April Fools Day - How Did It Come About?

Well it's that time of the year again, April 1st, a day when each of us are given permission to play a joke on one of our friends or co-workers. But how exactly did this day come about? Here's a brief history on April Fools Day.

April Fools Day seems to have no definite starting point, like Christmas or 4th of July. Rather, April Fools Day appears to have had a slow evolution toward modern day. It seems to be the result of the convergence of various cultural beliefs and practices which held a common theme, the emergence from the doldrums of winter. The first of April is recognized as a day of pranks not only in the United States, but also in France, Germany, and Great Britain. In India, the feast of Huli occurs in March. The final day of Huli is March 31, and is traditionally celebrated by acts of mischief. In France, a fool is sometimes called a "poisson d'Avril" (April fish). In Scotland, a fool is called an "April gowk" or "April cuckoo".
Read the rest of this entry »

How to Design a Successful Logo

A Logo can help or hurt Your Business: what about your logo:

When it comes to design a successful logo the key word is “The quality” It is that simple! Trademarks and Logos make up the most international language in the world. An excellent logo design can cross many barriers and provide your organization with a means of delivering to your customers a clear and consistent message.

Every successful company has its own "character" and just as human character, it can also be very complex. Same is true with your company's personality. A successful logo is a means of squeezing a complex reality into a single, simple statement, one that can be controlled, modified, developed and matured over time. Your logo needs to be much more than just a unique mark for your company. It must be a sign of quality, value, and reliability too.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Five Basic Elements of Web Design

The basic elements and principles involved in web design are true for all other types of design. These principles will show you the most effective way to put together the various design elements to come up with a good and effective site. A good web design company emphasizes the fact that web design is not simply about slapping all those HTML tags on the page, but it involves the use of web design principles to build a pleasing and useful web design. Your web design company will need you to make the most aesthetically attractive and effective web design, so make sure you keep these elements in mind: Read the rest of this entry »

Simple SEO For Your Blog

Any serious blogger will tell you the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), there's actually a number of simple things you can do if you want your article to be more search engine friendly .

• If you are using WordPress, download the All in One SEO Pack. This is actually my favorite WordPress plugin and it has helped my blog out tremendously. This neat little plugin allows you to modify your blog and current post's title, description, keywords and title format.

• Check your keyword density, make sure the keyword target is not too repetitive or else the search engine will see this as keyword spamming and they will drop you like a bad habit! To verify the density of your keyword go to www.seochat.com, click on Keyword Density on the left hand side, you'll be prompted to type in your url, then select 1, 2, or 3 keywords depending on your keyword and hit analyze. This will give you a list of keywords found on your page or current post. Under density, a good rule of thumb is to stay between 2.00% - 2.50%. If you are under 2.00% then you need to add more keyword, if you are above 2.50% you will need to decrease your keyword amount.

• Make sure your keyword target appears in the title heading of your post, for example if your keyword you are optimizing for is "web development", then make sure you use the phrase "web development" in your current post title.

• Don't forget your heading tag, use the h2 tag to emphasize your keyword target.

• If possible, link to previous posts within your blog. Bloggers fail to realize that these in house links are just as beneficial as outbound links, don't over do it though, I find that 1 link to a previous post should be enough. The search engines will give you a nice pat on the back for that one!

• Find a free site analyzer online, there are thousands of them on Google. The one I like to use is www.creatingonline.com. Their analyzer tool will actually tell you what you need to do to improve your keyword density, and it will also let you know what your current load time is.

• Lastly, I've been reading up on commenting on blogs that have disabled the "nofollow" function. Now I'm not sure how effective this is but I will sure give it a try to see if it helps out my blog at all.

If you follow these simple steps, your blog post should rank higher than usual within the search engines. If you know any other SEO tips/tricks please share it here.

What Can Mixx Learn From the Digg Revolt?

And the drama over at the Digg community continues... It seems a good majority of "Top Diggers" are very upset with Digg's latest algorithm which now requires a Digg vote of around 200 for a story to make the front page. This comes as a slap in the face for veteran Diggers who have worked so hard in making Digg a powerhouse social media site. And it's not just the algorithm change that upset the power diggers, here's a list of some of the complaints:

Read the rest of this entry »

Create a 3D Logo with Photoshop

Today I will show you how to create a 3d logo using Photoshop, Photoshop does not have 3d rendering capabilities but with a little bit of work and simple steps we should be able to create a 3d logo.

1 - Fire up Photoshop and create a new image, let's size the image to 300x300.

2 - Create a new layer above the background layer, we will put our logo on this new layer.

3 - Go to your custom shape tool and draw any shape, this will be our logo that we'll be working on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Freelance or Full Time Job?

I love doing freelance work, providing that the client is very easy to work with, but for the most part my experience with doing freelance work has been exceptional. What I enjoy the most is not having to meet a deadline on a constant basis, and you are pretty much in control of all the work you do. Being able to work from the comfort of your own home is a definite plus, not to mention the gas money you'll be saving.

But is freelance work better than having a 9-5 job? I've been fortunate enough to have been able to do both for the last 3 years and although I reap the many benefits of doing freelance work, I'd have to say that having a full time job is still the choice for me. Yes a 9-5 at times can be monotonous, but I also enjoy interacting with other people, I enjoy the thought of going to work not knowing what the day has in store for me.

I guess the best part of having a 9-5 job is knowing you'll have work to do tomorrow, as opposed to freelance work, where you'll have 3 projects lined up at the same time and nothing for the next 3 months! I know there are many of you just like me, who are able to balance a full time job and freelance work on your own spare time. What tips might you be able to give to anyone who wants to enjoy the best of both worlds?

Send me your thoughts and I'd like to know which do you prefer.

 Loading ...

iPhone Keeps Crashing

For some reason or another my iPhone seems to crash whenever I'm browsing online or just trying to run some applications. I've done a restore about 6 times already hoping to resolve the issue, I've even downgraded to firmware 1.0.2 and nothing seems to resolve it. I was starting to think that my iPhone might have gotten messed up somehow when I hacked it. It was getting really annoying, I was at the point where I just wanted to sell this one and buy a brand new iPhone. But I didn't want to hand this off to anybody knowing there is something wrong with it, so I devoted some time into investigating what was causing my phone to crash.

Read the rest of this entry »

Clear Your PC Memory The Easy Way!

If you're a designer using a pc platform then you know that most of the image editing software you use eats up your computer's resources. (Stop laughing MAC users) Especially if you have about 6 to 8 different applications running at the same time, depending on your computer's specs, running all these applications at the same time will often cause the pc to lock up or shut down on its own.

So what do you do when you start to notice that your pc is bogging down? Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple button you can click on to clear out your computer's memory? WinXP doesn't have that button but that shouldn't stop us from making our very own clear memory button. This is really simple so let's get to it...

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Monkey Day

So apparently today is Monkey Day, and what exactly does that mean? It's an annual celebration of all things simian, a festival of primates, a chance to scream like a monkey and throw feces at whomever you choose.

How did monkey Day originate?

The true origins of Monkey Day are deeply shrouded in mystery. Some say that the Monkey Day movement began as a tool to further the awareness of simian species and habitats. Others say that Monkey Day began as a scientific backlash to all of the religious holidays permeating the month of December, an evolutionary finger to the creationist holidays. Still others say that the concept for Monkey Day was brought on by the drunken debauchery of several young hooligans with a special affinity for monkeys, spending the first Monkey Day tauting their simian virtues and screaming obscenities at the local pub. Whatever the conception, Monkey Day has evolved beyond any simple beginnings into a greater movement.

Read the rest of this entry »