Tag Archives: design

Reptiles Playing Smartphone Games

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Many of the tablet and smart phone games have moves beyond the original solitaire. With this progression of creativity, customers have demanded better and better quality in their graphics and design and programmers have done well to keep up.

Here is an hilarious (and my wife would say, cruel) video of a lizard playing a game called Ant smasher. Obviously, it believes the ants are real and is looking for a nice little treat, but it is interesting that the graphics are so real that the lizard believes they are real!

[via Churchm.ag]

jeremy dance

New Shirt Design

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This is the first shirt design we have for the New Year. The design came from the students mocking me and letting me know that I tend to randomly dance all the time and they had come up with the slogan on the shirt. The design uses the font Agent Orange and a silhouette of my head and glasses that I quickly and crudely traced in Photoshop. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Why I Hate the New Google Reader Design

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

Google has been doing a lot of little changes to their already existing products with several others on the way. Google Reader is the top RSS reader (Really Simple Syndication) that collects the latest updated posts from blogs, photo galleries, and other types of websites. Traditional RSS readers make web browsing more effective. Instead of visiting your thirty favorite news websites and blogs, this web application collects the content of those websites and puts them in one place for your viewing pleasure. But Google Reader is not a traditional RSS reader.

Why I Love It
The redesign is a complete overhaul for the RSS feeder yet has the same look as the Google+ feel. Google is wanting to create one brand between all of their various projects. Look at Google Calendar, Gmail, and Google+ and notice that after six months of use, we will distinguish Google as lots of whitespace, smooth colors, and clean designs. Building a brand involves similarity between all the parts of a product, something that Google is finally fixing.

Another big change to the design is the replacement of the ‘Like’ link of an article with the now famous Google +1 button. Both the mobile and desktop browser versions have integrated it into the design. This means that Google Reader can be better utilized in the rapidly developing social network. (Something Facebook does not have!) Google Reader did have the ability to share via Google Buzz (which is now gone), we hopefully this will be a bit more successful. Is this yet another reason that Google+ will win the social network race in the long run?

Making A Custom Facebook Landing Page – Part 2

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

In Making A Custom Facebook Landing Page – Part 1, we looked at the changes Facebook has made to their Developer program, some quick and easy, yet not as flexible solutions for a custom Facebook page, and that we will be utilizing Facebook Apps to create our page.

Today, we will be looking at setting up that Facebook Apps process, including hosting our app on a SSL secure page and installing it on our Facebook Fan page.

Creating Your Facebook App

In the first part of this series, I asked you guys to come up with a strategy of what you want your Fan page to do and consequently what this customized landing page would do. For the purposes of being consistent, the name of this subpage and app will be called Welcome. At the same time, before we create our app, we need to get in and be apart of the Facebook Developers group. This is where we will come to tweak, edit and add new apps in the future. Go to the Apps tab > Click “+ Create New App”.

The App Display Name should be “78P Welcome” and the App Namespace should be a unique name. Think of the namespace as a username for this specific app. We put sep-welcome so you will need to put something else. After a security measure, you will be taken to the basics. Add your company’s logo to the icon, select the category your company would be under, and change the name if need be. Notice the left hand sidebar navigation. The section Settings has three subsections: Basic, Auth Dialog, and Advanced. This is where we will focus our attention.

Improving The WordPress’ Digg Digg Plugin Design

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

One of the top WordPress plugins available right now is the Digg Digg plugin. With its customizable social media integration into your website and the flexible positioning, it is becoming one of the most used plugins. But the best aspect that makes it worth getting immediately is the option to allow it to float on the right or left side of your website. This allows the social media buttons to always be present to your viewers and has the potential to significantly improve traffic to your site.

Yet, even with its great compatibility and marketing design, the look of the widget is only average. Fortunately, they encourage users to stylize the widget so that it is seamless with your web design. We will show you one great way to incorporate a CSS3 design technique to better integrate the Digg Digg plugin into your website.

To access the plugin’s editable CSS code, login to your website, click on the ‘Digg Digg’ button in the administration menu and select ‘Floating Display’. Assuming that this display is enabled, you have configured where this menu would be displayed, and the position of it in relationship to your content on the page, we can move down to ’5.1 Initial Position’. In the textbox, add the following code within #dd_ajax_float { }.

Websites Tribute To Steve Jobs

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

With the sorrowful announcement of the death of Steve Jobs, many are beginning to mourn his loss. A man that believed in a company, pushed for innovation, and desired nothing less than excellence, the technology world will never be the same. In this time of sadness, several websites have dedicated their website as a tribute to the life of Steve, including his company Apple and their rival Google. Here are some screenshots.

How To Utilize The Facebook Timeline Cover

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We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

The new Facebook design is here and the profile view has been completely overhauled from the old layout. One of its exciting new features is the cover photo. The cover photo gives you a lovely big space at the top of your page for an image of your choosing while still displaying your profile photo at the bottom left-hand of the cover photo. Facebook allows you to use any image from your photo gallery but you can also upload your own. Simply hover your mouse over the image and in the bottom right-hand corner and select the “Change Cover” drop down box.

You can customize it for an endless number of reasons to fit whatever purpose you want it to do. Before you simply put any photo up on your cover, make sure that you know what is your social media strategy. With this design overhaul, your social media strategy may have to change, but whatever your strategy is, make sure that photo fits. Here are three types of photos to use for your cover photo and how you can best use it for businesses, ministries, and individuals.

Businesses


Businesses see social media as one of several necessary marketing avenues to take advantage of and the changes Facebook has made will only increase corporate use on their network. Cover photos are the perfect way to share new products, reinforce company branding, offer special social media deals, or feature your best product. The possibilities are truly amazing here and social media will become more of a marketing tool than ever before.

Services and products like movies or clothing that has a dedicated visual element, the focus will need to be on the product. For someone like Amazon or Ikea, they may want to focus more on the savings, branding, or special deals. Regardless what happens, companies can use this really well and need to invest some time and money into marketing techniques.

How A Good Web Design Can Improve Your Traffic 300%

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Since the Internet explosion, the drive of website owners has been to increase traffic to their website. For some, more traffic means more money because of advertisement or marketing of certain products. For others, it means that your website is popular and thus validates your hard work. No matter the situation, traffic has been the most-sought after goal. The more traffic your website has, the easier it will be to make money, spread your ideas, or connect with other people.

There are countless ways to increase viewership, including RSS feeds, market on social media, or hold contests with prizes to draw in new viewers. All of those ideas require constant work, but so many people could increase their viewership 300% just by improving their web design. While a great web design will increase your traffic significantly, the opposite is true as well, a poor website will decrease your traffic. This is not a project for you to find the cheapest solution or skimp on costs. Find a web designer that has proven themselves and negotiate a fair cost. If this project is worth pursuing, it is worth pursuing correctly.

While a great web design will increase your traffic significantly, the opposite is true as well, a poor website will decrease your traffic.

Look at our website statistics pictured above. A week and half ago, we changed the website structure because our vision for the site had gone a new direction. In that time, our daily viewership has increased more than 300%. Nothing else has changed, we market the same amount, our posts are the same length, and the content has not varied (excluding the baby announcement, but that was not factored into the statistics).

So what can you do to improve your web design and thus increase your web traffic? Here is a list of a few things:

  • Rethink the purpose of the site and feature that aspect on your homepage.
  • Pick a more vibrant set of colors that work better for your product or site.
  • Make sure the focus is on your content and not advertisements or lesser parts of the site.
  • Make sure your web design works in all popular browsers and platforms
  • Write good content
  • Quit being cheap and higher a web designer to improve the flow
  • Use a heatmap application to know where your visitors are going.
  • Have better site navigation that links to other parts of your site.
  • Make sure your graphic sizes are low for quicker load times
  • Use whitespace well
  • Do not ignore the power of “above-the-fold”

There is no “magical” strategy to get you millions of views a day short of lots of money in investments or the perfect marketing platform (again, more money). But if you address the basics of your web design, you can optimize your traffic flow and hopefully earn a few extra bucks.