Cool Tools for Webmasters

Internet Librarian – Frank Cervone (and Darlene Fichter – who couldn’t be  there)

This is always a very userful session, full of great tips and  tools  Looking forward to  testing out some of these that are new to me. Will blog about the ones that I find particularly useful.

Tools for web site makeovers

Usability testing

• Gomockingbird.com – wireframes on the fly – web-based, easy to share
• Pleasecritiqueme.com – social site, ask designers for feedback
• Userfly.com – usability testing, free version allows 10 tests/month. Install 1 line of js on a web page and record interactions with page?
• Openhallway.com – create scenarios, get others to test remotely.
• Crazyegg.com – track what people do on your web-page, view hotspots, etc.
• Labsmedia.com/clickheat – opensource, implemented on webpage with javascript. Have to install on a LAMP server.

Sources of content

Music & sound

• artistserver.com, jamendo.com ccmixter.org, free-loops.com, freesound.com

Images, colors

• photoanywhere.co.uk – lots of travel photos, good quality images for background images
• Creativity103.com – free creative design elements, great for abstract images,
• Spinexpress.com/getmedia – nice hub  for finding lots of design elements, lots of creative commons content
• Enably.com/chrometric – what a web site would look to folks with different types of color-blindness

Searching

• Refseek.com – alternative to google scholar perhaps?
• Sweetsearch.com – terrific k-12 oriented search tool

Social media  & analytics

• Socialmention.com – great tool for finding where you’re being mentioned in lots  of social tools.
• Postling.com – you tell it which social streams to monitor. I use this & it’s handy way to get a summary of the online conversations I’ve had with others.
• Hootsuite.com –  great for pushing messages out over multiple social networks easily. And best of all, you can schedule those messages ahead of time.
• Twitter.com/goodies
• Constantcontact.com- good way to keep in touch with groups, newsletters, etc.
• Sharethis.com – social  media sharing and stats on how your content is being shared. Some social sharing tools don’t do the metrics.
• Spreadable.com – also a social sharing tool, but more – you can also customize the message that goes with your content when it’s shared
• Mashedin.com – helps you find out where your online communities connect.
• Facebook.com/help/?search=insights – find out more about your organization

Organization tools

• Evernote.com – I love love, love  evernote. Keeps all my notes, photos, tweets, content, url’s etc organized. Can share with others, lots of clients for various devices & platforms
• Ninite.com – click tools you want to install and it creates a install package.
• Secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal  – checks all your software to make sure you’re running the latest versions.
• Flavors.me – kind of like netvibes
• A.freshbrain.com/solvr – problem solving tool for a group. Enter your problem, get url for discussion page. Great for brainstorming.
• Yammer.com – Create your own private ‘facebook’ like social network.
• Prezi.com – good for organizing ideas – collaborative presenting is a new feature.

Additional Tools for Websites

• Amcharts – create a flash based interactive chart to  embed on your chart
• Tagxedo.com/app.html – similar to wordle, can create word clouds in different shapes. Also interactive
• Getfirebug.com  – Firebug is great for troubleshooing your web design
• Infodome.com – simple and powerful online database
• Goo.gl –for quick & easy qr codes, great url shortener service too. Add .qr to end of shortened url and get qr code.

Contributed by audience

• whyslow – yahoo addon for firefox – to find our   why your site m ight be running slow?
• Wufoo.com – subscription service for designing interactive, complex forms. Has a 15% discount to non-profits
• Seomoz.org – (.com?) –
• Woopra.com – 3 levels of access – website analytics, free for 2000 hits or fewer.

Missed you Darlene!