Article Archives

February 2012

The Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet

Pretty good description of the differences between the major networks to let you decide where to start. Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

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December 2011

iPad/iPhone Apps for Small Businesses

In Business

iPhones and iPads may have been the most popular gifts this holiday season. That now infamous phrase “There’s an app for that!” is fast becoming a cliché because it’s so true. Trying to find useful apps among the chaff can be hard for a new user so I’ve put together a short list of apps that might be useful for business people on the go. Apps with no price specified are free. Evernote The notepad app that comes with IOS…

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How to combine Chrome and IE

In Business

A lot of companies are still using old versions of Internet Explorer despite the security risks and lack of support for modern web applications. There are two methods of supporting both old and new. First, from Google is Chrome Frame which … equips older versions of Internet Explorer with the speedy rendering and JavaScript engines at the heart of Chrome. The second is the third-party IE Tab, which lets you use Chrome for most of your work and open a tab that…

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More People Browse On Mobile Than Use IE6 & IE7 Combined

In Technology

The latest data on browser trends from Sitepoint show that more people browse the Web on smartphones than use Internet Explorer 6 and 7 combined. Those two old clunkers have been the bugbears of Web developers for years, requiring sites to degrade as nicely as possible to that least common denominator of browsers. But it’s a new world now; 6.95% of Web activity in November 2011 was on mobile browsers, and only 6.49% was on IE 6 or 7. More People Browse…

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November 2011

A Guide to Generating Leads on LinkedIn

In Business

While the early adopters flock to Google+ and our kids and moms become power-users on Facebook, LinkedIn is where business gets done. Execs from all Fortune 500 companies are there, and 59 percent of those active on social networking sites say LinkedIn is their platform of choice over Facebook or Twitter, up from 41 percent who called LinkedIn their most important social account a year earlier, according to a June report by Performics and ROI Research. Ann Handley, A Guide…

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October 2011

Readable Webpages

In Design

It’s a long known fact among users that websites are hard to read. I will never forget the reams of paper an old boss of mine would go through printing out webpages and emails because she couldn’t focus on the screen. Web designers have been trying to change things with better typography and layouts for screens but sad to say, the purpose of a webpage isn’t always to allow the content to be read. Some websites place more weight on…

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July 2011

How I Evaluate Terms of Service for Social Media Web Sites – Google+ » JMG-Galleries – Jim M. Goldstein Photography

In Technology

Terms of Service are something you have to agree to anytime you register for an online service. These are mostly long, confusing legal documents we skip through as quickly as the website allows, trusting in the rest of the users to let us know if there’s anything wrong. Several times in the last few months trusted services have changed their Terms of Service without notification leading to uproars from the users. This article is a blessing because it gives pointers…

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A Quick Review of Google+

In Technology

Google+ is the search company’s latest foray into social networking. They’ve learned from mistakes in previous offerings and it shows every indication of becoming a hit.

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May 2011

Basic WordPress Child Themes

In Themes

Creating your own Wordpress theme without much knowledge of html and none of php.

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Trans Twenty Ten

In Themes

Announcing Trans Twenty Ten, a WordPress child of the default Twenty Ten theme. Twenty Ten has a lot of powerful features but I didn’t care for the look. I’ve added custom fonts (Tinos and Tex Gyre Heros and made the content background translucent so more of the custom background shows through along with some CSS3 goodies like shadows and rounded corners. It’s just enough to give Twenty Ten some polish and make the customizations more prominent. It works in Firefox,…

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November 2010

Freebies

In Themes

I’m one of those people who change my desktop background every few days. I’ve done the same thing since I got my first iPhone. In a fit of madness I’ve made some of my own. They’re sized for the iPhone 4 screens but look fine on older versions too. Just click to go to the full-size picture then drag to your desktop.

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August 2010

Newness

In Site

I’ve finally finished moving all my sites to WordPress 3.0 using the new multiblog feature. This will let me manage all my sites from a single interface and skip installing software updates multiple times. It was a lot of work made possible at all by liangzai’s post giving step-by-step instructions on how to use the same WordPress install with multiple domains. Moving the content wasn’t that difficult with my other blogs but because I’d used so many different forms in…

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Expanse

In Layouts

Download expanse.

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Nice and Clean

In Layouts

A minimal blog layout. clean

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Photo Blog

In Layouts

A simple photo blog template emphasizing the daily photo. photo

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Blog Co.

In Layouts

A CSS layout for the popular corporate design with three columns. blogco

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Business Layout

In Layouts

A sample business webpage layout created with CSS and available for download. business.html

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Hello world!

In Site

I’ve moved over to WordPress 3.0 so there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Please forgive the hiccups.

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June 2010

WordPress 3.0 Roundup

In Technology

The blogosphere has been spending a lot of time lately talking about the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. It includes many new features like a new default theme, the ability to manage multiple blogs from a single code installation and an easier method of creating custom menus. I’m personally looking forward to the multi-site ability as I have several different blogs using WordPress. Keeping up with blog and plugin updates on all of them can be a little tiring. I…

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April 2010

Oh no, an AD!

In Site

I once said I’d never do it but if you look over in the sidebar you’ll find an ad for Bluehost.com. Worse, an animated ad. The fact is that as a freelancer I need to make money however I can and the payoff affiliate funds I get are nothing to sneeze about. The important part though is that I’m very pleased with the service. It’s less than ½ of what I was paying previously with all of the services I…

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March 2010

How to create a 3D stained glass effect in Illustrator

In Personal

I came up with this technique while designing a glass art logo. The results were pretty nice so I thought I’d share. This is written in Adobe Illustrator CS3 but it should be fairly simple to implement in other programs. First, create the basic shape using the pen tool: Next, slice it into chunks using the knife tool: Third, select the chunks with the direct selection tool and color them separately: Now select the whole and change the transparency to…

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February 2010

Kicking it out of the nest

In Themes

After 2 months, the “learning project” that wouldn’t end is off my todo list. I took the H5 blog theme which is coded in HTML5 and designed a minimalist blog theme with it. One of the things I wanted was a sidebar with columns so there are four widget areas in the theme. One in the footer, one that spans the whole sidebar and two that float underneath it and form two columns. During the design process I found this…

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Socializing

In Site

Check out the links in the sidebar for my social networks.

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January 2010

My Favorite App

In Technology

Why Evernote is my favorite web/phone/desktop app.

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A new decade

In Site

My New Year’s resolution.

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December 2009

Adobe Design Center – Columns and articles from experts on web design and motion graphics

In Design

Many young web designers view their craft the way I used to view pop culture. It's cool or it's crap. They mistake Style for Design, when the two things are not the same at all. Design communicates on every level. It tells you where you are, cues you to what you can do, and facilitates the doing. Style is tautological; it communicates stylishness. In visual terms, style is an aspect of design; in commercial terms, style can communicate brand attributes.…

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October 2009

Systematizing the Graphic Design Process | Webdesigner Depot

In Design

Unlike other forms of art, graphic design is not just about taking paper and pen and letting the work flow. Graphic designers have to help viewers get the message and help sell a service or product. Creating a design for a client with little or no strategy just doesnâ€™t work. Unlike traditional art, graphic design has to convey a very narrow message. Developing a system for the graphic design process can help the designer achieve the best results. Systematizing any…

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September 2009

Finally finished

In Design

I’ve been working hard on an update to the Midsouth SLA website and it’s finally done. I’d love some feedback.

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August 2009

How to make a widget sidebar in WordPress

In Technology

How to easily adapt a Wordpress theme for widgets.

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July 2009

New Toy in the Box

In Design

Typography has long been a problem in web design. Technology in new browsers brings a practical solution to custom type.

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What is Design?

In Design

My thoughts on the nature of design.

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June 2009

Delicious Library 2.1 First Thoughts

In Technology

My first thoughts on playing with Delicious Library 2.1 and the new iPhone app.

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What is Twitter?

In Technology

I try to explain to casual Internet users what Twitter is and how they can use it for personal and business gain.

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Layouts

In Site

A long, long time ago (in Internet time) and far away (on another domain) I posted some pages I had made with html and css as templates for others to use as I was learning them myself. I’ve added to these occasionally since and today I pared them down to the ones I consider the best and moved them to this site along with a new one. You can find them all on the Layouts page.

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February 2009

What I learned about design from Iron Chef

In Design

Yes I am one of the many geeky Iron Chef fans. I loved the original and I love the American version as well. It only hit me tonight though, the may things I had learned from a mere tv show that ca be applied to my own, non-culinary pursuits. Have a plan They may not know what the specific ingredient is going to be but they obviously have a plan going in.The secret ingredient is revealed and they go straight…

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How to Succeed Marketing to Generation "G"

In Business

How to Succeed Marketing to Generation “G” Copyblogger There’s a brand new generation for online marketers to adapt to. This time, however, the generation is not defined by date of birth. This generation is defined by repulsion at the corporate and political greed that has plummeted much of the world into economic doldrums. In other words, Generation “G” is all about generosity and sickened by greed. I don’t intend to make this a link blog but this particular article is…

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November 2008

My favorite iPhone Apps

In Technology

Thanksgiving and I finally have a break from school and time to work on other projects. Evernote is my external brain. There is a desktop app for Mac or PC, an iPhone app and a web app that all sync automatically. There’s even a Thunderbird extension that sends things to your account. Text, audio, or photo. It’s searchable, taggable and has categories. Bookshelf is an e-book reader specifically for iPhone and the iPod Touch. It supports a lot of file…

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February 2008

40 Free and Cheap Stock Photo Sites to Punch Up Your Blog Posts

In Business

It’s a common rule of thumb that using images as part of your blog posts helps draw attention to them and illustrate what you’re saying. Finding and creating these pictures can be difficult if you aren’t a photographer but there are plenty of places on the Internet where people are sharing their own photos for free or low prices. You have to watch the Terms of Use though, particularly if you are selling the article. http://istockphoto.com http://www.sxc.hu/ http://www.stockxpert.com/ http://www.bigstockphoto.com/ http://www.imagecatalog.com/…

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Second Life as a design outlet

In Business, Design

A number of graphic designers have successfully converted their expertise into Second Life businesses. Everything made in Second Life relies on texturesâ€¦ pictures made in an image program like Photoshopâ€¦ to not only make it look like what the creator wants it to be but to give it depth and reality. So an orb becomes a basketball and an undershirt becomes a tattoo. Because of the ease of entry (software-Gimp is free, upload fees-10L each, 400L for $1, and time),…

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Research on the Web

In Business

The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that “everything is online” is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often available in the form of the public library. Tennessee has a project called the Tennessee Electronic Library, which provides access to a number of databases…

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A NewsGator System Review

In Technology

Newsgator has released all of it’s individual products for free. This was quite a surprise as they were/are among the leading desktop applications for reading RSS feeds for both Macs and Windows computers. However, they explained clearly that most of their money is being made from business licenses, so the more individual desktops they can control, the likelier their products will be chosen when the corporation starts looking for an overall solution. Also, they’ll be collecting “attention data.” If there…

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January 2008

The New Mac Goodies

In Technology

I was as excited as everyone else to see what Steve Jobs had for us at the 2008 MacWorld Keynote. And I oohed and aahed at the MacBook Air. But on further consideration I’ll be waiting for the new Macbook Pros to drool. It is clearly designed as a second computer for people with a desktop at home, with a slower cpu, less RAM and smaller hard-drive than most laptops today. But the big consideration for buyers is the lack…

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August 2007

Looking the Part (Whatever that is)

In Business

It is a fact of the human condition that we are judged on our appearance. We rely on our eyes a great deal in life so the first impression when meeting a new person can be critical in how we view them. In casual situations, this doesn’t matter much but in business it can make or break the deal. Before the potential client or employer has even seen your portfolio or heard your pitch, he or she already thinks of…

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July 2007

Buying local is good for your business too

In Business

Recently I was running errands and noticed a sign for a new local restaurant along the way. Always looking for something to ward off the chain food blahs, I stopped on my way home. It was nice inside, obviously a new family-run place, busy with what looked like a mix of people dropping in like myself and regulars. A very family-like atmosphere. After my meal I had the opportunity to talk with the owner when she wasn’t overwhelmed with work…

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Hacking WordPress as an easy updatable link directory

In Design

By now WordPress has been bent, folded and mangled in any number of ways to for custom CMSs. One of the most interesting ways I did it was to both manage a website and create a small Yahoo! like link directory within it. The website was part of a grant project for helping senior citizens find reliable health information on the Internet. My purpose in using WordPress as a backend was to speed development time as well as make it…

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Working with Bad Organizational Colors

In Design

My first professional website. I was so excited, I had worked so hard to position myself within my department for it. Then I realized, I had to work with our official color: orange. Not a nice warm earth tone, or a bright energizing version either. But what I’m pretty sure is the ugliest web-safe color to be found. Dark, dreary and muddy- not the image we wanted to present to our users. Worse, the secondary color was a web-safe green…

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Introduction

In Personal

I’m a librarian who’s leaving academia to enter the world of web design. Yes, I am insane but that doesn’t have any bearing here. In truth, design is where my heart has been since my first web class in grad school. It just took me a few years to realize it. They’ve been productive years though: I finished my degree, and I will always love information science. I also learned about design and the skills of web standards. I’ve put…

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