Writing, designing, and illustrating, for creators
The longest a twitter username can be is 15 characters. Sure, it’s nice to have a short name, but sometimes you need just a few more characters. For instance, I own the domain christiannotebook.com. I cannot reserve @christiannotebook because that is 17 characters. I work at a company called Tribune Content Agency. When we set …
Extend the max character length for Twitter usernames Read More »
Thinking about creating a blog, but always put it off? Just make it. You’ll be happy you did. For many years I wanted to have a blog that was about publishing and marketing. I would always put it off thinking I’ll start it at some point when I can focus on it. But then one …
Did you have a blog in the past but let it lay dormant? Where you part of the blogging craze in the middle of last decade, but then you turned to social media? I have to admit in the past few years blogged less, because I knew that google changed their ranking to prefer longer …
Why the quickness of social media was the downfall of my blogs Read More »
Thinking of starting a design agency whose sole focus is creating Microsoft Word templates? Yesterday I covered the need for this unique and undervalued service. Today we cover why one should not create an agency with a focus on Microsoft Word templates. 1) Word templates are extremely undervalued Approach a company and say, “we’ll redesign your …
7 Reasons to not start a design agency whose focus is Microsoft Word templates Read More »
There is a market opportunity for a design agency to be focused solely on making branded Microsoft Word templates for companies. Which is not just sticking the logo at the top of the Word file. Branding in a simple Word document can be done with many of the tools in Microsoft Word. Here’s a few …
A business opportunity: designing Word templates for companies Read More »
It can be a scary prospect to some–they don’t want their job automated. But really, if you know how to build a script, why not automate tasks of your job? Get things done faster, move onto other projects. I’ve always wanted more workers to be able to code–to write scripts to make regular tasks go …
Is there an online resource to translate a word into all foreign languages? You could manually look up a word in Google Translate. But don’t you want an online dictionary that can translate in all languages? Good news. Google Sheets has a function for Google Translate! You can set up a sheet with a function …
How to translate one word into all the foreign languages Read More »
Combine a keyboard with an e-ink screen and you have a new writing tool, the Hemingwrite: The Hemingwrite is a minimalist digital typewriter for distraction free writing composition. It combines the simplicity of a typewriter with modern technology like an electronic paper screen and cloud backups to create the best possible writing experience. It is designed …
It’s all about giving your readers what they want. Do you enjoy reading a stranger’s tweets about his/her health? I don’t, really. But I do enjoy reading the health tweets by my close friends and family. So strangers don’t have to read my tweets about chocolate cravings, I have separate those tweets into a dedicated …
1) Blog drafts Ever have a great idea for a blog post? You don’t want to lose that idea. In Evernote you can quickly jot down those ideas. I have 778 unpublished blog drafts. Anything that will be an idea for a post. A photo. A website link. I’ll copy and paste instant messenger conversations into a note. …
MLB’s only official baseball card manufacturer, Topps, is running a super-fun photo competition. Thirty fan-submitted photos will be used for the 2015 baseball card set. Imagine the delight baseball fans will get seeing their own photo appear on a baseball card! To enter just your photo on instagram with the hashtag #toppslive and it’s automatically …
Tag a photo with #toppslive and it becomes immediate property of Topps Read More »
Mashable is reports that “Millennials trust user-generated content 50% more than other media.” Sounds reasonable, right? However, in that article Mashable makes a false claim, “User-generated content (UGC) is media created by your peers.” Whoa. Mashable. Hold it there. Be careful with this report. Mashable is blending together the terms “user-generated content” with content made by your …
Why Mashable is wrong about user-generated content Read More »
How is it that Flickr is now the place for quality photos? Isn’t that Instagram’s realm? Not quite. Here’s what has happened between the two services in the past few years. With the rise of Instagram in 2011, many photographers left Flickr. Instagram became THE photo app for mobile, while Flickr sat undeveloped since Yahoo …
Flickr is for quality photos, Instagram is for bad photos Read More »
Gee, I don’t remember the name of the filter. Heck, I can’t even remember the name of the app that I used. Was it Fotor, Photogene, PhotoStudio, CP Pro, Filterstorm, PS Touch, Camera+, KingCamera, or Film Lab? Imagine if the iOS forced all photo app developers to include the filter information in the metadata of …
Will all sites ultimately become properly optimized for search engines? Web strategist James Ellis writes: While SEO is a critical element in your digital marketing strategy, there will probably come a day some time soon when everyone is properly optimized for search engines. What happens when there’s a level playing field and tricks don’t push …
Optimizing your site for SEO is one half of the search puzzle Read More »
Evernote runs text-recognition on all the images uploaded to their service. This great feature allows you to search through photos taken of notes and printouts. How does Evernote do it? It sounds like a fairy land. I’m using Adobe Acrobat Pro to OCR a batch of 32 PDF files that I scanned on the printer …
Perplexing is that people can read something and not have anything to say. What are the historical and psychology causes? At the dawn of democracy, listening was primarily an active activity. People would debate each other. A statement would be made, the listener would respond. Communication was interpersonal. Peter Kreten states in his first draft …
Why do people not comment on blogs? The psychology and historical reasons Read More »
All content goes through a life cycle. First content is created. Then people discover the content. People read the content. Finally, people share the content. By sharing the content, it becomes recreated like how a DJ recreates music by making it into a mix. The content is then discovered by other people, consumed, and reshared. …
2013 was the year of lists. Will 2014 continue the heavy use of lists? Yes, 2014 will bring more lists. Specifically for the masses, there will be more lists in 2014. However, for the more attuned reader, lists will become less popular. Perhaps instead we will see more interdisciplinary articles. Topics that merge various fields …
Earlier this year when the one-man-powered thisiscolossal.com announced that he was going full-time with his site, I became convinced that for a blogger to make a living off his site is to publish at least two blog posts per day. Christopher Jobson publishes about two to four posts about fantastic art per day on thisiscolossal.com. …