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Is your site accessible on a mobile phone? Not yet? Do you think your readers are all still accessing your site only via their PC-based computers? Think again: The number of people who surf the web via their mobile phones has been increasing tremendously in recent times and, whether you like it or not, your web site is going to be no exception to this.

Photo credit: Knitware Blog edited by Daniele Bazzano

“The US is the most tech savvy nation with nearly 40 million Americans - 16% of all US mobile users - using their handset to browse on the move. The UK and then Italy come a close second and third…”
(Source: Nielsen Mobile / BBC)

This is why is so important that you add to the list of key usability questions some of the following:
Can your readers access your web site via mobile phone easily? If you have an ecommerce site, what precautions have you taken so that if your reader loses his connection in the middle of a transaction nothing gets lost?

Ecommerce via mobile phones poses specific usability issues that need to be addressed as priorities if your site provides any type of interaction feature.

The result is the need to address with more attention the design aspects of your mobile-enabled web site as to effectively deal with the specific usability concerns characteristic of the mobile universe, such as the smaller keyboards available to your readers, or the limited size of their screens.

In this article, Alexander Baxevanis provides a detailed list of usability issues that must be addressed by any serious web publisher wanting to reach out to the emerging mobile audience(s).

Here all the details:

Ecommerce On The Go - Selling Through The Mobile

Introduction

Since we last wrote about the usability of mobile websites, the rise of the iPhone and other high-end handsets has meant that even more people use the Internet on their phone. (Source: Nielsen Mobile / BBC).

Companies have responded by creating more mobile-optimised websites, some of which now allow people to complete ecommerce transactions on the mobile, instead of simply researching for information.

For example:

• Shoppers can buy any product on the Amazon.com catalogue through the Amazon mobile site
• Travellers can instantly book a room in any Travelodge UK hotel through the Travelodge mobile site and rail tickets at the Train Line mobile site
• Car owners can get an instant car insurance quote on the Swiftcover mobile site
• Music fans can purchase tickets for their favourite concerts at the SeeTickets mobile site

However, while many people are already comfortable making online purchases using a computer, doing the same through a mobile phone poses unique challenges. These challenges need to be addressed by mobile ecommerce sites.

This article provides best practice guidelines for removing potential barriers between your customers and your mobile ecommerce site.

Help People Find Your Mobile Site

Having a mobile-optimised site is no use if your customers can’t find it.

You should always detect when visitors are accessing your site through a mobile phone, and automatically redirect them to the mobile-optimised version of the site.

Although you may also advertise the link to your mobile site, people may still remember the link to your main site only, or may arrive on your main site through a search engine link.

Ensure that the link to your mobile site is easy to remember and type into a mobile phone. For example:

• Append the word ‘mobile‘ to your main domain (e.g. www.example.com/mobile)
• Use a .mobi domain with your brand name (e.g. www.example.mobi)

Cater For Dropped Internet Connections

Mobile internet connections can often be unstable, e.g. when a mobile phone moves into a low signal area or runs out of battery. It’s usually not a big issue if this happens while someone is simply consuming information e.g. reading the news.

However, a dropped connection in the middle of a transaction may leave people wondering if the transaction has been completed or frustrated that the information they’ve entered so far was lost.

While there’s not much you can do to improve mobile network coverage, you can mitigate the effects of dropped connections by:

• Saving all details in every step of a transaction e.g. the items in a shopping basket or the shipping details already entered
• Ensuring that a transaction can be resumed from the point where it was left, without having to start over
• Capturing visitors’ e-mail addresses or mobile phones at the beginning of a transaction and sending them instructions to help them continue an interrupted transaction
• Ensuring that all transactions available on your mobile site can be completed in a few short steps

Avoid Data Entry Where Possible

Although high-end smartphones increasingly incorporate a full physical or on-screen keyboard, typing on a mobile phone still isn’t as easy as on a computer. Unfortunately, completing an ecommerce transaction often requires a lot of information that isn’t always easy to type, such as addresses and credit card numbers.

In order to decrease the chances that customers will drop off at this point, you can mimimise data entry by:

• Allowing customers to log-in with the same username and password that they use for your main website in order to retrieving shipping and billing information stored in their account
• Encouraging customers to create an account to speed up future transactions
• Integrating with 3rd party billing services for which customers need to enter only a username & password e.g. PayPal

Reassure Users About Transaction Security

With frequent reports on the news about credit card fraud and identity theft, most shoppers are looking to be reassured that their online transaction will be secure.

While most desktop web browsers prominently highlight secure websites and protect users from visiting fraudulent sites, many mobile browsers are primitive in that respect.

Also, because there are many mobile phones with different web browsers, people haven’t yet become accustomed to a certain way of highlighting that a website is secure.

It’s a good idea to prominently highlight that your mobile site is secure on the homepage and on pages that ask for sensitive information.

Customers may also feel more comfortable if they don’t need to enter any sensitive information because it’s already stored in their account, as discussed in the previous point.

Think Mobile For The Post-Transaction Stage

Interacting with your customers doesn’t stop when they complete a transaction.

A good mobile user experience should extend well into the post-transaction phase, e.g. when customers need to track the goods they ordered or check a booking confirmation. After all, if your customers have chosen to complete a transaction using a mobile phone, they’ll likely appreciate following up on this transaction in the same way.

Depending on the nature of the transaction, the following guidelines may apply:

• When customers can buy physical goods through your mobile site, provide a mobile solution for tracking the progress of the order and the delivery of the goods.
• When customers can book tickets or other services through your site, provide a mobile-friendly booking confirmation e-mail and consider mobile ticketing solutions, where tickets can be electronically stored in a mobile phone in the form of a special barcode
• In any case, ensure that all e-mails following up on a transaction are mobile-friendly

Conclusion

With increasing mobile internet use, it won’t be long before your customers will expect to transact with you over their mobile phone. This will take more than simply “downscaling” your existing website to fit in a mobile screen.

Only if you carefully consider the unique challenges and opportunities offered through the mobile channel will you be able to offer your customers a truly mobile user experience.

Originally written by Alexander Baxevanis for Webcredible and first published on December 1st 2008 as “Ecommerce on the go - selling through the mobile”

About the author

Alexander Baxevanis is crazy about usability - so crazy that he works for Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy, helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. He’s very good at information architecture training and extremely talented at eyetracking.

Photo credit:
Ecommerce On The Go - Selling Through The Mobile - solarseven
All other images by Webcredible

Apture is a new tool for bloggers and online publishers that can add interactive multimedia links and embeds to their site with a single click. Apture takes the traditional act of linking to a whole new level and provides your site with greater functionality and depth by providing your reader with the opportunity to browse related off-site content without ever having to leave your site. So in essence, Apture can potentially increase your reader engagement. And best of all, it is completely free.

Photo credit: Apture edited by Andre Deutmeyer

Links are the currency of the web. Any self-respecting blogger… independent publisher… website owner knows this. But when you are trying to maximize your readers engagement with your site, linking (and sending them away) to content elsewhere on the web seems to be a counterproductive process.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could link to outside content, but still keep the eyeballs on your site?

That is where Apture comes to play. Apture gives independent publishers the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items, such as video clips from YouTube, photos from Flickr, Wikipedia articles, music, podcasts, and much more from around the web directly on to your site with a single click of a button. You can also bring new life to old content you created by using Apture to upload that content from your computer and embed or link to it on your pages. Readers can then access these linked items without ever having to leave your site.

By doing this, you can increase reader engagement time with your blog or site by providing your readers with a deeper, richer web experience. This in turn can help you monetize your content by keeping your readers on your blog.

Still have questions about Apture? Continue reading below for the full review.

Here all the details:

Apture Overview

Apture is a free next-generation linking tool that allows you to add a wealth of multimedia links to your site. Once installed on your site, you can create Apture links by simply highlighting the word or phrase that you want linked and then selecting the relevant media.

Traditional linking creates a link that opens up in another tab / page, sending visitors away from your content if they want to view that link. But Apture changes the game. Rather than sending visitors away, links built using Apture open up in new interactive windows that can be repositioned anywhere on the page, or enlarged to fullscreen, allowing your visitor easy access to the content behind the link without ever leaving your site.

Apture further extends the traditional linking by allowing you to combine multiple sources of multimedia content together in one place. Each Apture link can be associated with content plus related media, enabling you to build a web of off-site information accessible without ever having to leave your site, and help your users learn more about the topic you are writing about.

If you have existing links to Wikipedia articles, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and other common web destinations on your website, Apture can automatically go through your site and create Apture links out of them with Apture Auto Link, saving you time and effort.

However, Apture is more than just a linking tool. Apture allows you to quickly and easily embed new media to your post / existing content. Using Apture you can add new videos, pictures, documents into a page without having to log in to your CMS backend. Once embedded, you can resize the content to best match your page layout, and add a caption to introduce it.

Installing Apture is as easy as pie. And if you use Blogger or Typepad then it is even easier - one click will set you up with Apture. For other CMS platforms (like WordPress, Drupal, MovableType) installing Apture is a straightforward process if you follow the step by step instructions provided to you by Apture. You only need one line of code to bring the Apture experience to your website.

Finally, Apture offers unique advantages for large publishers. For publishers like The Washington Post, Apture can serve as a new opportunity for commerce and advertising because you can display advertising within the Apture window that pops up when a visitor hovers over the link. By virture of the way Apture works, these ads are guaranteed to appear at the center of your visitor’s attention - an Apture window only appears when a visitor hovers over the link, indicating interest. Apture splits the revenue from these ads 50/50 with the publisher.

Key Features

Apture key features revolve around their next-generation linking service, providing your site visitors with a wealth of information without ever having to leave your site. Apture succeeds admirably. And the approach Apture takes is so innovative that there really is no direct competition for their service at the moment.

Features include:

• Wikipedia Links
• Video Links
• Audio Links
• Image Links
• Document Links
• Easy Media Embeds to published pages
• Related Media option allows you to connect multiple sources of media to a single link
• Auto Link
• Content Monetization (Advertising) for large publishers

Below is a graphical tour of these key features with details about how they work.

Wikipedia Links

Apture allows you to easily link to any Wikipedia article. Link any article that you want by highlighting the word or phrase that you want linked. Apture will then open up a pop-up from which you can choose the Wikipedia article that you want linked to the term. Apture tweaks the display of the Wikipedia article so that it displays beautifully within the pop-up box.

Video Links

YouTube is by far the easiest video sharing site to grab videos from, but as long as you have a web address, you can link to any video that you want and share it through Apture. If the video you want linked is sitting on your local drive, Apture also has an option to upload content and link that instead.

In addition to the ease with which you can link video, Apture also provides a nice feature that allows you to select the video playback start time and end time so you can show your visitors only the part you deem the most relevant.

Audio Links

Audio links work similar to video links. As long as you have the web address of the audio file, you can link any bit of audio that you want through Apture. Like video links, you can also choose to upload audio and link that instead.

Similarly, with audio links, you can select the start time and end time of the audio track so that the portion of the track that is most relevant to your reader automatically plays.

Image Links

Apture makes linking images simple too. Like video and audio linking, you can link any image to Apture if you have the web address for it. If you don’t have a specific image in mind, Apture’s built in search of Flickr, Yahoo Images, and Wikipedia Images makes finding and linking images a painless task. Or if you choose to, you can upload content from your local drive and have that display instead.

Document Links

Apture allows you to easily link PDF or other documents using Scribd iPaper technology. This allows your reader to access the article you are linking and read it without ever having to leave your site. The one problem that I noticed with this is that if you set up the Apture link for the document, there is no easy way for the reader to directly download that document anymore if you would like them to be able to do so.

Media Embedding

If you want to quickly embed media (video, audio, images) into your already published article without logging into your CMS backend, you can do so with Apture. Apture allows you to embed new media almost anywhere into your article with a single click of your mouse. You just point to the spot on your page that you want that media embedded, click, choose the media that you want (via search or web address), and presto… you are done. Although the media you embed through Apture will probably not fit your site layout as well as, say, one that you do through your backend, Apture is an excellent solution for embedding media quickly and easily without having to work with HTML.

Related Media

The capability to link multiple resources to one term or phrase is, perhaps, your greatest advantage with Apture. Traditionally, when you link something you can only have that link pointing to one location. But now with Apture, you can provide multiple types of media for you reader to enjoy… all linked to the term or phrase. So if there is a picture, video, and a Wikipedia link that you want pointing at the same term, you can do that with Apture.

Auto Link

Apture Auto Link is exactly what it sounds like. Rather than having to manually go through your old posts and create Apture links for your content, Apture automatically goes through your post and changes popular linking destinations (like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, and more) to Apture links. You can control which types of links that you want Apture to automatically convert through your Apture Dashboard. By default, all the links are selected, so if there are certain types of links that you do not want Apture to convert, then all you need to do is deselect those options.

Content Monetization (Advertising) For Large Publishers

Unfortunately, Apture only offers content monetization options for large publishers like the Washington Post (the above image is from the Washington Post) for now. Larger publishers will be able to serve ads within every Apture pop-up.

These ads could potentially have a higher click-through-rate than other display and contextual ads because as Apture argues, these Apture ads are going to be displayed where the reader is focusing his or her attention. The ads are all cost-per-click (cpc) types. And like Google, Apture will take a cut of any ad revenue that the publisher makes from those ads. Hopefully, Apture will soon extend this option to smaller independent publishers as well.

Pros and Cons

Apture Review - In Brief

Apture is a very functional solution. Other similar linking solutions like Snap fall short when compared to the functionality that Apture provides. Snap in many ways works like Apture. Snap provides pop up windows that link to videos, Wikipedia content, photos, etc so that visitors can view that content without having to leave your site. But unlike Apture, Snap previews are much more limited.

When selecting the content that you want the link to point to, Apture really has few limits. Snap is limited to only those ‘Snap Shots‘ that are presupported. Apture allows you to link almost anything, even content that you have stored on your local drive. Furthermore the Apture ‘Related Media‘ function is great. More than once I have wanted to link multiple pages / media / content to the same term. And Apture is the only platform that allows me to combine multimedia content from around the web, together on one link.

Furthermore, I am not aware of another tool that allows you to embed multimedia into your website as easily as Apture does. The ease with which Apture allows you to embed new media into your post is great. The one shortfall of this, however, is that the media you embed may not fit always as cleanly into your page as media you embed through your CMS backend.

One of the major complaints that I have seen about Apture is that it adds unnecessary noise to a web page. That complaint is understandable. I myself hate the unwelcome pop-ups that occur when you accidentally scroll over text-link ads. But the difference with Apture is that Apture actually provides relevant, interactive content to the viewer… not irritating irrelevant advertising. So despite the annoyance that the unsolicited Apture pop-ups may generate, the added functionality and information that you provide to your readers are well worth the cost.

These factors make Apture a unique product and well worth checking out. Apture is free, so go give it a shot.

Additional Resources

• Sign up for Apture
• Official Product Tour by Apture
• Videos of how to use Apture

Do you see any mistakes? Would you like to share your own experiences with Apture? Please leave a comment below.

Originally written by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 2nd 2008 as Add Multimedia Links and Embeds To Your Website With One Click: Apture Reviewed.

AdSense optimization is a series of tactics to help you to improve Google AdSense performance on your blog site. One of the key issues you face when you decide to use AdSense is WHERE to place ads. Above the fold? At the Bottom? Left or Right column? The monetization power of your site depends on the choice you make.

Photo credit: Inside AdSense

To help you better understand WHERE to position your AdSense ads, The Inside AdSense team has released a series of three short videos, entitled “Optimisation Essentials“, that can give you some good basic guidance on how to do ads placement, and how to increase your revenues with a rational design of your site.

In summary, here is what they recommend:

a) Use big ads.

b) Integrate your ads with the layout of your site.

c) Place your ads where users are more likely to see them.

Here all the details:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Optimisation Essentials (Part I - II - III)

Bigger Is Better - for AdSense Ad Units

Publishers often ask us what the best ad sizes are to include in their site’s design, and we always point them to these three:

• 300×250 medium rectangle
• 728×90 leaderboard
• 160×600 skyscraper

These ad units have proven in the past to deliver better results for both publishers and advertisers.

Advertisers favour these formats, and if you’ve receiving all ad types, you’ll find that advertisers will specifically target your sites more often. If you position your ad units well, users will be more likely to see these ad formats and find an ad that they’re interested in.

When you’re considering how to design your site, our testing has shown that displaying at least one of these ad formats on your page can increase your AdSense earnings potential.

So remember, sometimes bigger is better!

Dress for Success - Impressing Your Audience

Over the years, we’ve seen some colorful ad unit designs.

Some publishers design ad units that contrast with their site so that they stand out. Although this can work in some cases, we’ve found that ad units that match your site’s design tend to perform better in terms of revenue and click-through-rate.

Users are more likely to read ads when they’re well integrated into your site.

When you design your AdSense ads, keep these tips in mind:

• Use colours that either blend with or complement your site’s colours. Make the ads a part of your site.
• Use lighter colours for borders, or no border at all.
• Try rotating colours or occasionally switching the location of your ads on the page.
• Save sets of frequently-used colours as a palette.

So give your ad design and colours some thought, and you’ll notice the difference!

Position for Performance - Be Noticed

We’ve also made a heatmap to show you where the best placements are on a typical page. Great positions include:

• Above the fold of a page (the section of the page a user can see without scrolling)
• At the end of an article
• Aligned with content

But don’t just take our word for it - every website is different. Make sure you use your judgment of how visitors interact with your pages to determine good ad placements.

Position your ads so that they’re visible, but be careful of intruding on the experience of your site’s visitors.

Most of all, think like a user and you’ll be able to balance your website’s content with a successful ad strategy.

Where Should I Place Google Ads On My Pages?

The best location for Google ads varies from page to page, depending on content.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering where to position your ads:

• What is the user trying to accomplish by visiting my site?
• What do they do when viewing a particular page?
• Where is their attention likely to be focused?
• How can I integrate ads into this area without getting in the users’ way?
• How can I keep the page looking clean, uncluttered and inviting?

Certain locations tend to be more successful than others.

This “heat map” illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

While this heat map is useful as a positioning guideline, we strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad location. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them.

You’ll find that the most optimal ad position isn’t always what you expect on certain pages.

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the editorial content tend to perform very well. It’s almost as if users finish reading and ask themselves, “What can I do next?” Precisely targeted ads can answer that question for them.

Additional References

• AdSense Placement Optimization: User Behavior
• Improve AdSense Performance: Step-by-Step Video Guide From The AdSense Team
• Online Ad Management And Optimization: The Google Ad Manager Is Here to Optimize Advertising ROI
• Online Advertising Strategy - Ads Relevance Is The Key

Do you want to learn more about AdSense and other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with “in-depth” video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.

Originally written by Mel Ann Chan for Inside AdSense and first published between November 3-18 as “Optimisation Essentials (Part I) - Optimisation Essentials (Part II) - Optimisation Essentials (Part III)“

To check the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, or screen resolutions there are a handful of little known tools which professional webmasters keep secretly inside their toolkits. I have gone out to find out what these are.

Photo credit: BrowserCam edited by Daniele Bazzano

As you probably know, you cannot take for granted how your web site will be displayed when called up on a computer running a different operating system than yours. In fact, there are at least three main issues that affect the way your web pages are displayed on other people screens:

• The browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc) and the specific version your viewers use
• The operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux) your viewers run on their machines.
• The screen resolution your viewers have set on their monitors.

To make this straight, a page rendered in Firefox 2 on a Windows machine probably won’t look the same when opened again in Firefox 3 on a Mac. This is why as an online publisher you have to go out of your way to make sure your site displays almost identically across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.

But how can you test such a broad variety of possible combinations? Install all the available browsers and operating systems out there, and then test your web pages at each one of the different screen resolutions your monitor can handle?

If you want to maintain your sanity, don’t even attempt the above. The sheer number of possible combinations you need to test is pretty scary: 15 basic setups that need to be tested at least at three different resolutions makes for positive extended nightmare. Trust me.

In this guide, I have personally hand-picked the best browser compatibility testing tools out there to help you check rapidly your site across different browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.

Cross-platform browser testing tools generally all work in the same way. You provide the URL of the web page you want to test, and then select the operating systems, browsers, and (when available) the specific screen resolutions you want to test your page on.

The browser compatibility testing service you choose will then proceed to take a screenshot of that very page according to the specifics you have chosen (operating system, browser model and version, etc.), so that you can immediately evaluate what are the key issues to be addressed inside your web page HTML code tags.

Here below is a comprehensive list of all the browser compatibility testing tools and services out there as well as a set of key basic criteria I have utilized to compare them:

• Price: Is the service free or does it require the payment of a fee to be used.
• Free Trial: Many services allow a free testing period. Find out who does.
• Browser: Which browsers (and browser versions) are supported by the service.
• OS: Indicates which operating systems are supported in the compatibiliy test.
• Screen resolution: Specifies whether you can test your web page across different screen resolutions.
• Unique characteristics: Discover the key feature that makes every service unique.

To make your analysis and selection task even most effective, here below I have also prepared a comparison table showcasing all of the available cross-platform browser compatibility testing tools, along with a full set of mini-reviews introducing each one.

Here all the details:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

Cross-Platform Browser Testing Tools Comparison Table

go to the table!

*Please refer to services sites for additional pricing solutions.

Check The Compatibility Of Your Site Across Different Browsers, Operating Systems, And Screen Resolutions

1. BrowserCam

   

   BrowserCam allows you to test your site across different browsers, and operating systems. The service works on any browser you can think of running on Windows, Mac, and Linux Fedora Core 9. Testing of different screen resolutions is also allowed. A unique feature of Browsercam is the possibility of testing how your pages are rendered on a Blackberry smart phone running Windows Mobile 5.0. BrowserCam is priced at $19,95 for one day of use, but there additional pricing solutions if you plan to use it for a longer time. Free to try for 24 hours and 200 screen captures.
   http://www.browsercam.com/

2. Browsershots

   

   Browsershots is perhaps the best free solution to test the compatibility of your site across different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions. Browsershots compares the layout of your site on almost any browser and OS in the market. You can also test your layout at different screen resolutions. Unique feature is the possibility of testing color depth, as well as Javascript, Flash and Java codes, to see how these parameters may affect the way your site is displayed.
   http://browsershots.org/

3. Litmus

   

   Litmus is a web-based service that lets you compare the rendering of your site in different browsers and operating systems. Using the Basic (free) version you can run tests on IE7 and Firefox 2. By purchasing one of the additional pricing solutions you can access a wider choice of browsers and operating systems. Litmus offers no trial period nor the possibility to test your site at different screen resolutions. As a unique feature the service allows you to test the layout of your newsletters (only for MS Office 2003 and GMail in the Basic version).
   http://litmusapp.com/

4. CrossBrowserTesting

   

   CrossBrowserTesting allows you to check the compatibility of your site on a large number of browsers including IE, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino, and some more. Operating systems available for testing are Microsft Windows, Mac OSX 10.5, and Ubuntu 7.10. Cross-BrowserTesting does not offer the option to switch between different screen resolutions, but Javascript and Ajax testing is available. Pricing solutions start from $1 for 5 minutes of testing with no limitations. You can test the service for a free trial period of 5 minutes.
   http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

5. Browser Photo

   

   Browser Photo is a web-based solution that takes screenshots of your web pages across different browsers and operating systems for layout-testing purposes. The service works with main browsers on the market (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) running on Windows, Mac and Linux. Browser Photo allows you to test browsers at different screen resolutions as well. No trial period is available. Priced at $15 for a one-time use, Browser Photo offers additional pricing plans to suit your needs.
   http://www.netmechanic.com/products/browser-index.shtml

6. BrowsrCamp

   

   BrowsrCamp is a web-based service that allows you to check the compatibility of your site across different browsers but only on Mac machines. Working on almost all the browsers you can run on OSX, BrowsrCamp also allows you to test your site at different screen resolutions. Starting at $3 for two days of utilize, the service offers additional pricing solutions for longer testing periods. Free testing on Safari 3.12 only.
   http://www.browsrcamp.com/

7. IE NetRenderer

   

   IE NetRenderer is a free web-based service that lets you compare how a web site is rendered across different versions of Internet Explorer (from 5.5 to 8 Beta 2). Screen-resolution testing is not allowed. An useful and unique feature of IE NetRenderer allows you to compare at a first glance any difference in the way your page is displayed on the screen between IE6 and IE7 .
   http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

8. Multi-Safari

   

   Multi-Safari is a free browser testing service that allows you to check the rendering of your site across different versions of the Safari. The service is designed to avoid different installations of OSX to test the your site on older releases of the Safari web browser. Multi-Safari does not allow any test on different screen resolutions.
   http://michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/

If you are aware of other browser compatibility testing tools you tried and you think are worth mentioning here, please feel free to use the comment area below.

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on November 19th 2008 as “Browser Compatibility Testing: Cross-Platform Cross-Browser Multiple Resolutions Compatibility Testing Tools - Sharewood Guide“.

WordPress or MovableType? Robin Good meets Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress.org, and asks him about the advantages of using WordPress versus adopting a long-established solution like MasterNewMedia own publishing platform: MovableType.

Matt Mullenweg - Photo credit: Robin Good

WordPress, born back in 2003, is the most popular independent web publishing platform as well as one of the most successful open-source solutions in this sector. Wordpress, with its tens of thousands of users around the world and has also clearly established itself as the most popular blogging platform out there.

The possibilities of enhancing your web site design and accessibility via hundreds of different plugins and themes is very attractive. And there’s a very large community of users behind WordPress, so you get extensive support and advice everytime you need it.

In this short video interview, Robin challenges Matt to go beyond the surface: is WordPress as professional as MovableType when dealing with large traffic sites?

And you? What would you choose for your own site? Let us know in the comments area, but make sure you specify which are the reasons that make you prefer one over the other.

Here below the video interview alongside its full English text transcription:

Intro by Daniele Bazzano

WordPress Vs. MovableType - Video Interview With Wordpress Matt Mullenweg

Wordpress Matt Mullenweg interviewed by Robin Good
Duration: 16:47″

Full English Text Transcription

Intro

Robin Good: Hi guys, this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and guess what?

There’s some guy here, he tells me… but I don’t believe him.

What’s your name again?

Matt Mullenweg: Matt Mullenweg.

Robin Good: Oh, so he isn’t the guy I was thinking of…

Anyway, this guy is very interesting because he says he’s the guy who has kind of put together that incredible tool that you all use to publish everything online that’s called WordPress.

Wordpress, sì, yeah, that one!

He’s the guy who did it! Matt Mullenweg. Can you believe it? He’s right here.

Matt, I want to get closer so if they ask: “Did you touch him?” Yeah, I’m touching, look, I’m touching, he’s real!

Advantages of WordPress

Robin Good: Matt, unfortunately I’m a MovableType user. I write in English and I serve 70 per cent of my readers, about a million visitors per month, come from all kind of countries: India, Canada, North America and…

Matt Mullenweg: Similar to our traffic actually. About two-thirds of our traffic is international.

Robin Good: So we have something in common. I’ve been in envy of the people using WordPress because of the many advantages they have. Nonetheless my IT people said: “You know, you get some advantages with MovableType. You got lots of traffic and things, don’t just jump over to WordPress because you like it”.

Matt Mullenweg: What advantages do you think you would get?

Robin Good: The advantages I see as an ignorant, non-technical man, is that I have a lot of flexibility in adjusting my design, and customizing things.

We’re going crazy, and asking two, three webmasters to adjust things for days and days until they work.

And I would have a great community of people helping me out and I can ask just about anyone things. Which I cannot do with MovableType. It sometimes gets to be very hard. These are the two key things that I think we would get .

Matt Mullenweg: Alright. Both sounds good.

Good Reasons To Switch To WordPress

Robin Good: I’m sure you’ve been asked many times about MovableType and why would you suggest to somebody to switch. Is there good reason enough for a large traffic site to go from MovableType to WordPress?

Matt Mullenweg: In my opinion the reasons you just described are both valid. There is a great the community around WordPress. Here in Italy at WordPress Italia. They are wonderful. We have a hundred people working here in Italy, in Milan, and that’s pretty nice. And also, you didn’t mention it but there are a lot of plugins available.

Where MovableType used to have more plugins in the biggest development. Over the past years few years that has really shifted to WordPress . And we now have 1300-1400 plugins in our directory, and that’s pretty powerful. You can do a lot with it.

Is WordPress Good For Large-Traffic Sites?

Robin Good: From the standpoint of holding up to the demands of having many different users at the same time. Is there any key difference between the two systems?

Matt Mullenweg: Yes we have very different model of publishing, but I think that if you look at the Technorati 100, Wordpress is the most used blog platform, of the largest blogs in the world. We host anything from CNN’s blogs, or I can has cheezburger, which does millions of pages per day.

It can stand up… if it’s properly configured, it can stand up to any amount of traffic that you want.

Static vs. Dynamic Sites

Robin Good: You know better than me how this web thing is. People really like things not to be too hype: “I’m good, and this is better…” They really want to know the truth behind things and here I realize that something to defend any position because you’ve got a great market already.

My point is: what people tell me about MovableType having some advantages in terms of the way pages are put out. Caching, static, dynamic. How relevant is that in your opinion and how much can a set bring the performance of large web sites?

Matt Mullenweg: MovableType is static by default. And WordPress is dynamic by default. In my opinion the future of the Web is dynamic. Everyone has a customized experience on the Web.

For performance reason there is a plugin that will turn Wordpress into static performance, WP Super Cache and it makes the performance just the same that you get with something that produces static files like MovableType.

But where the static doesn’t really perform… Do you get a lot of comments… a lot of interaction on your blog?

Robin Good: Yeah.

Matt Mullenweg: You’re not constantly rebuilding these files. They are being generated and pulled in. But it also allows you more flexibility. Say you want to have random elements on every web page or customize it. Maybe have people be logged in and get a special experience. That’s so much easier when you have a dynamic site.

Robin Good: You’re saying if I have a lot of interaction, lots of things that need rebuilding frequently, it’s better to go your way than MovableType’s way?.

Matt Mullenweg: I think that both will work there are large blogs, like your own, that use MovableType very successfully. You can make either one work. A reason to switch I would say is more the stuff we talked about earlier.

Robin Good: Thank you Matt, I appreciated that.

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on October 29th 2008 as “WordPress vs. MovableType: Which Is Best For Large Traffic Sites? A Video Interview With Wordpress Matt Mullenweg“

Do you need to capture your screen activities, test out color combinations, or join multiple videos into a single one? In this visual communication Sharewood Guide I have collected some cool new tools to help you prepare, organize and communicate your visual and video messages more clearly.

Photo credit: Avner Richard

Here the full set of visual communication tools I have chosen for you this week:

1. PicPick: Capture regions of your screen, grab pixels colors and whiteboard on your desktop
2. ColorCombos.com: Test out color combinations and grab a palette out of any site
3. FlickrIn: Embed a set of Flickr photos, that you can generate by username or tags, on your website
4. TimeRime: Build Flash-based visual timelines that you can share or embed on your blog or site
5. ScreenToaster: Record screencasts and share them online
6. Muveemix: Create mixes with videos and music, and publish them on the Web
7. Foto2Avi: Arrange all of your videos and pictures into a new movie easily
8. YouEmbedTube: Search for videos by tags, and get a Flash widget that points to them

Here all the details:

Visual Communication Tools

1. PicPick
   
   PicPick is an all-in-one software for developers, graphic designers and home users. It enables you to capture regions of your screen, that you can later edit into the integrated image editor. PicPick also integrates useful features such as pixel color picker, pixel ruler, screen whiteboard and more. PicPick is a portable application, which works only on Windows machines. Free.
   http://picpick.wiziple.net/features
2. ColorCombos.com
   
   ColorCombos is an online resource that people can use to test out color combinations easily. You can use the Combo Tester, which allows you to see how different color combinations work together on the screen, the Combo Library, to browse into a collection of pre-made combinations, but also grab a color scheme from a website by pasting its URL into a box. The service is free to use, no registration needed.
   http://www.colorcombos.com/
3. FlickrIn
   
   FlickrIn is a free service that allows you to embed sets of Flickr photos on your website. You can type in tags or any Flickr username, select the number of pictures the widget will have, and click generate. A preview will be shown to you, along with the HTML and Javascript embedding code. The service is completely web-based and free to use.
   http://www.flickrin.com/
4. TimeRime
   
   TimeRime is a timeline creator that allows you to build up a Flash timeline easily. Timelines can be filled with text, music, pictures and YouTube movies: each timeline has some controls such as in / out zoom button and date slider, as well as an embedding code and a sharing link. TimeRime is free to use, but registration is needed.
   http://www.timerime.com/

Video Publishing Tools

1. ScreenToaster
   
   ScreenToaster is a web-based screencasting software that lets you record screen activities without downloading any software. Working on any Windows, Mac, and Linux machine, ScreenToaster allows you to start recording your screen by pressing and stop just pressing a key combination. When you’re finished recording your video, the output file will be immediately saved into your account, so that you can whether share its link or embed it everywhere. Free.
   http://www.screentoaster.com/
2. Muveemix
   
   Muveemix is an online video mixer that lets you join multiple videos and add music to them. To create a mix, upload all of the videos you want to add, select an audio file from your hard disk, give it a name, and click on “Make Muvee“. You can then get a sharing link to send your video to other people, or simply embed it on your website or blog. Free.
   http://muveemix.com/
3. Foto2Avi
   
   Foto2Avi is a free video editor for Windows that anyone can use to combine videos and pictures. You can import images (BMP, JPG and PNG), videos (AVI, MPEG, MOV, WMV and FLV) and music, and combine them into a new movie (AVI, FLV or MPEG): you can add transitions, apply basic effects, or add animations, subtitles and logos. Foto2Avi is free to download and use.
   http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareFoto2Avi.php?b2=1
4. YouEmbedTube
   
   YouEmbedTube is a Flash widget creator you can use to embed a set of videos inside your webpage. To create a widget, just type some tags, select the number of random videos that will be embedded in your widget, and click preview. You can then get the code, and embed it on your webpage to let people see the videos you pointed at.
   http://youembedtube.com/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on October 26th 2008 as “Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Oct 26 08“

Need to convert your videos between major video file formats, create web-based charts, as well as editing or adding effects to your existing pictures?

Photo credit: Antonis Papantoniou

All this and more in this roundup of new cool visual communication and video publishing tools I have personally selected for you. This week:

1. ActivePixels: Edit your images for free on Windows machines
2. Cyclops: Search pictures on major stock photography engines
3. iCharts: Create Flash-based charts from input data or Excel tables
4. 1001FreeFonts: Browse and download free fonts for your Windows or Mac platform
5. Smush It: Upload a picture and let the system optimize it by reducing its size
6. Molv: Stream live images from your phone, and embed recordings anywhere
7. CellSea Video Converter: Edit videos with basic features and convert them between various formats
8. TubeMaster: Browse online videos on major sharing sites and download them in multiple formats

Here the details:

Visual Communication Tools

1. ActivePixels
   
   Active Pixels is a photo editor for Windows that lets you edit all of your pictures for free. Its interface reminds of Adobe Photoshop, and it has many features as layers, effects, freehand selection, and everything you would get in a professional editor. It supports more than 100 image formats, between which you can also find Photoshop’s native PSD. Active Pixels is free to download and use.
   http://idea-systems.net/
2. Cyclops
   
   Cyclops is an image search engine that lets you make researches on BigStockPhoto, Flickr, Fotolia, iStockphoto, Photos.com, Shutterstock, stock.xchng and stockvault with one click. After you input your query and select where you want to search, results will gather divided by source, and you’ll be able to click any image you like and be instantly brought to its download page on the source site. Free to use.
   http://cyclo.ps/
3. iCharts
   
   iCharts is an online service that you can use to create Flash-based charts easily. It allows everyone to upload Excel sheets or manually add data from which they can instantly create, share and embed interactive charts within minutes. Every chart can then be embedded anywhere on the web or printed. iCharts is completely free to use, registration is needed.
   http://www.icharts.net/
4. 1001FreeFonts
   
   1001FreeFonts is a huge database of free fonts for Windows and Mac platforms. When you land on the home page, you can start browsing fonts by category, see the day’s featured ones, or even search for them. When you find one that suits your needs, you can simply download it for free, paying attention to the version you need (Win or Mac), and install it on your machine. Free.
   http://www.1001freefonts.com/
5. Smush It
   
   Smush It is an image optimizer that enables users to provide an image and it will automatically reduce its size with no quality loss. To use it, just choose if you want to use it as a Firefox extension, or whether you want to directly upload images from your PC or URL: after a matter of seconds your image will be ready for download, reduced in size but not in quality. Free to use, no registration needed.
   http://smushit.com/

Video Publishing Tools

1. Molv
   
   Molv is a mobile video streaming service that enables any phone to stream live images on the web. If you own one of the supported phones, you can register to the service, download the software, and start broadcasting live images in your own channel. Shows are automatically recorded by default so that you can later embed them on any page, but this can be changed in the settings menu.
   http://molv.com/
2. CellSea Video Converter
   
   CellSea is a web-based video convert and editor which allows you to add effects, change size, add sound or simply to convert your videos to other formats. Just upload a video from PC ur URL (from sharing websites like YouTube, GoogleVideo, DailyMotion): you can then set the start and end time to trim it, join one or more videos to it, resize and crop it, or simply convert it to AVI, MOV, MP4, FLV or 3GP file. Free to use, no registration needed.
   http://www.cellsea.com/
3. TubeMaster
   
   TubeMaster is a freeware portable application which can download multimedia files (such as FLV, MP3, MP4 …) from major sharing sites like YouTube, and can save them on your computer. Using the integrated browser, you can make researches on these sites, and choose which videos to download as you watch them. All multimedia files can then be converted to other popular video or audio formats (AVI, MPEG, MP3, MP4, IPod, PSP …). Free to download and use.
   http://tubemaster.free.fr/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on October 12th 2008 as “Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Oct 12 08“