The Savior-Sensitive, Seeker-Sensitive Church is a post from Brandon A. Cox.In 1975, Bill Hybels assumed the leadership of a fledgling church plant that would grow into the rather influential Willow Creek Community Church. Under Bill’s leadership, the church pioneered many concepts in the seeker-sensitive strain of worship and ministry. In 1997, Bill and his wife, Lynne, co-wrote Rediscovering Church, an inside look at how the church grew from 100 to 15,000 in weekend attendance. In 1980, Rick and Kay Warren relocated to Orange County, California to launch Saddleback Church. In 1995,…
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The Savior-Sensitive, Seeker-Sensitive Church
Brandon A. Cox9 Feb 2012 | 3:14 pm -
Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed by Google
We Blog Better9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amSearch engine giant Google confirmed the conspiracy’s that they’d performed an update to its Panda algorithm around a week ago, however the company implied it only conducted a data fresh and no changes to ranking signals or updates in the algorithm were initiated. SEO professionals and webmasters around the globe noted changes in their sites’ rankings last week, with some sites slipping further down the results. A range of sites that experienced missing rankings when Panda was first introduced discovered that their rankings and site traffic returned to the level… -
The Weird interview
Seth's Blog9 Feb 2012 | 12:06 pmTo celebrate the launch of Squidoo's new UpMarket magazine, we got permission to post an audio interview I recently did with Darren Hardy of Success. You can find it here. Thanks for listening. -
How To Build An Influencer Marketing Strategy
The Future Buzz9 Feb 2012 | 7:43 amThe following is a guest post from Future Buzz community member Amanda Maksymiw. If you’d like to contribute thinking here, please read the guidelines. So you want to build online buzz but aren’t sure where to get started? While there is no silver bullet or one ticket shot to success, an influencer marketing strategy is one way to help propel your brand into the spotlight online. Of course, this approach to marketing is nothing new. Companies have been marketing to key industry influencers to spread awareness for more than 200 years. But there has been a shift since the early days. -
Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting
louisgray.com7 Feb 2012 | 10:53 amLast fall, shortly after I joined Google, Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting/via My Google+ Profile.More:…
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Brandon A. Cox
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The Savior-Sensitive, Seeker-Sensitive Church
9 Feb 2012 | 3:14 pmThe Savior-Sensitive, Seeker-Sensitive Church is a post from Brandon A. Cox.In 1975, Bill Hybels assumed the leadership of a fledgling church plant that would grow into the rather influential Willow Creek Community Church. Under Bill’s leadership, the church pioneered many concepts in the seeker-sensitive strain of worship and ministry. In 1997, Bill and his wife, Lynne, co-wrote Rediscovering Church, an inside look at how the church grew from 100 to 15,000 in weekend attendance. In 1980, Rick and Kay Warren relocated to Orange County, California to launch Saddleback Church. In 1995,… -
Celebrating the Diversity of the Church
6 Feb 2012 | 8:13 amCelebrating the Diversity of the Church is a post from Brandon A. Cox.I grew up white, middle class, and in the mid-south. My high school was diverse, but not peacefully so. Tensions ran high between races, classes, and groups, which was to some degree a reflection of the entire community. I very well should have grown to adulthood with all kinds of prejudice. But God, in His grace, showed me a different way. As a teenager, when I studied the Bible, I couldn’t help but notice that diversity is something God celebrates. Yes, He chose the Jewish people as His own special people, but His… -
The Pro’s and Con’s of Planting a Church In a Movie Theater
30 Jan 2012 | 11:53 amThe Pro’s and Con’s of Planting a Church In a Movie Theater is a post from Brandon A. Cox.This past Sunday made the fourth week in a row we’ve worshipped in a local movie theater with January 15 being our official launch. We didn’t intend to launch in a theater. I fact, we spent a great deal of time looking at retail spaces, but eventually landed at the Malco because of space, price, and availability. There’s a part of me that fell in love with the idea before we moved in, and has remained attached to it since. Advantages of Meeting In a Theater We know that we… -
Fellow Church Planters, Check Out Velocity 2012
26 Jan 2012 | 4:39 amFellow Church Planters, Check Out Velocity 2012 is a post from Brandon A. Cox.I remember Shawn Lovejoy telling the story of how, when they had their opening service at Mountain Lake Church, he totally forgot to take up the offering, and they couldn’t meet the following two weeks because of ice. I love guys that are real who pour themselves into others, and that’s Shawn. He and his team host an annual conference for church planters and Angie and I have officially purchased plane tickets – so there’s no turning back! If you’re a church planter or a church planting… -
Bobby Minor’s Coaching Network and Truly Mutual Church Planting Partnership
25 Jan 2012 | 4:49 amBobby Minor’s Coaching Network and Truly Mutual Church Planting Partnership is a post from Brandon A. Cox.There are four elements necessary for a church planting movement to succeed: assessment of potential planters, ongoing training, partnership with existing churches, and personal coaching. Bobby Minor has a unique idea for creating a truly mutual partnership between his church plant and existing leaders, while also providing coaching from some of the nation’s leading church leadership thinkers. Bobby is planting Mosaic Church in Durham, North Carolina, a new campus of Mosaic…
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We Blog Better
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Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed by Google
9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amSearch engine giant Google confirmed the conspiracy’s that they’d performed an update to its Panda algorithm around a week ago, however the company implied it only conducted a data fresh and no changes to ranking signals or updates in the algorithm were initiated. SEO professionals and webmasters around the globe noted changes in their sites’ rankings last week, with some sites slipping further down the results. A range of sites that experienced missing rankings when Panda was first introduced discovered that their rankings and site traffic returned to the level… -
4 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Clients Running After Your Business
8 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amThis blog post will explain how you can get profitable clients who will outsource their work to you. Before client come to you, your business has to offer the best services that will produce results. By the end of this web content you will get some contracts that will supercharge your business to the next level. Guest Blogging: For my blog business to reach where it is now, it was because of a guest post that I posted on a high traffic blog that is related to my niche. Before you start to guest post on another person blog, you need to identify the right people that you are targeting. To be… -
Making money with Blogs Involves Research
7 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amThe internet is full of blogs on a myriad of topics. Some bloggers simply share events in their lives because they can, others want to give readers advice and others still are actually making money from their site. If the idea is to make money, it’s important to get the right tips from bloggers who are actually doing this successfully. There are precious few of those about, because a huge proportion of bloggers make a lot of mistakes, often because they have taken advice from people who were not terribly successful to start with. It is therefore essential to ensure that any advice taken… -
The Value Of Writing Your Ideas Down
6 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amThoughts and ideas cross our minds by the millions each and every day. On some days you might have a lot of thoughts on more or less the same subject and topic. Sometimes we speak to others about our ideas, which most likely leave us with even more thoughts and ideas on the subject. What about those days that you have millions and millions of different ideas going through your thoughts in one single day? Often at times we think about the next million dollar idea when we least expect to. If you are a passionate blogger or writer like me, then you might be constantly looking for ideas or… -
We Blog Stalk : Ameena Falchetto
3 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amAll right guys; we at We Blog Better have something new for you this month! We are stalking blogs! Yes, you heard that right! We have tried our best to give you the best of the blogging world and we will continue with that but from this month, we have a twist! Every first week of month we feature a blog that we have stalked over a period of time! Then, we pick out our favorite and tell you why we love them! Now, there are no rules of being selected. Just that these bloggers have something wonderful on their blogs and we loved it! Also, they are just plain awesome! In no way are we going to…
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Seth's Blog
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The Weird interview
9 Feb 2012 | 12:06 pmTo celebrate the launch of Squidoo's new UpMarket magazine, we got permission to post an audio interview I recently did with Darren Hardy of Success. You can find it here. Thanks for listening. -
Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)
9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 amIf I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't even like baseball. Or maybe it's my nephew's ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on. We label the experience with just two words, and two words can't possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event. The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might… -
How do they know you're not a flake?
8 Feb 2012 | 2:43 amBefore your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures. Do I know this person? Did someone I trust send them over? Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?) Has she won an award? Is she famous? Are there typos and is the design sloppy? Are they pestering me? Do I already follow this person online? Does music play when I visit the website? Will… -
Horizontal marketing isn't a new idea
7 Feb 2012 | 2:09 amBut it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money. Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are… -
Who is your customer?
6 Feb 2012 | 2:26 amRule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service. Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently. The question: Who is your customer? It's not obvious. Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes. Nike, on the other hand, doesn't care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect…
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The Future Buzz
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How To Build An Influencer Marketing Strategy
9 Feb 2012 | 7:43 amThe following is a guest post from Future Buzz community member Amanda Maksymiw. If you’d like to contribute thinking here, please read the guidelines. So you want to build online buzz but aren’t sure where to get started? While there is no silver bullet or one ticket shot to success, an influencer marketing strategy is one way to help propel your brand into the spotlight online. Of course, this approach to marketing is nothing new. Companies have been marketing to key industry influencers to spread awareness for more than 200 years. But there has been a shift since the early days. -
The Open Web (Still) Isn’t Going Away
6 Feb 2012 | 8:04 amThe “web is dead” linkbait discussions are back, spurred in part by recent IPO news but also by various tech pundits (ironically enough, the discussions started at sites on the open web). Except I don’t think the open web is going anywhere anytime soon. Even with the proliferation of the modern walled gardens. My opinion is that at this point, it is going to be “and” not “or.” And it makes the most sense to develop a digital strategy that invests in both the open web and in other people’s platforms in such a way that is designed to meet… -
Get Content-Centric, Or Be Disrupted In Search And Social
2 Feb 2012 | 8:19 amMy friend Gini Dietrich (who we featured in our latest digital marketing blogs list) recently published a post sharing 10 content ideas. But that’s not actually what I want to talk about today. I caught this post via her Tweet on the subject, in which she said the post was “for all of you who write content.” To which I responded: so, everyone then. Gini replied and noted that there are lots of people reading that run businesses, are in real estate, or other industries that “aren’t content related.” Maybe it doesn’t appear that these people or… -
Learn Digital Marketing From Savvy Future Buzz Guest Bloggers
1 Feb 2012 | 7:46 amWe not only have a highly engaged group of smart readers here at The Future Buzz. Beyond that, our community is so passionate about what they do they frequently take time out of their busy day to share thinking with all of us. If you’re new here (or just happened to miss one one of these) I’d like to share an aggregation of posts our guest bloggers have submitted since we opened the site up to community submissions. I hope you’ll take the time to read these and connect with the authors as well: Even the Biggest Brands Need TLC to Avoid Going MIA by Andrew Hanelly Help Your… -
The Forgotten Value Of Archival Content
30 Jan 2012 | 7:22 amThe web (and marketers in particular) continue to obsess over real-time. It is put on a pedestal by many who fall victim to the trap that they have to see everything new, now or that is only way web communities work. Of course, this isn’t accurate. Smart professionals across industries I speak with frequently timeshift the real-time web, as they understand the high cost of now. In many cases real-time is important. Conversations, breaking news and information which provides a significant enough advantage to get sooner is worth playing at the edge to get. It’s even fun. But…
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louisgray.com
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Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting
7 Feb 2012 | 10:53 amLast fall, shortly after I joined Google, Michelle Greenlee contacted me for a quick interview about the Google hiring experience, and what tech-savvy job seekers can do to leverage the influence of social media to influence hiring managers. The story was finally posted this morning.The biggest take-away is probably my last note in an answer to her final question: "The world is becoming social and the new world of business and hiring can find great candidates through how you present yourself online."See: Dice.com: Louis Gray on Google and Job Hunting/via My Google+ Profile.More:… -
50 Things a +1 Can Mean
7 Feb 2012 | 12:15 amA +1 is simple. It’s one of the easiest ways on the web to take an action that endorses the content and says you saw something. But it can mean many different things. That’s the beauty of +1. You can +1 things you like. You can +1 bad news. You can +1 things you love. You can +1 casual status updates or items that change the world.Often, we get asked what it means to +1. Here are some ideas. We’d love to see yours./via The Google+ Page (Which I maintain)1. A +1 can say you agree with the post.2. A +1 can say your photo is beautiful.3. A +1 can say your joke was funny.4. A +1 can mean… -
Two Numbers: 1 and 90 Million
7 Feb 2012 | 12:10 amBy now, you all have seen the dual bits of news today - first that Google+ has achieved 90 million users with at least one new feature every single day, over 1 million businesses and brand pages, and sign in of 60% daily, 80% weekly.Also, earlier today, Google was (for the 3rd time) named the best place to work by Fortune Magazine (see http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/snapshots/1.html). We're working on making Google+ the best place to be for you so you can be just as proud about these numbers and this news. To stay on top of all this great stuff,… -
Daria Musk Visits Google+ for Live Performance
7 Feb 2012 | 12:08 amLast Monday, I had the great pleasure of meeting Daria Musk and interviewing her on stage, to learn more about her story and rise from relative obscurity to becoming a Google+ sensation. As I told the Google+ team, assembled in the private concert, in my introduction, Daria epitomizes the community here as well as anyone I know.She is fully invested in this platform, is tireless, upbeat, and to boot, is incredibly talented. I'd heard her sing in many a hangout, but to hear her sing live at Google was transformative. Nothing beats a live performance by an artist with passion, energy… -
10 Great Ways to Get Discovered on Google+
7 Feb 2012 | 12:04 amAs social networks evolve, so to do your circles. Even in the few months since our launch, you’ve probably added a lot of people to your circles who you didn’t know before - people who share common interests, or came by recommendation of a trusted friend or expert. Some people have rocketed their way to high visibility, added to hundreds of thousands of circles, by virtue of their actions on Google+. So while I can’t promise you the big numbers, here are ten ways you can get found on Google+, and examples to boot.1. Embrace the Community While Doing Something Unique and Creative.Daria…
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chrisbrogan.com
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Throw Away the Maps
6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amPeople judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The… -
The Next Social Networks
5 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amThe rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for… -
Learn From Adele – Build Your Platform
3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 amJacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience. What Adele Could Teach You About Impact I’m writing something about this right now for my upcoming book with Julien Smith, but I had to share some of the… -
Rob Gokee is a Musical Wizard
2 Feb 2012 | 8:05 amI had such a great experience working with award winning musical composer Rob Gokee. We did some musical work together, and the process was so amazing. Rob helped me create my theme song for Shhh! The Secret Show. So anyhow, he and I sat down to do an interview, and it’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth it. We talk about what collaboration feels like at a distance, what it takes to get music like this made for your own show, and a lot more. Rob’s a hero to me, and has been part of the community for a while. I was so fortunate to have worked with him. Can’t see the… -
Build Your Platform – Start
30 Jan 2012 | 1:30 amThe following is part ONE of a series called Build Your Platform. If you find it interesting, please consider subscribing for free to get the rest of the series. This post is long. You might want to bookmark it for later. The age of social media oversaturation is upon us. People are declaring Twitter bankruptcy to go along with their email bankruptcy. They cite not wanting to start on yet another social network as their reason for not getting more involved with Google+. And just as soon as you start getting into Pinterest, you hear about Path, but wait: there’s Gentlemint, which is…
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Daily Blog Tips
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PHP Tutorial For Beginners – Part 1
9 Feb 2012 | 2:45 pmWhen I asked in the past if our readers would be interested in learning some programming concepts the vast majority said yes, especially if the concepts were focused around the PHP language. Recently I started playing around with PHP myself, so I decided to create a series of tutorials sharing the stuff. If you like this first part please let me know so I keep more coming. What’s PHP, and why should I care? PHP is a programming language that was developed to to produce dynamic web pages. Technically speaking it’s a server-side scripting language. Server-side means that it works on… -
New Backlink Analysis Tool
8 Feb 2012 | 3:56 amSince Yahoo! closed the Site Explorer service bloggers and webmasters (myself included) were left without any solid alternative. I have been looking for similar tools since then, and an interesting one I found recently is called ahrefs.com. It’s a paid service, but there are many free tools you can use on their website as well. For instance, right on the homepage you can type your domain name and click on “Explore Links” to get an overview of how your website is doing. As you can see from the screenshot above you get a lot of data back. For instance, you can see the total… -
Come Join the Social Media Club
7 Feb 2012 | 4:37 amBack in 2009 I created two clubs, one called “Retweet Club” and the other one called “Facebook Club”, where members would share each other’s content, with the goal of increasing social media traffic to their blogs and websites. The clubs worked as mailing lists (using Google Groups), but eventually the activity died down. The main reason was the following: sharing wasn’t fair. A member could be selfish and only send requests to the club, without ever sharing the content from other members. A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about what could be a… -
How Many Posts Should You Write Each Week?
5 Feb 2012 | 7:01 pmWhen I started blogging, four years ago, many experts advised posting daily – to increase traffic and keep readers hooked. And many popular blogs do post every day (at least on weekdays). Should you post every day, though? Probably not. Why? Because: If you write two posts each week instead of five (or seven), those posts will be much better written. If you only post once or twice a week, you’ll usually find that you get more comments on each post. If you don’t post too frequently, readers may actually read every post, instead of one in five. If you don’t use up all your ideas in the… -
How Much Does A New Customer Cost?
3 Feb 2012 | 8:28 pmFor someone who is about to start up their own business, whether online or not, this is an essential question to ask. When you sell a product or service you need someone to make a purchase so you can make money. The most important principle in business is that there are two different types of people involved in your business; customers and clients. While both of these may appear at first to be the same they are critically different and concentrating on one over the other can be the difference between success and failure. This concept, what I call the $1 Customer, I teach to clients in order…
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@ProBlogger
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Is Perfectionism Stalling Your Productivity?
9 Feb 2012 | 12:04 pmWe’ve all been there … You sit down to write a post. You get the opening line down, but half-way through the second sentence, you go back to tweak the first. A bit further on, you decide to chop up the paragraphs you’ve done so far and rearrange them … but on second thought, is that really the better option? In two minds, you “finish” the post, then spend a half-hour writing and rewriting the “ideal” headline. Finally, happy(ish!) your cursor hovers over the Publish button … but you just can’t press it. You decide to give it some… -
6 Powerful Guest Post Tactics that No One’s Talking About
9 Feb 2012 | 6:05 amThis guest post is by Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind. Guest posting is a hot topic amongst startup bloggers. It is one of the most widely-adopted blog promotion strategies in existence, and has been made perhaps even more popular by the success of “serial” guest posters such as Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing. His “blitzkrieg” strategy may come across to some as a triumph of quantity over strategy, but nothing could be further from the truth. He understands the key concepts that we will be exploring in this post, and executes them in a highly effective manner. Whilst… -
How to Succinctly Report a Blog Issue to Tech Support
8 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amThis guest post is by Matthew Setter of Malt Blue. How often do you find it happening to you? You discover an issue with your site, or one of your community members emails you to tell you about it, and soon you start to see tweets about it too. Maybe it’s as simple as an error message that detracts from the professional appearance of your site. Perhaps the contact form doesn’t send messages to your contact email address. Or is it that the whole site just displays as a blank page, otherwise known as the white page of death? You’re not a programmer, a software engineer or a seasoned… -
Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger: Part 2
7 Feb 2012 | 12:05 pmThis guest post is by Devesh of WP Kube. A few months ago, I wrote a guest post here called How to Make Your Blog Load Faster than ProBlogger. Today, I’ll go into some more detailed advice to help you speed up your site even more. If you’re a blogger, you already know about the importance of blog loading speed, and the role it plays in search engine rank and marketing your blog. But if this is new territory for you, here are three quick reasons why you need to speed up your blog: Google includes website loading speed as an important metric in their ranking algorithm. If you want… -
How I Beat my Best Month Ever by Doing Something Good, Better [Case Study]
7 Feb 2012 | 6:04 amMid-December 2010: on my photography site, we launched a new campaign—our first ever 12 Days of Christmas promotion. The result was my biggest month of earnings ever up to that point. The idea was simple: offer discounts on 12 products over the 12 days leading up to Christmas. I used a mix of my own ebooks and products from other photography sites with affiliate commissions. The result was massive. Not only did we see some great revenue generated, it created some lovely buzz on the site. Due to the success of the 2010 campaign, in mid-December 2011 we launched our second 12 Days of…
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Mashable!
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17 Most-Popular Photos From Flickr Commons
9 Feb 2012 | 3:36 pmFemale Aircraft Worker "Woman aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, Calif. Shown checking electrical assemblies." Image courtesy of The Library of Congress, Flickr.Click here to view this gallery.Flickr Commons, a collaboration between the photo-sharing site and the Library of Congress that began in 2008, has released 17 of its most-popular photos to celebrate its fourth anniversary. The project began as an effort to increase exposure to some of the world’s historic photographic treasures and to crowdsource public knowledge about the archives. The Commons has a “no… -
How Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Lays the Smackdown on Social Media
9 Feb 2012 | 3:04 pm“Can you smelllllll….What the The Rock! Is cooking?!?” That became a ubiquitous catchphrase when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a Worldwide Wrestling Federation megastar around the turn of the millennium. Unlike most wrestling-ring bruisers, however, Johnson has done a lot more than just “lay the smack down” on hapless “jabronis,” as he was fond of saying. He won a college football national championship as a hard-hitting defender at the University of Miami in 1991. He’s become a bona fide movie star too, appearing in action hits such… -
Type This Into Google for a Valentine’s Day Surprise
9 Feb 2012 | 2:25 pmRomantic math geeks, your moment has arrived. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, go ahead and type (or paste) this into Google search: sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5 Twitter user @Huckberry tipped us off to the fact that typing in the algebraic equation plots several different functions on a graph that forms the shape of a heart. The series includes various square roots, absolute values and cosine functions — mathematical functions often taught in high school math courses. The plotted lines change direction due to… -
Microsoft: You’ll Never Turn Off Devices Running Windows on ARM
9 Feb 2012 | 2:02 pmMicrosoft described in detail Thursday exactly how Windows will work on ARM devices. The new strain of Windows, retooled from the ground up for low-power devices like tablets, will be identical to the regular desktop version in many ways, and Microsoft says it’ll ship some test units to developers by the end of February. Actual products are planned for the general release of Windows 8. In a departure from traditional Windows machines, ARM-based devices running Windows will be complete “end-to-end” products, meaning you won’t be able to buy Windows as a piece of… -
When Should You Go All-In on Your Startup? [VIDEO]
9 Feb 2012 | 1:47 pmFrom bootstrapping his company, to raising a seed round last year, to his company’s recent $8 million A round, Neil Capel exemplifies the grit and hustle typical in successful entrepreneurs. Capel founded Sailthru, an enterprise software-as-a-service company that uses clickstream data to individually tailor marketing emails to each user, which Capel says will exponentially increase the lifetime value of a customer email address. Check out our interview with Capel to find out how he went from a consultant at Morgan Stanley to founding a company that will soon be expanding globally and…
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Lifehacker
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Google Revamps its Navigation Bar...Again [Google]
9 Feb 2012 | 3:45 pm -
Perform Nearly Any Windows Task with One Keystroke [Keyboard Shortcuts]
9 Feb 2012 | 3:30 pmMore » -
Save Files with Any Extension From Windows' Save As Menu [Windows Tips]
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 pmMore » -
Daily App Deals: Get Remoter: Remote Desktop (VNC) for iOS for 50% Off in Today's App Deals [Deals]
9 Feb 2012 | 2:30 pm -
Offer to Pay Up Front to Get Discounts on Dental Care [Saving Money]
9 Feb 2012 | 2:00 pmMore »
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zenhabits
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The Pause Upon Which All Else Relies
9 Feb 2012 | 7:56 amPost written by Leo Babauta. There is one little habit I’ve learned that has changed everything else in my life. The pause. When we fail, it’s because we act on urges without thinking, without realizing it. We have the urge to eat junk, and we do it. We have the urge to check email instead of writing a chapter of our book, and so we open our inbox. We have an urge to smoke, to drink, to do drugs, to chew our nails, to play a Facebook game, to procrastinate, to skip a workout, to eat more fries, to criticize, to act in jealousy or anger, to be rude … and we act on that urge. -
The Thousand Cuts Fitness Program
6 Feb 2012 | 9:43 amPost written by Leo Babauta. I’ve trained for marathons, triathlons, 10Ks, a 13.5-hour challenge, Ubanathlons, and more. But my favorite fitness program isn’t one where you train for a major event. It’s where you get fit by a thousand little actions. When the actions are tiny, they are easy. You have no excuse. You can do them anywhere, all day long. I fold fitness into my life, like blueberries into batter, and it becomes a part of the recipe, not just a topping. If you haven’t found a way to get fit, try the Thousand Cuts Fitness Program. There is nothing better for… -
The Two-Headed Beast of Successful Habit Change
2 Feb 2012 | 8:20 amEditor’s Note: This is a guest post from Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology. I used to have a lot of bad habits. I still do, but I used to have a lot more. Here’s just a small sampling: I woke up late and went to bed early. I procrastinated on my most important work. I neglected my relationships. I drank too much. I bit my fingernails. I slouched a lot. I picked my nose (no joke). I bought worthless things I didn’t need. I chewed with my mouth open. I dressed like a slob. I ate tons of junk food. I could go on, but none of that’s incredibly important. What’s… -
Create the Habit of Meditation, & the Zen Habits Premium Membership
31 Jan 2012 | 2:03 pmPost written by Leo Babauta. It’s something I should have created a long time ago: the Zen Habits Premium Membership, and a mini-course that’s included with it called Create the Habit of Meditation. The membership is a monthly subscription of $19.99, but really it’s a commitment to changing your life, and the tools needed to do that. If you’ve been looking to simplify, get healthy & fit, become more effective, do work you’re passionate about, eliminate debt, find contentment, declutter, create new habits … this new program is meant to show you how to… -
Creating Silence from Chaos
27 Jan 2012 | 2:20 pmPost written by Leo Babauta. We are often afraid of silence, because its emptiness feels idle, boring, unproductive, and scary. And so we fill our lives with chaos, noise, clutter. But silence can be lovely, and therapeutic, and powerful. It can be the remedy for our stress and the habits that crush us. If we want quiet in our lives, how do we create it? I’ve been exploring this myself. As a father of six kids, I have to admit that I don’t always have silence in my life. That’s not a complaint — I love the messy noise that my family brings — but silence can be a…
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Stepcase Lifehack
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Why Joy Can Be Your Enemy
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amIn previous posts, I discussed why the so-called “negative” emotions of anger, shame, sadness, and fear are actually good friends and guides. In this post, I am going to close the loop on this project by outlining why joy, a “positive” emotion, can be your enemy. How can this be? How can joy cause trouble? What’s wrong with feeling good? Well, nothing, of course. Except that the pursuit of joy (and the fear of losing joy) can distract us from creating long-term happiness and fulfillment. And it can even bring about circumstances that cause tremendous suffering. -
How to Consume Your Digital Information More Efficiently
9 Feb 2012 | 3:30 amAs the amount of information that is potentially important to us continues to grow, it’s now more vital than ever to be able to process and consume it more efficiently. Here are some tactics to help you become more efficient with your time and information processing. RSS and keeping up with headlines If you aren’t an RSS user, you should be. It’s an excellent way to become efficient with your time and a good way to get through a bunch of information to find the important stuff quickly. Only subscribe to sites that inform you directly or entertain you. According to Clay Johnson in his… -
Six Sizzling Suggestions to Make Valentine’s Day Last All Year
8 Feb 2012 | 5:13 pmIt’s that month again. Does your heart leap at the prospect of astonishing your partner with a date that will set their world on fire? I didn’t think so. All that pressure to be romantic focussed on one little day can feel like more of a burden than anything else. You can sulk all you want but declaring that you don’t believe in the whole consumerist conspiracy rarely gets you off the hook unless your beloved shares that same philosophy. It is possible that you are so romantic all year round that your partner feels sorry for the poor schmucks who are waiting for their annual dose of… -
A Get Out of Debt Strategy That Works
8 Feb 2012 | 11:03 amYou’ve decided this is the year you’re going to get out of debt once and for all. You’re committed, you’re determined, now the only thing you need is a plan. There are many plans for debt reduction, but they all generally include the same elements. Debt accumulates over time for a variety of reasons. So, it is expected that time will be required to reduce that debt as well. Be patient and take it one step at a time…you’ll see results. Get a clear picture You have to understand the reality of your indebtedness. It’s impossible to make a plan to reduce debt if you don’t know… -
Why You Should Learn a Daily Lesson
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am“There is divine beauty in learning… To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps.” – Elie Wiesel “What did you learn in school today?” is one of most common questions asked by parents to their children every day after school. Yet many people go through life without ever asking what they learned each day. Being mindful of learning daily lessons allows us to be open to change and growth. We think of school as the place where people learn, but really life itself is the far…
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Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life
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5 Myths Haunting Your Healthy Foods
3 Feb 2012 | 8:03 amThese days, eating healthy has become a curiously difficult task. Despite the fact that the canons of healthy eating have not changed in centuries, the proliferation of health food products has continued unabated for years. It’s become a crisis of abundance.However, just because a product occupies shelf space in a boutique food store doesn’t mean it’s any better for you than its generic counterpart. Advertisers are very aware of the powers of “mood affiliation”, which is the tendency to associate familiar claims with one another. For example, consumers are very likely to believe a… -
Four Steps To Rescue Stray New Year Resolutions
2 Feb 2012 | 6:55 amLooks like it is that time of year when many New Year resolutions that people set have already strayed. Attempts to kick a smoking habit for example, might have seemed successful for a few weeks but once the realities and stresses of coming back from the holidays have resurfaced, some people may have caved into the nicotine again.Of course there is the usual health promises that get broken too. According to the fitness industry, a lot of gym memberships are sold from December to February but gym attendance significantly drops shortly afterwards when people realize that working out involves a… -
Finding the Courage to Stay the Course
30 Jan 2012 | 10:06 amAnytime you decide on the pursuit of an important goal, you’ll be faced with a series of challenges. Peaks, valleys and plateaus are par for the the course. But the thing that separates the people who make it from the ones that don’t is the courage to stay the course.At the start of any new endeavor most of us look forward to every single day with a child like excitement. We see infinite possibilities and the future appears bright. It seems as though there is absolutely nothing that can get in our way. We feel almost invincible and the possibility of failure doesn’t even occur to us. We… -
How to Deal with Difficult People and Have Constructive Conflict
28 Jan 2012 | 8:32 amLife and relationships aren't always perfect. Take a minute to think of some difficult people you have to deal with in your life? These may be people you work with, the in-laws that come to town throughout the year, or your neighbor who can’t seem to take a hint. For whatever reason, you're just not jiving with these people.Do you flee? Or, do you get flexible and learn to interact?When we encounter these extreme personalities it can feel like they are trying to make our life miserable, but more often than not, it’s simply learning about these peoples’ tendencies and how to interact in… -
7 Habits of Highly Excellent People
27 Jan 2012 | 2:16 amAre you driven in life? Do you love to excel? I believe all of us do. We are born to be the best we can be and to make the best out of our lives.When I was in high school, I wasn't exactly the kind of student teachers would like. I was truant, didn't do my homework and did badly on my examinations. I was lazy and unmotivated in school. However, after a while I realized that this wasn't who I wanted to be. This wasn't the life I saw myself leading. People around me were judging and negative, and I had enough of all of that crap. I had enough of being discriminated against and I decided to turn…
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Twitter Blog
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Twitter SMS: Now available for satellite providers
9 Feb 2012 | 1:02 pmTwitter began as an SMS service. Today, we continue to build out SMS capability because we recognize the importance and value of making our service available to every person on the planet. No matter what device people use — from the most advanced smartphone to the simplest feature phone — people around the world should be able to send and read Tweets. Of course, there may be times when people cannot access SMS. We’ve been working on some solutions when that occurs:Satellite operatorsWe’ve partnered with the two largest satellite operators, Iridium and Thuraya, to give their… -
Post-Bowl Twitter analysis
6 Feb 2012 | 1:06 pmThe results are in: People love to share the experience of watching the Super Bowl with millions of other viewers from around the world. Whether it’s cheering for your team, commenting on the halftime show or discussing the ads, it seems you have a lot to say about this annual tradition—and you’re using Twitter to say it.Here’s a fun fact: in 2008, Twitter’s largest spike in Tweets per second (TPS) during the Super Bowl was just 27. Three years later, fans sent 4,064 TPS, which was the highest TPS for any sporting event at that time.This year, the TPS peak was 12,233 Tweets. The… -
Roar of the crowd: Super Bowl on Twitter
2 Feb 2012 | 11:34 amFrom @TimTebow leading the Denver Broncos to a shocking overtime win (and a new record for sports-related Tweets per second: 9,420) to San Diego Chargers receiver @ericweddle1’s sideline Tweets from the Pro Bowl—we watched all of the NFL post-season’s most memorable moments come alive on Twitter.And while the @Giants and @Patriots’ rematch and halftime show play out on TV, the national conversation is happening well beyond your den: it also happens on Twitter. Follow your favorite NFL players, coaches and commentators during the game, or just search for #SuperBowl to see how everyone… -
Tweets still must flow
26 Jan 2012 | 11:25 amSee below for an update.One year ago, we posted "The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,“The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact … almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits.”As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for… -
Hack Week @ Twitter
25 Jan 2012 | 12:20 pmHack Week is one of the ways we actively promote innovation through experimentation around the company. This week, a wide range of folks here are taking time away from their day-to-day work to collaborate and develop ideas that they are passionate about. Get comfortable with uncertainty; it leaves room for inspiration. #hackweek— benji shine (@bshine) January 24, 2012Employees across the company have formed nearly 100 teams to work on a variety of projects. Some are developing ways that could make Twitter even easier to use; others are testing out a new feature or tool that people might…
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Upcoming Pixar
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'Brave' at WDW's Magic of Disney Animation!
3 Feb 2012 | 9:22 pmVisitors will now be greeted by never-before-seen Brave artwork at The Magic of Disney Animation. Twitter user @BanksLee graciously uploaded a couple snapshots of the fresh installment from his latest visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida. Included in the display are gorgeous maquettes of Merida and Queen Elinor, sketches, paintings, and other concept art that contributed to the film’s prouction and knick knacks that pertain to the film’s plot. Feel free to check out the images below, but beware of possible spoilers: • Magic… -
'La Luna' Nominated at the 84th Academy Awards!
24 Jan 2012 | 9:14 amNominations for the 84th Academy Awards were announced today with an honorable mention reserved for one of Pixar’s films. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, Cars 2 didn’t garner any nods making it the first Pixar film not to land a spot in the Best Animated Feature category since its inception. On a positive note, Enrico Casarosa’s short, La Luna, is now in the running for Best Animated Short! Short Film (Animated) • Dimanche/Sunday – Patrick Doyon • The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore – William Joyce,… -
Pixar's 'Brave' Website Update!
21 Jan 2012 | 3:13 pmThe Pixar website debuted its "brave" new look today with banners dedicated to the studio’s upcoming film. Along with the home page, Merida and company also have a preview site available in the Feature Films section. Expect to see much more as we get closer to Brave‘s summer release. Brave opens in US theatres on June 22, 2012. Your thoughts? -
Trailer: 'Finding Nemo' 3D!
12 Jan 2012 | 3:56 pmAfter a pseudo-preview on the Ellen show, a new trailer has been released for the 3D theatrical re-issue of Finding Nemo. I’ve always thought the underwater environment in Nemo would work amazingly in 3D, so I’m excited to see Pixar’s 5th back on the big screen. Fans will be able to catch the Andrew Stanton-directed feature when it dives into megaplexes later this year. Check out the trailer below: Finding Nemo 3D opens September 14, 2012. Are you excited for the re-release? -
'Finding Nemo' 3D Featured on 'Ellen'!
9 Jan 2012 | 6:07 pmLate last year, Disney announced its plan to re-release four animated movies in 3D-capable theatres beginning in 2012. Two of these films happen to be some of Pixar’s most beloved, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. Appropriately, the first in line to make its 3D debut, Finding Nemo, was recently featured on Ellen Degeneres’ namesake talkshow. Take a look at the “preview” footage: Finding Nemo 3D opens on September 14, 2012. Your thoughts?
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A List Apart
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Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need
31 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amWith a mobile-first responsive design approach, if any part of the process breaks down, your user can still receive a representative image and avoid an unnecessarily large request on a device that may have limited bandwidth. But with several newer browsers implementing an “image prefetching” feature that allows images to be fetched before parsing the document’s body, some of the web's brightest developers are abandoning responsive images in favor of user agent detection, at least as a temporary solution. For us standardistas, UA detection leaves a bad taste in the mouth. More… -
Pricing Strategy for Creatives
31 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amStrategic pricing helps your brand and helps you to make more money. Issuing a price is like handing out a business card—it’s a great branding tool, but be careful about what it says to your market. Beginning relationships with customers at a high price makes the statement: “we’re good at what we do and we know it.” Fighting with a competitor over a low price says “I’m uncertain about my abilities, so I’ll take what I can get.” Failing to use a considered pricing policy will leave you treading water in a sea of design mediocrity, allowing you to just stay afloat while you… -
Building Twitter Bootstrap
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amBootstrap is an open-source front-end toolkit created to help designers and developers quickly and efficiently build great stuff online. Its goal is to provide a refined, well-documented, and extensive library of flexible design components created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for others to build and innovate on. Today, it has grown to include dozens of components and has become the most popular project on GitHub, with more than 13,000 watchers and 2,000 forks. Mark Otto, the co-creator of Bootstrap, sheds light on how and why Bootstrap was made, the processes used to create it, and how it… -
An Important Time for Design
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amDesign is on a roll. Client services are experiencing a major uptick in demand, seasoned design professionals are abandoning client work in favor of entrepreneurship, and designer-co-founded startups such as Kickstarter and Airbnb are taking center stage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that design has a massive role to play in the evolution of the web and the next generation of web products. The result, says Cameron Koczon, is that designers have now been given a blank check—one that lets web designers band together as a community to change the way design is… -
A Pixel Identity Crisis
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amThe pixel has long been the atomic particle of screen based design: a knowable, concrete unit of measurement. But layouts based on the hardware pixel are fast becoming an endangered species. Even the introduction of a new, W3C standard reference pixel, although it promises stability in the long-term, can't help us navigate the current chaos. Consider the two "standard" pixel definitions and 500 "standard" viewports your user's Android device may support. To create designs that transcend platform differences—the promise of the web and standards—you must normalize pixels across devices.
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Smashing Magazine Feed
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Smashing Special: WordPress Theme Trends For 2012
9 Feb 2012 | 5:25 amThis special is the first in our series of Smashing Specials — extended articles and studies dedicated to a specific topic. The special features current WordPress theme trends for 2012, covering past trends, new developments in theme design and trends in the theme development. 2011 was a great year for WordPress, with some excellent new updates that saw the introduction of a drag-and-drop uploader, distraction-free writing, the HTML5 Twenty Eleven theme, and movement towards a fully responsive dashboard. As well as changes to WordPress core, theme development continued to… -
A Craft Of Consequences: Reader, Writer And Emotional Design
8 Feb 2012 | 8:06 amBefore the very first page of a book has been read, you’ve already analyzed it in countless ways without even noticing. The paper stock, the thickness of the binding, the aroma, the color of the type and even the texture of the cover; the very character of the book is being dissected by the hand and eye at every moment. In this brief second there is a dialogue between the reader and the object. This conversation is subtle and complex, but for most people it is entirely subconscious. This is because we rarely think about these things — we feel them… -
Collaging: Getting Answers To The Questions You Don’t Know To Ask
6 Feb 2012 | 7:02 amWhen conducting user research, we all know that asking the right questions is just as important as how you ask them, but how do you know exactly what questions to ask? What if the discussion topic is very personal? How do you get a complete stranger to open up? There is a better way to conduct an in-depth interview, and it doesn’t involve a clipboard. Just imagine what you could discover if the participant’s answers weren’t limited to a predetermined set of questions. This is where collaging can help. Collaging is a projective technique by which participants select images… -
How To Use Custom Post Types To Organize Online Marketing Campaigns
3 Feb 2012 | 7:04 amCustom post types add a level of flexibility to WordPress that makes this open-source Web development platform more useful on many levels. Whenever I have been faced with a Web-based task, especially one that involves organizing information, the first thing I do is examine WordPress to determine if it can handle the job. It usually can. Image Source As an Internet marketer and analyst, I need to be able to organize online marketing campaigns in a way that is trackable in Google Analytics. This is the perfect task for WordPress custom post types. In this article, we’ll explain… -
Freebie: St. Valentine’s Day Icon Set (10 PNG/PSD Icons)
2 Feb 2012 | 7:38 amEvery now and then, we release useful freebies for all of our highly valued readers. Today, it is our pleasure to present to you Cuberto‘s fantastic St. Valentine’s icon set — exclusively designed for Smashing Magazine and its loyal readers. The icons presented are available in transparent PNGs as well as Photoshop PSDs (128×128 px) and are perfect for any projects you have coming up for St. Valentine’s Day. Enjoy! Download the Set for free! This icon set is completely free to use for commercial or personal applications without any…
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Web Designer Wall - Design Trends and Tutorials
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CSS3 Image Styles – Part 2
31 Jan 2012 | 8:18 amPreviously I wrote two tutorials on how to style the image element with CSS3 inset box-shadow and border-radius. The trick is to wrap the image with a span tag and apply the image as background-image. However, I recently ran into a problem with that trick while designing the PhotoTouch theme. The issue is that the [...]Advertise here with BSA -
UPrinting Business Card Giveaways
16 Dec 2011 | 10:32 amThis Friday giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting, a shop that provides a wide range of online printing services. We are giving away 3 sets of 250 die-cut business card printing to 3 winners. Each winner will receive a set of 250 business card printing with free shipping. To enter this contest, all you have to [...]Advertise here with BSA -
Responsive Design in 3 Steps
8 Dec 2011 | 7:52 amResponsive web design is no doubt a big thing now. If you still not familiar with responsive design, check out the list of responsive sites that I recently posted. To newbies, responsive design might sound a bit complicated, but it is actually simpler than you think. To help you quickly get started with responsive design, [...]Advertise here with BSA -
Despositphotos Giveaways
6 Dec 2011 | 7:59 pmAs mentioned last week, I will be giving away some goodies in December. So here is the first giveaway sponsored by Depositphotos stock photos. Depositphotos is giving away $50 credit to 5 readers on Web Designer Wall. Hurry, this contest ends in two weeks on Dec 21, 2011. If you need stock photos for your [...]Advertise here with BSA -
MightyDeals is Giving an iPhone 4S
1 Dec 2011 | 1:43 pmCan you believe it is December already? For the joy of December, I'm going to giveaway some goodies to you. The first nice one came across is the iPhone 4S (unlocked model) giveaway from MightyDeals, who gave away 2 iPod Nanos last year on the Wall. For your chance to win an iPhone or one [...]Advertise here with BSA
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Think Vitamin
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Are There Problems Web Apps Can’t Solve?
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amI’m a developer, have been for a long time. I’ve been wrting code for the web for the past decade in my life. I think I might be stuck in a bubble, I look to the web to solve problems that can be solved better in simpler ways. And looking around, I know I am not the only one. I want to tell you a story of a couple of problems that we’ve tried to solve several times with technology, when all we needed was a couple dollars worth of office supplies. The Lunch Party I’ve been working with Nick Pettit since 2007, before we came to Carsonified and Treehouse. In our last job… -
Rails 3.2.1
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amGreetings, folks! If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest Rails news, we have a new version! Ruby on Rails 3.2.1 has recently been released with some very welcome changes! Faster development mode – Rails now only reloads the classes you’ve actually changed between requests in development mode. Explain queries – In development mode, you can automatically show the explain of certain queries by calling .explain at the end of your query. The results will go in your log. Active Record Store – Active Record now has a built in way to do key/value storage right… -
Treehouse Groups are live!
8 Feb 2012 | 5:45 amYou can now create a Treehouse Group Account for your company, university, school or any grouping of two or more people. Group plans are 25% cheaper so it’s a great way to save money. We’ve added a simple Groups Dashboard that allows you to see … Group Activity: Who’s watching videos and unlocking Badges Ranking in your Group, based on Badge unlocks More info … Group pricing is 25% off normal prices, which allows people with large groups to save a bit of money. You only need 2+ people to sign up. If you’re already a Member, you can’t be brought into a… -
Free Video: Getting started with iOS development
7 Feb 2012 | 7:38 amIn this 6 minute video, we will get you started with iOS development by learning about the benefits of Apple’s iOS Dev center and how to gain access to the integrated development environment (IDE) called Xcode. This video is from Treehouse, a high-quality video training site with hundreds of short videos on topics like … Accessibility CSS3 Aesthetic Foundations Django HTML CSS HTML5 iOS Development JavaScript jQuery NoSQL PHP Responsive Web Design Ruby Ruby on Rails UX Version Control WordPress Theme Design New videos are added regularly, so it’s a great way to stay… -
Another Round of Treehouse Nerd Merit Badges!
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amWe recently launched Treehouse and, thanks to you, it’s been successful beyond our wildest expectations. Thank you all so much! We had so much fun celebrating with our previous giveaway, that we thought we would do another one.If you tweet to @treehouse the name of your favorite web app, we’ll randomly pick 10 winners to receive a "Mike the Frog" Nerd Merit Badge! Here’s a picture of what they look like:
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Psdtuts+
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Freaky and Bizarre Animal Mashups by Human Descent
9 Feb 2012 | 8:30 amOne of the best things about Photoshop is that it allows us to combine more than one photo to create an entirely new image. This can be done with landscapes, people, and even animals. In this article, we will showcase the work of Human Descent, a photo manipulator who has managed to create hundreds of new species using the power of Photoshop. Let’s take a look! Frederick the Fruck This image combines a duck and a frog. Roaring Liog This frog was combined with a lion. Nosferafrog This breed of frog has huge teeth. Rabbick A rabbit combined with a baby chicken. Hummingwolf Bird This is… -
Test Your Photoshop Knowledge #6
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amWe know how much you guys like to test your knowledge of Photoshop so today we are giving you an opportunity to do so with another quiz from Martin Perhiniak. Please take a moment to complete this 10-question quiz and see if you’re prepared to pass our test! Good luck! Editor’s note: this quiz is for Photoshop CS5. -
Easy Dashed and Dotted Lines in Photoshop
8 Feb 2012 | 9:57 amFor the last few weeks, the Photoshop team has been giving us some sneak peeks of the latest version of Photoshop. The latest version of Photoshop is due to be released in the first half of 2012. We have already seen videos showing off Photoshop’s new look, and some performance enhancements but this video shows us something new, something that we have been asking them to include for a long, long time – dotted and dashed lines. In this video, Photoshop Product Manager, Zorana Gee shows how you can click on a stroke and quickly convert it to a dotted line. Then, she shows how to quickly… -
Create a Caricature Painting in Photoshop
8 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amPhotoshop is an excellent tool for manipulating photographs but it can also be used as a means to create stunning digital art. This tutorial is part of a 25-part video tutorial series demonstrating everything you will need to know to start producing digital art in Photoshop. Digital Art for Beginners, by Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor, Martin Perhiniak will begin by teaching you how to draw in Photoshop. At the conclusion of this series you will know all you need to produce your own concept art and matte paintings in Photoshop. Today’s tutorial Part 22: Create a Caricature… -
Retouch a Bland Model Portrait in Photoshop
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amSometimes retouching a portrait can be really tricky, specifically when dealing with model portraits. In this tutorial, we will be retouching a particularly difficult shot in which the subject has no makeup or dramatic lighting to emphasize the shot. Using Photoshop, you will be able to add makeup, repair flaws, and add some drama to this shot. Let’s get started! Tutorial Assets The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. Model (iStockPhoto) Background (iStockPhoto) Step 1 – Selections The first thing I want to do is remove the model from her background.
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FreelanceSwitch
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Tackling Freelance Projects Like a Software Developer
9 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amHave you heard about the trend of standing room only meetings? Instead of having a team sit around a conference table, they’re made to stand up for short meetings instead. The trend is becoming prevalent in tech companies, and is meant to eliminate long, boring meetings where no one pays attention. Some companies have even instituted a penalty for being late to a meeting—either through sheer humiliation or a small fee. If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a… -
A 10-Step Process to a Successful Freelance Career
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amAs many freelancers eventually realize, going into business for yourself means you actually take on two separate (very different) full time businesses. How’s that for a surprise when you originally thought that you could blissfully code away and somehow the money would start rolling in? This is actually what happens on your path to freelance success: You dream. It starts with the fantasy of going freelance. First, you dream of the time that you can shed your cubicle life and work from home in your fuzzy slippers, and think that somehow, eventually, the money will start coming in. You dive… -
How To Deal With Criticism
8 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amWorking in the creative field means you are an open target for criticism. Someone doesn’t like your photography work, they think you’re a bad writer, or your prices are unfair. And as freelancers, it can be hard not to take criticism—no matter how well meaning—personally. I read this blog post on Forbes.com on how to deal with really tough criticism, written for people who are business leaders. While I’m not necessarily the target audience for this article, I did take away some good lessons that I’d like to share for the freelance set. The first thing we need to consider is that… -
5 Ways to Spread the Freelance Love
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amValentine’s Day is probably not a holiday that brings your fellow freelancers to mind. You may have made a point to recognize your clients during the December holiday season, so why not make February the time to applaud your fellow independents? Spreading good karma always pays off in some manner, whether it be a new contact, lead, or networking opportunity. Here are some ways to get started. Hire someone. You might not think of yourself as a potential client to other freelancers, but face it, you can’t be good at everything. You could tap into fellow freelancers for several aspects of… -
Build a Better Tweet
7 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amA new study from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science called “Who Gives a Tweet: Evaluating Microblogging Content Value” has unveiled what we like to read, and what we don’t like to read, on Twitter. I have to say, the results aren’t all that surprising. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Georgia Tech launched a site asking for anonymous feedback from people like you and me in exchange for rating their tweets. Users had to sign in to their website and rate 10 tweets before getting any feedback on their own tweets. Luckily for these researchers, their…
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You The Designer
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The Rise and Fall of Famous Brands – Why Do They Fail?
8 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amWe are living in a world where water is sold with a name, clothes are being marketed with signature signs and food items are being promoted with trademarks. The concept of branding has completely shaped the way people consume commodities. Customers in this day and age prefer status symbols over necessity. This shows the importance of branding and its influence on businesses. It takes years to erect a successful brand identity, but only an instant to destroy it. All the famous brands and corporations have risen to their current status after a lot of painstaking effort. Failure is common… -
We’ve Started Using PunchTab!
6 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amHere’s another one of our attempts to reward you loyal readers for sticking with You The Designer all this time, and this one is a pretty big deal! PunchTab is a loyalty program that lets us reward you for engaging with the blog, whether you visit, browse, comment on, and vote up our posts and more – with points you can use to redeem a reward from us! As some of you may have already seen by clicking on the Rewards ribbon tab hovering on the left side of our pages, we have a 30-day leaderboard tracking the most active readers on the blog. Right… -
Behance Launches Student Show, an Initiative to Support Emerging Designers
1 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amIf you’re a student, here’s an exclusive design community where you can get your work exposure, get feedback from peers as well as world-renowned creative professionals, and even get hired! Behance has launched a new student initiative called the Student Show Gallery, which aims to showcase the world’s next generation of creative talent. Membership is free! As a member, your work may be featured, “appreciated”, followed by fellow creatives, and noticed by recruiters. You’ll also receive updates on student competitions and exclusive discounts from some of… -
30 Examples of Impressive Concept Art
30 Jan 2012 | 12:00 amFor both video games and comic books, concept artists are necessary to create the aesthetically-pleasing visuals that enhance the storyline’s action and drama. From simple pencil sketches to 3D models, detailed character turnarounds to costumes, fantastic vehicles to intricate weapon design, the possibilities are endless. These are some examples of impressive video game and comic book concept art. BATMAN (DC/Rocksteady Studios) View Source View Source View Source ASSASSIN’S CREED (Ubisoft) View Source View Source View Source … -
The Best Looking Beer Cans – a Beer Can Appreciation Day Special
24 Jan 2012 | 7:54 amJanuary 24, 2012 marks the 77th anniversary of the day Gottfried Krueger Brewing Co. first brought canned beers into the market. Though it hasn’t been (and probably never will be) declared an official holiday, more and more people are celebrating Beer Can Appreciation Day to pay tribute to the creation that has changed the experience of buying, keeping and drinking beer, forever. YTD takes part in the Beer Can Appreciation Day celebration with this collection of 35 tasteful beer can designs. Check them out and don’t forget to leave a comment after. Cheers! Hurlimann…
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Just Creative Design
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6 Creative Ways to Use Delicious Bookmarks
6 Feb 2012 | 10:57 amThis is a guest article contributed by Rebecca*. – Delicious is a popular social bookmarking site which you can use for saving your favorite website links. The process is termed as bookmarking. This will enable you to share your bookmarks among others as well as allow you to browse bookmarks of other users’. Tagging and search tools help you in browsing as well as organizing topics of interest. It enables you to both create multiple tags and tag sites with manifold keywords. Every tag produces a page with all website links associated to it. You can share each of these pages with… -
The 2011 Logo Of The Year
1 Feb 2012 | 8:40 pmAfter a month of voting on the Top Logo Designs of 2011 the voting has now closed and I am pleased to announce the 2011 Logo Of The Year. The 2011 Logo Of The Year Fork & Knife Restaurant by Nick Sickelton. The Runner Up Bread & Breakfast is a coffee shop / bakery that serves breakfast all day and sells bread and baked goods. The aim was to create a logo that will combine the two elements of business (bakery and coffee shop) without creating an overload of visuals. The positive/negative design of the coffee cup and the bread image that is created by the coffee itself, along with the… -
Flywheel Takes Off
31 Jan 2012 | 2:39 pmFlywheel started with a simple idea… make indoor cycling epic. To make that happen Flywheel partnered with Ammirati (the agency where I currently work) who re-imagined the Flywheel brand experience. A bold, new look enforced by striking photography & solid copywriting was implemented across all facets of the Flywheel brand, including the Flywheel website which I had the pleasure to work on. Ammirati and I had to restructure, rewrite and redesign all pages of the Flywheel website, for both the front and logged in sections of the site. We’re happy to announce the site successfully… -
Accessibility & Integrity
25 Jan 2012 | 7:34 amI was recently humbled and amazed at an email I received through my brand identity questionnaire and I just had to share the story, not only because it opened my eyes to something amazing, but something I would never have thought of and I’m sure not many others would have either. To cut to the chase, the lady who was inquiring about my brand identity / design services was blind. Although accessibility should be built into in all websites, I still find this fact extremely fascinating. I simply can’t fathom the process of trying to find the right designer without being able to see… -
How to Keep Start-up Costs Low
20 Jan 2012 | 11:17 amThis is a guest article contributed by Daniela Baker*. – The success or failure of a business depends on how wisely you allocate start-up funding. As a solo-preneur you can monitor every expense and decide where your money will best be spent to get your business off to a good start. Here are four suggestions for controlling start-up costs. Be Flexible & Smart With How You Get Funds The cost of borrowing, along with the terms attached to most loans, can make them quite prohibitive to the small business owners. However, there are several other options new business owners may consider…
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Logo Design Love
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On the 2012 US election campaign logos
8 Feb 2012 | 2:34 amSteven Heller, Debbie Millman, and Alice Twemlow gave their thoughts on the 2012 US election campaign logos. Here’s a snippet from the post on SVA’s Visual Arts Briefs. “What’s right with this logo, other than his political stance?” — STEVEN HELLER “For a corporation, it would feel established and a bit stuffy. Seems as if there should be an image of the Bible on this page… If you’re going to make a site that looks like Tumblr, why not just create a Tumblr account?” — DEBBIE MILLMAN Nb/ Rick Santorum’s website. “The further right… -
“This is what you need — a magic dot.”
6 Feb 2012 | 1:56 amSaul Bass (1920-1996) described a particularly sticky moment when he presented his Minolta design at the company’s Osaka headquarters in 1980. “Although his son, the President of the company, had initiated the corporate identity program, the Chairman and retired founder, Kazuo Tashima, remained skeptical of such fancy new ways. “During the initial consultation process, he listened to my proposals in stony silence. At one point when I was speaking, Mr. Tashima plucked a miniaturized Minolta camera from its display stand, and said ‘Gentlemen, we have a very small… -
Madrid 2020 logo causes controversy
31 Jan 2012 | 12:52 pmMadrid launched its bid for the 2020 Olympics yesterday with a logo that left many Spaniards confused (as reported in The Telegraph). “The design purportedly consists of the letter M for Madrid and the number 20 in front of the coloured rings of the Olympics stylised into arches inspired by the Madrid landmark, Puerta de Alcalá. “But the lettering appears to show “20020,” an effect that has brought much derision in the Spanish press and on social networking sites.” The design is a result of a national competition, won by 22-year-old Luis Peiret. Here’s the… -
How LO can you GO?
24 Jan 2012 | 8:20 amThe following guest post was written by Tom and Phil of London-based Mat Dolphin. One of the services we offer as a design agency is logo design. No surprises then when we recently stumbled upon another agency offering the same service. So far, so average – the majority of graphic design agencies throughout the world do exactly the same. The difference with this one, however, was the costing of their work. $42. That simple. For $42 you can get a logo designed with two rounds of amends and a number of different files formats sent to you. Sceptical of the quality of the work and a little… -
Green T
23 Jan 2012 | 2:48 amCutting the grass is about as far as my green fingers stretch, but I like this logo-growing project by Judy Kameon for the New York Times. Kameon created a T from 130 plants “Together with her husband, photographer Erik Otsea, Kameon created a T from 130 plants. And in a postscript sure to warm the hearts of environmentalists, no flora were harmed in the making of this artwork. In fact, they’re all bound for a new demonstration garden in Kameon’s office and showroom.” Her husband, the photographer Erik Otsea, captured the T The finished product Click for full-size chart of…
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CSS Drive News
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Turn.js page turn plugin
7 Feb 2012 | 5:35 amjQuery plugin that adds a beautiful "page turn" transition similar to flipping a book or magazine for HTML5. -
42 Logo Designs With Creative Use of Pen
2 Feb 2012 | 9:14 pmA showcase of creative logos where the "pen" is the focal point. -
5 Tips for Designing iPhone Apps in Photoshop
2 Feb 2012 | 3:22 amSome tips on creating the mockup and basic skeleton of your iPhone App in Photoshop. -
Beating Borders: The Bane of Responsive Layout
19 Jan 2012 | 5:36 amThis article looks at how CSS's "outline" and "box-sizing" properties can help resolve issues that arise in percentage based layouts. -
Web Typography for the Lonely
5 Jan 2012 | 5:23 pmCutting edge experiments with HTML5 canvas and SVG graphics to create interesting typography effects.
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Church Forward
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The Leader of the Artists
13 Jan 2012 | 6:13 pmCreativity is not necessarily art. Art requires creativity, but not all creative processes produce art. I like to consider myself creative (but not an artist). As a researcher, my creativity is different than an artist’s creativity. My spreadsheets are no works of art. I doubt they will ever be displayed in a museum, or in my church’s heritage room for that matter. But I do take pride in creatively communicating statistics in ways people can grasp. So an artist I am not, even in my most inspired spreadsheet moment. But we do have several artists in our church, and leading them requires a… -
Five Leadership Resolutions for Your Followers
9 Jan 2012 | 12:08 pmNew Year’s resolutions are often self-centered; it’s understandable. Successful people often reflect on who they are. They try to be more self-aware. They desire to develop themselves. So, good leaders often make resolutions involving individual goals, desires and objectives. Many leaders have resolve — the determination to see a goal and achieve it. Too often these goals involve what individual leaders can do on their own. By the nature of their roles, however, leaders have people around them – teams, subordinates and followers – who are necessary components of success. Allow me to… -
The New Geography of Megapolitan Communities
9 Dec 2011 | 3:56 pmUSA Today recently published a graphic that grabbed my attention. As shown below, this graphic reveals what some demographers predict will become “megapolitan” communities. While I might draw the lines differently on some of the physical boundaries of these communities, the concept of megapolitan areas is fascinating to me. The article (which reports on this book) defines these megapolitan areas as “having at least one metropolitan area of 2 million people by 2040 that’s connected — via commuting patterns — to at least one other metro area of more than 250,000 people. A… -
Why We Romance Poor Leadership
4 Nov 2011 | 9:46 amThere is a romance of leadership. Most studies in leadership focus on the top roles. Many leader-centric approaches assume followers are mere recipients of leader-driven change. To romance leadership is to exaggerate its importance relative to followers. Leadership is extremely important, but it exists only because followers collectively interpret someone (or a group) in such a role. Romancing leadership leaves out half the relationship. Followers are just as important. Obsessing over leaders at the expense of followers leaves a gaping hole in understanding how leadership really works. If… -
Why Your Community is More Diverse… or Soon Will Be
19 Oct 2011 | 5:17 pmWhen you get to know a person more, you learn how to love them better. The same principle applies to communities. Communities are made of individuals, and knowing your local context helps you love the people in them more. One critical element of understanding your community is tracking demographic changes. Perhaps one of the most important changes occurring in North America is the growing diversity of many local communities. Brookings recently released a fascinating study on the changing landscape of immigration over the past ten years. Compared to previous decades, several changes are…
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Biblical Preaching
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The Bible Story – Plots in Plot
9 Feb 2012 | 5:18 amWe tend to be trained, both by Sunday school instruction and by NIV section headings, to separate out each individual story and treat it as a stand alone. But the Bible always presents plots in the context of larger plots. I’ve been trying to get hold of a commentary series on the books of Samuel that does a stunning job of demonstrating the interconnectedness of the individual stories (a rarity in commentaries on narrative books!) I’ve been pondering how the gospel writers wove together events and parables in a way that honoured their historicity, yet communicated their own… -
The Bible Story – People in Plots
8 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amWhether we are looking at a parable, an event in the life of Christ, an historical portrayal in the inspired account of a Patriarch or the early church, Bible stories are about people in plot. Plot – the skeleton of every story, both fictional and historic, is the plot. Every story has a plot, for without one it wouldn’t be a story. At its most simple, a plot consists in a tension eventually resolved. A tension is created in the context of an imaginable situation. Somehow that tension is then resolved, or left uncomfortably unresolved in some examples. Our primary task as we… -
The Bible Story – Theology Dressed Up In Real Life
7 Feb 2012 | 5:49 amWe tend to tell Bible stories to children and teach theology to adults. Perhaps we err in both. All too often I come across childrens’ ministry that seems like random ancient tales with a moral. An interesting little tale from long ago and far away that is offered with a moral moral – do this, don’t do that. But then children go to school where the tales told in the classroom don’t begin with “once upon a time,” but with “the scientists know that…” All too easily the children in our Sunday School classes make the inevitable observation that there is more… -
No Theory Test
6 Feb 2012 | 8:51 amIn the UK we have both a theory and a practical driving test. In life, the Bible only offers us the latter. So is living the Christian life primarily about what you know, or about who you know? Today’s post is over on Cor Deo – click here to go there. -
Saturday Short Thought: Fresh Over Abundance from a Can
4 Feb 2012 | 11:02 amThis week the blog has been pondering issues of recycling sermonic materials and also recycling other peoples’ materials. Meanwhile we’ve welcomed a healthy baby daughter into our home and we are both thankful to our gracious Lord and very tired! So just a short thought to finish off the week. I understand the challenge faced by many preachers with other work commitments and family priorities. I understand the feeling that some express, namely, that without borrowing the outlines and sermons of other preachers from the internet, they would never be able to preach a sermon on…
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Vandelay Design Blog
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Getting More Out of Your Blog Archives
9 Feb 2012 | 4:10 amGet a free icon and vector bundle (worth $54) just for subscribing to our weekly newsletter! Bloggers typically dedicate a lot of thought and effort into topics that should be covered with their upcoming posts, and rightfully so, but older posts are often quickly forgotten both by the blogger and by readers. As a blog continues to publish new content the archives will grow larger and larger, and for many blogs the archives include a wealth of information and content that is not being maximized. For most blogs, posts from the archives can continue to be useful for years to come (of course,… -
30 Unique Business Cards
7 Feb 2012 | 12:39 pmGet a free icon and vector bundle (worth $54) just for subscribing to our weekly newsletter! Unique business cards can help you to stand out to potential clients. Being more memorable will often result in being more likely to get hired. Fortunately, there are all kinds of possibilities to create unique business cards. In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples for your own inspiration. Popup Business Cards QR Code Business Card Tie-Shaped Business Card Drink Me Creative Optometrist Business Card TAM Cargo Paper Doll Business Card Business Card Bird 3D Business Card Plexiglass Business Card… -
Comment to Win a Free Item of Your Choice from MightyDeals!
7 Feb 2012 | 4:17 amGet a free icon and vector bundle (worth $54) just for subscribing to our weekly newsletter! Our friends at MightyDeals have offered to give a free item to 5 lucky readers of the Vandelay Design blog! MightyDeals is great resource for designers and developers who like to save money (and who doesn’t?). They offer amazing limited time discounts on a wide range of popular products, and they even give freebies from their site on occasion. In addition to the several new deals that are released each week, MightyDeals also keeps some of the more popular deals on for a longer period of time. So… -
25 Websites with Awesome Backgrounds
6 Feb 2012 | 4:08 amGet a free icon and vector bundle (worth $54) just for subscribing to our weekly newsletter! In recent years the use of large background photos and illustrations has become increasingly common in web design. In some cases the background image is the most distinct feature of the design. There are all kinds of different backgrounds that can be used, like nature photos, nature illustrations, and abstract designs. In this post we’ll showcase 25 websites with impressive backgrounds that really make the sites stand out. If you’re looking to make a website or a design memorable, a large… -
Pros and Cons of Outsourcing
2 Feb 2012 | 4:08 amGet a free icon and vector bundle (worth $54) just for subscribing to our weekly newsletter! Running a design business, either as a freelancer or a small agency, is a big challenge. Getting the most efficiency out of your time is essential, but it’s also very difficult for those who wear many different hats, like freelancers. One of the most common ways of dealing with this challenge for efficiency is to outsource work to others. It could be anything from design work, front-end development, back-end development, marketing, to anything else that needs to be done. There are some very…
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Fuel Your Creativity
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10 Designs Inspired by Microsoft’s Metro UI
25 Jan 2012 | 5:09 pmAdvertise here via BSA Since Microsoft first unveiled the Metro UI on Windows Phone 7, the rollout has been gradually taking place across every Microsoft product and website. It is the cornerstone of the Windows 8 interface and one of the most notable official uses of Metro UI available now is the excellent implementation on the Xbox 360 dashboard. The new design language has been a refreshing sign that Redmond cares about fixing its messy, bloated and ageing image, and the company is following through and executing. In the process, Metro has picked up a lot of fans in the design… -
Timeless Design, Ferrari
25 Jan 2012 | 10:10 amAdvertise here via BSA To begin with what I hope will end up being a mindful, thought-provoking article on the essence of timelessness in design, I felt it only fitting to start with what gave birth to this idea. As a designer and all around technology consultant, it’s my job to stay up-to-date with current trends and product offerings, which by its very nature is contradictory to the idea of timelessness. I’ve been grappling with this concept for over two years now. A lot of you that follow me on Twitter know that I’m an absolute nut about cars. Up until about 24 months ago my passion… -
Free Web UI Wireframe Kit
24 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amAdvertise here via BSA Sometimes you don’t need to build interactive wireframes, or may not feel all that comfortable in Visio or OmniGraffle. I know there are times I just want to open up Photoshop and start laying things out. This web UI template kit is made completely with shape objects and in some cases converted into SmartObjects. So they’re totally scalable. There are no usage restrictions but if you find them helpful give us a shout. We love hearing from you! CLICK TO DOWNLOAD via -
Shape, Color, Content – The Language of Logos
9 Jan 2012 | 5:00 amAdvertise here via BSA Before you approve that new logo you’re considering, stop for a moment to consider how people perceive visual information. The content of your logo is third in the sequence of recognition, behind shape and color, because the brain takes more time to process language. Letterforms can be very powerful in creating content and meaning. The use of initials as an identifying mark has been around for centuries, since medieval kingdoms became economic enterprises. Letterforms are often abstracted to create clever symbols which act as metaphor for the core brand positioning. -
Starting a T-Shirt Line with No Money
5 Jan 2012 | 8:25 amAdvertise here via BSA I have to admit right up front that the title of this article is a bit of hyperbole. You might be quick to think that a t-shirt line that can be started without any money cannot possibly be a good one. It’s true that we could easily end this post in a few sentences by suggesting one of the many turnkey websites that sell one-off digital printing on every product imaginable. However, I am actually referring to starting a high quality screen printed t-shirt line without any money. Thanks to the internet…this is very possible. Tell Your Story One of the main…
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DzineBlog.com
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40 Dribbble Shots of iPhone Applications
6 Feb 2012 | 10:17 pmAdvertise here with BSAToday we have decided to put together 40 well design iPhone app designs. If you like this post you might also enjoy our previous post below. 50 Dribbble Shots of Amazing Illustrations and Vector Art iPhone App UI iPhone App Prototypin’ New iPhone app design New iPhone app design Libra iPhone App Iphone App Settings UI for Flowerly! App Remix: Lose It! Movie App New UI BeachWeather app for iPhone Iphone App Part2 Iphone UI Social Wine iPhone App Tab Bar / Tabbar Stapp for iPhone (Updated) iPhone app (assessment step) iPhone App UI Eventtie app final touch Surf… -
7 Pain Free Sales Tips for Creatives
3 Feb 2012 | 7:12 amAdvertise here with BSA If you’re a graphic designer, or any other creative professional, you probably don’t think of yourself as a salesperson. Like so many creative folks, you may even hate sales. Yet, if you’re freelancing, sales are necessary to keep your business going. In this post, I share seven simple sales tips that are relatively pain free if you happen to be uncomfortable with sales. If you liked this post, you may also enjoy Sales Tips for Shy People and 7 Ways to Identify and Market the Uniqueness of Your Freelance Business. Tip #1. Make Yourself Visible Selling… -
28 Free Slab Serif Fonts
31 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pmAdvertise here with BSATypography plays a huge role in any design. Here we have collected 28 free and high quality fonts for you to use. In this post you will find variety of slab sefif fonts. Enjoy!! If you like these free fonts you might also want to check out our previous post below. 28 Free High-Quality Fonts 15 Beautiful Free Web 2.0 Fonts ADELLE BASIC ARVO BITSTREAM VERA SERIF BITTER BODONITOWN CHUNKFIVE COLLEGE INDENTO JOSEFIN SLAB KONTRAPUNKT MUSEO SLAB NADIA SERIF OCTIN SPORTS ROKKITT SANCHEZ ST MARIE TERTRE TRUMP TOWN PRO TYPOSLABSERIF MOLESK font Hellforge aldine BEVAN OBLIK SERIF… -
33 Examples of Latte and Coffee Cream Photography
25 Jan 2012 | 7:45 amAdvertise here with BSAOne of the more unique artistic visions of the 21st century comes in the form of coffee cream. Many infamous cafe’s found all around the world have mastered the skill of latte foam art. Using some milk or cream these artists can put together beautiful designs in your steaming brew. If you have an interest in photography then definitely check out my showcase below. These are some powerful skills you won’t find just anywhere! Overall combining a delicious beverage with some very inspirational artistic visionaries. Usual Latte Art Pioneer Coffee Sun Art Coffee… -
31 Beautiful Fashion Websites
23 Jan 2012 | 8:26 amAdvertise here with BSAToday we have collected some beautifully designed fashion related websites for your inspiration. If you like these web designs you might also want to check out our previous post below. 32 Clean And Minimal Web Designs Showcase of Black and White Web Design tatchies diesel michellehunziker shoprevolution socialwear bokicabo goliathsportswear hair-makeup everlane bensherman fashionphotography carolinewiseman pauleka paulsmithjeans supremebeing newgothamnyc carhartt-wip lecoqsportif luladesigns timberland editerjournal vertu woodandfaulk showstudio versacecollection cxxvi…
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Nettuts+
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Using JavaScript’s Prototype with MVC
9 Feb 2012 | 12:01 pmIn this article, we will review the process of using JavaScript, from an MVC-based perspective, to manipulate the DOM. More specifically, we’ll engineer our JavaScript objects, their properties and methods, and their instantiations parallel to the intended behavior of our Views (what the user sees). Consider Your Views As Objects, Not As Pages At any point in the development of a web page, we are using a language that naturally promotes either class-based development or object-based development. In strongly-typed languages like Java and C#, we are usually writing our views in classes… -
Easy Script Loading with yepnope.js
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amOfficially released by Alex Sexton and Ralph Holzmann in late February of 2011, the yepnope.js resource loader features asynchronous, conditional loading and preloading of both JavaScript and CSS resources. This makes managing dependant, conditional code a breeze. March of 2011 This nifty resource loader, which is only 1.6KB minified and gzipped, is now bundled with Modernizer and is great for loading polyfills, preloading or “priming” the users cache, or as a simple asynchronous resources loader / filter! For those of you unfamiliar with polyfills, they are essentially plugins,… -
Turbocharge Your Website With Memcached
6 Feb 2012 | 9:49 amYour latest PHP/MySQL website is finally online. And it’s awesome. But it’s not as fast as you want it to be, because of the many SQL queries running every time a page is generated. And above that, you have the feeling it will not scale well under heavy loads. And you are most likely right. In this tutorial, we will see how you can greatly improve your website’s responsiveness, and help it scale to handle many simultaneous visitors, by implementing a cache layer between your code and your database. The good news is it is fairly easy, and can be done in a few minutes! -
JavaScript Testing From Scratch: New on Premium
5 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pmThis likely isn’t the first tutorial on testing that you’ve ever seen. But perhaps you’ve had your doubts about testing, and never took the time to read them. After all, it can seem like extra work for no reason. This tutorial (with screencasts) intends to change your views. We’re going to start at the very beginning: what is testing and why should you do it? Then, we’ll talk briefly about writing testable code, before actually, you know, doing some testing! Let’s get to it. Become a Premium member to read this tutorial/screencast, as well as hundreds of… -
Best of Tuts+ in January 2012
2 Feb 2012 | 7:37 amEach month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start! Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera,…
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Holy Kaw!
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Bear and wolf, friends for life [video]
9 Feb 2012 | 2:12 pmAll too often we lose track of our friends from childhood, but this bear and wolf appear to be BFFs despite the differences. Full story at YouTube via io9. Can’t we all just get along? Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Can dessert for breakfast help you lose weight?
9 Feb 2012 | 1:39 pmNew research suggests that, in the early morning, you can have your cake and shed pounds too A new study from Tel Aviv University finds that eating a small dessert as part of a balanced breakfast can actually help you shed unwanted pounds. Staying skinny and eating chocolate? Here, a brief guide to what sounds, frankly, impossible: Full story at The Week. Photo: CC by ::paqman:: All the top stories from The Week. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Romance survey [infographic]
9 Feb 2012 | 12:02 pmVia Hotels.com. Infographics to put you in the mood. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Do aliens go invisible by 'going green'?
9 Feb 2012 | 11:24 amAs we discover more and more planets around other stars, the Fermi Paradox is becoming, well, more paradoxical. The Fermi Paradox simply asks the question "where are they?" Our Milky Way galaxy is so big and so old -- and we are estimated to be accompanied by at least 100 billion planets -- that aliens should have visited us by now. Instead, when we peruse the heavens, we are faced with the Great Silence, which is one of the biggest challenges to modern astronomy. Full story at Discovery News. More news from Discovery Communications. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a… -
Mysterious sounds reported around the world
9 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amPeople around the world have reported hearing strange sounds from the skies over the past month. Sometimes they describe it as a hum or low rumble; other times it’s a whine, thump, or even a melody. Often the sounds have been recorded and posted online, fueling rumors and conspiracy theories. One blogger wrote, "either the world is ending, aliens are landing or everyone is getting hoaxed. Or, possibly, there’s an actual scientific explanation for the mass amount of YouTube videos capturing bizarre sounds that are being heard around the globe. Are we witnessing the beginning of a…
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AndySowards.com :: Web Design, Development, Programming
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Top Most Important & Crucial Points To Consider Before Becoming A Freelance Logo Designer
8 Feb 2012 | 8:50 amAdvertise here with BSATweet You may have thought that you could just up and start freelancing any day, but there are some top most crucial points before becoming a freelance logo designer, that you must first consider. Freelancing is not as easy and comfortable as it sounds. In fact, it could be quite tough. Even though logo designing might be your passion, you could still find it a lot of hard work. Before taking up freelancing, people usually feel that it could not be any worse than working under others in a regular office job. But if you look closely, it can be worse. Actually, it could… -
40+ Amazing Examples of Music Inspired Design – Artwork, Concepts, Illustrations & Photography
6 Feb 2012 | 10:48 pmAdvertise here with BSATweet So we all know music rocks, literally (hehe herp derp ). Today we have some amazing examples of how music can influence a workflow or a design in a totally awesome way. Music can make anything more creative, or motivate you to do your best on any given task (great to listen to while designing or developing btw!). Drool over these awesome artworks, concepts and designs that were inspired by the true power and beauty of music! Enjoy! The audio above is the engine revs the Moog would produce. Once again, the theme of using something recognizable and something alien… -
Here There Be Dragons! Dealing with Nightmare Clients & Challenges As A Freelance Designer
6 Feb 2012 | 11:25 amAdvertise here with BSATweet In the great fantastic world of design, professionals are like knights, claiming prizes and rewards while fighting fierce dragons and vanquishing evil foes. At least, we think ourselves kin to the great knights of old. In many ways, we may be correct. While we may not be Knights of the Round Table or regularly hold Court with King Arthur, we deal with many challenges as they would. The difference is our enemies are time and budget, and our dragons are challenges we face. The challenges are not only with producing an excellent product, but producing any product… -
Epic Giveway! – Win A $75 Printing Credit For FREE From Next Day Flyers
6 Feb 2012 | 8:34 amAdvertise here with BSATweet Do your old business cards or marketing materials need a new look? Do you find yourself crossing off information from printed flyers and writing in the correct info? Time to update people! Here’s a chance to do it without spending a dime. Next Day Flyers, the premier source for all of the printing services a business needs is offering 1 lucky winner a $75 credit toward anything on their site. Next Day Flyers has tons of products that just about anyone can find useful. They offer brochures, tickets, DVD inserts, menus and more. So if you need to update your… -
The Future of Networking on 10 Gigabit Ethernet
3 Feb 2012 | 11:34 amAdvertise here with BSATweet Intelligence In Software: IT Software Strategy The Future of Networking on 10 Gigabit Ethernet The rise of cloud computing is a bit like that of a space shuttle taking off: When the rocket engine and its propellants fire up, the shuttle lifts slowly off the launch pad and then builds momentum until it streaks into space. Cloud is now in the momentum-building phase and on the verge of quickly soaring to new heights. There are lots of good reasons for the rapid rise of this new approach to computing. Cloud models are widely seen as one of the keys to increasing IT…
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Web Design Ledger
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Creating Minimalist Designs Makes You a Better Designer
8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 pmAdvertise here with BSAThe trend of using minimalist designs has been with us for a while now. It seems like every day major design blogs publish a new gallery of great designs. But do minimalist designs actually mean anything to a designer? Can you become a better web designer by going the minimalist way or is it just a fad? Actually, I do believe that it is a fad. But at the same time I also believe that you can learn a lot from it and use it to improve your skills significantly. First of all, minimalist designs are here not without a reason. After the dark age of the ’90s (the dark… -
Dolody: A new Design Dialogue – Plus a FREE ebook
7 Feb 2012 | 9:51 pmAdvertise here with BSAFrom the creators of BundleHunt.com and Noupe.com, a new design dialogue just launched today Dolody.com. Dolody (@dolody) is a weekly design magazine that brings together the latest (and, yes, the greatest) tutorials, articles, freebies & webcasts on the topics of UX and UI design for the web and mobile worlds. Each issue is dedicated to a single wow-tastic topic that is sure to rock the socks off today’s leading designers, developers and agencies. This week’s issue is about one specific topic: “What’s New and What’s Next”… -
21 Examples of Light Color Usage in Web Design
5 Feb 2012 | 9:03 pmAdvertise here with BSALast week we showcased a list with 21 Inspiring Examples of Dark Colors in Web Design, and this week, to show you a different approach on color choices, we decided to go for a list with examples of websites using mainly light colors on its designs. Color is indeed a really important element of web design, so nothing better than showing different approaches to keep you inspired. La Piuma Kipling BdeB Rainstar Boutique The Work Cycle Michela Chiucini Inzeit Stora Enso Appex Plus Plus Neotokio Guilherme Garcia Dawid Wadach Reserved sénic Nicola Cozzolino ChurchMedia Blind… -
Free Bundle for Designers
2 Feb 2012 | 9:09 pmAdvertise here with BSAToday is Friday, and what better way to celebrate than by presenting you with something new. ZeroBundle.com is a website that offers an awesome free bundle of goodies for designers. It is brought to you by WebDesignerDepot and MightyDeals.com. The bundle will be available for a limited time so speed up and download your goodies while you have time. From UI elements, to forms, and PSD files to icons, you will get a lot of free stuff in their bundle. Make sure to visit ZeroBundle.com to check out all the goodies you can get. Have a good Friday! -
23 Free Textures for your Delight
2 Feb 2012 | 4:50 amAdvertise here with BSAHere at WDL, we take great pride in being able to find useful freebies and share them with our readers. It saves you time, and allows you to focus on creating, instead of hunting. Here you will find 23 free textures to add to your resource library. Remember that textures can always add a nice touch to a website or other design project when used properly.
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Search Engine Journal
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Amazon Rakes in the Money With Free Shipping [INFOGRAPHIC]
9 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amShipping charges are a huge part of my decision process when buying online. The infographic below reminds me of me :-). I leave a lot of items in carts because shipping charges are high and I can’t find a promo code to offset it. Before I was an Amazon Prime member many of my Amazon [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal -
Numbers Shift but Online News is a Steady Trend
9 Feb 2012 | 9:00 amHave you seen the numbers lately? Brands and marketers like to leverage numbers to create a (desired) reception based on reader perception. Obviously, bigger numbers reflect more popularity and added reason for investors to celebrate. The New York Times issued a recent article on Facebook, calling attention to a subjective view of numbers. For instance, [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal -
Google Drive: Will You Drop Dropbox?
9 Feb 2012 | 7:51 amAlthough rumors have been flying since 2007 about Google offering a hosted storage solution, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is finally set to launch its new storage service in the next several weeks. The service, which is named Drive, will utilize Google’s cloud-based storage to allow users to easily store and share [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal -
The New Google Analytics Fuels an On-Site Revolution
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThe new version of Google Analytics has been a hit-or-miss type of implementation. I personally think that most resistance to change is a type of “Professional Inertia”; where people get to know the tools they use so often, that any modification of those tools is greeted with resistance. I myself also found myself disliking the [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal -
LinkAssistant – A Review of Options and Benefits
8 Feb 2012 | 11:15 amLinkAssistant is a part of the SEO PowerSuite and can help you with your link partner set-up and management. I recently tested out the software and I am going to breakdown some of its features and how the tool is used. LinkAssistant Features Helps users find link partners and find their contact info. LinkAssistant looks [...]Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
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Online Marketing Blog
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Good Content Marketing vs. Great Content Marketing: Learn the Difference From Joe Pulizzi #OMS12
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you are part of the online marketing or content marketing industry you have undoubtably heard of Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) and his company the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). Joe has been a member of the content marketing community for over a decade, and has made it his mission to help brands create quality content and distribute that content through multiple online channels. This was my first time seeing Joe speak and he made it a great interactive experience, and was of course wearing his trademark Orange. I enjoyed the history that Joe shared with the audience as well as his… -
Innovative Search Features Drive Engagement – Paul Vallez #OMS12
8 Feb 2012 | 3:30 am"Google taught us how to search." - Paul Vallez Paul Vallez admits that when he started at HP less than a year ago he had just come from Ask.com and was pretty cocky about what he knew. Vallez also shares that he wasn’t very open to new ideas and wanted to step into his new position at a big brand and immediately demonstrate value. What was his approach? 75% Cocky 25% Open to new ideas In Vallez’s presentation he identified what he called “3 Key Learnings” that he shared with the audience for improving the way that your search strategy is implemented for… -
#Optimize This: Online Marketing Summit 2012 Presentation
6 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amI’m headed to (hopefully) sunny San Diego today for the annual Online Marketing Summit conference where I’ll get to present on one of my favorite topics: Optimization. Of course, if you read Online Marketing Blog very often, you’ll know my definition of optimization is a bit different than traditional SEO. My post last Thursday “Are You Optimized?” touched on this. The competition for attendance during the breakout sessions at OMS is really tough during the time slot I’m scheduled for. SAP, Wider Funnel and SAP are all presenting at the same time as… -
Online Marketing News: Facebook IPO, Harmonize with Google+, Pinterest Dominates Traffic
3 Feb 2012 | 4:55 amFacebook in Numbers: Prior to the IPO The big news in social media and business this week is Facebook’s new IPO. This infographic from statista and creative commons shares some very interesting figures about Facebook, before it goes public. Highlights include: In 2012 Facebook is expected to reach: 90% of U.S. Social Network Users & 60% of Internet Users. Assuming a valuation of $100 billion, Facebook would be work 67 to 100x’s it’s estimated 2011 net income. The Social Media Buzz “How to Harmonize Google+ With Your Other Social Platforms” Search Plus has placed even more… -
Essential Shifts in Online Marketing: Are You On Board? Are You Optimized?
2 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amIs your company adaptable? Is your marketing optimized? I think most online marketers get the fact that marketing and communications on the web is a fast changing place and that most companies are structured to move at a slower pace than the digital world is evolving. Take for example, the notion of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s been around for about 15 years or so and in just the past few months Google has made the most significant changes ever. Despite the crystal clear focus towards search integration with social, many companies and digital pundits are still skeptical about…
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Yoast
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Use Gravity Forms to submit custom post types
6 Feb 2012 | 1:17 amIn my previous post I explained how I used the Types plugin to create a new custom post type. That custom post type will be used to display a table of supported themes for my WordPress SEO plugin, and is therefor called wpseo-theme. Now the trick here is that I want users to be able to submit themes through a form.Gravity Forms + Custom Post Type addonBy default, Gravity Forms allows you to create posts through a form. It doesn't have support for custom post types at the moment though, in part because a wonderful plugin was already created that allows for this. This plugin, aptly named… -
Types WordPress plugin – Easy Custom Post Types
2 Feb 2012 | 2:06 amI've long wanted to create a database of themes that support my SEO plugin and never came up with a manageable way of doing that. When my buddy Amir from WPML emailed me about their two new plugins, Types and Views, it took me a while to grasp what they did. Turns out I'm daft and it's actually quite easy when you install it and they're perfect for that job. So I thought I'd let you all enjoy what I'd done with it. I'll review both of them, in a 3 post series in which I'll also create my desired database.Database of Themes that support my WordPress SEO pluginI've also got a project I'll use… -
Tracking Outbound / Affiliate Links with getClicky
26 Jan 2012 | 2:30 amI use Clicky for most of my day-to-day tracking and analysis, only using Google Analytics for the harder analyses. One of the things Clicky can do most wonderfully is track outbound clicks. There's an issue however when you start routing your affiliate links through a script or on-site redirect. I redirect mine through /out/ here on yoast.com, but not all of the /out/ links need to be tracked. Let me show you how I do track the ones I need to track.Forcing Clicky to track a link as outboundFirst of all, you need to know that when you add a class clicky_log_outbound to a link, Clicky will… -
On WordPress Dashboard Widgets
25 Jan 2012 | 12:18 pmI was one of the first plugin developers to add a dashboard widget to your dashboard when you installed one of my plugins. I'm hoping people will follow me in doing the reverse as well. While it generates traffic, it doesn't generate sales. Let me show you.When I added mine, in the beginning, it drove lots and lots of traffic. People weren't used to it yet and thought I had somehow "found my way into core". Recently, I've added more elaborate tracking to my WordPress SEO plugin links. Allowing me to see how much traffic the individual sections of my plugin were sending back to my site. Let me… -
Search & Social – you can’t get the cream out of the coffee
11 Jan 2012 | 6:47 amYesterday, Google launched "Search plus your World", intermixing search and social and providing even more "personalized" results. There's a lot of outcry about some parts of this, with people saying they don't want "personalized" results. I actually think that normal users do want personalized results and that this is, for the most part, a good thing.There's been some outcry though, because Twitter and Facebook aren't "highlighted" as much as Google+ in those new social results. Danny is doing some awesome reporting on this, first in "Search Engines Should Be Like Santa From “Miracle On…
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Brand New
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Toledo Zoo
9 Feb 2012 | 4:48 amEstablished over 100 years ago, the Toledo Zoo has over 9,000 animals representing over 800 species. A new logo was introduced recently. Thanks to Matt Rower for the tip. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online -
Brandiose is Grandiose
9 Feb 2012 | 4:34 amEstablished in 2000 as Plan B Branding by life-long friends Jason Klein and Casey White, Brandiose, as the new company has been named, is a branding firm focused on designing official logos and uniforms for Minor League Baseball teams with awesome names like the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs and the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Having been called to the Majors, they also revitalized the Cincinnati Reds logos and uniforms. With the new name comes a new identity with lettering by Ken Barber. The Brandiose signature pays tribute to the mid-century lettering that captured an optimistic, utopian view of… -
Ecova
8 Feb 2012 | 4:53 amThe result of the recent merger between Advantage IQ and Ecos, Ecova is a "total energy and sustainability management company". The new identity was designed by Sandstrom Partners. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online -
Rescuing the American Red Cross
8 Feb 2012 | 4:31 amEstablished in 1881, the American Red Cross is one of the most well-known emergency response organizations in the world aiding victims of natural disasters and other emergencies. It counts with more than half a million volunteers and 35,000 employees across 700 national chapters. Recently, a new logo and design standards designed by Turner Duckworth have been quietly implemented. The Brand Standards manual can be seen here [PDF] and covers more than is represented in this post, in case you are interested. The pin is a symbol of enthusiastic participation. It is a personal, grassroots and… -
SOCAN
7 Feb 2012 | 4:15 amEstablished in 1990, SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) represents and works with more than 100,000 Canadian composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers "to protect, preserve and promote the performing rights of music creators." At the end of January SOCAN introduced a new logo. Story here. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online
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Latest articles
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Daily Inspiration #1053
9 Feb 2012 | 1:16 pmThis post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo's writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use "Daily Inspiration" in the subject, and don't forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image"… -
Outstanding Neon Illustrations by Digimental Studio
9 Feb 2012 | 8:14 amOne of the biggest influences around Abduzeedo's look is the good old shiny neon. We love it, and it's great to see illustrations with it, like these, made by Digimental Studio. Pretty sweet, I'd say. Digimental Studio is located in London, and they definitely love their neon. These are absolutely awesome, and I really dig the animated ones. Anyways, for more of Digimental's works, you may check their portfolio at Behance. I hope you enjoy these! Cheers. ;) About the authorHello, everyone! I'm Paulo Gabriel, designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, born in 1984. I have worked as a webdesigner… -
The Properties of Identity
9 Feb 2012 | 7:03 amThis is an illustration series by Alex Varanesse, he believes that if identity can be reduced solely to a finite set of properties—and I've always believed that it can—then this series serves as a woefully incomplete but sternly determined starting point. A collection of [seemingly] random visual ideas produced over a period of a couple weeks in November of 2011. Much of the creative content seen here, however, was pieced together from half-remembered dreams, edgeless shards and overwritten fragments of a partial existence originally thought to be lost forever to the 1980's; as such, it…
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Blog.SpoonGraphics
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How To Create a Cool Vector Yeti Character in Illustrator
5 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pmFollow this step by step Illustrator tutorial to create a cool vector Yeti character. We’ll use as many basic shapes as possible to achieve that quirky style of illustration, then bring the character to life with a palette of cold colours. Despite the use of basic shapes this tutorial includes a good spread of intermediate to advanced tools and techniques.The Yeti character we’ll be creating is made up of basic shapes to maintain that simple illustration feel. The plump round shapes all help create a friendly and loveable character while the high shoulders and wide stance give him… -
MOO Luxe Business Cards Giveaway for Members
2 Feb 2012 | 11:00 pmThe awesome folks from MOO have arranged some great product giveaways for Access All Areas members in the past, and today they're back with an offer for their latest business card product - Luxe. At triple the weight and thickness of standard business cards and featuring a stylish seam of ...Log in to your Access All Areas account to read the rest of this post.Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content just like this. The premium category is already packed full of discount codes and useful design resources, and there's plenty… -
30 Illustrator Video Tutorials Every Designer Should See
29 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pmIf you’re trying to learn a new application there’s nothing better than having an expert guide you through the various menus and tools. This post rounds up 30 of the most detailed Adobe Illustrator video tutorials and screencasts on the web. Each one features a mix of clear commentary and useful techniques that will help you on your way to becoming an Illustrator pro.Digital Inking Demonstration & TutorialHow To Setup and Design Business Cards in Adobe IllustratorAdobe Illustrator Tutorial – Object Expand FeatureHow To Warp Text in Adobe IllustratorHow to use the Symbol… -
MightyDeals Giveaway for Access All Areas Members
24 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pmThis week MightyDeals have arranged a great offer for Access All Areas members. They are giving away any of their current deals to 5 lucky winners! Fancy some new vector resources, a premium font to add to your collection, or maybe a book to learn something new? Log in and ...Log in to your Access All Areas account to read the rest of this post.Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content just like this. The premium category is already packed full of discount codes and useful design resources, and there's plenty more to come! -
How To Create a Vibrant Abstract Shards Poster Design
22 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pmFollow this step by step Illustrator and Photoshop tutorial to create a cool poster design of vibrant shard graphics. We’ll create the array of shapes with Illustrator’s vector tools before finishing off the poster with some subtle textures in Photoshop.The design we’re creating today features a range of sharp vector shard shapes each with a vibrant mix of colours. These colours interact with the help of blending modes to create an intricate piece of digital art.View the abstract shards poster designOpen up Illustrator and use the Pen tool to create a random triangular shape…
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Outlaw Design Blog
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App Icon Template
25 Jan 2012 | 10:17 am“After more than 10k downloads of my old app icon template and countless of requests for an update, i’ve put together an app icon template that should make your icon endeavors on the iOS platform easier.” App Icon Template | Pixelresort.com. -
Bicycle Can Cage
24 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pmIf you look at this and think; “oh cool a thing to hold my beer so I can steer my bike with both hands.” Then you sir, are a rookie beer drinker. This is in fact made so that you can have an EXTRA beer in ADDITION to the one in your hand. Bicycle Can Cage by WalnutStudiolo on Etsy. -
Social Media Icons Font
20 Jan 2012 | 11:40 amThe social icons font is very convenient and easy to use for web design in themes, page layouts etc, as well as for every type of print or offline design. via Social media Icons pack | Fontfabric™. -
Layer Styles
20 Jan 2012 | 10:59 amLayer Styles uses the exact same UI as Photoshop. Can be pretty handy when you’re looking for the quickest way to convert a PSD mockup in HTML/CSS code. -
Recycled Circuit Board Clip Board
16 Jan 2012 | 11:43 amI dont know who still uses clipboards these days, but if you are one of those “paper people” then you might get a kick out of these. Recycled CIRCUIT BOARD Medium Geek Office by DebbyAremDesigns.
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Design daily news
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The Darkest Lord – 25 Spine-Chilling Darth Vader Fan Art
8 Feb 2012 | 5:05 pmAs Star Wars has gone on to become a popular culture phenomenon, much of the credit goes to its characters. Darth Vader, for one, has helped the films achieve massive success. His rise as a Jedi Knight to his fall to the dark side as documented in the six “episodes” of the franchise is not only regarded as one of the most iconic villains in the history of film, but also one of the best characters in cinema. Despite being billed as the main antagonist in the latter trilogy of the series, one of the reasons for the popularity of Darth Vader among people is his depth and complexity. The Dark… -
The best movie posters of 2011
7 Feb 2012 | 6:16 pmI haven’t watched much movies in 2011, so this compilation of best movie posters of 2011 by Mubi.com is very welcome. Personal favorites in the list? Probably Tyrannosaur or Burning Man. -
How to convince your clients of the importance of white space
6 Feb 2012 | 3:31 pmThis is a recurring issue for designers around the globe. No matter if you are a graphic or web designer, you will sooner or later run into a client that finds the layout of your design too “empty”. This is a quite natural reaction for a non-designer. I remember in graphic design school, most students would add more elements in their layouts than needed, or they would make these elements bigger because they were afraid of too much white space. As a designer, you should probably already know that white space helps a lot to create more elegant designs, separate elements better from… -
Featured illustrator: Malika Favre
5 Feb 2012 | 5:37 pmMalika Favre creates wonderful vector-style illustrations. She uses color and white space perfectly. -
Vårdapoteket identity
3 Feb 2012 | 5:08 pmI wish we could see more visual identities like this one. For Vårdapoteket, a swedish pharmacy chain, Stockholm Design Lab created a colorful infography of the human body that serves as the base for the whole branding. The result is a colorful and coherent looking style for the shops and promotion material.
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CBS News - Small Business
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Smartr: A brilliant contacts app for smartphones
9 Feb 2012 | 4:57 amXobni already provides rich profiles on the people you communicate with for your PC -- now its available for your mobile device, too -
Find your next job with help from Glassdoor
8 Feb 2012 | 3:35 amHere's a site that harvests the so-called "weak ties" in social networks to uncover hidden employment opportunities -
Best strategies to build a strong social network
7 Feb 2012 | 3:48 amSome people love the idea of networking, while others feel it's cheap and inauthentic -- here's the right way to do it -
Get an additional 5GB of Dropbox storage for free
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amDropbox is one of the most popular cloud-storage services -- here's a way to get as much as 5GB more storage just by uploading some files -
Make Visio-like business graphics on the cheap
3 Feb 2012 | 3:44 amEdraw Mindmap is a low-cost, easy-to-use alternative to Microsoft's $600 design program
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Copyblogger
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How to Recover From a Social Media Hangover
9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am“Hello. My name is Cori and I’m a social media addict. “Today is day 1 of my commitment to give myself a regular break from technology and the foggy, uncreative haze it can unwittingly lead to.” I was reading a post the other day by blogger Michael Brenner at B2B Marketing Insider, talking about getting your social media game on. Of course, being the skimmer that I am, the first thing that caught my attention and made me go back and read the whole thing was his mention of having a Social Media Hangover. His hangover was induced by sometimes (as we all do) forgetting to… -
The “New” SEO Secret Weapon
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIf you have a web site, you may have noticed one of two things about the traffic you get from search engines. Your search traffic may have dried up overnight, with once-healthy streams turning into a sad little trickle. Or you may have noticed a nice, steady improvement as you’ve climbed higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages), while other sites that used to outrank you suddenly evaporated. There’s a super-secret new ingredient in SEO. It was always a factor, but it’s become even more important recently, as the Google team relentlessly declares war on what they see… -
8 Quick Tips for Writing Bullet Points People Actually Want to Read
7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amIt’s a Twitterized world, we’re just living in it. Blog posts, Tweets, quick videos, Google+, the Facebook Timeline, and tens of thousands of images pinned to digital boards are flying past us faster than we can read them. Faster than we can even scan them, depending on the time of day. What does this mean for writers trying to cut through it all? At least two things that I can think of: You’d better know how to write a compelling headline You’d better know how to write bullet points that grab (and keep) your reader We’re not telling you to keep your copy short. -
7 Crucial Tactics for Writing a Wildly Successful Guest Post
6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amWe all know that guest posts grow blogs. But not many people realize that tactical guest posting grows careers. Most bloggers I see pump out these articles while reciting the mantra “quantity over quality”; there’s no real strategy and there are no real long-term benefits. In this post I am going to show you the seven crucial tactics for writing a radically successful guest post. Done right, these strategies will get you more email subscribers, coveted Google ranking positions, and a big head-start on your content marketing goals. Who am I to teach you about guest blogging? -
7 Smashing Social Media Marketing Links
4 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amThis week on The Lede … What really works on Twitter One thing social media copywriters should never do 9 productive social media hacks A reminder of the power of the original social media If you just can’t wait for The Lede every Saturday, and you want even more practical, useable links than the seven we highlight here every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter. It’s painless. Really. // 9 Social Media Hacks You Need to Embrace Now Mr. Baer makes a good case that though social media is inexpensive in monetary terms, it can get good and costly when it comes to spending your…
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Online Marketing Blog » Blogging
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Online Marketing News: Say NOPA to SOPA, Google+ Strikes Again, Coca Cola “Gets It”, Twitter Gobbles Up Summify
20 Jan 2012 | 4:31 amThe Social Job Seekers The social media job market is hot! This infographic visualizes the 2011 Social Job Seeker Survey that was conducted by Jobvite. It examines who the job seekers are and how they are utilizing social media to find jobs. Some interesting statistics you may not be aware of: 61% of all employed Americans are open to a new job or actively looking for a new one. 4 out of 10 job seekers are “Super Social” and have 150+ contacts on Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. 1 in 6 job seekers found their last job through an online social network. This Week in News About Google… -
Social Media & Blogging Listmania with Curated Resources & Lists
16 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amBeing included on a popular list of credible resources like our own BIGLIST of top Marketing Blogs or one of the many other collections of useful resources posted online can feel pretty satisfying, validating the hard work many are putting in to their business blogs. Great lists get socially shared, linked, and emailed, giving those included quite a bit of valuable exposure. By association, the list publisher also gains value in terms of exposure, links, and a connection with list participants. Curation is essential for sorting through the mass of data published online and with the closer… -
4 B2C Examples of How Companies are Using Twitter to Attract & Engage Customers
3 Jan 2012 | 3:36 amIf you are a B2C company, interaction on a social platform like Twitter can increase engagement and even sales if executed properly. Small businesses like Tender boutique in Birmingham, Michigan have promoted special offers on Twitter and sold out in just a few days. Social interaction via platforms like Twitter allow companies to gain a true understanding of their prospect base and serve as a real-time source of market research. Customer engagement is a key benefit of executing a B2C Twitter marketing strategy. A recent survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey found 67% of Twitter users are more… -
Blogging On A Budget: 3 Tips for Bigger Impact
29 Nov 2011 | 5:00 amBlogging is one of the top sources of online content creation for many companies. Blogs are a great vehicle for interacting and engaging with current and prospective clients. Blogs are also an effective way for prospects to associate stories, anecdotes, and personalities with a company or brand. Taking on a blog can be a large undertaking. There are many things that should be considered including cost, availability of resources, strategy creation, time commitment, and measurement. Simply creating content and expecting instant success is not realistic. If you have recently decided that… -
The Dynamic Duo of Business Blog Marketing: Optimize & Socialize
25 Nov 2011 | 3:59 amBlogs are often rated one of the top content marketing tactics for attracting and engaging customers and eMarketer has reported blogs reach over 50% of the internet audience. But many companies fail to combine two of the most important tools for boosting relevant traffic and reach: Optimization for search engines and for social media. Most marketers and bloggers understand the basics of a good business blog and the notion of search engine optimization but often focus more on keywords than the customers that are actually searching. Adding keywords to blog posts is a common SEO tactic but…
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Chris Garrett on New Media
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When Should You Start Selling from Your Blog?
31 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pmHow do you know when your audience is ready to buy from you? Should you wait to “monetize”? How big does your audience need to be? These are common questions and the answers have been debated over the years. I am going to share an answer I gave George from the Man Up Blog during his blog critique. George spent some time in the dating world, sometimes called the “pick up artist” niche. This is shy dudes learning to pick up the ladies mostly, but obviously the market caters to all genders and tastes. It’s pretty obvious what people want from dating advice, but… -
Why You Shouldn’t Drive Traffic
16 Jan 2012 | 7:58 pmIn the first 7 days of this blogs life, 20,000 visitors checked it out. Sounds like a pretty nice result doesn’t it? I was super happy, but a little disappointed in one specific respect. Only 500 people subscribed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved and nurtured those 500 subscribers and 500 subscribers in any time frame is not to be sniffed at! My problem was, how can you have 20,000 visitors check out my blog and only 500 of them want to stick around? The cause? I was “Driving” traffic … Big Lessons Learned I had been involved with a couple of successful blogs at… -
How to know what your audience really wants
23 Dec 2011 | 11:53 amYour audience does not want your content. Your audience probably does not want to hear from you at all. If you think that because your website looks great that people will want to visit it … think again. What do they really want? Your audience and potential customers know who they are and probably have a very good idea of their goals. At the very least they know their immediate needs. They are looking for answers to questions, advice, and resources that help people like them get the stuff people like them want. When someone seeks out and clicks on your content it is only as a means to… -
Finding and Communicating Your Value
5 Dec 2011 | 11:06 amMany bloggers don’t have a value problem. They have a great deal to share. I am sure you do – I have never met someone who doesn’t. Why then do people struggle to find an audience. Never mind an audience who knows, likes and trusts them – ANY audience? It’s weird but a lot of the time it is because you have SO much to offer, it’s hard to know who you are for and what specific benefit you provide. A lot of my coaching clients have this problem and, thankfully, there is a solution. The solution is simple, but it isn’t always easy. Check out Ryan… -
How to REALLY make money from a website
23 Nov 2011 | 3:08 pmAs much as I tell people to seriously reconsider buying too much into the hardcore “Make Money Online” hype, I can not argue against its allure and the fact that, well, people DO make money online. The problem is, there are the usual caveats: It’s not fast. It’s not easy. You WILL encounter problems and tough challenges. You might not always enjoy it. These are challenges facing Roman who asked me for a blog critique. He has been building a site all about his experience of creating a website that makes money called “How this website makes money” (how meta).
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Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog
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What Business Bloggers Can Learn from Hobby Bloggers
6 Feb 2012 | 6:15 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com While business bloggers have the ultimate goal of attracting prospective clients, hobby bloggers have a whole other set of motives. Here are just three of them, along with some ways you can apply them to your business blog: Free Your Passion Hobby bloggers have the liberty to indulge in deep exploration of their passions, wherever that journey takes them. In an earlier article about what happens when artists call their art a hobby, I noted how that "means freedom from the creative constraints that might be involved once you… -
Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers
27 Jan 2012 | 6:20 amBloggers can never get enough advice about SEO. This is a guest post by Chrisian Arno at Lingo24. Six Essential SEO Strategies for Bloggers When a blog forms part of your marketing strategy, you need to be confident your words will reach the right people. With search engines constantly refining their algorithms, not to mention the huge amount of information competing for your readers, this can seem like an impossible task. Here are six strategies that can help you regain your confidence with SEO.Do Your ResearchIf you are someone who dashes off blog posts when inspiration strikes, slow… -
Blogging Without Dates - The pros, the cons and meeting in the middle
6 Jan 2012 | 6:45 amThis is a guest post by Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com In his October 2011 post about why you no longer need a blog (in the traditional sense), John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing predicts that soon our content will "no longer be consumed in chronological fashion." When Jim Connolly of Internet Marketing Jam explored the question of why people remove dates from their blog posts, in the end, he came to the conclusion that for his blog, the benefits far outweighed any risks. What are the pros of blogging without dates? What benefits did Jim Connolly see? People were spending more… -
Pitching to bloggers - the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching
22 Dec 2011 | 6:25 amThis is a guest post by Kristy Shaw of Punch Communications. Pitching to bloggers… the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching Life as a PR has certainly changed over the last few years; with the rise in popularity of blogs it has meant having to adapt the way I pitch to different types of media. Bloggers can be just as influential as many print publications and therefore should always be on PR agencies radars. Pitching to bloggers is a world away from traditional pitches to journalists; there are many more things to take into account. For example, in contrast to traditional media… -
Two Tips for Generating More Leads on Your Business Blog
19 Dec 2011 | 6:55 amRecently I joined the Social Media Biz School as an instructor. In the video below, I share a couple of the business blogging tips to give you a taste of the kind of strategies, tactics, tips and tools you'll be learning in the free 27 minute webinar on demand: How to Generate More Leads with Social Media... [Can't see the video in your blog reader? Click here to watch on YouTube.] You can get instant access to the free webinar here. Your instructors are: Viveka von Rosen (LinkedIn), Lori Gama (Twitter), Andrea Vahl (Facebook), Lou Bortone (Online Video) and me (Blogging). Get…
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The Blog Herald
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Instagram Co-Founders Girlfriend Announces Lovestagram Application For Valentine’s Day
9 Feb 2012 | 11:42 amWhile many of us purchase Valentine’s day cards for our significant others and perhaps a nice bouquet of flowers Kaitlyn Trigger decided to give her boyfriend a much bigger and involved present, a brand new photo sharing platform. Kaitlyn’s Lovestagram program is so thoughtful because her boyfriend is Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and it’s his platform she chose to use when creating Lovestagram. The program is essentially an interactive Valentine’s card maker that implements the Instagram API to create Valentine’s Day cards. The program works by creating a slideshow… -
Tumblr Hires Emerging Fashion Bloggers To Cover New York Fashion Week
8 Feb 2012 | 12:58 pmTumblr has actively been attempting to showcase the networks talents lately, ast week the company hired two veteran journalists to cover the sites best content and now they have hired several emerging fashion bloggers to kick off New York Fashion Week. Tumblr on Wednesday announced on its staff blog that they have partnered with Milk Studios, a photography and studio conglomerate who will take a team of five “local emerging voices in fashion from Tumblr to cover the events” to cover the events. Readers of the massive blog network can find information using the NYFW tag or they can… -
Google Blogger Content Removed From Certain Domains Following Warning From India
7 Feb 2012 | 11:03 amGoogle Inc. on Monday removed content from various blogger specific domains in India after the countries leaders warned a “China type response” if the company didn’t better censor content deemed “religiously inappropriate.” The request comes one week after Google announced plans to censor blogger platform content in certain countries through specific URL domain protocols. For example a post may be banned in India but still show up in a country where freedom of speech is available. Speaking about the request Google representative Paroma Roy Chowdhury noted:… -
ManageWP Makes Multi-Blog WordPress Management Easy And Affordable
7 Feb 2012 | 4:25 amManaging even a handful of WordPress websites can be a pain, for example 10 websites means 10 different login accounts that you must access each time you want to write an article, update plugins or change theme settings. While you could give WordPress Multi-Site a chance that system can be confusing and time consuming for non-Wordpress experts. ManageWP however takes care of multi-site management by installing a simple plugin on each of your WordPress blogs which then allows them to be controlled by a single user login interface found at ManageWP.com Once you have signed up for a free trial… -
Guest Posting vs. Article Marketing: The Importance of Understanding The Difference
7 Feb 2012 | 1:13 amIn the last couple of years, guest posting on other people’s blogs has become a solid marketing technique. At first, the idea of letting some stranger post their content on your blog seemed ludicrous. However, many bloggers realized the benefits of more fresh unique content, and the wheel has been rolling ever since. I have personally guest posted on many different blogs, and I have noticed that guest posting is sometimes clumped together with article marketing as if they are “basically the same thing.” They are NOT the same thing. There are many differences, and that is…
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The Edublogger
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The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons
9 Feb 2012 | 10:15 amLately, we’ve been hearing more and more about digital copyrights and fair use in the news and online – particularly with the whole SOPA/PIPA uproar that recently swept the web. Also, we on the Edublogs support team have been getting more and more complaints and official requests to remove copyrighted content that users have placed on blogs. The legal jargon with respect to digital copyrights can be confusing – especially since different countries have their own laws and regulations. With this post, we hope to dispel a few myths and pull together a complete list of… -
Picasa Slideshows: Giving Parents a Glimpse of School
7 Feb 2012 | 6:51 amThis is a guest post written by Janet Moeller-Abercrombie. Janet teaches at an international school in Asia. She is the author of Expat Educator and a contributing author of 1 to 1 Schools. You can follow her at @jabbacrombie. A parent once remarked, “You do so many great things at school. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and watch my child in action.” One of the easiest ways to give parents a glimpse of school is to give students a camera, access to Picasaweb, and a blog. Give students a camera. Each week, one or two students are given the classroom job of photographer. The… -
Add SpeakPipe to Your Blog to Get Audio From Students
3 Feb 2012 | 12:13 pmLast week, we got a question at Edublogs from Larry Ferlazzo asking if he was able to add SpeakPipe to his blog. We had never heard of the new service – but it turns out, as Larry shares here, he certainly could! SpeakPipe is still in beta, which is a way for the company behind the service to allow for it to be used, but they are open about the fact that their might be a few bugs or missing features. What this does is place a nifty “Send Voicemail” button on the side of your blog where visitors can make a recording which is then emailed to you. You can access the mp3… -
3 Major Problems With Apple’s Education Announcement
19 Jan 2012 | 6:12 pmYou probably have already heard about the big announcements from Apple today and how they plan on changing the world of education as we know it. While you won’t find a bigger fan of technology in education than me, as I read through all of the different news articles and blog posts about this announcement, something just didn’t sit right. Here’s why… Rant #1 – You Don’t Own Your Content Most of the concerns I have with the announcements made today revolve around the iBooks Author app. This fun-looking application is marketed as a way for educators to make… -
Travelling Toy Bloggers – Coming to a School Near You!
19 Jan 2012 | 2:55 pmNote: This post was written by Sue Wyatt, who lives in Tasmania, Australia, and is the fearless leader of the Student Blogging Challenges. In 2011, I went on a fantastic holiday (vacation) in Canada and U.S.A. for 11 weeks. I drove about 10.000 miles in an automatic car on the wrong side of the road without using a GPS or mobile phone. I visited about 25 different classes arranged by 12 teachers in my PLN. I didn’t write a blog about my experiences though. “What!”, you say, “Yet you are writing here about blogging?” Mr. Davo Devil eating dessert! Instead of me writing the blog, I…
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Quick Online Tips
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How to Fix Feedburner Feeds That Do Not Update
9 Feb 2012 | 9:32 amWe use the Google Feedburner to distribute our RSS feeds, but how to fix Feedburner feeds which do not update? When you update your blog, the RSS feed updates, then pings Feedburner, syncs your feeds and Feedburner grabs the latest content. But what if the feed does not update? … and we had a chance to experience this today as Feedburner feed would simply not sync, and not update. Here is what I did… Feedburner Feeds Not Updating 1. Check original source feed – has it updated? When you use caching plugins, there is a high chance your feed is cached and when pinged bots… -
Switched WP Super Cache to Quick Cache
9 Feb 2012 | 12:03 amWe have switched over from WP-SuperCache to QuickCache as the primary WordPress caching plugin for our site. We have used WP-SuperCache for over 5 years now and it is one of the best caching plugins out there. WP-Super Cache However, since the release of the latest version, there were some buggy issues and we were unable to delete the cache. It was getting tedious to FTP inside the server and manually delete the cache. Then repeatedly reinstalling the plugin, some strange kind of 403 errors occured. It was time to try a new caching plugin… Kindly note these are isolated issues… -
How to Find Thin Content on Your Site
7 Feb 2012 | 7:36 amSite traffic hit by Google Panda? It is essential to find thin content on your site and remove it to avoid being slapped by Google algorithm penalties like Google Panda, which specifically target to reduce search engine rankings to sites with thin content. What is Thin Content? Simply put it is poor content, low quality content, few words of content which is classified as ‘low quality’ by search engines and fails to generate any significant search engine traffic. So basically it adds to the site bloat and reduces your link equity value. Note that low pageviews does not necessarily… -
Highlight Tumblr Posts for More Site Traffic
5 Feb 2012 | 10:10 amNow you can highlight Tumblr posts for $1 only and feature your outstanding content to your followers. By just spending $1, your blog post will get highlighted and stand out in the dashboards of all your Tumblr followers, neatly set apart with a custom sticker to add to the extra visibility. Highlight Tumblr Posts I noticed a new option has appeared when you post a new article at the bottom right corner, titled “Highlight this post”. This gives you a choice of text across various categories and also allows you to choose from various logos (besides the default Bolt) and colors. -
Forum Marketing 101: Get Laser-Targeted Free Traffic
1 Feb 2012 | 8:33 amForum Marketing can get you laser-targeted free traffic. Traffic is the lifeline of any internet business. Without traffic, it really doesn’t matter how good your sales copy is or what kind of killer product you have to offer. If no one ever sees your page, sales will be pretty dismal. There a dozens of ways to get traffic to your site. Some of the methods include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, guest blogging, and solo ads, just to name a few. While paying for visitors can bring immediate rewards, it’s also possible to lose a ton of money while you’re learning…
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Blogging Tips
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One Simple Process to Take for More SEO Traffic
8 Feb 2012 | 11:51 amSEO can be very difficult if you’re just starting and have little to no experience or authority to start with. Of course, there are tons of tutorials online about SEO and link building, but most of them can be sometimes complicated and long-term that it seems you’re not getting as much results for the efforts you put in. In this article I will be sharing a process I use to increase traffic to my blog from the search engines; using this process alone I have been able to increase SEO traffic to one of the pages on my blog from around 400 to 3,000+ visitors monthly. This technique… -
Building Massive PageRanked Backlinks with BuildMyRank
8 Feb 2012 | 10:37 amWhen it comes to building quality links back to your web sites, it’s important not only to get people linking to your main page, but also your internal links. The internal pages of your blog or web site is where you are going to get all of your longtail keywords ranked, and traffic from the search engines. At the same time you also want to focus on link building for your main page, so what is the best solution? Building PageRanked Links with BuildMyRank Over the past couple of weeks I have been playing around with a content link building service called BuildMyRank. So far it’s… -
Nailing Down Your Niche
7 Feb 2012 | 1:15 pmYou’ve heard it a thousand times; you need a niche. Maybe you’ve tried several with some success but not the success you want. Or maybe you try one and it really doesn’t fit, so you try another, and then another. It seems like it’s a never-ending quest to find what you’re good at and can make money doing. I’ve been there. I’m a writer. I “thought” my niche should be writing. The thing is, I’m not passionate about writing about writing. I love to write, I just don’t want to talk about it all day. I also love Internet Marketing,… -
The Advantages Internet Advertising Brings To The Plate
5 Feb 2012 | 1:59 pmI deal with people now and again that understand they need some kind of Internet advertising to help their company to take off but they’re really not sure what it is and how to go about getting the right kind. First off, the benefits to getting exposure on the Web. Simply put, you get more of it for less. With the right people using a combination of social media, blogs and articles as well as maybe even some videos and other mediums, more people will be able to read about the goods and services that you have for sale for a cheaper price than with print or even television and radio. -
Top 10 WordPress Plugins To Improve a WordPress Blog
5 Feb 2012 | 1:54 pmOne of the best things about WordPress is the ability to customize your blog with plugins. The only issues is that there are thousands of plugins to choose from and just not enough time to go through all of them. Luckily, WordPress plugins are kind of like iPhone and Android apps: no matter what you’re looking to do, there’s an app for that. So you can be sure that whatever type of functionality you’re looking to add to your blog, more than likely there is a plugin for it. There are plugins to help increase traffic, help boost your rankings, help speed up your blog, encourage the…
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Performancing
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Why your Internet Marketing Company Should Offer Conversion Analysis
29 Jan 2012 | 10:37 pmIf your internet marketing company is helping to drive traffic to your website, you may still be losing money. But how is that possible? Getting new visitors to your website is only the half the battle; ultimately, they need to become new — and preferably loyal and repeat — customers to benefit your business and help you grow revenue. The process of getting new visitors to become customers is called conversion, and if your internet marketing company isn’t offering conversion analysis as part of your internet marketing strategy, you need to start shopping around for a new marketing… -
Buy Links for SEO or not
22 Jan 2012 | 11:43 pmLinks, and in particular one-way links, have always been thought to be one of the top metrics that search engine web sites look for when ranking websites. Although the spirit of linking to another website is to show a tacit recommendation for that website, there are many ways in which this metric can be exploited. One way is to simply buy links or pay a search engine optimization company to buy links for you. The temptation of saving the time and effort of having to build relationships and court the opinions of webmasters is quite a strong one, yet many people swear off buying links for their… -
InstaBG Delivers Instagram Backgrounds To Your Twitter Account Automagically
31 Dec 2011 | 12:59 pmWhile I take great pride in managing my Twitter account through user interaction, quick responses to questions and sparse sharing of my own personal posts I don’t care much for updating my background so it remains fresh upon user visits. It’s for that reason that I began using and highly recommend the program InstaBG. The InstaBG platform connects users to their Twitter account and the Instagram photo sharing platform in order to create backgrounds based on user preference. The program couldn’t be easier to use, simply click on the “Sign in with Twitter Account”… -
Newest Free Mac Apps for Better Productivity
24 Dec 2011 | 1:29 amWe all have trouble focusing from time to time. With the massive time waster that is the Internet tempting us with endless pages of Lolcats, YouTube videos, social-networking sites and Netflix, it is practically turning us all into creatures with the attention span of a goldfish. When was the last time you actually got through a task without checking Facebook? Or sending a text? I bet you can’t even remember. It is no surprise that an avalanche of free applications has been released by developers for the Mac that helps to combat the lack of productivity that sometimes occurs in our… -
Have You Selected The Right SEO Keywords?
15 Dec 2011 | 10:19 amThe first step in any successful search engine optimization campaign should be to consider your target market. What products and services do you sell? What sets you apart from your competitors? Why should people shop online with you? These questions help you to build up a picture of those who are likely to buy your products or services online. They also give you an immediate insight into the keywords (search terms) that will be used in order to find your website online. This is a great starting point when considering the keywords that you wish to target. Some would argue that keyword analysis…
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It's Not a Lecture
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The original #scimom
7 Feb 2012 | 8:12 amSusan Niebur was one of those amazing people who was perfectly at ease in more than one community. Mom, scientist, cancer fighter, advocate. The outpouring of support and love that has come from so many people, from so many walks of life, is testament to her grace, her strength, her leadership.It was through a number of conversations with Susan that the idea for the #scimom meme emerged. I remember one of those conversations vividly. Just a few hours before she gave the "voices" speech at BlogHer that everyone talks about, we were talking about science communication -… -
I don't want to hear about Komen's "brand" anymore
4 Feb 2012 | 12:41 pmSo a few people have asked me about the debacle that the Susan G. Komen Foundation brought upon itself last week, creating a silly and transparent "rule" clearly intended to do nothing more than cut funding for Planned Parenthood. They reversed the decision three days later. (ironically, the best tick-tock I can find is from Jezebel.) Specifically, I've been asked about the "damage" Komen has done to its "brand."You know what? I don't give a rat's ass about the Komen brand. I don't care that they offer companies an easy opportunity to help customers feel warm and fuzzy in… -
My surprisingly conflicted take on #scio12
24 Jan 2012 | 12:37 pmScienceOnline 2012 has concluded, and the snap reviews are glowing and well deserved. It was great to reconnect with acquaintances, and to meet people whose work I've been reading and admiring for some time. I'm very grateful for the well-developed program, the brilliant speakers and attendees, and the spectacular organizers.However, #scio12 also left me surprisingly conflicted and frustrated.To me, science is hope. It's the process by which we discover our origins, try to understand our present, and help shape our future. It holds the promise for addressing humanity's… -
Some important questions for NCSE
17 Jan 2012 | 2:27 pmI was very pleased to learn (via John Timmer's piece at Ars Technica) that the National Center for Science Education (a.k.a., those nice folks who defend the teaching of evolution in classrooms) is broadening its mission a bit:NCSE is proud to announce the launch of its new initiative aimed at defending the teaching of climate change. Like evolution, climate change is accepted by the scientific community but controversial among the public. As a result, educators trying to teach climate change, like their counterparts trying to teach evolution, are often likewise pressured to compromise the… -
The evolution of that evolution video
3 Jan 2012 | 9:47 amSo you and about 36,000 of your friends have seen the video some pals and I put together that features women scientists explaining why teaching evolution is so important. That pales in comparison to the million-plus views of the Miss USA contestants sharing their thoughts on the topic, but it's a small step in the right direction.Before the holiday break, our group started to share some initial thoughts on the next step. I don't think we've reached a clear consensus yet, but I do know we will all be at ScienceOnline 2012, we will be talking with a lot of scientists and science…
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Lorelle on WordPress
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Prove It: What Makes You Trust a Website?
6 Feb 2012 | 8:48 pmWhat makes you trust this site? What makes you trust me? What makes you trust any website you visit? What is it about the site that earns your trust? I’ve asked this question at most of the conferences and keynotes I’ve given over the past seven years. The answers are all over the map but [...] -
This Site Will Blackout Against SOPA and PIPA
17 Jan 2012 | 12:09 pmI’m joining Wikipedia, Reddit, and millions of other concerned web users across the United States to blackout my site on January 18, 2012. WordPress is even against this. Traction is happening. SOPA appears to be dead in congress but PIPA is still alive and just as bad. When you land on Lorelle on WordPress on [...] -
Clark College WordPress Class in the News
16 Jan 2012 | 12:42 pmWow! I knew my Introduction to WordPress course at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, was getting a lot of attention around the world from those eager to get WordPress into their curriculum, I didn’t realize it would make so much noise so close to home. Check out “Blogging pioneer blazes trail for WordPress at Clark [...] -
Prove It: Kym Huynh Exposed
16 Jan 2012 | 12:08 pmAfter reading Prove It: It’s Starts With Defining Who You Are as part of my Prove It Campaign, one of my best friends volunteered himself for a bio tearing and ripping as he is now involved in several startups that are gaining the attention of investors, which means everything he does online is now subject [...] -
January 18: Join Reddit in a National Blackout Day of Protest Against SOPA
11 Jan 2012 | 9:25 pmOn January 18, join Reddit and the country in protesting SOPA. Reddit announced they will black out their site January 18 for 12 hours in protest of the US government’s pursuit of the horrible SOPA act: The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will [...]
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BloggingPro
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WP Really Simple Health Plugin. Monitor Your Server Through The WordPress Admin Toolbar
9 Feb 2012 | 1:12 pmWP Really Simple Health is a very easy to use and ultimately useful application for WordPress users who are worried about Cpu user time, server uptime and general WordPress memory utilization. The program can be downloaded at WP Really Simple Health and offers users just three simple options for setting up the program. Here’s a screenshot for the program’s health settings: Once installed the program then provides instant access to a users server setup in the admin bar at the top of their WordPress page setup. Having immediate access means you can quickly see your servers health… -
5 WordPress Plugins I Won’t Build a Blog Without
8 Feb 2012 | 8:37 amWordPress, out of the box, is already a great content management system (CMS) and a great blogging platform. However, just like most Web browsers, the real power of WordPress isn’t unlocked until you start to add some plugins that help you customize and streamline your WordPress experience. But while most WordPress users are well aware of Akismet, various caching plugins and other near-essential tools for blogging, over the years I’ve found a slew of lesser-known plugins that have become indespensible to me and my bloggging. Though the full list could probably go on for quite some… -
How to Create a Catchy Title in 2012
8 Feb 2012 | 5:02 amEveryone knows that readers scroll down a blog until they find a title they like. I do it all the time, and why shouldn’t I? A title is supposed to let me know what the article is about, and I am not interested in spending my time reading a bunch of articles that don’t interest me. Ironically enough, this is the attitude that I as a blog editor try so hard to counteract. As a blog owner, you want every article to be of interest to someone who comes to your blog. You want them to see that catchy title and decide that the article is worthy of their precious time. In other words, the title… -
How To Destroy Your Blog With Bad Social Media Engagement Practices
7 Feb 2012 | 10:28 amBuilding a brand around your website isn’t a simple process, not only do you have to create amazing content that readers want to engage with, you have to work off-site to spread the word about that content in a manner that peaks the interest of readers. Unfortunately many new bloggers and even some seasoned writers fail to properly use social media properly, destroying the work they put into their posts before they have a chance to go viral. In this section we’ll examine some of the ways you can destroy your blog by become over zealous about the use of social media. 1. Destroying… -
Practice Being a Blogger Daily
6 Feb 2012 | 3:12 amBlogs are a dime a dozen. Seriously, take a few minutes to type “blog” in Google’s web search, and you will get an unbelievable number of results. Those are only the ones that have kept the keyword somewhere in their SEO results. There are millions of blogs, some successful and some not-so-successful. Some are based on images and others on writing. You will never be able to get a very good picture of just how many are out there, but the thought is a little overwhelming. The best thing a blogger in today’s over-saturated market can do is carve out a nice, little piece…
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Weblog Tools Collection
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WordPress Theme Releases for 2/9
9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amAqua is a crisp, clean, and bright theme with small touches of aqua as an accent. Gridly is a clean, minimal, and responsive theme with a simple options panel. -
Printed WordPress Magazine to be Released Shortly
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amWPCandy Quarterly, a WordPress related quarterly print magazine from the folks at WPCandy, is just about to be mailed out to the lucky readers who either pre-ordered or subscribed. To my knowledge, or at least about half an hour of searching, this may very well be the first ever printed WordPress magazine publication. The first issue will feature articles from 11 well-known contributors, and due to demand from the pre-orders, 2,000 copies are making their way through the printers as you read this. A lot of thought went into the design of this magazine, and you can see a video blazing through… -
WordPress Plugin Releases for 2/7
7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amNew plugins Google AdSense and Google Analytics Remover will prevent AdSense ads and Analytics tracking code from displaying when you are logged in. Updated plugins Custom Field Suite allows you to visually manage custom fields. Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. -
BuddyPress Codex Gets a Refresh
6 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amIf you’re a fan of WordPress, you probably know about the WordPress Codex, the massive community-editable source of WordPress documentation. Just yesterday, the BuddyPress core team gave a massive update to the BuddyPress Codex, making it easier than ever to learn how to use the #1 social networking platform plugin for WordPress. Even though the new BuddyPress Codex may function like a traditional Wiki, it’s actually built on top of WordPress and BuddyPress. After all, why not show off some of the cool things you can do with a platform while you learn how to use it? -
WordPress Theme Releases for 2/5
5 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amBlush is a soft, warm, feminine theme in tones of rose and cream. Boozurk is a clear theme with a lot of features. The Frances Wright is a clean and elegant theme.
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WordPress News
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Year of the Meetup
27 Jan 2012 | 12:17 pmWe hereby declare 2012 as the Year of the WordPress Meetup. You’ll want to get in on this action. meet·up \mēt-əp\ noun A meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking Web site: a meetup for new moms in the neighborhood; a meetup to plan the trip; a meetup for WordPress users.1 So what is a WordPress Meetup? Basically, it’s people in a community getting together — meeting up — who share an interest in WordPress, whether… -
Internet Blackout Day on January 18
17 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pmWordPress.org is officially joining the protest against Senate Bill 968: the Protect IP Act that is coming before the U.S. Senate next week. As I wrote in my post a week ago, if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it. On January 18, 2012 many sites around the web — from small personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla, Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dark in protest and to drive their visitors to sites like americancensorship.org to… -
Help Stop SOPA/PIPA
10 Jan 2012 | 11:18 amYou are an agent of change. Has anyone ever told you that? Well, I just did, and I meant it. Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know… -
WordPress 3.3.1 Security and Maintenance Release
3 Jan 2012 | 1:24 pmWordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team. Download 3.3.1 or visit Dashboard → Updates in your site admin. -
WordPress 3.3 “Sonny”
12 Dec 2011 | 2:58 pmThe latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard. WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are the cat’s pajamas: For Users Experienced users will…
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churchrelevance.com
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Atheists vs Christians Research Study on Personality Differences
8 Feb 2012 | 7:47 amMatt Baker of UsefulCharts is conducting some very important research regarding the personality differences between atheists and Christians. Please take a moment to complete the quick questionnaire by clicking here. The survey has already received about 25,000 responses from atheists and is in great need of more Christian participants to balance out the dataset. I’ll publish the results on Church Relevance when available. Sponsored by: E-zekiel: Websites for Active Ministries E-zekiel.com is a flexible platform that thousands of churches depend on to create and manage their website and… -
The Top Churches in America to Watch in 2012
1 Feb 2012 | 12:18 pmThe metrics that matter most in ministry are true conversions, maturing disciples, and selfless acts that advance the gospel message. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to truly measure this in just one church let alone tens of thousands of churches. Instead those who study churches rely on metrics like weekly attendance, growth rates, subjective opinions, scope of influence, and church planting efforts as hints to gauge if a church is successful. The underlying flaw with this is sometimes exceptional churches have humble results in terms of size, growth, and influence while sometimes… -
Whoops! Open Church Delayed but Coming Soon
25 Jan 2012 | 4:20 amOpen Church’s launch has moved to March 1, 2012 for the ministry ideas section and likely April 2012 for the free resources. WHAT HAPPENED? Developing the site wasn’t as easy as our developer expected. After previous delays, we pruned off features to make a mid-January launch possible, but those pruned benchmarks were not hit either. Unfortunately, what is left is unstable and missing most of what we hoped for. It is clear we need to go a different route. The developer has moved on. I apologize for this. Any payment the developer received was underwritten by my company or came… -
What Ministry Conferences Are You Attending in 2012?
24 Jan 2012 | 9:14 amChurch Relevance’s list of 2012 church conference recommendations has been updated to almost 40 ministry conferences. There’s no way it includes all of the conferences worth considering. So check out the list, and please leave a comment letting us know which conferences we forgot and which ones you’ll be attending. Sponsored by: Leaders Book Summaries Leaders Book Summaries help you grow as a leader. Receive the best books for leaders in concise, easy-to-read summaries. Thirty times/year receive a 12-15 page complete summary and a 2-page Nutshell of each book. -
Leaders Book Summaries
17 Jan 2012 | 3:00 amI love books. From the Bible to theologians to business experts, books are a quick way to get wisdom which in the long run helps you make better choices and avoid dangerous pitfalls. Over time my library has grown to about 1,500 books I haven’t read yet, but over time, my responsibilities have also grown to the point that I have to be very strategic about what I read and how long I read it. In 2012, I have purposed to read more by using book summaries from Leaders Book Summaries. I’ve avoided book summaries in the past because I liked the sense of accomplishment from reading a…
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Ron Edmondson
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The Way to Guarantee NO ONE Reads Your Blog Post
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amPeople email me everyday about how to improve their blog, how to write more, or whether they should even start a blog. There are countless “experts” always telling us how to write better blogs and what to do to increase readership. I read some of them and some of them are helpful; maybe even all of them if I had time to implement all of their strategies. Frankly, most days I do good just to get some thoughts out. (Typos and all.) Here’s my best advice: Start Writing! I guarantee you no one will read your blog if you never write it. No one! Not even you would bother… -
Structure Can Impede Progress
9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amRecently I received a question about a post entitled “7 Enemies of Organizational Health“. One of those “enemies” I listed as “structure”. The person’s question was, “Are you referring to micromanagement?” He went on to say that we need structure to prevent organizational chaos. I answered. Well, yes and no. Micromanagement is an impediment to organizational health, but really I simply meant structure. Let me attempt to explain. I do agree we need some structure, but not for structure sake, but for progress sake. And there is a difference. -
Five Minute Challenge: Persecuted Church
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThis week I’m at Moody Founder’s Week. It’s a Bible conference put on by Moody Bible Institute that I’ve come to for several years, especially since my son Nate is a student here. One of the underlying themes this year has the persecution of Christians around the world. I’ve read recently that Christians are under more persecution today than any time in church history. Then, my friend Tami Heim tweeted that she was praying for the Christians of Uzbekistan. I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I ever prayed for anyone in Uzbekistan. Then I followed the… -
3 Ways To Remove The Pain From Preparing A Weekly Sermon
8 Feb 2012 | 4:00 amThis is a guest post by my friend Casey Graham. Casey is one of the most innovative church leaders I know. He is passionate about Kingdom building and helping those who desire to Kingdom build. I haven’t seen any project of Casey’s yet I can’t support. Here’s a word from Casey about a new project to help pastors: After talking to hundreds of preachers, we’ve found most preachers love preaching, but the grind of preparation can often become a pain. Here are three things we’ve seen. Here are 3 Ways To Remove The Pain From Preparing A Weekly Sermon: 1. Great preaching… -
7 Enemies of Organizational Health
7 Feb 2012 | 4:20 amI love organizational leadership. I especially love leading healthy organizations. I have been in both environments…healthy and non-healthy. I prefer healthy. If truth be told, I’ve probably been the leader in both extremes. Along the way, I’ve observed a few things which can be the enemy of organizational health. Here are 7 enemies of organizational health: Shortcuts – There are no shortcuts to creating a healthy organization. Success is not earned through a simple, easy-to-follow formula. It takes hard work, diligence and longevity. Satisfaction – Resting on…
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tonymorganlive.com
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Stop & Start 2012: Josh Griffin
9 Feb 2012 | 11:41 amJosh Griffin As part of the current series addressing shifts leaders should consider making this year, I connected with Josh Griffin. Josh is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA. He is a father of 4 and has been in full-time youth ministry for over 15 years. Here’s our interview: TONY: What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider stopping in 2012? JOSH: Stop walking around with such urgency. When it is time for the service to start and the church staff is briskly running around… -
Stop & Start 2012: Will Mancini
8 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amWill Mancini As part of my series on things leaders should stop and start doing, I connected with Will Mancini. Will is a Clarity Evangelist who started Auxano and wrote Church Unique so that ministry leaders can have amazing vision and focus. Here are Will’s thoughts on shifts leaders should consider making in the new year. Stop imitating. Make 2012 the year to stop imitating. No matter what your role is ask the question, “Who am I imitating?” Are you a group’s pastor? Reconsider the model you are following so you can reinvent. Are you a children’s… -
Too busy to read?
8 Feb 2012 | 6:32 amLast week was pretty typical. Once again, I received several “must read” books in the mail. They are sitting on my desk with some other books that I’m trying to find time to read. You have probably found yourself in a similar situation. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that you have ten to twenty unfinished books on your Kindle. We all want to read more. Unfortunately, we live in a fast-paced world with limited time. Recently, I heard about a group called Leaders Book Summaries. They summarize books for busy leaders. The group was started by Dave Frederick. Dave… -
Sifted: 20 leaders in 20 days
6 Feb 2012 | 8:30 pmThere’s something new happening at storiesofsifting.com this week. Make sure to check it out. Today they launched a really cool 20-day campaign of daily devotionals based on the theme “sifted.” The word “sifted” means accelerated spiritual growth in times of trouble. The 20 leaders in 20 days devotions are essays on 20 Bible leaders (Paul, Noah, David, etc.) The stories are written in Max Lucado story format by a professional writer. The collection of the stories and similar essays from national leaders will be packaged into a free eBook in the next few… -
Stop & Start 2012: Mike Foster
6 Feb 2012 | 11:00 amMike Foster As part of my series on things leaders should stop and start doing, I connected with Mike Foster. Mike is a speaker, author, and consultant helping people live and tell a better story. He is the Co-founder of “People of the Second Chance” a radical grace movement made up of activists, artists and imperfectionists. He serves on the Executive Team of PlainJoe Studios and is the author of “Gracenomics: Unleash The Power of Second Chance Living.” He lives in Southern California with his beautiful bride and his 2 young children. Here are Mike’s…
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Ragamuffin Soul
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Jedis, Atmosphere, And When Your Kid Knows You’re Lying
9 Feb 2012 | 9:31 amThe 8 year old is perceptive. Perceptive is probably the wrong word. She is a Jedi. I can’t get crap past her. She moves items around the house with only her mind. It’s freaky. Anyways… Yesterday she got sick. Like really sick. She called me crying asking when I was getting home. She needed her daddy. “Daddyyyy. I feel sooooo sick. I needed yooooouuuu. When are you coming home?” Those 13 words we littered with moans, tears, snot, sighs, wailing, and gnashing of teeth “Baby. I’m so sad you are sick. Daddy is on his way home. Probably like 15 more minutes ok?” And… -
I Want Joel Olsteens Body
9 Feb 2012 | 8:51 amNot like WANT his body… But want his body… Like only if it wasn’t so pasty. A bit more tan. But like my head on top of his body. Not like that. Not with his head on his body and my head on his body. Like cut his head off and put my head on his shoulders. I mean I would never actually do that. Cut off his head. You know what I mean. I just want his pecs as my pecs. His abs as my abs. Not ON my abs. Whatever… This post started off really safe and ended up wounding my masculinity. But face it… The J Dog is ripped Los -
Fevers, Crap, & Good Theology
8 Feb 2012 | 8:02 amWhen the 5 year old crawled on top of me at 4:30 this morning it pretty much felt like someone had just taken him out of the microwave. The kid was burning up. “Hey buddy? You ok? Daddy’s got you.” “I know this daddy. That’s why I came. You make me feel less sick.” Out of the mouths of babes… Losiah didn’t crawl up and snuggle next to his new Power Ranger sword. Losiah didn’t crawl up and snuggle next to the wii. He came to me. He found rest. How quickly we, as adult followers of Christ, forget this simple concept and try and find refuge… -
Today I Am…
7 Feb 2012 | 9:36 amToday I Am… -
To Be Christian And Famous
6 Feb 2012 | 11:41 amTo Be Famous It’s said that mans greatest desire is to know and be known. I mean who wants to live and not be known? But even if all you do is preach or sing or write about Jesus, the satisfaction from being known is sometimes greater than the satisfaction of Jesus being known. Ah humanity. So I ask 2 simple questions… How has the current culture of Christianity helped this problem? How does the current culture of Christianity solve this problem? Los
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Tall Skinny Kiwi
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In Search of Masculine Christianity
7 Feb 2012 | 6:48 pmRachel Held Evans issued a challenge to male bloggers last week in response to John Piper's suggestion at the Desiring God conference that "God has given Christianity a masculine feel", which she thought was "a strange way to talk about the Bride of Christ." I didn't have time to write anything but I noticed that 150 men have responded and there is some great conversation going on all over the blogosphere. Driscoll, Piper and others are saying we are in a crisis as there are very few young men in our churches. They say their teaching is an attempt to win them back. Yet at the same… -
What Dorothy Day might teach bloggers
2 Feb 2012 | 2:36 pmDorothy Day once described herself as "a journalist and a diarist pure and simple" as opposed to a writer of books. As a young girl, she kept a diary and later became a journalist to pay the bills. I would like to think, based on her approach to writing, that she would be a blogger if still alive today. And what's more, she would have some good advice for bloggers who have tragically reduced themselves to reviewers of books, or worse, evangelists for their own books. I have always seen writing, and by extension blogging, as a means to provide a voice for the voiceless and turn the eyes of the… -
Covenant Making is not always evil
29 Jan 2012 | 1:29 pmYesterday I was at All Saints [Hataitai] Church to witness and participate in a covenant signing ceremony. But before you get all excited about that word "covenant", I should tell you that: 1. Yes, I know all about last week's contract/covenant controversy at Mars Hill Seattle and agree that covenants can be abused to control people and I am glad people are sharing exactly what their covenants and commitments entailed. Nothing wrong with a second opinion and the wider-church crowd wisdom. 2 Yes, I am aware of the personality-driven "Covenant" of Destiny Church in which some church members… -
Tall skinny elves at The Hobbit casting call
27 Jan 2012 | 10:10 pmI took my tallest kids over to Lower Hutt today for The Hobbit casting call. Filming starts next month for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and they were looking for extras: the short, the tall, the skinny, men with big biceps [not me} and those with 'character faces'. Unfortunately, 3000 people turned up and they could only handle 800. The rest of us were turned away but told we could apply online. The Herald said they were "overwhelmed" but it should have been a surprise. We all want to be in the movie! Bummer! My kids and I would have made great elves. I am 1.96cm (6'5'') and my son,… -
Sweet Voice Amber Hunter
27 Jan 2012 | 11:18 amAmber Hunter has been giving songs away online for years but now is creating her first CD. She led worship at our roundtable gathering at Cornerstone Festival last year and we really loved having her there. She has a story to tell. Watch the video and if you want to help out, visit her project at Kickstarter.
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Church Marketing Sucks
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Office Hours: Communication Volunteers & Church Social Media
8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 amEvery week I hold online office hours and answer questions from folks like you. This week we’ve got a question about communication volunteers and staff. I also take a look at the true meaning of social media and how churches can participate. Take a look and be sure to join me every Wednesday from 2-4 p.m. CST for online office hours! I’m setting up a creative team at our church to handle all the communication requirements. There are no staff on the team, just volunteers. Any advice on what to focus on most and what can wait until later? My answer: This is what I would do if I were… -
Churches Reaching Out With Pinterest
6 Feb 2012 | 5:21 amWhether you’re crazy about pinning or think that it’s just a fad, there’s no denying that Pinterest is a new player on the social media scene. In January it beat YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace for percentage of total referral traffic in January, according to a Shareaholic study. One church is pioneering this new territory and has some insights to share on how churches can use Pinterest. Jake Johnson is the publishing and content manager for Mars Hills Church, Resurgence and PastorMark.tv. He oversees content strategy for all of Mars Hill’s online… -
Job Board: Director, Web & Media
3 Feb 2012 | 6:15 amAre you looking for a job in church communications? The CFCC Job Board has some listings that you might be interested in. Here are a few of the recent listings to the board: Hempfield United Methodist Church in Lancaster, Penn., is looking for a director of communications. Click here for details. Northview Church in Carmel, Ind., is looking for a web coordinator. Click here for details. Victory Highway Wesleyan Church in Painted Post, N.Y., is looking for a media designer. Click here for details. Is your church looking for a communications professional? Be sure to get your free listing on the… -
Lessons from Bible Billboards in Egypt
1 Feb 2012 | 6:09 amOn Sunday my church had a visit from the general secretary of the Bible Society of Egypt, Ramez Atallah. His visit coincided with the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian revolution. But rather than a typical discussion of passing out Bibles, he offered a lesson in marketing. In Egypt the Bible Society isn’t allowed to evangelize, so they advertise. They’re not allowed to give Bibles away, so they sell them. Atallah admitted he freely borrows from the business world, saying “If it works for Pizza Hut, it can work for us.” That includes using billboards and… -
Annual Report: We Need Your Help
31 Jan 2012 | 11:54 amWe need your help. As an organization that has delivered thousands of breakthrough moments—those key sparks that frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ—we believe there is even more to be done. We’ll get to that in a moment. First, 2011 was a remarkable year and I want to celebrate what took place. Last year included events such as the launch of Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication, Creative Missions, more CFCC meetups and the continuation of Cultivate. I’d encourage you to read the 2011…
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Human3rror
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Wise Man
8 Feb 2012 | 2:57 amYou just finished reading Wise Man! and you survived! -
Super Mario: Inception
5 Feb 2012 | 5:13 amYou just finished reading Super Mario: Inception! and you survived! -
Biblical Differences Between Men and Women
4 Feb 2012 | 7:46 amFascinating stuff: Man was formed from dust; woman was formed from flesh. Man was placed in the garden alone; woman was brought to the man so they could be together. Man was created with a need; woman was created to fill a need. Man’s job was work; woman’s job was to help man with his work. Man’s job was cognitive/task oriented (name the animals); woman’s job was emotive/relational (meet the need of the man). Man gave woman her name; woman received her name from man. Man’s body was crated to give a seed; woman’s body was created to give life. You just… -
This is the Good Stuff
1 Feb 2012 | 3:19 amWhen was the last time you did this. Really? You just finished reading This is the Good Stuff! and you survived! -
Top Love Needs for Men and Women
31 Jan 2012 | 3:27 amDoes the following resound with you? Women need: Unconditional love and acceptance Emotional intimacy Spiritual intimacy Encouragement and affirmation Companionship Men need: Unconditional love and acceptance Sexual intimacy Companionship Encouragement and affirmation Spiritual intimacy You just finished reading Top Love Needs for Men and Women! and you survived!
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ToddRhoades.com
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Church OMG Sign Sparks Controversy
8 Feb 2012 | 9:12 am“People forget what they are actually saying when they say ‘OMG’. “We’re reclaiming ‘oh my God’ for the church.” IT TOOK only three letters for a church to become the talking point of the neighbourhood. The ‘OMG’ (‘Oh My God’) sign on St Paul’s Anglican Church in Australia, has become the subject of photos, laughter and an internet frenzy. The Rev Howard Langmead said the sign was put there to “catch attention and be unexpected”. SOURCE -
Sermon Kills Man, Church Resurrects Him
8 Feb 2012 | 8:21 amThis church believes they raised a man from the dead. What do you think? -
Wycliffe: Oh No We Didn’t
8 Feb 2012 | 8:01 amWycliffe Bible Translators denied allegations that it removed the terms “father” and “son” from Bible translations meant for Muslim countries and said any problematic texts are no longer being distributed. Russ Hersman, senior vice president of Wycliffe Bible Translators USA, told The Christian Post that many of the works that critics like the organization Bible Missiology have pointed to as changing familial terms for God and Jesus have either done no such thing or have already been pulled from circulation. Read more here from the Christian Post… -
Ewwww… God’s Plan for Sex
8 Feb 2012 | 7:32 amSomebody please scratch my eyes out now. This is an article promo over at Christian Post this morning. At least change the picture. Just sayin’. -
Paula Was Queen Way Before King Eddie
8 Feb 2012 | 7:01 amWow… we totally missed this from back in 2009… eerily similar cerimony from the same Rabbi… no crown though. Wonder if Paula feels ripped off in some way.
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9Marks Blog: Building Healthy Churches
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Six Ways to Help People Pray
8 Feb 2012 | 1:41 pmPretty much everyone would agree that prayer is an important part of the Christian life. And pretty much everyone would agree that most Christians don’t pray as much or as well as they could. Here are six ways you as a pastor can help your people become more faithful and enthusiastic in their prayer life: 1. Set aside a lot of time in your gatherings to pray. We pay lip service to the importance of prayer, but in many of our churches the prayer time is quick and unfocused. The message we may be sending unwittingly is that prayer is not quite as important as other more… -
What Are the Keys of the Kingdom?
8 Feb 2012 | 5:35 amYesterday I promised to offer my interpretation of Jesus' keys of the kindom passages in Matthew 16 and 18. The following excerpt comes from Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Represents Jesus, due out in April from Crossway. For a significantly longer discussion of the keys, see chapter 4 of here. Excerpt begin: One day, Jesus warned the apostles not to trust the teaching of Israel’s leaders (Matt. 16:1-12). Their term of office had expired, and they would be vacating the capitol building shortly, carrying the contents of their desks in boxes. Then he asked them who… -
Pastors, Don’t Let Your People Resign Into Thin Air, Part 2
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amThank you to those who have taken time to respond to Bobby Jamieson’s blog. Bobby has clearly provoked a robust discussion; so much so, that I thought it might be worth offering a few comments that, I hope, will promote shared understanding. A few housekeeping matters first: I have personally deleted a number of comments from his blog. So blame me if I have deleted yours. We’re happy to have people present disagreements, even strong disagreements, but I have deleted anything that strikes me as uncivil and bullying, such as name-calling and ad hominem. You might say I have applied… -
Pastors, Don’t Let your People Resign into Thin Air
1 Feb 2012 | 7:41 pmDoes your church let people resign into thin air? A church member simply submits a letter or has a conversation with a pastor, and then poof!—they’re gone. And your church couldn’t say whether the person has joined another evangelical church or dropped off the face of the earth. My brothers, this should not be. TWO WAYS CHURCHES LET MEMBERS DISAPPEAR INTO THIN AIR An encouraging number of evangelical churches seem to be regaining meaningful practices of church membership and discipline. But I’m concerned that even some of these churches, however unintentionally, are… -
Elders, Protect Your Pastor
1 Feb 2012 | 11:53 amLast Spring, Thabiti shared some statistics about pastors compiled by the Schaeffer Institute. These numbers emerged from research done from 1989-2006, and my guess is that things have gotten worse, not better, since then. The one that struck me most in the report was the fact that 1,700 pastors left the ministry every month. That number is astounding to me. At a recent gathering, Carl Trueman was asked what churches could do to stem the tide of men leaving the pastorate. His answer was that elders of the church needed to do a good job protecting the pastor of the church…
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Echo Hub » Posts
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The Widow’s Offering
9 Feb 2012 | 9:04 amI’m going to try something a little different today. I’m going to present you with Mark 12:41:44, but I’m going to resist the temptation to add a bunch of commentary at the end. 41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts.42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ”Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the… -
MyBetterStory.com: How to Help with Technology
8 Feb 2012 | 7:19 amI could probably say this every week, but Elevation Church is up to something cool. Elevation’s current sermon series is called “Living a Better Story,” and in order to support that series, the team at Elevation launched MyBetterStory.com. It’s a simple website that invites people to identify and articulate the stories they think God is calling them to live. As Pastor Steven Furtick explains in the video below, the site was birthed out of a desire to help people explore and apply the sermon series — what a great concept! As Furtick goes on to say, the site represents an opportunity… -
Our Very Own Dumb Jib Dolly
7 Feb 2012 | 11:54 amOver the last six months, we at Igniter Media have produced some scripts that required a few shots that went beyond just a stationary tripod. When we brainstormed “Strangers” back in August, the script was screaming out for a few long dolly shots. And thus began the creation of our 22-foot dolly track. I’d never built something like this before, so I hope you enjoy reading about my experience, and I hope you can use it to make something even better. (Thankfully, we already owned an Indie-Dolly so we were fortunate to not have to go out and purchase rollerblade wheels as suggested… -
Graceway Media Joins RT Creative Group
7 Feb 2012 | 8:04 amAs you may know, Echo has a parent company called RT Creative Group. I spend most of my time focused here on Echo Hub and putting together Echo Conference, but I still work closely with the rest of my colleagues in the company. They spend their time helping me on the Echo side and/or creating great church media through Igniter Media. Anyway, yesterday we announced a new addition to the RT Creative Group family: Graceway Media. If you’re not familiar with Graceway Media, just know that it’s made up of a great team of people who design and deliver title graphics, banners, motion loops, and… -
A Sale and Other News from the Echo Hub Store
6 Feb 2012 | 12:44 pmThere have been a few new developments in the Echo Hub Store, and I wanted to make sure you heard about them: First, the Echo DVD 4-pack is on sale through the end of the week. Get the DVDs from the four previous Echo Conferences for just $179, a savings of $50 off the regular price. As you might imagine, the DVDs feature audio and video recordings of fantastic sessions from past Echo events. The 4-Pack is a great resource, and you can find out more here. Culture Making by Andy Crouch is now available. This is one of the best books I’ve read in the last five years, no doubt about it.
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The Resurgence
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The #1 Command in the Bible
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmThis content is for those that have signed up for Leadership Coaching with Pastor Mark. Please sign in at http://theresurgence.com/. -
Why You Should Know the Journal of Biblical Counseling
9 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amAfter four years of anticipating the return of the Journal of Biblical Counseling, my wait is over at last. Yesterday, CCEF announced the JBC's return in a new online format, with the new issue freely viewable now. In years past, this journal has been a goldmine for me personally, as a pastor and counselor, and as a trainer of other counselors. To give you a sense of how timely and helpful this journal has often been, just yesterday, I was looking into reference books on psychoactive medications. The same day, CCEF released the new journal with an article by Mike Emlet,… -
Broken Homes in the Bible, Part 1
8 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmUnless you live in complete isolation, you have seen a broken home. Maybe it’s the family of a friend or relative, maybe it’s your own home. Families fall apart in ways that are short-lived and lifelong, hidden from view and out there for everyone to see. Whatever the case, hardly anything perplexes and discourages us more than broken homes. The Scriptures teach us that the pandemic of damaged families we see today is nothing new. Many of us attribute the problem to recent cultural shifts away from church and the gospel, but the Scriptures point in a different… -
Why Jesus Wants You to Lose Hope
8 Feb 2012 | 12:00 amIn Mark 10, a young rich man eagerly comes to Jesus. He is a winner who does not want to give up trying to win. The good thing about him is that he has a desire for something more, something beyond worldly winning. He asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It is good to ask about eternal life, but his question reveals a deep flaw. You see, as Robert Capon notes, while he wants something more, he can’t imagine pursuing it in any other way than doing through more winning and striving. His question shows he believes there are techniques for inheriting… -
Dangers Leaders Face
7 Feb 2012 | 12:00 pmBeing in leadership is dangerous. The Bible is full of warnings and examples of this truth. The devil is always lurking in the shadows to sidetrack, plateau, neutralize or flat out destroy Christian leaders. It is at times overlooked that 1 Peter 5:8 is in the middle of a passage directed to leaders. Leaders are often the first target of the enemy of our souls and the ministry. We have all observed many well-known, godly Christian leaders who have fallen due to financial greed, sexual misconduct, and/or a variety of poor decisions. It seems that there…
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Less Clutter. Less Noise.
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20 minutes about communication trends in the local church…
2 Feb 2012 | 11:23 amSean Cannell over at Think International sat me down on Skype last week for an interview about communication trends in the local church. Best practices, bad habits, missed jokes and all–we covered it in 20 minutes. -
How we addressed our growing connection and communication gaps as a church…
30 Jan 2012 | 7:42 amWe launched the Table at Granger last fall. Since then, I’ll regularly get emails and voicemails from other churches wondering why we made the choice, how we rolled it out and what’s happened since the launch. Last week, I took some time and answered all the FAQs over on the Table blog. Hope it’s helpful. Part 1: Why did you feel Granger needed its own private social network? What made you pick the Table? How did you get leadership buy-in? Part 2: What kind of response has the Table received at Granger? What’s your favorite feature of the Table so far? Part 3: What do… -
If I asked you to describe your job with one visual, what would it be?
27 Jan 2012 | 10:09 amI had a special guest in the office on Monday. Emily, an eighth grader, shadowed my goings on for a full work day as part of a Career Day assignment for school. She was all in–going to meetings, listening to phone calls, observing emails, catching hallway conversations, going out to lunch with the gang, etc. She showed up more prepared than most adults and kept me on my toes–asking questions about the why behind the what, sharing unique perspectives and jumping in wherever she could add value. Several of my teammates thought she was in college. At the end of the day, she ran me… -
Economics for humans…what we don’t measure and why it’s a problem.
24 Jan 2012 | 6:59 amI listened to an HBR Ideacast this AM that had an encouraging perspective from an unlikely source. An economist was advocating that there is more to life than a growing GDP. Here’s a few notes I jotted down. If I asked you what a good life consists of, your answer would be about more than money & stuff. It would be about a life rich in relationships (social capital), accomplishment (organizational capital), meaning, fulfillment and passion (emotional capital)—all of those things add up to a meaningful life. Economics as we know it and live it doesn’t really capture this… -
I got to be on the world’s only user-antagonistic podcast…
20 Jan 2012 | 11:53 amThanks Anthony, Heath & Matthew… I could do this every week.
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Challies Dot Com - Informing the Reforming
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Asking Better Questions
9 Feb 2012 | 6:32 amSo how many people go to your church?” That’s a question just about every pastor faces at just about every conference he attends. It usually doesn’t take long for a conversation to progress to that point. For the pastor this can be a moment of great pride or great humility, great freedom or great shame. Regardless, it is a question that always seems to come up. And it comes up for those who are not pastors as well; you begin to talk about your church and your friend inevitably asks that same question.Today I’d like to make a two-part proposal: Let’s stop… -
A La Carte (2/9)
9 Feb 2012 | 5:21 amReceiving Criticism - Dane Ortlund: “Seems to me there are two wrong ways to receive criticism and one right way. By ‘criticism’ I have in mind love-sent but hard words from a believing brother or sister that are meant for our good, in the spirit of so many NT passages (neglected by many today, first and foremost by me) that call us to exhort, rebuke, and sharpen one another.”9 Good Purposes in Suffering - Rebecca has a helpful list, taken from scripture, of good results that come from the suffering of believers.Radiant Inspiration - There are some nice… -
Are You Living by "The Prius Fallacy?"
8 Feb 2012 | 6:06 amThe Prius Fallacy: “a belief that switching to an ostensibly more benign form of consumption turns consumption itself into a boon for the environment.” That’s how David Owen, in his recent Wall Street Journal article, “It’s Too Easy Being Green,” defines the Prius Fallacy. Here’s how he illustrates it in action:A favorite trick of people who consider themselves friends of the environment is reframing luxury consumption preferences as gifts to humanity. A new car, a solar-powered swimming-pool heater, a 200-mile-an-hour train that makes… -
A La Carte (2/8)
8 Feb 2012 | 4:31 amKeller on NYC’s Decision to Ban Churches from Schools - “I am grieved that New York City is planning to take the unwise step of removing 68 churches from the spaces that they rent in public schools. It is my conviction that those churches housed in schools are invaluable assets to the neighborhoods that they serve. Churches have long been seen as positive additions to communities.”Asperger’s - “Psychiatrists working on the latest edition of their profession’s diagnostic manual are thought to be tightening the definition of autism and dispensing with… -
An Ordinary Podcast
7 Feb 2012 | 9:49 amDownload the audio file.This week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom Podcast (another of our new, shorter episodes) has David Murray answering a question I asked him last week: What’s it like to be ordinary? You can listen in or read along…What would you say if one of your friends asked you, “David tell us what it’s like to be ordinary?”Well I had the privilege of “enjoying” that experience last week. When offered the opportunity to challenge me to speak on a subject of his own choice, my friend Tim Challies said, “David,…
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daveingland.com
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Why church diversity falls short
6 Feb 2012 | 12:45 pmI’ve been seeing more posts lately on other blogs about church diversity, and they constantly remind me about how the church focuses on the visible, without digging deeper in this issue of diversity. When a suburban, white, middle-class church attracts a few people of different ethnicities, it becomes something to be celebrated. Why? What does having a black family, or a Chinese family coming to your church service have to do with anything if your songs are contemporary, white America, Christian radio songs and your message speaks to your white American congregation? We quote lots of… -
Creativity has gone and done it again
5 Dec 2011 | 11:22 amI just experienced a calm November with no stress or conflict. It was such a great feeling to be at peace. However, there is always this feeling within me that I’m missing--or missing out on--something. This feeling resurfaced again when I found myself working on tidbits of graphic design: dabbling in some elements to start considering a whole makeover of this blog and creating a new business card for my current full-time gig. In total, I probably spent about 3 hours doing this. As odd as this may sound to some, it was 3 hours of feeling connected to something in my core that brought me… -
Who is this Dave Ingland?
21 Nov 2011 | 11:17 amLiving life online doesn’t really give one much of a glimpse into the true person that I am. Maybe you’ve seen me tweet some things that have merit, yet you don’t know if I’m qualified to validate those tweets. A lot of times, people just have questions when they learn that I’ve spent most of my life as an atheist, only to sell off a successful business and enter into full-time, unpaid ministry for 7 years. Every once in awhile I devote a day on the blog to answering questions about myself so that those of you know that may only know me through Facebook and… -
Life is like a box of chocolates…
12 Nov 2011 | 8:07 amMany people remember the movie Forrest Gump very well. I, on the otherhand, only remember this phrase: “…Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are gonna get.” I convinced myself that life--my life--was going to be just like that. I never knew what I was going to get and just tried to make it through each day in preparation for the unknown coming my way the next day. As of yesterday, I had to put this way of thinking to rest. Think about it… When we go to the store to buy a box of chocolate, we are faced with many choices. We can choose the… -
Thoughts the day after my birthday…
7 Nov 2011 | 10:12 amI guess the most memorable thing about my birthday yesterday is that it marked the changing of Daylight Savings Time--clocks went back one hour. It was an uneventful day with two exceptions: I had some things of note happen at a church service My wife forgot it was my birthday. In previous years, number 2 would have stolen the day for me. It has actually happened before… more than once. This time she was busy with preparing to sing worship songs at a Spanish language church in Santa Barbara (about 45 minutes away) in the evening and spent the day practicing for that. However, this time…
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Managing Your Church
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Appeals Court: No Housing Allowances for Two Homes
9 Feb 2012 | 7:21 amRuling overturns controversial 2010 Driscoll decision. -
Trademarking the Church
9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amWhen should churches seek legal protections for names and logos? -
The Top 7 Paid Positions at Churches
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amAcross all paid church positions, men are paid 28 percent more than women. -
Before You Share Your Space
31 Jan 2012 | 1:09 pmWhat to know—and do—before opening your church to outside groups. -
Hosting a Super Bowl Party at Church—Is It Legal?
30 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am
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How To Make My Blog
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How to Write 100 Consecutive Daily Blog Posts
7 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amTo celebrate my new blog I made a promise to my readers (even though I didn’t have any!) that I would write 100 consecutive daily blog posts. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
11 Blogging Lessons From The Daily Mail Traffic Growth
2 Feb 2012 | 1:00 amThe Daily Mail is the biggest newspaper website online. Let’s take a look at the key ingredients for the success and what lessons bloggers can learn. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Should I blog for free or self-host my blog?
31 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amFree blog hosting platforms like Blogspot, Tumblr and WordPress.com are a great way to get introduced to blogging and are a fine place to start. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Blogspot Blogger or WordPress: Which one should I use?
26 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amBlogspot Blogger or WordPress - If you have bigger ambitions like creating a professional web presence or building a business from your blog, read on. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
How To Prevent A Facebook Epic Fail!
24 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amFacebook is great and growing at an impressive rate, but many blog owners have been extremely slow to react with Facebook’s ever changing marketing environment. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Desiring God Blog
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The Journal of Biblical Counseling Is Back
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amAfter a four year hiatus, the Journal of Biblical Counseling is back. Beginning with the new Winter 2012 issue, each new publication will be posted online, free to read and free to download. David Powlison announced the re-launch and new format in this video: A number of JBC articles have appeared in Pastor John's messages and books over the years, these four in particular (posted with permission): Ed Welch, “Self-Control: The Battle Against ‘One More’” (Winter 2001) David Powlison, “‘Peace Be Still’: Learning Psalm 131 By Heart" (Spring 2000) Ed Welch, “Counseling Those… -
Pray and Ponder Yourself into Sync with Paul’s Sense of Wealth
9 Feb 2012 | 3:50 amWhen the apostle Paul thinks about “wealth” or “riches” what springs to his mind? What should spring to ours? Where should our efforts at enrichment be invested? Here are all the uses of Paul’s favorite word for “riches” (ploutos). Taste and see what he lives for. The riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience. (Romans 2:4) The riches of God’s glory for vessels of mercy. (Romans 9:23) The riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! (Romans 11:33) A wealth of generosity on their part. (2 Corinthians 8:2) The riches of God’s… -
A Conversation with Doug Wilson and John Piper
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 pmThe recent Conference for Pastors concluded with this two-hour-long conversation between John Piper and Douglas Wilson, moderated by Joe Rigney. Download the audio and video. Time-markers — 0:01:06 — Unpacking the meaning behind the individual mission statements. 0:07:09 — The differences in how those mission statements are framed. 0:10:48 — Unpacking, comparing, and contrasting two sub-themes: "Don't waste your life" (Piper) and "Living out the good life one family at a time" (Wilson). 0:19:14 — Counteracting the negative tendencies of these sub-themes… -
This Momentary Marriage — Small Group Special
8 Feb 2012 | 1:10 pmIn This Momentary Marriage Pastor John unpacks the biblical vision of marriage, with all of its unexpected contours and weighty implications, for married and single folk alike. Pastor John: Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God. It displays the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people to the world in a way that no other event or institution does. To encourage churches to use this resource for small group studies, we are making the book available as affordable as possible — 24 books for a suggested donation of $75. -
Where There's a Praying Mother, There's Always Hope
8 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amMark 7:26, ". . . Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter." J. C. Ryle comments, The woman who came to our Lord, in the history now before us, must doubtless have been in deep affliction. She saw a beloved child possessed by an unclean spirit. She saw her in a condition in which no teaching could reach the mind, and no medicine could heal the body — a condition only one degree better than death itself. She hears of Jesus, and beseeches him to “cast forth the devil out of her daughter.” She prays…
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Marketing Integrity
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You’re Still Here?
2 Feb 2012 | 7:49 pmDon’t you have anything better to do? Go on…get going! Go. Honda’s extended 2012 Superbowl ad that plays off a classic movie from our past… If you cannot see the video, please click here… -
Knowing Your Audience
19 Jan 2012 | 5:07 amWe are just a couple weeks away from the 2012 Superbowl Ads weekend. One of my favorite times of the year…for the game and for the ads! The smart companies, who have invested a ton in their ad production and placement are leveraging social media to advance their marketing reach and impact. Volkswagen knows that one of their core demographics is the Star Wars generation. To to play on that nostalgia, they have created another ad themed around this and integrated…dogs. People of all demographics like animals in ads don’t they? The combination is a perfect mix that… -
Technology Just Makes Sense
17 Jan 2012 | 4:51 amSometimes, Dilbert just says it perfectly… -
In 2012, I Hate Religion
13 Jan 2012 | 5:54 amI am trying to re-calibrate my life. Everyone needs to do that right? I am not talking about starting a new year and making a whole ton of resolutions that I will never keep. I am talking about assessment. 2011 was a phenomenal year for me. I ran my church marketing and communications company full-time for the full-calendar year. It was an amazing journey and an amazing privilege to work with so many ministry-passionate clients. I started a church communications podcast, teamed up with a great bunch of guys to launch a Christian Business Magazine, and served in my Halifax church as… -
God’s Not Dead
10 Jan 2012 | 9:36 amI realize we are already 10 days into 2012 but I thought I would start off the new year of posts here with a statement: God is Not Dead I think the Newsboys sum that up nicely in their latest music video. If you cannot see it below, please click here.
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LeadingSmart
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The Story of the Art Wall
3 Feb 2012 | 4:36 amI’ve led every building project at GCC since the early days, and I often get asked, “Do you regret any part of the design?” I always say, “Yes, I regret the ‘Art Wall’. In fact, I will be able to die a happy man when the Art Wall gets torn down.” Let me tell you the story of the Art Wall… Sixteen years ago I was sitting with GCC’s building committee in our rented offices, and we were discussing details about our first building, already under construction. We originally were going to build a small auditorium to the east of the Atrium (the… -
Don’t Worry About the Needs of the World
30 Jan 2012 | 7:50 amI’ve been thinking a lot about the principle of proximity. Here is Tim’s definition: I have a greater responsibility to care for those I’m close to than others do who are not as close. I have a greater responsibility to care for those I’m close to than I do for those I am not close to. God so loved the world, but I am to love my neighbor. Jesus healed people in front of Him. There were probably hundreds of thousands of sick and crippled and diseased people who were alive when Jesus walked the earth–and yet the ones He healed were the ones who He actually met. -
What Goes Around Comes Around
25 Jan 2012 | 5:24 amI’m not that old, but I’ve voted in 7 elections. And it seems like there are some constants… In every election, we are told it is the most important election in history. In every election, the candidates tell us they won’t go negative. In every election, the candidates always go negative. In every election, the media tells us the candidates are going more negative than ever before. In every election, there is someone running who is painted as a “crazy” (Ross Perot, Howard Dean, Ron Paul) In every election, we are told the young voters will make the… -
Work Here? Attend Here.
24 Jan 2012 | 4:50 amI remember way back when I was first hired at Granger that Mark Beeson talked about the importance of attending the church where you work. At first I thought he was joking–I had never heard of anyone working at a church where they did not attend. He told me of several situations where that was unfortunately true. I wrongly assumed it was a dying pattern. In fact, the number of churches I’m hearing about who hire staff members to do “jobs” rather than “ministry” is increasing. Recently I learned of a large church that had a senior-level staff member who… -
How About a “Masters-Level” Course on Being an Executive Pastor?
5 Jan 2012 | 4:55 amI’ve said it before and it’s still true today: One of the most enjoyable things I get to do is lead a Coaching Network for Executive Pastors. In a couple of months, I’m going to offer this again. I will be meeting with 12 church leaders for a coaching experience which begins in March and concludes in May. I’m designing it specifically for Executive Pastors (or leaders in a similar role) who want to take their leadership to the next level. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but here is my best attempt… It will be personal. Highly practical. Intensive.
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ChurchCrunch
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Seattle Library Allows Porn on Computers Despite Complaints
9 Feb 2012 | 1:00 pmA Seattle woman was visiting her local library with her children, when she noticed a man viewing pornography on the library computers. The Seattle mother didn’t ask the librarian to remove the man from the library or even have him kicked-off the computers. No, she simply asked if the man could be relocated to a more discreet location. The librarian refused. Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Andra Addison said, “We’re a library, so we facilitate access to constitutionally protected information. We don’t tell people what they can view and check out.”… -
Study Likens Tweeting Urges to Smoking & Drinking
9 Feb 2012 | 11:30 amThis from Geek O System: A recent experiment headed by Wilhelm Hofmann of Chicago University’s Booth Business School shows that urges to tweet are extremely hard to resist, harder to resist than urges to drink, or smoke, for example. The study involved 205 people between the ages of 18 and 85 in the German city of Würtzburg. The participants were given Blackberrys and questioned seven times over the course of a 14 hour day, for seven consecutive days, about their desires. They were to report any desire they were currently experiencing, any desire they’d experienced in the past 30… -
Vintage Computer Ads from the 1950′s
9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 amCan you believe the size of these things! These reminded me of the computers they would show in the old Disney movies. We’ve come a long way in 50+ years! If you thought these were interesting, you should take a look at the vintage computer ads from the 1940′s. [via Vintage Ad Browser] You just finished reading "Vintage Computer Ads from the 1950′s" on ChurchMag! Feel free to comment on it! We use the Standard Theme for our blog platform! -
What To Do with Multimedia By-Products?
9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 amI’ve been thinking about by-products. You know that when you do things there’s waste. When you cut down a tree for the wood, there’s sawdust left. When you wash your car, you have dirty water left. When you cook ground beef, you have fat left over. There’s a couple ways to deal with this fact. You can find a way to get rid of the waste and regard it as just a garbage, or you can find something useful to do with it. In the case of the dirty water from washing your car, you can use it to water your plants; it turns out they like dirt. When I was growing up, there was a… -
What Dr. Seuss Books Were Really About
9 Feb 2012 | 6:47 amHaving read all of these Dr. Seuss titles to my kids, I could quickly understand how these titles tell more explicitly what the books are about. There are a couple of things we can learn from this: Be mindful of what the media you are consuming is really saying. What are the books, TV shows and movies feeding us? Communicating the Gospel and Godly values doesn’t have to be dry and “in your face.” It can be done in a creative way. Just like Jesus did with His parables. Now, take a look at these Dr. Seuss titles and you’ll see what they are really about: See what I…
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David Risley dot com
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Don’t Use GoDaddy
9 Feb 2012 | 6:27 amWhy so many people end up doing business with GoDaddy, I have no idea. But, of course, I must look in the mirror. As I used to use GoDaddy for my domains. Well, not anymore. Like many who’ve been in online business for awhile, I owned a lot of domains. Close to 90 of them, actually. I have been meaning to ditch some of them that I realized I’d never use. But, in the process, I’ve decided to transfer the ones I’m keeping away from GoDaddy. I’m switching everything to Namecheap. In fact, I’ve been slowly working on this for many months now. But, recently,… -
Reality: Click-Through Rates On Banners Suck. What To Do?
8 Feb 2012 | 9:10 amBanner ads continue to be the de facto way to make money with a blog – or so it seems. But, the headline says it all: click-through rates on banners are typically pretty horrible. This has an effect on everybody involved: Advertisers get increasingly more desperate to make their ad campaigns work, which leads to lower pay-outs, more annoying banners, etc. The end users end up being barraged with ever-increasing amounts of ads, thereby leading them to be even MORE likely to dismiss them. The blogger, looking to generate some revenue, ends up making less money with more ads. The Problem… -
Why Periodically Deleting Email Subscribers Makes Sense [Subscriber Re-Engagement]
6 Feb 2012 | 8:12 amWhat if I told you it might make sense to delete a bunch of email subscribers from your email list? Would you think I was nuts? Well, let me explain why it isn’t nuts. And, in fact, it might be something you want to do on an annual basis. Engagement > Numbers Simply put, the number of email subscribers who are actually paying attention to you and act on what you say…. is FAR more important than the size of your list. I’d rather have a list of 1,000 people who open every email I send them than a list of 50,000 who mostly don’t open my emails and just send my stuff to… -
Weekly Round Up: Google Hates Your Blog?
3 Feb 2012 | 12:30 amAs I do each Friday, I’ll share some of the cool stuff I came across around the blogosphere in the last week. This week, we have the 10 commandments, Google hatin’, one HUGE list post from handome Chris Brogan, and some of what’s happening over on Pinterest. Let’s get going… How to Make Skype Play Nicely with Google Voice This was a purely geek post that I shared earlier in the week. Not so much about marketing. But, hey, I’m a geek. Plus, I’m a big fan of using cheaper, cloud-based alternatives where possible. Why even have an office phone these… -
6 Uncommon Techniques For List Building
1 Feb 2012 | 10:30 amA lot of great questions have come in for the “20 Questions” webinar next week. Make sure to RSVP for it. We all want to build up our email lists and get more subscribers. And the common way to go about that is to offer an “ethical bribe”, or “free giveaway”. And, in almost all cases, this ends up being an ebook. In some niches, an ebook is still a rather novel idea. However, in a growing portion of the Internet, free ebook giveaways are getting so common that the effectiveness of the offer has dropped a lot. Of course, much of this comes down to how well…
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Mike's Life - Business and Marketing
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Road Test - Lexus CT200h
26 Jan 2012 | 4:56 amI probably shouldn’t read other people’s road test reports on cars I’m about to try out, but in this case I did. And I can’t help thinking that many other motoring writers simply don’t “get” the Lexus CT200h. They lament the tardy zero to sixty time, complain that the styling isn’t great and whinge about the handling. Let’s start with the acceleration. When was the last time you raced from zero to sixty? It just doesn’t happen in real life, does it? The useful performance area is from 30 or 40 to 70 miles per hour – it’s that segment you use to overtake other cars, and… -
Twitter Chats - A Great Place To Learn
26 Jan 2012 | 4:18 amI find Twitter chats invaluable for finding stuff out, and for staying in touch with people who share my interests. I’m also an avid business learner, so I was delighted when Best Colleges Online sent me a list of the best Twitter chats for people interested in business. Here’s a link so you can have a look at it: 50 Best Twitter Chats For Business Students I’m interested in how you are all finding Twitter these days? When I first started the blog, Twitter quickly became the primary driver of the traffic, and it still contributes significantly. But these days I find myself… -
On Hotels
14 Jan 2012 | 2:53 amI like to think of myself as a five star kind of person. All through life, I’ve always strived (and all too often failed financially) for the finer things in life. But a recent experience made me question that whole philosophy. I spent two nights in two different hotels – one a four star Hilton in a big city, the other a lowly Premier Inn, near a provincial airport. I didn’t pay the bill – I didn’t even see it, but checking their respective websites it looks like the second was less than half the price of the first. To say that the Premier Inn suited me so much better would be… -
Update on 2011 - Part Three
2 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pmSo we’ve covered all the work stuff and it’s time to focus on the personal side of life. I’m A Triathlete You probably know that I decided to become a triathlete in 2011. Julie calls it a mid life crisis – on my 50th birthday in March I announced I wanted to do Ironman in 2013. Typically, she decided to join me! I can honestly say it’s changed my life. I’ve lost quite a bit of weight, but still need to lose more. But I’m so much fitter than I was! My training schedule is pretty punishing, with most weeks consisting of a couple of 8 to 10KM runs, two 2000 meter swim sessions and… -
Review of 2011 - Part Two
28 Dec 2011 | 10:32 amThis is the second part of my review – you can read the first here: Review of 2011 – Part One If you haven’t read the case study of the first year of our travel blog, Lanzarote Information’s existence, then you should do so – all you have to do is sign up to the newsletter to your right. The Lanzarote blog passed it’s third birthday a few weeks ago, and the growth during 2011 has been nothing short of amazing. Almost all of the credit goes to my wife Julie, who essentially runs the site single handed now that I’m fully employed elsewhere. The Headline The site’s income more…
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Blog Design Studio
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How to create Twitter widget with WordPress and SimplePie (Part 1)
23 Jan 2012 | 12:42 amThere are a lot of Twitter widgets for WordPress but in my experience none of those utilize the powerful SimplePie PHP class that is in the WordPress core. SimplePie is a powerful RSS reader class that has very nice built-in caching system since as we all know the Twitter API is limited to only 150 requests per hour creating problems with high traffic websites. You can download the plug-in here. Step 1: Getting the plug-in ready Create a folder and name it bs_twitter. In that folder, create a PHP file and name it the same as the folder i.e. bs_twitter. Also, in the bs_twitter folder create a… -
Top 10 reasons to select WordPress as the platform for your website development
21 Sep 2011 | 12:17 am1. Low Cost to start with: Its open source and thus the platform itself is free to use and develop on – starting on WordPress is like less than half the cost of custom developing from scratch or using any other robust CMS. 2. Additional Functionality with Plugins: WordPress community is huge and developing everyday – they contribute in the form of plugins which gives you additional functionality at ease and most of them are free or really low cost. Try to only use plugins which are regularly updated as it means the developer is active and it was not just a onetime thing. 3. Simple to… -
Paypal website isnt loading for the last 30+ min – is it really down?
11 Sep 2011 | 10:02 pmI had some transactions to do on Paypal and I have tried opening it but it simply wont load – nothing happens on the page actually. So I called up my friends in Europe and India and it was the same result for them. I went to Pingdom and according to it the site is loading but surprisingly it takes 17+ sec – pingdom tests are from US servers – Its night time in US and so I cant confirm this with anybody. Here is the test link. So I tried to ping and traceroute the site to see the response and make sure that its not only me or the few people I know – here’s the… -
WordPress is the right choice for Business websites or blog – Facts and Figures
9 Sep 2011 | 4:33 amAbout 3 years back we as a Web Design and Development Company, decided to chose WordPress as the only platform we will develop blog/websites on. The progress since then proves that our decision was right. Some of the achievements of WordPress as underlined by Matt in the recent Wordcamp in San Francisco and what it means to us: 14.7% of the top 1 million websites in the world are now powered by WordPress (one year ago it was 8.5% only) 1 in every 5 new domains created in US are running on WordPress (for new sites its easy to get started with WordPress – design, functionality and cost… -
TimThumb Security Flaw, Akismet-HubSpot integration & Varnish+Apache+WordPress
11 Aug 2011 | 4:21 amTimThumb 2.0 – Use it to avoid your WordPress from getting hacked WordPress has been long criticized for security issues although by just applying certain steps one can make it secure and with proper regular backup policy, one need not worry at all. You must be wondering that why am I talking about security suddenly – well, TimThumb one of the popular library that is used in various WordPress themes has serious security flaws that can be compromised to hack the servers. The flaw was found by Mark Maunder and has started working with the Ben Gillbanks, original developer to…
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Pastor Steven Furtick
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Code Orange Revival Recap
24 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amGod moved in a mighty way during the past 12 days of Code Orange Revival! These pictures are just a glimpse of some of the most powerful moments. And here’s a video our team put together to celebrate what God has already done through the first part of 2012. This is not a highlight reel – it’s a preview of what God is going to do this year. -
The Vision Behind the Elevation Network
12 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amThis is such an exciting time for our church. Not only did Code Orange Revival kick off last night, but we have also launched a brand new initiative that will open up unlimited opportunity to reach people all over the world with the power of the gospel. As a church we have always sought to leverage technology to increase our platform for ministry, so we have launched The Elevation Network: a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week Gospel preaching ministry. The Elevation Network is our gift to you, and is a free online network that will stream round the clock gospel preaching. When you tune into the… -
Code Orange Revival Behind the Scenes
11 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amWe wanted to share a quick insider, behind the scenes look on the eve of the launch of the Code Orange Revival. Make your plans to join us starting tonight at 6:12pm. -
The First Step to Realizing God’s Purpose—Special Sneak Peek
10 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amI got such an encouraging response the last time I did this, I felt like it was time to do it again. In September of this year, I’m planning to release my second book, Greater. It’s getting hard for me to be patient, because now that the final edits are complete, I am bursting to get this message into your hands. I feel confident that it is going to help you ignite God’s vision for your life, whatever that vision may be. But production schedules are what they are, and we’ve got to wait a while. So, in the meantime, I thought I’d give you another sneak peak into one of the chapters… -
If You’re Feeling Stuck…
9 Jan 2012 | 3:15 amAbout two years ago, I completed a personal evaluation exercise in my journal. I wanted to uncover the 3 main factors that keep me from moving forward and embracing new paradigms in my life and leadership. In other words: why do I stay stuck? From my journal to your computer screen, here’s my short list. I blogged it in 2009, but felt like it may be appropriate to share as we begin this new year…to help somebody go forward in God. 1. Complacency Change is hard. Positive change is just as hard as negative change. Sometimes it’s easier to stay stuck than to move forward. Often it’s more…
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Technotip.org
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Amazon’s Junglee.com Live In India
1 Feb 2012 | 8:25 pmMaybe due to FDI rules in India, Amazon has smartly taken a different approach in India. They are not selling the products directly; Right now they are just listing the products from different sellers in India and directing the users to purchase the products directly from the sellers via their website or local store. Want to put your product online for selling ? Goto Amazon Services page. Advantage is, users get to see the price and all the required info about the product. It’s like de-cluttered smart price listing tool. Nevertheless, entry of Amazon into Indian market would surly alert… -
5 Facebook Tips and Tricks You Don’t Know Yet
28 Jan 2012 | 1:02 amThis is a guest post by Tom george. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines. A lot of business owners use facebook as a way to reach targeted customers and to keep in touch with their current customers. If you use Facebook regularly, then you might be familiar with the basic things like creating an album, removing an album, creating a post, or linking a post, etc. But did you know that you can make more from your Facebook using these tips? Here are some of the common facebook tips and tricks, that you, as a hardcore, or even casual facebook user should… -
How-To Update android OS On Sony Ericsson Xperia
15 Jan 2012 | 9:03 pmI’m using Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc to illustrate android os updating procedure. Goto phone settings -> About Phone -> Software update -> Update; It informs you to install update via your computer! Now goto your computer install software(pc suites) and try it; once again it shows some connection error messages and other frustrating error messages So does your Sony Xperia doesn’t support os updation? It certainly does. Install some fashing software; follow some procedure; after that you can directly update your phone OS at settings -> About Phone -> Software update -> Update; via… -
How Do I Preview My Site Before Updating DNS?
9 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amKeith, Q: How Do I access my files on the new server ? I’ve recently purchased hosting from HostGator and have transferred all my files to new servers. I want to preview it and make changes before letting it live to my audience. Is it possible? If yes, how can I do that ? Yes, it’s absolutely possible to preview and make changes to it before making it live to general public. Here are the simple steps: Usually computers look at the IP in the local host file before looking into the actual DNS( Domain Name System ). So make changes to this simple file on your computer and trick the… -
bbpress(plugin) Theme Compatibility
1 Jan 2012 | 9:01 pmThere are many threads on bbpress forum where people are almost frustrated with the problem of making their theme work with the new bbpress plugin version. Particularly, they have this problem with making a theme, child-theme and applying it to the forum. Ex: Your blog has sidebar and you don’t want to have sidebar in your forum. I had the same problem, and solved it after trying it for a long time. Now I feel like, why the hell did I spend so much time on this simple thing Without much delay: In this example I’ll illustrate by keeping the official “bbPress (Twenty…
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Affiliate Blog Online
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Yet Another Goal Setting New Year’s Post?
16 Jan 2012 | 6:44 pmDoes time seem to speed up as you get older? It certainly feels that way to me. Last year just flew by and here we are already in 2012 and of course that means the obligatory goal setting post. Yeah, I know…ho hum…it’s not the most interesting of topics and most people try to ignore...Read the rest of this entry -
Christmas Giveaway Winners!
25 Dec 2011 | 4:57 pmHope everyone is having a great Christmas. For us here in Australia, Christmas is already over and today we are celebrating Boxing Day. That usually means watching the Boxing Day cricket test match on tv, having a bbq, catching up with family or friends that you didn’t see over Christmas or going to the post-Christmas...Read the rest of this entry -
Our Best Amazon Day for November 2011
14 Dec 2011 | 5:30 amOver the past couple of years we have made it a habit to reveal our income for our November-December Amazon sales but as many of our regular readers know we decided to no longer do that for various reasons. (You can read the reasons why here). However, we know that hearing about others successes is...Read the rest of this entry -
Christmas Giveaway 2011 – Canon Powershot S95 Camera, Amazonian Profit Plan & $50 Amazon Gift Card
7 Dec 2011 | 3:26 pmUDATE:The giveaway is now closed…you can view the winners here. Well it’s almost Christmas once again, my how the time flies, and to help spread some Christmas cheer we are going to be giving away a few goodies to help get us all in the Christmas spirit. #1: Canon Powershot S95 Camera The first is...Read the rest of this entry -
The 3 Critical Factors You Need to Know to Make Money Online
21 Nov 2011 | 5:16 amDo you remember when you were young and your mum or dad (or other significant person in your life at the time) would tell you something extremely wise and life changing but it totally went in one ear and out the other? Today you might think back on it and say, “I wish I’d listened...Read the rest of this entry
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Blogussion
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Do You Suffer From Blogger’s Blues?
7 Feb 2012 | 11:48 pm“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.” – Isaac Asimov, I, Asimov: A Memoir If you have actively and professionally blogged for at least several months, chances are you’ve encountered blogger’s blues: the creeping sense of isolation and loneliness that generally comes with regular blogging. Whether you blog full-time, as a freelancer, or as a hobby, sooner or later you are bound to ask yourself: what am I… -
5 Reasons You Should Choose Vlogging (Video Blogging)
2 Feb 2012 | 2:53 amA video blog, also known as a ‘vlog’ is a website that uses video as its primary mode of content delivery, rather than text or image. Video blogging is not just limited to general websites; you can video blog through your YouTube channel, Facebook fan page or even through your Twitter account. The basic idea behind video blogging is to use videos as a medium to share your thoughts, views, or to raise awareness about a topic, product or service. Video blogging is a relatively new concept and has not yet taken off, as compared to text or image blogging. One of the reasons for this… -
The Latest In SEO: What’s New With Google?
23 Jan 2012 | 10:27 pmWhat’s your New Year’s resolution? To lose weight? Make more money? Or finally crack the SEO barrier and get your site to page 1 for that awesome key phrase that gets loads of searches? If you said the latter, this post is for you! As a result of working as a freelance SEO, I get a pretty close look at what is really going on in the SEO world, and right now I can tell you that it is slowly but steadily changing. Here are some tips on how you should proceed with the SEO on your site in 2012. Enjoy! User Behaviour Matters It has been talked about for a while, and often speculated… -
Your Blogging Goals: Can You Meet Them? (Part 2)
16 Jan 2012 | 10:28 pmHAVE you ever set blogging goals that have the staying power of a New Year’s dieting resolution? You’re not alone. Many of us fall into the trap of setting lofty objectives at the height of inspiration, only to be derailed later by unforeseen pitfalls. This is why so many promising blogs fail: the goals are not realistic enough. Most of this stems from lack of preparation and flimsy understanding of one’s capabilities and limitations. However, with careful planning and a more grounded view of what one can achieve, these drawbacks can be avoided. Remember that seemingly impossible… -
Can You Make Your Site Work For You?
10 Jan 2012 | 3:04 amI was first enthralled with the idea of earning passive income online when I discovered Clickbank products about five years ago. So I created my first information product and started buying pay-per-click traffic which was directed to an awful landing page that I had created. I lost money. However, I had glimpsed the power of the internet, and knew that I could create a system to produce income. I want to show you how I created a profitable website, and how you can do the same thing. Get-rich-quick schemes hardly work, if at all. It takes time and effort to build a successful income online.
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SmartBloggerz!
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SEO Copywriting Tips – Getting The Sale
9 Feb 2012 | 10:13 amThis is a guest post by Tommy Sherry from Premium-Online-Writing.comAs bloggers and Internet marketers, we often have a tendency to focus on traffic. After all, if no one is visiting your website, you’re not going to make any money – it’s that simple. But don’t be one of those people who makes the mistake of spending all your time on traffic generation methods, without learning the tricks and techniques you’ll need to convert those visitors into customers once they arrive.Whether you’re selling affiliate products, your own ebook or your services, you need to… -
6 Ways To Combine Your Emails And Social Media
2 Feb 2012 | 8:59 amThis is a guest post by Daniel Cassady from BenchmarkEmail.comHow’s that blog going? Good, you say? Same here. Of course, I could use some more readers, but then again, who couldn’t, right?Does this sound familiar?If you’re a blogger – especially one that is trying to make money with your blog, there’s a good chance that you’ve spent your fair share of time trying to figure out how to lure new readers to your blog, and with varying amounts of success.Most people tend to move toward social media sites like Facebook and Twitter when they want to increase their readership, and… -
Social Networking vs SEO – Which is Better For Internet Marketing?
27 Jan 2012 | 10:58 amThis is a guest post by Noah Mark Rodolfo from BestOnlineBusinessGuide.netSocial networking is one of today’s biggest arena when it comes to online marketing. It’s been an effective gauge for Internet businesses, not only for e-commerce sites but also for bloggers. Facebook, Twitter and even Google+ are making a big impact on the Internet and many practical users are taking the bait. So the question is – “does SEO still have relevance for your online business?”.SEO against social networking is an interesting topic especially if you are looking for the best way to… -
The Best Advice for Home Office Success is More Simple than You Might Think
21 Jan 2012 | 11:32 amThis is a guest post by James Martell from AffiliateMarketersBootcamp.com.Starting an Internet Marketing business, or any home-based business, can be intimidating.Where do you start?Perhaps you have already started one, but are feeling like you are in a rut.How do you get out of it?Whatever you do, don’t take that as a sign that you should give up on your dream. It’s normal to have these concerns.What isn’t normal is to actually push forward and not give up. If you look at the statistics for home-based businesses, it’s not pretty, and will discourage most people. Why? Because most… -
5 BEST Strategies To Get Your Guest Post Published On Popular Blogs
17 Jan 2012 | 10:36 amThis is a guest post by Michael Chi from Blast4TrafficNow.net.Do you want to get your guest post published on A-list blogs?A single guest post on a popular blog can cause and influx of targeted traffic, relevant and unique backlink and increase your Google pagerank. I’ve seen the great potentials in these authority blogs and my major goal is to get at least 2 articles featured on their homepage monthly.The strategies I highlight below can get you started on your quest for successful guest blogging.You’ve 3 things to do right away; Read. Understand. Implement.1. Research Your Topic…
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VIRALBLOG.COM » Viral ideas.Trends. Inspiration
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Measuring The ROI Of Social Media
7 Feb 2012 | 10:06 amSocial media has proven itself as a medium that serves as an extended platform for reaching and engaging the target audiences for brands & businesses. CMOs integrate social media in their current strategies and are looking beyond sales, which indicates they understand the value of social media. Sounds nice but how do you measure the return on investment? Whether or not to enter the social space is not even a question anymore. Even if you don’t want to be there your audience most likely will be in that space, talking about your brand. These days the question is towards the ROI of… -
All Super Bowl 2012 Commercials
6 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amIf you checked one of your favourite social media during the Super Bowl, you could notice that there was another battle besides the Giants vs the Patriots: The Super Bowl Showdown Between Advertisers Check out the list of all commercials of Super Bowl Sunday and let us know which is your favourite and why! Phone Innovators: Official 2012 Best Buy Game Day Commercial Click here to view the embedded video. Coke 2012 Commercial: “Superstition” Click here to view the embedded video. Bridgestone – Performance Football Click here to view the embedded video. Budweiser –… -
Weekly Reacp #5
6 Feb 2012 | 6:50 amTime flies and since it’s not easy to follow, read and catch-up with everything, we bring you a Weekly Recap from ViralBlog: all of the past week in one place. Last week on ViralBlog among others “KLM’s Meet & Seat Social Seating Is Live”, “Why CMOs Will Focus On Social Media Metrics?” and “Top 10 Social Media Blogs: The 2012 Winners!”. Mexican Football Team Managed By Its Fans Recently we mentioned the very first article on ViralBlog written by our founder Igor Beuker, who announced, after his subscription to MyFootballclub.co.uk, that he proudly… -
KLM’s Meet & Seat Social Seating Is Live
5 Feb 2012 | 8:41 amLast year we told you that KLM would launch its social seating service in 2012. Well, Meet & Seat is live now. Facebook and LinkedIn users can now meet interesting passengers on their flight. Check the video below… What is Meet & Seat? Our industry tends to call it social seating. As seen at i.e. TicketMaster before. Meet & Seat lets you find out about interesting people who will be on board of your KLM flight, such as other passengers attending the same event as you at your destination… How does it work? Simply share your Facebook or LinkedIn profile through the… -
Mobile Gaming: State Of The European Market
4 Feb 2012 | 8:23 amThe Mobile Gaming is still growing, not only in the USA but also on the “Old” continent, Europe. This comes hand in hand with the increasing penetration of smart-phones and Mobile Media. These are the findings from comScore‘s report Mobile Gaming: State of the European Market, having a deep look on the details how Europeans use their smart-phones. First of all it’s about the market share of smart-phones in Europe – the acquisition of new devices . The mobile media population has grown 22% on the year-on-year basis and now there are more than 100 million users.
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THE BLOGGER'S BULLETIN
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Three Steps to Improving Your Article Marketing Efforts
1 Feb 2012 | 11:08 amWhen you are using article marketing for your business, it is easy to become frustrated quickly. You may not be reaching goals you had set and that can leave you feeling disappointed with your plan. That doesn’t mean you should wave the white flag and give in! In order to cross the line from failure to success in article marketing, you need to have a plan. To improve your marketing strategy, there are three important steps you need to take: Step 1: Figure out Your Message What are you trying to tell customers? They are looking for solutions to their problems. They have a need and want to… -
How to Choose Your Best Keywords Without a Search Tool
23 Jan 2012 | 8:08 amWhen you begin working on an online marketing campaign, you will immediately recognize the importance of using the right keywords to boost your content’s search engine optimization. Choosing the wrong keywords can lead to lackluster results for your website. So how do you find the ideal keywords for your business? Many people turn to online keyword search tools for help. These can be very helpful, however, there are a few things that you need to do before turning to one of these suggestion tools for your keyword research. Describe your business in simplified terms. When you sit down to… -
Work Motivation Tips to Help You Succeed
29 Dec 2011 | 1:47 pmIn order to succeed and be happy in our work lives as well as our personal lives, it is important to get motivated and stay motivated. Typically, being happy in one life will lead to happiness in the other. For some, though, it is hard to maintain the right balance needed to achieve this goal. There are people who view their work as a means of escape from discontent at home. Others are so miserable at work that home is seen as their refuge. This kind of imbalance can have a negative effect on both your home life and work life. This is why it is important to strike the perfect balance of… -
The Silver Linings of Hopeless Situations
29 Dec 2011 | 1:09 pmThere is a saying that you have probably heard or said that goes: For every cloud, there is a silver lining. It can be hard to give this quote much credence, however, when your own personal dark cloud is hovering above you, pouring cold rain down your back. We have all faced hopeless situations in our lives, whether it’s a failing marriage, a failing business, a failing poker hand, or countless other failures. Each unique situation seems dire, and the last thing you are willing to believe is that on the other side, there is a silver lining. It is hard for us to look at these situations in a… -
Methods to Finding the Source of Your Motivation
14 Dec 2011 | 9:28 amWe all suffer from a lack of motivation from time to time. Whether it is a project that needs to be done for work, a chore to do at home, or a personal goal that needs to be accomplished, it takes a boost of motivation to get your started on the path to completion. Without the proper motivation, success cannot be achieved in any task. Every person is different, so finding the source of inspiration is different for all of us. Once you know how to get yourself motivated, you can accomplish the things that need to be done. Visualizing your achievement can be a great way to motivate yourself. If…
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Robb Sutton
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What it really takes to get a smiling baby picture.
31 Jan 2012 | 4:52 pmI post a lot of pictures on Facebook of my kid…A LOT. The funny part is I always try to catch him doing something interesting. Whether that is smiling, frowning or just being silly, the pictures are of a split second in time when he is exposing some emotion he is feeling at the time.Now, for someone just looking at the pictures, they might think that he is always this way! 1 click and post and you are good to go! Yeah…not so much. I put together the sequence above to show what goes into getting that moment. Sometimes it takes 30 exposures or more to get that shot I am looking for. -
Find something you love to do, and don’t make any money.
30 Jan 2012 | 8:09 amSerial entrepreneurs run into a major problem in life…we try to make money off of everything we do.While this can be a great thing in many aspects, we run into one major problem that is ultimately not a good thing. We create a life that is nothing but work by thinking that everything has to create a revenue stream. Our hobbies, our free time, our passions…they all turn into billable hours during the day as we can’t seem to turn the entrepreneur brain off for 5 freaking seconds.It’s ok. You can love to do something that other people make money at without having to do… -
Video: Daniel Learning His Motor Skills
28 Jan 2012 | 9:45 amOver the past couple of days, we have been working on helping D grab toys and work on basic motor skills. He started grabbing for stuff on his own…so we just started encouraging it by sitting him in his Bumbo with some hard toys around him. So far, he is doing really well with it. It is amazing to watch him really think about what he wants…then go after it.We are starting to get into that fun stage where he becomes less and less of an infant and more of a baby. Things like tummy time, interaction with my wife and I and activities like this are starting to be a lot more fun for him… -
7 Tips To Keeping Your Sanity Working From Home
27 Jan 2012 | 1:07 pmWorking from home rocks. There are no bones about it. In my life, I have done the years of the hour commute to the office everyday and there is nothing worse. By the time I got home, the frustration level of the work day and traffic about had me through the roof. It is amazing that my wife even married me through that time. So for those of you that are still in that and looking for a way out…I completely feel you and hope you find a way to get some sanity soon.Ironically, working from home also has its share of struggles and adaptations that make it not suitable for everyone. There are… -
Video: Daniel Telling Us About His Day and General Observations
27 Jan 2012 | 7:43 amLately, Daniel has started to become really responsive to us talking to him. With his motor skills getting better and his ability to try to communicate really taking off…it is hilarious to have conversations with the little guy even if we have zero clue what he is saying.Obviously, at 16 weeks we are a long ways off from him actually saying a word, but this interaction seems to go a long way in encouraging him to make sounds and move around. Plus, he seems to love it and we get to see him smile a lot.While we are going through these things in early development, I am trying to capture as…
