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Current web design trends – an overview

Web design trends keep on changing with every passing year or within a period of few months. There had been significant changes last year whose impact can be seen more clearly in this year.

Popularity in the mobile device space has immensely increased in the sense that Smartphones and tablets like the iPad have made the interaction between users better and have facilitated easier accessibility to contents. Moreover, now people can take more and more advantage of the latest and the optimized features.

And this is possible because of web standards like HTML5, web fonts and CSS3, but What about the small businesses? It actually becomes difficult for them to stick to the latest designing trends because of factors like cost of the redesigns and the need for reaching a wide range of users.

Read the rest on skyje.com

13 Essential Tips for Landing a Job on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the best places online to find a job, period. It’s also a great place to connect with top decision makers, generate targeted leads for your business, drive traffic to your website, and more.

I hear countless stories every week from people who land amazing full time positions at great companies thanks to engagement on LinkedIn. Although there are a number of approaches you can take when hunting for the right job, start with these 13 important tips for using LinkedIn effectively.

Read the full article on mashable.com

Why and How I Switched to a Standing Desk

I spend about 45 to 50 hours a week working on my computer. Up until a week ago, I did that work sitting on my ever-expanding behind.

Last Monday I adjusted my desk to standing height (pictured right). I spent the week working on my feet, and I’m never going back to a sitdown desk again. Here are some questions and answers about the change.

Read the full article on lifehacker.com

Get More Out of Your Fonts

It’s a text-based world. Everywhere you look, there’s a sign, an ad, or a screen relaying information. The hand-lettered signage at your mom-and-pop corner store aside, most of the messages you see are set in familiar fonts.

You’ll find plenty of tips and tricks on using type elsewhere –- and far more technical ones, at that –- but here are some select ideas and advice that will put you (and your online presence) on the path to becoming a font savant.

Read the full article at mashable.com

Attention Freelancers! 3 Simple Ways to Attract Higher-Quality Clients

Lower-quality clients suck. All they focus on is how little they can pay. They make unreasonable demands for the amount of work they want you to do and how fast they want it done. And they’ll inevitably ask you for designs that you don’t really enjoy creating. Does this sound familiar? Then chances are you have suffered from working for clients like these. We all have at some point, especially when starting out. So how do you avoid working for lower-quality clients? You attract higher-quality ones. How? Well, you’re in luck: there are 3 simple ways to attract higher-quality clients.

There aren’t any tricks involved. It’s simply adjusting your attitude and approach towards clients. You stand your ground and don’t compromise on what you’re worth and who you’re willing to work with. By doing so, you’ll be well on your way to attracting higher-quality clients that you actually want to work with. Without further ado, here are 3 simple ways to attract higher-quality clients:

Read the full article on speckyboy.com

5 Ways to Improve Meetings

(www.openforum.com) – Meetings are very expensive. Time is precious, and having many people in a room is quite costly by any measurement. The cost of an interrupted workflow is even worse, especially for a small business.

 You might be especially productive early in the morning, from the moment you start working. I might require an hour or so of build-up time before I’m ready to get cranking. But when a meeting starts, our preferences and differences are cast aside. Meetings strip us of the core tenet of the creative process: autonomy.

 We can’t rid the world of meetings. After all, the benefits of meeting do sometimes outweigh the costs. But we can meet more wisely.

 Here are five tips for improving the experience and outcome of meetings:

Read the full article here!

Do you have your own blog? Thinking of starting one?

(instantshift.com) – 23 Good Habits of Successful Bloggers

I’m sure all bloggers wonder, “How did others make it to the top? If only someone would share the secrets of becoming a popular blogger.”

Summing up and categorizing the good and bad habits of highly effective bloggers could be frustrating; you might begin to see that some successful bloggers have certain behaviors in common, while others absolutely don’t. What does it take, then, to become a popular blogger, to be accepted, trusted and followed by many? I’ve discovered some interesting similarities among the successful bloggers who I follow. Some traits are common, some unique.

To become a successful blogger, open yourself to your readers as well. Treat them with the same respect and honesty that you would give to your friends and clients.

Read the full article here!

Get organized with these free planners!

It’s time for a fresh start! Seize the New Year and streamline your calendar. We stumbled across this great resource; several free and quite unique planners are available for download. Definitely worth checking out!

Hate PowerPoint? Here Are 5 Web-based Alternatives

(www.readwriteweb.com) – Whether they’re for clients, customers or colleagues, visual presentations are an unavoidable part of doing business. For years, Microsoft PowerPoint has been the standard bearer of slide presentation applications, but several Web-based alternatives have emerged.

For the most part, the alternatives offer similar functionality to PowerPoint, sometimes more, sometimes less. One obvious advantage to Web-based presentations is that they’re stored in the cloud, eliminating the potential for nightmare scenarios involving lost or corrupted thumb drives.

Check out more here!

Momentum: The Key to Making Your Big Ideas Happen in 2011

(www.openforum.com) – According to Newton’s First Law of Motion, the tendency of a body in motion is to keep moving; the tendency of a body at rest is to sit still. In other words, it’s a lot less work to keep moving once you have some momentum, than it is to start moving from a dead stop.

 It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a marathon or running a business – momentum is key. If we can take small steps to execute our big, bold business objectives every day in 2011, it will be infinitely easier to stay focused, make great strides, and blast through the roadblocks that inevitably come up.

Read the full article here!

3 Business Tools to Spice Up Boring Work Tasks

(mashable.com) – The small business professional’s workday can be both tedious and mundane when it comes to necessary daily, weekly and monthly tasks that feel more like chores than accomplishments.

Presentations for meetings or keynotes can take hours, if not days, to perfect. Building dynamic accounting reports is a labor of love (or heartbreak), and everyone dreads monthly must-complete expense reports.

While there’s no escaping these unfortunate tasks, newer web and mobile applications, like Prezi, inDinero and Expensify, make the time spent doing them much less arduous, and in the end, you might be infinitely more pleased with the results.

Read the full article here!

Revamp Your Resume

(Alison Doyle on About.com) – This is a good time of year, and you should do it at least annually, to check and revamp your resume. It’s important to take the time to write a resume that reflects why you’re a top tier candidate who should be selected for an interview. That means your position descriptions should be as quantified as possible – numbers, percentages, achievements – concrete evidence of what you have accomplished.

Read the full article here!

HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing.

After you’ve covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers.

We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools. Read on for their thoughts and let us know which tips you’d add for optimizing LinkedIn profiles in the comments below.

Read the full article here!

30 Great Holiday Gifts for The Designer and Developer In Your Lives

Its that time of year again. Time to buy those important holiday gifts for your loved ones or coworkers. As we all know, it is never easy to find the right gift for the designer or developer in your life. They are generally very hard to shop for since they speak a different language and sometimes live in a different world, but now you have more unique, fun and useful gifts than ever. Today lets take a look at 30 Great Holiday Gifts for The Designer and Developer In Your Lives:

Read full article here!

25 Creative & Innovative Ways To Use Twitter For Business

(Sally Walker on www.sallywalker.me.uk) – A lot of people ask me about Twitter and its use. “Surely it’s just a lot of ‘noise’” they say but there are so many creative and innovative ways you can use Twitter, especially for business.

With Twitter, to a certain degree, you have to think out of the box.  The term ‘micro-blogging’ does makes it sound a little clinical, but when you open your mind to the wonders of what it can do for you and your business, then you really get an idea of why Twitter must be part of your online business profile.

Here are a few ways of using Twitter for business.

Read full article here!

7 Tips for Succeeding as a Social Media Strategist



(Erica Swallow on mashable.com) – The role of social media is expanding rapidly and many organizations of all types are trying to stay afloat amidst the changes. Meanwhile, a small group of innovators pulls the industry onward.

In the past few years, the social media marketing role has become increasingly present, leading the way to more strategic social media programs. Enter the social media strategist.

Read the full article here!

Concise Guide to Archiving for Designers

Designers, protect your hard work! Archiving is one of the most important steps of the creative process, even if it isn’t always the most fun! But if you take the time to archive properly, it will pay off down the road. For effective ways to archive, check out this comprehensive guide.

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