Posts Tagged ‘services’

Who Should You Unfollow on Twitter?

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

There are dozens of sites that tell you who to follow, but the most useful Twitter tool I’ve found in months tells you who to unfollow. Manage Flitter analyzes the people you follow on Twitter and allows you to select and batch unfollow based on criteria you set. You can analyze who doesn’t follow you back, who doesn’t have a profile image, people who haven’t tweeted in a month, people who tweet more than five times a day and people who tweet less than once a day. After creating your list you can filter out verified and popular users so you don’t accidentally delete Shaq or Fake Steve Jobs.

Click here to check out Manage Flitter.

Using Google Translate

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

As my blog has grown in traffic I’ve noticed more and more readers coming from outside of the US, and while not surprising it does pose new issues. As more and more non-english (or non-native) speaking readers began to read my blog started looking for an automated way to translate into their language of choice. My Spanish is extremely rusty, and my German has been whittled down to a few words, so Google Translate seemed to be a great option.

By including a div and a few lines of Javascript into my page I was able to use Google’s powerful translation engine to add multiple language support to my blog through a simple drop down.

Here is the code for translating from English into all supported languages. 

<div id="google_translate_element"></div>
<script>
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
new google.translate.TranslateElement({
pageLanguage: 'en'
}, 'google_translate_element');
 }
</script>
<script src="http://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit">
</script>

When setting up your site you select your original language, choose output languages and Google will output a code snippet for your site. Right now I am only translating my main blog page, but will be rolling out Translate to every page of my site in the near future.

Selecting a new language will instantly change all text on your website if your site is using good design practices. It won’t help you out if you are using images for text (which is generally a no no) and won’t translate text created using SIFR. I haven’t tested every font replacement technology, but Google Translate works great with Typekit.

Customize Google Translate for your site here.

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

EGO – All your web stats in one mobile app

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

EGO is a mobile application that lets you check all of your web statistics in one place, from a mobile device. It supports Google Analytics, Twitter, Vimeo, Tumblr, Feedburner, Ember, Mint and Squarespace all in one application, with new services being added frequently. While the iPhone version only lets you view high level stats, like page views and follower counts, the iPad app lets you dig deeper and view the full sites associated with you analytics inline. A must have for anyone who wants to keep tabs on their website and the social web surrounding it.

Check out EGO here.

EGO App

Apple to shut down Lala on May 31st

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Apple purchased Lala.com a few months back and faithful Lala users have been holding their collective breaths waiting for Cupertino to let us know the fate of the popular streaming service. In my inbox this morning was the following automated message from Lala.

Dear Eric,

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

It’s a sad day for music fans but it’s nice to see Apple is doing the right thing and giving consumers iTunes store credits equal to the amount they spent on web songs. Personally I hope to see another incarnation of Lala’s technology soon, as I have almost entirely given up listening to music in iTunes. It looks like my Rhapsody subscription will have to tide me over until Apple tells us what the future holds.

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.

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