Monday, March 30th, 2009
This is part 1 of 3 in a series on ideas to create or improve web and desktop applications. See also parts 2 and 3: “Idea #2: Two iTunes Features That Should Have Been There a While Ago” and “Idea #3: Google People Search – Convenient or Just Plain Creepy?“
In redesigning this blog, I’ve thought a lot about fonts. I know that it probably doesn’t show, since I’m still not very good with typography and what-not, but I certainly tried. It would be nice if I could find a website or application that would help me with this effort.
We’ve all seen various color scheme generators built for web and graphic designers. These applications take one or two colors that you provide and create a color scheme based on your given starting point. Others work similarly and build a color scheme based on the colors in an image that you upload. I’ve been thinking that someone should apply a similar technique for font generation.
This application would be simple: the user would select or insert one or two fonts and the application would return a scheme for a website or other document. Options could include the total number of output fonts, degrees of variation in fonts, preview sizes of output fonts, etc. I imagine that this would be no more difficult to design than a color scheme generator, and it would certainly be helpful to hopeless designers like me.
I looked around to make sure this didn’t already exist, and to my knowledge it doesn’t. That said, if any of you know of an application that does this, definitely let me know!
Friday, March 27th, 2009
No new post today. I’ve moved to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule, which will be nice for 3-part series (like the one potentially happening this week…or maybe next). Regardless, no post today for the sake of promoting the Facebook privacy settings guide I wrote the other day. So if you missed it before, here you are:
The ULTIMATE Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
Note: This is not the actual guide; this is only an excerpt. You can find the full guide here: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings
Facebook offers truly detailed privacy settings which are rarely harnessed by users. I’ve recently learned of these numerous settings and have applied them with great success to my profile. I suggest that everyone use Facebook’s privacy options, but I recognize their complexity and that they can take a long time to apply. I recommend doing so for several reasons (and many more not listed here):
- With stories of online abuse flooding the news, boosting your privacy protects you against that.
- You can customize what certain friends and groups of friends can see about you. By doing so you can separate your professional contacts from your close friends.
- You can show or hide information from the public.
- By creating specific privacy settings, you’ll be able to add as friends even people you don’t know with the ability to hide as much information from them as you’d like.
I will outline the steps that you should take to customize the privacy of your Facebook profile. So here you have it: The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
The other day I took a short flight from Chicago to Philadelphia, and as I usually do I picked up the SkyMall catalog provided in my seat pocket. I want to thank whoever came up with the SkyMall catalog, because I am generally entertained by it for about 60% of any given flight (seriously, unlike other people who have come up with lists like this, I am not angered by the products — I greatly enjoy them and think they’re hilarious). I decided to pick out some of my favorite products from the Early Spring 2009 edition for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.
I know that every time I’ve baked cookies I’ve thought to myself, “Hm, I wonder what the volume of half a human brain is.” Finally, a product that answers this question and many others! Be careful or you may not notice the subtle genius behind this product. This is no normal measuring cup; this measuring cup is helpful…and educational! This measuring cup places next to common measurements interesting items of the same volume. Check out some of these: volume of half a human brain, volume of body cells that die on a given day, amount of table salt in a large human. Don’t miss this steal!
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Friday, March 20th, 2009
I’m a big fan of Twitter. I’m an even bigger fan of using Twitter to build relationships. A few weeks ago, I added a couple new Twitterers to my list of followers. One of these new guys, @Aadom, posted a link to his blog on which he had made a post asking a simple question about Chicago. I figured I could give him a quick answer to the question he had asked, and I did. After I commented on the post, I returned to Twitter and sent him a tweet mentioning that I had commented on his blog. Soon after, he thanked me and followed me back. We had a short, general, and cordial interaction.
I think that this small example shows something about online communication. Much has been said in the last few weeks about the value of online community, sparked to a large extent by Shane Hipps’ now-(in)famous comments. To affirm his words, I’ll add that I frequently comment on a blog or send an @reply but generally won’t go any further than that. However, by answering @Aadom’s question then sending him a tweet, I let him know that I was genuinely interested in communicating with him rather than just selfishly talking to an abyss. Furthermore, he responded to my two attempts and therefore showed his appreciation for my efforts (however small they were). This type of personal, two-way communication is standard in the offline world but is much rarer in online interaction. Rather than personally talking to individuals, we often speak online in a megaphone-style proclamation — especially with Twitter.
So while I’m not presenting this comment-tweet method as a formula by which everyone must follow to be a good social media user or an attack on two fronts which will force the victim to give in and respond, I hope to give a good example of a habit of communication which we must develop. I’m also not suggesting that online community can compete with offline community, as I’m not really sure where I stand on that debate. Furthermore, this brings up other important issues like consistency in your online name/persona or Seth Godin-style boldness in marketing yourself, but for now we’ll stick with this (somewhat important) idea of repetitive, multi-format communication. So although I don’t claim to have all the answers, I do think we must seriously consider this issue. What other ways exist by which we could improve our online relationships?
