Web marketing & development company

This particular post is directed toward guests that attended the Friendswood Development Company Social Media Event today.

We intend for this to be a more detailed outline of instructions for a few of the social networks and tools we mentioned in our keynote. Let's get started:

Facebook

1. Create an account at Facebook.com. If you don’t know how, your child or young friend does.
2. Fill up your profile with specific information about yourself. DO NOT only fill out work material – this is YOUR profile, not your company’s. It is important not to create a profile filled with fluff about your business, as visitors may be wary and see your intentions. Facebook can be fun on your own time too!
3. Look for and befriend your friends. Try to find people you’ve lost touch with. Find colleagues. Have fun!
4. Create a Page for your company/product. Fill in all of your company’s information. Remember to make the Page live when you’re done (look for a red link).
5. Upload pictures pertaining to your company/product – staff, events, etc. Add upcoming events if you have any.
6. If your company has a blog or news section on its website, feed posts from the website through the “Notes” section on the Page via RSS. Again, ask a friend or give us a call for help with this if you’re lost.
7. Become a fan of your Page and encourage your close friends to (if they don’t on their own). Keep your Page up-to-date with events and info about your company/product.

Twitterfeed

1. Sign up for an account TwitterFeed.com/users/new. You can either make a brand new account or sign in with OpenID by using one of your current accounts at Google, Flickr, Yahoo, Blogger, and so on (if you have one).
2. Add your Twitter account/s and the RSS address to your blog post. Often, simply the url of the page your blog is on will work. The process is very straightforward and takes you step-by-step through the process.
3. Track your progress! TwitterFeed allows you to see how many people are clicking on your link to your blog - the perfect way to measure its effectiveness.

Gravatar

1. Sign up for an account at en.Gravatar.com. (Super simple - just a few fields to fill out).
2. Add all of your email addresses.
3. Add pictures or one picture to each of your email addresses.
4.  Now when you comment on someone's blog that supports Gravatar, your picture will show up.

Resources/Further Reading

• Presentation Slides
• Social Media Basics by Daphne Hager
• Social Media for Real Estate 101

There are many times when for one reason or another I need to have Internet Explorer on my Mac. For the longest time I thought the only way was to use Boot Camp or Virtualization until recently I discovered IES4OSX.

IES4OSX allows you to install a few different versions of the Internet Explorer (currently pre IE7) on your Mac and a few popular browser plug-ins. We have had varying amounts of success with it but for the most part it proves to be a viable alternative to Virtualization or Boot Camp if you just need IE6 for testing designs or for sites that require Internet Explorer.

We finally have built ourselves a new website! We have been so busy working on client websites, ours got pretty neglected. We are planning on adding many new features that will help our clients and our company alike.

We will be adding live support chat, customer portal, tutorials, and a support ticket system... so check back soon! Please leave us feedback on what you think about the new site and any suggestions you may have on how we can make it better.

Here is a screencast I made on creating a single page in Photoshop and how to slice it. This is the first screencast in a series. Later in part 2 I am going to show you how to take the sliced up image and create a HTML and CSS page out of it. In part 3 I will show you how to take the HTML and CSS page and turn it into a template for Joomla! and WordPress.

Check back in the coming weeks for the rest of the screencasts in this series.

I recently purchased the MacHeist bundle priced at $49.00 because I needed a copy of Snapz Pro X which was included. By itself Snapz Pro X runs $69.00 so this was a steal. I decided I would try out some of the other software that came in the bundle and found CSSEdit. As soon as CSSEdit opened I could tell it was meant to be.

CSSEdit takes the pain out of CSS. I usually use google to lookup CSS properties I don’t have memorized. With the full featured sidebar built into CSSEdit you will find yourself building complex styles in minutes and learning many of the CSS properties it generates in the process.

This was the final blow to Dreamweaver which I don’t use at all now. Between CSSEdit and TextMate I have everything I need to turn my image slices into fully functional websites.