Dani 3.0

GooseGrade Fails But Gets an A for Effort

// October 31st, 2008 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

I’m a fan of The Next Web blog and when they mentioned a new copyediting service that they were using for their blog, I decided to check it out.

GooseGrade’s premise is brilliant: use web-based services to allow readers to copyedit online content. Unfortunately, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

For example, in both Internet Explorer (7.x) and Firefox (3.x), the fields that contain the text to be corrected and the corrected text orient themselves vertically, not horizontally, which makes corrections very difficult as the fields are only a few characters wide. Also, having to enter one’s credentials each time one makes a correction is completely aggravating. Finally, it would be nice to be able to view and edit one’s corrections. (I made a correction to an article only to change my mind as I read further, but there is no way to communicate to the author that the corrected text should be left ‘as is.’)

I am interested to hear what other editors have to say about this tool. I love the idea and hope that the developers will continue their work, however, until GooseGrade makes their tool easier to use, I anticipate that users will be reluctant to use it with any regularity.

Update: GooseGrade gets an A+ for effort. Within hours of my post, I received an email letting me know that the size of the textboxes had been corrected. Although the interface is still a bit buggy, once I figured out to use the back arrow instead of closing the window each time, it became much less cumbersome to use. Also, I’ve been assured that they’re working on storing a cookie so even if one does close out the window, the app will recognize you for subsequent corrections.

A couple of things I think would make this really useful. First, if there was a way to communicate to the author why the edits are being suggested. This could be as easily accomplished by adding a notes field. Second, a way to view all of one’s suggested edits and the ability to change or delete them.

In any case, the text boxes being fixed go a long way to making GooseGrade more useful. I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Form-filling with Sxipper

// October 23rd, 2008 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

First, let me qualify this by saying that I’ve been using Roboform for years, so there’s a natural reluctance to change how I do things.

I found Sxipper too much of a departure from Roboform’s unobtrusive form-filling to be a good fit for me. Especially annoying was the way the entire page dimmed when a Sxipper form-filler pop-up appeared. I also found it to be too difficult and time-consuming to train the majority of the forms that didn’t work with Sxipper (about half of all forms I encountered.) I register for a lot of sites and generally speaking, I only register once per site, so training a site-specific form is an exercise in futility. I find Robo-Form to be more effective for my needs in this area – just fill it out and be done with it.

I think that Sxipper is a beautifully designed product with a couple of neat features – the idea of training a form for the benefit of others who will use the form is nice – and I look forward to seeing the product when it is mature. For now, though, my heavy-duty form-filling requirements are best met by RoboForm.

Automate Your Hurricane Plan with OneStorm

// August 29th, 2008 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

Just in time for soon-to-be Hurricane Gustave roaring into the Gulf, I’ve discovered OneStorm, a free site that aims to “educate and prepare families for severe weather.” This well-organized will get your disaster planning started with downloadable forms such as shopping and contact lists, as well as a very comprehensive article library with topics that range from planning and preparation to behavioral issues, but the real draw here is the automated hurricane plan wizard.

After registering you’ll be offered the chance to start building your hurricane plan. The site suggests that building your plan will take about 20 minutes, but you should allow longer if your important documents are not already organized in a central location. Alternatively, you can opt to add additional information at a later time. The screens are ordered logically, and while comprehensive, the process goes very quickly since most input is done with check boxes as opposed to actually typing.
Having the following information handy will make the process go even faster: emergency contact numbers of friends and family, family neighborhood meeting place and out-of-town meeting place, pet immunization records, prescription information, and healthcare provider information.

The final section of the wizard lets you print out lists of supplies that are still needed, supplies on hand, human and pet health information, and contact information. You are also invited to share your contact, pet and health status with local emergency officials. I opted to just share my contact information.

This is a great site and I’d love to have been able to write a more comprehensive review, but my printouts indicate that I need to stock up, so I’m off to Sam’s Club. Stay safe, all.

Get more from CraigsList

// May 16th, 2008 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

Craig’s Little Buddy is very close to being a killer app. It lets users search multiple cities in CraigsList, a huge time saver if you’re trying to track down an elusive item and want to maximize your chances by adding surrounding areas to your search. I live in Houston, so for hard-to-find items, I’d like to be able to include Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Austin, and San Antonio. Craig’s Little Buddy will allow me to do that.

The interface is slick and very easy to use. Choosing cities is accomplished by checking boxes on a pop-up; Select All and Restore defaults are provided options but they could really benefit from a Deselect All choice here as well.

Search is straight-forward. Choose a CraigsList category and/or use keywords, just as you’d do on CraigsList. One of the things I really like about the search is that it displays a list of the cities you’re searching – very handy, that, if you’re searching multiple cities. Each search result is appended with the city it’s located in, another handy feature.

It’s Craig’s Little Buddy’s handling of images, or rather their lack of handling, that keeps this from being a truly killer app. It would be nice if they’d include the ability to search only ads with images. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard for them to integrate as Craig’s List already provides this functionality. Also, there are very few preview pictures, and what preview pics there are seem to be for dealer ads. I do like how they’ve handled the display of the preview pics, however – integrated right into the search result. Another nice feature to have would be to display the full-size image on rollover, much like the Firefox extension CraigsList Image Previewer. (In CLB’s defense, it is most likely CraigsList’s stingy nature that have prevented them from displaying preview photos.)

For the moment, I’ll stick with my combination of CraigsList and the FF CraigsList Image Previewer extension, however, if I was just using CraigsList, I’d switch over to this option in a heartbeat. If they’re ever able to more fully integrate images into the search results, this will be a hard site to beat.