Archive Thoughts ~ Newb Tech

Thoughts

Twitter Theme Finally Updated

After procrastinating for ages, I decided to give our twitter page a bit of a make-over. Following the excellent guide by Chris Spooner (Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices @ Blog.SpoonGraphics), I think I’ve finally come up with a look and feel that I was happy with.

http://www.twitter.com/newbtech

Its a little on the lighter side, but I think it works for me :)

My previous attempts was a little too Web 2.0’ish… so i decided to change the colour scheme around a bit to make it look less so:

I actually wanted a darker “logobar”, but then decided against it.

Anyways, let me know what you think :) and if anyone wants any backgrounds done, I’ll looking for practice :)

Tags: Design, News, Productivity, Thoughts, Twitter

Thursday, May 28th, 2009 Design, News, Productivity, Thoughts, Twitter No Comments

Blog Reader and Writer Types

I’ve been an avid user of the Internet for many years now and have noticed several types of behavior associated with browsing. Over time, I’ve even given some of these types of people names and descriptions that I’d like to share with you.

Disclaimer: this are my opinions and descriptions only. This isn’t industry standard or based on extensive study. Its merely my observations over the years. So take with a grain of salt :)

Author Types

Open Extrovert

image Blog Reader and Writer Types There is the “Open Extrovert” – someone who writes about every facet of their lives and are not afraid to give their thoughts on everything.

These people usually have long and wordy blog posts and are conducive to open discussions. The posts that they make may be opinion based and will pose open questions to their users.

They generally have a wide range of followers and frequently these websites tend to build into a community. These people love social networking and frequently have an account in just about every social networking site in their age group.

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Tags: Thoughts, User Experience

Friday, May 1st, 2009 Thoughts, User Experience No Comments

Getting Rid of Windows – Why I Won’t Do It

Lets face it, the grass is always greener on the other side. Whether its moving jobs, houses or operating systems, people are always lamenting their present situation and looking for changes. That’s natural human behavior. Mix that with the other human trait “procrastination”, and you have a lot of people who are unhappy where they are but refuse to move on.

There may be a lot of reasons why people need to change, but there are always more reasons to delay the change as much as possible. We tend to get comfortable living with the inadequacies of our current situations and finding workarounds to get things done. While at the same time we complain about how our current world can be a whole lot better. Funny thing is that it can, but putting a change into what we perceive as a working environment, can be like jumping off a bridge.

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Tags: Linux, Microsoft, Thoughts, User Experience

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 Linux, Microsoft, Thoughts, User Experience No Comments

Newb Tech’s purpose

I’ve been thinking.. This blog was initially created as a personal blog to hold my thoughts and views on practically anything. So I wanted an online diary of sorts. However, when i started setting up everything, a clear purpose behind this site suddenly eluded me.. and i started going in all sorts of tangents..

I saw that the majority of the blogs out there served two purposes: 1. a personal blog that was hardly visited apart from family and friends, and 2. a resource blog that specialized in one or more areas and over time grew to have a wider audience.

Also, i noticed resource blogs coming in many flavors. A lot of resource sites out there are simply portals that spin out dozens of posts every week with links to everything to do with their subject. This is "good" in some ways, but the articles are not really written by the site owners.. they are simply pointers to other peoples work.

Then you get the great tutorial sites that pick a product such as Photoshop and go hard out in teaching its audience on how to best use that product.

I didn’t (and still don’t know) the purpose behind my blog.. Ideally I want this site to be a place where people can come and see my experiences with test driving new applications or technology. This doesn’t mean that I need to be an expert at these applications. Rather its more of a casual look and more than just providing a blurb and link. Certainly a product may take more than one article to cover off and we want to start doing that as our knowledge of that product grows.

I want a wide set of audience and LOTS of comments :). I don’t want this to be a portal site as such (y’know… the articles that begin with "25 ways to do something" and end up with 25 links to other sites).

So, if there are any products out there that you want us to test drive and play around with and give our thoughts on, please let me know via email or leave a comment here. Our next applications will be the Zoho suite of online applications and ScreenToaster (a great little tool everyone can use to "Record" their desktop and create mini movies)..

Till then.. thanks for reading my ramblings and leave a frickin’ comment!

Tags: personal, Site News

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 News, Thoughts No Comments