The Daily Dose

LaunchList.net

Making a list? And checking it twice? Why? Launch List does it for you!

If you have ever built a website, you know how pain staking it can be to check and double check all of your content, to be sure it is correct, before you go live. Launch List has a pre-formatted checklist all set to go. All you have to do is visit the site and begin checking off boxes. Launch List, depending on what has and has not been checked, will advise for or against a live launch. Read the rest of this entry »

These days, we are connected 24-7 to our clients and their needs. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, email, instant messaging, office phones or cell phones. More and more each day, technology makes it more difficult to take a minute to yourself and disconnect from work.

I have decided to share how I have recently learned a way to turn the emails off and stop being controlled by the sound of my cell phone alerting me of new emails on my days off. I came across an application called “Away Find”, www.awayfind.com. Essentially, it allows you to turn off your email and receive only messages considered to be an absolute necessity to respond to. Read the rest of this entry »

With thousands of icons available, with endless gradients, colors and reflections, it can be overwhelming as to what will best suit your minimalist design. There are alternatives to all those over-glossed icons, should you require a more simple, elegant design style.

Here are ten noteworthy icon sets which match the minimalist design ethos.

or to view this post from it’s original source, click here: Mashable

1. Iconic

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Original post by www.onlinedesignbureau.com, to read this post at its original location, click here.

Many people are frustrated that they don’t seem to be able to generate any leads from LinkedIn, while it seems to be the perfect vehicle for others. This tutorial will help you in generating business from LinkedIn. The topics we will cover are the following (click on the link if any of these topics interest you in particular):

1. Create your personal profile
2. Create a company profile
3. Promote your profile
4. Find leads on LinkedIn

Step 1 Create your profile

1. Open an Account

Without an account on LinkedIn, you aren’t going to get very far, so join LinkedIn here. Once you’ve confirmed your email address, you’ll be able to fill out all your details, such as experience, previous work, education and contact preferences. Do this, it will help people who want to find someone with your skills.

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All of us as designers, as artists, hit that wall. The wall that blocks us from the lush fields of creativity. Knowing we are all in need of a little inspiration from time to time, we have compiled a set of 8 great photo manipulation examples intended for your inspiration. These photos incorporate excellent artistic qualities, digital manipulation, and a keen eye for photography. Truly great pieces of visual communication and expression. Enjoy.

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Starting a business can be difficult. It seems as though everything is set up for failure and success is a distant sight. From start-up fees, to incorporation fees, property tax, sales tax, and the list goes on, everything seems so expensive. Well, we have found 3 applications that have become essential to our daily routine that come to us at little or no cost. They cover these 3 areas: Invoicing & Receipts, Payment Terminal, & Email Marketing. Let’s get to the meat…

Working Point: Invoice & Account Management

www.workingpoint.com

This particular service is one of the most helpful that we have found as a small business. It provides a professional invoicing and receipt system for you, and your clients. You can see overdue invoices, open invoices and payment history. You can create as many items as you need in your inventory for faster reference when building an invoice. (Smart software suggests items as you type). When complete, you can save the invoice as a PDF file to send from your email account, or send the invoice to your client directly from within Working Point.

And there’s more! You can log expenses, track bills, export reports & handle most requirements your accountant will request when it’s tax time. Somehow, when you tie in a bank account to Working Point, from time to time, it will actually connect activity in your account to payments made inside of your Working Point history. Amazing stuff. 

Some of the features discussed are for premium members only ($10/month) but a free version is available with limitations. We started with the free version to “check it out”, and slowly realized it was worth the money to upgrade.

Bonus: If you have a PayPal account, Working Point will add a “Pay with PayPal” button to your invoices. Your clients can click on the link and be redirected to make a payment using a credit or debit card.

Mail Chimp: Build & Deploy Email Campaigns

www.mailchimp.com

Mail Chimp… what a wonderful tool. While most email marketing and management sites require a monthly fee to access all of their features, Mail Chimp is FREE! Yep, totally free, so long as your email subscriber list is less than 500 and you send less than 3000 emails per month. As a small business, this should be more than sufficient. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who are not signed up for the Dark Rising Grafx E-Newsletter, this month we outlined some techniques for a more relevant social media campaign. These aspects are brief in length but very effective. The focus was on Facebook and Twitter updates. The world is now filled with the “Like” button, and Tweets, most of them useless nonsense when it comes to business marketing. We have noticed that companies really don’t “get it” as far as good posting practices. So to steer you clear of some potential pitfalls, we have devised short list of ways to engage your audience and maintain your company’s integrity. Before we get started, we must mention that we too, are far from perfect and still implementing our own advice. If you have any additional tips that you deem as helpful, or you notice that these few have really helped your campaign, please provide feedback. We love to hear about businesses thriving through social media advertising, especially in tough economic times. So without further ado… Read the rest of this entry »

Many folks believe that they are helping their web designer by purchasing domain names and hosting prior to consulting with them about their site. While some folks may be savvy enough that this holds true, most of the time this is simply not a good idea. Let’s go over two items you need to if you decide to take this route, so as not to delay your website build. Read the rest of this entry »

iPhone user? Download the new “Storm in a Teacup” wallpaper, optimized for iPhone from Dark Rising Grafx. Free to use, free to share. Just click the image to enlarge, and save to your desktop. Open your favorite email client and email it to an account tied to your iPhone. Save the image once opened on your iPhone, and set as your new wallpaper. Oh, and don’t forget to tell a friend or two.

Eight, that’s right, eight. Because Top Ten’s are too cliché.

With thousands upon thousands of apps now in the iTunes App Store, finding suitable apps for your business and productivity needs, can be time consuming and costly. For this reason, we have decided to share our favorite and most used apps that we have come to rely upon over the past year or two. Please note that all descriptive text is fed straight from the developers so any mention of “The Best” is a matter of opinion. However, if it’s on this list, rest assured it’s worth the download. A tip before starting: Many apps have free or “Lite” versions available for the user to test drive. This is a good way to try the app, see if it fits, and spend little to no money. So let’s get started.

Trip Cubby

Trip Cubby is a polished, full featured app; essential for anyone who needs to track mileage for tax deduction or reimbursement.

After many failed attempts over the years at keeping a paper mileage log, we created Trip Cubby to take the time and tedium out of this money saving process. We designed Trip Cubby to be fast, clever, and above all, easy to use. With predictive input, auto-entry, auto-calculation, and quick access to frequent trips, Trip Cubby does the hard work for you. A few quick taps will create useful data ready to search, sort, and generate email reports.

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