Website Building Tools

Over the years I have collected a bunch of useful open source tools which have helped tremendously in building and maintaining websites. Most important – they are FREE! If you really want to go to town and have the funds get yourself Adobe Web Premium (Illustrator, Photoshop, Contribute, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Soundbooth)  and start looking at a software configuration management system, which manages your built environment with versions, baseline projects and affords the ability to build up a code base. But in lieu of burning some money, the free ones are below.

If you have any suggestions, I’d love to you hear from you and I’ll add the useful ones to this list.

File Transfer Protocol Program (FTP Client)
FileZilla http://filezilla-project.org

HTML/CSS Editing
Notepad ++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Image File Viewers/ Basic Editors
FastStone http://www.faststone.org – Slick looking interface. Really good for managing large numbers of images. Can bog down in network drive situations i.e. cataloguing images across multiple hard drives/server locations, however this can be rectified by dumping the Thumbnail database on a regular basis. Can view PSD’s.
Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com – Fast loading, non intrusive. Not quite as flexible as Faststone, it nonetheless is lightweight enough to run concurrently when you just want a fast preview of images sent to you i.e. email attachments.

Rulers for measuring windows, images, text blocks
Sizer http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html. Brilliant, lightweight application for quickly resizing windows to any parameter you care to program in i.e. 1280X1024, 1280X 800 (laptops), 1024X768, 640X480. Will work with ALL windows, outside of the browser i.e. Photoshop, etc.
Screen Ruler http://wonderwebware.com/screen-ruler/ Configurable floating ruler pain which has X & Y planes with configurable transparency.

Firefox Browser Plugins
Firebug, Cooliris, Screengrab! I wrote about Firefox Plugins’ in my post Software: Firefox Browser Extensions

PDF for Finished Art
Cute PDF Writer http://www.cutepdf.com/ If you are producing print quality finished art or into publication of e-zines or editorial variants of a book, collected works etc, consider upgrading to the Pro edition. Significantly cheaper than Adobe’s Acrobat offering and I find the compression algorithm and font handling to be either equal or on better.

Evernote
http://www.evernote.com
Fantastic web based application which allows you to jot down notes, import images and manage articles in a secure, password protected environment. Once items are imported, they are indexed and you can perform searches on them. The ultra cool aspect about Evernote is the ability to import images with writing on it and Evernotes servers run Optical Character Recognition protocols on it, allowing indexing of the words in the image. So, you can take a photo of a business card (MAC = Photobooth, PC = MSN, Trillion, Logitech Cam etc) and it will index the details.

Contact’s Management
So you have hundreds of contacts, they sit in your iPhone or Blackberry. Store them securely online and Sync them with one of the below:

• Google Contacts in Gmail - http://www.gmail.com
• HighRise by 37 Signals – http://www.highrisehq.com
• Zoho CRM – http://www.zoho.com

www.twanalyst.com

My first reaction was to laugh. The second was to frown. The third response was: “Damn it! Since when have I been described as bloody UNREMARKABLE?!”

My excuse is that I’ve been onboard for only 2 weeks. So there.

Once I was over my fit of apoplexy, I went back and Twanalysed a few other well known peeps, celebrities, friends and random. I don’t feel so bad now considering some of the descriptions that @aplusk, @oprah and others have got and most importantly the recommendations which were offered are actually relevent, useful and pertinent.

	PERSONAL INFORMATION:
	Name:	TheCultureMind (Colin Yeung)
	Location:	Melbourne, Australia (Time zone: Melbourne)
	Description:	Active – mountain biking, digital at www.areeba.com.au, house renovating + family: wife / baby son.
	URL:	http://www.theculturemind.com
	STATISTICS:
	Account Created:	09 Apr 09
	Status Updates:	38
	Followers:	19
	Following:	39
	ANALYSIS:
	Tweets per day:	2.7
	Readability index: (?)	10
	% conversations:	24
	% links:	14
	% content:	62

(This page for theculturemind has been viewed 7 times)
Your Twitter personality (click to tweet it!)
Personality: ordinary sociable unremarkable Style: chatty coherent VOYEUR

Tips for your tweeting…

• Work on making your tweets more interesting to attract more followers
• If you retweet others, hopefully they’ll retweet you back
• Use hashtags to join in popular discussions or online events

Google shows analytics API

I can see this announcement by Google in recent days about releasing the Analytics API to developers creating a whole new cottage industry overnight:

• Custom tailored and tracked analytics targetted, triggered and monitored at discretion by customers directly.

The dev team at the Areeba offices think this is very cool, as it opens up whole new ways to metric user behaviour and monitor site statistics in meaningful ways which have business relevence. Watch this space, we’ll have it connected to RedDot errr Open Text Web Solutions Suite, Umbraco & Drupal in a flash.

• Desktop widgets will start appearing that are designed to communicate when pre-determined benchmarks have been met i.e. number of visitors post a campaign period; number of transactions in a period; average period of time for the website as a snapshot. A refinement of this could include a summary of the most visited pages of a particular type i.e. latest product, product support, legacy products; service type; location.
• tailored search result presentation will come to the fore, based on prior user data influencing the representation of search results and its relevence.
• Connecting to the cloud inversely, you could run a search of the terms in your particular industry and then compare it against your own website to see if your competitors have the jump on you for particular marketing drives, campaigns etc. In effect, it would be RSS on steroids because you could set up alerts which actively scan for terms you yourself are marketing for and be much more intertwined with the data being fed back to you, which would allow immediate response to market conditions…..

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/attention-developers-google-analytics.html

How cool are Google for allowing direct access to the API? Heh – 50 years from now, there will be churches and a religion for Google, in tribute to their data mining philosophy. They own it all. Or will. Soon.

Twitter bragging rights

With all the hoopla surrounding the popularity contest currently going on with Twitter and its celebrity/corporate residents (think: aplusk; Oprah, CNNBRK) , Travis spotted this amusing site earlier today.

www.epenis.nl

I wonder if there is a version which gives a rating for the type of car you drive when you plug it in? Ford? Holden? BMW?

Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008

Technorati’s 5th annual report commenting on that which it focuses on so well – Blogs – citing a pot pourri of mind boggling statistics, insights and conclusions around the “State of the Blogosphere“.

The reports comprehensive nature was delivered across a 5 day period, and split across a host of areas looking at variables such as background, time commitment, income, influence and value both in the blog itself and the erstwhile Hemmingway types who dilligently peck out on their keyboards thoughts, observations and other such eloquent turns of phrase.

• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
• Day 4: Blogging For Profit
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

I was particularly interested in this, seeing as I have really only been commited to blogging on a regular basis for the past 6 weeks or so. I’ve been slowly pooling together content from a range of different sources which have made their presence known over the years – A neglected Travel Diary from 2003/2004, an experimental Image Gallery and an Areeba Facebook Page. Most recently – and most interestingly – the vast bulk of my literary inspiration has been my job, prompted by work colleagues and clients who have seen fit to pick at my thoughts from a professional work context point of view. With the hopeful intentions of applying some discipline and order to this “stream of consciousness” is the presence of this blog, which is forcing me somewhat more quickly than originally anticipated to articulate what I am hoping to be a rationale, clear, concise and engaging dialogue. Cripes.

So reading such observations within the State of the Blogosphere apparently:

Bloggers are…

• Not a homogenous group: Personal, professional, and corporate bloggers all have differing goals and cover an average of five topics within each blog.
• Savvy and sophisticated: On average, bloggers use five different techniques to drive traffic to their blog. They’re using an average of seven publishing tools on their blog and four distinct metrics for measuring success.
• Intensifying their efforts based on positive feedback: Blogging is having an incredibly positive impact on their lives, with bloggers receiving speaking or publishing opportunities, career advancement, and personal satisfaction.

On this basis, I profile myself as part of the Professional and Corporate Blogging set, but I’ve thrown in some personal stuff for good measure. It’s a mess really, by this definition.

I certainly don’t do much to drive traffic to my blog site, although I am tinkering in this area. Cross links from work colleagues, joining up to Technorati, playing around with the Tags for different search results…. Google Adwords, Adsense and some SEO/SEM activity may step in there if I can be convinced. Manually fettling the Permalink post names has been useful i.e. changing the About page to also include Colin Yeung

http://www.theculturemind.com/about/
http://www.theculturemind.com/about-colin-yeung/

Metrics for success? This is where it gets interesting. Currently I’m just writing this because I enjoy it. I’m getting asked to offer an opinion on particular things and rather than repeat it 5 times over (I hate going over ground I’ve already travelled) I’d rather write it once and reference it. However the derivations of success by the millions of bloggers out there and their levels of satisfaction with a “job well done” vary so widely that subsequently measures of success are also widely divergent. The focus by way of questioning bloggers, assessing their methods and highlighting the tools and approaches with which they are availing themselves of improved market data were all fascinating to myself and my shiny new 6 week blogging awareness.

What also had me intrigued was the notion of 5 different topics groups was the average. Looking at my list, this translates roughly as:

• Opinion on Digital/New Media
• Interesting Stuff that Makes me Smile
• A little bit about my Family here and there
• The odd Movie , Book or Website review
• Interesting & Noteworthy images and articles of cool stuff – or more correctly what I rate as cool – usually photography, cars, web culture maps (driving the office nuts in the process) and other such popular culture.

Now looking at this statistic, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a Philosophy of Science subject I took during my Uni years which assessed, theorised and extolled the notion of “natural kinds” and the empirical limit that these states enforced on a system. Looking at my above groups, they’re pretty broad. Vaguely objectified, they are Reviews, History, Opinion and Emotion (the Family & Make me Smile). Problem is they aren’t “kinds” as such, being abstracts. Gah. Stuffed up there.

Anyway, in a nutshell, there is much to learn about Blogging “successfully” and this report gets you thinking about it in a different and factually presented light, by virtue of its participants and the vast amounts of data they have put together. The eye opener for me was the droves of people who are earning upwards of $75,000 USD per year by blogging part time.

That sounds like an existence I could get very comfortable with.

Web Trend Map 2009 – Information Architects Japan

Hard on the heels of my post a few weeks back, Information Architects Japan has just released Version 4 of its Web Trend Map. The full version can be viewed here at http://www.informationarchitects.jp/wtm, or click on the below image for a full size 6740 x 4768 (JPG 2.56Mb) on Flickr. As at time of writing the Map wasn’t up on IA Japan’s website yet….