Great Example of Learning and building Tutorials

Guy Kawasaki posted The Art of the Tutorial, an article for his American Express Blog . In his article, he discusses how companies, or any web site should be able to explain their business in under 2 minutes to a new client, customer or visitor. He show cases some examples for his newer startup AllTop, which I’ve posted about before as well as the production company who designed the tutorials and has produced all 3 examples he demonstrates.

They do a great job of showing, in this case, how to cook something using still shots/photography, a voiceover and simple directions. It’s a great example of how designers, instructors and everyone involved in e-learning should take into account on how to teach our audiences. I love the treatment and its effective. This technique can be applied to any business, idea, or training, think about it when you start your next production. Would love to hear your thoughts. Web Link: http://www.startcooking.com

Looks interesting – The Wharton Evolution of Learning Symposium, Philadelphia, May 13 – http://tinyurl.com/dey32h

If you are in Philadelphia are, check out this conference. Looks great and only $60. The keynote is Daniel Pink. Great writer and speaker. Check out A Whole New Mind @Amazon > http://tinyurl.com/b4jrd8

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About the conference: http://tinyurl.com/dey32h
The world is increasingly interconnected, the face of employment is rapidly changing, and the economic upheavals roll on. Education is at a crossroads. Have we as educators kept up with this evolution of global consciousness, and have we considered the possibility that our current status quo no longer meets the challenges of today???s world? And are we prepared, if necessary, to transform an entire system of pedagogies and administrative infrastructures?
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Have you seen the great content on TED? http://www.ted.com/

I was first introduced to the TED talks, about 2.5 years ago, when Al Gore created his documentary An Inconvenient Truth.TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds.  The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). One of the greatest assets for web users is they have moved more and more of their content to the web for everyone to see. There’s a lot to learn, some fun, some serious and inspiring content. If you are not familiar with the content, I would recommend checking out a clip at least once a week. http://www.ted.com/


Safari 4 Beta – Play with it Today!

The latest beta release for the Safari browser looks great and is fast. When you first try it out, the tabs (now above the title bar) seem a little out of place but once you play with it for a while I’ve come to the conclusion it is an improvement. So far I have not run into any problems on my routine daily sites, blogs and apps.

 As you type in a url or in the search area, a auto-drop down appears with choices which is a great time saver. There is also built in spell and grammar checking now. The new zoom in/out page view is nice implemented as well. The beta is available for both mac and windows. Full feature list at: http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html

 Learn more at http://www.apple.com/safari/

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Apple Certified Refurbished – Great Deals

With the current economy you may be looking for opportunities to cut costs but you may still need to purchase a new computer. Apple offers the latest and previous generation computers via their refurbished section where you can save $100 – $300 off the original price. The purchase comes with a full 1 year warranty and after getting several machines via this discount the only difference I’ve seen is that the machine is delivered in brown recycled box typically. Take a look the next time you are looking to add a new laptop or workstation. Some of the specials currently include:

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Macbook White 2.1 – 2.4ghz $849 – $999

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 iMac 20-inch 2.0ghz – $949

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 Macbook 2.0ghz $1,099

Check out at the latest: http://tinyurl.com/6f5lza

TweetDeck – Application for Twitter & Tutorial Link

If you are looking for a desktop app for mac or windows, check out TweetDeck at http://www.tweetdeck.com/. Its an Adobe Air based application that lets you split your feeds into smaller bites to allow for easier management as well as posting tweets. Its currently in Beta and available for free.

 Also check out this great getting started video by Cali Lewis/Geekbrief.tv <a href="http://www.geekbrief.tv/gbtv-517-how-to-tweetdeck-like-a-pro.

http://www.geekbrief.tv/gbtv-517-how-to-tweetdeck-like-a-pro.<p>

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Stories your parents told you…

Remember that classic story that you parents told you everytime you complained, asked for something or misbehaved? Mine was always the “classic” myth about having to go to school everyday in the blizzard with a foot of snow, walking uphill both ways. 

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I was thinking about this recently while prepping for a Design session I presented at Training Magazine’s 2009 Conference. I came with the following stories that I will start to share with my little one:

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Creating a Drop Shadow for Text
When I started using Photoshop, we had to buy a special Wow book in order to follow 3 pages of steps which involved, creating your text, selecting the text with the magic wand, inverse selection,   creating an alpha channel, dropping the selection, reselecting the alpha channel, offset, applying the treatment and then the client would ask you to tweak it. I didn’t have access to the book while writing this so it may be a little off but I think the longer the better for the story.
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Today, you are lucky, in just about every program, you can just select a piece of text and click shadow.

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I didn’t get my first cellphone until I was in my mid-20’s. They didn’t really exist prior and it was expensive but I had to have it. Today all the kids have one. 

When we were growing up there was no web. 

We had to use a single button mouse to work with our computer, at least if you were a mac user during the first 15 years.

Lastly, the iPhone, the ultimate interface for interacting with content. More about this in a future post.

Mosso: Hosting and Deploying Web Servers Quickly

If you are a web developer or manage several sites, Mosso is a great hosted solution for $100 per month you can setup as many sites, urls and manage them independently. It allows for easy web-based management if you want to offer to your teams or clients and you can setup individual pricing or offer as part of your package.

 The service allows you to quickly deploy a new url and have a server setup within an hour. They offer dns, email and ftp support as well as configurations with MYSQL, Linux, or Windows and you can switch post launch with a couple clicks on the management site. The email service, offers pop3, smtp as well as a webmail service and spam filtering which you can control for each domain.

 They also offer a cloud service now, which we are in the process of testing, similar to Amazon’s service and they utilize Limelight’s network. If you are dealing with lots of video or large files it worth giving it a try to improve download speeds for your audience.

 We’ve been using them for about a year now and have deployed dozens of sites. Strongly recommend. They are also owned by Rackspace. Learn more at http://www.mosso.com/

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Great Business Podcasts from Manager-Tools.com

Manager-Tools.com has been offering podcasts for helping you improve your business and leader skills since June 2005. They have over 200 casts available via itunes or via their website and I would highly recommend checking them out and subscribing to their feed. Some of my favorites:

Web Site Link: http://is.gd/3aSP

Silverbackapp.com – Usability Testing software for the Mac

Silverback is described as “guerilla usability tests” by its makers Clearleft, it allows you to use a mac and the app to record the user onscreen movements as well as their facial expressions using the built in camera on your mac. Its pretty incredible, for $49.95 and you can try it for 30 days for free. It auto highlights each click and allows you to review user activity and movements. I think its a great way to introduce to your team or clients to the ability during testing or focus group testing to also record inexpensively the movements and use the test data to help perfect your web site or product. Check it out at http://is.gd/12wf

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Quick overview of what it does and how it works.

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Web Resource: Alltop.com

Alltop.com is a website launch by Guy Kawasaki, its described as an online magazine rack for the internet of popular topics. The design is clean and easy to use and allows for easy viewing of your favorite subjects from design, technology, medicine, gadgets to specific products with hundreds of listings. Content is updated hourly.

 The interface starts with a menu where you can select a hot topic, look under a list A-Z or use the search topics field. I would suggest checking it out for an alternate way to view a specific topic and a breadth of content from one central location without having to google or search each day.

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I selected Tech as the categories and you can see a list of topics.

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Once you find a topic of interest you can bookmark that url such as http://gadgets.alltop.com and you can visit the updated content daily. Moving the mouse over a headline displays the opening of the web site.

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I would recommend checking out these (to get started)
 
http://user-interface.alltop.com/
 
http://ajax.alltop.com/
 
http://iphone.alltop.com/
 
http://gadgets.alltop.com/

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Jingproject.com – free screen and video screen recording tool.

I’ve been using the Jing application on a mac and pc for several months now. They have had several updates and if you installed the original version last year, you should download and reinstall because the original version, at least on the mac, did not auto-check for updates. The latest rev has several bug fixes and refinements in its interface. Jing can auto start and be available with a click of a button or by a keyboard shortcut. What’s great about Jing is you can select to grab the entire screen or a portion of the screen as a still or as a video. Looking at the still grabs you can easily annotate with text, add arrows or highlights which makes it a great for bug recording or pointing out parts of graphics that you need your team to address, adjust or work on. The video tool allows you to easily save a screencast to share with a client or friend and either post, email or use the Jingproject.com site to instantly share via a link. Strongly recommend adding this free tool to your toolset and taking advantage of its features. Jing now offers a pro version to enable better video compress plus several additional Pro features. Jing was created by Techsmith.com which has several great windows products including Camatasia, Snagit, Morae, and Uservue.

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Example of a marked up screen:

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