Archive for the ‘productivity’ Category

Seen a font and want to know what it is? Check out What The Font.

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

Over the course of my career I’ve been asked (or have asked) “do you know what this font is?” hundreds of times. MyFonts.com has solved this problem by creating What The Font, a simple online tool that can identify fonts. You upload an image of a font, double check to make sure it recognizes the letters in the image properly, and click a continue. The font has been identified you are presented with buy links, the ability to rate the font, or the option to submit the font to the site to have it matched manually. The app works best when the font is isolated from other images or background texture, but in my experience it has proven very reliable.

Check out What The Font.

what the font

TestSize.com – Test Your Site at Multiple Sizes

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Designers have a distorted view of the web. We all have huge monitors and speedy computers and it’s easy to forget that your average web user isn’t always so lucky. Testsize.com is a simple web app that allows you to easily check out how your site will display on monitors of varying size.

To use the site you only have to enter a url, a size, and hit enter. There are shortcuts that allow you to cycle through different sizes, and zoom, but the developers of the app have done a good job of keeping the options minimal and the application simple.

Check out TestSize.com here.

screenshot of test size

Notable – The Easiest Way for Teams to Provide Feedback on Websites

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Notable

Notable is a web and iPhone based service that allows team members to easily share feedback on all aspects of a website. To start a discussion you create a new project called a capture, or a set to hold multiple captures. Captures can be created from a url, by uploading an image, from an iPhone screenshot or from a Firefox Plugin. After creating a capture your team can comment on the page’s design, code, copy or seo. Users can also output the results to a PDF, email, public or private urls.

home

Design

When uploading a jpg, or a capture from a url, Notable creates and stores a full page screenshot of your webpage. Multiple users can create transparent boxes with comments on top of the page giving the designer consolidated visual feedback.

design

Code

Code view is organized by html, css and javascript. You can isolate each source file and highlight lines of code by clicking and filling out a pop-up comment box.

code

Copy

The copy tab removes all graphics and markup from your page and reproduces the page as plain text. Unlike code view, you can highlight individual characters or words for comment.

copy

SEO

The SEO tab analyzes how search engines see your page and only displays relevant content. The left column contains a list of keywords and keyword phrases appearing on your page. The right column breaks down the page by metadata, headers, first 100 words used on the page, bold/strong elements, alt tags and outbound links giving you a thorough view of how a search engine sees your site.

seo

Pricing plans for Notable range from free to $119 a month based on the number of users and the total amount of storage needed. Notable is one of the most thorough site markup tools on the market allowing you to give feedback on site design, code, copy and seo. Pair that with the companion iPhone application and you have a tool that no production team should be without.

Check out Notable here.

Online iPhone Mock-up Tool

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Lukas Mathis has created a really nice iPhone mockup tool in Flash. This web based tool lets you create wireframes for iPhone apps by dragging and dropping simple components onto a phone and sharing the url. You can create final pieces that look like either illustrations or sketches. A nice tool for simple mocks when a napkin just won’t do. Check it out here.

Rules of Productivity

Friday, December 18th, 2009

An interesting article showing a correlation between prolonged overtime work and a sharp decline in productivity. It’s amazing to see studies done by Ford at the turn of the century, and those done in startups showing almost exactly same loss in productivity with sustained overwork. Good for short bursts of productivity, but a loosing strategy if it becomes the norm. A great read.

http://lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html

Rules of Productivity