Let’s take a trip back in time. The year is 1994, and two tech giants are going to war over copyright. They are Microsoft and Apple, and they are fighting over a copyright claim by Apple over Microsoft and HP’s use of graphical user interface elements from the Macintosh OS. The resulting court case, Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, ended with a ruling in Microsoft’s favor, mostly due to a contractual license agreement between the two.

The matter was never fully settled by the case though. Instead, negotiations that took place several years later resulted in the two companies agreeing to make Internet Explorer Mac’s default browser. Microsoft also agreed to keep developing Office for the Mac. Most importantly though, Microsoft invested $150 million into Apple to keep it afloat.

This series of events, which happened while Steve Jobs was being reinstated as the CEO of Apple, set the stage for what is happening today between Microsoft, Apple, and Google. While Microsoft and Apple are still bitter rivals, several recent events have inadvertently brought them closer together in order to fight their common enemy: Google.

The phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes to mind. Let’s explore how we got to this tipping point.

Android: Google Enters Apple’s Turf

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s Board of Directors in 2006, the move made perfect sense. Here’s what Apple said about Eric in its original announcement:

“Eric’s 20 years of experience as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and technologist give him a well-seasoned perspective which perfectly complements Google’s needs as a young and rapidly growing company with a unique corporate culture.”

At that time, Google wasn’t in mobile, hardware, operating systems, or browsers. Now Google is directly competing with Apple through the Nexus One, Google Chrome, Chrome OS, and even possibly in the tablet computer space.

It all started with Android, though. Back in August 2007, details began to leak about Google building a mobile OS or even a GPhone. It turned out to be Android, the open-source mobile OS that is now the fastest growing smartphone OS on the market.

At first, Android didn’t pose much of a threat, but as more phones utilized the software, the relationship between Google and Apple became very uncomfortable. Eric Schmidt sat out board meetings discussing the iPhone due to conflict of interest, but the relationship only eroded from there.

Watershed Moment: Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board

Tensions between the two companies grew worse after Apple rejected Google Voice as an app on the iPhone.

The resulting FCC inquiry, along with an FTC investigation and the announcement of Google Chrome OS were just too much. On August 3rd, 2009, Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s Board of Directors.

In retrospect, this was the moment when Apple, Google, and the rest of the world realized that the two companies could no longer be allies. Google’s expanding interest outside of search was pouring over into Apple’s domain on multiple fronts. With the search giant free of its Apple association, it could go all-out on its agenda to bring more people onto the web for longer (read the Google Revenue Equation to learn why).

The culmination of the breaking of the Google-Apple alliance? It was the release of the Nexus One, a direct competitor to Apple’s lucrative iPhone.

Recent Events: Apple and Microsoft Talk Bing

Yesterday we learned that Apple and Microsoft are in talks to make Bing the default search engine for the iPhone. While we’ve heard this rumor before, the talk seems to be heating up. Most of our readers expressed their dismay or shock over the potential deal, some questioning why Apple would ever team up with Microsoft over Google.

Really though, the deal makes perfect sense, given the new competitive landscape. Earlier today, Jim Goldman at CNBC provided some interesting new information on the dynamics of the Apple-Google-Microsoft relationship. According to his source, Steve Jobs hates Eric Schmidt (it wouldn’t surprise us) and Microsoft is offering a bigger cut of iPhone search revenues than Google.

While Microsoft and Apple’s relationship grew cold after the Redmond, WA company bailed Apple Computer out, it never vanished. Moreover, Steve knows that he can work with Microsoft, especially if it helps Microsoft hurt Google.

Android has become the de-facto alternative to the iPhone OS, and the Nexus One is closest thing yet to a smartphone that can stand up to the iPhone’s dominance. While Microsoft and Apple are still in competition over Mac vs. PC, Apple clearly believes that its future isn’t just in computers, but in other Internet devices such as the iPhone and the fabled Apple Tablet. Microsoft poses far less of a threat in these areas than Google does.

It’s time to call it: Google is now Apple’s greatest enemy. Soon Google will be entering its OS turf with Chrome OS. Apple increasingly sees Google as a major competitor over the next few years. While the company Steve built doesn’t particularly like Microsoft, it knows that it has to work with the lesser of two evils in order to succeed.

Say hello to the new dynamic. It’s Apple + Microsoft vs. Google. May the new battle begin.

Tags: apple, bing, business news, Column, Google, google search, iphone, microsoft, Opinion, social media, trending

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The Kaiser Family Foundation has the results in from its latest media usage study, and it was enough to shock the authors.

The last time the Foundation looked at the media usage of 8- to 18-year-olds was five years ago, when they were at just shy of six and a half hours of media consumption per day. At that point, the study authors felt that they must have hit a ceiling on media usage.

Not so, according to the latest study, which puts the average up more than an hour to upwards of seven and a half hours per day. Plus, for the first time, time spent watching TV actually dropped in favor of other forms of media, including listening to music, using a computer, playing video games, reading print publications and watching movies.

Moreover, because so many of the kids are multitasking by consuming multiple forms of media at the same time, they actually end up consuming closer to 11 hours’ worth of media content within that seven and half-hour span. Nor do those hours include the time kids are spending talking on their cell phones (half an hour) or sending text messages (an hour and a half).

Director of the Center on Media and Child Health and Boston pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich pointed to the ubiquity of media usage as an indicator that it may be too late to continue debating the question about whether media was a positive or negative influence on children’s environment. Instead, media may have become essentially “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.”

What do you think of the study results? Parents out there — have you noticed your children consuming more media over the past five years? Do you set any limitations or place any guidelines surrounding your kids’ media usage?

[image credit: Diego Cupolo]

Tags: Children, Film, media, music, social media, studies, technology, tv, video games

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There are still a lot of details to be worked out from the sound of it, and since the change won’t go into effect for a year, maybe they will have enough time to get it right. However, publishers have been trying to get this right for years already, and are still struggling to find that true answer. You have to wonder, what makes them think they can get the details ironed out by then?

It would be one thing to announce it and start doing it. Other publications do this, but a year is an incredibly long time in the online world. There are so many things that could happen and questions that may still remain unanswered in the online news industry. News Corp. for example, has set off a firestorm over whether or not people should be able to freely link to free content on the web. There are just so many things that come into play that it seems rather strange to assume everything will fall into place a year from now. Who knows what condition the industry will be in by then? Publications that are using paid models right now may decide it’s not working and switch to a different plan. To reiterate, a year is a long time, particularly in an industry with so many question marks.

"This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going to answer so many of the questions that we all care about," Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper is quoted as saying. "We can’t get this halfway right or three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really right."

I would say the thought process has been in motion for some time, and it’s hard to imagine setting a deadline for the discussion to wrap up in such a timeframe. Does setting such a deadline suggest a hint of desperation? The Times says that any changes will be closely watched by other publishers of online content, and there is no doubt that this will indeed be the case.

The publication refers to Nielsen Online and analysts’ data indicating that NYTimes.com is "by far" the most popular newspaper site in the country with over 17 million readers a month in the U.S. alone.

Do you read the New York Times? Would you pay for frequent access or get your news from other sources? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> New York Time’s Could Announce Paid Model This Week

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Is This the Answer for Online News Revenue?

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For those unfamiliar with Boot Camp, it’s the dual-booting tool that allows Mac users to install to and boot Windows partitions from their hard drives, and this update gives Mac users looking to dual-boot Windows 7 something to be happy about. Specifically:

This update adds support for Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate), addresses issues with the Apple trackpad, turns off the red digital audio port LED on laptop computers when it is not being used, and supports the Apple wireless keyboard and Apple Magic mouse.

Boot Camp is a free download, requires Mac OS X.

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Photo by el monstrito.

Want to do something nice for your loved ones? Keep in touch with them more often. If you’ve got friends or family members who aren’t so good about online communication, these apps and tips make video chat, simplified email, and photo sharing easier to do on a regular basis.

Making a web connection isn’t about “fixing” a relative’s computer—though that’s not a bad idea, next time you’re visiting. It’s about lowering the barriers for communication, for both yourself and the person on the other end, so you can get used to keeping in touch through the easiest available methods.

If it’s that hard for you, it’s doubly hard for a person who didn’t constantly have a computer in front of them their whole careers. There are, thankfully, solutions that don’t require either side to invest far too much time and effort to get started with. The reward is time well spent with far-off family members, which will certainly pay dividends for a long time to come.

Set up their computer

The apps we want to use to connect are pretty easy to install, for the most part. But if sending a bunch of download links over email to a relative isn’t a realistic option, you can do the setting up yourself, from nearly anywhere in the world, with minimal pain. We’ve previously provided an in-depth list of tools for giving tech support or grabbing files from any system, but below are the two easiest solutions. (We’re not even going to pretend your relatives are using Linux, but, if they are, see if you can walk them through connecting to your reverse VNC setup.)

CrossLoop: (Windows) The How-To Geek loves this little remote-control app, and for good reason: It’s a VNC remote control app without all the back-end fiddling (“Do you know your IP address, Uncle Robert? Okay, type ‘cmd’ into the start bar …”). The client only has to install the software and tell you their access code, and you run the same app and connect from your end. The Geek’s site detailed the connection in a screenshot tour. It’s secure enough for a one-shot Skype setup or settings fiddling, because it requires a fairly complex code and doesn’t persist on the computer beyond your session and the next time they shut down.

LogMeIn Free: (Windows/Mac) It’s another fancy, all-in-one VNC client, but it works between PCs and Macs. Doesn’t offer the remote file transfer of CrossLoop, and is just a little more complicated for the relative you’re having install it to get going with it. Still, it claims and (generally) delivers “two-minute setup,” and, though intended for accessing your own home computer at the office and elsewhere, it’s still works as a tech support tool. There’s also LogMeIn Express, which is even more simple, fast, and support-oriented.

Make their system more accessible

If you’ve got remote access to a relatives’ computer, you can also make it easier for them to use. Bigger type, screen magnification, higher contrast themes, and other tools can make the computer an easier place to navigate for older relatives, but they might never discover those options on their own.

You can read up on the built-in accessibility tools inside OS X, in Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Set up video chat

These days, nearly every laptop has a webcam and microphone built in, and USB-connected webcams are cheap and easy to set up. Video chat is a lot more personal than a phone call, and feels like the next best thing to jumping in your car and visiting. (It’s especially good for keeping up with the grandkids, nieces, and nephews as they continue to grow up so fast.)

Skype is the go-to pick for video chat—it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it’s been designed to be fairly easy to install and get started without having to dive into the preferences and configuration settings. If you’re not there, either in-person or remotely, most computer users can set up Skype just by clicking Next, Next, OK all the way through the installation process, minus one pause to set up an account. They’ll end up with Skype automatically starting and logging them in when their computer boots into Windows, but that’s something you can undo later, or not worry too much about if they’ve got a decently new system.

If most of your relatives have Macs, iChat is probably easier to set up and use than Skype. It is, however, limited to Macs, and so a fairly limiting option for families not entirely descended from typeface designers (Kidding!).

If Skype isn’t going to work for your relatives, in terms of software setup, try the web-based TokBox. It’s free for both parties, it’s one of our readers’ favorite video chat applications, and the quality is surprisingly good for a web-based client. You can sign up your relative for an account ahead of time, then simply email them a link to the chat you’re initiating with them, along with their username and password.

Last, Gmail’s video chat functionality installs via a browser plug-in and works surprisingly well, too—provided everyone involved has a Gmail account.

Better email for everyone

You don’t always have time, or the right hair, to jump into a video chat. Sending an email is probably second nature to you, but some relatives hate their email—and you would, too, if you had it their way. Help them reconnect with the (type)written word.

The New York Times recommends a stripped-down email service called PawPawMail for computer unsavvy relatives, which any more tech-patient relative can set up for the email account that they’ve likely received from their cable, DSL, or other internet provider. It’s a nice, simplified interface for email, and probably far easier to use than Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or even Mail.app for Mac—the picture aggregation is a nice touch. Then again, it’s also $5 per month, so you’ll want to test it out before committing.

My own mother also grew to loathe desktop email clients, especially when Verizon tech support would have to talk her through SMTP setup when she spent time at our summer camp. The Verizon webmail interface just wasn’t cutting it, either. So, using Gina’s guide to consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and Gmail’s mail and contact importer, I set her up with a Gmail account that used her same password and, more importantly, sent and received email transparently through Verizon.net. Her friends didn’t have to update their address books, and once she saw the magic of auto-complete, as-you-type contact names, she was hooked. I also set up sidebar labels, hooked to filters, that show her emails from her children, automatic notices of bills due, Netflix updates, and so on.

Photo sharing

My in-laws have a desktop computer in the living room, as well as a laptop. My wife and I would only occasionally receive digital photos from them, and they’d either be gigantic, 3 MB-each files, or tiny thumbnails forwarded from a photo developing service. While at their house at Thanksgiving, I showed them the Picasa desktop software (available on Windows and Macs), particularly the clever facial recognition and easy collage features. I set it up on their system, set it to always watch their desktop, downloads, and pictures folder, and returned home.

When we returned for the holidays, they had a special gift prepared for a son of theirs: a T-shirt featuring a photo collage of family members, assembled and ordered right from Picasa. I was pretty floored; these were folks I’ve long been the Computer Explainer for, but Picasa was intuitive enough for them to manage on their own, even into the advanced features. The main thing that required a little explanation was the somewhat quirky “holding”/thumbtack system, and its difference from “Starred” photos, but other than that, it’s a perfect photo simplifier: the left-hand folders are albums that show up automatically, the main window is filled with pictures, and photos are automatically knocked into manageable but visible size for emailing—and it’s even easier if you set up a Gmail holder account for the user.

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Pour aller plus loin : d’autres vidéos en time-lapse

Previously on Fubiz

• Nike True City
• Physalia Concept
• Elene Usdin

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Hi woorkuppers, this is Stefano. I’m new on woorkup, from now I will start writing posts about Social Media highlighting specific topics (Marketing, Strategies, Monitoring, Trends). So let’s start. This time I’d like to show my personal playlist of the best 2009 Social Media Presentations. I don’t like very long lists so I selected just 10 presentations found on SlideShare. Enjoy!

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

The Science Of ReTweets

Your Social Media Strategy Won’t Save You

Old Media vs. New Media

Real Time Is *Not* Fast Enough: Three Strategies For Companies To Get Ahead

Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)

Do Brands Need Agencies? | Face Forum, Nov 09

Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi

9 Ways Your Business Could Be Using Social Media But Probably Isnt

22 Social Media Trends

Maybe I forgot something great, but I’m glad to know your favorite presentations about these topics.

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Sometimes, when you find some nice sceneries, and you would like them to be arranged happening in the same time. This tutorial is such a good combination example to show a man holding a gun and a broken glass. It seems like two different scenes happening together.

(View This Tutorial)

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To get started with the web-based sleep tracking service, sign up for a free account. You can start entering sleep data right away, including backdating entries to include info from nights past. Record the approximate time you fell asleep, the time you woke up, and the quality of your sleep each night; Yawnlog will do the rest. You can even add notes to each entry if you want to keep track of variables like how medication you’re taking might be affecting your slumber.

Yawnlog gives you an overview of your daily and average sleep debt (if any), as well as an average of how much you sleep per night and how close you are to meeting your nightly sleep goals. To see how your numbers compare, Yawnlog lets you connect with other users so you can see how much sleep time you get compared to your friends. You can make your profile and data public so others can find you, or mark it private so it’s accessible only to you.

Yawnlog isn’t as robust as some of the other sleep tracking apps we’ve mentioned, but it’s a great way to get some insight into what affects your sleep and what kinds of overall slumber habits you’re developing.

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If you just want a PDF of a given URL at a certain time, PDFmyURL gets the job done with no fuss, no muss. You can also grab the bookmarklet from the front page to pull off the conversion at any time.

Click the “Advanced Options” on the right, though, and you’ll learn how to pull off PDF production without even visiting the site, embed advanced options, and even run PDFmyURL from your own server. Neat, free stuff, and a great public service.

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“Some of my first memories were seeing him working till 4am every morning, only to be awake the next day and at his desk 8am. He did that for about 1000 years and over my short life span I have always made sure that when he speaks I pay attention (though he may think other wise). He has a tendency to be right 99.9% of the time and since we were about 15 years old Marc and I have learned some valuable lessons from him that we apply at Obox every single day.”

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Read the rest of Acer Debuts Eco-Friendly Aspire 3811TZ & 3811TZG Notebooks [GreenPeace-certified Aspire 3811TZ & 3811TZG Laptops Announced]

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Keyword Research – You’ll need to do your keyword research. Decide what’s important and divide your content into different categories: evergreen content, primary content, secondary content, head & tail content, current events, and possibly even linkbait/social media content.

Evergreen Content – Some people call it evergreen content, some call it flagship content. Whatever you want to call it, this is the best content your website will have and should be written by your best writer. This will also probably be the most expensive content to produce, so you’ll have to do it in stages. Every time I put a piece of evergreen content up, I use  a plugin like crosslinker to automatically create internal links for specific words. Sure I could create the links manually, but crosslinker saves me time and picks up every instance in the past and any in the future. Little steps like this can reduce your maintenance.

Primary and Secondary Content – Look at your keywords and try to prioritize this content in order of importance. This will help you schedule the content production out over the next few months/years. Sometime I’ll use crosslinker for these posts but sometimes I won’t. It’s a case by case decision.

Head & Tail Content – I’m sure there’s another name for this but that’s what I call it. Let’s say I want to create an article titled “Best Family Friendly Restaurants in New York City.” In that article, chances are good that I’m going to have some editorial content to open and close the article, but the middle will have a brief description highlighting individual restaurants and links to those restaurants. But what if, instead of  linking to the individual restaurants, I linked to another internal page on my website with a more detailed review of the restaurant? If I wrote each of the individual restaurants (tail pieces) first, then writing the head would be a lot easier. Also if I gave the “head” article a social/linkbait feel it can increase the number of page views, since most social media articles tend to be hit and run type of traffic. As a result, this tactic gets me more bang for my buck.

Current Events – Having an editorial calendar is really a must IMHO. You can keep track of events that affect everyone like national holidays, but you should also include specific things to your vertical, like the Daytona 500 for your racing website. You can also branch out and look for other non traditional tie-ins (maybe a celebrity in your field is a contestant on Dancing With the Stars this year). By knowing what is coming and when, you aren’t living on the edge.

Social Media and Linkbait – While this is a lot more competitive than it was in the past, IMHO it’s still a no-brainer. It’s the most cost effective way of driving links, traffic, and sending social signals that people are visiting your website to search engines like Google. You need to work linkbait into your content creation schedule. Use situations like current events and head and tail creation wherever possible. If your industry can support it, you can create it as often as once every 1-2 weeks. At the other end of the spectrum once every 2-3 months is the longest I’d let it go. Some websites like Weburbanist go with 100% linkbait. It’s important to find the right time frame that works for you.

Schedule Content Creation – Now that you have an idea of what content you need and the order of priority,  if you need any of it on specific dates, you can start sending content out to your writers. I’ve had great results with the ProBlogger Job Board in the past. I like to send out a month’s worth of requests at a time. I also like to use a plugin like WP Status Notifier to send an email to myself or anybody else involved in the final review process (such as an editor) whenever a new post is uploaded and moved from “draft” status to “pending” status.

Scheduled Posts – If you’ve scheduled your content creation, once the article posts are ready it’s easy to schedule them in advance. This is another really important time saver and a way to cut down maintenance on your website. I use a plugin called future calendar, which puts a calendar on my post page and color codes the days that have posts scheduled. I like to keep things scheduled 2-8 weeks in advance. If you travel a lot like I do or just don’t like living on the edge this makes it much easier to sleep at night. You wont be able to do this 100% of the time as there are news/current events items that will have to be posted live/realtime, but otherwise it’s really helpful.

Dashboard Tools – I have a few plugins I use on the dashboard that help me keep and handle on things. Dashboard Scheduled Posts shows me a list of the next scheduled posts. Dashboard Pending Review shows me posts that are pending review. I’ll line up scheduled posts, pending review, and recent drafts one on top of the other on the dashboard, it gives me a quick glance of the editorial status of the website.

Comments – I’m not a big fan of comments, but other people feel they help build community. I see them as a maintenance point. The choice is up to you.

Sitemaps, Spiders and Crawling – Providing a clean and easy crawling path is one of the hallmarks of a site that is SEO friendly. The Dagon Sitemap generator automatically creates an HTML sitemap for your site and updates it every time you add a page or post (it’s all about reducing maintenance). Google XML sitemaps generates an XML sitemap and pings all of the services every time you add a post page (working towards zero maintenance again). If you want to track spiders crawling, spider tracker is helpful, but I wouldn’t leave it on all the time. Two other plugins that can help with crawling are wordpress breadcrumbs and robots meta plugin, both from Joost de Valk. If you haven’t already I highly reccomend reading his SEO for wordpress guide and subscribing to his newsletter. Both are excellent.

Errors and Links – Any site that has been around for more than few months will likely have things that moved and/or throw errors. The redirection plugin will let you set up redirects and also give you a 404 report, and set up redirections in one spot. I also use the broken link checker plugin to identify outgoing links  that don’t work anymore. I can edit the link or just remove it.

Utilities and Tools – Here are a few miscellaneous tools I use. Insights plugin lets you do searches and create links from the post page without opening a second tab. Optimize DB helps clean up your WordPress database. Photo Dropper searches flickr for creative commons photos inserts and links them quickly and easily from your edit post page. WP Email and WP Print adds email a friend and printer friendly pages utilities to your website.

Logo – One of the easiest things you can do to make your website is give it a professional logo. Patrick Winfield of 10e20 created the logo on this website, and I love it. I’ve also used Prizelogos.com in the past and been very happy with the results. If you are on a tight budget GotLogos.com is another option. They charge $25-$100 depending on your needs, but they can be a bit hit or miss though. I’d recommend trying to get a square element somehow that you can use for a favicon and social media icon. It’s all about the power of branding.

Design – Having a clean, professional-looking design can go a long way toward making your website look more authoritative and trustworthy. I’m a huge fan of using Thesis as a starting point (read the full thesis review for more info). Thesis is a framework but it also has a lot of design elements built in. Also by building up a library of hooks and thesis customizations, you can leverage your work for future projects.

Backups – Having an automated backup solution is key. My favorite plugin is wp db backup. It can be used for on demand backups or scheduled backups that get sent to an email. The other thing you’ll want to backup is your theme and uploads file. I’ve seen plugins that do both automatically but once your blog gets big or the directories get large the plugin fails, so set yourself a once a month reminder and you’re all set.

That’s my big plan for how I set up and keep a wordpress website running. If you’re running wordpress you might also want to check out How to Speed up WordPress, WordPress SEO Plugins, or some of my other wordpress posts for some more tips.

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Cacoo is an online drawing tool that will allow you to create diagrams based on your specific needs.  The tool is for Free all you need is to sign up and you are good to go.  The tool also fully supports  support IE 7+, Safari 4+, Firefox 3+, and Chrome 2+. Older browsers should work but we cannot guarantee operation. In addition, Flash Player 10 is required.

Cacoo supports simultaneous (real time) collaboration. Multiple users can edit a single diagram at the same time. It is as if all the users are in the same room working together.  Check out the video for more information and watch the demo to see how easy it is to use.

Main Image Source: Collaborative via eLearning on Flickr

Cacoo – Real-time Collaborative Diagramming & Design from Nulab Inc. on Vimeo.

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It’s tragic stuff, and it deserves our attention and support – there’s no doubt about that.

When something like this occurs, the main job of charity organizations like The Red Cross is to get the word out to the masses.

Food, water, administration, insurances, transportation and any other miscellaneous elements to a relief campaign cost money.

They send their message to us across all channels – the web, the tv, the radio, the papers, billboards and magazine advertisements. It’s pervasive, which is to say a day doesn’t go by where we aren’t asked to give money.

Now, take this into consideration. Here’s a list of all the natural disasters that happened in 2009 recorded by reliefweb.int (this doesn’t cover the unnatural disasters like wars, torture, deforestation, pollution, mass murder etc.).

Overall there were 133 disasters from that year alone!

That’s a lot of disasters right?

Do you think that it’s unreasonable that a person on minimum wage or middle-class should donate money to every one of the disaster relief funds of that year? I thought so too. But a lot of people are left feeling guilty that they didn’t do their part.

The reality of the situation is that too many people equate charity to forking out cash. The reality of the situation is that there is suffering happening all the time, in all parts of the world – not just when you hear about it in the mainstream.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that money is the only way that you can help people – because it’s all too easy and it’s untrue. Equally, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that foreign aid is the only way that you can make a difference.

Of course there are issues abroad that need to be resolved – but let’s not forget the ones at home!

How Can I Help Without Spending Cash?

I’m here to remind people that charity does not mean “open your wallet” but rather “open your heart”. LOVE is what we practice when we donate, whether that donation is of our money, our time or otherwise.

I’ve taken the time to compile a list of ways that YOU can be charitable without opening your wallet:

Figure out what you’re good at and find ways of using those skills to help others

I regularly offer charity organizations help with their marketing.

Volunteer to serve a common cause in your local area

Have a look on the web or in the papers for a way that you can help with local charities. There are many ways you can help such as:

• helping out at a local homeless or drug rehabilitation center
• spending your time at a listening post, giving people the opportunity to share and be heard
• Helping out at orphanages
• working pro-bono at local charity offices in administration

Promote charities that you resonate with on your websites and blogs

Julian Habib does this on his Facebook page, and is a good example of how even just clicks can help get relief aid to where it’s needed.

Be the messenger – be vocal

Share your concerns with your family, friends and colleagues by simply educating people about what’s going on in the world. Change can happen when people are aware of what needs to be changed.

Realize that without you, you cannot be charitable

It’s the story of the chicken and the egg. Your eggs (offerings) are so much more powerful when you are in a perfect state to be able to give birth to them! Think of how much more of yourself you could share if you had an abundance of free time, money and power.

Recently Google hinted at moving away from China as a search engine provider there. Some seem to think that it is a tactical strategy to get China to loosen up their censorship regulations, since Google now own a considerable share of the search engine marketplace.

Even if this is untrue, it’s a great example of how you should be thinking of ways of leveraging your own position in order to get the things done that you feel most passionate about. If you can’t do them today, don’t sell out and do them half-heartedly. Plan ahead and plan BIG.

Conclusion

Focus on what’s important. Are you going to have more of an impact on the world if you throw a dozen dollars now and again at the world’s biggest charity organizations, or if you go out and meet real people and see first hand how your presence impacts their lives or the ecosystems or the planet?

There’s no right or wrong to this answer – but believe me – exclusively donating money is not the name of the game – your ability to share yourself is.

Lastly, if you have anything you’d like to share with the people reading this post that I’ve missed out (and I’ve missed out a lot for the sake of length!) please comment this post with your suggestions! We would love to hear from you.

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I was excited when I saw @Kim send a tweet with the link for this amazing interview with John Knoll, the co-developer of Photoshop. The person conducting this interview is @Scobleizer, and he does an incredible job. John is a smart, humble genius and watching this interview is definitely worth your time. One of the most interesting parts of this interview to me is when he talks about what it was like to pitch the idea of Photoshop and what some reactions were. What great history, wisdom and lessons to be learned.

This video was just posted onto YouTube yesterday. According to the site, “John Knoll released Photoshop 20 years ago next month with his brother, Thomas. It changed the world of graphics and digital photography in a big way. Here’s the full interview, done in a hallway of Lucasfilms’ Industrial Light and Magic, where Knoll now works (he does special effects on films, including on Avatar).”

Get ready to be inspired!

Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/synx508/3128207481/ for the birthday candle photo!

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Soren Gordhamer is the organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, which brings together staff from Google, Facebook, and Twitter with others to explore living wisely in our modern age. Mashable readers can use code ‘Mashable‘ for a discount when registering.

Social media allows us to discover, connect, and engage with new people of interest. While most people are open to new connections and receiving messages from people they don’t know, there is a fine line between reaching out and “spamming.” The challenge is to make a connection clearly and effectively without wasting people’s time.

Many of us are on both sides of this relationship — sometimes making the connection, sometimes receiving the invitation. To help navigate these waters a little better, I’ve outlined seven key lessons for improving your social networking skills.

1. Find a Person’s Preferred Communication Channel

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If you want to contact someone you have never communicated with before, do some research. Find the person’s preferred communication channel. If they have a website, check out their contact page and see if they encourage people to contact them in a particular way, and follow their suggestion.

It also helps to discover what level of participation they have on various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) to see which places may be best to engage them. When is the last time they posted on Twitter or Facebook? Do they respond to the @replies they receive on Twitter or comments on a Facebook page? Get a sense of their preferred means of communication, and make contact where they are.

Lesson: Go where they are.

2. Say Just Enough

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This cannot be emphasized enough, and it is probably my toughest challenge. In the age of social media, we may be able to get the attention of more people, but we get it for a much shorter amount of time. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make, is that they send long e-mails or social media messages explaining all the reasons they want to connect. You are likely have not earned not earned the five minutes of the recipient’s time that it will take to read that message.

Brevity is built right into Twitter, making it a great platform for making a first connection. However, if you use other channels, keep it simple. If there are 700 words you eventually want to get across, include only 50 in the first contact. Let the person choose if he or she would like more. You can fill in the rest later. I prefer a less complete 50 words than 700 words that tell me more than I need to know.

Lesson: Less is more.

3. Don’t Expect a Response

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I often see e-mails with phrases like “Please respond,” or “please get back to me.” Unless it is an old friend or a colleague, if you are contacting someone new, you are not entitled to a response. If the person wants to get back to you, he or she will. It is much better to say “If this is not of interest, feel no need to get back to me.”

At times I hear people complain because they reached out to someone and never heard back. The fact is most people do not have the time to get back to everyone who contacts them to say, “not interested.” Open a door without adding pressure. There may be times to follow-up, of course, but don’t do so with resentment or frustration.

Lesson: Say what you need to and then let it go.

4. Clarify Early

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This may seem like common sense, but don’t wait for the last line of your message to say that you want to meet for lunch, or ask your contact if he’d like to speak at an event. Put it right up front. If he cannot provide what you’re looking for, he’ll know sooner rather than later, and will appreciate you for it.

Lesson: Say it up front.

5. What You Want is Not the Point

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You may think that what you want is a phone call or lunch meeting to discuss your big idea. But communication is more than any one project or meeting. What you really want is an authentic connection.

In a very real way, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the person is interested in discussing your project idea. What matters is whether you are making a connection.

If you focus on the relationship more than the specific request, and the person has a pleasant experience reading your opening communication, it is likely the door will remain open for possible collaboration in the future, and the next e-mail you send will more likely be fruitful.

Lesson: No one knows what the future may hold, so make the moment count. Ensure the door stays open, even if no one is walking through it right now.

6. Be Open Without Needing

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Needy never goes over well. Statements like “I really need to talk to you,” or “it is essential that we speak,” show your general insecurity. There is a huge difference between being open to collaboration and “needing” it.

Do not make contact until you find that place in yourself that is totally comfortable with any outcome, including a strong “no” or no response at all. Only then can you make authentic contact. When you do, openness rather than need will come through in your words.

Lesson: Speak from openness rather than need.

7. Give Space

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The key questions people have when someone new reaches out to them, particularly those who are quite busy, are “Do I have time to bring this person into my network? How much time will they take?”

Therefore, it is generally not helpful to send too many e-mails. Doing this may send the signal that you are going to take a lot of the recipient’s time and send numerous e-mails every day, and communicating with you will take great effort.

Instead, give communication some space. Unless something is very timely, let a bit of time pass before sending a response. Let communication have some breathing room. Once there is some level of trust, you can experiment with more immediate information exchange.

Lesson: Focus on thoughtful instead of continual contact.

Do you have any other tips for better networking using social media? Do you agree or disagree with any of these tips? Let us know in the comments.

More social media resources from Mashable:

---

- Zen and the Art of Twitter: 4 Tips for Productive Tweeting
– The Tao of Tweeting
– How Social Media Has Changed Us
– 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology
– 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
– 4 Steps for Effective Online Networking

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, iqoncept, PaulPaladin, chromatika, stuartbur

Tags: business, facebook, List, Lists, networking, small business, social media, social networking, social networks, twitter

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Save time/be more efficient:

• Found a phone number in the yellow pages? Dial it instantly from your iPhone.
• Spotted a cool URL while browsing? Open it instantly on mobile safari.
• Seen a cool picture on the web? Add it instantly to your iPhone photo gallery.

http://pastefire.com/

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1. Be a Jack of all trades

It seems the conventional wisdom lies in how much you know rather than how well you know it. I see people who have skill sets that take up a lot of space on a resume. Admirable? I suppose so. Does it make you more valuable to a potential client? Absolutely not.

Think about it: has a client ever hired you just because you knew 8 programming languages and 10 web development frameworks? They hired you to work on a specific project that requires a specific skill set, and chances are you have represented yourself as an expert that is the best fit for that project.

If you can’t settle on a particular tool set, you won’t be able to gain that competitive edge we all desperately need to be successful. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if you really think about it, no successful development company becomes so merely based on the size of their tool set. They become experts in a particular skill set, and they have value because they leverage their knowledge and find their competitive edge in that context. You can specialize in so many things; find a niche that works for you, and focus on that.

2. Take on every project that comes along

Getting work is great, isn’t it? As young, nubile professionals, there is a tendency to covet every job we get; billable time is billable time, right?

Inevitably, though, what happens as the workload increases? We gravitate towards certain types of clients that fit our skill set better, or people that we can tell understand our role as the experts versus "order-takers".

The point is this that you should be selective of who you work with. Don’t think of it as losing revenue as much as adding value for those you do choose to work with. Spread too thin, you lose the ability to be responsive to your client base; those people who are already sold on what you do, how you do it, and are willing to compensate you for the value you offer them.

3. Don’t have a business strategy

If business is good for you right now, then I would like to congratulate you on that. Often when business is good, it is easy to forge ahead and spend 8 hours in a day on billable work. You owe every moment in the office–and many of your moments out of it–to your clients first and foremost, right? It sounds harmless, but think of it like this: if you never sharpen your machete, how will you be able to cut a path through the forest?

It’s simply too easy to lose your competitive edge without knowing it, and then realizing as your clients move on one by one that the money didn’t come from manual labor, it came from your ability to continually improve upon the solutions you gave them in the first place, which in turn improves their ability to make money through the web channel.

On top of that, these are the people that are easiest to sell to. In sales, it’s called the low-hanging fruit.

4. Neglect your existing clients

Once you land a client and finish a project, be sure to put them on a nice ride that circles the park and walk away. They are happy and therefore they need nothing else from you. Time to hurry up and wait for the next word-of-mouth customer, right? Sounds like a safe plan. Occasionally you might need to call or email and see if they are doing okay, but that’s about it.

Now back to reality. When was the last time you reviewed your current client base looking at ways to improve upon their existing solution? Or talk to them for ten minutes and find out how things are going? If you are doing this, great, but all too often clients are left to grow old and hairy and slowly fade into the sunset.

Now imagine that there is a potential dollar figure that floats above each client and this represents lost potential revenue. You just can’t ignore your clients for long after that first project is completed. If they are happy with you, the first thing you have to do is think of another way to make them happy. You may want to give them some time to settle into their new digs, but at that point, you have a customer who understands the value you add to their company and will listen willingly to you for the next recommendation you can make to help increase their bottom lines. It really doesn’t get any easier than that to generate additional income.

It is good to talk to existing clients at least seasonally, but ideally to check in once per month and call it a value-added service because that is how attentive you are (to the money they are holding in their hand and ready to give to you for more awesomeness). Sounds exciting to me!

5. Don’t invest your revenue into your growth

Take the revenue, put it in the bank, and retire it from the business. "It’s been great working with you, but you can relax now and pursue whatever it is you like to pursue – maybe vacation in someone’s mortgage somewhere or take a ride in a 401K. Have fun".

Doesn’t that sound crazy? As crazy as that might sound, if you aren’t investing some portion back into growing your business (provided that is one of your directives), that is essentially what you are doing! You are sending perfectly good capital on a permanent vacation, perhaps eventually to be traded for a lifetime supply of unicorn glitter or a data plan for your cell phone.

It’s easy to be shy about using some of the capital you may have saved up to take a calculated risk on your business future, but then again, you took a risk going into business in the first place, didn’t you?

One entrepreneur thinks of his dollars as soldiers: they go out and they come back every day with hostages – more dollars. You can guarantee those dollars went out with a mission in mind though, not to wander aimlessly around waiting to be snatched up by someone else.

Related Content

• How to Design for Your Worst Client: You.
• A Simple Guide on How to Effectively Talk to Clients
• How to Get Your Ideas Across to Clients
• Related categories: Project Management and Web Development

About the Author

Fred Bliss is a slightly over-seasoned bleeding edge web-evangelist. He is a married father of 3 boys. He has been working for the past year on Isotope eCommerce (a hybrid solution built in with TYPOlight CMS/ Framework) as lead developer, and one third of Winans Creative.  Connect with him via Twitter: @fbliss and LinkedIn.

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It takes me around 11/2 hours to finish my ritual and for others I know takes a much longer time.  Specially if you have kids that you need to take care of and get ready for school before you can actually have the time for yourself.

Found this very funny and amusing video that I hope will cheer you up, and who knows you might even get a pointer or two from the Japanese guy who participated in this television show on how fast can you get up, eat breakfast and get ready for work in 5 minutes. Yes, you read it right 5 minutes.  Watch and see how he does it.  The language of the video is in Japanese.

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As it turns out, there is a lot more to Seattle than meets the eye. Aside from the beautiful mountains and scenery, there is an underlying culture of free living that I have not seen before. The attitude is all about, “Do what you want, do what makes you happy.” That explains why people like Quincy Jones and the Bill Gates live there. And, everyone knows that Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Pearl Jam all began their musical careers in Seattle. Duff McKagan, who was part of my favorite band of all time, Guns N’ Roses, and now writes for Playboy.com is also from Seattle.

So what exactly is the magic formula that gives a small town of 600,000 people such a creative edge? I’m not sure what it is, but for the first time ever, I’m finding myself wanting to visit Seattle and experience it for myself. I’ve gone onto Flickr and pulled some amazing photos that were all taken in and inspired by Seattle. I’ve given credit to the photographers below. The stories associated with these photos all paint a picture of Seattle that is happy and beautiful. Click on the links below to learn more. Also, you can read the original Fast Company article by clicking here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine

Thank you for sharing your Seattle pictures with us, you are so talented!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theta444/16800827/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrealize/3628340618/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bryanswan/3085338823/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adelmann/3302583508/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adelmann/3320573029/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/suomynona/3756172346/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adelmann/3339203467/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adelmann/3332283820/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/piero/23712191/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/surrealize/3605986857/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moog55/4173956236/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fiveminutebreak/2267760768/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncle_buddha/2993571961/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qwkdtsn/2364634400/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepressure/2583476903/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincos/158512082/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleeker/151015066/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apexrally/4059260046/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bala_/2792159590/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21654792@N03/3424904314/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanvirus/4024845201/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robgmsft/174254157/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/papalars/3634344633/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindes/100015540/

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What could be better then than to camp out in an entirely new way. The concept, put together by the genius Kevin Cyr at KevinCyr.com, is quite provoking but at the same time plays on the humoristic use of everyday items we’ve never cared to actually keep on developing. Someone pointed out that this could be the exclusive penthouse for the more fortunate homeless people while some people actually sees the prototype more as a piece of art.

And even though I agree with both, however in the most humoristic way, I can certainly see the art aspect in it more than anything else. The practical use of this contraption is highly doubtful as it alerts a string of security issues such as instability, theft and more importantly the risk of being whisked away to an unknown location while you’re asleep.

I am amazed by the idea and where it may have come from but at the same time I get a little disappointed when I look closer at the actual photo’s as it looks evidently like it’s all a hoopla of photoshopped pieces and bolts. Maybe I am wrong and maybe not, the lighting and the shadows just doesn’t rhyme right in my head, that’s all. But, it’s a “AA” for idea and a “B” for conceptualization.

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Sources

• Attached
• The Mothership
• Flickr

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As an affiliate marketer using these 3 tips will help your chances of success with your online marketing business. Using these 3 tips will help your online business survive the competition that is found in an online based business environment.

1. Give your readers free reports.
Either place these reports where they can be easily seen near the top of your website or alternatively give them as an incentive to visitors who are will to give you their name and email address.

Use a unique squeeze page, in other words one that is different from what everyone else is using, to offer your reports in exchange for their email address and make sure that you have an opt in box on that squeeze page that goes to your auto-responder account.

It is a known fact that the majority of people will not purchase anything the first time they see it. Normally it will take a minimum of seven views for them to make the purchase. Keep in mind that usually people are more willing to spend money with a person that they believe is trustworthy and has taken the time to build a relationship with them, they need to know that they are not just dealing with some faceless website but a real person who is willing to help them.

If the only connection is the product on your website, not only will you not build a list, but chances are that even if someone is interested in the product you are selling they will move on and in the end buy it from someone else.

2. Promote each product on a separate web page.

If you use this method of marketing your products you will be keeping the reader focused on one thing at a time and they will become less distracted than if there were too many things on the one page.

Help the reader to make a decision on each product by having a review for each one on your website. This not only gives it a more personal touch but also helps to encourage a sale. If you are able to get some testimonials from any of your previous customers who have already tried the product then this is something that you can use to your advantage.

Just be sure that those customers are happy to allow you to use their name and if possible their photo.

3. Aim to generate a lot of targeted traffic to your website.

There is absolutely no point in getting people to visit your site who have no interest whatsoever in the products that you are promoting. Write articles and submit them to ezines and article directories and focus on the niche that you are promoting your products to. There is no point in spending your time promoting your affiliate internet business where no one is interested in what you are selling, but writing articles and publishing them in article directories is a great way to become known and brand yourself and your business and the best thing is that this type of advertising will not cost you any money.

If you want to benefit from marketing your online business by using article marketing you will need to write a minimum of 2 articles every week. If you continue to do this consistently you will see that over time your traffic will increase and it will be people who are interested in your products and what you have to say.

None of these tips are really difficult to follow and take action on it just needs some time and thought from you. Try using these tips for a few of your affiliate internet based business programs and see how they will help your opportunity to survive as an online affiliate marketer. Another great thing about this is the increase in the pay checks you will be receiving.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Use These 3 Tips so that Your Online Income Affiliate Business can Survive

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Websites were still at an early stage in the 90s. Designs were simplistic and websites were not really interactive. Information tended to be positioned in a small space in the centre – with lots of empty space all around. This was because people’s screens were smaller than today and in addition to that, people were not used to scrolling up and down the page. However, considering that websites were still relatively new in the 90s, any company that had developed a site – even if it was a single page was forward thinking and ahead of the game. Here we take a look at a selection (with thanks to WayBackMachine).

The American Broadcasting Company site (Oct 1996).

The Apple site (Apr 1997).

The Bank of Scotland site (Jan 1998).

The Google site (Dec 1998).

The BBC site (Dec 1996).

The Guardian site (Feb 1997).

The ITV site (Jun 1998).

The Yahoo site (Jan 1997).

Disclaimer: We are not attempting to take any credit for the above work – we have had nothing to do with any of the designs shown. If you have any questions regarding this please contact us.

Related posts:

1. Time Machine / Record Cover Designs
2. Time Machine / Fashion Mags from the 50s & 60s
3. Time Machine / Perfume Ads from the 90s

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It’s time for more iPhone 4G rumors folks and the one I’m about to share with you sounds very interesting. In fact, if true, it might totally change the way we interact with the device and it could convince most people to switch to the next-gen iPhone.
(…)
Read the rest of iPhone 4G to Come with Touch-Sensitive Casing? [Rumors Say iPhone Next-gen Casing Will be Just Like Apple’s Magic Mouse, Touch-Friendly]

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It’s that time again, folks — time for another viral vid of a kid who is so incredibly gifted that you’ll a). Come to loathe your own child for his/her inadequate talent show skills, b). Fall into a deep sea of depression when faced with the listless path your life has taken. I give you: 5-year-old Jonah Rocks.

This little video hit YouTube just a few days ago, and it’s already going viral, giving other pint-sized performers like Ukulele boy and Rush Girl a run for their proverbial money.

But this little dude is no flash-in-the-pan prodigy — he even has his own website (which — be warned — has autoplay music) replete with more videos and photos of Jonah and the band K.I.S.S. His bio, from the “About Me Section”:

“Way back in 2008, at the age of 3, Jonah Rocks was lining up his Play-Doh cans to make a drum kit. He would sneak all the baby spoons from the cupboard, and use them as drumsticks. His daddy asked him if he wanted a real drum kit, and of course, Jonah said ‘YES!’ Once he sat down behind that kit, and held that first pair of 7A’s in his hands, he has never put them down, playing as much as he can, whenever he can. Jonah is completely self taught, never had a lesson, and if you’ve watched him play, you know he absolutely loves it.”

Check out his cover of System of a Down’s “Toxicity” below:

Talent Show

And, if you’re not completely demoralized by Jonah’s superior talent, here’s some more bite-sized band members for you.

Tags: humor, music, viral video

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As time goes by Architects try to innovate and create different structures away from the usual. That’s when these funky architectures come to live instead of the simple building shapes that we are used to. You most likely to be impressed when you see these unusual architectures. Check it out!

<!–break–>

by Ray

by okaypookie

by Wonderiane

by Jeremy N3o

by Wonderiane

by Steve9091

by Ir

by Forstonsr

by r0gue shad0w

by krooooop

by Surrealize

by brewdroid

by Sarah Jayne Brereton

by Brian Matiash

by Iy wylde

by Cybergabi

by Samer M

by Gary Syrba

by Mac Girl

by Julia Claire Jackson

by Scot James

by Scot James

by Scot James

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Manage your time, mileage and money.

Whether you freelance or run your own small business, tracking your time, mileage and cashflow is super important.

1DayLater lets you keep an exact record of your activities and will give you confidence in your business, invoices and productivity.

http://1daylater.com/

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MakeSomeTime offers easy-as-pie online time tracking for free. It has the ability to keep your times sorted by projects and clients and the ability to generate detailed reports of how you spend your time which can be included in invoices and reports.

http://makesometime.com/

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Dear oh dear, we have more tablet-related rumors for you. This time everything comes from an Apple insider that obviously has more information available about the upcoming iSlate.
(…)
Read the rest of Apple iSlate Tablet to be an “iPhone on Steroids” [Rumor Suggests Tablet True iPhone-resemblance]

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This is an era of products galore. Each product and producer is trying to outdo the other. Marketing costs are turning out to be more than production costs as marketing has an ability to take products and services to a new high, or bite the dust. Without marketing, a product is as good as non-existing. At the same time, clients and consumers do not have enough time to go around looking for everything that is offered. Clients want it all on their fingertips. Keeping this in mind, internet or online marketing has quickly come to the rescue. It bridges the gap between your service or product and client or consumer.

Having your own website has become an important marketing tool. Almost all products and services have their own presence on the internet in the form of a website. However, there are numerous websites trying to affect the decisions of clients. So, website marketing has become an important and integral part of every business’s marketing strategy. Let’s understand the five most important steps to website marketing.

Understand client requirements

Understanding what your clients are looking for is the key to effective website marketing. Amidst a plethora of websites on the same subject, a client will most likely stick to the sites that are focused on her unique requirements and give her exactly what she’s looking for; e.g. if a client is looking for a website on alternative medicine; the website must focus solely on the various alternative medicines and not generalize on all types.

Get the right design and content

The rightly designed website will catch and hold more eyeballs. Your design should not only have right aesthetic appeal but also facilitate easy navigation. To many flashes, to bright colors running at the same time, plus disturbing pop-ups are sure fire turn offs. Clusters of information placed on the homepage may dumbfound the visitor. At the same time, too little info will dampen her. Your site should strike the right balance of information and placement.

Once you’re done with the designing part of your website, comes another important part, content. Your content should always be current, crisp and clear. It should convey exact information without being verbose. It should be logical, smooth, and flowing. The language should be set keeping the client in mind. The quality of your content should reflect a professional attitude.

Make it user friendly

Once on your website, the client should get important information like variety of products, possibly with their images, price ranges and product availability. Your website should facilitate ordering products online with great ease. It should also give requisite information like contact numbers of the home office or representatives, firm’s location, previous track record and after the sale service.

As customer choices and preferences are always distinct and all of them cannot be addressed on the site; provide for direct contact with your customer service department in order to answer their queries. In case of an email, a prompt reply must be assured.

Blow your trumpet

Once you are done with your website, it is high time to get on the rooftop and tell people that you’ve arrived! What’s the use of a wonderfully designed, beautiful looking site that few know about or catches hardly any eyeballs? Avail other mediums of advertising viz. seminars, articles, television, newspapers,ect… to widen your client base and reach every possible client. Get press releases distributed. A good advertising campaign is essential to attract initial traffic to your site.

Utilize the internet to its fullest. Begin blogging about your site and products/services. Forward links to as many other websites as possible. Get links on social networking websites. In simple terms, talk, talk and talk more about your site.

Action backup

The types of services and products that you offer on your website must be put into action by an efficient team. Your client must feel she is getting a good value for her money, and also her time spent. This will assist to establish a reputation for your business and create your brand image. Website marketing will only be effective if and when your promises are fulfilled in reality.

And yes! Do not rest on your laurels. Continue updating your website with any new developments and also, continue to support it with on going action.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Top 5 Steps to Website Marketing

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This will allow you to use variables, functions (mix-ins), for statements, and to even create grids on the fly with ease! I promise you that, if you’re mildly familiar with PHP, this will drastically change – and improve – the way you code your CSS! Become a Plus member to watch!

Learn How to…

• Create CSS variables/constants
• Create grids – of any size you like
• Use functions or mix-ins
• Automatically minify the generated CSS file.
• Combine multiple stylesheets into one, to save on HTTP requests.
• Dramatically improve your development time.

Join Tuts Plus

For those unfamiliar, the family of TUTS sites runs a premium membership service called “TUTSPLUS”. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from Nettuts+, Psdtuts+, Aetuts+, Audiotuts+, and Vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you’ll learn from some of the best minds in the business. Join today!

• Subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

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Marcin Stawiarz is an experimental photographer from Poland that has a sort of fascination for landscapes and urban scenes. I’ve been a great fan for a quite long time already and that’s why I decided to share some of his photos with you, especially because Marcin is able to transform very ordinary subjects into almost surreal images through excellent illumination and different angles.

All Marcin’s photos look like they come out of a dream or something, very subtle and at the same time impressive. Not surprisingly, he has been awarded several times and also featured on many publication.

For more information visit: http://www.stawiarz.com/

I’ve always been fascinated by landscapes – places that are absolutely desolate, where I can stay one on one with nature. For me, the growing joy right before pressing the shutter button as well as the possibility of interacting with the world filled with inspiration is as important as the creative act itself. This initial fascination has rapidly grown into obsession that eventually took control over my life.

Since the beginning of my adventure with photography, every landscape has been an unforgettable experience, thanks to which I’ve learned how to interpret light – the single most important (and the single most waited for) factor that shapes my images. On the other hand, lighting is directly connected with another key element of photography – luck.

Proper weather, interesting cloud patterns or even a couple of sunrays breaking through the clouds, have many times decided that after a couple of failed attempts I was able to reach a satisfactory effect the moment nature displayed her most unpredictable face.

Whereas taking pictures with the main focus on a person involves emotions that are relatively easy to define, depicting an empty street or portraying pulsing nature usually requires qualitatively different feelings that have to fill in for the missing elements, thus making such photograph something more than a simple document.

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Christian Nauck is an illustrator, comic designer, and game designer from Berlin, Germany. We have stumbled upon some of his works through the Daily Inspiration and were completely dazzled by the quality. Therefore nothing better than a full feature post on Christian Nauck’s work.

For more information about Christian Nauck, visit the links below. Tip: be prepared to spend some time.

• Homepage
• Blog
• Behance
• Flickr
• Deviantart

“Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire” Cover

Yep, my first (and hopefully not my last) Marvel-cover.
It’s for the last/#6 issue of the Ghost Riders Miniseries, solicited for January 2010.

Rex Plode

Rex Plode from from the great comic series Invincible!

Grifter

yeah, another fan art. This time Grifter from Wildstorm! Kick Ass Character!

Spidey vs Hulk

Am I completely in marvel fanart mode?! …seems so… This time good ol neighborhood Spidey again and his good pal Hulkyschmalky!

Wolvclops

Started as a little Cyclops sketch …. First time I painted a whole scene I guess!

Deadpool vs. Cap

yep, another fanart. Ever awesome Deadpool vs. Captain America:

Darkstalkers

My contribution to Udon’s Darkstalkers tribute book

Daredevil

Dared Evil …uhm Daredevil portfolio work. I don’t dig that the style looks a bit too similar to Marko Dj.’s stuff, but anyway.

It’s a me! Mario!

I think I did the first scribble of this pic almost a year ago after I’ve had played Mario Galaxy. And finally I managed to finish it. It’s a collab with my girlfriend Steffi aka Miss Matzenbatzen! http://miss-matzenbatzen.blogspot.com/ concept and Mario by me, background by Steffi.

Crimson Viper

This time something new. Only the colors are done by me, the lineart is done by Steven Cummings for Udon. The colors are personal work, though – kind of try-out how my colors would look on a lineart like this/which style I would end with.

Randon Works

Sketches

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If you have an idea for a web app and you don’t believe that it will be successful or you don’t think you have the time to build it, think again. It’s possible!

We invited Stu Green of Haloweb and Great Web Apps to share with us how he built a web app to meet a particular need and launch it successfully in just three months.

The Story of My Web App

I always found project management something very scary. Agencies that I worked for used Basecamp, MS Project and other very complicated (and pricey) systems. I tried them myself but I really needed something a lot simpler and ‘less serious’. Because I had some spare time, and because I was already learning a ‘rapid application development framework’ I knew it wouldn’t take me that long to build, so I decided to do it.

I designed everything the way I thought it should work. Because I wasn’t a project manager and had no experience in that area there were no plans in my designs for Gantt charts or complicated reporting systems. Everything was very simple and fun to use. After three months of building the app I decided to share it with the world in November and since then it has rapidly grown to a user-base of two thousand. Apparently I was not alone in believing that there was a need for a project management web app that handled projects and invoices in a simple fashion.

The web app is called Project Bubble. I continue to develop and support it every day and I love seeing other users really enjoying using it. I particularly enjoy seeing people suggesting new ideas and us all gathering together as a community and discussing whether or not to implement these ideas. Because I believe in keeping things simple, a lot of the time these features don’t make it but it’s fun to be a part of something so agile and fluid in it’s development. I also believe that customer service is critical to the success of the web app (as I’ll explain later) and proving that your web app is alive with activity and social buzz will also keep user retention and satisfaction.

What About Your Web App Idea?

Some people, particularly entrepreneurs, go to bed at night and can’t sleep because they have so many ideas for websites. It might be some new community website that is focused on a particular passion of yours, or a unique web application that integrates with Twitter, or perhaps you have ideas for how you can rebuild your current site and utilize all the latest web technologies. This is your inspiration and your dream, but how do you make it a reality when you have a day job and twenty other websites that you look after?

With this inspiration you have taken your first step. The next step is making that dream a reality and building your web app, even though there are many factors that could stop you such as time and money. Here are some tips that will help you down that road of inspiration to reality. Start believing that you can make this happen, because you can.

1. Stay Motivated

These days it is very possible to build those web applications that you previously only dreamed about. A few years ago you would need to build everything from scratch, today you can benefit from the vast array of open-source code libraries and freeware design resources that are out there.

So much of the hard work has been done already so time shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Also a lot of the resources out there are free so money cannot be an excuse either. You have to stay motivated and believe that you can take your new project on. Commit yourself to at least getting a public beta launched so people can give you their feedback, and just block out some spare time when you can work on your web app.

2. Don’t Be Afraid of Competition

I learnt this lesson when I built Project Bubble. The reason why I wasn’t afraid of competition was because I didn’t think I was going to be competing with anyone! I built Project Bubble firstly for my own business, months before I ever thought I would release it publicly. Now it has become very successful. If I think about competition today part of me still wonders how on earth it could possibly succeed when you compare it with the greats. So don’t worry about competition. Your app will be unique, because you made it.

3. Plan Everything

Set deadlines and plan everything from the early development through to the Beta launch. You could even make wire-frames using online tools such as Mockingbird to help you with the design phase. Whatever you do make sure you’ve thought it all out on paper (or stickies!) before you ever get to the design or build stage.

4. Use a Rapid Application Development Framework

Development frameworks such as Ruby-on-Rails, CodeIgniter and Kohana have done all the hard work for you and are really easy to learn. I use CodeIgniter and I love it. On their website they will show you how you can build a blog engine in just twenty minutes! A lot of cool web apps that you see these days are built on Ruby-on-Rails including Basecamp and the beauty of using something like Ruby is that not only do you have that massive library of time-saving functions but you also have a huge community of other developers who will help you if you get stuck.

5. Get Feedback

Once you have your public beta live, use widgets like Get Satisfaction and User Voice to get feedback from your users. They will be happy because you are listening to them, and you will be happy because you will know straight away if something is wrong and also you will get ideas that you probably would never have otherwise thought of. Don’t be afraid of saying “No” to people if they suggest something that you don’t think is appropriate and always welcome peoples suggestions and ideas no matter how crazy they might seem.

6. Use Social Media

Once you are happy with your app, use social media to create a buzz for your app. Submit it to all the web app reviews you can possibly think of such as:

- Feedmyapp
- Killer Startups
- Great Web Apps

Make sure you are on Twitter and you have a clear link on your website so people can follow you. Get involved with your community, respond to them, and show that your web app is new, exciting, buzzing and active. Your users will be excited to be a part of something fresh and evolving.

7. Keep Trying

If it doesn’t work out, don’t worry just try again. I built a web app recently for car owners and it wasn’t successful at all. It wasn’t because the idea wasn’t original and it wasn’t the design, in fact I still don’t know why it hasn’t worked out but the point is it really doesn’t matter. Just pick yourself up and try again with another idea because one day you will just ‘hit the nail on the head’ and get it right. Practice always makes perfect.

I hope you have enjoyed reading and I hope that now you are now inspired and motived. If you have a new web app that you want to tell us about why not comment and let us know?

Stu works for his own web company developing web apps and has experience in PHP, jQuery and user-centered design. Be sure to connect with him on Twitter.

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My favorite part of an effective brainstorming session is that when it is over, you have a ton of ideas that you would have never thought of before. When creative people get together and bounce ideas off each other, there is a magnetic energy that is created and if cultivated, it can produce some amazing results.

Have you ever noticed that some brainstorming sessions are more effective than others?  Something I’ve noticed is that there are definitely things you can do to make the most of your brainstorming sessions.  Here is a short list:

Create An Environment That Fosters Creativity
There are lots of ways to do this, for example, create a safe environment where people know it is okay to make mistakes and ask questions. Try to limit strict time restraints. Creative ideas don’t flow as easily if there are time pressures. Create an environment that is fun and happy.

Do Not Be Judgmental Or Critical Of Anyone’s Ideas
In a brainstorming session you really want to gather a ton of ideas, and then you can go through those ideas and hone them down to the top ones that are the most innovative and creative. The key is to get a lot of ideas flowing and recorded. If a member of the group is afraid of what everyone will think, he will not contribute with as many ideas. Make sure everyone knows that all ideas, no matter how crazy they may sound, are invited!

Keep The Energy High And Positive
Have you ever noticed the magic that happens in a good brainstorming session? The person writing down the ideas can barely keep up with everyone? People are smiling, contributing, laughing, and lots of juicy ideas are flowing everywhere? There is an element to that which has to do with the energy in the room. Whether you play music, give everyone coke and cookies, take everyone out to lunch, whatever it may be, keep the energy up and positive in order to tap into that place.

Stay Focused
This one is probably the toughest for me personally because I’m a total scatterbrain and I’m always thinking about a bunch of things at the same time. It is so easy, especially if the room is filled with creative people, to get off track. I remember once we had a small Bit Rebels brainstorming session on the wave, and when I went back and reviewed it, although it was a lot of fun, we barely talked about the topic at hand. Haha! To have an effective brainstorming session, it is important to try your best to stay focused and centered around the brainstorming topic.

Like John Sweeney says,

“Brainstorming is the rocket fuel that propels us
toward the next great innovative idea!”

This video is from an actual Google employees brainstorming session from 2007. It is so interesting to get a peek into how they come up with their creative ideas.

Thank you to http://www.flickr.com/photos/27339074@N08/3944447242 for the inspiring purple light bulb photo!

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Two more weeks to go until Apple will present officially its tablet to the world. In the mean time we get to explore more rumors and leaks which happen to confirm the device and reveal more of its specs and features.
(…)
Read the rest of Orange France Confirms Apple Tablet [Applet Slate Coming to Orange Customers in Europe]

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Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something. The term is also often applied to a lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity.

Often times we have already identified that passion but getting there is another thing.  If you dream of something that you want badly enough that you can taste it? Or if it leaves you sleepless at night then you need to fuel that passion and just do it.  But how you may ask?  I myself had some struggles and faced so many challenges but happily I can say that I am still working on it and that I am on the road to fulfilling my dreams. Here are some things that you might want to consider:

1. Don’t wait for time, make time – Busy, busy, we always say that, but when are we really not busy? Give at least 30 minutes  to 1 hour of your time a day, to either start learning what you want to do (ex. cooking, painting, designing etc) and stick to it, taking small steps is better than not doing anything at all.  I work, 9 to 10 hours a day on my regular job and sometimes even more, but giving myself time to do what i love most (writing, drawing) really helped me even with my productivity at work.  Being happy and fulfilled does make a big difference.

2. Don’t give up when you encounter difficulties -  Some are lucky when they pursue their dreams, but there maybe occasions when you encounter challenges.  When I started blogging last year and started my personal blog, I had difficulties with having people even look at it, took some months before I even had someone follow my blog, but i persisted and found ways to make stuff interesting.  As most of the people I know who have been successful, they would always tell me that, something worth doing usually is hard, and you would need to go through a lot, but most worthy things usually are.

3.  Give your heart and soul into it - Commit to it and give your very best.  Most successful people I meet would always tell me that they all started from scratch, they were not great or famous instantly, it took them great courage, dedication and discipline to get where they are now.  We in turn have our own talents and gifts that we just need to nurture.

4.  Hang with people you know that have the same passion as yours -  Having positive and encouraging people always helps, they can give you the boost you need when you are in a slump.  I attribute my daily inspiration to people who have taught me a lot and have been there cheering me on as I continue my journey to reaching my goals.

5. Set an achievable goal for yourself -  It is always good to set a goal that you know you can achieve, setting something that you know is impossible will only cause you grief and in turn cause you to stop.  What do I mean here, When I set myself to finally write and start a blog, I did not set to be one in a span of 2 to 3 weeks or even months, what I said was that in 2009 I will at least have gotten a blog up with good content and have a set of people interested in reading, and then build up on that.  Having too much expectation in a short span of time with very little experience would have caused  disastrous outcome and would have been demotivating for me.

We all have our passion that can make us happy and fulfilled inside.  For me it’s writing and designing.  I hope the tips here will enable you to unleash that fire inside of you and make that dream of yours come true.

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There is an old saying that rings true, no matter what forum or context it’s applied in. ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’ We were thinking of this the other day, and how with some minor tweakage the statement could become a powerful statement of affirmation for designers, or at least it could lead us towards this freeing affirmation.

Recently a project came our way that we were extremely excited about, however, as things unfolded, we realized that the project was doomed from the start. Now as designers we are used to working with non-creatives, or at least people who are not in, or do not understand our field, therefore you have to work across an information gap. This is something we are used to dealing with, but in the context of the discussion about to take place, it only makes things, that much more difficult. This project had the gap, but beyond that, there was an underlying instruction from the client that let us know this would be an utter waste of our time. ‘We want it to appeal to everyone across the board. Consumable to all.’ It was at this point, that we walked away.

You see, going back to Honest Abe’s words of wisdom and tweaking them as we mentioned before, we work under the premise that you can appeal to some of the people all of the time, but you cannot appeal to all of the people some of the time. Perhaps we have too much of a cynical streak running between us, but as varied as the masses are, even when broken into discernible groups based on similar interests or occupations, we believe that there is not much that they will all find appealing. As designers, this is reflected easily in the fact that we all have differing tastes and opinions as to what designs and styles appeal to us.

Breaking Down the Myth

Universal consumability, in the creative communities, is a myth. Given that our tastes play such a large role in our creative consumption, finding a flavor that everyone is going to appreciate equally generally will not happen. The appeal of what we create will have a heavy draw for some and perhaps little to none for others. The sooner we come to that realization, the less stressful and more fun our designs will be to create, thus making our job easier. And if we compromise our creations to try to bring in that universal appeal, we will slight our audience, and our designs. Allow us to elaborate.

When we create something, it will automatically appeal to a certain crowd for a specific number of reasons (theoretically at least, we hope there will be some appeal, and for the sake of this argument, we will work under the premise that there will be some inherent draw). Now if we take away from those areas, to try and make it appeal to another crowd, we have already lessened the appeal of our design for the crowd that initially responded to it. The more aspects we include or alter to further that mass appeal, only takes the design farther from both its original intent and audience. Look at it in terms of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

The PB&J Factor – An Analogy for the Ages

If you make a PB&J sandwich, then you are only appealing to those people who like PB&J sandwiches. There is really no way to alter the sandwich to make it appeal to those who don’t like PB&J, and if you tried, then it will tend to lose appeal to the PB&J crowd. And even in your group of PB&J fans, there are still degrees that affect the sandwiches appeal. There are those who like more PB than J and vice versa. Once again, you can alter the amounts of PB&J to try and appeal to both, but chances are, you are going to end up with a sandwich that still appeals to one faction over the other.

So what does this all mean (beyond the fact that we are apparently hungry for a PB&J sandwich and are a little particular as to its construction)? It means as designers, we need to accept that our work is not going to have that mass appeal and trying to design with that in mind can have more of a negative impact on the work, not to mention our psyche, than a positive one. Universal consumability simply means an end product that falls far short of its potential and intent, and since when has that ever been appealing to anyone? So when you are designing, do it with focus. Meaning basically do it with a particular audience in mind, and go for it.

The Client Variable

When working with a client, designing with focus may be a bit of a challenge, but it can be done. It is our responsibility as designers to lead our clients towards decisions and away from bad choices, this is simply one of them. If the client keeps pushing for more mass appeal, we need to be able to make them understand why that will effectively hurt the project. We need to make the client choose a crowd to appeal to, and work within those boundaries while not trying to reach out beyond that crowd so much that it no longer appeals to anyone.

In the case of the project we walked away from, we made our attempts to sway the client over to our side, but after a couple of attempts and lots of time wasted we surrendered and threw in the towel. Perhaps we should have tried harder, but we did not see our arguments as having any effect whatsoever. Not to mention, we had not thought of that whole sandwich analogy, so we walked away. With so many opinions, tastes, and overall individuals populating the masses, trying to design for them all is a mistake. But designing with focus, never will be!

Finding Your Audience

In order to find your audience and allow them to guide you in your work, you must make sure that you are doing two major things. One, connecting with your audience. And two, listening to them once you have connected. Now as we mentioned before, when we create, our product will have inherent appeal to certain members of the crowd, but you first need to find that audience that you are going to be designing with in mind to bring them in and make them aware of what it is you are doing. Reach out via the various social media outlets to find the fans that will be drawn to the designs you will be crafting. Other places to try to connect with the audience you are seeking are related sites and blogs who share a similar style or mission as you. By becoming more active on these related sites, you can easily tap into that necessary connection you are after for your business or blog.

After you have made this connection, then the next step is so simple to accomplish as you are engaging the crowd. Listen to what it is they are talking about, or moreover, what they are looking for. This is easy to find out because overall, people like offering their constructive critiques on where the community is lacking or letting them down. So ask. Get in there and mix it up a bit. Talk to your audience to find ways that you can improve your work so that its reach is much more effective. Take these suggestions and critiques that you find being repeated from various places and make adjustments to fine tune the direction of your designs. Afterall, what is the purpose of connecting with them, if you are not going to listen to what it is they have to say. You can also interview others in your field, who may share in the audience that you are seeking to tap into, and find out what they have done to connect and listen to their followers. What helped with their reach? It may be something that can help you as well.

Again, when dealing with a client, it is still important that you have this connection and avenue for access to the intended audience, so if the client is not already tapped in, then you both need to work out the best way to extend this reach before you begin. Having this understanding of who you are trying to appeal to with the design, can assist you invaluably, and making sure the client does as well should help ensure that they are not steering you away from their target with their input. So this is always a critical factor in the overall equation, and trying to reach out in a universally consumable way, is only going to close you off from your audience not widen them. So know which audience you are going to go after, and focus on them as you move forward.

That is All

So that concludes the talk from this side for now, but just use the comment section below to keep the discussion going and offer your thoughts and perspectives on this topic.

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

With so many online productivity tools at our disposal, there’s never been a better time to check up on what’s out there to help optimize your work flow. One such class of tools that can help set up a dashboard of critical “at a glance” information is the personalized start page.

There are a number of different choices in this category, but the general gist is that a start page enables you to “stick” bits of the web like news feeds, interactive widgets and other specific blocks of information into a one-stop-shop destination you can use as your first port of call when starting a work session.

Why Use a Start Page?

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Like an RSS reader, a start page can help you stay on top of a large volume of information. What sets a start page apart is the ability to integrate far more than just news feeds, including everything from e-mail, to your calendar, to the weather report, to the current time in other places around the world where you do business.

After taking some time to set up your page with relevant feeds and resources, it can be the optimal place to check first to get a sense of what’s going on in your work and your industry. By aggregating multiple widgets and bits of information into a single interface, a start page can serve as a central hub for the most important information that’s always one click away from your regular browsing habits.

Let’s take a look at how to choose and use a personalized dashboard.

How to Choose a Start Page

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Both Google and Yahoo offer personalized start pages, the former at iGoogle and the latter with My Yahoo. If you or your business already uses web products from either company, the offered integrations with your start page might make either an obvious choice (Google Apps users tend to mesh well with the iGoogle start page, for example).

Another brace of popular options are Netvibes and Pageflakes, both of which offer full-featured start page alternatives to the big companies’ offerings. All four services offer the ability to add widgets to your pages that go beyond presenting mere news feeds (Google calls them “gadgets,” while Pageflakes refers to them as “Flakes”).

The best way to choose which start page fits is to give each one a quick try. Differences in layout, user interface, and style become apparent quickly, and you have the luxury of picking which one looks and “feels” right. Although the widget offerings tend to be fairly comparable between the platforms, you might want to spend some time browsing the available widget and gadget options as well to get a sense of which selections make the most sense for you and your business.

Alltop is a nice, clean interface that provides just that, and you can set up your own customized dashboard of feeds and/or make use of the pre-collected packages which are organized by hundreds of topics, industries and niches for a quick and pre-curated view into a number of sectors.

How to Set Up and Use Your Start Page

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Once you’ve picked your poison, as it were, you’ll want to spend a bit of up-front time setting it up for optimal use. Of course, it’s always easy to change things around on the fly as well, so as new sources become critical and you discover new widgets, it’s a simple matter to incorporate them into your start page work flow.

Each start page offers the ability to create a tabbed interface. Working much like tabbed browsing, it allows you to set up and toggle between multiple pages for different purposes (Netvibes even allows you to create multiple instances, similar to having multiple Gmail accounts versus simply forwarding multiple addresses to one inbox). Depending on your needs, you’ll want to take stock of what realms you might want to have at your fingertips. If you’re a frequent traveler, you might want a Travel tab with weather conditions, time zones, flight statuses, and news in your frequently-visited spots. If you need to monitor what’s happening in several industries, you might create a tab for each of them with appropriate sources and widgets. Multiple tabs means your personal dashboard can even live right beside your work dashboard(s) as well.

Once you have an idea which buckets you’ll want to keep track of, start thinking about what are the most high priority sources and bits of information you’d like to collect for each page. Since you can arrange your pages in any manner you wish, you’ll want to set up the highest priority widgets towards the top of the page and fill in the lower parts of the page with some of the lesser priority items.

Feel free to go nuts hunting down new, interesting, and useful widgets and gadgets and giving them a try on your tabs and pages. It’s always easy to move, re-order, or even remove them if they end up being not as useful over time. Each service offers a directory of widgets, most with suggestions of the most popular or essential tools for your pages. From note-taking to e-mail, from stocks to eBay auctions, from your Netflix queue to integrated online storage, there’s a lot of functionality that can be brought into one at-your-fingertips’ interface.

One other consideration when setting up your start page is choosing a theme — much like you can customize the look and feel of your Gmail account or your WordPress blog, you can “skin” your start page with colors and graphics that appeal to you. You’ll also want to consider whether or not you might want to make use of a public component to your start page. Netvibes gives you a public section by default, and Pageflakes allows you to create “Pagecasts” that can be public to the world or shared privately with a group. Setting up a valuable public page could be a novel way to position yourself as a resource in your niche or industry.

These are just a few ideas to help you get started on the road to personalized start page mastery. With more features and widgets being developed over time, there promises to be no shortage of information and functionality to enhance your start page. Plus, since most widgets and gadgets use existing web markup and standards, you could even build your own widgets if you need customized, business-specific information on your dashboard. Enjoy your one stop information shop!

More small business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– 9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
– 5 New Year’s Resolutions for SMBs
– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business
– 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
– 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, smartstock

Tags: business, how to, how tos, iGoogle, List, Lists, My Yahoo, Netvibes, organization, Pageflakes, productivity, small business

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Foursquare is one of the crucial new social networks to keep tabs on, and for entrepreneur types, the recent release of its open API is big news. It may be time for developers to start shifting away from Twitter and start tinkering with something a bit more Square.

Here are 6 Foursquare apps we’d like to see developed. What other location-based apps would you like to see take advantage of the Foursquare API? Let us know in the comments.

1. MenuSquare

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When you check in at a restaurant on Foursquare, you can see what feedback your friends and others have left. Usually it’s recommendations –- “Try the lobster ravioli!” –- or warnings –- “The green curry is wicked hot!” But wouldn’t it be great to be able to see the actual menu from your phone? We’d love to see an app that allows the crowd (or zealous programmers) to add a list of every menu item, perhaps even with prices, to every popular venue. Want to plan your meal while waiting for a table or a slow waiter? Maybe you’re just trying to decide where to eat? Just fire up “MenuSquare.”

2. OrderSquare (a la SeamlessWeb)

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Building on the aforementioned menu idea, how about being able to order food from your smartphone, using Foursquare as the backdrop? The API makes it easy to grab all the nearby restaurants’ info, which will give this app a leg up in a lot of areas. The app could also be used to broadcast to your Foursquare friends what you actually ordered, leaving a record for everyone’s sake and encouraging reviews on individual dishes.

3. TextSquare

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Not all our friends are on Foursquare, and many of yours probably aren’t either. Could be they’re just not hip, but it’s also likely they just don’t have the right smartphones. How about an application that allows you to send selected check-ins as text messages or e-mails to non-Foursquarers that you’d like to meet up with. Invite those technoramuses to the party, too.

4. SquareDeck

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We don’t generally sit around tapping refresh on our phone to see where everyone’s at on Foursquare. We’d like to see a desktop application or widget that shows a feed of friends’ announced Foursquare coordinates and shouts. This way, we could see what we’re missing out on while we’re at work, or what gig we should get to. Integrate this app with Twitter and the rest of our social networks, and we’d never be lonely again.

5. EventSquare

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Teens and party-going twenty-somethings have plenty of disposable income to make this app worthwhile. Build them an application that shows where the nearest parties, concerts, or events are going on at any moment, based on their location. Great for those bored Friday nights, this app could really help you find something to do any time you want.

6. GroupSquare

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Sometimes you may check in and only want certain friends to know — you can’t always invite everyone. That’s why we’re proposing an app (or a built-in feature) that lets users categorize their Foursquare friends and then choose which ones to alert upon check in. It shouldn’t be so hard to implement (says the writer to the programmers), and it would definitely enhance the experience.

Conclusion

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Foursquare’s API makes it easy to tap into location data for virtually every venue in most big cities, and now that Foursquare has opened up globally, this information will start flooding in from smaller locales as well. Developers: Now’s the time to get in on the app-building action early. With the right foresight and a bit of ingenuity, the possibilities are endless.

More Foursquare resources from Mashable:

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- 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
– Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
– The Twitter of 2010: Foursquare as Next Year’s Breakout Hit
– Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, photoposter, dwphotos, macroworld

Tags: android, api, APIs, apps, blackberry, foursquare, geo-location, geolocation, iphone, List, Lists, mobile applications

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Andrew Pearlman – who is himself a satisfied Hotmail user – wrote earlier, "I am happy to report that MSN Hotmail still holds a slight lead in the number of Unique Visitors over Gmail every month."

It’s done so for quite some time, too.  Pearlman continued, "Below is a trend line for the previous 3 years, keep in mind that the domain for hotmail.com has changed over time and in late ’07 the sub-domain moved from msn.com to live.com."

Of course, if you eye the July 2009 to September 2009 region of the graph, the odds of Hotmail staying in the lead start to look a little slim.  Nonetheless, if Bing continues to become more successful and Microsoft does a decent job of tying all its products together, it’s hard to say what might happen.

At the least, this should be a sign to not give odd ("you’re backwards") or rude ("you’re blowing me off") looks to people who supply Hotmail addresses.

Related Articles:

> 10 Reasons Social Media Isn’t Replacing Email

> Google Adds Easy Way To Merge Duplicate Contacts In Gmail

> Offline Use Now Part Of Everybody’s Gmail

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That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities.

They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….).

Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice:

If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what.

Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end?

I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it.

What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ?

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nsyght is a real time service that pull in events and posts that and your friends make on all the social services that you use. Additionally, you can chose to post cool stuff from here, reply to things you find on other services, and of course forward groovy stuff that you find to your friends.

Suppoted services: Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Last.fm, Vimeo, and Delicious

http://www.nsyght.com/

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There are very few who would argue against the notion that most freelance professionals, especially those operating in the design/development and writing arenas, tend to operate from a creative base. They are, by and large, a group that has chosen to let the right side of their brain steer them as far as the road stretches out before them. Having embraced their creative and artistic nature, merging it into their career path and never looking back. And for the most part, a creative mind fits well in this freelance environment because they ultimately call all the shots and are bound by very few restraints — for the most part.

This road, however, is not without its bumps, and for a lot of freelancers, these bumps come when the left brain must be engaged to navigate the terrain. Most of us are familiar with the concept of right brain vs. left brain, wherein it has been shown that the two hemispheres of the brain control different modes of thinking. The right is the creative and artistic side, the left being the more logical and analytical.

Given that most of us are less apt to be full-minded (meaning we excel in both modes of thinking), there tend to be some issues when it comes time for you to mentally cross over for a short time to the other side. This can be a problem in freelancing, because though we might prefer to turn right, we have to handle every aspect of our business and that means every so often going left.

The administrative side of the job tends to be left-brain-heavy, and can prove difficult for some right-brainers to tackle. Below, I have broken down the offending areas that often hang us up, and have provided some tips for how to make it through these left-brained business barriers.

Also consider our previous articles:

• 6 Simple Ways for Freelancers to Increase Productivity
• How to Find Time For…Everything!
• 8 Strategies for Successful Client Relations

Scheduling

The first administrative task we will look at is scheduling. Not only because of its importance to our freelance business, but because effective time management can aid with the other elements of your admin responsibilities. This tends to be very difficult for extremely creative individuals for the simple fact that right-brainers tend to be more random and less sequential in thought. And since scheduling creativity is not something we can always effectively manage, we tend to overlook the idea of scheduling our work altogether.

Ironically, this often-avoided admin element by creatives can actually help stimulate our creative workflow. Scheduling different left-brained administrative tasks to be handled throughout the day offers your creative mind a change of gears. It essentially unplugs you from the mindset you’re in when you create and gives your often overworked right brain a bit of a break. So when you return to the right side of things, you do so refreshed and recharged. Scheduling your day, therefore, can benefit both sides of your freelance business.

For more on this…

• 4 Steps to Creating a Freelance Schedule
• The freelancing business part 3: scheduling your projects
• 8 Simple Online Time Management Tools for Freelancers
• 13 Principles of Effective Time Management for Freelancers

Tips for Tackling

• The more fun that it is for you to use, the more likely it is that you’re going to use it. Find an easy-to-use time management app with a fun UI and you will find that it is easier to motivate yourself to open it up and dive in.
• Be strict with yourself about all the self-imposed schedules you have come up with. By enforcing the schedules and through repetition, they will eventually become second nature and will be easier to work into your routine.
• Do not be too hard on yourself, just let your system evolve with you. Chances are, you are going to have a period of adjustment for this, so let it evolve and grow to suit you better rather than get frustrated and give up. The better the fit, the better it will serve your business.
• Always set yourself up with a redundancy system! Given that you may not be used to scheduling yourself, it may behoove you to have to have a backup plan. Having the extra coverage may also provide some peace of mind.

Accounting

The next administrative task we’ll talk about is the bookkeeping side of business. I have always had an aversion to numbers, math and anything accounting related, so this was a big adjustment for me as I imagine it has been for a lot of other freelancers. The easy answer for these woes is to simply hire an accountant, but for some — especially those just starting out in the business — this is not necessarily an affordable plan of attack. So we have to take these tasks upon ourselves and be able to make sense of it all.

The great thing about this area of your freelance life is that so many application authors understand our pain and they have developed wonderful programs that take most of the guesswork out of the equation for you. Client, account, and project management are becoming easier-than-ever for the right-brained inhabitants with applications like Billings. In these cases the software essentially handles most of this for you, while you simply input a bit of data.

For more on this…

• Accounting Basics for a Freelancer
• 10 Dependable Money Management Tools for Freelance Designers
• 10 Costly Money Mistakes Freelancers Should Avoid

Tips for Tackling

• Find a program that is suited to your needs only. The bells and whistles that go above and beyond are not necessary, and may only cause confusion. Especially in the beginning, keep it simple so you do not get overwhelmed.
• Make sure that you stay on top of these tasks. The bookkeeping is what keeps you going and stable, so make sure you do not get behind in your billing…that’s the client’s job. Set billing reminders and collection reminders so that you do not let anything fall through the cracks.
• The less time it takes to get done, the less apt we are to put it off. Creating templates for your accounting paperwork can help cut down the time and thought that has to go into it. And that will naturally make us more prone to tackling.
• Help avoid penalties for your accounting practices. Each country and province has different laws and regulations that are governing your business and the taxes that accompany it. Be sure that you find out what they are and keep up with changes to avoid accumulating penalties and fines.

Correspondence

Another aspect of the administrative side to your freelance business that will often draw periods of procrastination is your business correspondence. This is not referring to replying to a pen pal or any kind of creative writing; this generally is detailed and contractual which immediately presents itself as a barrier to the right-brained thinkers. So it is a natural reaction for the creatively minded to avoid dealing with the inbox or returning messages that we cannot deny are important. Even though this is not occurring face-to-face, we still feel out of our element, so we put off until tomorrow what should have been done today.

Once again, the right-brainers tend to think more randomly than sequentially, so communicating our thoughts to those populating the opposite sphere can prove problematic. But this is where the scheduling can further assist you. Most of our business runs on some form of back-and-forth communication — be it with clients, users, colleagues, etc. — so making time every day to sort through your inbox will keep it running smoothly. Getting back in a timely fashion will reflect positively on you and build trust in your brand.

For more on this…

• Are You Managing Your Email Or Ignoring Your Clients?
• Client Tip #4: Stay in touch
• A Complete Guide to Better Email For Freelancers

Tips for Tackling

• Again, get time on your side and this will help get you going. If you find that you are regularly responding to the same types of queries, create copy templates to move your mail along.
• Prioritize and categorize and the task will fly past. Keeping a hierarchy of your correspondences and having them separated by types will keep you rolling through quick and easy. Again, this breaking down and separating of your messages may not be the easiest for the right-brainers to build into a habit, but it is certainly worth a try.
• Get in and get out! Try to keep your inbox empty and your messages filed away for easy reference and prioritization. If it is a message that can be replied to quickly, then go ahead and immediately get this done, otherwise file it for later.
• Brevity is beyond key; it is your best friend. Keep your correspondence brief and to the point and avoid venturing down unnecessary avenues that open yourself up to further questions. If you ramble on, you are simply wasting time that you could be using elsewhere.

Client Relations

Another oftentimes administrative nightmare that freelancers come across is the client relations portion of the position. There is a reason we like the solitude that tends to accompany the freelance career path, and so breaking out of that solitary shell to be able to effectively communicate with clients can be daunting. It’s no secret that in order for your business to thrive, you need to have a client base to build upon. And as should be no secret to anyone, the way you deal with your clients will often determine if they will return.

As a creative individual whose train of thought pulls right, interacting with those on the left side of the tracks will not always go smoothly. In fact, it may not translate well. The means and methods that right-brainers subscribe to, even in explanations and conversations, can tend to be hard to follow for lefters, and vice versa. So it is imperative that we try to make an effort to keep these interactions focused and on topic. And by understanding that such a translation gap exists, we can make more of an effort to bridge the gap when we deal with our clients.

For more on this…

• Effective Communication With The Non-Creative and Non-Technical Folks
• Client Management for Freelancers: 10 Tips for Better Management
• 5 Mistakes That Will Cost You Your Client (and How to Avoid Them)

Tips for Tackling

• Try to step outside your regular right-brained random ways. Momentarily leave them behind and organize your thoughts before meetings. Taking notes and outlining the points you need to cover beforehand can help you stay focused and have an easier time following.
• Just as we are often responsible for steering clients towards a decision once they employ us, we need to continue to make strides towards being able to steer the conversation. This helps to ensure we stay comfortable as we converse, and it keeps us in our element as much as possible.
• Since it is necessary for us to understand the project from every angle, have your clients explain their approach from many directions. This may help you find a way to relate to it when you otherwise wouldn’t.
• It may sound cheesy, but you may want to set up dry-run practices with some of your non-creative friends or family. Running through your side of the conversation with someone who does not work from a creative place may prepare you for meetings with clients.

Backups and Updates

When it comes to important administrative tasks that so many freelancers tend to let slip through the cracks, keeping up with backups and updates ranks high on the list for right-brainers. Creative people tend to work in the moment of inspiration, and we are enveloped by that moment. But the moment moves on, and when it does move on, we are swallowed up by the next task. With our ever-forward-moving momentum pushing against us, we forget to look back, let alone backup (…sorry). And stopping in the middle of our creative flow to update our software doesn’t exactly rank high either.

Naturally, as a freelancer you are going to be the only one managing and keeping records of what is happening on your end, including those ever-precious works-in-progress. Losing them would be devastating, but remembering to back them up, wouldn’t exactly be a right-brainer move …though I think it may be a both-brain sphere issue. It seems that most of us do not consider backing up our files until something actually happens to cause our drive to crash and we lose them all. But again, in the freelance field you are on your own when it comes to data loss, there is no IT department backing you up, so to speak.

For more on this…

• Backing up your data Part 3 – Backup strategies
• 10 Data Backup, Storage and Sharing Solutions
• List of Services and Tools to Backup Your Hard Drive

Tips for Tackling

• Automation is a right-brainer’s buddy, and it just means that you may actually get your backups and updates done! Finding a service that backs up your data automatically takes the stress off you and ensures that you won’t have to worry about any right-brained interference in this area.
• Take a moment, and take a hike! For many of us, as long as we are at our computer, we will not have the willpower to stop working and get our backups and updates done. So walk away. Give yourself a break, start the process and come back later ready to go.
• A lot of basic software updates are quick and easy and do not interrupt your workflow for very long. Scheduling can definitely work with you in this arena, as most productivity methods encourage you to take short breaks throughout your work day. Set up to run updates during these breaks so that you know they get done.
• Once again, turn to prioritization and a left-brained-style breakdown to get over the procrastination hump that bars most creatives (and so many more) from getting their updates and backups done. Decide what are your most important files and programs, and make sure that they get done first and foremost. Then as you work through your week, work through your lower-priority items.

Overall Advice

You are creative, so act like it!

Overall, you cannot ignore your administrative responsibilities and hope they go away. So do what it is that you do best — approach it creatively. The interwebs are alive with creative solutions to so many different problems that you are bound to be able to find one that fits yours. If not, maybe come up with your own. Nothing is out of reach for the creative mind, because we know no limitations…even the occasional cross-over to the left side.

Inspiration is the easy part, now lets talk motivation!

One of the hardest things for most creative-minded individuals to do when approaching the territory of the left, is getting motivated to tackle these tasks. Even those of us not prone to procrastination will tend to let the left work pile up longer than the right simply because it is a less comfortable fit for us. The thing to remember is that getting started is usually the hardest part. Not to go all Nike on you, but just do it. Force yourself to get started, and let it roll. Immerse yourself in as much of a creative environ as you can to help smooth the transition, and run with it!

Do not elaborate, that just complicates!

You know if it rhymes it’s got to be true (even though that absolute doesn’t rhyme, but still…). Another important thing to remember is to keep things simple to help with these momentary forays into foreign territories. Remember that this is not where your strengths lie, so it may be best for you not to take on too much in one bite. Keep things as concise and brief as you can, taking them a piece at a time. As right-brained thinkers we tend to see things as a whole rather than in parts, so try to find the different parts and break them down, tackling one at a time. That was the reason for breaking everything apart above, so that you could see a way to start separating the different parts from the whole. This can make the tasks at hand seem less overwhelming.

It’s in your reach, you just have to try for it!

An important thing to remember, overall, is that just because we tend to prefer one mode of thinking (be it right- or left-brained), we can improve our abilities within each side through exercises that stimulate the different hemispheres. The problem tends to arise when there is an imbalance in educational focus that fails to appeal to both sides of the brain. This doesn’t mean it is beyond us, just that we have not worked at improving the opposite sphere. So the more that we keep those sides stimulated, the easier the tasks that fall to that side of the brain will be to take on.

Further Resources

That was a look at the administrative side of the freelancing gig, from a right-brained perspective. Below are a few more resources that will further fill you in on the creative’s take on the linear-thinking side of the coin.

• Billings – Billings 3 is a great user-friendly accounting app for Macs built with right-brained creatives in mind.
• Dropbox – Dropbox is a great automated backup system with a range of packages and benefits for keeping your data safe.
• Collabtive – Collabtive is web-based project management software geared towards freelancers and small businesses.
• Invoice Journal – Invoice Journal is an awesome open source app for invoicing that is web-based so you can access your account from anywhere.
• Skype – Skype is a fantastic communications tool for freelancers to contact their clients and colleagues via their computers.
• Left-Brained vs. Right-Brained – The Developer/Designer Paradox – A great article on My Ink Blog which looks at the different sides of the brain in relation to designers and developers.
• Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right – Web Designer Depot’s post which examines the brain and the different hemispheres that operate within it.

By the way…

Smashing Magazine is offering a student trainee position in Smashing Magazine’s Office in Freiburg, Germany. We are looking for a motivated trainee student who wants to learn about online publishing and editorial work. You can gather a first hand experience from one of the most successful blogs by working side by side with the Smashing Magazine’s editorial team. Details.

And for our German readers: Smashing Magazine sucht Unterstützung für die Redaktion — Stelle: (Online)-Redakteur m/w. Details.

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Scattrbrain is a lightweight program for managing the little tasks and reminders we keep track of in our day-to-day lives. Let is sit quietly on your desktop and feed it new tasks from time to time.

With Scattrbrain you can set a due date for a task, color code or re-order your tasks. It can also fetch your Google Calendar events and show them in your to-do list.

http://www.getscattrbrain.com/

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