Saturday, April 21, 2007
Cool Kuler Coolest
Take the Kuler tour (aka tutorial) to see what it's all about. It even plays cool music while you learn. To create or share color groupings, you'll need an Adobe ID.
The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB) lists Kuler as #7 in their "Top 100".
Friday, April 20, 2007
Web inventor explains impact of Semantic Web
The video presentation is by Brightcove video publishers. I find the interface interesting and easy to use. The maximum size is not full-screen, but plenty big enough for a computer screen.
- View the 8-minute video of Tim Berners-Lee
Friday, April 13, 2007
My Maps a great new resource
Prior to this new feature, I had tested MultiPlottr, which is a similar tool and does use Google Maps. Google's My Maps appears slicker and offers the familiar ease of use and easy to learn GUI we've come to expect from Google. With Google My Maps you have to guess at location by dragging a plot marker. Try both and see if you agree.
Side note: There is a limit of 50 plotted addesses per map at present.
Ideas for possible uses
- Plot the street addresses of your church members. A visual look at clustering and dispersion may give you added insight for outreach or visitation planning.
- Plot members' addresses, but use different colors for:
- Members who have moved out of the area but still attend.
- New members within the last year.
- Founding members (if the church is new).
- Members who have not moved out of the area.
- Your church's street address (the key reference point on the map).
- Location of selected community resources (City Hall, Courthouse, City or County agencies that help people, Clothes closets, etc.). This might become the basis for a "Where to get help" portal page for your community.
- Home address of visitors in the past year.
- Plot the location of an event away from the church. The Church Art Online Plus Calendar does this, but that is a paid subscription. You could email this map link to all church members and any visitors that gave you their email address.
- Plot any type of demographic information about your members that is related to their address. Just remember the 50-address per map current limit.
Special note about long links. Remember that if you email map links, you should check the length and potential for problems at the receiving end. If the link is a long one or contains special characters, the recipient's email messages may "break" the link, especially when it wraps lines.
A way to avoid that problem is to use the free "TinyURL" online service to create a special short link when the target is a long one. TinyURL creates a special very short link that points to the long one you provide. An example long link reduced by TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/ywzpx8 .
TinyURL also offers a "preview" feature that lets people see the actual destination link before they decide to select it. Here's an example of the same link as a "preview" one: http://tinyurl.com/preview.php?num=ywzpx8
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Church PR using Flickr
- Zazzle
Zazzle site lets you design produce custom stamps, T-shirts, mugs, and more. Custom stamps come in varied sizes using photos of your choice and sizing. They are more expensive than USPS stamps, but it's a unique way of promoting your church. Flickr offers a cross-site link to Zazzle. - QOOP
QOOP uses your photos to create custom cards (myCards) of different sizes, calendars, Posters, an more. You can create picture-based business cards, for example. Or mini-cards with a photo on one side and printing on the other. You might want to purchase some for special seasons or to promote select events. - Moo
Make notecards or mini-cards
Monday, April 09, 2007
Church webs -- Heal!
- Heal your church web site
- Is my web site ineffective? (including checklists)
- Top 20 confessed web site sins
- Don't do really weird navigation, no matter how "cool" some designer thinks it is. Go ahead. Figure it out. Then ask yourself if you really want to use it on that web site?
Monday, April 02, 2007
Hone your keywords
Although designed for use with Google AdWords, the handy online Keyword Tool can help you tweak the ones you are using or considering.
Other free keyword-related tools:
- Keyword suggestion tool (1)
- Keyword suggestion tool (2)
- GoogleDuel - compare which of two related words is more popular
- Ontology Finder - get a list of related words. Use the synonyms in your page's text to boost search results.
- Keyword Density tool
- Keyword Cloud
- Keyword Optimizer - Deletes duplicate keywords in the list and alphabetizes the list.
- Add Keyword Typos - lists possible misspellings you may want to add in your Keywords list.