lucidCircus helped Solomon Says launch their new corporate website. Solomon provided the design, we provided the Flash and animation.
http://solomonsaysinc.com/
I have a Adwords coupon usable for a new account only. Contact me at ezra@lucidcircus.com if you are interested.
We worked with HBM Advertising on this Flash based pie charting system for their client Rockwood. The slice size is dynamic and the text is controlled via an XML management system. No need to alter the flash file to update the content.
Harris, Baio & McCullough (HB&M) is an integrated marketing communications agency, founded in 1986, serving a quality group of regional, national, and international clients.
Check this out… http://www.thisisplanb.com/
We worked with Plan B (the agency alternative) to develop the Flash video chat on their homepage. See the person you need to talk to? Just click and go.
Plug for PlanB… if you need a new media agency but don’t want the hassle and costs of a traditional ad agency… I recommend you talk to these guys.
7 Fresh and Simple Ways to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility.
Often a web designer/coder will need to test their creation out on browsers or platforms they don’t possess. This list will surely come in handy.
I’ve cut/pasted the intro and the list; check the link to FreelanceFolder.com for brief reviews of each one.
This post is written for designers, developers, or anyone else who has struggled with testing their websites across multiple browsers.
As little as one year ago, there were almost no good options for testing cross-browser compatibility of websites. The tools out there usually had significant drawbacks — either in cost, capabilities, or time required. Lately, though, there have been a lot of newcomers to the browser testing world, some of which offer truly excellent services.
In this article we’ve listed 8 (7 +1) fresh and simple tools for cross-browser compatibility testing, tools that actually make this stuff pretty easy. Not only that, but every single one of these tools can be used for free.
The majority of our business is web design and implementing Flash/Flex in cool and useful ways. Followed by web development, seo, animation and print design. I used to do all of this myself but over the years I’ve replaced myself with better and faster partners. Aside from the small jobs that aren’t worth farming out to the team, I mainly handle marketing and management these days. There is another aspect of our business that I have handled (and still handle) from day one. Web hosting administration.
After one year if you want to walk away, then that is that. If you stay, I charge $100 a year for a typical site.
Because I am online for the greater part of my day, hosting-related maintenance requires minimal extra effort on my part and the pay off is that it builds or strengthens relationships with clients. It occurred to me that I could give away web hosting as a loss leader. It will only cost me time since I have more server space than I need for my current clients and I’m constantly doing some small task like email management or blog maintenance.
So here is my offer: One year of web hosting. Free. No catch. Transfer your DNS to me (I’ll help if you don’t know how) and I’ll handle the rest. Unlimited emails. A WordPress Blog. FTP space. I’ll even implement Google Analytics. No charges for setting up email addresses, file transfers… all the normal web hosting activities.
Naturally if your site is bandwidth intensive, we’d have to discuss fair terms. Contact me at hosting@lucidcircus.com to discuss.
As I discover more tools for Twitter the more I like Twitter. My main complaint with Twitter is the signal to noise ratio. If Twitter won’t or can’t do something about it, there are programmers out there who are.
Monitter : real time, live twitter monitor. With this tool you can enter a word or a phrase and all tweets with that word or phrase will appear in real time. Pretty awesome way to find relevant information quickly.
TweepSearch : It’s very easy to forget who your followers are and what made them relevant to you in the first place. This tool helps you to remember by searching their bios.
TweetStats : Ask and you shall receive. I was discussing with a colleague just last week about how social media marketing really lacks stats and metrics. Well it seems this guy, Damon Cortesi, who also did the above mentioned tweep search, is filling this need.
More tools that I need to check out :
I welcome any suggestions for “must have” social media sites. Here are the ones I use and recommend so far:
Primary :
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Secondary :
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Personally I’m very much against MySpace.com for two reasons. One, “Tom” got his start as a major spammer. I’d like to see him go down in a class action anti-spam lawsuit. I wish I had saved some of the dozens of unsolicited emails I got from some crappy site telling me I had friends and that I should post my pictures and talk about myself. Two, the pages the users make hurt my eyes and ears too badly to stay on the site more than a moment. I really don’t understand how that dreck is so successful. I know every band site and many other niches use MySpace… is it vital to SMM to have a page? I hope not. I want nothing to do with it. Ethically and aesthetically I refuse.
Here is a great list of 50 ways to use Social Media.
lucidCircus has worked with Prague based Ilincev Design for many years now. Over the last couple of years we’ve been educating ourselves to offer SEO (search engine optimization) , PPC (pay-per-click) and now SMM (social media marketing). Here is a mindmap of our SEO service offerings:
Market Analysis:
PPC Advertising:
Usability Testing:
Web Analysis:
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Client:
Competition:
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Or just one?
Let’s take look at a web strategy that has a number of SEO and benefits: the hub and spoke strategy. A hub and spoke strategy is when you create one authoritative domain (the hub), and then hang various related websites off that domain (the spokes).
If you don’t yet have an authority site, it’s probably best to focus on that one site. However, once you’ve built an authority hub, it can be a good idea to specialize in a number of niches using multiple, smaller sites.
Let’s look at a few reasons why, in the context of dominating a niche.
Economic theory holds that division of labor increases profitability.
During the early days of the web, it was easy to make money by being a generalist. However, as the web got deeper and richer, it became difficult to maintain a generalist position unless you had significant resources.
Specialization, by way of niches, allows for greater targeting, and this targeting can increase value. Leads and advertising become more valuable, because the target audience can be reached more efficiently.
The hub and spoke approach is this theory in microcosm. The hub is the generalist authority, whilst the spokes allow for niche specialization.
We’ll see how this dove-tails with SEO shortly.
Full article: http://www.seobook.com/should-you-have-multiple-websites
article suggested by Ondrej Ilincev
