Monday, March 30, 2009

CIL 2009 Day 1 - 40-Plus New Tools & Gadgets for Webmasters

This is an annual presentation done by Diane Fichter from the University of Saskatchewan and Frank Cervone, who is now at Purdue University Calumet (somewhere I've actually attended classes). They whip through a huge list of cool apps and websites. I'll just post the whole thing right here. Some of it looks like it could be really useful (that stuff's in italics).

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Layout Gala (blog.html.it/layoutgala) – Lots of layouts

Wave (wave.webaim.org) – Accessibility testing

HTML Table Generator (www.spectrum-research.com/V2/projects_table_generator.asp) – Generates web tables

Visual Thesaurus (www.visualthesaurus.com) – Aquabrowser like thesaurus clouds added to your website (runs in Java, seems something most appropriate to education environments)

FancyZoom (www.dfc-e.com/metiers/multimedia/opensource/jquery-fancyzoom) – Adds a Mac-like zooming to a webpage for images

Uni-Form (sprawsm.com/uni-form) – Creates a well structured, semantic, accessible and usable form

feed.informer (feed.informer.com) – widget that assists with putting feed output on your website

phplist (phplist.com) – Open-source newsletter manager. RSS to email. (!!!!!!)

EasyPHP (www.easyphp.org) – Tool for simulate and installed PHP environment.

Net.tutsplus.com/videos/screencasts/how-i-can-code-twice-as-fast-as-you/

Texter (lifehacker.com/software/texter/lifehacker-code-texter-windows-238306.php) – GPL version of ShortKeys

TextExpander (www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander) – (Mac)

Crowd Science (crowdscience.com) – Sophisticated survey tool (looks very nice and professional)

Fusestats web analytics (www.fusestats.com) – Can generate heatmaps of your website showing where people are going and looking on your page.

Read it Later (www.ideashower.com/ideas/launched/read-it-later) - Firefox extension

Top Posts Widget (www.postrank.com) – will show what blog entries have been most popular

Internet Health Report / Internet Status Report (internethealthreport.com / internettrafficreport.com) – Helps you figure out if there's a problem on the Internet and where it might be (possibly useful for patrons asking “Why is the Internet so slow?”)

Lonely Hearts Club for Web Sites (www.google.com/friendconnect) – Allows people to friend your website.

FireShot (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648) – for making screen shots

FileJuicer (echoone.com/filejuicer) – get all of the images out of a PDF, Flash, or PowerPoint documents

XnView (www.enview.com/en/index.html) – allows you to convert graphics file formats to other graphics formats

ColorPicker (www.colorpicker.com) – Simple tool for picking colors and provides hex codes

Color Wizard (colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp) – gives you suggestions for complimentary colors

Accessibility Color Wheel (gmazzocato.altervista.org/colorwheel/wheel.php) – shows you what a color scheme looks like for different color blindnesses

Personal Fonts (www.yourfonts.com) – Make your handwriting into a font for free

Lovely Charts (www.lovelycharts.com) – clean, elegant visualization tools

XML/SWF Charts (www.maani.us/exm_charts/index.php) – converts an arbitrary XML file into a Flash-based chart

Mind Mapping (bubbl.us) – cloud-based brainstorming tool

Mindmeister (www.mindmeister.com) – more collaborative mind mapping

script.aculo.us (demo: wiki.github.com/madrobby/scriptaculous/puzzle-demo)

xcavator (www.xcavator.net) – searches a number of different photo sites and allows you to see the results based on a particular image. You upload an image and it searches for similar images

Google Unsend (mailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.htm) – unsend a gmail message in 5-10 seconds.

Automatically open search results in a new tab (lifehacker.com/software/firefox/firefox-tip-open-search-results-in-a-new-tab-255171.php)
Review Basics (www.reviewbasics.com) – Collaborative document reviewing

Quintura Kids (quinturakids.com) – filtered kidsafe searching

Virus Total (www.virustotal.com) – detects trojans in a file

WinDirStat (windirstat.info) – see what's using up space on a drive

LetsCallMe (letscallme.com) – hides your phone number but lets people call you

DamnIT (damnit.jupiterit.com) – Sends you an email when something goes wrong with javascript

Chunk It! (www.getchunkit.com)

net.tutsplus.com – tutorials

www.designer-daily.com/mac-apps-1915) -free mac applications

noupe.com

homokaasu.org/rasterbator (make an image poster sized)


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