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A superb showcase of social network analysis maps from FAS.research.

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I’ve tried this little Gmail Login Switcher tool this morning and I must confess that it really made me happy. It allows you to instantly switch among all your Gmail login accounts without having to log out from the account you’re logged in and then re-log in to the other account (very annoying if, for any reason, you have to check your email frequently).

Actually what this script does is replacing the “Sign Out” link located in the upper-right corner of the Google login services with a drop-down menu. From that menu you can select one of your alternate Google login accounts, and it will immediately logout and login to the other without any other user intervention.

Even if, once installed and configured, using the tool doesn’t require any particular ability, the installation process can put in little troubles the average internet user. Then, let’s show it in details.

Gmail Login Switcher Requirements

First of all, you must have all the following things in place:

Firefox. Sorry, the tool only works on Firefox. If you are still following the Explorer, listen to me… leave it alone, join the Fox crew and don’t look back: it’s free, smarter …and you won’t regret it!

The new version of Gmail. If you are still using the old version, you will have to switch to the new one. It’s easy: login to Gmail and click on the “Newer version” link on the upper-right corner of the page. Then logout and repeat this operation for each of your Gmail accounts.

Greasemonkey extension installed. This will probably sounds a little exotic for most of you. Don’t worry: Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on that “allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript” - just to use their own words. Well, install it and forget it! Go to the Greasemonkey homepage , click on the ‘install’ button, confirm that you want to install the add-on and restart Firefox.

At this point you will see a little monkey face on the status bar (lower-right corner of your Firefox window) If the monkey looks sad and grey , click once on the icon to activate.

Installing the Gmail Account Multi-Login script

Now that everything is in place, you can install and configure the script itself. Go to the script homepage and click on the black button on the right. Once again, Firefox will warn you, but go on. Done!

Configuring the Gmail Login etc.

Now that you have the script installed, login to one of your Gmail accounts and manually add all the Gmail accounts among which you want to be able to switch. To help you to do that, I’ve uploaded a short instructional video on YouTube. Hope this help…

Once finished with adding all your accounts to this Gmail login tool, you will be able to switch from an account to another simply selecting them from the drop menu.

Enjoy!

Common features of spam domains include:

• Long domain names
• .info, .cc, .us and other cheap, easy to grab TLDs
• Short registration period (1 year, maybe 2)
• High ratio of ad blocks to content
• Javascript redirects from initial landing pages
• Use of common, high-commercial value spam keywords like “mortgage,” “poker,” “texas hold ‘em,” “porn,” “student credit cards,” and related terms
• Many links to other low quality, spam sites
• Few links to high quality, trusted sites
• High keyword frequencies and keyword densities
• Small amounts of unique content
• Very few direct visits
• Very few links sent out in (non-spam) email to the site
• Registered to people/entities not associated with trusted sites
• Not frequently registered with services like Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central or Live Webmaster Tools
• Rarely have short, high value domain names
• Often contain many keyword-stuffed subdomains
• More likely to have longer domain names
• More likely to contain multiple hyphens in the domain name
• Less likely to have links from trusted sources
• Less likely to have SSL Security certificates
• Less likely to be in directories like DMOZ, Yahoo!, Librarian’s Internet Index, etc.
• Unlikely to have any significant quantity of branded searches
• Unlikely to be bookmarked in services like My Yahoo!, Del.icio.us, Faves.com, etc.
• Unlikely to get featured in social voting sites like Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon,  etc.
• Unlikely to have channels on YouTube, communities on Facebook or links from Wikipedia
• Unlikely to be mentioned on major news sites (either with or without link attribution)
• Unlikely to register with Google/Yahoo!/MSN Local Services
• Unlikely to have a legitimate physical address/phone number on the website
• Likely to have the domain associated with emails on blacklists
• Often contain a large number of snippets of “duplicate” content found elsewhere on the web
• Unlikely to contain unique content in the form of PDFs, PPTs, XLSs, DOCs, etc.
• Frequently feature commercially focused content
• Many levels of links away from highly trusted websites
• Rarely contain privacy policy and copyright notice pages
• Rarely listed in Better Business Bureau’s Online Directory
• Rarely contains high grade level text content (as measured by metrics like Fleisch-Kincaid Reading Level)
• Rarely have small snippets of text quoted on other websites and pages
• Cloaking based on user-agent or IP address is common
• Rarely contain paid analytics tracking software
• Rarely have online or offline marketing campaigns
• Rarely have affilliate link programs pointing to them
• Less likely to have .com or .org extensions
• Almost never have .mil, .edu or .gov extensions
• Rarely have links from domains with .edu or .gov extensions
• Almost never have links from domains with .mil extensions
• Rarely receive high quantities of monthly visits
• Rarely have visits lasting longer than 30 seconds
• Rarely have visitors bookmarking their domains in the browser
• Unlikely to buy significant quantities of PPC ad traffic
• Rarely have banner ad media buys
• Likely to have links to a significant portion of the sites and pages that link to them
• Extremely unlikely to be mentioned or linked-to in scientific research papers
• Unlikely to use expensive web technologies (Microsoft Server & Coding Products that Require a Licensing Fee)
• Likely to be registered by parties who own a very large number of domains
• Unlikely to attract significant return traffic
• More likely to contain malware, viruses or spyware (or any automated downloads)

For high quality content domains, the opposite is true (at least, for a good percentage of these). Now think about the sites you’re building - which features apply to them? What could you do differently to be more like the “high quality” category and less like the “spam”?

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/separating-web-spam-from-quality-content-what-are-the-metrics

How to write a rewrite matrix?

1. Write a new informative article (max. length 2000 characters). Copywriting is based on 3-12 keywords given by the SEO to the copywriter (for the article to have good SEO effect read http://www.copyblogger.com/category/seo-copywriting/ copywriting tips). Every keywords must be used at least once. They should be spread through the article in the first paragraph, middle and in the end.

2. Make a rewrite matrix based on the original article. The matrix has several levels. The deep structure deals with synonims for words (not only keywords). It means every 2-5 word gets a synonim.
The syntax is simple. Every synonim is placed inside “{|}”, where “|” is the seperator.
Example:
As a rule it begins in the evening. (original sentence)
“As a rule” is a set expression in English - so we can find synonyms and equal expressions for it. Synonyms are gathered by the copywriter, the digital “An A-Z Dictionary of Synonyms” is a good source of synonyms.

• Inventio (invention) is the process that leads to the development and refinement of an argument.
• Once arguments are developed, dispositio (disposition, or arrangement) is used to determine how it should be organized for greatest effect, usually beginning with the exordium.
• Once the speech content is known and the structure is determined, the next steps involve elocutio (style).

(max. length 10 000 characters)

{Normally|Usually|In most cases|As a rule} it {begins|starts|initiates|enters upon|launches|embarks on|embarks upon|opens}

FAQ
- What is a rewrite matrix?
The term is based on transformational-generative grammar. It means a

There are a variety of issues that tend to recur in the life of a user interface designer. I recall the first time I was asked to write performance requirements for a user interface. How should I go about deciding on an acceptable level of errors or an acceptable speed of accomplishing a standard task? How do I know whether I have improved an interface design enough? Of the many problems that need fixing, which ones should take priority? How do I even know whether improving the user interface of a product is going to have an impact on sales? At one company, we sold usability so successfully one of the business units declared they wanted to label each product with a “usability seal of approval.” How would one go about determining when to award such a seal?

Over the years I have worked with colleagues at Ameritech (where the work began), U.S. WEST Advanced Technologies, and most recently Sapient to create a tool that has helped in dealing with some of these questions. The tool that we developed is called the USE Questionnaire. USE stands for Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use. These are the three dimensions that emerged most strongly in the early development of the USE Questionnaire. For many applications, Usability appears to consist of Usefulness and Ease of Use, and Usefulness and Ease of Use are correlated. Each factor in turn drives user satisfaction and frequency of use. Users appear to have a good sense of what is usable and what is not, and can apply their internal metrics across domains.

General Background

Subjective reactions to the usability of a product or application tend to be neglected in favor of performance measures, and yet it is often the case that these metrics measure the aspects of the user experience that are most closely tied to user behavior and purchase decisions. While some tools exist for assessing software usability, they typically are proprietary (and may only be available for a fee). More importantly, they do not do a good job of assessing usability across domains. When re-engineering began at Ameritech, it became important to be able to set benchmarks for product usability and to be able to measure progress against those benchmarks. It also was critical to ensure resources were being used as efficiently as possible, and so tools to help select the most cost-effective methodology and the ability to prioritize design problems to be fixed by developers became important.

Finally, it became clear that we could eliminate all the design problems and still end up with a product that would fail in the marketplace. It was with this environment as a background that a series of studies began at Ameritech. The first one was headed by Amy Schwartz, and was a collaboration of human factors, market research in our largest marketing organization, and a researcher from the University of Michigan business school.

Building on that research, I decided to develop a short questionnaire that could be used to measure the most important dimensions of usability for users, and to measure those dimensions across domains. Ideally it should work for software, hardware, services, and user support materials. It should allow meaningful comparisons of products in different domains, even though testing of the products happened at different times and perhaps under different circumstances. In the best of all worlds, the items would have a certain amount of face validity for both users and practitioners, and it would be possible to imagine the aspects of the design that might influence ratings of the items. It would not be intended to be a diagnostic tool, but rather would treat the dimensions of usability as dependent variables. Subsequent research would assess how various aspects of a given category of design would impact usability ratings.

The early studies at Ameritech suggested that a viable questionnaire could be created. Interestingly, the results of those early studies were consistent with studies conducted in the MIS and technology diffusion areas, which also had identified the importance of and the relationship between Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use. Furthermore, the rich research tradition in these other areas provides theory that may be extended to explain the relationships. This is an area that provides a link between academic research and practice, and it is informed by several disciplines. Some work has already been published suggesting that at least one publicly available tool drawn from earlier research can be applied effectively to software interfaces.

How It Developed

The first step in identifying potential items for the questionnaire was to collect a large pool of items to test. The items were collected from previous internal studies, from the literature, and from brainstorming. The list was then massaged to eliminate or reword items that could not be applied across the hardware, software, documentation, and service domains. One goal was to make the items as simply worded as possible, and as general as possible. As rounds of testing progressed, standard psychometric techniques were used to weed out additional items that appeared to be too idiosyncratic or to improve items through ongoing tweaking of the wording. In general, the items contributing to each scale were of approximately equal weight, the Chronbach’s Alphas were very high, and for the most part the items appeared to tap slightly different aspects of the dimensions being measured.

The questionnaires were constructed as seven-point Likert rating scales. Users were asked to rate agreement with the statements, raging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Various forms of the questionnaires were used to evaluate user attitudes towards a variety of consumer products.

Factor analyses following each study suggested that users were evaluating the products primarily using three dimensions, Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use. Evidence of other dimensions was found, but these three served to most effectively discriminate between interfaces. Partial correlation calculated using scales derived for these dimensions suggested that Ease of Use and Usefulness influence one another, such that improvements in Ease of Use improve ratings of Usefulness and vice versa. While both drive Satisfaction, Usefulness is relatively less important when the systems are internal systems that users are required to use. Users are more variable in their Usefulness ratings when they have had only limited exposure to a product. As expected from the literature, Satisfaction was strongly related to the usage (actual or predicted). For internal systems, the items contributing to Ease of Use for other products actually could be separated into two factors, Ease of Learning and Ease of Use (which were obviously highly correlated). The items that appeared across tests for the three factors plus Ease of Learning are listed below. The items in italics loaded relatively less strongly on the factors.

Usefulness

• It helps me be more effective.
• It helps me be more productive.
• It is useful.
• It gives me more control over the activities in my life.
• It makes the things I want to accomplish easier to get done.
• It saves me time when I use it.
• It meets my needs.
• It does everything I would expect it to do.

Ease of Use

• It is easy to use.
• It is simple to use.
• It is user friendly.
• It requires the fewest steps possible to accomplish what I want to do with it.
• It is flexible.
• Using it is effortless.
• I can use it without written instructions.
• I don’t notice any inconsistencies as I use it.
• Both occasional and regular users would like it.
• I can recover from mistakes quickly and easily.
• I can use it successfully every time.

Ease of Learning

• I learned to use it quickly.
• I easily remember how to use it.
• It is easy to learn to use it.
• I quickly became skillful with it.

Satisfaction

• I am satisfied with it.
• I would recommend it to a friend.
• It is fun to use.
• It works the way I want it to work.
• It is wonderful.
• I feel I need to have it.
• It is pleasant to use.

Work to refine the items and the scales continues. There is some evidence that for web sites and certain consumer products there is an additional dimension of fun or aesthetics associated with making a product compelling. For the dependent variables of primary interest, however, these items appear to be reasmonably robust. A short form of the questionnaire is easily constructed by using the three or four most heavily weighted items for each factor.

Conclusion

While the questionnaire has been used successfully by many companies around the world, and as part of several dissertation projects, the development of the questionnaire is still not over. For the reasons cited, this is an excellent starting place. The norms I have developed over the years have been useful in determining when I have achieved sufficient usability to enable success in the market. To truly develop a standardized instrument, however, the items should be taken through a complete psychometric instrument development process.

A study I have been hoping to run is one that simultaneously uses the USE Questionnaire and other questionnaires like SUMI or QUIS to evaluate applications. Once a publicly available (i.e., free) standardized questionnaire is available that applies across domains, a variety of interesting lines of research are possible. The USE Questionnaire should continue to be useful as it stands, but I hope the best is yet to come.

Author: Arnold M. Lund