I recently decided to move as much of my life online as possible. One thing I had a hard time with was my Bookmarks. I’m a bookmark junkie. I currently have over 6,500 bookmarks from the past 4 years. They are loaded on my laptop in a program called URL Manager Pro. Not a bad little program, but not online (I have a upcoming post about why I’m moving online).

There are a lot of different bookmarking online apps.

• del.icio.us:
  No private bookmarking
• furl.net
  I started here, I imported my bookmarks (all 6,500 of them) and they imported correctly, but they did not keep any of the tags/folders and stripped the page titles. Also the search was not that great
• spurl.net
  Next tried spurl, which looked great! I imported my bookmarks, was able to mark them private or public - they said they would send me an email when the import was complete, that was more then a week ago…

After browsing eHub for more solutions I came across simpy.com. Again, tried importing - and yes, it took all 6,500 - simpy even made tags from my folders. Simpy has privite/public features, del.icio.us integration, tag management and a bunch more. The site is ugly as sin, but it gets the job done. It even has a notes feature where you can highlight text on a page, store and tag it for future viewing. It also has a great search feature that also searches the homepage content for all the bookmarks.

So here I am, finally an online home for my bookmark addiction.

Jared tagged me for a “get to know your blogger” meme that’s making the rounds. So as not to make him angry (he’s like 7 feet tall!) here you go:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

• Tooth Painter
• Bookseller
• Customer Service (the headset kind)
• Designer

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Serenity (same as Jared)
• The Incredibles (same as Jared)
• Zoolander
• The Beach

Four places I have lived:

• Fishers, IN
• Cicero, IN
• Keller, TX
• Grapevine, TX,

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• Battlestar Galactic
• Firefly
• West Wing
• Survivor

Four places I have been on vacation:

• Mumbai, India
• Paris, France
• London, UK
• Dublin, Ireland

Four websites I visit daily:

• Flickr
• Google
• digg
• del.icio.us/popular

Four of my favorite foods:

• PB&J
• Any Pasta
• Fast Food
• Breaded or Fried anything

Four places I would rather be right now:

• A quiet place
• On Vacation
• Home
• Paris

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• Bryan Busch
• Stephen Anderson
• Patrick Mcleod
• Bill Turner

(I was going to tag Garrett, but I think he’s above meme’s now…)

If you have been tagged, please join in on the fun - and post a comment when it’s up.

There are many places on the web that talk about good visual design vs. good content/function. While I agree it takes both to make a truly great website, visual design opens the door for the visitor to go in-depth and engage your site.

Nature.com has an article titled “Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye” - where they say:

Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny.

In the crowded and competitive world of the web, companies hoping to make millions from e-commerce should take notice, the researchers say. “Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,” Lindgaard warns.

They go on to say:

For a typical commercial website, 60% of traffic comes from search engines such as Google, says Marc Caudron of London web-design agency Pod1. This makes a user’s first impression even more critical, he explains. “You’ll get a list of sites, click the top one, and then either say ‘I’ve engaged’ and give it a few more seconds, or just go back to Google,” he says.

Link: Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye

I just received this e-mail from SearchFox:

SearchFox Users,

Thanks for all your help in making SearchFox what it is. We have enjoyed providing this service, and hope that you have enjoyed using it. Please export all of your links and an OPML file with your RSS sources before the site shuts down. In accordance with our privacy policy, we will delete all personal information on January 25 after we shut down the services.

Esteban Kozak

SearchFox

415.642.2170

I started using SearchFox when it was first released, but slowly stopped using it - I still can’t find anything online I like as well as NewsFire on my Mac. SearchFox was one of the better looking as well as functioning RSS readers online. Soon someone will need to start www.deadweb2-0.com to keep track of the applications that won’t make it. To take a look of the HUGE amount of “web 2.0″ applications that have been released in the last year check out eHub’s collection of 437 different online applications.

My photoblog - metrolifestyle - has been featured on screenspire.com. Screenspire is a little different from other galleries in that they take a full screenshot, not just a thumbnail and a link. This leaves your designs to live forever online (or at least on archive.org).

I think most designers are glad to see their old designs fade when a new look is launched, but it’s also nice to see how the web looked at that moment in time…

I recently got a chance to attend a friends wedding in Mumbai, India. What an experience! My wife and I set out on th’e 20+ hour trip to BOM (me through Amsterdam, her through Zurich) on the 13th, and arrived in what was definitely the closest thing to “culture shock” i’ve ever experienced.

(more…)

You’ve probably heard by now, Firefox 1.5 is out. This is the first time i’ve seen icons explaining how to install the application on a mac, instead of the “Drag to your applications folder” text you usually see, they went the international route - visually showing dragging the icon to the applications folder. Great job Firefox team!

For a limited time I’m hosting the videos from the 11/10/05 Refresh Dallas meeting.

• View Stephen Anderson’s presentation.
• View Garrett Dimon’s presentation.

Read more about the Refresh Dallas meeting on Garrett’s blog as well as on Stephen’s blog.

I went to Richland College last week to speak to a portfolio class about some things i’ve learned in the past 5+ years in the design field. Titled “10 things I wish they told me” (pdf) I went over things that I noticed students “missing” when I was in school.

One new slide i added (i also gave this talk at ATI earlier this year) was a model I call the “Designer Career Pyramid” (pdf). I wanted to show what I think is a somewhat typical growth/career chart was for a designer.

Starting at the bottom, in school you learn may different types of design - from video to print. As you move “up” the pyramid you start to narrow your skills to a particular design area that interests you. As you continue “up” you move from doing these things to thinking and directing these things, until at the “top” you become a expert at whichever part of the design field you’ve decide you enjoy most (hopefully!). I also added a pay scale to this model, more for the students, as I think college kids really want to know what they can make someday - these numbers were not really researched, but I think it’s possible.

I’ve had this idea in my head for awhile, but have never put it down on paper before. Download the Designer Career Pyramid and see for yourself.

A friend of mine wanted me to plug a local googlemaps mash-up called Friday Night Hangout.

This site was developed by the UTA Libraries: GIS Program to demonstrate the capabilities of geographic information systems, the Google Maps API, and the power of combining the two.

This application demonstrates the integration of geographic information systems analysis with the Google Maps API. Answer all of the following 7 questions and the geoprocessor will calculate the best location in Tarrant County, TX for you to hang out. All user selections are stored, so who knows…maybe someone else will be hanging out there with you…

I’m glad to see some interesting “web 2.0″ apps coming out of North Texas!