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Blogs ยป Archive for December, 2004
Ah, like sands through the hourglass…
Ah, like sands through the hourglass…
Greetings. As Corrie mentioned in the last post, increasing work demands have meant she’s be forced to take a break from Pixel Perfect — but if we’re lucky we might still see some more great articles from her, time permitting.
Whatever the case, she’s done a wonderful job taking this blog from it’s inception through to today and, like the many commenters earlier, we thank her sincerely for blogging us her view of web design this past 9 months.
Thanks Corrie!
How to kick start an online site with a trial period
This blog talks about paid websites, and how to get them kick started. It is based on my own experience licensing my marketing and sales materials to a funded online publishing firm that specializes in this kind of work. The site in question is listed in my bio — http://www.attractnewclients.com.
We just launched the site, albeit in an early form. The CEO of the company that developed the site has extensive experience launching paid subscription content sites, and I’ve learned a lot from him about how to kick start new sites. Here are some initial lessons:
1. Perfection is your enemy. Launch the site when it is “good enough.” Then get as many people as you can to the site, capture their experience, and improve the site. We already have a slew of significant changes planned within the month, changes that will allow us to charge a lot more for the program.
2. Set up a way to get merciless, ruthless feedback from users. Friends and family tend to say, “Nice job! Looks great! We are very proud of you!” People you don’t know say, “This won’t work. You need to do this right away…” It hurts, but it is essential …
Passing the Torch
Many of you are probably already familiar with the name Alex Walker.” If not, then you should immediately go and subscribe to Design View, SitePoint’s monthly newsletter covering all things design-related. Alex is SitePoint’s in-house designer and the editor of Design View — and on top of all that, he’s also taking my place as the Pixel Perfect Blogger! I am excited to see Alex take this blog to the next level, and thank all of you faithful readers for your time, comments, and encouragement. I hope you’ve learned a little bit more about Photoshop, Illustrator, and design than you did before reading this blog.
Best wishes to all of you in this holiday season! And please give a big warm Pixel Perfect welcome to Alex!
A collection of business New Year’s resolutions for you
Okay, let’s list as many New Year’s resolutions — only about growing you business — as possible for 2005. What is one thing you promise to do next year to grow your business?
Examples:
- Increase your network of referral sources
- Sell more to existing clients
- Re-do your marketing message
- Get a true edge over the competition
- Upgrade your web site
- Mail to prospective clients
- Focus on a target market that is specific
- Write some articles
- Issue some press releases
- Hire a salesperson
- Develop new capabilities
Okay, now you…..What’s your business resolution for 2005? I want to see dozens of unique resolutions….
Ctrl-clicking Layers in Photoshop
Kevin asked for more details about “Ctrl-clicking” layers in Photoshop, so here’s a quickie.
Ctrl-clicking (Command-click for Mac users) a layer allows you to create a selection based on the pixels in that layer. Here’s an example of a multi-layered Photoshop file:
When you ctrl-click Layer 3 (the arrow layer) in the Layer Palette, you create a selection (shown by the dotted lines) based on what the layer contains:
So likewise, ctrl-clicking Layer 2 in the Layer Palette creates a heart-shaped selection:
And similar to many other “selection” functions, if you Shift-Ctrl-Click more than one layer in the Layer Palette, the selections will be added together. Shift-Ctrl-Clicking the arrow layer creates selections of both the heart and arrow shapes:
Creating selections in this way preserves transparency. In this example, I have a layer with a shape created with the airbrush tool, where the outer edges are transparent. I ctrl-click that layer to create a selection:
I create a new layer (and turn off the original layer for demo purposes) with the selection still available:
I select the paint bucket tool and a different color, and click in the selection. The transparency of the edges is …
Automated Blog Comment Spam?
Via Simon - MT Plus Comment Spam Equals Dead Site. The subject of blog comment spam bothers me, not so much as a problem in itself but because there’s alot of people talking about it (and suffering from it) while, at the same time, little real technical analysis.
Have to say I don’t have first hand experience of dealing with blog comment spam (and Sitepoint administer these blogs) so perhaps I’m the wrong person to make suggestions, but going to do so anyway, from the standpoint of someone who knows the technologies involved. Shoot me if I’m wrong - preferably with technical reasons.
First have yet to fully answer for myself whether the problem is primarily human beings, manually posting spam, or automated processes (scripts)? I assume the answer is both but the bigger problem is the latter, given the volumes being generated in some places, to the point of denial of service against Movable Type.
In the former case; armies of sad gnomes paid to post links for pagerank, the only decent technical solution would seem to be “blacklisting” - maintaining lists of patterns (urls / words) which should be blocked from posts.
From a quick scan of what people are …
Momentum for Firefox
Not that it did not have any momentum - but Firefox has the potential to gain another 80,000 users even as it surpasses 10 million downloads.
Penn State University has issued an advisory to students and staff urging them to discontinue use of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and propose the adoption of alternate browsers, including Firefox, Safari, Mozilla and Opera.
The apparent tech policy change was driven largely by continuing security issues revolving around Internet Explorer.
Your Money or Your Life?
Last blog talked about making a great living. This blog gets into your relationship with work and money, and recommends two books.
The first is Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. This is a classic that is great for people who never seem to be satisfied with what they have, and yet keep working and working for more of the same. It challenges you to ask when you have reached ENOUGH — and to develop a financial plan that makes you truly independent.
The book is great because, unlike the plethora of books out there about how to get rich by increasing income, this one focuses on getting out of debt and reducing spending. It also shows you the true costs of working so hard.
Now, if you love what you do, you may find your money vs. your life to be a false dichotomy. Still, this book is worth a read, especially the first few chapters.
Second, consider getting Money and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman. This book takes money and uses it as a vehicle for you to discover your core values. Money is loaded with meaning, and yet few of us take the …
Holy Cow! My pipline is full already for 2005. How about you?
Have you started looking at your prospects for 2005?
I’m going to share something with you that’s never been the case for me before and is amazing to me:
1. My pipeline is full for 2005, even if I turn off ALL marketing right now.
2. (And this blows me away) I have the potential to make 7 figures as a standalone consultant in 2005. Not 6 figures, but 7!
All of this has come about for a couple of reasons:
1. I’ve become skilled at creating value propositions that lead to extreme compensation. Even if I do the same tasks that bring others $20 per hour, I know how to position those same tasks to get $500 per hour. Hopefully you’ve learned some of those skills by reading this blog and my articles.
2. I’ve started to focus on companies that can structure deals with significant upside, especially public companies willing to part with guarantees of options/equity. I haven’t written much about this yet, and probably should.
3. I’ve also focused on a very few core referrals sources that bring me significant work, and understand my value and ways to structure highly profitable compensation. Instead of spreading myself thin, I’ve learned how to identify key referrers …
Auto complete comes of age
Google Suggest, the latest bag of tricks from Google Labs, is a perfect example of how modern web applications are breaking out of the mold and becoming more interactive. It uses XMLHttpRequest to run queries against Google as yout type, proving an auto-complete box with the most likely results. As you might expect from Google, it’s slick, intuitive and fits right in to their bare-bones interface.
The JavaScript that powers the feature is pretty well obfuscated, so if you want to see how it works your best bet is to install the Firefox/Mozilla Live HTTP Headers extension, set it up as a sidebar and watch what happens when you use the site. Basically, for every character you type it retrieves a page like this and evals the resulting string of JavaScript. It’s the same kind of technique they use for Gmail.
XMLHttpRequest is a technology with amazing potential, and this is just the tip of the iceburg. The web’s about to get a whole lot richer.
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