Review of LittleSnapper (as a designer)

By Dave Roach on April 27, 2009 at 6:00 am in Design, Mac, Reviews

Recently I purchased LittleSnapper through Macheist, a super amazing bundle of mac applications (plus the proceeds go to charity). Sorry PC users, this application is for Macs only =( Anyways, LittleSnapper basically takes screenshots of entire webpages…no matter how tall the page is and puts it in a library of screenshots:

LittleSnapper Gallery

This is very handy for many applications. If you have a need to display a screenshot an entire webpage for a portfolio or gallery, LittleSnapper makes this easy. Furthermore, if you are a designer, you can bookmark screenshots of a tutorial and go back to it later, and even make a colleciton of tutorials to view whenever you need them.

Another cool feature about LittleSnapper is that it allows you to snap specific elements within a site. This makes things much more accurate than trying to make a screenshot yourself:

Element screenshot

Screenshots can be taken straight from your browser  and are automatically imported into LittleSnapper, or you can use LittleSnapper’s built in browser, which is especially handy when taking images of specific elements.

What makes LittleSnapper so cool though is what you can do with your screenshots after they have been taken. You can easily annotate your screenshots and upload them to share with others! Check out my website dnroach.com in edit mode:

Annotating

As a designer, LittleSnapper is a handy little tool that I have used daily since I got it. It makes things much easier and streamlined on my part, and it’s a simple application that doesn’t get in the way either. Check out http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/ to read about more features and check it out for yourself.

LittleSnapper is on Twitter!

99 reasons to buy a $99/month website from T&S

By Emily Spirek on April 23, 2009 at 12:17 pm in General

Here at T&S, we’re in the process of launching our new, low-cost websites that run just $99/month. You can read all the details here.

We came up with 99 reasons you should buy this new, affordable website option from T&S, and thought we’d share those reasons with  you.

1. inexpensive
2. easy
3. effective
4. domain name included
5. hosting included
6. unlimited # of pages
7. T&S takes care of initial setup
8. no setup costs
9. T&S fills in initial pages
10. no special software on your computer
11. Easy updates
12. 1 hour training included
13. up to 60 email addresses
14. unlimited email support
15. only 1 year commitment
16. hundreds of designs to choose from
17. no hidden fees
18. T&S speaks english, not techno-babble
19. save money compared to other advertising
20. increase professionalism
21. compete online
22. don’t pay thousands of dollars
23. content management system is expandable
24. customizable with your logo
25. content and template checked for compatibility
26. one central location online
27. more room than a business card
28. more space than the phone book
29. did we mention unlimited pages?
30. establish online presence
31. supplement traditional advertising
32. no technical knowledge needed
33. create a hub for your social network marketing
34. blog is included 35. quick gallery updates
36. upload any file type
37. more room than a magazine ad
38. no more newspaper ads
39. add features without changing monthly cost
40. easily advertise specials
41. provide better customer service
42. it’s your answer to everything
43. be accessible 24/7
44. update site anywhere, anytime
45. replace traditional advertising
46. get customer/client feedback
47. look better than competition
48. widen customer base
49. compete internationally
50. expand your business
51. save money
52. give favorable impression
53. generate leads
54. more room than a brochure
55. get customers’ business
56. strengthen brand identification
57. simplify your marketing
58. make info available about services
59.  no more phone book ads
60. yearly payments available
61. appeal to target market online
62. user friendly
63. very low risk
64. quick setup
65. make your small business look better
66. receive setup assistance
67. blogs increase traffic
68. blogging helps you learn
69.  advertise your business
70. it will help grow your business
71. receive flexible service
72. communicate better with clients
73. no html knowledge needed
74. ecommerce capabilities
75. control your updates
76. keeps prices competitive
77. establish customer trust
78. if you don’t exist in search engines, you don’t exist
79. establish word-of-mouth
80. try unique marketing ideas risk-free
81. easy to fix snafus
82. use an award-winning content management system
83. no print costs
84. no color matching with print items
85. update content quickly
86. expand your target market
87. templates are professionally designed
88. no more mail-outs
89. increase your credibility
90.  more room than a flyer
91.  make product info available
92. inexpensive redesigns
93. easy to add new pages
94. your customers expect you to have one
95. professional installation & setup
96. it’s green
97. you can’t afford not to
98. allows for easy payment
99. if you don’t exist online, you don’t exist

Thanks for reading, and contact us if you would like to meet to see if our $99 per month website would work for you.

Pikchur: Good for uploading pictures to social networks, or good for nothing?

By Tim Priebe on April 14, 2009 at 8:54 pm in Reviews, Social Networking

Piktchur homepageHere at T&S, we love tools that let us update multiple social networking and social media websites in one fell swoop. We’re big fans of ping.fm, a website that updates your statuses across multiple sites. So when we heard about Pikchur, a website that would allow you to update multiple websites with your pictures at once, we were eager to try it out. I was the willing volunteer.

Pikchur currently supports Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku, Facebook, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Plurk, Brightkite, Totspot Rejaw, Koornk and Flickr. I was immediately disappointed that it didn’t have MySpace in the list. I’m not a huge MySpace fan, but I try to keep my pictures there as up to date as my Facebook page.

I went ahead and signed up for Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and Flickr, and started uploading pictures. The first major drawback I found was that I could only upload one image file at a time. What a pain! I had 15 pictures to upload, and if I was a more casual social networking user, I probably would have bailed at that point.

pikchur_logoThe upload process did let me put in the location, although it turns out it didn’t share that information with the other websites. By default, Pikchur stores your pictures themselves, with a gallery and pages you can view them on. So here’s how it interacted with each of the social networks:

Twitter

Tim's Twitter homepage after using PikchurPikchur posted a tweet for every single picture I uploaded, with a link back to Pikchur’s website to view. A batch upload option with just one tweet would have been nice here. I’m sure this was annoying for those following me on Twitter.

Facebook

Here, Pikchur created its own Pikchur album. I did not put a description in when I uploaded the pictures, so Pikchur posted some annoying message for other people to visit Pikchur and use them. I had to go in, delete all the descriptions for each picture, then rename the album.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed got the same treatment Twitter did, with a status update with a link for every single picture. Annoying.

Flickr

picture-3Flickr had the same results as Facebook, down to the annoying “Send pics 2 Flickr from your mobile device, and view full size @  pikchur.com/wp7″ for the description. I had to delete the descriptions and put the pictures in a set.

So there’s two gripes I have with Pikchur right now. First, they need to not automatically put their plug in where my description goes. Second, and more importantly, they need to allow for multiple files to be uploaded at once. This would create a set on Pikchur, Facebook, Flickr and similar sites. On FriendFeed, Twitter and other related sites, it would result in only one link sent out, not one per picture.

Until they at least add multi-file upload support, I won’t be using Pikchur any more.

Looking for 40/hr week programmer student worker during summer

By Tim Priebe on April 13, 2009 at 5:11 pm in General

We’re looking to hire on a full-time programmer student worker for this summer, with the possibility of continuing on into the school year. We are looking for someone who learns quickly. Experience in the following is a plus, but IS NOT absolutely necessary:

  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • XHTML / CSS
  • Javascript (jQuery experience would be nice)
  • General IT support
  • Social Networking
  • Wordpress
  • Adobe suite (Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc.)

Again, experience in those areas is not necessary, but would be a plus. We’re looking for someone to start immediately after the semester ends, the very next week.

Email us your resume, any code samples, and URL to any online work you’ve done. Also indicate the date you would be available to begin, and when your summer break ends. If you look like you might be a good fit, we will call or email you to schedule an interview.

  • Location: Edmond, Oklahoma
  • Compensation: $10/hr
  • This is an internship job

Our new website design has launched!

By Tim Priebe on April 4, 2009 at 3:21 pm in Business Identity, Design

Well, in the very, very early hours of this morning, we launched our new website’s design. It had been a traditional “shoemaker’s children” type problem, where our quality of websites and design in generally has continuously improved over the past year, but our site stayed the same because we were busy work on other people’s websites and print design.

After putting it off for much too long, we all pitched in and worked really hard these last couple of weeks to get our site done. And it’s really paid off.

Take a look above at our old site on the right compared to our new site on the left, and you’ll see what I mean about our drastic increase in skill over the last several months. Although the website we designed for ourselves at the beginning of last year was solid, it was no longer reflective of our collective capabilities.

Major kudos goes to Dave, who spent hours and hours working on the site, getting it done  phenomonally fast while still doing an outstanding job. And to Eric, who still plans to redo much of the coding his boss threw together to get the site online quicker. Eric, please don’t cry when you start looking at my code.

Please, take a look around. We would love any feedback on the new design.