Blog | T and S Web Design

10 Tips For Managing Twitter As Your Usage Increases

Tim Priebe — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:44:35 +0000

Just came across 10 Tips For Managing Twitter As Your Usage Increases. This article has some great tips, some of which I’ve been doing for awhile now, some of which I recently started doing, and some of which I’m going to start doing.

Here are a few items the article mentions that are quick and easy to do:

1. Use Your Real Name In The Name Field, Not Your Username

9. Stop Your Automated Direct Message Tweets To New Followers

Obviously, the actual blog post goes into more detail, so I would suggest you check it out.

Free Marketing Educational Event in Edmond

Tim Priebe — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:22:10 +0000

For anyone in the Edmond area, there’s a marketing educational event coming up. The Marketing Rxpo is a free educational forum focusing on marketing awareness. Vendor space is available (and free) for marketing related business.

The Rxpo is on Tuesday, July 14, from 10am - 1pm. It will be at 2575 Kelly at Kelley Point Parkway. It’s sponsored by PMS, Jersey Mike’s and The Edmond Sun.

There will be an expert panel including: myself; Steve Patterson, Publisher of the Edmond Sun; Ken Moore, President and CEO of the Edmond Chamber of Commerce; Michael Butler, Gold Star Networking Group; Michael Morrison, Owner of Comtech Design Print & Mail and others. We will answer your questions on how to market in this economy.

This is an educational event. I will not be there to sell websites, but to help educate the public and offer advice.

There will be door prizes, goodie bags, and a free lunch provided by Jersey Mike’s for those who attend the Q&A panel.

Feel free to RSVP on Facebook. We hope to see you there!

Clear out some apps: your dock will appreciate it

Emily Spirek — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:50:57 +0000

People always find it humorous to make fun of me for the excessive amount of applications on my Mac’s dock. Despite the torture, I have always justified each application’s position because I use every one on a daily basis. Finally, Dave (the other designer), came to my rescue and showed me a wonderful tool that clears my dock. All you need to do is add your most used applications to your Finder window, and you’re golden. Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s how it’s done: navigate to your Applications folder in Finder, and drag the desired app next to the “search” field. Hold it there until it gives you the green + symbol and drop it. And you’re done! If you want to open a file in that particular app, just drag the file over the icon and it’ll open right up! No more right-clicking to “open with” a certain application.

If these applications aren’t in use, it frees up your dock and no one will have a reason to make fun of you. And, if you have quite a few windows open, your dock doesn’t squash to a microscopic blob.

Become a fan of T&S on Facebook to win business cards

Tim Priebe — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:25:21 +0000

As you probably know, this past Friday, Facebook launched user names. While we’ve previously told you how to find your public Facebook link, that’s no longer an issue at all. Now you can have a link like http://facebook.com/timjpriebe

While it’s open currently to both individual accounts and to pages, the pages have to have at least 1,000 fans. The T&S Facebook Page is a few short, and we’d love you to become a fan to help us make up the difference.

But let’s make it worth your while. Become a fan AND comment on our new Print Material Portfolio linked to on our page, and you’ll be entered to get free business card design and 1,000 cards. Contest closes June 20, 2009.

Note: Current fans can still be entered by just commenting on the Print Material Portfolio.

New trendy clothing website redesign launched

Tim Priebe — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:28:26 +0000

We’ve just launched a redesign of one of our long-time clients, Nstyle Fashion Xchange. They first signed up way back when I was doing all the design work. We’d tweaked their design a couple of times since then, but this is the first time they’ve had a complete make-over.

Compare this to my original design from back in the day, and you’ll be glad I’m not doing the design work anymore:

Send large files easily

Tim Priebe — Fri, 22 May 2009 15:09:04 +0000

Often we have clients who have problems sending large files or a lot of files in one email, because of limitations their internet provider (not T&S) has put on how big attachments can be. To those clients we recommend YouSendIt. Although we don’t really use it ourselves, we’ve had clients use it and love it.

What you do is actually upload your files to a holding page on their website. Once you’ve done that, they send an email to your recipient, telling them where to go to download the files.

Their website talks about paid accounts, but you can use it for free. Check out their plan comparisons for more information.

YouSendIt

New look for webmail

Tim Priebe — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:26:49 +0000

Thanks to Dave, myself and our new programmer, Amber Hanks, we now have a new look for our webmail. Dave designed it all, I coded the inside pages, and Amber coded the login page.

We’re also looking for suggestions on how our webmail can be improved. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding user interface, features, etc., send them our way!

Review of LittleSnapper (as a designer)

Dave Roach — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:00:09 +0000

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:

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:

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:

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

Emily Spirek — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:17:18 +0000

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?

Tim Priebe — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:54:23 +0000

Here 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.

The 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

Pikchur 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

Flickr 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.