Archive for the 'tool' Category

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Easy web page mockup tool

Published on September 6, 2006 in tool. 2 Comments

I’ve just finished a tool to make web page mockups. The purpose: make a quick draft of what a web page should look like, so you can include a screen shot in an email or a specifications document. When a client describes what page layout he wants in pure text, it is easy to misunderstand what he means. E.g. “two levels of menu should be visible on each page“. Ok, you want those as a bullet list in the side bar or a breadcrumb on top? It’s easier to just show him an overview of: that block goes there, that’s what I mean with two sidebars on the right, the tags are here at the right, under the recent comments.

Forret tool: web page designer

My web page designer will let you specify headers, footers, sidebars and let you add bogus content with an easy markup syntax. [text becomes a block of text, *text becomes a bullet, _text is a link … The goal is that anyone, without any knowledge of HTML, can make a rudimentary page layout and say: see that’s what I want. I also generate ‘pretty’ URLs in the RubyOnRails syntax (list/edit/new/…).

It’s helped me, it might help you! Any remarks are welcome!

Myers-Briggs typology: I’m an ENFP

Published on June 14, 2006 in Society and tool. 16 Comments Tags: , , , .

Background

I have never been a big believer in astrology. I am not convinced the location of stars at the moment of your birth is that important to your personality. I’m a Virgo, but I don’t feel that defines me that much. But some years ago I discovered a ‘labeling’ system that was based on the actual behaviour of a person, whose result was much more significant: the (Jung) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):

According to Jung’s typology all people can be classified using three criteria. These criteria are: Extraversion/Introversion – Sensing/Intuition – Thinking/Feeling
Isabel Briggs-Myers added a fourth criterion: Judging/Perceiving
from humanmetrics.com

A good explanation of each criterium is:

1. Where, primarily, do you prefer to direct your energy?
If you prefer to direct your energy to deal with people, things, situations, or “the outer world”, then your preference is for Extraversion. This is denoted by the letter “E”.
If you prefer to direct your energy to deal with ideas, information, explanations or beliefs, or “the inner world”, then your preference is for Introversion. This is denoted by the letter “I”.
2. How do you prefer to process information?
If you prefer to deal with facts, what you know, to have clarity, or to describe what you see, then your preference is for Sensing. This is denoted by the letter “S”.
If you prefer to deal with ideas, look into the unknown, to generate new possibilities or to anticipate what isn’t obvious, then your preference is for Intuition. This is denoted by the letter “N” (the letter I has already been used for Introversion).
3. How do you prefer to make decisions?
If you prefer to decide on the basis of objective logic, using an analytic and detached approach, then your preference is for Thinking. This is denoted by the letter “T”.
If you prefer to decide using values and/or personal beliefs, on the basis of what you believe is important or what you or others care about, then your preference is for Feeling. This is denoted by the letter “F”.
4. How do you prefer to organise your life?
If you prefer your life to be planned, stable and organised then your preference is for Judging (not to be confused with ‘Judgemental’, which is quite different). This is denoted by the letter “J”.
If you prefer to go with the flow, to maintain flexibility and respond to things as they arise, then your preference is for Perception. This is denoted by the letter “P”.

from teamtechnology

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BlogCentral: your blog dashboard

Published on June 8, 2006 in scripting and tool. 4 Comments

I just updated one of my web tools that definitely needed it: the Blogcentral Blog Dashboard.The idea is to give the relevant data for your blog (blog name, blog URL, feed URL, author name) and then get a dashboard page (that you can bookmark) which gives you easy access to all blog search engines, rankings and ping services.

Web tool: blogcentral

I have been using the old version for quite a time already (mainly for Technorati stats), but now it even includes Alexa ranking, Egosurf, BlogPulse, -Digger, -Lines, -Shares, Google/Blogger, Sphere and Icerocket. Try it out and investigate that blog ego!

Adwords generator tool

Published on July 2, 2005 in tool. Closed


I just finished another webpage for my forret.com tools collection: the Adwords Generator tool. Inspired by seeing a colleague losing his time with Excel trying to create a full list of keywords for his Google Adsense campaigns, I created an easy web interface to do just that: give in lists of keywords of key phrases, and let the Adwords tool create all the possible combinations.

You would use it in this way: say you want to promote a podcast client application for Windows (like the new Doppler 3.0).

  • you would use the 1st box to list ‘podcast’ and all its synonyms:
    podcast, audioblog, mp3 blog
  • you would use the 2nd box to list all synonyms for ‘client’
    client, podcatcher, aggregator, downloader, viewer
  • you could use the 3rd box to list the versions of Windows your software runs on:
    Windows 2000 (or Win2k), Windows XP (or WinXP), Windows 2003 (or Win2003)

Combining everything together gives you a list of 90 keyphrases: Adsense keywords for a Windows podcast client. You can even add the “phrase matching” or [exact matching] options (see adwords.google.com for more info).

You can also look up suggestions for new keywords through tools from Google Adsense and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture). A nice addition to my toolbox!

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