Friday, October 19, 2007

Facebook

facebookI've joined Facebook just out of curiosity.
Everyone mentions it, and I bump into it when using a Bookmarking Service, so I had the perfect excuse to explore it.
It is supposed to connect you with friends, share photos, and create your own profile.

At the Sign Up stage you are required to indicate whether you're signing up as a company member or a student and to enter a valid email address and additional details depending on your choice.

I tried to enter my company's (1001webs.net) e-mail address, at the form didn't recognize it as a valid email address???
Why? Because it's got numbers in it? Absurd?
So I used my company's Gmail account (also with numbers, BTW)
confirmation email arrived and on to:

step 1 of 3
I'm asked to find friends using my email address book

Please fill in all the fields to find your friends.
We currently only import webmail address books from Hotmail, AOL, Gmail, MSN, and Yahoo.
Your Email: @
Email Password:
We won't store your login info or contact anyone without your permission.
Don't worry, you can still use Facebook. Simply click here to skip this step.
So I skipped it.
No way I am giving away my e-mail pwd to no one.

step 2 of 3
I am asked to fill out my Profile Info

City:
Country:
Company: Again???
(if any)
College/University:
(if any)

I diligently filled the redundant fields and got to a page that said:
"window.location.href="http://www.facebook.com/gettingstarted.php?step=join_networks";"
I am starting to get a bit pissed off and I haven't even completed my registration ...
Back and Skip this Step
I then realized that JavaScript was turned off. Turned on and everything OK. My fault.

step 3 of 3
I am asked to join a Network
Once you join, you will be able to see the profiles of other people in the selected network, and they will be able to see yours. You can change your privacy settings on the Privacy page.
I've chosen Spain.
I hope I don't regret it later

Finished the Registration.
I am Welcomed and presented with several options to explore Facebook.
Search for friends
Finding your friends makes your Facebook experience better. You can search for classmates or coworkers or look for friends by name.
Several Options here:
  • Browse people in your networks.
  • Search for classmates from high school and college.
  • Search by workplace or organization to search for coworkers.
  • Advanced search the profiles of people you can see.
No one when I do a search of all Networks for 1001webs.

The Advanced Search is like one of those Dating Agencies:
Basic Info:
Name
Sex
Home Town
Home State Home Country
Interested In
Relationship Status
Looking For
Political Views
Religious Views
Contact Info:
Email
Screen Name
Mobile
Land Phone
City
State Country
Zip
Personal Info:
Activities
Interests
Music
TV Shows
Movies
Books
Education Info:
School Status
Class Year
Concentration
HS Year
Work Info:
Company
Position

I suppose I should better fill out my profile with detailed information, upload a profile picture to help friends recognize me, etc.:
Name: Rafael
Sex: Male
Home Town: Madrid
Home Country: Spain
Interested In: Women
Relationship Status: Single
Looking For: Whatever I can get
Political: Very Liberal
Religion: If God exists and has given us a Brain, then it would be a horrible Sin not to use it and believe without scientific backup what other people tell us
Email: rafaminu@gmail.com
Screen Name: RafaMinu
Mobile: 34620443347
Country: Spain
Activities: Swimming, Diving
Interests: Internet
Music: Andreas Volleiwander
TV Shows: Monty Python
Movies: Blade Runner
Books: H.P. Lovecraft
Favorite Quote: Love conquers everything, even Karma
Company: 1001webs.net
Job Title: Director
I then went on to do some research, get friends, poke people, and else.
And here the System excelled, really.
Very well put together, very easy to use, lots of options and very Web 2.0-like.

And then, there is the News Feeds
You are presented with a number of slides that you can adjust to get News Feeds from Friends you care about most, and filter away the ones you don't care about.
You can select up to 20 friends that you find interesting. You will get News Feed stories about these people more frequently.
And you can select up to 20 friends that you prefer not to see in your News Feed. You will only get stories about these people if nothing else is available.

I wish I could waste my time in there a bit more.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Mock-Ups for WWD

Mock-Up
I did these Mock-Ups a few weeks back for World Wide Destinations.
I was applying for a job there and wanted to make a good impression, so I offered to create a preliminary sketch of some inside pages about Brazil for their quarterly magazine.

They received the files alright, they seemed to like them and I was assured that they will give a reply in a few days, no matter what their decision was.
A month has passed by and no answer from them.
Waste of time (which is precisely what I don't have) and resources.


I thought I might as well post them here, so there you have them.

It took me about 10 minutes to get some royalty-free photos from the Internet and about 20 minutes to do the design with just a Demo copy of the latest Adobe® Photoshop® CS3 version, that died out 2 days later after I optimized my Mac.
All I can tell is that the main difference with earlier versions (CS2, CS1) was the speed. They must have fixed the code or something because it was blazingly fast.
A real pleasure not having to wait for memory-hungry large operations (God, how I hate those progress bars, specially the ones that go all the way to the end and then hang in there for more than double the time that it took them to get there.)

But as all good things in life it couldn't last.
Back to Graphic Converter ...

iWEBTOOL

iWEBTOOLiWEBTOOL has put together a very inreresting collection of Webmaster Tools and SEO Tools.
And the best part of it is that they are FREE to use.

Among the many services at their website you can find a tool that will list all backlinks linking to a specific website, predict your future Google PageRank, view multiple Google PageRanks and Alexa Ranking in bulk, preview your website on Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search, discover whether a website is banned on Google and many other services that you may have not even know they existed.

Select a tool below and it will lead you directly to iWEBTOOL's website:



Search Engines
Backlink Checker
Find a list of backlinks linking to a specific website.
Cloaking Checker
Cloaking Checker
Google Banned Checker
Discover whether a website is banned on Google.
Google Datacenter Search
Search keywords/phrase through different Google data centres.
Google PageRank Prediction
Predict your future Google PageRank.
Index Checker
Check for the total number of pages of a specific website which are present on search engines.
Keyword Density Checker
Analyze a websites to view the optimum keyword distribution.
Keyword Suggestion
Find related keywords matching your search.
Link Popularity
Retrieve a number of backlinks of a specific website from search engines.
Multi-Rank Checker
View multiple Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking in bulk.
PageRank Checker
View Google PageRank on different Google servers.
Rank Checker
Get an overview of a website's ranking.
Search Engine Position
Check your search engine positions on Google Search Engine.
Search Listings Preview
Preview your website on Google, MSN and Yahoo! Search.
Spider View
This tool enables you to view a perpective from a search engine spider.
URL Redirect Checker
Check whether a redirect link is Search Engine Friendly.
Visual PageRank
View the PageRank of links visually rather than in text.

Miscellaneous
.htaccess URL Rewrite
Convert your dynamic URL into a short friendly link.
Anonymous Emailer
Send e-mails to users anonymously.
Google Adsense Calculator
Quickly calculate your Adsense earnings based on Page Impressions.
Google Adsense Preview
Preview what ads are targeted for your website.
Link Shortener
Make a long web address short and easy to remember.
List Cleaner
Clean and remove duplicates from a list.
md5 Encrypt
Use this simple online converter tool to encode any inputted text to md5.
Online Calculator
Use this free and easy online calculator to work out quick calculations.
Unix Time Converter
Convert UNIX internal time formats to a date or Vice versa.
Your Browser Details
Find out your IP address, hostname and your browser details

Domain Checkups
Alexa Traffic Rank
View and compare Alexa Ranking graphs.
Broken Link Checker
Use this tool to check for Broken Links on a website.
Domain Availability
Check for available domain names.
Domain Look-up
Retrieve a range of information about a domain.
Domain Whois
Retrieve a domain whois information.
Instant Domain Checker
Check the availability of domains instantly.
IP Location
Locate the country of an IP Address.
Link Price Calculator
Estimate how much to pay for a link.
Ping Test
Check the presence of an active connection.
Reciprocal Link Checker
Check your reciprocal links to see if link partners are still linking back to your site.
Reverse IP/Look-up
Searches for domain names hosted on your IP address.
Server Status
Check if a website is online or offline.
Website Speed Test
Find out how fast a specific webpage loads.


HTML
HTML Encrypt
Hide your HTML source code.
HTML Optimizer
Optimize and clean your HTML source code.
HTTP Headers
Extract the HTTP Headers of a web page.
Link Extractor
Extract links from a specific web page.
Meta-tags Extractor
Extract meta-tags information from a web page.
Meta-tags Generator
Generate and configure your meta-tags.
Source Code Viewer
View the source code of a page.