Archive for 2007

PodCampBoston2 “UnConference”

The PodCamp Boston2 “UnConference” (an unorganized conference, shortened to UnConference) is just around the corner. It’ll be held in October at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, and admission is free. You just have to register in advance to get in! Who should attend? You do NOT need to be a podcaster to attend a PodCamp. If you’re interested in podcasting or blogging, if if you’re a podsafe musician (or want to be), or just someone curious about podcasting and new media, then please join us — and bring a friend or colleague. You can also register... [read more]

Contrast Analyze THIS!

Here’s a neat little app called the Contrast Analyser from the Paciello Group that works for both mac and pc. It checks to see if you foreground and background colors have good visibility/are legible on the page. This is a service the ATIC lab provides free of charge to the MIT community, but if you wanted to check this out for yourself you will get a first hand look at what your site would look like those with visual conditions such as low vision or color blindness.  [read more]

Why is my web page slow?

There’s another great Firefox extension to help web designers/developers take charge of how long it takes web pages to load. From the Yahoo! Developer Network comes an open source utility called YSlow: YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the popular Firebug web development tool. YSlow gives you: Performance report card HTTP/HTML summary List of components in the page Tools including JSLint Thanks to Wilson D’Souza from IS&T’s ISDA for this post idea!  [read more]

What Size Font is That?

Here’s a firefox extension that lets you pull the font size from a css file: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4415. From the Firefox site: “Simply highlight a single element (e.g. a paragraph or a strong tag ), right-click and select `Font Finder`, then marvel as the full CSS text styling of the selected element appears.”  [read more]

Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype

Use Interface Engineering has another webinar on Web 2.0 coming up on August 16th — 1pm ET / Noon CT / 11am MT / 10am PT. Jared Spool is giving the talk. Here’s the outline: In this presentation, I will teach you: + How Web 2.0 works with a tour of Flickr + How Folksonomies (also known as Tagging) can make personally important information easier to retrieve by users + How Social Networking can enhance the users’ experience + How APIs expand the user experience + How RSS brings data to your users on their schedule Pricing: $129.00, $99 for UIEtips Subscribers (form at the bottom... [read more]