Nikita Knysh's Blog

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Blog Details

Blog Directory ID: 1488

Blog URL: http://nikitaknysh.blogspot.com/

Google Pagerank: N/A

Blog Description: Social networking, IT-related stuff including managerial and technical, reviews of tools I use

Blog Tags: service reviews - tool reviews - social networking - linkedin - testing - technical writing - analytics

Blog Category: Technology Blogs

Blog Owner: Nikita Knysh

Blog Added: January 22, 2008 04:54:39 PM

Audience Rating: General Audience

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Blog Country: Ukraine

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Latest Blog Post from Nikita Knysh's Blog

Great Free Business Prototyping Tool

Serena Software has recently released Prototype Composer 2.4 ? a tool for prototyping dataflow, processes, activities and user interfaces. The tool also proposes functionality for managing projects which is quite simple but probably enough for small projects. Prototype Composer supports export to MS Word, collaborative work (e.g. prototype sharing, review requests and reviews), and integration with larger systems by Serena and Microsoft VSTS.

The tool can be used by businesses with medium and high prototyping and collaboration demands and by individual contractors who will utilize only a small part of the proposed functionality.

The user interface prototyping tool almost repeats one by Axure. It is convenient for building both wireframes and graphically rich UI prototypes.

The largest disadvantage I was able to find so far is absence of wizards and sample projects.

Prototype Composer home page (Downloading the tools requires submission of a short form.)

List of screen mockup prototyping tools (I?m the lucky one who added Prototype Composer there).

W3C: Compliance for the Sake of Compliance

It's a well-known fact that many popular websites fail W3C validation. There is a brisk discussion on Digg about this subject.

Being valid eats resources and doesn't provide any benefits to visitors. Working in the web development industry I observed that none of the clients are going to pay additionally just to make their websites W3C valid. However, of course, all clients would accept such a gift from a web development contractor.

I think it's better to spend those resources for being useful, interesting and popular. If leading web resources do so then perhaps this approach is reasonable. If they can't afford spending resources for being W3C-valid then smaller websites can't do this all the more.

W3C says that "[...] household-name companies expect people to visit because of the name and in spite of dreadful websites". Are Technorati top-20 blogs dreadful? Is Yahoo! dreadful? I believe you'd rather say "nope" than "yep". W3C is the company with years of tradition so they are just defending their ideology.

Having those W3C compliance badges may work for web development contractors who expose their professionalism that way and willing to give a compliance gift to their clients. But I don't expect W3C compliance to become a de-facto standard.

A couple of links to blog posts on subject:

W3C: Where are the web designers and developers?

Why do we need W3C validation

Service Review: websitegrader.com

Submit your website's URL and get the marketing efficiency report. The analysis takes some time which probably depends on your website's size. Analysis of my small blog took about 2 minutes.

The report is very user-friendly. Figures are accompanied by meaningful explanations and advices. You can subscribe to receive you website's analysis by e-mail every month.

You can also download a free "Internet Marketing Kit" which is 2 videos and a 12-page whitepaper with SEO and conversion tips. Download requires submitting a short form. Yep, that's their conversion form so they follow their own advice.

Bookmarks on del.icio.us and Digg.com were not detected but I know they exist so such a defect in the service is not a big problem.

The tool shows the number of inbound links which differs a lot from the figure returned by for instance Google. It would be a good idea to list the links or at least link domains to provide users with criteria on making the decision on how reliable their figure is.

... My blog scored 78%. What about yours?

Calculate Your Blogging Efficiency!

As you can see I?ve started blogging only several days ago but those several days were enough for me to realize that blogging isn?t easy thing and it takes time and efforts to attract readers. Perhaps everybody knows this but why not try to calculate how much time we spend for generating each visit? To measure is to control. To control is to succeed.

The formula is very simple:

Efficiency = Number of your hours you?ve invested to your blog / Number of Visits to Your Blog

If you?re going to vote on ?What?s Your Blogging Efficiency?? poll please follow the simple rules below to make results more unified and ensure we all have the same foundation to evaluate
them.

Choose any time period you like. This poll is only for fun and to turn your attention to the fact that we can measure and track efficiency of our activities. I don?t see the way restricting time period will add value to the poll results.

Try to remember how much time you?ve spent on your blog, including technical activities, posting and promoting. I know that number of hours cannot be very precise. It can even be very inaccurate! But what?s precise enough for you precise enough for us as well.

Count visits to your blog?s website (not visitors, new subscribers, hits or anything else).

When you?re done with calculation you can see where you are standing among other bloggers and vote! The poll will not last forever. I plan to close it when traffic to this post falls to 1/3 of the peak. So you can subscribe and get notified about the final results.

A couple of tips on evaluating your efficiency:

If you spend much time for getting each visit then you should love each your reader! What if even they will stop visiting?!

If you spend one second to attract one visit then you?re quite close to be a Lord of Blogging! You?ve learnt to love your readers ages ago, haven?t you?

My efficiency is 22 minutes per visit. Leave yours in comments ? poll results are not personalized!

How to Browse the Web Quicker or Do You Use Opera?

I use Opera for over five years and now I have a blog where I can spread the word about this wonderful web browser. So let me do!

Just to Say Ahh!
Today Opera is much more popular than it was when I've started using it, but even that time I was very serious about buying it. Not just to remove the banner from the top of the browser window but to thank Opera team for what they're doing. But... Ooops... They've made it free! They are always two steps ahead. Ahead in usability. Ahead in technology. Even ahead of your wishes! And that's what I love them for.

To Be a Bit More Specific
Opera browser has numerous features that'll make your not only browsing quicker but also using the web without a need of having several tools. In Opera you can download files (and yep BitTorrent is supported), store notes, manage your passwords and much more! A built-in email client, widgets, skins are there too! View the full list of Opera features ? it worth!

But what really makes browsing in Opera more efficient is its user interface. Look at speed dial, thumbnail preview, mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts. Again ? it worth!

To Invite You to Best Browsing
So why not learn more about Opera? Why not visit their website at least once a month? Why not download all latest versions (stable ones only!). Why not promote it? Why not try Opera Mini?

Or, if new to Opera, why not download it?

Another Way to Improve Language Skills

All of us know that to improve our language skills we need to have practice read, write and speak. We also know of such ways as having a small personal dictionary, learning N words per day, etc.

I?d like to introduce another way I?ve invented. Perhaps it?s not an easier way. This is just one more trick we can use and combine with other ones. And I suspect I?m not the first who invented it.

So the Method Is
When you see something or think about something, check yourself ? do you know what is that word in English (Spanish, Russian, etc.). If you don?t, write that word down in the language you know immediately (you can just remember ? that?s enough if you are not trying to learn too many words daily). And check it out in the dictionary once you have access to it.

The difference from just learning N words from a dictionary is that you learn words that describe your surrounding and your life so you are more likely to use words learned this way in practice.

It helps me and will hopefully help you.