Monday, 8 September 2014

Top 15 Social Networking Sites You Should Be Using

A List of the Hottest Social Networking Sites and Mobile Apps

 

The most popular social networking sites sure have changed over the years, and you can expect them to continue to change as times goes on. Old social media trends will die, and new ones will appear.
Before Facebook and Twitter dominated the web, we were a lot more familiar with sites like MySpace and LiveJournal. Although there are some people who still use older social networks like MySpace and LiveJournal, most people can probably admit to moving on to newer, cooler social sites -- especially with the recent shift toward mobile-based social media consumption.
Here is a short roundup of a few of the trendiest social networks people are using both on the web and on mobile right now.
Social Networking Sites - Photo © Dimitri Otis / Getty Images
Photo © Dimitri Otis / Getty Images

1. Facebook

Most of us already know that Facebook is the top social network on the web. It's a thriving beast of a social networking site on the web over a billions users. Despite holding the spot on the entire Internet for years now, it has to lead you to wonder just how long and what it might take for Facebook to eventually be brought down to a lower spot on the popular social site list. Time will only tell. More »
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2. Twitter

Like Facebook, Twitter has also changed dramatically over the years, becoming a top source for real-time news sharing. For a microblogging site with a 140-character text limit, Twitter sure has made its mark online. Its an ideal platform for mobile users, and Twitter Card integration make it easy to share all sorts of multimedia content in tweets. More »

3. Google+

Making its debut in the early summer of 2011, Google+ became the fastest growing social network the web has ever seen. After failing a couple times already with Google Buzz and Google Wave, the search giant finally succeeded at creating something that people are actually excited about using -- especially alongside all the other popular Google apps and services. More »
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4. YouTube

Where does everyone go to watch or share video content online? It's obviously YouTube. After Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine. Although owned by Google and now tied right into our Google+ accounts, YouTube can still be recognized as a separate social network all on its own as one that revolves entirely around content like video production, vlogging, movie-making and music sharing. More »

5. LinkedIn

Anyone who needs to make professional connections should be on LinkedIn. Known as the social network for your career, LinkedIn is right up there with Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Individuals can promote themselves and their businesses, outline their education and work experience, make connections with other professionals, interact in group discussions, post job ads or apply for jobs. More »
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6. Instagram

Instagram has grown to be one of the most popular social networks for photo sharing that the mobile web has ever seen. It's the ultimate social network for sharing real-time photos and short videos while on the go. The app started by being exclusively limited to the iOS platform, but has since expanded to Androidand, Windows Phone also the web. Instagram was bought for a hefty $1 billion in 2012. More »

7. Pinterest

Pinterest is quickly becoming a major player in social networking, and proves just how important visual content has become on he web. As the fastest standalone site ever to reach 10 million monthly unique visits, Pinterest's beautiful and intuitive pinboard-style platform on the web and on mobile is one of the most incredible resources for collecting the best images and categorizing them on your own boards. More »

8. Tumblr

Tumblr is an extremely popular social blogging platform heavily used by teens and younger users. Like Pinterest, it's popular for sharing visual content. You can customize your blog theme, post all different tpes of content formats, follow other users and be followed back. Reblogging and “liking” is a popular way to interact. If you post great content, you might be surprised to see how many followers you can attract. More »

9. Vine

Vine is mobile video-sharing app owned by Twitter. One of the most convenient things about Vine is that its videos can be directly embedded inline on Twitter when shared through a tweet -- or even embedded on a website. Videos play on autoloop and are limited to a maximum of six seconds, but that doesn't stop it from being such a powerful social network. Many prefer it over Instagram video.More »

10. Snapchat

Snapchat is a social network based on instant messaging, and it's totally mobile-based. It's one of the fastest growing apps out there, building its popularity on the idea of self-destructing "snaps" -- photos or short videos you take to chat with friends before they automatically delete after viewing. It's a massive social app for kids. If you're unfamiliar, check out this step-by-step tutorial on how to use Snapchat.

 

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Thursday, 4 September 2014

10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Information graphics, visual representations of data known as infographics, keep the web going these days. Web users, with their diminishing attention spans, are inexorably drawn to these shiny, brightly coloured messages with small, relevant, clearly-displayed nuggets of information. They’re straight to the point, usually factually interesting and often give you a wake-up call as to what those statistics really mean.

Who can resist a colourful, thoughtful venn diagram anyway? In terms of blogging success, infographics are far more likely to be shared than your average blog post. This means more eyeballs on your important information, more people rallying for your cause, more backlinks and more visits to your blog. In short, a quality infographic done well could be what your blog needs right now.

Designing An Infographic

Some great tips for designing infographics:
  • Keep it simple! Don’t try to do too much in one picture.
  • Decide on a colour scheme.
  • Research some great facts and statistics.
  • Think of it as a visual essay: ensure your arguments hold and are relevant.
  • Remember that it’s all about quickly conveying the meaning behind complex data.
  • Draw conclusions.
  • Reference your facts in the infographic.
  • Include your URL so people can be sure who made it.
World Computer usage   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics
Ideas for infographic formats include:
  • Timelines;
  • Flow charts;
  • Annotated maps;
  • Graphs;
  • Venn diagrams;
  • Size comparisons;
  • Showing familiar objects or similar size or value.
Here are some great tutorials on infographic creation:
  • How to Create Outstanding Modern Infographics
  • Infographic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best practices
  • Tutorial: Create Cool Infographics
  • 10 of my Favourite Infographics
  • 40 Useful and Creative Infographics
  • Seven and a Half Steps to Successful Infographics
  • The Anatomy of an Infographic
  • 10 Tips for Journalists Designing Infographics

Creating Your Infographic

  • Plan and research.
  • If required, use free software to create simple graphs and visualisations of data.
  • Use vector graphic software to bring these visualisations into the one graphic.
Ultimately, if you have a little design skill, the very best approach is to create all the simple graphs and illustrations yourself using vector graphic software. Your end result will be more visually attractive and you will have more freedom to be creative with it.

Free Online Tools For Creating Infographics

Stat Planet

Stat Planet allows you to create some amazing interactive visualisations, which you can then use as is or create a static image. It can be used within your browser or downloaded for free. Stat Planet gives you access to some great world data and lets you customise that in your visualisations. It also has some great map-based visualisations to try.
StatPlanet   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Hohli

Hohli is an intuitive, simple online chart maker. It’s incredibly easy to pick your chart type, add some data, vary the sizes and colours and see the finished chart. The finished charts are also very well designed and look great!
Hohli Visualisations   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Creately

Creately lets you make easy-to-make diagrams and flow charts (easy to collaborate too). When you start, you can choose from a number of purpose-designed diagram types and quickly add your data to make your own chart. The end result looks very professional.
Creately Diagrams   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

New York Times

New York Times’ Visualization Lab lets you use statistics from recent NYTimes articles to create visualisations in various formats. You can also see other people’s visualisations and see how other people choose to display the same data.
NY Times Visualization lab   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Many Eyes

Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data already stored on the site. The visualisations themselves are well-designed and very professional-looking. This is definitely the easiest way to use your own data for online visualisations.
Many Eyes Visualisation SMS Frequency   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Google Public Data

Google Public Data lets you easily take public data and transform it into an infographic of your choice. These beautiful, colourful graphics simplify and communicate the data perfectly.
Google Visualisation   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Wordle

Wordle lets you create word visualisations using text you enter. There are plenty of interesting designs to choose from. Enter whole books, short passages or see what other people have used. In this example, we can see the US constitution visualised.
Wordle visualisation   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Free Software For Creating Infographics

Tableau

Tableau is a free Windows-only software for creating visualisations. As you can see, these impressive graphs are colourful and quite unique.
Tableau Visualisation2   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Gapminder

GapMinder is a free Adobe Air (cross-platform by nature) application to ensure you have current data on major world issues and can create visualisations for your purposes. Data is updated yearly and released with new versions of the application. The visuals are also quite impressive!


Inkscape

Inkscape is a free vector graphic software available for many platforms. This is the ideal free option for the creation of your overall infographic. Simple and intuitive, you should have no problems importing your visualisations and combining them with other visuals to create your masterpiece.
inkscape rpg map   10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

Love Infographics?

If you’re a fan of infographics, these tools will probably become part of your everyday blogging tools. Feel free to let us know of more great tools in the comments!


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Tuesday, 2 September 2014

10 free tools for creating infographics

Don't have hours to spare crafting something beautiful in Photoshop? Sarah James selects tools that won't cost you a penny...

For all the importance we place on text, it's an indisputable fact that images are processed in the brain faster than words. Hence the rise and rise of the infographic which, at its best, transforms complex information into graphics that are both easy to grasp and visually appealing. No wonder magazine readers and web visitors love them.
The only problem is, infographics that look like they were simple to make are often anything but. Creating something beautiful and instantly understandable in Photoshop is often beyond the limits that time allows. Which is why it's occasionally useful to use a quick and dirty infographics tool to speed up the process.
We've selected our favourites here. They're all free, or offer free versions. Let us know which ones you get on best with...

01. Vizualize

infographics
This generator could be the start of how ‪résumé‬s will be portrayed in the future
After the success of our post on an infographic ‪résumé‬, it was only a matter of time before this infographic ‪résumé‬ generator turned up. You can visualise your resume in one click and also take a look at previous examples. Enabling people to express their professional accomplishments in a simple yet compelling personal visualisation, we think this is the start of something big.

02. Google Developers

infographics
Display real live data with Google Developers
Google chart tools are powerful, simple to use, and free. You can choose from a variety of charts and configure an extensive set of options to perfectly match the look and feel of your website. By connecting your data in real time, Google Developers is the perfect infographic generator for your website.

03. Easel.ly

 Easel.ly
Easel.ly offers a dozen free templates to start you off
This free web-based infographic tool offers you a dozen free templates to start you off, which are easily customisable.
You get access to a library of things like arrows, shapes and connector lines, and you can customize the text with range of fonts, colours, text styles and sizes. The tool also lets you upload your graphics and position them with one touch.

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04. Piktochart

 Picktochart
The Piktochart's customizable editor lets you modify colour schemes and fonts
Piktochart is an infographic and presentation tool enabling you to turn boring data into engaging infographics with just a few clicks. Piktochart's customizable editor lets you do things like modify colour schemes and fonts, insert pre-loaded graphics and upload basic shapes and images. Its grid lined templates also make it easy to align graphical elements and resize images proportionally. There's a free version offering three basic themes, while a pro account costs $29 per month or $169 for a year.

05. Infogr.am

 Infogr.am
Customising the data that makes up the infographic takes place in an Excel style spreadsheet
Infogr.am is a great free tool which offers access to a wide variety of graphs, charts and maps as well as the ability to upload pictures and videos to create cool infographics.
Customising the data that makes up the infographic takes place in an Excel style spreadsheet and can easily be edited, watching the software automatically change the look of the infographic to perfectly represent your data. When you're happy with your infographic you can publish it to the Infogram website for all to enjoy and even embed it in to your own website or share it via social media.

06. Visual.ly

 Visual.ly
Visual.ly is both a tool and a community for infographics creators
Visual.ly is a community platform for data visualization and infographics set up in 2011. It allows you both to create infographics and get them shared on social media. The website is also able to match those commissioning infographics - including brands, companies and agencies - with its community over more than 35,000 designers.

07. InFoto Free

 Infoto Free
Build infographics based on your photo taking habits
This one's a bit niche, but if you take a lot of photos with your Android phone it's worth checking out. InFoto takes the EXIF data attached to your photos and builds nice-looking infographics from it. It's got a great interface, and the paid-for version (which comes without ads) only costs 99 cents.

08. Venngage

infographic tools
Looking for an easy-to-use tool? Venngage is your best bet!
Venngage is a great tool for creating and publishing infographics because it's so simple and easy to use. You can choose from templates, themes, and hundreds of charts and icons as well as uploading your own images and backgrounds, or customize a theme to suit your brand. You can animate them too!

09. Dipity

infographic tools
Upgrade to the Premium plan for custom branding
Dipity is a great way to create, share, embed, and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location, and time stamps. You can join for free but premium plans offer custom branding and backgrounds, analytics, and custom iPhone apps.

10. Get About

This free Windows app lets you monitor your social media activity and generate infographics that help you visualize how you connect and share with your network.