05/2007 Article Archive

  • May 31, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Local Video

    This is a video posted on my local newspaper�s web site. Low budget, low quality, but it�s hilarious. Great job stepping out of the box.

    • 2 Comments
    • 1363 Views
  • May 30, 2007 in Programming & IT

    Embedding a Shopping Cart

    is the true web 2.0 version of a shopping cart. You build a store on Cartfly and then you can embed it into any web site and even share it so that others can embed your store into their web site. Here is one embedded into a MySpace Page My mind is already racing with possibilities. It will be interesting to watch this little company and see how it does.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1577 Views
  • May 28, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Go Light on the Convergence, Please!

    I have owned a Palm Treo 650 for about two years now and I have to admit that I have been extremely impressed with functionality and features of the phone. It�s easy to set up emails, play games, get GPS info, and even surf the web (a little). In short, it does everything that it promised it would and more. But after I got sick of playing the games, and tired of trying to surf the web on a tiny screen I realized that I really wasn�t using any of the features other than the basic phone. I finally deleted all my email info off the phone because I didn�t like getting interrupted every time someone sent me something. So if you want to hold on to some peace in your life, I would suggest grouping like activities together into blocks and getting rid of your convergent device. It will make you more efficient and less annoying. Sorry iPhone.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1177 Views
  • May 26, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Two Quick CSS Tips That Will Keep You From Committing Suicide

    Having fought these battles and come very close to killing myself, I know how important these two tips are. 1. Padding is interpreted differently in IE than it is in Firefox. So in order to make sure your layout won’t break in one or the other, nest a div tag inside another div tag and give the inner div tag a margin. Now you have the same effect as padding. 2. Set “overflow: hidden” on all div tags that need to be a certain height. Otherwise IE will add some extra padding at the bottom of them and drive you out of your mind. If you’ve just decided to make the switch from table-based layouts to all CSS or you’ve being doing CSS layouts for a little while now, these tips will help you keep your sanity.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1178 Views
  • May 24, 2007 in Programming & IT

    You Will Mash It Up Whether You Like It or Not!

    Smart web sites make their content available to the world in RSS feeds and XML. I think we�ve already proven that the more you share the better off you are. But what about web sites with great information that don�t want to share. Dapper.net says, �Too bad! You�ll mash it up whether you like it or not!� Seriously, though, dapper.net has created an incredible free tool for extracting information from web sites and turning it into data that can be republished. When you go to the site, make sure to take a look at some of the daps that have already been created. Here is a screenshot of me �dapping� Bits O� NewMedia. This service brings up some interesting questions about where web content is going. If anybody has and idea for a dap or finds a really cool dap that I should post about, let me know.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1256 Views
  • May 22, 2007 in Business & Process

    Proposals Should be Short and Sweet

    I’m a reminded almost daily of how important this principle is in the New Media business. I’ve written hundreds of proposals since I started Liquid Design Media and I’ve found that big picture summary proposals are the way to go for a number of very important reasons: (1) You will save a lot of time and energy. (2) They most likely won’t understand the details so the more you put in there, the more confused they are about what they’re buying. (3) Short, sweet proposals attract the type of easy-going clients that we all love. If I’m proposing a new web site for a client, I start out with an all-inclusive design and set up quote that covers the type of design I think would work best (Straight html, ajax, flash, or hybrid) and all of the other work necessary to get it up on the web with the basic static pages. Next, I list out the other elements (blog, news, calendar, etc.) that I recommend they should have on the site. I stay away from the hows and really focus on the whys. That will do. Don’t over think it and don’t worry about it, even if it’s a big project.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1211 Views
  • May 21, 2007 in Business & Process

    Powerpoint is Dead! Maybe not...

    I haven�t used Powerpoint in a long time for various reasons. I usually find that it�s easier to just talk with a client about a project and click around to a few web sites as examples. It comes across more personal and it takes a lot less time to prepare. But many times I have clients that have created Powerpoints themselves that they want to post on their web site (one of my least favorite requests). Kiss the Powerpoint to web conversion fear and anxiety goodbye! Slideburner.com has created a service that will allow you to upload those unwieldy PP presentations and convert them on the fly. It�s free for up to 200MB and $3/mo. for 1GB.

    • 2 Comments
    • 1345 Views
  • May 20, 2007 in Product Reviews

    flickrSLiDR

    flickrSLiDR Just when I think I have found the best flickr mashup tool (see a few posts down), a newer better one shows up on digg. Nice!

    • 0 Comments
    • 1429 Views
  • May 18, 2007 in Mirificam Press News

    Matthew Griffin on ziki.com

    Matthew Griffin on ziki.com If you�re like me, you have a few blogs, a couple web sites, a flickr account, and a forum account or two. But if someone googles your name, not much comes up. Well, here is the answer to your personal promotion problems. Ziki.com takes all of your blogs, websites, feeds, and a bunch of other stuff and blends it all into a myspace-ish page that can be indexed by search engines. The link above is to my personal Ziki page so you can see what one looks like.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1457 Views
  • May 17, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Embedding a Calendar into Your Website or Blog

    I’m actually posting this to just say how impressed I am with 30boxes.com. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been searching for a good online calendar that can be embedded into a site. Google calendar is pretty good, jotlet.com is a little better, but 30boxes.com just takes the cake. It’s easy to use and extremely easy to share/embed into a blog or website. The event input is intuitive so if you put “John’s Birthday” it automatically asks you for the year he was born and keeps track of how old he is. They also have an RSS mashup feature that doesn’t even require you to sign up. You just put in an RSS address and it automatically creates a calendar mashup of the items in the feed. I did it with my family blog and it even pulled in the photos I had posted and slapped them into the day they were added to the blog. What more could you ask for. Great job guys!

    • 4 Comments
    • 1514 Views
  • May 16, 2007 in Business & Process

    CreativePro Office

    This is a new online project/office management site that I found while doing some research for online calendars. I like the stuff that 37signals puts out and I personally use pipelinedeals.com to manage my projects but this one seems to really complete the loop with calendars, invoicing, todo lists, etc. It�s hard to find a one stop solution for running the da-to-day tasks in a business and this is the closest I�ve seen so far.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1299 Views
  • May 15, 2007 in Web Design Culture

    Download Movies Legally? No Way!

    I recently bought a Mac Mini on Ebay and hooked it up to my home television. Of course, after getting everything set up and networked and all that fun stuff, I started looking at options for downloading movies legally. If anyone out there is in the middle of this process now, let me save you some time. There is nothing good out there. The services that have a good selection have high prices and the ones that have reasonable prices have a poor selection. That�s the bottom line. Why would I pay $10-$25 for a download that�s not even DVD quality when I can get the same thing on DVD for much less? I know that it doesn�t cost more to facilitate a download than it does to print package and ship a DVD. So what gives? Hollywood desperately needs to rethink it�s online distribution strategy. They�ve made it difficult and expensive to do it legally so people are going to do it illegally. If you�re not convinced, check out this article on PC Magazine�s web site. It goes into more detail. PC Magazine Article

    • 1 Comments
    • 1171 Views
  • May 14, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Embedding Your Flickr on a Web Site

    You’d think this would be an easy task but it’s really not. Oh yeah, it’s easy to slap a slide show up there, but what if you want to post photo set up on your web site that isn’t just a slide show. Well, after a lot of searching and quite a few “That’s almost what I’m looking fors”, I found PictoBrowser. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s like the YouTube of photos. You just have to enter your user name and choose what photo set you want to embed, and out pops the embed code. It also resized very well so feel free to change the size of the Flash object once you embed it.

    • 0 Comments
    • 1072 Views
  • May 11, 2007 in Business & Process

    Should I Use Search Engine Marketing?

    Uhhhh…. Yes! I have found that using search engine marketing through Google Ad Words, Yahoo!, etc. and focusing on local keywords is extremely effective. It’s actually really surprised me how many web designers still don’t have faith in the medium they selling. Have faith! It works!

    • 0 Comments
    • 1243 Views
  • May 8, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    How to make sexy buttons with CSS

    I actually saw this link on the Style Grind blog. Great find! This article gives a very simple solution to make expanding buttons with just an "a" tag and a "span" tag.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1388 Views
  • May 5, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Why Didn't I Find Grouper.com?

    A few posts ago, I did a little analysis of the popular video services out there. In all my research for that post, I didn’t find grouper.com. Now, there’s nothing special about grouper as far as I’m concerned. It’s basically a YouTube clone. I’m just blown away by the fact that the search term “upload videos” typed in on Yahoo! failed to bring up grouper (at least not within the first 15 pages or so). It’s a large video site that’s been around since 2004. So what gives?

    • 1 Comments
    • 1186 Views
  • May 4, 2007 in Product Reviews

    ClickTale :: Because every user has a story

    After a long wait, clicktale.com is finally running a closed beta on their new web stat analyzer. As one of the beta testers, I have to say that I am pretty impressed. I think that their visual approach to tracking web site usage is much more useful than anything else we’ve seen in a while. Liquid Design Media will definately be using clicktale.com for clients in the future. Also, check out crazyegg.com if you like what you see and you just can’t wait.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1239 Views
  • May 3, 2007 in Mirificam Press News

    London Office Space

    You never know when a blog post will strike a chord with someone or connect you to someone you would otherwise never have met. After my last post about map mashups, I quickly received an email from Jurga and londonofficespace.com explaining how they are using a map mashup to create a new service.

    • 2 Comments
    • 1400 Views
  • May 2, 2007 in Design Tips & Tutorials

    Adding a Maps Mashup to Your Site

    Adding maps to a web site is a great way to bring a more interactive and personal experience to the visitor. At Liquid Desgin Media it’s become standard practice to embed a Google map with directions on every site that we produce. Now, with the ability to easily add photos and videos to maps, we are already seeing some very creative mashups out there. With sites like palatial.com and communitywalk.com, you can add a lot of mapping capability to your site for free including the ability for your visitors to contribute to the map. Another good way to get your map up on your site fast is to use the new “My Maps” feature at maps.google.com and then use a service like ongopongo.com to embed the map that you create into your site. If you are willing to do a little coding, you can use yahoo! maps and do a mashup like I did on fightmap.com.

    • 1 Comments
    • 1025 Views