Life
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For sending out great looking newsletters and keeping track of all your stats, nothing beats MailChimp. It’s simple, flexible, works together with a LOT of other systems and is just plain fun too. Even their tech support is a joy to contact – they sign off with an eep-eep, in keeping with the monkey branding!

MailChimp have now redesigned their mobile apps, available for Android and iPhone. It’s cleaner, leaner and meaner, plus you get more reports, eCommerce360 stats, and you can manage multiple MailChimp accounts. If you’re already kind of addicted to checking your MailChimp campaign stats, and you found yourself sneaking way too many peeks at your email marketing reports during your holiday time with family, you do not want this app – it will only make your addiction worse! But who doesn’t need more stats?!

Get the Android app or the iPhone app directly from iTunes. More details are available on the MailChimp blog.

Eep eep!

As of December 1, 2011, Brandstack, the logo farm that sold clipart, is closing it’s virtual doors for good.

On their website, CEO Wes Wilson says it was because of credit card fraud – “it’s ripple effects have caused serious waves.”

KO in the Third Round.

Brandstack was only in business for three years, and to see an entrepreneur’s dream die is sad. But what is sadder is that there are designers caught in the middle of this who will not be paid for their work. I truly hope that this is the first time the creatives (the ones actually doing the work in this venture) got ripped off, as it’s the first time that always spurs one on to hone business skills and do better next time. Everyone gets ripped off at some point, but when it’s your business it’s like having wages taken out of your pocket. It devalues what you do.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Web design is a young industry. But like most things young, it’s growing rapidly. With each new full version of HTML (the language used for building websites) come more and more features and interactivity. The latest version, HTML 5, now offers animation, video and a host of features that makes a web designers job easier and pages load faster. » Read the rest of this entry «

In part 1 I covered why you should have a podcast and tried to get you to think about what you would say in your podcast. It might be a regular ramble, interviews, tutorials or a diary entry from your daily life. Whatever you decide to do with your podcast, keep it relatively short, on topic and alive. Imagine you are on the radio – would you tune out and change the channel, or is the material interesting enough to hold your attention? » Read the rest of this entry «

A regular column by author, Simon Rose.

The English language can be very odd when you take a look at it. I mean, consider a word like ‘thought’, which doesn’t look like it should be pronounced the way it is. The spelling is similar to the word ‘through’ although even that word sounds the same as ‘threw’, which has a completely different meaning. No wonder people from other countries have trouble understanding or learning English or that we see images of those badly translated signs from around the world. Nevertheless, that’s no excuse for what sometimes seems like pure laziness in the use of the language by English speakers that we witness so often today in the business world and elsewhere. » Read the rest of this entry «

Great music, great friends and great times!

Since 1972, the home of folk music and the favourite venue of artists from all over the world between September and April has been Calgary Folk Club.

Now, the Calgary Folk Club has a new website featuring SiteCM content management by ideaLEVER. Take a peek and drop them a line, say hi!

If you want to give your brand some personality and broadcast your expertise to a busy audience, recording your own podcast is an often overlooked and easy-to-do medium.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Used with permission: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Allan_warren

When I took up the violin at the age of 12 I started listening to other violinists. There were two that stood out at the time – Yehudi Menuhin and Stephane Grappelli. Menuhin was master of the classical realm, while Grappelli had no match in his world of jazz. But between the two, is was Grappelli’s singing tone, lyrical phrasing and unbridled creativity that caught my ear. » Read the rest of this entry «

Some things stay the same and never change. Good manners, what people really want, red wine with steak and how much the Rolling Stones rock. But some things change no matter how many books are written on the subject.

For example, sales.  » Read the rest of this entry «

No, I’m not shooting myself in the foot. There are times when people need a logo for a new startup or a side venture, but don’t want to spend the money paying someone to do it. Fair enough. The problem with this is that they want to do it themselves. » Read the rest of this entry «