A graphic that’s worth a thousand words

The other day, @KathySierra tweeted about this website. All I can say is ‘Wow!” What a terrific use of a graphic to explain the differences in size between small, common objects (e.g. grain of rice) and things such as human eggs, viruses, etc. Use the slider on this web page from the Genetic Science Learning Center at the Univeristy of Utah (http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/) to get the full effect.

Create a simple survey in Google Docs

Did you know that you can create a simple survey using Google Docs? You need a Google account (such as a Gmail account), but that’s all.

Note: You can delete your survey if you don’t like how you’ve created it, but it’s much easier to mock up what you want on paper first.

1. Open Google Docs (if you’re in your Gmail account, click Documents at the top of the page).
2. Select New > Form from the menu.
   
3. A new tab opens with the beginnings of your survey form — add your data, add more questions, change question types etc. In effect, you’re creating a simple database with field names and data types.
   
4. When you’re finished, apply a theme.
5. Then decide how you will distribute your survey — you can email it or embed it in a web page. Hint: Email it to yourself or a small group of testers so you can test it BEFORE emailing it to hundreds or thousands of people!
6. At any time while you’re creating your form, you can preview what it will look like by clicking the URL at the bottom of the editing page.

Here’s one I created in about 5 minutes:

Everything you wanted to know about Twitter

Well, perhaps not everything, but a lot!

If you’re still new to Twitter or are thinking about setting up a Twitter account but aren’t sure what to do, why you would use it, how to use it, etc. then take a look at the various articles — arranged by chapters — pulled together by the people over at Mashable into The Twitter Guide Book.

And the Twitter people have also put out a ‘Twitter 101′ for businesses: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

[Link last checked July 2009]

Caught by Captcha!

From the pen/stylus of Brad Colbow:

Internet connection issues?

In a previous post I talked about using commands like ping and tracert to test your internet connection and its speed.

Here are some more things you can use — SpeedTest and DownForJustMe.

SpeedTest

SpeedTest (http://www.speedtest.net/)  lets you test your connection speed and shows you the results compared to your ISP’s average and compared to other places in your state, country and the world.

Snapshot of my results

Australia compared to other countries

You can also view and download a CSV file of your results over time if you need to ‘prove’ that your connection is doing strange things (the screen shot below shows my results over a few hours — the red box is the slowest speed and the green box the fastest).

Results over time

Down for everyone or just me?

Another tool for checking a slow or non-responsive connection to a website is the Down For Everyone or Just Me? website (http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/).

You enter the URL you’re having trouble with, then press Enter or click the link.

Enter the URL in the box

After a very short time (less than one second?), you’ll get your answer:

Looks like there's nothing wrong -- it must be at my end

If there is something wrong, they’ll tell you that too. You don’t get a lot of information, but you get enough to ‘prove’ that it’s not something at your end. (In the example below I entered a fake URL just to see what the response would be.)

And if it's not working, you get this

[Links last checked August 2009]

The illustrated guide to color contrast

Brad Colbow is a web designer, illustrator and cartoonist. He does some great geeky-type cartoons, some of which I’ll be featuring in this blog over the next few weeks.

I first came across him when I read an RSS feed that pointed me to this article on color contrast: The Brads — Learning about contrast in design.

Brad has captured the essence of explaining the concept of color contrast simply, by using cartoon panels featuring himself and Hector the Pig. Here’s a taste:

[Links last checked July 2009]

Acronym Finder

There are some really cool tools on the internet. Some are new shinies; others have been around for years — like Acronym Finder: http://www.acronymfinder.com

But just because Acronym Finder has been around forever doesn’t mean it’s lost its usefulness. Sure, it may not have the gloss of the new shiny objects, but it does what it does really well and very quickly. One thing I particularly like about it is that it offers similar items for the acronym you’re looking for — just in case you got it wrong, or in case there are multiple definitions for the one you entered.

The image below shows the results for CSIRO — in addition to the definition, the Abbreviation Database Surfer below it is pretty handy! (and yes, I know the CSIRO spells themselves as “Organisation”…)

Example result from Acronym Finder

[Links last checked August 2009]

Want to find out more information about a phone number?

Do you want to find out more information about a phone number? Then try this site: http://www.numberingplans.com/?page=analysis&sub=phonenr

You won’t get who the number is assigned to (that’s illegal in many countries, including Australia), but you can see it’s general geographic location. For example, I entered a (fake) Australian number and got this information about it:

I already knew from the ‘+61′ it was an Australian number, but the ‘2′ could be anywhere in New South Wales or the Australian Capital Territory. What this site gave me was that it was from the Moree area of NSW.

Handy… I think!

[Link last checked August 2009; thanks to Nick M who alerted me to this site is his comment on an earlier blog post]

Visual resumes and CVs

Recently, I was alerted to some visual variations on the text-heavy resumes and CVs typically seen by hiring managers and recruiters.

Bill (@techcommdood) Tweeted about this really cool one for a graphics designer. What a great way to showcase his talents!

Michael Anderson's visual resume

(You can see the image at full size here: http://bit.ly/TbUKN)

The other was Tweeted by @etechwriter via @crowinfodesign, and is a free service that creates an online (and PDF) resume for you: http://www.visualcv.com/ I haven’t tried it, but it looks like an interesting option. Here’s YouTube video explaining the process and the benefits:

Finally, Jennifer Farley over at the Sitepoint blog offers “eight imaginative resumes from people working in various creative fields” here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/02/how-creative-should-a-designer%E2%80%99s-resume-be/

[Links last checked July 2009]

Everything you need to know to make accessible documents

I came across a great site the other day: WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind). They have all sorts of goodies available in the Articles and Resources sections of their website, like checklists for Section 508 compliance etc. And everything I’ve looked at so far on this site is written clearly and laid out in a way that makes the pertinent content easy to find.

I found out about this site because someone mentioned that it had some good stuff on creating accessible PDFs: http://www.webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/

There are also great articles on making accessible Word and PowerPoint documents, and documents and files in other common formats including OpenOffice.

This is a site well worth checking out and bookmarking!

Update 23 July 2009: SitePoint also have an article titled 12 tools to check your site’s accessibility.

[Links last checked July 2009]