My daughter the little artist

Ava the lil' artist enjoying spring break in Florida out on the lanai.

Rapid Weaver, NCD themes

I had a great customer service experience from Nick Cates of NCD Themes.

I needed help with some Mootools Jquery scripts, and Nick sent me an old tutorial video to get me back in action fast.

If you are a MAC based web designer and use Rapid Weaver like me, you should should check out his site.

Using the combo of his themes and Rapid Weaver and some good design techniques, you can crank out great looking sites like the one I made here really, really fast!

Rapid Weaver, NCD themes

I had a great customer service experience from Nick Cates of NCD Themes.

I needed help with some Mootools Jquery scripts, and Nick sent me an old tutorial video to get me back in action fast.

If you are a MAC based web designer, like myself and use Rapid Weaver like me. You should should check out his site.

Using the combo of his themes and Rapid Weaver and some good design techniques, you can crank out great looking sites like the one I made here really, really fast!

Valentines day graphic design project

 This graphic design project, is actually quite simple, but can yield great results. So it's Valentines Day, and you need to do something romantic. How about a custom wine bottle? Well the bottle itself, isn't custom, but by applying your own label it is! I created a custom wine label badge for my better half, and she thought it was thoughtful and creative. The label had her name on it, in a nice serif font, and even showed the date range we have been together for, similar to how wine has a date. I added an emblem or a crest and some fleur-de-lis style effects. It was finished off with a label which said, "open only for life's finest moments", and it was made to look like a tag, complete with a hold punched in it, for a ribbon to tie it to the bottle. The finishing touch was stating it was a "Classic Reserve", as if that was the name or brand, and it sounded good to me, and we both enjoyed it. So if you're a graphic designer and need a fun and easy idea for a little romance, this is a great project, just make sure you can print full size label paper on your color printer, and your all set!

Latest Good Book

The last book I recently finished was called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

There are really only two characters, a young man on a journey to discover how to "solve man kinds problems" and well, for sake of not spoiling the book, another character.

This one took me back to my late nineties reads such as: Celestrine Prophecy, Tales of Power, and The way of the Shaman.

This is a read all through the night book, which will give you a different look at the state of mand kind.

here is the authors site.

Good Books

Occasionally I will recommend a great book.

A couple of weeks ago I finished Next, by Michael Crichton. I have read several of his other works, and would definitely reccomend this. If you have any fascination with the medical industry or genetics, this one is for you, reads like a fast mystery novel!

Click here to go to the authors website to find out more about him and this great read.

Which is the best social tool?

Here are my reviews and feedback for some mulit-tasking tools to consider for keeping your reality boat afloat on the seas of today's social network.


Yoono *****

Socialite****

ScribeFire***

TwitterBar**

Personally I use Yoono. I have it as a Firefox plugin on my macbook, and I can multi-post on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, IM, listen to music, Read RSS feeds, share webclips, photos, videos and more. It even has link discovery Nuff said my hands down favorite... However each app has it's own uniqueness and therefore appeal.

I really like Socialite. Drawback it is not free! However if you are a Mac fan, and appreciate when a third party company makes a great app for Apple, you should consider this too!

ScribeFire is great, if your a word press user. It has revenue capabilites and if you have like 10 firefox tabs open and want to share a lot of links and data quickly, it is a power blogging tool for sure.

TwitterBar. Now If I was Kevin Smith and I could talk about whetever the hell I wanted on Twitter all day, and make a living, this is the tool I would use.

That's my review! If you have any comments, or can suggest any other features or apps to use, please do share.

Multi Tasking Social app reviews & Links!

This post is all about multi-tasking and productivity tools for social networking.

The programs are:

Socialite MAC standalone.

Get Socialising

"Socialite is a beautiful Mac OS X application, designed to make it easy to stay in touch with the social networks and services that matter to you. From news on Digg, photos on Flickr, statuses and photos on Facebook and Twitter updates, to full Google ReaderRealMacSoftware, Inc. RSS syncing, Socialite keeps all your social networks in one convenient place."

ScribeFire MAC or PC firefox browser add-on.
(Note: this is for blogs like word press or blogger!)

About ScribeFire

"ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog."

Yoono MAC or PC Standalone or Firefox plug-in.

STAY CONNECTED

"Connect to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, AIM and more...in one place..."

STATUS SYNC

"Update your status across all your services at once..."

EASY SHARING

"Share links, images & videos across all your networks..."

Twitterbar MAC or PC Firefox or Google Chrome browser add-on.

Post to Twitter

"...from your (FireFox) address bar."

________________________________________________________________

Click on a logo/ link to go to the site(s) and find out more info on each of these tools.

If you can think of any other tools that allow you to multi-task and be more effective with your social networking and marketing duties please do share! Also see the poll to vote on which is your favorite.

Twister- Twiiter groups for your website!

Twitters hot! But whats even better is how fast spin off aps are coming out. Here is a new one called Twister, that lets you display twitter account group posts on a website, instead of just one. It is easy to install and pretty powerful, well as powerful as your twitter audience is busy tweeting!

Avatar 3D with my daughter Ava!

Avatar official Movie Site

Last week I took my daughter to see Avatar.

What a joy to see the wonder, curiosity and awe in her face!

Is it any coincidence that one of the coolest movies ever, has my daughters name in it?

I think not.

If you have not seen this movie yet, go do it, while it is still in the theaters! I read the Wired magazine interview with James Cameron and was very motivated, here is someone who got into action by being pissed! He saw Star Wars with a buddy, and was like damn, I wanted to make a sci fi epic movie! I am not going to start a debate of which will end up being bigger or better over time, but it is cool to note that one influenced the other and made it all better for us, the movie watchers!

Now go see the movie!

Last day of long hair.

I grew my hair out for fun, and well mostly for my wife. She said it was for our family vacation in the Carolina Mountains, and she wanted a rugged looking mountain man! Well it reminded me of the 90s and a different era of my life. Here it is for posterity...