Every once in a while you run into such a great collection of tools online that you just have to stop and play with them for a while.
That’s what happened to me today when I discovered this post on a site called Splashnology. There are links to so many good tools here like background image makers, CSS makers and more than I can mention here.
If you are interested in some great free tools to help your website look better I highly recommend that you check out
I’m currently building a new site that’s called Spofferz.com. That stands for Special Offers with a “Z”
It’s a pretty cool site where it free for a business to add a SpOffer. Any business can register free and add one SpOffer every month. Each SpOffer will expire and be automatically deleted in 30 days from it’s posting. Merchants have the option of having their SpOffer expiring sooner, later or not at all, but in any case in order to keep our service current and accurate all SpOfferZ will be deleted in 30 days.
Our only request is that the SpOffer gives our visitors something that will make them want to try your product or service. Something of value. Self serving or strictly promotional SpOfferZ will not be considered.
We have future plans to offer an enhanced membership that will allow for more than one SpOffer at a time as well as premium placement for your SpOffer.
Visitors will be able to print SpOfferZ and take them to the merchant for redemption. Visitors will also be able to vote for the SpOfferZ of their choice and the more popular the SpOffer the higher they will move up in the search rankings. The highest ranking SpOfferZ will appear in several prominent places in our site.
Visitors can also subscribe to our RSS feeds for the entire site or any individual category. That way our visitors will know when a new SpOffer is posted in a category they are interested in.
Because Spofferz.com are a brand new site I’m very interested in your thoughts. I want to know what you like, what you don’t like and if you have any ideas on how we can improve please add a comment and let me know what you think.
Here’s a new blog called Google Small Business. It’s new, but looks like something that may provide valuable information for most any business.
I’ve already seen a couple of new tools that I plan to check out.
I have a category with some of my favorite site designs 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 Paul’s Market. I just surfed into this site and love the look of the main page. Their great pictures stopped me and made me take notice. It was a simple, but elegant way to display them as a menu. Something that looked new and different.
The rest of the pages are nice and carry on the theme very well.
My main complaint is that I don’t like light text on a dark background and I really don’t like darker text on a dark background. Avoid things that makes it harder for human visitors.
I would love to have Google Fiber Internet come to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has submitted their bid. I used my Google account to write them my support and aside form the Stupid Pet Tricks aspect of this show, I think Pittsburgh has a pretty fair chance.
As you may know I am a fan of dumping cable and using the Internet to stream video to my TV. It does pretty well for me with plain DSL and I get a great variety of streaming programs to watch.
It would be really great to be able to stream in HD to all of my TV’s at once and I really believe this will be the future of Television viewing, but what worries me is the lack of competition. I have had only two choices of ISPs and my sister who is out of town a bit only has one choice and no prospect for any more soon.
The most important thing about what Google plans is
“We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.”
Competition is what will drive the market on this. It will provide more innovation and lower prices. You can be sure that the current content providers will do their best to hinder this in other places, so please Google, Pick Pittsburgh.
Wade Richards is my customer. Have a look at his site.
He’s a musician using wordpress tools to promote his business and doing a good job of it.
Another lovely winter day in The Burgh…
I thought I would pass along this recommendation from my friend Lou Marmon.
If you can get out of the house or if you can go to your basement.
Hello,
Here are some ideas for libations to share (and a movie to watch) with someone special on Valentine’s Day.
Here are some red wine suggestions for winter weather including Phelps, Castello di Amorosa, Quivira, Frei Brothers and St. Clement.
While my editor entitled the piece “West Coast” it also includes a few fun Spanish wines called “Tempra Tantrum.”
Hope you enjoy them.
Best wishes,
Lou
grapelines.com
I have been using NoNags for almost 15 years now and I have never been disappointed in one of their recommendations.
and
Everything is free!
My nephew Dave is in the Navy.
It’s always good to think of our military people and help them out when you can.
I recommend this organization…
Military Connections specializes in finding service men and women that don’t get any mail and sending them packages.
http://militaryconnections.org/
I saw a great post by Eric Brown on the Search Engine Guide site where he reports on an apartment rental company in Michigan who’s blog has nothing to do with apartment rentals and are still top of the search engines.
They offer virtual sightseeing tours, restaurant tips and reviews, and other good information about the community. Without ever directly plugging their main business from their blog their website business has more than doubled. A very good lesson for anyone interested in writing or improving a business blog.
If your blog screams that you can “Make You A Million Dollars”, but offers no other value for free, your visitors will not take you seriously. However, if you offer them something of value without any strings attached they will take the time to find out what else you can offer them, even if it’s not free. In fact, they will look expecting to have to pay for it. You’ve already proven that your experience can be valuable to them.
As a designer I think that the Urbane Life Blog is very hard to read, with blue text on a black background, but they have done everything else right. It’s just my opinion and who knows the blue on black may even help them.
