From TechRepublic comes this great idea for ensuring that your emails can be read on all devices: use plain-text email. It seems that “reading image-rich e-mail messages on … BlackBerrys [and other smart phones] is a major pain.” Read the rest of the post here.
The Benefits of Using an RSS Reader
March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
If you spend a lot of time trawling the web, visiting your favorite websites and blogs looking for updates, then you need an RSS reader.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Every site that is regularly updated (news sites, blogs, etc.) has an RSS “feed” and by subscribing to that feed using a “reader” or “news aggregator” you can get the updates delivered to you — online (through your Google account, for instance), to your desktop, via email, or to your smartphone. You can save articles for later use and can also share them with others.
Confused? You don’t have to be. Here’s a link to a funny, slightly rough, video that explains it all — very clearly.
I use Google Reader and currently have 88 RSS subscriptions. Can you imagine how much time I’d spend traveling from site to site to check for those updates? Now all I do is log in to my Google account and spend way too many hours reading all those articles.
If, after viewing the video, you have questions, leave a comment, and I’ll respond.
Image Search – Beyond Stock Photos
March 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
If you need images for a project, you have a lot of affordable options. Why then, do so many of the images used on websites and marketing materials look exactly the same? Without breaking the budget, how do you find graphics that help you stand out — not blend in?
Popular stock photography sites like iStockPhoto and Fotolia offer images starting at $1.00. But many of their graphics look similar and have that unmistakable “stock” look.
The next time you need to do an image search, use Creative Commons and Flickr to find free images that don’t fit the “stock mold.”
To start a search, go to the Creative Commons search page and enter your search term. In addition to a general search, you can limit your options to works that can be used commercially or works you can modify. Select one of these modifiers if you’d like. Hit “go” and your search results should appear. If you do not get a list of Flickr photographs, make sure you have selected the Flickr tab (this is the default).
If you find an image(s) you want to use, give attribution to the photographer who took it. Many of the images I’ve used on this site were found on Flickr; you’ll notice that I give credit and provide a link to the original image location.
Finally, a note to you Firefox users: the search box of this browser has a drop-down menu — click on it, and you’ll see that Creative Commons is there. You can begin your Creative Commons/Flickr search without navigating to the Creative Commons site.