Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Today it’s FunEnclave – The Fun Portal!
There is some great time wasting stuff here. Probably more than enough to go until next Friday. FunEnclave offeries galleries, games, horiscopes, and much more.
I found this list of Free SEO tools. I have tried many of them before and there are many others that I haven’t tried yet, but will.
I do recommend bookmarking this post on Investintech and at least having a look at all of the tools.
Iron City Beer has long been a symbol of the City of Pittsburgh. It’s no secret that they and many other local brewers have struggled mightily to save their brands in recent years.
Several years ago Rolling Rock Beer was purchased by Anheuser Busch. They moved them out of their mountain home (Latrobe PA) and spend a gazillion dollars to promote the brand nationally. Rolling Rock is now for sale so I guess the experiment failed.
Iron City recently moved out of the city and into Rolling Rock’s old brewery. It’s much more modern and Iron City is planning to make and sell much more beer to stay alive. One of the things that they are counting on to sell more beer is social media. If you have ever seen a Pittsburgh Steeler road game you’ve probably seen thousands of towel waving fans. Many of them have moved from The ‘Burgh over the years, but still possess their hometown loyalty. Iron City is counting on that loyalty and social media to spread the word instead of a huge advertising campaign.
So far all that I’ve seen is a “coming soon” website OneCityOneNation.com and a pretty good slogan -”One City. One Nation. One Beer.” This should be an interesting one to watch. Successful social media campaigns are very hard to manufacture, but Pittsburgh fans in far away lands are a different breed as well.
The other day I wrote about how I sometimes find myself trying to talk a client out of doing something one way or another. Some of those times my client will decide to do things their way. I will then do what the customer wants because they are the customer and they know their customers better than I do.
Sometimes it works out well and sometimes not so well. Yesterday I read a post on the Wilson Ellis Consulting blog called Are Your Personal Preferences Costing You Money? They wrote about almost the same thing. It’s really impossible to know what will work for a site and what won’t, unless you try everything and thoroughly test your results.
I have a category with some of my favorite site designs that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Duirwaigh Studios.
This site is about the three E’s: enchantment, enlightenment, entertainment. They specialize in fanciful projects like books, films, and gifts, as well as inspirational workshops, and concerts.
Their site shows it all over. It’s enchanting and colorful. The search is a bit hidden, but the rest of the navigation is clear, easy to find and use. It’s a magical looking site.
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When I speak to business people about how I use Twitter, many of them want to know if it’s something that can help their business. Unless they’re living under a rock they’ve heard of Twitter and all kinds of social media, but many of them are not involved either in their business or personally. Hearing all of the hype they know they should be doing something, but don’t have a clue what.
I have written about this before and I believe it may be better for some not to do anything, but most businesses can benefit from a good social media strategy. Recently Twitter has posted a very good tutorial for business. I can recommend that anyone who’s interested in learning about what can be in it for them, should check out.
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
The Gawno Magazine is a design blog and they cover everything from movies to architechture. You could spend the day looking at their stuff, but I really recommend this one with some amazing, strange and mostly beautiful buildings.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people want the latest and greatest technology, regardless if they have any idea how to use it or what it can actually do for them.
It’s also very true with websites. I can’t tell you how many sites that I’ve built with programs for things that were hardly ever used, if at all. There’s also no telling how many visitors that the latest bell or whistle confused and chased away.
As a website designer I work for the site owner and so first I give my opinion of the value for any addition to their site. I’ll hope that they’ve thought long and hard about if they really need the very latest “must have” gadget. Hopefully they will have taken some time to decide if it will actually help their site’s goals before they add it. After that, I’ll do what they want.
There are many other designers who will just say to their customers “sure thing, that’s a great idea” and close their eyes and see their bill going up.
Here’s another good post on the subject from Joshua Palau on the Search Engine Watch called…
I wrote the other day how much I like using WordPress for other things beside this blog. WordPress Can Do Anything
Today I found another great post with all kind of more things that you can do with the new WordPress 2.8 on the 1stwebdesigner site. They have great resources and tools.
I have a category with some of my favorite site designs. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called RIPIE6.
RIPIE6 is the obituary notice of Internet Explorer 6’s death. I have written before about how I would like to get rid of IE6. Here’s a great looking site that agrees.
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