30 agosto 2010 – Gabriel Catalano®

TweetUp Now Includes Updates From LinkedIn And Facebook; Changes Name To PostUp

Twitter search and advertising startup platform operator TweetUp has announced today that its search engine for Twitter will be expanding to include bios and updates posted to other social networks, including LinkedIn and Facebook. Because the company will no longer be solely based on Twitter, TweetUp is changing its name to PostUp.

In April, TweetUp, which was incubated by incubated by idealab, opened registration for its bidded marketplace for real-time search, and in May the company launched its search capabilities on a number of sites at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, including at TechCrunch, Topix.com, and Businessinsider.com.

Leena Rao

Cisco May Be Making A Run For Skype

Michael Arrington

Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process, says one of our more reliable sources. We have not been able to confirm this rumor one way or another via other sources, which isn’t surprising. A company in lock down during the IPO process is usually even more tight lipped than normal.

Michael Arrington

El porno aprovecha el avance de la TV 3D

En los últimos años, el panorama de la industria del entretenimiento adulto se vio beneficiado y perjudicado en partes iguales con la presencia del formato DVD o los contenidos en Internet. Piratería o los bajos costos en la Red son algunos de las causas que esgrimen desde las compañías del sector para explicar la baja en los ingresos de los formatos tradicionales. Sin embargo, nunca deja de estar al tanto de los avances tecnológicos.

Como ejemplo, el nuevo iPhone 4 fue visto como una buena opción de parte de algunos productores, que desean utilizar el servicio FaceTime para que las actrices del cine adulto realicen videoconferencias sexuales .

Con el objetivo de emular el éxito económico de Avatar con una proyección tridimensional, que envalentonó a la industria cinematográfica a crear más producciones similares, una productora de Hong Kong se encuentra embarcada en una costosa producción condicionada, llamada «El sexo y el Zen: éxtasis extremo», que esperan estrenar en mayo de 2011.

En la misma tendencia que sigue la industria cinematográfica de la mano de Avatar, una productora asiática de cine para adultos prepara una costosa producción de 3 millones de dólares

Foto: AFP

Homepage Optimization: How your peers use keywords and communicate with visitors

we wanted to hear your thoughts about homepage optimization. So we asked marketers. Here are a few of our favorite answers…

Keyword early, keyword often

1. Keywords are very important. Find the best for you site/business/product. Is your homepage going to be a landing page for your product or service? If so, you can use the appropriate keywords. Otherwise find the keywords that more generally describe your industry/product and use them for the home page.

2. Content: the keywords will be used to develop relevant content. Try to use the keywords early and often (but not unnaturally so) on the page. Especially effective if you can use them in a title, or bold, etc.

3. Title tags: use keywords in title tag, plus the name of your company at the end.

4. Write a good descriptive meta tag – remember this is going to be part of what shows up in natural results on a search results page

5. Limit graphics. For the graphics that are there, use Alt formatting to see that the search engine can read them.

6. Try to build incoming links into your home page

– Brent Carnduff, Owner at EchelonSEO

Daniel Burstein

(…) We wanted to hear your thoughts about homepage optimization. So we asked marketers. Here are a few of our favorite answers…

Keyword early, keyword often

1. Keywords are very important. Find the best for you site/business/product. Is your homepage going to be a landing page for your product or service? If so, you can use the appropriate keywords. Otherwise find the keywords that more generally describe your industry/product and use them for the home page.

2. Content: the keywords will be used to develop relevant content. Try to use the keywords early and often (but not unnaturally so) on the page. Especially effective if you can use them in a title, or bold, etc.

3. Title tags: use keywords in title tag, plus the name of your company at the end.

4. Write a good descriptive meta tag – remember this is going to be part of what shows up in natural results on a search results page

5. Limit graphics. For the graphics that are there, use Alt formatting to see that the search engine can read them.

6. Try to build incoming links into your home page

– Brent Carnduff, Owner at EchelonSEO

Continuar leyendo «Homepage Optimization: How your peers use keywords and communicate with visitors»

Real Time Insights into Your I3 Value Prop

Gone are the days when companies would simply create a product or service, market it and hope for a successful, profitable outcome. Products and services are now deeply commoditized and consumers are increasingly fickle and hard to please. People don’t just want something to spend their money on; they want solutions. They want something that can satisfy a specific need in a specific way. It is a must for companies and marketers to understand this basic consumer reality.

Gone are the days when companies would simply create a product or service, market it and hope for a successful, profitable outcome. Products and services are now deeply commoditized and consumers are increasingly fickle and hard to please. People don’t just want something to spend their money on; they want solutions. They want something that can satisfy a specific need in a specific way. It is a must for companies and marketers to understand this basic consumer reality. Continuar leyendo «Real Time Insights into Your I3 Value Prop»

Embrace Constraints: How Limiting Yourself Won’t Limit Your Designs

If you’re a creative person it’s easy to believe you will be at your most creative without any constraints. In reality however, this isn’t the case. Your creativity needs a focus, which is found by setting limits. If you can do anything your creativity stalls – there are too many decisions and you get confused. Restrict yourself to just a few design elements and a set a deadline to give your creative brain a goal to focus on. This article looks at how designers can turn constraints into opportunities.

Embrace Constraints: How Limiting Yourself Won’t Limit Your Designs
The Myth of Creative Freedom

A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. – Thomas Huxley

There’s nothing better for a designer than being given creative freedom by your client. Equally, there’s probably nothing worse than a designer giving themselves creative freedom.

If you’re a creative person it’s easy to believe you will be at your most creative without any constraints. In reality however, this isn’t the case. Your creativity needs a focus, which is found by setting limits. If you can do anything your creativity stalls – there are too many decisions and you get confused. Restrict yourself to just a few design elements and a set a deadline to give your creative brain a goal to focus on. This article looks at how designers can turn constraints into opportunities.

Embrace Constraints: How Limiting Yourself Won’t Limit Your Designs

The Myth of Creative Freedom

A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. – Thomas Huxley

There’s nothing better for a designer than being given creative freedom by your client. Equally, there’s probably nothing worse than a designer giving themselves creative freedom. Continuar leyendo «Embrace Constraints: How Limiting Yourself Won’t Limit Your Designs»

A Collection of Mini Icon Sets

Icons can add a lot of meaning to a website or web app design.

Used appropriately, they can make it faster for your visitors or users to complete the tasks they need to complete. But not every website design has space for normal, full-size icons (often 32×32 to 48×48 or sometimes even larger).

That’s where mini icons can come in handy. With the smallest versions of these icons sometimes coming in as tiny as 8×8 pixels and the largest generally being 16×16 pixels (though sometimes they’re slightly larger than that), they can fit into virtually any design.

And there’s a huge variety out there that can fit with almost any aesthetic style. Here are more than 35 of the best sets of mini icons out there (most featured here are free, though we’ve included a few premium sets, too).

Icons can add a lot of meaning to a website or web app design.

IconDock Mini Pixel Icons

These icon sets from Icon Dock are split up into different categories, including file types, web design, blog & CMS, and Ecommerce.

Continuar leyendo «A Collection of Mini Icon Sets»

Are You Ambitious Enough?

Admit it: you’re ambitious.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to proclaim your ambitions in the comments. But if you read the 99% and use the Behance Network, you’re here because you want to learn, you want to improve your professional skills, you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the creative industries. You want to compare your work with that of your peers and emulate the success of your heroes. You want to succeed.But it’s not really the done thing to say so, is it?

These days, “ambition” is a dirty word. People who are “ambitious” are viewed as either selfish or unrealistic. (“That sounds a bit ambitious” is code for “you are going to fail.”) Yet it wasn’t always this way. The poet James Fenton points out that 500 years ago in Renaissance Florence, artists had no qualms about admitting their ambitions. Here’s Fenton discussing Giorgio Vasari’s biography of Andrea del Verrocchio:

I take these stories about artists, from Baldinucci and Vasari, because they date from a period when it appears that one could acknowledge straightforwardly motives of which we would today be obscurely ashamed. Verocchio observes that there is much to be gained in the field of sculpture, so he becomes a sculptor, and when he feels he has won the honour that is going, he turns to painting with the same motive, but when he sees his way blocked by Leonardo he turns back to sculpture again.

by Mark McGuinness

Admit it: you’re ambitious.

Craftsmanship in Designing Websites

With high pressure from clients and crazy development schedules for web designers, it is easy to forget to spend the proper amount of time crafting a design.

In the interest of speeding things up, it’s tempting to skip over small details. This is an easy pitfall to which to succumb, but in the end, it can hurt your overall career.

This article will share methods and simple tools for building better portfolio pieces, having happier clients, and imbuing your work with more value.
Professional Pride and Value

If you do not take pride in your job, strive to build better value, and feel rewarded in your work, this article is not for you. The first step to being a better craftsman is care for your work no matter what it is.

Regardless of whether or not the subject is close to your heart, as a designer you should always be proud of your work. It is true that clients, deadlines, and projects will occasionally force you to make decisions that you do not agree with, but part of being a valuable and effective professional is genuine care for your work and your clients.

Love your craft and it will pay off. Real value starts at the core of how you handle your work in your practices, presentation, and approach.

by Shawn Borsky

With high pressure from clients and crazy development schedules for web designers, it is easy to forget to spend the proper amount of time crafting a design.In the interest of speeding things up, it’s tempting to skip over small details. This is an easy pitfall to which to succumb, but in the end, it can hurt your overall career.
This article will share methods and simple tools for building better portfolio pieces, having happier clients, and imbuing your work with more value.

Professional Pride and Value

Regardless of whether or not the subject is close to your heart, as a designer you should always be proud of your work. It is true that clients, deadlines, and projects will occasionally force you to make decisions that you do not agree with, but part of being a valuable and effective professional is genuine care for your work and your clients.

Love your craft and it will pay off. Real value starts at the core of how you handle your work in your practices, presentation, and approach. Continuar leyendo «Craftsmanship in Designing Websites»

PSD/HTML Conversion: Elegant and Simple CSS3 Web Layout

by Eric Hoffman

This is Part 2 of tutorial series. The first part dealt with creating a web design mockup of an elegant and simple blog web design. You should do Part 1 before attempting this tutorial so that you to gain the most benefit.
Elegant and Simple Blog Web Layout Tutorial Series

This tutorial is the second part of a two-part tutorial series. This part (Part 2) will show you how to create an HTML/CSS web template for the PSD design created in Part 1.

* Part 1: Make an Elegant and Simple Blog Web Layout Using Photoshop
* Part 2: PSD/HTML Conversion: Elegant and Simple CSS3 Web Layout

Final Result

Click on the final result preview below to see a live demo. Since we are using some CSS3, this demo might not look exactly the same in all browsers.

View Demo

Create the Basic Files

1 The first thing we’ll do is set up the files and folders. Create a new folder in your computer and name it letterpress. This will be our working directory.

2 Create 2 folders inside the letterpress folder and name them images and styles.

3 Open up your favorite HTML/CSS editor (such as Dreamweaver or Notepad++) and create an HTML document. Name it index.html or some other preferred file name. Save this HTML document inside the letterpress folder.

4 Create a stylesheet document and name it style.css (or any other name you want). Save this file inside the styles folder.
Basic HTML

5 The code below goes in index.html. The code represents common HTML markup.

Letterpress

Slice the Bookmark from the PSD

6 Now open up Photoshop and open the PSD we created together from Part 1 of this tutorial series.

7 Hide all except all Photoshop layers except these layers:

* Datebg and shadow
* Headerdivider
* Navbarbg
* Logo
* Sidebar
* Sidebar divider
* Background
* Widgetbg
* Footerbg
* Image
* imagebg

by Eric Hoffman

Elegant and Simple Blog Web Layout Tutorial Series

This tutorial is the second part of a two-part tutorial series. This part (Part 2) will show you how to create an HTML/CSS web template for the PSD design created in Part 1.

Part 1: Make an Elegant and Simple Blog Web Layout Using Photoshop
Part 2: PSD/HTML Conversion: Elegant and Simple CSS3 Web Layout

Final Result

Click on the final result preview below to see a live demo. Since we are using some CSS3, this demo might not look exactly the same in all browsers.

View Demo Continuar leyendo «PSD/HTML Conversion: Elegant and Simple CSS3 Web Layout»

45 Inspiring Design Agency Websites

A while ago, we showcased a list of 50 Inspiring Portfolio Designs which featured a collection of portfolio websites belonging mainly to individual designers. Today, along those same lines, we’re presenting a collection of design agency websites. We want to show you how some of the talented design studios out there are presenting their work and attracting new clients. Enjoy, and get inspired!

Gisele Muller

nclud

Solid Giant

Continuar leyendo «45 Inspiring Design Agency Websites»

Post-Install Plugins to Enhance & Protect WordPress

WordPress is a fantastic, easy to install application that’s packed full of useful features. It’s all ready to rock straight out of the box, but there’s a few easy customisations you can make with a cocktail of plugins that will enhance the functionality as well as offer crucial protection. This is my collection of post-install plugins that I immediately add to every WordPress install I work on – There’s no fancy gallery plugins here, just back-to-basics additions to improve speed, SEO and security.

Continuar leyendo «Post-Install Plugins to Enhance & Protect WordPress»

Paradox of Marketing & Innovation

One of the take-aways from the 2nd Annual Open Innovation (OI) Summit was the criticality of communication (see previous post) for success. Let’s think, who ‘owns’ internal corporate communications? Frequently, internal communications falls in the gap between areas of responsiblities, people are not well trained on how to communicate and it becomes ad hoc. Yet, we hear, and know, that communication is key. Ok, let’s add innovation to the equation.

For many companies creating a culture of innovation means getting some people who are passionate about some ‘thing’ together and letting them go for it. There probably isn’t a reward or recognition system, they may not even be freed up from their ‘day-job’ – they do it because they want to, have a passion to. Even when successful, the group’s work will probably be unknown in most of the business, which impedes replicating that passion/excitement/success throughout the company.

One of the take-aways from the 2^nd Annual Open Innovation (OI) Summit was the criticality of communication (see previous post) for success. Let’s think, who ‘owns’ internal corporate communications? Frequently, internal communications falls in the gap between areas of responsiblities, people are not well trained on how to communicate and it becomes ad hoc. Yet, we hear, and know, that communication is key. Ok, let’s add innovation to the equation.

La marca Blockbuster está al borde de la extinción

La conocida marca Blockbuster, un ícono de la cultura popular de la década pasada en Estados Unidos, pero también en España y Latinoamérica, se bate en retirada ante el arrollador avance de nuevas formas de consumo de ocio determinadas por las nuevas plataformas como el iPhone o el iPad.

Out of topic.
Opinión.
[«Tuve la oportunidad de trabajar como proveedor para BB Argentina, y me cabe destacar una profunda falta de innovación, adaptación y por sobre todas las cosas re inventarse o replantear su modelo de negocio. Digo esto, visto la negación para aceptar una nueva era y modo de hacer negocios, comunicarse con sus consumidores y utilizar las nuevas tecnologías». Out of topic. Opinión por Gabriel Catalano]

La conocida marca Blockbuster, un ícono de la cultura popular de la década pasada en Estados Unidos, pero también en España y Latinoamérica, se bate en retirada ante el arrollador avance de nuevas formas de consumo de ocio determinadas por las nuevas plataformas como el iPhone o el iPad. Continuar leyendo «La marca Blockbuster está al borde de la extinción»

Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

I’ve been playing tennis for nearly five decades. I love the game and I hit the ball well, but I’m far from the player I wish I were.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past couple of weeks, because I’ve taken the opportunity, for the first time in many years, to play tennis nearly every day. My game has gotten progressively stronger. I’ve had a number of rapturous moments during which I’ve played like the player I long to be.

And almost certainly could be, even though I’m 58 years old. Until recently, I never believed that was possible. For most of my adult life, I’ve accepted the incredibly durable myth that some people are born with special talents and gifts, and that the potential to truly excel in any given pursuit is largely determined by our genetic inheritance.

During the past year, I’ve read no fewer than five books — and a raft of scientific research — which powerfully challenge that assumption (see below for a list). I’ve also written one, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, which lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

by Tony Schwart

I’ve been playing tennis for nearly five decades. I love the game and I hit the ball well, but I’m far from the player I wish I were.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot the past couple of weeks, because I’ve taken the opportunity, for the first time in many years, to play tennis nearly every day. My game has gotten progressively stronger. I’ve had a number of rapturous moments during which I’ve played like the player I long to be.

During the past year, I’ve read no fewer than five books — and a raft of scientific research — which powerfully challenge that assumption (see below for a list). I’ve also written one, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, which lays out a guide, grounded in the science of high performance, to systematically building your capacity physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Continuar leyendo «Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything»