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 – Â 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!
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