Archive for September 2010

Cameron Chapman at Six Revisions offers 10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies. Each one of these recommendations comes with data and reports to back them up, here are his top five:

1. Forget the “Three-Click Rule”
2. Enable Content Skimming By Using an F-Shaped Pattern
3. Don’t Make Users Wait: Speed Up Your Website
4. Make Your Content Easily Readable
5. Don’t Worry About “The Fold” and Vertical Scrolling

Cameron Chapman at the Noupe Design Blog gathers 40+ Awesome Keynote and PowerPoint Templates and Resources. These are all high-quality templates which are either available for free or minimal cost, and the list is followed up by further resources such as tuts for creating your own templates from scratch.

Online Colleges & Universities gathers up 50 Excellent Open Courses on Teaching With Technology. This is a mega-list of free courses on how to use technology such as blogs, wikis, instructional gaming, and more to reach out and engage students. It is divided into the following categories:

• Technology and Learning
• Online Education and Distance Learning
• Tech Tutorials
• Secondary and Higher Education

Rebecca Fitzgerald, Acquisitions Librarian/Office Manager at the Scheele Memorial Library Concordia College, New York, guest-posts at Tame The Web with her article Using Netflix at an Academic Library. This excellent post discusses the success of using a Netflix subscription in a college library with a limited media budget.

“The streaming movies have been a great success; instead of students waiting for the one DVD on reserve, they can go to the computer or into the library’s film viewing room, where we have a Roku player set up, and watch the movies on our flat screen TV. The amount we save just having the instant play is significant; it’s almost like having multiple copies of the movie on reserve.”

Zachary Sniderman at Mashable rounds up 29 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed. This useful list gathers reviews, lists, and guides in the areas of Social Media, Tech & Mobile, and Business. Here are just a few of the resources:

• The Next 5 Years in Social Media
• 5 New Ways Small Business Can Offer Location-Based Deals
• 3 iPad Apps that Reinvent News Reading
• 10 Emerging Social Platforms and How Businesses Can Use Them

The team at Educause has put together a new “7 Things” guide, this time tackling 7 Things You Should Know About Privacy in Web 2.0 Learning Environments. As usual, the quick reference source answers the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

In the wake of Ask.com’s announcement yesterday that it will shut down the Bloglines news reader service on October 1st, Dawn Foster at GigaOm has put together a well-timed guide to 5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Reader. Here are her recommendations:

• Learn Keyboard Shortcuts
• Go Full screen
• Ditch the Home Page
• Group and Prioritize
• Use Trends

Michael Stelzner at the Social Media Examiner spotlights this brief Video Guide to Facebook Places for Businesses. This seven-minute tutorial discusses everything you need to get you started using location-based services such as Facebook Places for your organization, including privacy concerns. Here are the highlights:

• What Is Facebook Places?
• Facebook Places Versus Foursquare
• What Users Need to Know About Privacy
• How to Add Your Business on Facebook Places
• What’s Next With Facebook Places?

Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, shares his insight into How to Write a Blog Series. I’ve written several blog series articles myself and have found them to be quite popular, so if you’re a blogger you won’t want to miss this article.

And if you’re looking for further instructions, check out this detailed post at Bash Bosh titled How to Write a Post Series on a Blog.

Aliza Sherman at GigaOm writes about 8 Things You May Not Know About Facebook. This interesting article brings up several features of Facebook that many people are probably unaware of, here are the top four:

1. You can get a business account
2. You can “tag” a Facebook Page in a status update
3. You only need 25 “fans” to get a custom “username.”
4. If you restrict access to your Facebook Page, your Page ceases to be public

Geekers Magazine rounds up the 60 Best Free iPhone Apps for 3G, 3Gs & 4. This mega-list is chock-full of awesome applications in the following categories:

• Music & Entertainment
• Navigation
• Photography
• News
• Books
• Education
• Social Networking
• Productivity & Utility
• Weather

Social media guru Chris Brogan tells us How to Write Effective Blog Posts. This quick guide is packed with useful suggestions including:

• Start With a Useful Title
• Lead In With a Story and an Image
• Go Into An Explanation of the Concept
• Make a Wire Frame and Try It Yourself
• It Takes Practice
• There’s Always More

If you’re researching which e-book reader is right for you, you’ll want to check out Justin The Librarian VS e-Book Readers. Justin Hoenke rates and reviews four popular e-book devices detailing which features he enjoyed and which he disliked as well as providing further comments.

via LibrarianinBlack

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers reviews BlogBooker, an application which will Turn Your Blog to a PDF Book. This brief posts provides a feature summary of the application and short screenshot tutorial for how to export your Blogger or WordPress blogs as XML files for use with BlogBooker.

Denise Wakeman at the Social Media Examiner lists 24 Impressive Blog Plugins You Should Consider. Each of these add-ons is compatible with the WordPress platform. Here are just a few of the more interesting plugins that made the list:

• Sexy bookmarks
• FBLikebutton
• CommentLuv
• WordPress Editorial Calendar
• WP Mobile
• Photo Dropper