Surfboard Art Design Sydney

By scott | Published: March 8, 2010

Its good to know art and design are alive and well offline also.   Apparently surfboards are a great canvas for artwork and great design.

A friend of mine is offering his services painting surfboards. In the image you will see his latest design on a Al Merrick Quad fin Fish board.  Looks amazing.  ?

yhan-surfborad-art

His details are below if anyone has a board they want trned into rideable art!

Yhan Leal

0433 670 394

www.yhanleal.com

www.myspace.com/yhanleal

www.youtube.com/yhanleal

Posted in art, scotty's posts, surfing | Leave a comment

iPad Apple’s New Tablet Mac with Apps and Books

By scott | Published: January 28, 2010

iPad mac with apps and books: Steve Jobs presents Apple’s new tablet

Today apple released its new arrival the iPad mac. There is tons of excitment about this new iPad product.  Having previously worked at apple over a 10 year period pre iPhone i have to say these are some pretty awesome developments. 

Steve Jobs plays the guru of tech but i have to laugh at the irony of his current focus on technology and mass consumerism.  Apple used to be pure and serve the design and education markets.  Now it is just entertainment for the masses, which happens to make heaps of cash.  Maybe he needs to go back to the ashram in india and consult the oracle on what exactly the point of all this is?

Anyway i’m still an apple devotee, yes i have the iphone and macbook pro.  But as a web designer i run windows.  how ironic.  well i have to admit i prefer mac os.  Someday i might even own an iPad. 

SMH were raving about it, they must have printed the press release verbatim.  Guess it saves on writers.

Meet
the iPad, Apple’s new tablet computer, which the company says will
revolutionise all manner of digital publishing and consumption.

Photos | Apple iPad Tablet Launched | Pics | Steve Jobs

Yahoo also had good things to say.

SAN
FRANCISCO – Apple Inc. will sell the newly unveiled tablet-style iPad
starting at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some analysts
were expecting.The iPad, which is larger in size but similar in design
to Apple’s popular iPhone, was billed by CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday as
“so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a
smart phone.”

Apple’s Jobs unveils ‘intimate’ $499 iPad tablet – Yahoo! News

Did anyone see this coming?

It has long been roumoured that apple was headed for a tablet, check out this article on ZDnet.  These guys were on to it.

Over
the last several months, Apple has made moves in the direction of
bridging the mobile computing gap, with plans to develop a device that
fits somewhere in between the iPhone and the MacBook.

Is Apple getting ready for an ‘iPad’ | Tech News on ZDNet

Now even slashgear saw this coming, miles ahead of the game.

It’s
not all Microsoft’s Courier grabbing tablet headlines today; Apple’s
touchscreen tablet is also making waves, with iLounge claiming to have
more insider news on the upcoming device. According to their sources,
there have been three separate prototypes of the device they’re calling
the “iPad�, starting with a 7-inch display which was then junked for a
larger, 10.7-inch capacitive touchscreen running at around 720p
resolution.

Apple iPad tablet to run iPhone OS, 3G & non-3G versions tipped? – SlashGear

For anyone who gets one soon happy iPadding and let me know what you think with a comment below.

Scott

Posted in Tech, apple | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Wordpress Search Engine Optimization Titles Slugs and Conversions

By scott | Published: August 26, 2009

You have a wordpress site and want it to rank better in google searches.  Here’s a few tips to get you started.   I will use the example of an architects website.

The way to start is to install all-in-one-SEO-pack for wordpress.  This allows you to edit Page titles and the url address.  Follow this tutorial which will get you started.
seo-tutorial-video-for-all-in-one-seo-pack

The way to name pages is using about 6 words including: category keywords, general keywords, specific keywords.  It is best if it is a meaningful title and every page must have a different title.  Using the architects website example.   Make the topic general to the project something like “commercial architecture project, service station” so the general terms are emphasized.

Now if this works you’ll start to get some visitors for those key terms, then you’ll be asking how do i get the visitors to contact me.  This is also known as conversions of your visitors to inquiries.  Some suggestions to increase the number of contacts
- Display phone number at the bottom of the sidebar on every page.
- Display a button that stands out on every page “get a quote” or “ask us
now” that should link to a contact form. I do think contact forms are
preferred as a user does not have to open their email client.
- A call to action of any type, this is a good example for an architect contact form it provides an obvious contact method and result.
- Say you had 300 visitors in the month so 3 contacts would be average, 1 in
100 visitors. but there must be a reason for them to make the contact.

Following these tips should help increase traffic and inquires and make more business.

Posted in SEO, Wordpress, how to, marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to share files and music on your mac os x network.

By scott | Published: August 11, 2009

If you have a few macs and want to make the most of networking them to share files and media, here are a few suggestions to get you started.

Firstly you’ll need to have a network setup.  if not you can get some help from apple support on Creating a small Ethernet network. Creating a small Ethernet network

Airport network is also an option but speed is compromised, if you must do netowrking via airport you can get the lowdown at apple docs – AirPort Base Station and Network Setup GuideAirPort Base Station and Network Setup Guide (Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier)

To get started sharing files you will need to Select folders to share, configure user groups and accounts so they can access the files, and choose a network type for your connection.  To get the full run down get over to apple support article Mac 101: File sharing Mac 101: File sharing

Now you want to share your itunes library from one central drive and backup to your time machine?  why not!  To start with you’ll need a fast network connection to stream your music across and ideally a ‘networked media server’.   To get the full run down on how to have your music on a networked drive accessible to all computers on the network, head over to Networked iTunes – macosx.com

If you simply want to Share iTunes Music on an existing Network With Mac OS X get the ehow here How to Share iTunes Music on a Network With Mac OS X | eHow.com

Happy mac netowrking
Scott

Posted in scotty's posts | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Q and A with Creative Web Design Sydney

By scott | Published: August 10, 2009

I recently applied for a local small business competition, this is a Q and A that i sent about my business Creative Web Design Sydney.

Ed: What is your business? (please describe in 100 words or less)

Scott: Empowering Business online. Providing business the tools to control their internet marketing with easy to use websites and marketing solutions.

Ed: What is your product/service? (please describe in 100 words or less)

Scott: Providing a complete internet marketing solution for business, including all services from building a website through to ranking it at the top of google searches and building loyalty with email marketing.

Ed: What is your market?

Scott: Small to Medium business with budgets for internet marketing.

Ed: What inspired you to start your business? (please describe in 100 words or less)

Scott: Talking to business owners about their websites. I was shocked by the poor service and lack of benefit that their websites were providing. To solve that problem i started the business to provide quality service with complete internet marketing to give a tangible benefit to the customer.

Small Business Marketing Makeover Sydney Event

Creative Web Design Sydney

Posted in web design | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

9 Steps to Search Engine Optimization Success

By scott | Published: June 19, 2009

Building your site for Search Engine Optimization

You can also use this list to modify your existing site.

1) Ensure you have Validated HTML
2) Use a CSS / DIV Layout for accessibility, no tables.
3) meta and title tags to be different for each page
4) SEO keywords, keywords to be included in all possible locations

  • a) research your keywords
  • b) page names to be structured like keywords-page-name.html , this creates Search Engine Friendly URL’s.
  • c) image alt tags to include keywords related to the page
  • d) html sitemap to be included, also include an xml sitemap for search engines
  • e) <title> tag to include keywords “page name | page keywords | site keyword”

5)  rel=”nofollow” all external site links.  this saves leaking pagerank to sites that you do not want to give it to.

Do this linkbuilding once your site is SEO ready

Linkbuilding requirements:
6) dofollow backlinks, only these provide keywords for search rankings and help your rankings.
7 themed links using the keywords
8 ) links from sites in a similar topic
9) pages with pagerank are preferred

You can get these links from any source

- forum posting
- blog comments
- social bookmarking
- directories
- profile pages
- blog pages
- article submissions

Good luck with your SEO, you should find better exposure for your site once applying these methods.

Tags: , , , , ,

Posted in SEO | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility Test Guide

By scott | Published: April 20, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 has arrived… Is your site ready?

Here are some useful links to check your sites compatibility with IE8.

The short answer is to run your site in IE8 compatibility mode described in the link below.

A quick fix is to add a meta tag on any page which you want to render as version 7 or below.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

Internet Explorer 8 and backward compatibility : CodeDiesel

Upgrading your site to run in IE8 Standards Mode is the best option in the long run, but in the interim you can quickly fix these types of issues by running your site in Compatibility Mode. This is described in Jefferson’s post on the EmulateIE7 meta tag.

IEBlog : Site Compatibility and IE8

And one thing that hasn’t changed much over the past several months is the fact that many Web sites still aren’t compatible with IE 8.   The Compatibility View list includes some major sites Apple.com, CNN.com, eBay, Facebook, Google.com, NYTimes.com, even Microsoft.com (!)

IE 8 and Javascript, below is a good summary of javascript changes in IE 8 and how to accomodate them.   Again you can use compatibility mode.

Now, if you are rendering in IE5/IE7 mode, then Nothing changes except that there will be a few methods added that shouldn’t interfere with your page.  However, if like the majority, you are running with a doctype set, and thus in IE8 Standards mode, the following changes have occurred.

What are the most likely causes of Javascript errors in IE8? – Stack Overflow

The IE8 Developer Tools now offer an integrated JScript debugger that provides the basic set of debugging features.  This should simplify the process of testing your Javascript.

Microsoft’s IE 8 Compatibility List: Is it working? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

If best practices are followed in development, the default appearance and behavior of a Web site viewed in Internet Explorer 8 should be the same as in Internet Explorer 7. By default, however, Internet Explorer 8 uses a more compliant Standards mode that supports the latest feature set in the CSS 2.1 specification.

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility Test Guide

Microsoft IE Readiness toolkit.

“One of our top goals with Internet Explorer 8 has been to improve developer productivity.”

Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

Happy Browsing

Tags: internetexplorer 8, ie8 compatibility, ie8 readiness, cross browser compatibility, javascript compatibility

Posted in Programming, Tech, html, web design | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Social networking analysis tools and applications

By scott | Published: April 15, 2009

It is an interesting challenge to map social networks.  It is used in crime fighting, to track terror cells, also advertising track social media trends for opportunities to advertise.  Personally it could also be interesting to know how you are linked.  I have researched some open source tools and these are the hottest topics in the area at the moment.  Firstly the wikipedia link on the topic reveals heaps of software available.

Social network analysis software is used to identify, represent, analyze, visualize, or simulate nodes (e.g. agents, organizations, or knowledge) and edges (relationships) from various types of input data (relational and non-relational), including mathematical models of social networks. The output data can be saved in external files. Various input and output file formats exist.


A fascinating application is social network analysys in fighting organized crime as seen in this post.

Social Network Analysis [SNA] is a mathematical method for ‘connecting the dots’. SNA allows us to map and measure complex, and sometimes covert, human groups and organizations.


For those that are interested in developing social networks of their own, have a look at the list below for some great open source social networking tools.

Top 40 Free Downloadable Open Source Social Networking SoftwareVivalogo ResourcesThis is Vivalogo’s list of best free, downloadable, open source social networking software (kinda hard to say all these words :) ).

Happy social networking and i hope these tools make it a productive experience.

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Seo Keyword Research Process And Methodology – A Keyword Research Case Study

By scott | Published: March 20, 2009

This article is a quick example of standard Keyword Research Process and how an SEO company goes about determining and analysing keywords for organic and paid search marketing.

seo-tips-tricks.info

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in SEO | 1 Comment

Content Management System Showdown

By scott | Published: March 18, 2009

This is a great article about the showdown between 3 content management systems.

In an Iron Chef-like match up, a team of developers from Drupal (news, site), Joomla! (news, site) and WordPress (news, site) had 100 hours to build a website based on a specific list of specifications and design.

“It was a battle to the end, with a mix of good humor and serious competition among developers from the open source web content management community.

In an odd conclusion the decision was a draw, as the winner could not be decided by the voting audience.  Personally I’m a fan of Wordpress as the best system.

SXSW Web Content Management System Showdown (Update 2)

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in CMS | Leave a comment
  • Receive our email. 10 Minute SEO Checklist.

  • Get a Complimentary 30min Website & Marketing Review

    Name (required)

    Email (required)

    Phone Number

    Enter the security code
    captcha