I’ve created a set of web icons with a very clean, glossy look to them. They’re available in red and green, and they’re FREE! Should you desire them, you can use them for whatever you want, as long as you give props to craigsoup.com.
The file is in Adobe Illustrator format. Anyways, check them out, and let me know what you think.
A friend of mine came across this spiffy little R2D2 mailbox in downtown Fort Worth the other day, so he whipped out his pretty little iPhone and snapped a picture.
Has anyone else seen these? If it weren’t for the bolts holding it down to the concrete, I’d take it home with me and make it my very own.
I payed a little visit to the URL on R2’s front, and it seems that this is all an elaborate scheme to get us to buy Star Wars postage stamps.
I wonder if these little guys chirp and twitter whenever you drop mail in them? Even better, I wonder if they can shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level!
My wife and I recently had a discussion about our budget and why it was that even with a cash budget, we were still spending more than we should each month. After careful consideration, we discovered that we needed a small shift in mindset in order to make a significant improvement in our spending habits.
Unfortunately, I’ve always operated under the mindset that a few little splurges here and there wouldn’t hurt anything. And for the most part, I was right. None of the aforementioned splurges in and of themselves were significant enough to make a big impact on my budget. The problem was with the mindset.
Simply convincing myself that little indulgences didn’t make a difference always ends up biting me from behind, because all the little indulgences eventually add up to an exorbitant amount of money that was supposed to go towards paying off debt.
So with the help of my wife, I’m changing my mindset. I am now totally convinced that little indulgences DO make a difference, and even if I see that something I want will only cost me a nickel, I refuse to buy it unless I can do so with the money left over from my weekly cash budget allowance.
I’ve also discovered that this mindset can be applied in any area of life. Take freelancing, for example. If I’ve got an extra thirty minutes on my hands, I have to make a decision on how I’m going to spend that time. I could either spend it watching TV, or I could use the time a little more wisely and jump on Guru.com to make bids on some freelance projects. Sure, the TV may be a little more relaxing, but what if I’ve missed a really great bidding opportunity just because I decided I wanted to watch a rerun of Arrested Development?
So take the time to examine your own life. Are there areas you’re struggling with where this concept of “every little bit makes a difference” could apply? If so, change your mindset. You won’t regret it, I promise!
It appears so!
The makers of Blendtec blenders have a genius marketing campaign to attract attention to their products. They simply take popular commercial products and stick them in their blenders to see if they’ll blend. They publish the results in a video on their website, and for some reason, it’s remarkably entertaining to watch.
So it was just a matter of time before they put an iPhone in one of their blenders and set it to “smoothie”.
Unfortunately, a lot of die hard iPhone fans have gotten their shorts in a bunch over this, but come on! It’s just a little bit of marketing. It’s NOT a statement against the iPhone.
And besides, with a little whipped cream on top, an iPhone smoothie doesn’t taste half bad!
Thanks to Duncan Riley at TechCrunch for showing me this link.
One of the best things you can do to enhance your search engine results right off the bat is to select a domain name that has some of your desired keywords in it. For example, if you’re trying to sell cross stitching masterpieces online, having a website named ‘www.gertrudesplace.com’ isn’t going to help you get traffic. On the other hand, a website name like ‘www.cross-stitching-masterpieces.com’ will give your SEO pursuits the boost it needs to get started.
But what if your dream domain name is already taken and you can’t think of anything else to use? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve entered in domain name after domain name just trying to find one that isn’t already taken. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a tool out there that could help you with suggestions?
Well, there is. It’s called Bust a Name. An article by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse brought my attention to this great site, and if you’re a web-dork like myself, it’s actually a very addicting service.
So if you need to come up with a good domain name but can’t think of one, check out Bust a Name.
Hemmy.net recently posted several images showing how Disney animators have reused animations over the years. The pictures were very interesting and entertaining to look at.
I’ve never noticed this before, but it makes perfect sense why they would do it, and I think we could all learn a little bit from it. As Mathias Meyer talked about on his blog, if in the course of your work you’ve had to do something twice, automate it.
For example, if you’ve had more than one customer ask for the same type of Flash slideshow, then there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Tweak the slideshow you’ve already created. Keep a directory of files that you could possibly reuse, and when the need arises, resurrect the desired piece and reuse it.
Often it takes a lot of time to generate good, organic search engine results that drive traffic to your website. Search Engine Optimization can often be a tedious, lengthy process that takes months and months, especially if you have keywords that everyone else is fighting for.
Which is why it’s absolutely crucial to target very specific key words and key word phrases in your SEO pursuits. Specific, targeted search terms are much more likely to get you to the front page on a listing of Google search results. For example, if you build a website selling golf training videos, you’re not very likely to get good search engine results by going after the keyword “golf.” On the other hand, if you get more specific and try to target a search phrase like “free online golf training videos”, then you’re much more likely to someday wind up on page one of somebody’s search results. Even though there are probably millions more people searching for the keyword “golf”, those millions of searchers are going to get you NOWHERE if you’re constantly winding up on page 60 of the search results. Most people never even navigate past the first page of search results before they find something that they’re looking for.
Anyways, I’ve said all of this to say that I’ve finally reached the first page of Google for the search term “web design, keller”. Keller is a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, where I live and work. By getting specific, I’ve been able to bring my website to page one of the search results for my targeted phrase, making it much more likely that searchers are going to find my little piece of internet real estate!
CraigSoup.com has undergone another mild redesign. I’ve brought it together to make it a little more visually cohesive, and I really like the results. As you can see, I haven’t redesigned the blog just yet, but that shouldn’t be long in coming.
I got the fancy, dark blue background above the header from the ‘Patterns’ section of Brusheezy.com. Thanks to Shawn Rubel for the awesome design!
The new design was created with XHTML and CSS, and the graphics were created in Photoshop.
Anyways, please leave a comment, and let me know what you think of the new web design.
Update: The design, as you can clearly see, has now been applied to the blog. Ah, the beauty of uniformity!