Kinect Sets Sales Records
Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing camera for the Xbox 360 has been named the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history.
What I’m Reading
Shareworthy articles and content syndicated from other sites. These aren’t things I’ve written or necessarily endorse, for the record.
Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book brings a new twist to the genre
Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book (US $3.99) from Game Collage LLC brings something new to interactive children’s books on iOS. The original book was published in 1904 and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke, a popular illustrator of the time. Along with the usual wheels, tabs and spring loaded animated object that move things around, they included X-Ray Goggles (really a tappable button), that lets you see the gears, clockwork, springs and pulleys that make the animations work on most of the pages. This fits in well with the tone of the book, since it was originally published during the second Industrial Revolution.
Just when I thought that publishers had run out of new ideas for this genre, this wrinkle arrives with a lot of fun. Outside of the well-known story, you are given a faux backstage peek of how it all works. Sure, it’s a gimmick, but it’s exceptionally entertaining, even for “older kids.” Often seeing how items are affixed to a gear gives you a good idea of what the page can do, providing a better experience playing with the movable objects after viewing the schematics. There are a lot of objects that can be manipulated either by pushing them around or tilting the screen and having the accelerometer do it.
There is a lot to see. On one screen, instead of a few objects, there are 20 apples, all connected to strings and a tab that feed out or pulls in the brightly colored strings. Looking at the X-Ray, you’ll find pulleys and gears that raise and lower the apples when you push a tab up or down. Another tap brings you back to the story. I would consider this a real benefit for kids who invariably ask “why.” You can compare the graphics and the X-Rays in the gallery below, and then hit the “Read More” link to read the rest of the review and see a whimsical video of how the book was developed.
TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page.
Continue reading Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book brings a new twist to the genre
Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book brings a new twist to the genre originally appeared on TUAW on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Reddit Blog Marketing 101
This guest post is by Antriksh of Right Now In Tech.
Reddit is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. It’s hard to classify Reddit as a type of site. It could be a social news site, or a social bookmarking site, but in fact it’s just a place where people can share interesting stuff from the Web. You can post links to blog posts, news articles, videos, photos—anything you like. The content doesn’t need to be new. You can also write “self” posts, where you just talk about something or ask for opinions. So the content doesn’t necessarily have to be a link.
Reddit is made up of a number of smaller reddits. I know, it’s confusing initially. The reddits are simply different categories you can post your content to. Throughout this post, I will refer to the site with a capital ‘R’, and the word for categories with a small ‘r’. When you have an account, you can add certain reddits to your frontpage, so that fresh content and hot links from those categories appear on your Reddit homepage. The frontpage (that’s Reddit terminology for your homepage) is personalized when you are logged in: Reddit will show you content that arises from the reddits you’ave added to your frontpage.
There are all kinds of reddits for all kinds of topics on Reddit. Any link (or comment) that’s posted to Reddit can be upvoted and downvoted. This determines how popular it will become.
How effective is it?
I started blogging just this year, so my blog is still pretty new. After a lot of marketing attempts and lots of trying to improve traffic quantity and quality, I was thinking about closing down my blog and quitting blogging.
But then I found Reddit. I loved the community and the interesting stuff that always keeps on coming along there. I primarily joined Reddit to promote my content, as Darren had suggested a number of times. Twitter wasn’t (and still isn’t) working very well for me.
So Reddit started getting me getting a trickle of traffic. Slowly it increased. There were a number of reasons why people were seeing my links and clicking them (I’ll tell you why in a moment). Then I experimented with different ways of drawing traffic. I tried various link bait methods, and I started learning what does and what doesn’t get traffic from Reddit users.
Why Reddit can help you
There are a number of reasons Reddit will outperform other ways of promoting your content. Maybe it still won’t be the best means of getting traffic, but it has many advantages. Here are some of them.
The community is just awesome
The Reddit community is really great. There are all kinds of people interested in so many kinds of topics. And unlike the case with paid ads like AdWords, the Reddit audience is looking for links to click on.
There’s a place for all kinds of blogs
Reddit, being a really diverse community, has people interested in a huge range of topics. So no matter what niche your blog is in, you probably have a wide audience waiting for you.
Targeted marketing
As I mentioned in the intro above, you can add certain reddits to your frontpage. Most people add reddits of the topics they are interested in to their frontpages. Then, when you post your links in appropriate reddits, the people who are interested in that topic will see your content on their frontpage. Reddit is thus totally targeted.
Everyone likes free—and you do too
Reddit, apart from being so efficient, is completely free. So you get loads of targeted traffic, and you don’t pay a dime.
Tips for Reddit success
If you are convinced to try using Reddit for promotional purposes, and if you are ready to start posting links, then learn the following things that you must take care of before you do anything else.
Use the right title
If you haven’t already noticed, Reddit users often type in really long titles for their links, since there is no opportunity to enter a description. You can do that too, so take it as a plus. For titles, you can remember the acronym CD-R (I know that also means recordable CD—I’m a tech blogger!): Catchy, Descriptive, but Relevant. Here’s an example.
I had an article titled “Wait! Dual-core CPU required for Android Honeycomb?” This post explained that the upcoming version of the Android OS for mobile phones may require a dual-core processor to run. This could be a bad thing, as the phones could potentially become expensive. So instead of posting on Reddit something like: “Android 3.0 Honeycomb may require a dual-core CPU,” I wrote, “I want to see just where this goes for Android…” and easily attracted over five hundred views for that particular article.
Post in the relevant reddit
This point is really important. Before you post a link to Reddit, make sure that you choose the correct reddit for it. If you post it in any random category, don’t expect a traffic spike anytime soon. Make sure that you post to specific reddits. But there’s also another aspect to it.
Remember to check how many people have added the reddit to their frontpage. Just open another tab, and after the regular Reddit address, type in /r/reddit-name. For example, to see the reddit about technology, you type http://www.reddit.com/r/technology. To the right, you will see the number of people who have the reddit on their frontpage. Make you sure you choose a reddit that’s relevant to your link, and has a lot of subscribers.
If you can’t find a reddit that is relevant to your article, or if your relevant reddit has very few subscribers, use a reddit with a broader topic.
If that doesn’t work, try to make the title fit into the reddits “TodayILearned” or “YouShouldKnow.” Both of them have a lot of subscribers (even me). TodayILearned is for links with stuff that is informative and interesting to learn. It requires that your title start with a “TIL” or “Today I Learned.” The latter reddit is for stuff that you should know (self-explanatory!). The titles of the items you post there need to begin with a “YSK” or “You Should Know.”
You can probably fit your article into either one of these if it won’t fit elsewhere. But take care: both these reddits have amazing content, so make sure you’re posting a link to an interesting article.
No shortened URLs please!
This is something I have noticed over time. When I post a shortened URL to my article (for the purpose of tracking clicks), very few people use it. When you submit the link, the main domain of the link appears beside the title. So maybe people don’t like to click on short links, as the website it redirects to could potentially be malicious.
When I post links from my domain directly, it usually goes viral.
Have fun, interact, and post other stuff as well
I have noticed that at times, people even visit other Reddit subscribers’ pages. Your page has records of your links and your comments, so you need to make sure that it doesn’t make you look like a leech. Remember to post links to other interesting content on the Web—not just your own blog posts.
Remember also to comment and upvote others’ links, too. Interact with other people in the community and help others when they post calls for suggestions, opinions, and surveys. Visit others’ links and have fun.
That last point was really important. Remember that you are joining Reddit not just for promoting yourself. You are doing so to meet new people and have fun!
Have you used Reddit? What did you think of it? Share your experiences in the comments.
Antriksh is a high school student and author of the tech blog Right Now In Tech. Visit his blog to get interesting news about the tech world, reviews, opinions and loads of computer tips, tricks and software.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
A Bookmarklet To Prettify Codes In Any Web Page – Syntaclet
Reading codes in websites can be challenging if no syntax highlighter is used (check 11 Syntax Highlighters To Beautify Code Presentation).
Language specific tags, functions, etc. will be hard to recognize specially in long pieces of codes.
Syntaclet is a bookmarklet which can automatically highlight codes on web pages that are not already highlighted.
The bookmarklet auto-detects the language used and applies syntax coloring with line numbers to all the code on the page.
Simply drag it to your bookmarks bar and press it whenever you see any hard-to-read codes on any web page.
Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets
Advertisements:
Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.)
Psd to Xhtml
SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)
12 Tips to Help You Communicate with Your Developers
As an internet business owner you’ll need to face your developers. Yes, it’s scary — they probably look odd and speak a weird language. But you can’t avoid it. Here are my 12 tips to help you communicate with your development team…
1. Know Your Requirements…
How can you explain your requirements if you don’t know what they are? Developers are often faced with vague, wishy-washy briefs such as “it needs to be just like Facebook, only — er — like, different”.
A good developer will immediately begin to analyze your idea. They’ll ask questions. They’ll pose “what-if” scenarios. No one will expect you to have all the answers, but you should be able to discuss the majority of problems. If you can’t, you haven’t thought the project through. It’ll fail.
2. …and Document Them
Putting your requirements on paper may not be fun, but it’s necessary. Interface sketches and flowcharts will help you identify functionality, understand the technicalities and explain issues.
Consider hiring a systems analyst if you can’t do this yourself. They’ll ask identical questions, though.
3. Don’t Use Pseudo Code
If you’re not a programmer, please, please don’t attempt to write pseudo code — it won’t help. You’ll almost certainly over-complicate the easy stuff and gloss over the complexities. Your developer will need to reverse engineer your ‘code’ to determine what you actually wanted to achieve.
Pseudo code is useful when developers discuss algorithms with each other. There are few other reasons to use it.
4. Agile Programming is Not an Excuse for Poor Planning
Don’t think that rapid, agile software development excuses requirements analysis. It may reduce some of the up-front planning, but you’ll still need to make just as many decisions — if not more.
5. Be Clear and Decisive
Programmers make thousands of decisions on your behalf. However, they will inevitably have questions during the development process and failing to providing a definitive answer will halt progress.
As good manager, you’ll take responsibility, make a prompt decision, stick with it, and face the consequences if it’s wrong. Bad managers are unavailable, avoid answering the question, seek opinions from 57 other (disinterested) colleagues, then blame the developer for delays or bad decisions.
6. Stay Ahead of Your Developers
Good programming teams will have a development plan — components and features will be implemented in order. Understand that plan and prepare accordingly:
- know what decisions need to be made prior to implementation
- prepare dummy data or test cases
- organize the production of content, graphics, videos or other media.
7. Avoid Scope Changes
Changing scope can destroy a project and put a deadline at risk. You may have seen a cool feature elsewhere, but it doesn’t need to be implemented immediately.
By all means, have an informal discussion with your developer. State it’s something you’re considering for a later version — don’t distract them from the agreed tasks or demand immediate attention.
8. Don’t Assume Anything
One of the worst statements made by non-developers is: “Hey, we should implement feature X. It’s easy, right — it’ll only take a few hours.”
It might take a few minutes. It might take months. It might be impractical. It might be technically impossible. You don’t know — if you did, you wouldn’t require a developer to implement it for you.
9. Set Realistic Deadlines
Like anyone, developers work best when they have an agreed deadline. However, those deadlines should be set by the developer themselves or someone with programming abilities and in-depth technical knowledge of the system.
Setting an arbitrary or unrealistic deadline will result in a bug-ridden monstrosity which takes far longer to fix.
10. Alter Your Schedule When Necessary
Application development is complex. Development estimates are just that — estimates. Programmers will encounter unforeseen problems and changes to the project scope (no matter how hard you try to avoid them).
The schedule will inevitably change as the project progresses. Do not be afraid to modify the completion date accordingly.
11. Test Your Own Application
Don’t rely on your developers or other people to test your application. It’s your vision: test it yourself at every opportunity.
That said, be aware you may be running unfinished code and check progress against the development schedule. Don’t send emails ranting about feature Y not working when that code hasn’t been started.
12. Stay Involved and Keep Communicating
Most people lose interest in their own projects as time goes on. If you can’t remain enthusiastic, don’t expect it from others.
Contact your developers on a regular basis. You don’t necessarily need to organize formal progress meetings — just show your face and ask how things are going.
That said, avoid pestering them. Your project won’t be completed quicker if you call your developer every 10 minutes to ask “are we there yet?” Let your developer do their job.
Do you have any developer communication tips? Do you have first-hand experience of bad management? Comments welcome…
