instructor would teach students to use them as a best practice. I’m wondering now if making web development into a game like Foursquare or Gowalla may be tempting enough to build some momentum. And if so, what does that mean to web education?

Two posts from Itpastorn about browser “support” and new technology. No browser supports HTML 5 yet. Part 1. The rant. and No browser supports HTML 5 yet. Part 2. Technology. Are demo sites and experiments the same as browser implementation?

10 Terrific Tech Blogs by Women

Tech tips, geeky how-tos, thoughtful analysis of issues, news about the latest gadgets, ideas for improving your blog—you’ll find it all in these 10 terrific tech and science blogs. They just happen to be written by women.

I. Hacker Chick

The Hacker Chick Blog is a beautiful starting point. I say beautiful because the graphics on this blog are stunning: everything from the image representing the hacker chick (software developer Abby Fichtner) to the icons and images used as illustrations are visually outstanding. Hacker Chick writes about designing WordPress themes, agile computing, programming, social media, and business.

In Build Your Startup From the Heart, she said,

The world, it seems, is changing. If you ask Daniel Pink, he’ll say that our “left-brained” aptitudes — logical, analytical skills, the types of things schools reward us for — are no longer sufficient if we want to remain competitive. These are, after all, the very things being automated by computers and outsourced at rates we can’t compete with if we want to pay our mortgages, or, say, eat.

If we truly want to succeed, we need to pull in those right-brained skills that our schools & employers have tried so hard to beat out of us — artistry, empathy, play, and story telling.

You don’t find many programmers who think this way, or who can pull it together the way Hacker Chick does.

II. Pars3c

Elizabeth Howell has her head in the stars with her blog Pars3c. The blog is pronounced “PAR-seck,” and astronomical term that gives you an idea of the topics you’ll find on the blog. This blog is about astronomy, spaceflight, science and telescopes. Big telescopes.

In 500 explosions, 500 reasons to love satellites, Elizabeth said,

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again — the greatest thing about space-borne observatories is they have 24-hour darkness to enjoy. This makes it easier to catch fleeting cosmic events, even explosions.

Like that moment last month when NASA’s Swift telescope saw its 500th gamma-ray burst.

III. Blogger Buster

Blogger Buster is for Google Blogger users. It’s written by Amanda Kay. Blogger templates and tutorials are the heart of this blog.

For example, you can learn about 90 Related Posts with Thumbnails for Blogger – New Version by BloggerWidgets

Aneesh of Blogger Widgets has developed a new “Related Posts” script for Blogger which displays thumbnails of images in addition to linked post titles.

In appearance, this Blogger “add-on” is similar to the LinkWithin script. Each section is highlighted in a complementary colour when the mouse hovers over it, and the entire section is clickable, leading to the URL of the “related post” displayed.

IV. Girl Developer

Girl Developer is written by Sara, a software engineer. Her topics range among .net and WAN, tech events, software reviews, and life as a developer. There’s always a dash of style and humor in the mix. Recently she wrote about Meeting Wendy Friedlander, a fellow developer who is undergoing cancer treatment.

Meeting Wendy prompted her to put together a fund-raising dinner:

I put this dinner together because I think it would be wonderful if we could all help Wendy a little as a community. She’s one of our own and it really could be any one of us. We’re having a dinner for Wendy, and if you’re in the NYC area and can make it we’d love to have you. It will be a great time of fellowship with other developers and I’m looking forward to it. If you can’t make the dinner or aren’t from the area there is a paypal link here for donations.

V. Do it Myself Blog

Do it Myself Blog is the work of Glenda Watson Hyatt, the left-thumb blogger—so called because she types only with her left thumb due to her cerebral palsy. Glenda writes about accessibility on the web and in life, about events she attends and speeches she gives with the help of her computer’s voice, about new technology, entrepreneurship, and trying to find an accessible bathroom while at tech events.

Lately Glenda has been searching for the perfect app for her iPad that will help her with chores like making hair appointments and ordering burgers. In The iPad as an Affordable Communicator: A Follow-up Review, she commented

While I was at the mall last Tuesday, i also made a hair appointment. In the old days I would have typed a note before leaving home. Or, I would have asked Darrell to call for an appointment.

Tuesday i pulled out my iPad, typed a message in the Proloquo2Go app and showed it to the receptionist. An appointment was made for the following day.

All is not golden with the Proloquo2Go app, however, as Glenda discovers when she tries to order food.

VI. Apophenia

Apophenia is danah boyd’s blog. This blog deals with big ideas. It focuses on issues: trends, analysis, data about how young people use technology, and topics like privacy.

In “for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy , danah explains what 4chan is with a “Newbie Note” before she begins her discussion of the site:

Newbie note: If you have never heard of 4chan, start with the Wikipedia entry and not the website itself. The site tends to offend many adults’ sensibilities. As one of my friends put it, loving LOLcats or rickrolling as outputs is like loving a tasty hamburger; visiting 4chan is like visiting the meat factory. At some point, it’d probably help to visit the meat factory, but that might make you go vegetarian.

danah boyd is quite possibly one the the smartest people on the planet, so running big ideas through her mind and getting to read the results of her thinking on her blog is a true privilege.

VII. The Female Perspective of Computer Science

The Female Perspective of Computer Science is from Gail Carmichael, who is working on a doctorate in Computer Science. Her fields of study include educational entertainment and augmented reality, both of which get discussed on the blog. Other topics include visual computing, games, events, computer science, and women.

Recently she wrote about Getting the Hang of iPhone Development.

I needed to learn how to develop for the iPhone since the projects I want to work on next will be games for the device. This task was somewhat daunting, given that I hadn’t really even used a Mac before, let alone Objective-C or Xcode. Luckily, there are some really great resources out there that you should check out if you are also just getting started.

So far, the most invaluable resource for me has been the Stanford iTunes U lectures on iPhone development. After watching the lectures via iTunes, you can download all the course materials, including slides and assignments.

A free course from Standford so you can learn how to develop for iPhone? Dang, that’s great information!

VIII. Geek Feminism Blog

Geek Feminism Blog has over a dozen writers, mostly women. A few male feminists in the mix is a good thing. The range of topics you find there is as wide and deep as the minds of its many contributors. The frequent linkspam posts are a great source for exploring the blogosphere on topics related to technology and women. Other topics you might find explored there are comics, conferences, gender, open source, programming, star trek, and just about anything else you can think of that interests geeks.

In July 6th is the last day for super early bird rate for Grace Hopper Celebration, Terri tells us,

If you haven’t heard of GHC before, it’s a really amazing conference for women involved in technology (especially geek feminists!). Not only does it tip the usual ratios on their heads (hello, >90% women! And yes, that means men are welcome.) it’s one of very few conferences where I can say that even the most technical talks are interesting and well-presented.

IX. CSS, JavaScript and XHTML Explained and Standardista

CSS, JavaScript and XHTML Explained is by Estele Weyl. The title is self-describing, but doesn’t completely cover the range of what you find there. You might learn about conferences, girl geeks, browser quirks, accessibility and other web development related topics. Estele has another blog called Standardista: CSS3, JavaScript and HTML5 Explained that is similar but devoted to newer technologies such as HTML5. As the technologies move forward, the newer blog may get the most additions.

Estele is great at putting things in an organized matrix to help you quickly see what is what with a topic. For example, in HTML5 Input Attributes & Browser Support, she created a handy table to show which browsers support which of the new HTML5 form elements.

X. MacTips

I saved a great one for last: MacTips, the very helpful guide to Macs, iPhones and iPads from Miraz Jordan. The tips never end at MacTips. For example, Use Safari 5′s Reader for easier reading on the web and How to change app Preferences on an iPhone.

Miraz always has clear directions with informative illustrations and screen shots to guide you through all things Mac.

Cross-posted in slightly different form at BlogHer.

Useful links: Documentation, help files, child bloggers

Talk documentation to me lists some common sense steps for documenting a process. One of my pet peeves around the explosion of web apps, iPhone apps, and explosive new tools like Twitter is that the documentation and help information is inadequate. Putting someone in charge of documentation is always a good idea.

The Twitter Help Center is a good example. There was always something in the Twitter help files, but it was not very helpful for a long time. Now there are video tutorials on everything from how to retweet to how to find people. Twitter even has a YouTube channel for their videos.

How Young is Too Young? at Techipedia takes a look at successful child bloggers, some as young as 10. The kids respond to some questions about young bloggers and offer advice for young bloggers.

Useful links: Dissected tweets, photo apps, Google places

This is what a tweet looks like from ReadWriteWeb is the sort of thing that would make a great poster to put in your office. Endlessly fascinating. (When I saw the headline in my RSS reader, I got all excited, because I thought the post would be about Twitterscapes.)

Demo Girl has been quiet lately, but she’s back with 3 Fun Photo Editing iPhone Apps.

Google Local Business Center Becomes “Google Places” at Search Engine Land says you can add tags, photos, QR codes, favorite places, coupons, and real time updates to your business listing with Google. More at Google Places.

A look at Google Analytics

This is the first in a series about analytics tools. In following weeks I’ll also examine Woopra and Post Rank Analytics. We’ll start off this look into the hows and whys of analytics with a look at Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free tracking tool that will help you understand how many people visit your site and what they are doing on your site. You find out what entry pages are most used, what page users were on when they left your site, where visitors came from both in a geographical sense and a referring link sense.

Elise Bauer wrote How to Build Blog Traffic – Search Engines and SEO, and it’s a definitive explanation of what Google or any other analytic tool does to help you build your blog and understand your audience. If you’ve never read Elise’s post, go take a look.

To get started with Google Analytics, set up a profile with Google for the website you’re going to track. You get a unique ID, which is inserted into a code snippet Google provides. Paste this code snippet into your web page code and you’re ready to go. SkinnyMinnyMedia has an excellent tutorial about how to insert the HTML snippet into a WordPress or Blogspot blog in Tracking Your Blog Statistics with Google Analytics. A helpful video tutorial on Using Google Analytics is available from Thirty Day Challenge.

There is a lot of documentation and help available to get you going with Google Analytics, and there’s Google customer support.

With Google Analytics, you’ll get site usage information, bounce rate (how many people left immediately), average time spent on your site, average number of pages viewed, the number of new visitors and other helpful metrics. This is more than just a count of page views. This type of information helps you understand what works on your site and what your visitors are interested in reading.

It’s the nature of a blog to read the most recent post and then leave. A blogger might not want a bounce rate report each day or week. With Google Analytics, you can customize your reports to track only the information you care most about.

Google has prepared a checklist called Get the most out of your report that will help you through each step from installing the tracking code to learning about features like keyword optimization.

With Google, you can add Google ads. The selling point for Google Analytics, from Google’s point of view, is that the knowledge you glean from the metrics you collect helps you target your advertising more effectively. As you can see in this video on Google Analytics from Google, the emphasis is definitely on monetization of a web site.

Even if you aren’t displaying Google ads, or any ads, the knowledge you gain about what captures the interest of your readers is helpful to you in planning new content and keeping your blog growing.

Google Analytics scales. It works on a mega-site but it can also work for a small site. If you have a mega-site, it would be a no-brainer decision to use it. If you have a smaller site, you might want to compare it with the two other analytic tools we’ll be looking at in future posts: Woopra and Post Rank.

Useful links: Jane McGonigal, Aviary in ed, hints in text boxes

New Game Designed to EVOKE a Better World tells about several projects involving game playing that Jane McGonigal is leading. These virtual reality games are designed to solve difficult real life problem and make real life changes. This excellent article by Kim Pearson also contains video of a recent TED Talk by McGonigal, which is a must-see.

Aviary continues to grow and improve. It’s now available in Google Docs. This is good news for educators, as this video shows. Aviary is readying an education program. If you’d like to be a beta tester for this education program, sign up here.

Don’t put hints inside text boxes in web forms from UX Matters give some excellent reasons why you should stop teaching anyone to do this, if you still are.

Trend spotting at SXSWi

SXSW Interactive, a yearly geekfest in Austin, TX, is where I spent most of last week. I picked up on a lot of trendy new ideas, apps, and goings on in the tech world. Some of them may be of interest.

Gowalla

Everyone was using Gowalla and talking about Gowalla, comparing Gowalla with Foursquare, and even dreaming about Gowalla. There’s a constant stream of Twitter chatter about it. As you see in this tweet from @Goodwitch, you can set up Gowalla to tweet your whereabouts when you check in at a particular location.

Let me explain Gowalla, so you’ll have some idea if you want to give it a try. It’s a mobile phone app that does several things. It’s a social networking app that connects you with friends. It uses geo location to check you in to places where you go. Once you’re checked into to a place, a game-like part of the app kicks in. If you’re the first person to check in somewhere, you become the “founder” of that location and you get some video game style prizes. If others have been there before you, you can see who they were and when they were there. If a friend of yours is there when you are, you can see that. You can collect or redeem some of your prizes in whatever location you are in. You can download it for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and palm at Gowalla.

AOL Seed

There was a huge AOL display at SXSW, touting their new network called Seed. For writers, photographers and bloggers, Seed is of interest because it pays you for writing and photos. You can make from $15 to $100 on stories of various lengths that get accespted by Seed. But, be aware that you’re giving up all rights to the material for that money. Go to the site and see what current assignments they are seeking contributors for. If you’re interested, you can’t miss all the Get Started and Sign Up buttons.

QR Codes

Every badge at SXSW held a QR Code with contact information or URLs for the badgeholder. These codes can be read with a mobile phone that contains an appropriate app for capturing the information and adding it to your contacts. I saw very few cards change hands, but I saw a lot of people pointing their phone camera at someone else’s QR code.

You can get the apps here:

iPhone: I-Nigma
Windows Mobile: Bee Tagg
BlackBerry: I-Nigma or BeeTagg or Open the BlackBerry Messenger 5 application -> click on invite -> Scan the code
Android: Google Zxing Reader
Nokia: I-Nigma

A handout in the schwag bag was from Stickybits. It contained a packet of stick-ons with QR Codes that you activate at the website and then use to identify your phone, computer or attach to something like a business card or photo. The QR code can contain whatever information you want. For example, the code block on a business card might contain the URL to your resumé.

Not long ago, Facebook started playing with QR Codes in Facebook profiles, according to TechCrunch. Are you ready to wear your Facebook profile on your tee shirt as a QR Code?

Fast Company found a cupcake company that is making QR Code Cupcakes. First you download it, then you down it. Tasty.