This post has moved to our new location at http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/blog/2008/some-other-blogs-we-write-for/
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
Shorten Long URLs - Tiny URL
Tiny URL...
READ THE FULL POST AT ITS NEW HOME:
http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/blog/2008/shorten-long-urls-tiny-url/
...They also allow custom short URLs:
http://elevateprinting.com
Becomes:
http://tinyurl.com/elevatep
Another added effect of this services is that you can hide the true domain and web address you are sending people to. This can unfortunately be used for some less ethical purposes.
Other Similar Websites & Services:
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Local Search for your business
Here are the major players in local search engines – you can take the time to set-up accounts with each or find an easier way by using our service. You can find the direct link to the sign up on this listing website. The major players for data is superpages, info-usa and google.
• Google
• Yahoo
• MSN
• Yahoo Yellow Pages
• AOL Yellow Pages
• Verizon SuperPages
• Switchboard
• YellowPages.com
• Sprint Yellow Pages
• YP.com
• InfoSpace
• Local.com
• Judy's Book • True Local
• HomeStore.com
• Welcome Wagon
• Realtor.com
• MerchantCircle
• Earthlink
• 4INFO.net
• KUDZU.com
• InsiderPages.com
• YPCity.com
• InformationPages
• Info USA
• City Search
• Axiom
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Docstoc - Free business and legal document templates
A new reference is available for boilerplate business documents, contract templates, letters, memos, and a bunch of other extremely useful templates. Docstoc.com is the address, it is a site of user submitted documents usually based off real world ones. Its free to use, and they encourage you to upload more professional documents of your own to increase their knowledge base. You can find Excel, Word Documents, PDF's, and more. Definitely worth checking out.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
"How often should I update my website?"
This article has been moved to our new blog at http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/blog/
Monday, February 4, 2008
Don't let Poor Website Images scare away your Visitors
Before a visitor has a chance to read the first line of copy that you perfected over the last few months, chances are good that they will see an image (or ten) and judge your website accordingly. Subconsciously we favor good composition, color balance, and proper lighting in pictures-- even if you aren't a creative person. Ever wonder why your pictures from your camera never look as good as someone else's? Its usually not the camera...
In my humble opinion -- please, never try and use your own pictures on your website unless you have some photography experience and can work your way around in Photoshop. In an effort to save money, some people will have friends or their nephew with a snazzy digital camera take some wonderful pictures for their website (SEE LEFT). Most digital camera pictures require a good amount of editing and correcting before they're worthy of a professional website.
With the price of stock photography (Really good stock photography) as low as it is today, anyone can afford professional quality images at 20% of what it cost just five years ago. My choice website for stock photograhy is iStockphoto.com, they are one of the most well know sites out there. (SEE RIGHT) For between $3-$15 you can have an amazing royalty-free image. I have also heard good things about www.jupiterimages.com. These low cost stock sites, often called "microstock photography," are a great place to find pictures. If you have a higher budget and are looking for hard to find or unique, check out gettyimages.com or Adobe's Stock images. They have a diverse collection of images from professionals all over the world. Most of these images are designated as "right's managed." Both of these are excellent ways to give your website a professional look on a true small business budget.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Royalty-free Images vs Right's Managed vs Exclusive Rights
When buying stock photos, contracting a photographer, or purchasing images from events these three terms will usually come into play. Here is a brief overview of how you can purchase the right to use an image.
Royalty-free images: This simply means you can use the image over and over again, as many times as you would like, without paying any addition money (royalties) to the creator. This does not mean the image is free to use if you have not bought it. Be sure to read over the terms when buying images, as sometimes even royalty-free images can have limitations to how they can be used. These images also can be sold by the image creator to other individuals or companies for their use, so their is a chance you might run into the same image somewhere else. That is just a fair warning, I buy all three of these license types of images and I have never had a problem with royalty-free ones. Even if someone did see the image elsewhere, I would rather that happen than having a visitor leave your site due to poor quality images.
Right's Managed images: These images are ones that you purchase the right to use a certain number of uses or for a set amount of time. Many times, this allows the photography to retain some control over their image or sell the exclusive rights to it after you are done using it. This allows you to purchase higher end images at cheaper prices that buying it outright from the photographer (exclusive rights or use).
Exclusive Rights to images: This is when you are, in effect, purchasing all the copyrights to an images from its creator. This is usually very expensive and requires some kind of legal knowledge / contracts. Once you own exclusive rights to an image, no one else can use that image -- not even the original creator. You could sue the creator for using it just as if it was your original work. Buying exclusive rights to images is often times not needed, most web and basic business uses being that way. At times, when you contract photographers to photograph an event you can pay to have exclusive rights of all the images -- for a very high price.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
GrandCentral and other phone technologies
I was searching for a low cost option to for a phone number and came across Google's newest acquisition GrandCentral. This free service gives you a local phone number that you can forward anywhere, voicemail you can customize based on who's calling (friends, family, co-worker's etc), listen to your voicemail on-line and even a website button for people to connect to you live. We will be testing on of these buttons on the green werks contact us page.
The other thing that is unique is you get to keep the number for life...that means you can move change your number and don't have to worry because you can just forward the calls to your new number. Just like most other Google services this is offered for free. I encourage you to try it out. I set my number up this week and think is is extremely valuable. Just shows where the technology is going and Google is continuing to take over the free world...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Analytics what is that? Google gives it out for free?
Analytics is the tracking software used to discover who is visiting your website. Google Analytics can tell you where the hits are coming from, how long they are on your site, what pages they visited and i think most important- how they got to your site. I can see who is linking to me from where. This service has an huge value, previously companies would charge thousands a year for this service that google now offers for free. So if you have a website this is a must have to learn more about your visitors.
Free 411 service? try out goog 411
Stop paying the phone companies 1.50 a call and call 1-800-466-4411. aka (800) GOOG-411. This free 411 service is voice activated and actually works very well. You can connect to the business for free and even get the listing texted to you.
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