Today I found two links I would like to share with you:

The first one is from Chris, the writer behind Mixing Memory. He had a closer look at the Color Opponency in Synaesthesia. People with Synaesthesia perceive colors even when looking at black letters and numbers. Some researchers discovered now, that if you show such persons wrongly colored color-names (e.g. red) they have very different reaction times than people with no Synaesthesia.

The second link is for web publishers. Skye claims that you have to Check Your Link Colors – You May Need to Redecorate! This is not only true for professional web designers but also for any blogger running a free blog software. If you are interested in accessibility you might enjoy her weblog about all access blogging .

Adam from Criteria Fieldwork contacted me today. They are looking for people who would like to join a market research study into internet use, and it’s accessibility for individuals, who have certain impairments, that may or may not effect their use of the web.

Specifically they are looking for the following types of people:

• Visually impaired individuals.
• Individuals who have Dyslexia.
• Individuals that have mobility impairments.

I suppose at least some readers of Colblindor best match into the first group. Unfortunately I’m not living on the island and as the interviews take place in a North London location, or in your home/office close to this, I can’t join. But maybe you have some time this Thursday 14th, Friday 15th and Monday 18th. The research will consist of one-to one interviews that will last up to one hour.

Not forget to mention you get a thank you cash out of £40.00.

Unfortunately it is the nature of market research that we are unable to disclose the end goal/ purpose of the research to potential. As we like each participant to have an un biased approach when taking part.

So we won’t find out more about this study. But if you like to see what it is all about and are living in the area, just either add a comment to this article or contact me directly. I’ll get you in touch with Adam.

This is already the fourth issue of Carnival of Colors. Please welcome the contributors and dive into the beautiful world of colors.

For the Carnival of Colors IV we have again some great submission which I would like to share with you. And be prepared for the next time, because for the first time Carnival of Colors will be hosted not by Colblindor but by the famous birdwatcher Mike Bergin from 10,000 Birds.

Strolling

« While Irina was at a cafeteria she found this little nice garden. Strolling through it she took some really colorful pictures and realized, that she’s Surrounded by Beauty. This doesn’t really look like living dangerously to me does it? »

« You can see some more beautiful colors at Spring Days on the Riverbank. Riversider, the author of the Ribble Cycle Diaries, says “The predominant colour here is green”. It definitely is, but I can spot many more nice colors there. »

« To take some beautiful and colorful pictures you don’t have to go far. Christopher from Photographer’s Journey found the Colors of the Rainbow just around the corner. »

« Going round the corner and strolling pass a florist, don’t pick the red flowers for your beloved, because this are just Guy Colors. Doug knows more about it at Doug Green’s Garden, saying, “A politically incorrect but true story about garden flower colors.” »

« So you shouldn’t pick the red flowers but what about seeing red while you are collecting tokens. Alejna knows more about all the red folks out there. »

« I suppose Mike was strolling around almost a bit too long tonight. Watching maybe some late-night birds out of his 10,000 Birds. But anyway, it’s never to late to jump on the boat. And the birds which ‘Color me Rosy‘ just fit in nicely into this series. »

« Special entry by Suzan: Just read her story about the Blue Scratch and learn more about it, her and her blogstory at Behind the Politeness of It All. »

A great thanks to all the contributors. Stay tuned for the next release and join in whenever you have something to say about colors. You can find everything you have to know about the carnival at Carnival of Colors or just send me a note including the link to your article to be included in the next upcoming issue.

I was getting blogtipped last month by Scott from Standardzilla which was really a surprise—even if he still owes me a real tip. This first of the month I would like to keep the ball rolling.

Blogtipping was brought into being by Easton from Business Blogwire. It’s more than a year old and his doing it every first day of the month. So what is blogtipping?

• surprise a fellow blogger
• point out three great things you enjoy
• share a tip

As I said, I would like to pick it up and do my first blogtipping today on June 1st. I have the following blogs ready for you and hopefully as a surprise for them:

Number one: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

• Really great tips on how to become a good presenter and improve your presentation skills.
• Garr has always some great examples ready to emphasize his statements. He also is linking up to every other bits of information.
• Insights into to Japanese culture and work life.
• Tip: The articles are for my feeling often to long. I very much like reading them and learn new stuff through them, but often struggle to read through the whole posts. I personally would prefer some shorter articles.

Number two: Eye on DNA — How’s it going to change your life? by Lei Hsien-Hsien

• This is definitely the place to learn the latest about DNA, genes, the genome and more.
• Covers everything on the news and doesn’t forget any interesting links.
• She is really a great back-linker and shares links to everybody who linked to her—and a lot more.
• Tip: On certain days it’s just to much information coming in through Eye on DNA. I would prefer some less posting; but what could be dropped?

The last one is a blog written in German and therefore I’m writing the next few lines also in German.

Nummer drei: pixelgraphix von Manuela Hoffmann

• Interessante Tipps und Tricks aus der Online- und Webdesignerwelt.
• Sehr gute Verlinkung auf weiterführende Informationen, Websites, Downloads und Originalartikel.
• Kurze und prägnante Artikel wie zum Beispiel Farbfehlsichtigkeit mit Color Oracle simulieren.
• Tip: Ich wünsche mir manchmal etwas mehr ‘persönliche Meinung’ und weniger ‘Zusammenfassung’ in den Artikeln, denn ich verlasse mich gerne auf den Rat der Expertin.

That was it for this time. Maybe I’ll pick it up again in the future to have a nice little gift for some fellow bloggers.

For the third issue of Carnival of Colors we leave the hitherto topic trace of color names to sally out some new fields.

As there are so many colors around us every day and every minute—if you don’t close your eyes—I would like to encourage you to walk around with Open Eyes this time.

The following six submissions to Carnival of Colors III are based on a broad range of topics. But all of them can teach you how to open your eyes to colors in a certain way. Enjoy.

Open Eyes

« Verlee gives us an introduction into Choosing color combinations and shares the best clue for the source of your color inspiration: Always keep your eyes open for color combinations that you like. Follow it and read more of her inspirations at Verlee’s blog »

« Michael digs even deeper into color combinations for a Room Color and How it Affects your Mood. He concludes that this is a good starting point in your search for a paint color. So open your eyes and feel your colored moods and maybe some more tips from freshome will help you to find the right color for you. »

« Maybe you don’t like to refresh your rooms with a new paint but just with some great color photographs. You can learn from Christopher How to use color in your photographs. Again you should open your eyes for the color in your life to take some great shots on your personal Photographer’s Journey »

« When Sassy from The Mommy Journals was trying out some macro photography shots, she definitely had to open her eyes to find this small imprint on her bottle of green tea about the Ingredient: natural color. What?? An industry gag about artificially added natural color, just to catch the latest wave of a more nature friendly mindset? »

« Mike says: One needn’t be restricted to the culinary arena to enjoy the pairing of wine and bird. I recommend that you start looking outside your kitchen for such delights. Not only one from his 10,000 birds can say Color Me Vinaceous—which means either wine-colored or containing wine. Reading through the article lets me think, it’s both: Bird watchers containing wine naming birds wine-colored. »

« If you had to much of red-wine the Germans would say you are blue. So this is the last call to open your eyes. Watch out for blue neighbors, blue toys or other blue heroes. Alejna is Collecting Tokens and did put together a list of blue-skinned, blue-furred or in any way blue creatures. It’s just so blue. »

Stay tuned for the next release of Carnival of Colors which will be released the first of next month. If you would like to contribute just contact me or visit the Carnival of Colors Blog Carnival Page.

Only four days to go until the next issue of Carnival of Colors will be published. If you are a blogger and have a recent article in some way related to colors, I would love to see you joining in.

This blog carnival is open to everybody. Every article not older than two months and in some way related to the broadly defined topic of colors is welcome.

This carnival gives you the opportunity to find others thinking, writing and painting with color and of course through your participation you open the doors for new visitors on your blog, who might like to even stay around and find out more about what you have to say.

If you would like to join, it’s never to late—only after publishing. You can either send me a note through my contact page, including the link to your article or submit your post through the Carnival of Colors homepage at blogcarnival.com.

Previous releases of Carnival of Colors:

• April 2007 — Carnival of Colors II – Green
• March 2007 — Carnival of Colors I – Blue

Don’t hesitate and join in for the next issue of Carnival of Colors. It will be published on the 1st of May 2007.

This guys call to fight for love in the colour revolution. Their weblog is all about colors and this means it is in some way a counterpart of Colblindor.

But yesterday they were really brave. They took a little trip into the world of color blindness and shared some information about Protanopia which is also called red-blindness (a subtype of red-green color blindness).

If you would like to learn more about the lovely world of colors visit their weblog called COLOURlovers. Their article about Protanopia can be found here. And if you like, you can even compare it with my own article about Protanopia (attention: self-advertisement :-).

I would like to welcome everybody to the second edition of Carnival of Colors. This time we could double the entry count and have now four interesting topics to look at. If this carnival keeps growing at this rate, it could get really big—so stay tuned.

Last time we looked at the color Blue. This time we move on at the color circle to the color Green and have a look at it from very different perspectives.

Green

« Green is the color that elicits relaxation. – This is the closing note of Deborah, known as Dr. Deb, in her contribution Want To Succeed? Don’t See Red. Luckily enough I am red-green colorblind and can’t really be distracted by neither. »

« Maureen presents Components Of A “Green” Home while she is looking forward into retirement and gets prepared for it. In her Empty Nest she moves the color Green into the environmental perspective. »

« You got me Mike. Color Me Fulvous could simply be renamed into Color Me Green because there is no difference to me between the yellow-brown color fulvous and green. That’s maybe why I will unfortunately never spot your 10,000 Birds. »

« After all this maybe Green is your choice of color? Karen writes about The Perception of Life; a perception which is not only black and white. Please, make your choice and Live The Power. »

Stay tuned for the next release of Carnival of Colors which will be released the first of next month. If you would like to contribute just contact me or visit the Carnival of Colors Blog Carnival Page.

A few weeks ago I decided to start my own blog carnival on a very broadly defined topic: Carnival of Colors.

Whenever you write something on your weblog in any way related to colors which you would like to include into the next release of this carnival just contact me through the contact page.

The first release of this carnival isn’t that big. I received only two valuable contributions which sums up to three when counting my post as well. Carnival of Colors I is issued under the topic…

Blue

« Thinking about blue birds there is one which comes to my mind instantly, the Blue Tit, about which I just learned that its scientific name is parus caeruleus and it is well known in Europe but quite exotic in America. If you want to learn more about blueish birds and the term cerulean visit Color Me Cerulean posted at 10,000 Birds from Mike Bergin. »

« Maybe you sometimes feel blue and are looking for a nice change. Why not give it a go by creating your own scrapbook? Check out the secrets of Design Team Member – Pam Aylor at BeyondPaper.net and find your own favorite layouts. »

« My red-green color blindness gives me a lot of difficulties in naming colors. But one color I’m always quite certain about is blue which looks quite different to all other colors even to my eyes. Have a look at the Ishihara Plates Color Blindness Test here at Colblindor to learn which colors you can distinguish best — or maybe not at all. »

This was the first issue of Carnival of Colors. I hope you enjoyed it despite its shortness. See you again at Carnival of Colors II the first of next month.

It was exactly one year ago when I started blogging in the name of Colblindor. Well it wasn’t really the start of my blogging career. I started a few weeks earlier writing about everything and nothing. But soon I realized that this wasn’t my way in blogging and at this point Colblindor was born.

First of all I was looking around for a topic to write about. A topic I new something about, I had a personal connection and something that wasn’t covered by a lot of others. And the search of a topic ended up at color blindness.

The first time was tough. I had to do a lot of research, didn’t know how to write blog posts and was kneeling right into it, posting around once a day. It was a good time where I learned a lot about color blindness, blogging and a lot more. A lot of tests with designs, plugins, communities and a lot more followed which filled my everyday life besides job and family.

After a few month I was quite happy with what I achieved but an event let me stop writing for several month. We bought a house. This took up a lot of time, effort and work.

But after a few months of hard work I started again with blogging. Why? Because I missed it, I needed again a change and I just wanted to come back. My comeback wasn’t that strong. I posted only a few times a month and slowly kept it going.

Again a few months later visitor numbers started to increase and I started even to earn some money through advertisement. So I decided to give it another try and start posting at least two times a week. It’s not that easy for me because there is a lot to do besides writing about color blindness: job, family, renovating our house, sport and so on.

And that’s where I am at the moment and as a reward I can see the traffic counts increase.

Some facts as of 21st February 2007:

• 132 posts
• 141 comments (with over 35’000 rejected by Akismet)
• Average of 170 unique visitors a day
• Average of 378 pageviews a day
• 36 RSS subscriptions
• Total earnings of 92$

Most popular articles:

• Color Blindness Test by Dr Shinobu Ishihara
• Tritanopia – Blue-Yellow Color Blindness
• Color Arrangement Tests
• Chromosomes Involved in Color Blindness
• Daltonism – Named after John Dalton
• Color Blindness Testing Poster for Children

BTW I constructed the name Colblindor while looking for a unique naming for my weblog. I just played around with the words color and blind. And I am still quite happy with the brand I created. As happy as I hopefully soon will switch to color-blindness.com.