    
|
|
|
Twenty five members of UMBC's Society of Women
Engineers (SWE) chapter attended the WE13 national conference held in
Baltimore from October 24-26, 2013. SWE is an educational and service
organization that empowers women to succeed and advance in the field of
engineering, and to be recognized for their life-changing contributions
as engineers and leaders.
The UMBC SWE student chapter executive board, led by President, Ebony Tongo (CBEE May 14) actively promoted the event and leveraged gifts from Northrop Grumman and Advertising.com (a division of AOL) to pay for part of the student registration fee. Dean Warren DeVries, arranged for the UMBC delegation to meet Betty Shanahan, SWE CEO. The members were inspired by their conversation with Ms. Shanahan about her career path, the importance of professional association involvement, and SWE's mission.
DoIT is reporting a known issue for campus users trying to access the private, UMBC-authenticated version of iTunes U, including links to associated Blackboard course sites. As of September 20, 2013, faculty and students can no longer access the associated iTunes U space. Recorded media can still be uploaded to the area but only DoIT system administrators can access it. When you try to open the iTunes U link, the browser opens a new window and displays a blank page. This is the same symptom when using Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Google Chrome. The public, unauthenticated version of UMBC iTunes at itunes.umbc.edu is not affected.
DoIT has been working to resolve this issue with Apple and Vanderbilt University, developers of the 3rd party “building block” plugin that allowed faculty to automatically publish recorded screencasts from our Camtasia Relay lecture capture software and link these to a current Blackboard course. To date, we have not been able to resolve this issue.
As a work around for publishing Camtasia Relay screencasting recordings for a class, DoIT has configured UMBC's Box.com to receive all recordings from the Camtasia Relay server. For specific instructions please visit:
https://wiki.umbc.edu/display/faq/Camtasia+Relay.
Instructors: If you would like to recover your course content saved in iTunes U, please enter a Request Tracker (RT) help ticket via the myUMBC help menu or directly at my.umbc.edu/help (please include the full name of the instructor and course). A DoIT admin will work to recover your files for you, and place them into a UMBC box.com folder as described above.
Private Packet Filtering (PPF) is a new capability that preserves the confidentiality of sensitive attack indicators, and retrieves network packets that match those indicators without revealing the matching packets. The capability is achieved through the definition of a high-level language, the definition of a conjunction operator that expands the breadth of the language, a simulation of the document detection and recovery rates of the output buffer, and through a description of applicable system facets. Fundamentally, PPF uses a private search mechanism that in turn relies on the (partial) homomorphic property of the Paillier cryptosystem. PPF is intended for use in a collaborative environment involving a cyber defender and a partner: The defender has access to a set of sensitive indicators, and is willing to share some of those indicators with the partner. The partner has access to network data, and is willing to share that access. Neither is willing to provide full access. Using the language, the defender creates an encrypted form of the sensitive indicators, and passes the encrypted indicators to the partner. The partner then uses the encrypted indicators to filter packets, and returns an encrypted packet capture file. The partner does not decrypt the indicators and cannot identify which packets matched. The defender decrypts, reassembles the matching packets, gains situational awareness, and notifies the partner of any malicious activity. In this sense, the defender reveals only the observed indicator and retains control of all other indicators. PPF allows both parties to gain situational awareness of malicious activity, and to retain control without exposing every indicator or all network data.
Committee: Dhananjay Phatak (chair), Michael Collins, Josiah Dykstra, Russell Fink, John Pinkston and Alan Sherman
]]>
Welcome, friends, to WebdesignerDepot’s first monthly WordPress plugin roundup. (Try saying that out loud really fast a few times!)
If there’s one word that I would use to describe the WordPress community, it’s this: huge. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are plugins being released and updated every single day. Some of them bring features that we all wish WordPress had by default. Some of them might only be useful to any given website creator once in their lifetime.
Either way, there’s a lot to explore, and every month, I’ll be writing about the freshest plugins making their way out of beta.
Now, without further ado, here’s this month’s batch of eye-catching plugins:
Subscribr is a simple plugin in concept. You activate it, and each user can choose to receive updates about new posts in any category. As of now, anyone who wishes to subscribe to your posts must have an account on your WordPress website. It’s a bare-bones plugin currently; but there are a slew of planned features, including: front-end notification signup via a widget, integration with mass-mailing systems like MailChimp, notifications via SMS, and more.
As its name would suggest, this plugin requires a Google API project and key. Once you create one of those, turn on The Page Speed Insights service, and paste the API key into the plugin’s admin section, you’re good to go.
It starts by performing an analysis of every page on your blog, and scores them based on how light/heavy on the bandwidth they are. It’ll tell you what the heaviest elements on the pages are (usually images, in my case), giving you… well… insights (sigh) into how to reduce the size of your site.
There are two “pro” versions, but the free plugin is more than enough to get you started on the path to a lighter, faster website.
My only problem so far: it adds certain pages and posts to a list of “ignored” links, and I can’t figure out why.
A dead simple plugin that creates a site map out of unordered lists. The plugin’s authors suggest using it to provide your users with a way to find all of the content on your site.
For larger sites however, that may be impractical. On the other hand, it might be the perfect way to provide search engines with a quick and easy index of all your content.
Manual Image Crop distinguishes itself from other cropping plugins by allowing you to create any number of cropped thumbnails from the same image.
Here’s the thing though: the dimensions of these thumbnails are the ones defined in your WordPress theme. This means that instead setting your image sizes, and hoping to whatever deity you may or may not pray to, that the cropped thumbnail looks good in your theme, you can make sure that you always put the most relevant part of the image on display.
You have to love a plugin that does exactly what it says. With Iframely all you have to do is put a link to some content from one of a long list of sites in your page or post content, and it will be embedded there. The embedded element will be responsive, where possible (it’s apparently not always possible), and that’s that.
You can embed content from Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, GitHub, Google Plus, Imgur galleries (I like Imgur, so I like this), and quite a few more.
It will not affect any existing plugins that embed content via shortcodes, so you can install from the main plugin repository, and go. It’s that simple.
Allowing a plugin to dictate things like markup, especially for UI elements as critical as pricing tables, goes against my nature. However, there are times when you need a system that would allow your client to easily edit the said UI elements, and that’s when a plugin like this comes in handy.
The interface for editing your price tables isn’t just good, it makes sense. A lot of sense. Calling up the price table is a simple as using a shortcode. The plugin comes with its own styles and color scheme; but those are easy enough to override.
A great plugin for anyone who has to deal with a lot of comments on a regular basis. It strips out comments that either aren’t comments (such as pingbacks), comments by the post’s author (if that’s what you want), and so on, leaving only the comments that require a response.
Of course, it’s all configurable.
Where portfolio “functionality” is usually something that will come with a theme, this plugin gives you the means to easily integrate a good-looking portfolio with an existing theme. If you’re not a coder, and you want to have a good-looking portfolio without committing to a particular WordPress theme, this could be a great option.
My only qualm so far is the page template for the individual portfolio items. When you click on an item, it takes you to a page that is supposed to be cross-theme compatible. However, it doesn’t work very well with mine, which means that it might require some custom styling after all. Your mileage may vary.
Overall, though, I like how it handles portfolio-style content.
Who actually likes ads? No one, really. But then, some of us make a living from them. BAN detects ad-blocking software, and allows you to replace the missing ads with unobtrusive messages asking the user to turn their software off for your site.
Their compliance is, quite understandably, not guaranteed.
This plugin is very much for developers only. It provides a simple API that allows you to switch the website’s theme based on specific conditions.
The first example provided on the plugin’s page changes the theme if the user is browsing with Internet Explorer. (I suppose that would be one way to keep the CSS hacks out of the main stylesheet.) There are other uses, though, such as changing the theme if the user is on a mobile device.
Why would you, specifically, want to use this plugin? Well, that’s up to you. Whatever your reasons, the functionality is there. It raises some interesting possibilities.
This plugin just does what is says on the box: it calls in a Google Calendar feed, and presents the information in a table.
Since it’s a new plugin, that’s all it does. In the future, I’d like to see ways to customize the data that gets output. Imagine being able to replace massive, complicated event calendar plugins with one that just gets all of its information from a Google Calendar, thus simplifying the process of managing it.
Just put in your shortcode (with the public XML link provided by Google) and go.
However, it currently has some teething problems, and may not work for everyone. But the concept and the potential uses are just that cool. Or they will be, if the devs get on this!
Have you tried any of these plugins, and if so, what did you think? Have we missed one of your favourites? Let us know in the comments.
| 3 Minimalist WordPress Themes from ThemeCobra – only $23! |  |
|
|
 |
Developing a product is one thing, bringing it to market is another. In this article, Rachel explains how to start with a new product, develop and support it over time. Interested in learning more? Rachel will be hosting a full-day Smashing workshop on “Shipping Your Product” in Berlin, and she has contributed a chapter on customer support to the brand new upcoming Smashing Book #4 (to be released in late November). —Ed.
“The goal of a startup is to find the sweet-spot where minimum product and viable product meet — get people to fall in love with you. Over time, you listen to your customers, make improvements and raise the bar on what viable means — making it more expensive for competitors to jump in.”
If you are launching a bootstrapped product, then your aim should be to ship something that people are happy to give you money for as quickly as possible. This means launching with the minimum that will make your product something that people would be happy to buy. You can then begin to develop additional features based on what customers actually want and need, rather than on what you think they want and need.
In this article, based on my own experience, I’ll describe how it is possible to launch with a really small product and grow from those small beginnings by listening to your customers.
You might be starting small, but you need to draw that list of features that will make up your small but perfectly formed product offering, something that people would be happy to pay for because it brings them value as is. To get your product to launch, I suggest that you consider two main things:
For my own product, our target market was design agencies and freelancers. It’s a CMS, but we were not interested in making it a website-building tool or in appealing to non-coders. The customers we had in mind were the sort of people we were already working with: small agencies and designers who know how to write HTML and CSS, who don’t need a website-building tool and who want to manage content. This was an audience we knew well and importantly where people knew us. I would always recommend that if you are developing a product you target a market you already are well known in; it will make it far easier to spread the word, and for people to have trust in you. We also intended to appeal to people who develop relatively small-scale websites. We were not creating a Drupal competitor. So, our ideal customer is a designer, either freelance or in an agency, who knows HTML and CSS and has to develop smallish websites.
We wanted to solve two problems with the product. First, we wanted it to be really quick and easy to deploy. A small website doesn’t justify days of creating a theme or template. Secondly, we wanted to provide a solution that does not add any unwanted markup, CSS or JavaScript to the website. The designer should have control over everything the CMS outputs.
That was it. As we started to develop, a million ideas came to mind. We thought of so many features and possibilities, but we kept that simple use case and that ideal customer in mind and ruthlessly trimmed features until we had something that felt complete yet was about as small as it could be. That initial version of Perch took about four weekends to write — we were still a consultancy working with clients at the time. We spent about the same amount of time building the marketing website and the infrastructure to deliver the product.
With your product developed, you should launch with confidence. You might have had a million features listed that you wish your product had, but your customers don’t know that. If your ideal customer exists and has the problems that you’ve identified and your product solves them, then you should be able to sell it to them. An advantage of getting to launch quickly is that you can test whether all of those things are true before spending any more time.
According to John Radoff, you have to take your time to listen to your customers, make improvements and raise the bar on what viable really means. (Image credits)
Don’t be apologetic about the small feature set. Market and sell the product as it is now, making sure that you are accurate in presenting the scope of the product and what problems it will solve. Assuming that people do buy and start to use it, you’ll soon start to get suggestions and requests for features, and you will probably be surprised by some of them. Some of the things you have already identified will likely come up as requests; but in my experience, customers will have needs that you didn’t even know exist, and they will be very happy to tell you about them.
We heard no outcry from customers who felt shortchanged by our tiny product, because we were selling something that does what it says on the tin; our marketing and sales were aligned with the product itself. We found, however, that those initial customers were delighted as we started to add new features based on their feedback, and many people who use the product today and have developed a large number of websites using it were among that first group of customers.
I opened this article saying that getting to the point where people will pay for your product is important. There will be no end of people who are keen to tell you exactly what you should build them for free. Getting to launch means that you can start to hear feature requests and ideas from your paying customers. Requests from people who are happy to pay for your product are far more valuable than requests from people who are not. Paying for a product changes a person’s relationship to it and to the company behind it. The person becomes a customer and feels reasonable for asking for the service and features that they would expect as a paying customer.
If you successfully launch with a tiny feature set, then you will quickly start to get feature requests. This is great! But it can feel overwhelming. How do you even start to provide all of these new features, and how do you explain to customers why their pet feature will not be immediately added?
Prioritize the feature that solves a more general problem and is useful to enough people to warrant the investment of time required to develop it. (Image credits)
We have always been very clear to our customers that we prioritize those features that would benefit the largest number of users. We collate requests that people post in our suggestions forum, email to us, tweet or tell us in person. We also look for the hidden feature demands that can be found in what people are trying to do with the product. Sometimes we can see someone doing something very complicated to get around the fact that something is not possible out of the box. If we see a number of customers doing that, we can infer that a feature is needed there. The things that would help the most people soon rise to the top. We have always found that as soon as we have picked off the most requested feature, another comes along as the new top request!
To add a feature to your product, you need to be able to define a general use case for it. You can’t add a feature as you might for a bespoke build for a client; the feature must solve a more general problem to become useful to enough people to warrant the investment of time required to develop it. We often ask our customers to explain the use case for a feature they are asking for. We want to know the general problem they are trying to solve, rather than how they think their particular problem should be solved.
We often find that by exploring the use case a little with the customer — and in the forums, other customers with similar requirements often pitch in — we start to open a narrow solution into something more generally useful. Once we do that, then the feature becomes far more likely to be one we consider.
That being said, every so often a customer asks for a feature that doesn’t compromise the core use case and is fairly specific but very quick to develop. In that case, we do enjoy being able to quickly pop it into the next dot release and letting them know it is there. One of the best things about working on your own product is being able to delight people and do those unexpected things that help people out.
We’ve built a product based on speaking with and listening to our customers, but remember that the customers you hear from are probably the minority. If statistics are a part of your customer-support system, then look at how many of your customers ever come to you for support. In our case, it’s about 25%. We hear from only 25% of our customers. So, 75% are quite happy with how our product works — happy enough, at least, not to feel the need to ask us anything or suggest a feature.
Keeping that ideal customer in mind also really helps here. We have on occasion told people before purchase that we were not sure the product was a good fit for them, but they bought a copy anyway. They then spent a lot of time declaring the deficiencies they saw in the product — for example, complaining that it doesn’t come with themes or that they are being asked to write HTML. While these customers can be frustrating, you just have to step back and remember that they are not your ideal customer. The product isn’t really for them, so resist the temptation to add things for people who are not your target audience.
Even within your core audience, a few noisy people can make you feel as if all of your customers are asking for a particular feature. If that feature would take the product in a new direction or change a workflow, then getting opinions from the silent majority would be especially worthwhile. We have found that posting on our blog, talking on our podcast and mentioning a possible feature on Twitter does cause people we never see in the support forum to talk to us. If your usage statistics or sales data are broken down by user, then you can always use that to identify customers who you never hear from but are very active. Customers who like your product will generally be happy that you have asked them for feedback.
Twitter may also be a useful platform to collect short feedback from customers. (Image credits)
When asking customers for feedback, ask specific questions, rather than just what they think of your product. If you are proposing a major change, explaining the change and asking whether they foresee any issues in how they use the product can be enlightening.
Clearly understanding your core use case — the initial problems your product is intended to solve — is vital to deciding which features to add to the product. We are over four years from launch, and yet the basic way people use our product has not changed — despite it being well into version two and far more full-featured than the tiny product we brought to market.
If a feature will complicate that basic use case, there would need to be a very good reason to add it. Sometimes we find another way to solve the same issue, which is where those general use cases from customers come in handy. You need to be happy to tell customers, however, that the feature they are asking for wouldn’t fit the product, and recognize that some of those customers might go elsewhere. Pleasing everyone is impossible, and your ideal customers wouldn’t want you to try.
It took me a long while to learn that adding new features is not a huge marketing win in itself. We’ve added some huge and much-requested features to Perch over the years. Many of those features took as long to build as developing the initial product did. However, launching a new feature has never made a blip in our sales figures. Our graph moves upwards at a fairly steady rate, with no evidence that any period of growth was caused by a particular feature.
That is not to say that adding features is not important. As mentioned, existing customers appreciate new features: They can see that the product is actively being developed and is evolving to meet their needs. However, pinning your hope of acquiring new customers on some new headline feature is not realistic in my experience. Instead, focus on marketing activities and on finding new customers and users, in addition to developing new features.
Starting small and focused, with a clear idea of who your ideal customer is and of the core problems that your product solves, is a great way to get a new product to market. For bootstrappers, it not only means bringing in much needed cashflow quickly, but also means that any new features you develop will be useful to your audience.
As your product matures, keeping your ideal customers in mind and speaking with them will help to ensure that you continue to serve your target market, rather than attempt to please everyone. By adding features deliberately and thoughtfully, you will delight existing customers and make the product useful to a wider market, while staying true to your goals.
Interested in learning more? Rachel will be hosting a full-day Smashing workshop on “Shipping Your Product” in Berlin, and she has contributed a chapter on customer support to the Smashing Book #4 (to be released in late November).
(al, vf, il)
Front page image credits: Dave Gray.
© Rachel Andrew for Smashing Magazine, 2013.
]]>
Fleurons are typographic elements, much like swashes; they add an elaborate touch to display text, they create borders and frames; they can even be used as background patterns.
Complex to draw, these carefully balanced fleurons from Wiescher Design are an excellent addition to any designer’s toolbox. The calligraphic nature of the lines adds a hand-written touch to even the most formal type schemes.
Perfect for creating the sense of personal service, they are excellent when used for legal firms, financial advisors, and any kind of company that needs to present both formality and heritage.
Our sister-site, MightyDeals.com, has put together a great deal on these 7 ornament sets; that’s 6 full sets of fleurons and an extra set of ornamental frames.
Styled after flowers and leaves, these great fleurons range in scope from very modern abstract designs, to beautiful baroque swirls.
Delivered as fonts, the vector outlines will scale and remain crisp at whatever size you choose to use them.
These fantastic typographic devices normally retail at $276 for either the desktop or webfont version, but thanks to MightyDeals.com, you can get the desktop set for just $12, or splash out and get desktop and web versions for just $19. That’s an amzing 96% discount.
Head over to MightyDeals.com to grab this great offer whilst you still can!
Do you use fleurons in your designs? Which style do you favor the most? Let us know in the comments.
| MagPress Plugin: Convert any WP Blog to an eBook – only $24! | |
|
|