Gulo

The Gulo Blog: Where we talk about software, social media, associations & nonprofits, design, content management, open source, mobile and more.

Staying Busy

The Gulo team has been working feverishly on projects for the Chicago Photography Center, the Cruise Lines International Association, and the Pew Environmental Group.

We're also working on a couple new Gulo apps we think are really cool. Boardwiz is a dead-simple jobs board app which let's you add your very own revenue-generating jobs board to your website. And FleaPay is a hosted shopping cart that plugs right into your merchant account. Both will be ready soon. Stay tuned.

Are you tweeting? Be sure to follow us on twitter.

Google's Grammer

In the email users receive from google, discussing sharing one's location, there is a slight grammatical error.  Today, in the release of Google Latitude, Google made another 'oops'.  Perhaps they should invest in a few resources that review grammar.

Matt Smith (googleuser@gmail.com) wants to share their his/her location with you on Google Latitude. You can use Latitude on your mobile phone, PC, or both. To accept or reject the request, or to learn more about Latitude, click the link below.

http://m.google.com/latitude

Does this underscore the importance of a copywriter for your website?

Is your website ready.mobi?

Ready.mobi is a really great resource:

The ready.mobi testing tool evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards. The free report provides both a score (from 1 to 5) and in-depth analysis of pages to determine how well your site performs on a mobile device.

Visit http://ready.mobi/ and test out your site.

My Worst Enemy - Focus

You're using Google Docs forms, right?

At Gulo, most of our writing happens in Google Docs - it's simply the easiest way for us to share notes, collaborate on copy, and create spreadsheets - you know, the stuff we used to do in Microsoft Office. "But I don't have Gmail!" I hear someone in the back saying. Creating a Google account means filling out three fields and a captcha. It's worth your 25 seconds. Trust me.

Earlier this year, Google quietly released a feature that I don't see a ton of people taking advantage of - forms. And it's pretty darned easy:

Start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you'll get the spreadsheet automatically. Responses are automatically added to your spreadsheet.

Here's a sample survey. Took me two minutes:

Something that makes me really happy

Silicon Valley Insider deems Facebook applications useless. Ah the relief. Next up, deeming Facebook useless too.

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IT and your associations website

Ed. note: Here's a post I started and never finished...

The IT department shouldn't be in charge of your association's website. That is absolutely not IT's job. Let me explain.

IT (or Information Technology) is a fairly broad term but in general it covers software, data management systems, and network support. From server administration to network security to setting up email...that's IT.

Not long ago, member data was stored in a database or a client server application - systems which were implemented and hosted on-site; they lived on a computer in your server room. So it made sense for IT to "own" those systems and support them.

Those days are gone. Mature association management software (AMS) (or CRM, etc.) is hosted and supported by vendors and consultants. And that's a good thing. Between wifi, blackberries and supporting remote access, IT has enough to deal with.

I Love Research That Re-enforces My Intuition

You know when you do something that feels right and then feel like everyone else should listen to you and follow your lead? We have people ask for the "open in new window" or target="_blank" feature for adding hyperlinks in our WYSIWYG. We tell them, we don't like that functionality because it's bad practice, poor for usability and confuses users. Jakob Nielsen comes to the rescue:

Opening new browser windows is highly confusing for most users. Although many users can cope with extra windows that they've opened themselves, few understand why the Back button suddenly stops working in a new window that the computer initiated. Opening new windows was #2 on my list of top-10 Web design mistakes of 1999; that this design approach continues to hurt users exemplifies both the longevity of usability guidelines and the limited improvement in user skills.

Thanks Jakob, I feel much more vindicated in my advice now!

Add a del.icio.us linkroll to your site

Homepage getting stale? Add a del.icio.us linkroll to your site. A what? If you're not familiar with del.icio.us, read this. Otherwise, proceed...

A linkroll is just a bit of code that takes your del.icio.us account and creates a self-updating feed of links that you can insert anywhere on your site. It's a great way to add value to your site and keep your homepage or news page content fresh and revolving. Here's how to get started:

1. Sign up for a del.icio.us account for your organization
2. Start posting industry-specific links to your account - anything you come across that might be of interest to your visitors. You can even post links to your own content.
   
3. Go to "settings" within your del.icio.us account and click on linkrolls (it's under the Blogging heading or fifth column).

The linkroll page gives you some display options such as how many links to display at a time, whether or not to display notes, etc. When you have the linkroll customized to your liking, you simply grab some automatically-generated javascript and insert it into your page.

I created an example here.