JPTWeb

Eye tracking sounds very elegant when one talks about studying a sites overall usability. However I found that it is very challenging to conduct. Part of the challenge is the technology itself is very fickle. Even on the $50,000 eye tracker we used there were still calibration problems, and bugs in the software. Another part of the challenge comes when creating an experiment design and trying to decide what to study. Often times we would think of a cool idea only to realize it something that could be studied with a traditional usability test (no need for eye tracking equipment really).

Below is a presentation I made using Prezi about eye tracking which goes over some of the basics and analyzes the trends and what may be in store for the future. Use the little arrows to navigate the presentation, full-screen mode is also recommended to get the full feel:

This year I was fortunate enough to attend the “Higher Education Web Professionals” conference (HighEdWeb for short) in Milwaukee WI. I say fortunate because we all know this was a year of economic woes, financial uncertainty, and a general sense that we’re doomed.

It was my second time attending this conference. I often go into a conference thinking that I know it all. This is ironic for me since I can’t stand the know-it-all programmer type of personality. If you have to deal with the IT Crowd (have you tried turning it off and back on again?) I am sure you have encountered this type of person. I continually prove myself wrong even though I didn't leave having learned 3 new programming languages (only 1). If you are lucky you may leave it with a more enthusiastic outlook, a couple new ideas, an htmALE glass, and if you are very lucky: the coveted screaming monkey.

Recently I have been working with the JFusion team on an Elgg integration plugin, and happy to hear a new version has just been released with the Elgg plugin.

So if you are wondering what the heck this is let me explain.  Joomla a CMS is described as "the dynamic portal engine and content management system."  It is a tool that can be used to run and administrate websites. What makes Joomla great is that it has a huge library of 3rd party extensions that allow people to build communities, manage e-commerece sites, forums, just about anything.  JFusion is an extension for Joomla that extends Joomla's core functionality

Taken from the Joomla site: "JFusion is a revolutionary new universal integration framework for Joomla 1.5. It’s a “universal bridge” that can synchronize user accounts, user sessions and even visually integrate many different applications into Joomla. This is done by extending the Joomla 1.5 user authentication framework without any core hacks. Now you can turn your Joomla installation into a powerful portal system that manages your user base across all your online applications. JFusion is just another example on why Joomla is the future of Content Management Systems."

Elgg is a completly seperate piece of open source software that is a bit like facebook or a social networking site that you can run on your webserver.  Simply put: this plugin integrates Joomla and Elgg via JFusion.