Up until a couple of years ago, I used to say that the average person could protect his or her privacy on the Web. Even as the founder of an online reputation-management company, ReputationDefender, I believed it was possible—so long as you were willing to commit some time to doing it. Today, I tell people this: the landscape of personal data mining and exploitation is shifting faster than ever; trying to protect your online privacy alone is like trying to build your own antivirus software—really, really difficult. But whether or not you have the time (or money) to invest in the pros, there are a few simple steps we can all take to reduce the risk to our private data.
1. Block cookies on your Web browser.
When you surf, hundreds of data points are being collected by the sites you visit. These data get mashed together to form an integral part of your “digital profile,” which is then sold without your consent to companies around the world. By blocking cookies, you’ll prevent some of the data collection about you. Yes, you’ll have to enter passwords more often, but it’s a smarter way to surf.
2. Don’t put your full birth date on your social-networking profiles.
Identity thieves use birth dates as cornerstones of their craft. If you want your friends to know your birthday, try just the month and day, and leave off the year.
3. Don’t download Facebook apps from outside the United States.
Apps on social networks can access huge amounts of personal information. Some unscrupulous or careless entities collect lots of data and then lose, abuse, or sell them. If the app maker is in the U.S., it’s probably safer, and at least you have recourse if something should ever go wrong.
4. Use multiple usernames and passwords.
Keep your usernames and passwords for social networks, online banking, e-mail, and online shopping all separate. Having distinct passwords is not enough nowadays: if you have the same username across different Web sites, your entire romantic, personal, professional, and e-commerce life can be mapped and re-created with some simple algorithms. It’s happened before.
Related: What the Internet Knows About You »
5. Know how much private data are out there about you.
Most people aren’t even aware of how much information can be found about them with a few clicks. Check out this free service to get a quick read on some of the information that can be found about you and your family.
6. Be really cautious about geo-location services.
Smart phones, apps, and Web services are frequently tagging your location as you move through life. We don’t yet know the full privacy implications of these services, and we may not know for some time. For now, be thoughtful about how you use “I just checked in at Restaurant XYZ” features. And if you don’t know what geo-location is, turn it off on your phone right away. As a first rule, we usually shouldn’t let third parties collect info about us without our even knowing what kind of info is being collected or how
7. Shred.
If you’re going to throw away credit-card offers, bank statements, or anything else that might come in hard copy to your house, rip them up into tiny bits first.
8. Opt out of “people search” sites.
There are many sites across the Web where our personal data are stored, copied, aggregated, and resold. Remove yourself from as many as you can.
9. Max out your privacy settings on social networks.
Privacy settings are getting harder to fix all the time. Stay on top of them. For Facebook, here’s a free service that will fix your privacy settings in two clicks.
10. Close old accounts.
If you no longer use Friendster or MySpace, shut down your old account. Doing a digital data wipe from time to time is a good way to reduce the amount of old info floating around in the ether. Reducing your digital footprint will reduce the risk that your digital profile is being built, catalogued, and exploited.
Michael Fertik is the CEO and founder of ReputationDefender.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/22/10-ways-to-protect-your-privacy-online.html
wireless yogi
What the Internet Knows About You
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/22/forget-privacy-what-the-internet-knows-about-you.html
Imagine that a company could use the Web to rate your health, your employability—even your dating appeal. Welcome to the credit score of the future.
Imagine you’re an employer, looking to hire me for a job. You subscribe to a Web site that gives you background information, and this is what you find. Jessica Rose Bennett, 29, spends 30 hours a week on social-networking sites—while at work. She is an excessive drinker, a drug user, and sexually promiscuous. She swears a lot, and spends way beyond her means shopping online. Her writing ability? Superior. Cost to hire? Cheap.
In reality, only part of this is true: yes, I like a good bourbon. But drugs? That comes from my reporting projects—and one in particular that took me to a pot farm in California. The promiscuity? My boyfriend of five years (that’s him above) would beg to differ on that, but I did once write a story about polyamory. I do spend hours on social-networking sites, but it’s part of my job. And I’m not nearly as cheap to hire as the Web would have you believe. (Take note, future employers!)
The irony, of course, is that if this were a real job search, none of this would matter—I’d have already lost the job. But this is the kind of information surmisable to anybody with a Web connection and a bit of background data, who wants to take the time to compile it all. For this particular experiment, we asked ReputationDefender, a company that works to keep information like this private, to do a scrub of the Web, with nothing but my (very common) name and e-mail address to go on. Three Silicon Valley engineers, several decades of experience, and access to publicly available databases like Spokeo, Facebook, and LinkedIn (no, they didn’t do any hacking)—and voilà. Within 30 minutes, the company had my Social Security number; in two hours, they knew where I lived, my body type, my hometown, and my health status. (Note: this isn’t part of ReputationDefender’s service; they did the search—and accompanying graphic— exclusively for NEWSWEEK, to show how much about a person is out there for the taking.)
It’s scary stuff, but scarier when you realize it’s the kind of information that credit-card companies and data aggregators are already selling, for pennies, to advertisers every day. Or that it’s the kind of data, as The Wall Street Journal revealed last week, that’s being blasted to third parties when you download certain apps on Facebook. (Under close watch by Congress, Facebook has said it’s working to “dramatically limit” its users’ personal exposure.) “Most people are still under the illusion that when they go online, they’re anonymous,” says Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But in reality, “every move they make is being collected into a database.”
This, say tech experts, is the credit score of the future—a kind of aggregated ranking for every aspect of your life. It’s an assessment that goes beyond the limits of targeted advertising—you know, those pesky shoe banners that follow a visit to Zappos, made possible by tracking devices we know as “cookies”—by making use of the data in ways that are more personal and, potentially, damaging. Think HMOs, loan applications, romantic partners. Let’s say you’ve been hitting up a burger joint twice a week, and you happen to joke, in a post on Twitter, how all the meat must be wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. Suddenly your health-insurance premiums go up. Now imagine your job is listed on Salary.com; your vacation preferences linked to Orbitz. Think how this could affect your social standing, or your ability to negotiate a raise or apply for a loan. Finally, what if you could know, based on Web history and location tracking, that a prospective mate had a communicable disease. Wouldn’t you pay to find out? “Most of us just don’t realize the potential consequences of this,” says Lorrie Cranor, a Web-privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University.
Think it sounds shady? It’s perfectly legal—and happening already. In 2009, a Quebec woman who was receiving sick leave for depression had her disability benefits revoked after her insurance company discovered photos on Facebook—her profile was public—where she looked like she was having fun. At the time, a spokesperson for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association told reporters that such information is fair game. Credit-card companies use social media to determine what kind of offers might work the best on your social group—or to get insight on whether you’d default on a loan. Ultimately, it’s safe to assume that every Web site you visit—yep, that means NEWSWEEK, too—reserves the right to install tracking technology on your computer, eating up information about your tastes, guilty pleasures, and everything in between. Each company can then decide where that trove of data ultimately ends up—and, for data gold mines like Facebook, there’s very little incentive to keep it to themselves. “It’s not only Global 2000 and Fortune 2000 companies who want this information,” says Michael Fertik, the founder and CEO of ReputationDefender. “Eventually, it’s going to be every person in your life.” The ultimate paradox? It doesn’t matter if the information is wrong—or, in my case, comically incomplete.
Imagine that a company could use the Web to rate your health, your employability—even your dating appeal. Welcome to the credit score of the future.
Imagine you’re an employer, looking to hire me for a job. You subscribe to a Web site that gives you background information, and this is what you find. Jessica Rose Bennett, 29, spends 30 hours a week on social-networking sites—while at work. She is an excessive drinker, a drug user, and sexually promiscuous. She swears a lot, and spends way beyond her means shopping online. Her writing ability? Superior. Cost to hire? Cheap.
In reality, only part of this is true: yes, I like a good bourbon. But drugs? That comes from my reporting projects—and one in particular that took me to a pot farm in California. The promiscuity? My boyfriend of five years (that’s him above) would beg to differ on that, but I did once write a story about polyamory. I do spend hours on social-networking sites, but it’s part of my job. And I’m not nearly as cheap to hire as the Web would have you believe. (Take note, future employers!)
The irony, of course, is that if this were a real job search, none of this would matter—I’d have already lost the job. But this is the kind of information surmisable to anybody with a Web connection and a bit of background data, who wants to take the time to compile it all. For this particular experiment, we asked ReputationDefender, a company that works to keep information like this private, to do a scrub of the Web, with nothing but my (very common) name and e-mail address to go on. Three Silicon Valley engineers, several decades of experience, and access to publicly available databases like Spokeo, Facebook, and LinkedIn (no, they didn’t do any hacking)—and voilà. Within 30 minutes, the company had my Social Security number; in two hours, they knew where I lived, my body type, my hometown, and my health status. (Note: this isn’t part of ReputationDefender’s service; they did the search—and accompanying graphic— exclusively for NEWSWEEK, to show how much about a person is out there for the taking.)
It’s scary stuff, but scarier when you realize it’s the kind of information that credit-card companies and data aggregators are already selling, for pennies, to advertisers every day. Or that it’s the kind of data, as The Wall Street Journal revealed last week, that’s being blasted to third parties when you download certain apps on Facebook. (Under close watch by Congress, Facebook has said it’s working to “dramatically limit” its users’ personal exposure.) “Most people are still under the illusion that when they go online, they’re anonymous,” says Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But in reality, “every move they make is being collected into a database.”
This, say tech experts, is the credit score of the future—a kind of aggregated ranking for every aspect of your life. It’s an assessment that goes beyond the limits of targeted advertising—you know, those pesky shoe banners that follow a visit to Zappos, made possible by tracking devices we know as “cookies”—by making use of the data in ways that are more personal and, potentially, damaging. Think HMOs, loan applications, romantic partners. Let’s say you’ve been hitting up a burger joint twice a week, and you happen to joke, in a post on Twitter, how all the meat must be wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. Suddenly your health-insurance premiums go up. Now imagine your job is listed on Salary.com; your vacation preferences linked to Orbitz. Think how this could affect your social standing, or your ability to negotiate a raise or apply for a loan. Finally, what if you could know, based on Web history and location tracking, that a prospective mate had a communicable disease. Wouldn’t you pay to find out? “Most of us just don’t realize the potential consequences of this,” says Lorrie Cranor, a Web-privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University.
Think it sounds shady? It’s perfectly legal—and happening already. In 2009, a Quebec woman who was receiving sick leave for depression had her disability benefits revoked after her insurance company discovered photos on Facebook—her profile was public—where she looked like she was having fun. At the time, a spokesperson for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association told reporters that such information is fair game. Credit-card companies use social media to determine what kind of offers might work the best on your social group—or to get insight on whether you’d default on a loan. Ultimately, it’s safe to assume that every Web site you visit—yep, that means NEWSWEEK, too—reserves the right to install tracking technology on your computer, eating up information about your tastes, guilty pleasures, and everything in between. Each company can then decide where that trove of data ultimately ends up—and, for data gold mines like Facebook, there’s very little incentive to keep it to themselves. “It’s not only Global 2000 and Fortune 2000 companies who want this information,” says Michael Fertik, the founder and CEO of ReputationDefender. “Eventually, it’s going to be every person in your life.” The ultimate paradox? It doesn’t matter if the information is wrong—or, in my case, comically incomplete.
Create Your Dream Dotcom Job
Social-media careers are growing—and in search of young talent.
Richard Vogel / AP
Every day when Olivia Ma turns on her computer, she takes some time to read NYTimes.com, Google News, and a host of niche sites. Then she might check her Twitter feed to see what people are sharing, or browse Facebook for trending stories. Sure, it probably sounds a lot like your morning, but there’s one difference. For the 27-year-old Harvard graduate, who serves as a YouTube news manager, it’s part of her job. As a video curator, she has to know how to sift through social networks for news that’s gaining momentum, or look through some of the video uploaded to the site each day to determine what’s interesting to the YouTube community as well as the news media, which tend to link to YouTube videos. “I am basically reacting to what happens organically on YouTube and the Web to determine what’s noteworthy and interesting,” she says.
Related: Crazy, Sexy College-Application Videos »
For years now, studies and news articles have talked about the value of using social networks to make potential employment contacts. Today it turns out social networking is the job—or at least part of it. The proliferation of sites like Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools has led to a boom in social-media positions at just about any company with a Web presence. In response, colleges are adding related courses and even entire M.B.A. programs to prepare students who are interested in turning an otherwise amusing hobby into their profession.
At many schools, the decision to add social-media classes and degrees has been largely market-driven. “In our case, recruiters were coming to us saying, ‘We need people who know social media,’” says Chuck Martin, an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire. And the demand will likely continue to grow. According to a report by SocialMediaInfluence.com, titled “The State of Social Media Jobs 2010,” online re-cruitment sites are being flooded with potential positions. At Indeed.com the number of social-media job postings has increased by more than 600 percent, from roughly 3,000 in 2005 to 21,323 as of May 2010. Yahoo HotJobs has also seen a significant rise in positions with a social-media component: “Year over year, from May 2009 to May 2010, we saw a 974 percent increase [in] job offerings that had some kind of social-media requirement,” says managing editor Charles Purdy.
But Purdy adds that while the field is currently wide open, employers still have high standards for what makes a good social-media guru. “People have to remember that someone is not social-media-savvy simply because they spend a lot of time on Facebook socializing and playing Mafia Wars,” he says. “What businesses want is someone who has been blogging in a certain field, or has some experience with using technology to promote or build a business.” Employers also value people who can easily glide between the more traditional parts of a company and its growing digital division. (Employees entering the field can expect an average introductory annual salary of between $60,000 and $90,000.)
Many of the undergrad courses that are offered across the country teach students how to apply their natural social-networking skills to the business, marketing, or editorial world. Martin, who taught the social-media and marketing course at UNH’s business school in the spring of 2010, says his students do learn social-networking basics, but the curriculum mostly focuses on gaining real-world experience. “The larger, semester-long project required students to come up with a social-media strategy for three local companies that did not have a big Web presence,” he says. “It was a way to give them practice with a real business rather than doing something theoretical.”
If students are interested in getting into the social-media field, Martin suggests taking one or two undergraduate classes—usually found in the business, marketing, or new-media departments of a school—to get a general understanding of what a job in this sector will entail. “If it turns out you’re good at it and you like it, then get an internship and keep promoting yourself on social sites,” he says. “You really can’t lose [because] it’s an exciting time to be in the field.” .
http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/college-grads-find-jobs-in-social-media.html
Richard Vogel / AP
Every day when Olivia Ma turns on her computer, she takes some time to read NYTimes.com, Google News, and a host of niche sites. Then she might check her Twitter feed to see what people are sharing, or browse Facebook for trending stories. Sure, it probably sounds a lot like your morning, but there’s one difference. For the 27-year-old Harvard graduate, who serves as a YouTube news manager, it’s part of her job. As a video curator, she has to know how to sift through social networks for news that’s gaining momentum, or look through some of the video uploaded to the site each day to determine what’s interesting to the YouTube community as well as the news media, which tend to link to YouTube videos. “I am basically reacting to what happens organically on YouTube and the Web to determine what’s noteworthy and interesting,” she says.
Related: Crazy, Sexy College-Application Videos »
For years now, studies and news articles have talked about the value of using social networks to make potential employment contacts. Today it turns out social networking is the job—or at least part of it. The proliferation of sites like Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools has led to a boom in social-media positions at just about any company with a Web presence. In response, colleges are adding related courses and even entire M.B.A. programs to prepare students who are interested in turning an otherwise amusing hobby into their profession.
At many schools, the decision to add social-media classes and degrees has been largely market-driven. “In our case, recruiters were coming to us saying, ‘We need people who know social media,’” says Chuck Martin, an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire. And the demand will likely continue to grow. According to a report by SocialMediaInfluence.com, titled “The State of Social Media Jobs 2010,” online re-cruitment sites are being flooded with potential positions. At Indeed.com the number of social-media job postings has increased by more than 600 percent, from roughly 3,000 in 2005 to 21,323 as of May 2010. Yahoo HotJobs has also seen a significant rise in positions with a social-media component: “Year over year, from May 2009 to May 2010, we saw a 974 percent increase [in] job offerings that had some kind of social-media requirement,” says managing editor Charles Purdy.
But Purdy adds that while the field is currently wide open, employers still have high standards for what makes a good social-media guru. “People have to remember that someone is not social-media-savvy simply because they spend a lot of time on Facebook socializing and playing Mafia Wars,” he says. “What businesses want is someone who has been blogging in a certain field, or has some experience with using technology to promote or build a business.” Employers also value people who can easily glide between the more traditional parts of a company and its growing digital division. (Employees entering the field can expect an average introductory annual salary of between $60,000 and $90,000.)
Many of the undergrad courses that are offered across the country teach students how to apply their natural social-networking skills to the business, marketing, or editorial world. Martin, who taught the social-media and marketing course at UNH’s business school in the spring of 2010, says his students do learn social-networking basics, but the curriculum mostly focuses on gaining real-world experience. “The larger, semester-long project required students to come up with a social-media strategy for three local companies that did not have a big Web presence,” he says. “It was a way to give them practice with a real business rather than doing something theoretical.”
If students are interested in getting into the social-media field, Martin suggests taking one or two undergraduate classes—usually found in the business, marketing, or new-media departments of a school—to get a general understanding of what a job in this sector will entail. “If it turns out you’re good at it and you like it, then get an internship and keep promoting yourself on social sites,” he says. “You really can’t lose [because] it’s an exciting time to be in the field.” .
http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/college-grads-find-jobs-in-social-media.html
photoshop
http://creativefan.com/101-best-photoshop-tutorials/
HTML 5
http://creativefan.com/the-ultimate-html5-toolbox-60-articles-tutorials-resources-and-inspiring-showcases/
http://creativefan.com/11-excellent-photoshop-tutorials-to-boost-creativity/
HTML 5
http://creativefan.com/the-ultimate-html5-toolbox-60-articles-tutorials-resources-and-inspiring-showcases/
http://creativefan.com/11-excellent-photoshop-tutorials-to-boost-creativity/
http://creativefan.com/50-inspirational-letterpress-business-cards/
http://spyrestudios.com/mega-collection-of-cheatsheets-for-designer-developers/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/11/25-useful-data-visualization-and-infographics-resources/
http://mashable.com/2009/02/03/productivity-tips-for-freelancers/
http://spyrestudios.com/mega-collection-of-cheatsheets-for-designer-developers/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/11/25-useful-data-visualization-and-infographics-resources/
http://mashable.com/2009/02/03/productivity-tips-for-freelancers/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/11/25-useful-data-visualization-and-infographics-resources/
http://richworks.in/2010/04/50-most-stunning-examples-of-data-visualization-and-infographics/
http://spyrestudios.com/creative-blog-design-layouts/
http://creativefan.com/50-inspirational-letterpress-business-cards/
http://richworks.in/2010/04/50-most-stunning-examples-of-data-visualization-and-infographics/
http://spyrestudios.com/creative-blog-design-layouts/
http://creativefan.com/50-inspirational-letterpress-business-cards/
http://www.cssbasics.com/
http://www.htmldog.com/
http://www.csseasy.com/
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/take-your-web-designs-to-the-next-level/
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/ways-to-horrify-website-designers/
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/icon-design/create-a-battery-core-icon-in-photoshop/
http://www.htmldog.com/
http://www.csseasy.com/
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/take-your-web-designs-to-the-next-level/
http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/ways-to-horrify-website-designers/
http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/icon-design/create-a-battery-core-icon-in-photoshop/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/06/designing-the-world-of-programming-infographic/
Fewness Of Words
All of the pioneers in this infographic have had a big impact on the field of programming. Still, this list is in no way comprehensive. Programming languages like C, C++ and Java have shaped the programming world, and so including their creators here was essential. The same goes for pioneers such as Ken Thompson, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who have each made significant contributions to the open-source world.
You might also notice that some important algorithms — such as dynamic programming, brute force and hash tables — are missing. The reason is that explaining these algorithms in a single diagram is difficult. Hence, they were replaced with ones like insertion sort and merge sort, which are relatively simpler to explain. Eight Queens and N-puzzle have often been used as illustrative problems for various programming techniques, and so they, too, are included here.
Designing The Infographic
Infographics are visual representations of information, data and knowledge. So, layout, color and typography are critical to user comprehension. Let’s consider each of these in turn.
Layout
Given the available information, I decided to divide the infographic into three major sections:
The most important people in the history of programming,
A timeline of the history of programming,
Statistics on programming languages.
The goal was to make the infographic simple yet beautiful. I came up with the following possible layouts to display the information:
The red squares denote illustrations, the arrows denote timelines, and the blue rectangles denote statistics on programming languages. In the third layout, the green circles denote random facts and algorithm diagrams.
This first layout is simple but lacks the attractiveness of a good infographic. So, I decided to abandon it.
In the second layout, the illustrations are arranged in a circle. But including the relevant information for each illustration consistently would have been difficult. So, I abandoned it, too.
I decided on a layout that combines the sine wave with golden rectangles, two properties that I discuss in an earlier article. I put random facts and diagrams of algorithms in the remaining golden rectangles to make the infographic more attractive.
I used Pixus to create the golden rectangle grid for this infographic. It comes in handy when you have multiple golden rectangles in a design.
Color
Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions.
— Josef Albers
Picking the right colors is one of the most important things in graphic design. Color affects visual hierarchy and legibility of type, so it’s important to choose the right colors, and not just the expected ones. In an infographic, the background should blend perfectly with the illustrations. In this case, the illustrations looked dull against a white background and looked ugly against a dark background.
I chose a light shade of gold (#f9ebb3) for the background. Then, I applied a granular pattern to the background layer and scaled it down to 51%. I also reduced the opacity to about 52%. The illustrations now look good against this background.
I opted for “academic” colors for the typography because they blend well with the background and the illustrations. We all know that contrast is king, and so I used mostly primary colors for the illustrations because they contrast well with the text blocks.
You can always get help from Adobe Kuler if you have trouble choosing colors for your design.
Typography
The typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text: its tone, its tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determine the possibilities of its typographic form. The typographer is to the text as the theatrical director is to the script and the musician is to the score.
— Robert Bringhurst
Use two or a maximum of three font types in a design. I chose Colaboarte Light for the programmers’ names and Calibri Italic for their descriptions. Both are sans-serif.
Within a single typeface family, variations in weight, width and style can vary the rhythm substantially, thus affecting communication. To control this, I italicized Calibri to a font size of 15 and kept the programmers’ names at 21. Alignment is flush-left. I also used Calibri for the descriptions of illustrations but gave it a different color to distinguish it from the descriptions of programmers. I chose the ChunkFive font for the numerical values in the illustrations.
Displaying Stats
To envision information — and what bright and splendid visions can result — is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art. The instruments are those of writing and typography, of managing large data sets and statistical analysis, of line and layout and color.
— Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
For years, we have been displaying information in bars graphs and pie charts. In fact, Edward Tufte coined the term “chartjunk” to refer to useless, uninformative or information-obscuring elements in quantitative displays. But this trend has shifted in recent times with the rise of infographics.
I opted for three different ways to display the statistics on programming languages. The Project Euler statistics are displayed in circles of different radii. The project is based on mathematical problems, and so displaying the statistics in geometric shapes was apt. The StackOverflow statistics are displayed as appearing in text editors of various sizes and colors, while the Tiobe Index statistics are displayed in terminals of various sizes and colors.
Final Thoughts
An infographic is all about displaying information in creative ways. The process of designing infographics can help us understand and implement certain graphic design principles much better than by designing for the Web alone. It’s all about applying the fundamental principles of design; we’ll always come up with better results if we can do that well.
Useful Links and Resources
Anatomy of an Infographic
Data Visualization and Infographic Resources
50 Most Stunning Examples of Data Visualization and Infographics
Also check out these related books:
Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information
(al)
Fewness Of Words
All of the pioneers in this infographic have had a big impact on the field of programming. Still, this list is in no way comprehensive. Programming languages like C, C++ and Java have shaped the programming world, and so including their creators here was essential. The same goes for pioneers such as Ken Thompson, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who have each made significant contributions to the open-source world.
You might also notice that some important algorithms — such as dynamic programming, brute force and hash tables — are missing. The reason is that explaining these algorithms in a single diagram is difficult. Hence, they were replaced with ones like insertion sort and merge sort, which are relatively simpler to explain. Eight Queens and N-puzzle have often been used as illustrative problems for various programming techniques, and so they, too, are included here.
Designing The Infographic
Infographics are visual representations of information, data and knowledge. So, layout, color and typography are critical to user comprehension. Let’s consider each of these in turn.
Layout
Given the available information, I decided to divide the infographic into three major sections:
The most important people in the history of programming,
A timeline of the history of programming,
Statistics on programming languages.
The goal was to make the infographic simple yet beautiful. I came up with the following possible layouts to display the information:
The red squares denote illustrations, the arrows denote timelines, and the blue rectangles denote statistics on programming languages. In the third layout, the green circles denote random facts and algorithm diagrams.
This first layout is simple but lacks the attractiveness of a good infographic. So, I decided to abandon it.
In the second layout, the illustrations are arranged in a circle. But including the relevant information for each illustration consistently would have been difficult. So, I abandoned it, too.
I decided on a layout that combines the sine wave with golden rectangles, two properties that I discuss in an earlier article. I put random facts and diagrams of algorithms in the remaining golden rectangles to make the infographic more attractive.
I used Pixus to create the golden rectangle grid for this infographic. It comes in handy when you have multiple golden rectangles in a design.
Color
Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions.
— Josef Albers
Picking the right colors is one of the most important things in graphic design. Color affects visual hierarchy and legibility of type, so it’s important to choose the right colors, and not just the expected ones. In an infographic, the background should blend perfectly with the illustrations. In this case, the illustrations looked dull against a white background and looked ugly against a dark background.
I chose a light shade of gold (#f9ebb3) for the background. Then, I applied a granular pattern to the background layer and scaled it down to 51%. I also reduced the opacity to about 52%. The illustrations now look good against this background.
I opted for “academic” colors for the typography because they blend well with the background and the illustrations. We all know that contrast is king, and so I used mostly primary colors for the illustrations because they contrast well with the text blocks.
You can always get help from Adobe Kuler if you have trouble choosing colors for your design.
Typography
The typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text: its tone, its tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determine the possibilities of its typographic form. The typographer is to the text as the theatrical director is to the script and the musician is to the score.
— Robert Bringhurst
Use two or a maximum of three font types in a design. I chose Colaboarte Light for the programmers’ names and Calibri Italic for their descriptions. Both are sans-serif.
Within a single typeface family, variations in weight, width and style can vary the rhythm substantially, thus affecting communication. To control this, I italicized Calibri to a font size of 15 and kept the programmers’ names at 21. Alignment is flush-left. I also used Calibri for the descriptions of illustrations but gave it a different color to distinguish it from the descriptions of programmers. I chose the ChunkFive font for the numerical values in the illustrations.
Displaying Stats
To envision information — and what bright and splendid visions can result — is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art. The instruments are those of writing and typography, of managing large data sets and statistical analysis, of line and layout and color.
— Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
For years, we have been displaying information in bars graphs and pie charts. In fact, Edward Tufte coined the term “chartjunk” to refer to useless, uninformative or information-obscuring elements in quantitative displays. But this trend has shifted in recent times with the rise of infographics.
I opted for three different ways to display the statistics on programming languages. The Project Euler statistics are displayed in circles of different radii. The project is based on mathematical problems, and so displaying the statistics in geometric shapes was apt. The StackOverflow statistics are displayed as appearing in text editors of various sizes and colors, while the Tiobe Index statistics are displayed in terminals of various sizes and colors.
Final Thoughts
An infographic is all about displaying information in creative ways. The process of designing infographics can help us understand and implement certain graphic design principles much better than by designing for the Web alone. It’s all about applying the fundamental principles of design; we’ll always come up with better results if we can do that well.
Useful Links and Resources
Anatomy of an Infographic
Data Visualization and Infographic Resources
50 Most Stunning Examples of Data Visualization and Infographics
Also check out these related books:
Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information
(al)
Best Free Website Resources
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-website-resources.htm
Updated Wed, 06/02/2010 - 21:16 by chris.p
Here are a collection of free website resources. This list is angled at helping you run a website more efficiently. Please add more sites in the Comments and we will migrate them onto the page, if suitable.
The Best Internet Network Information Site
There are too many tools to describe here, but if you need to know anything about a web site, URL, email address or web routing then this is the place to go. The full toolset is now only available by paid subscription, but there are various free tools and trials here. This is the site the pros use.
http://www.dnsstuff.com
Scrutinize Your Web Site
This site brings together on one page, a whole range of web site validation tools.
http://www.craigcecil.com/checkyoursite.htm
Code Validation
This is the #1 site for web developers as it tells you if your code is correct or not.
http://validator.w3.org
CMS Resources
This site has good background, reviews and tutorials on website content management systems (WCMS). Also some of the best resources available on search penalties / website bans.
http://www.a3webtech.com/index.php/compare-cms.html
Free Service Validates Web Pages
Most web validation sites tend to either concentrate on syntactical validation or standards compliance. This site, which will check individual pages or whole sites, checks both. If all this sounds too tedious try the second link below.
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
http://posheika.info/whatevervalid/
What Your Web Site Really Looks Like to the User?
Every web developer curses about the interpretation and rendering differences of the different brwosers out there. What looks great in Firefox might be a total mess in IE. Oper, Safari and other might display your site differently too. It is a good habit to check what your site looks like in all these browsers. This Brwosershots.org offers such a service. Just enter the URL and you will be able to access screenshots of more than 70 browsers and broswer versions.
http://www.browsershots.org
What Your Web Site Really Looks Like to Search Engines?
Here you'll find an excellent free tool that shows you how your web site appears to a search engine crawler. Using the tool to browse some familiar sites is an educational experience. For example sites that enclose all their content in frames appear as totally blank. Yes, folks that's right; most search engine crawlers can't see inside frames. Don't take it too hard - at least you now know why your site has never been indexed ;>)
http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html
Free Web Page Content Monitoring
This is a free service that lets you know when the content of a web page you have designated has changed. There are a number of sites that offer this service but what impressed me was the fact that the email you receive notifying you of a change, also details exactly what has changed. This means that you don't have to visit the monitored site as all the information you want is in the email. This gets around a real problem with these services; you get notified of a change only to visit the site and discover the change is trivial.
http://www.watchthatpage.com
Everything You Wanted to Know About Cookies
Well not quite everything. This site covers the basics pretty well, has an excellent FAQ and gives good guidance on cookie removal but there's not much on the curly issues such as setting cookie management policies.
http://www.aboutcookies.org
Free HTML Tutorials
This site offers an excellent directory of HTML resources including many free tutorials. While at the site, check out their free HTML editor. I've not tried it but, based on the description, it sounds most impressive. If you try it, give me some feedback and I'll pass it on to other readers.
http://www.evrsoft.com/
Who Are You and Where Are You?
Yougetsignal.com offers very useful and interesting information about your connection and other helpul internet data. Your IP address, your Internet hub location, visual trace routes, Whois lookup, and, and, and. The list of tools seems endless. Definitely worth a check...
http://www.yougetsignal.com/
Updated Wed, 06/02/2010 - 21:16 by chris.p
Here are a collection of free website resources. This list is angled at helping you run a website more efficiently. Please add more sites in the Comments and we will migrate them onto the page, if suitable.
The Best Internet Network Information Site
There are too many tools to describe here, but if you need to know anything about a web site, URL, email address or web routing then this is the place to go. The full toolset is now only available by paid subscription, but there are various free tools and trials here. This is the site the pros use.
http://www.dnsstuff.com
Scrutinize Your Web Site
This site brings together on one page, a whole range of web site validation tools.
http://www.craigcecil.com/checkyoursite.htm
Code Validation
This is the #1 site for web developers as it tells you if your code is correct or not.
http://validator.w3.org
CMS Resources
This site has good background, reviews and tutorials on website content management systems (WCMS). Also some of the best resources available on search penalties / website bans.
http://www.a3webtech.com/index.php/compare-cms.html
Free Service Validates Web Pages
Most web validation sites tend to either concentrate on syntactical validation or standards compliance. This site, which will check individual pages or whole sites, checks both. If all this sounds too tedious try the second link below.
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
http://posheika.info/whatevervalid/
What Your Web Site Really Looks Like to the User?
Every web developer curses about the interpretation and rendering differences of the different brwosers out there. What looks great in Firefox might be a total mess in IE. Oper, Safari and other might display your site differently too. It is a good habit to check what your site looks like in all these browsers. This Brwosershots.org offers such a service. Just enter the URL and you will be able to access screenshots of more than 70 browsers and broswer versions.
http://www.browsershots.org
What Your Web Site Really Looks Like to Search Engines?
Here you'll find an excellent free tool that shows you how your web site appears to a search engine crawler. Using the tool to browse some familiar sites is an educational experience. For example sites that enclose all their content in frames appear as totally blank. Yes, folks that's right; most search engine crawlers can't see inside frames. Don't take it too hard - at least you now know why your site has never been indexed ;>)
http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html
Free Web Page Content Monitoring
This is a free service that lets you know when the content of a web page you have designated has changed. There are a number of sites that offer this service but what impressed me was the fact that the email you receive notifying you of a change, also details exactly what has changed. This means that you don't have to visit the monitored site as all the information you want is in the email. This gets around a real problem with these services; you get notified of a change only to visit the site and discover the change is trivial.
http://www.watchthatpage.com
Everything You Wanted to Know About Cookies
Well not quite everything. This site covers the basics pretty well, has an excellent FAQ and gives good guidance on cookie removal but there's not much on the curly issues such as setting cookie management policies.
http://www.aboutcookies.org
Free HTML Tutorials
This site offers an excellent directory of HTML resources including many free tutorials. While at the site, check out their free HTML editor. I've not tried it but, based on the description, it sounds most impressive. If you try it, give me some feedback and I'll pass it on to other readers.
http://www.evrsoft.com/
Who Are You and Where Are You?
Yougetsignal.com offers very useful and interesting information about your connection and other helpul internet data. Your IP address, your Internet hub location, visual trace routes, Whois lookup, and, and, and. The list of tools seems endless. Definitely worth a check...
http://www.yougetsignal.com/
The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 1: The Toolbox
Photoshop is one of the most intimidating programs for any beginner, but has powerful image editing ability for any skill level. Look through a fresh install of CS5, and learn the basic tools and info to help you get started.
Out of the box, this is what your default CS5 installation will look like. It looks even more intimidating than older versions, so let's spend a few minutes taking a basic look around the program, demystify it, and get you editing your photographs, painting, or whatever you might want to do with your fresh install.
Starting your Custom Workspace
You're going to want to move your panels and palettes around in an effort to get comfortable with your new install. In this area of your screen, you'll see various "Workspaces," which are the various arrangements of said palettes and panels. This can be helpful, because you might want a different arrangement for editing photos than you'll use if you are also a painter or designer.
CS5 autosaves your changes to your workspaces, so create a new, custom one to play around in. You can always edit your stock Workspaces to fit your liking later.
Click the 
to bring up the contextual menu. Create a "New Workspace" and name it anything you like. Use your own name, or anything that suits you. Make certain to pick "Keyboard Shortcuts" and "Menus" as you can edit both of them and tie them to your workspace.
Click your new workspace and feel free to play around in it.
Customizing the Toolbox
 | The toolbox is where you get all your mouse or cursor-based tools. By default, it is locked to the side of the screen in a panel area. By clicking the  arrow, you can bring up a condensed version in your panel. The is a toggle, that will switch between the two versions.You can also click and drag the to create a "free floating" version of the toolbox. |
 | The aforementioned double column format of the toolbox. Now that we've identified that we can change the shape of the toolbox, let's briefly look at what's available in it. |
The Options Palette
At the top of your screen, directly under your menus, you'll see the options palette. When you select different tools, you'll have the various options you can edit here. Each tool is complex without these options, and can become extremely powerful with knowledge of its options.
What's in the Toolbox?
 | Rectangular Marquee Tool: Shortcut key  . The basic selection tool, marquee, AKA "Marching Ants" allows you to select areas of layers or flattened photographs. Shift + M will cycle through to the various other selection tools, including the ellipse tool. You can hold Shift while drawing marquees to create squares. |
 | Move Tool: Shortcut key  . The basic move tool. Once you select an area, choose the move tool to move it around. You can also move whole layers without selecting them. |
 | Lasso Tool: Shortcut key  . Another selection tool, allows you to draw quick, shaped selections around parts of your image. Shift + L will cycle through the alternate lasso tools, including Polygonal Lasso and Magnetic Lasso tools. |
 | Quick Selection Tool: Shortcut key  . A rough selection tool that works like a paintbrush. Brush around in an area, and Photoshop will read your image and try and guess what you're trying to select. Press Shift + W to get the indispensible magic wand tool, which is a Bucket Fill or Flood style tool for selections. |
 | Crop Tool: Shortcut key  . Draws rectangular selections, then cuts your image down to the rectangle you draw. Very useful for straightening crooked images. Press Shift + C to pick the Slice Tool and Slice Select tools, useful for creating multiple images from a single one, usually for web content. |
 | Eyedropper Tool: Shortcut key  . Picks a color from any document you have open. Shift + I will cycle through the tools: Color Sampler, Ruler, and Note Tool. |
 | Spot Healing Brush Tool: Shortcut key  . Useful for erasing blemishes, scratches or unwanted noise from images automatically by painting over them. Press Shift + J to find the Healing Brush, Patch Tool, and Red Eye tools. |
 | Brush Tool: Shortcut key  . The single most complex tool in the toolbox. Many articles on the brush tool to come, but for now, paint with left mouse clicks, and select different brush styles with right mouse clicks. Shift + B cycles through to the Pencil, Color Replacement Tool, and Mixer Brushes, all worth experimentation. |
 | Clone Stamp Tool: Shortcut key  . Another photo-editing brush, Alt and Click to set a "Source" and then paint with the Left mouse button to copy from your source. Shift + S also gives you the pattern stamp tool. |
 | History Brush Tool: Shortcut key  . Working in tandem with your History Palette, you can paint "back in time," so to speak. Use a filter, then selectively undo parts of it with the History Brush. The Art History Brush is buried underneath here, accessible with a Shift + Y. |
 | Eraser Tool: Shortcut key  . Erases layers to transparency, and locked or Background Layers down to the Background Color. Shift + E will cycle through the Magic Eraser and the Background Eraser tool. |
 | Gradient Tool: Shortcut key  . Clicking and dragging will fill your layer with a basic gradient using your foreground and background tools. The options palette has a lot of different gradients to use. Hidden under the Gradient Tool is the Paint Bucket Tool. Shift + G will cycle through to it. Use the Paint Bucket to fill areas of similar color in your image. |
 | Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools: By default, no shortcut key. These are three photo editing tools that do exactly what they say. Smudge, in particular, can create excellent painterly effects in your images. Left click and hold to bring up the contextual menu and pick the "buried" Sharpen and Smudge tools. |
 | Dodge and Burn Tools: Shortcut key  . Dodge and Burn are photo editing tools that lighten and darken images, respectively. This tool is not the zoom tool, as confusing as it may look. Shift + O cycles between the two of them. |
 | Pen Tool: Shortcut key  . A nightmarish frustration for beginner users, the Pen Tool is tough to get used to, but a favorite of Photoshop Pros. Similar to the Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator, works in tandem with the Paths Palette. Shift + P will give you alternate Pen tools related to working with paths. |
 | Type Tool: Shortcut key  . Allows you to set typography, by default horizonally. Shift + T will give you the Vertical Type Tool, as well as the Type Mask Tools. |
 | Path Selection and Direct Selection Tools: Shortcut key  . More tools made for editing paths in the path palette. Ignore unless you're trying to learn the Pen Tool. Path selection picks whole paths, while Direct Selection picks line segments or points within paths. Cycle with Shift + A. |
 | Custom Shape Tool: Shortcut key  . Bizarre tool for creating clipart type vector shapes from a library in the options palette. Shift + U will also give you the more helpful tools for rectangles, polygons, and lines, all helpful for learning paths in Photoshop without suffering through the pen tool. |
 | Zoom Tool: Shortcut key  . Yes, this is the real zoom tool and not the Dodge tool. Zoom in with left clicks, zoom out with ALT plus Left Clicks. This is likely the most basic tool in the toolbox. |
 | Hand Tool: Shortcut key  . Scrolls your document without using the scrollwheel or scroll arrows. Press and hold the Space Bar at any time to use the quick Hand Tool, release Space to return to your previous tool. |
 | Background/Foreground: The active colors you are painting with. The top color is Foreground, the back Background.  swaps the two colors.  reverts them to the default colors, black and white. |
 | Quick Mask Mode: Shortcut key  . An alternate mode for creating complex selections with the Brush, Eraser, and Paint Bucket tools. The Q key toggles to and from Quick Mask Mode. |
Stick with How-To Geek for the next section of the HTG Guide to Starting With Photoshop, where we'll go beyond the cursor tools, and go into the panels, palettes, menus, and filters that make Photoshop seem so complicated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)