Tag: WebDesigner Depot

Content Strategy: An Interview with Kristina Halvorson

Kristina Halvorson was talking about the importance of web content way before others chimed-in on the discussion. In her book, Content Strategy for the Web, she makes the case for having a well-thought out strategy that involves getting others in the organization on board early on, and not leaving content as an after-thought to the design process.

Recently I had the pleasure of doing an interview with Kristina for WebDesigner Depot. The timing was great since she and Melissa Rach have revised the book which was recently published in a second edition by Peachpit.

Check out the interview on WebDesigner Depot and do yourself ( and your team) a favor and invest in your content by getting a copy of 2nd edition of the book.

New Blog Posts: Mac Apps & Monitoring Competitors’ Social Media

This past week I’ve had two new blog posts published: 1) 30+ Design Apps on the Mac App Store on WebDesigner Depot and 2) 15 Ways to Monitor Your Competitors’ Use of Social Media to Gain Social Intelligence on GigCoin.

Click on the images to read the full story.

Creating Art with the Brushes App

The first time I saw the New Yorker cover by Jorge Colombo that he painted with the tip of his finger by using the brushes app on his iPhone, I was awestruck. Completely. As time has gone on, other artists have followed in Colombo finger-prints, as the case may be.

The first time I saw the New Yorker cover by Jorge Colombo that he painted with the tip of his finger by using the brushes app on his iPhone, I was awestruck. Completely. As time has gone on, other artists have followed in Colombo’s finger-prints, as the case may be.

David Hockney, one of my favorite artists, has also created covers for the magazine and a whole host of artists have been sharing their brushes work on Flickr. Some have created their paintings on iPhones and iPod Touches and others have used their iPads. In this recent post I did for WebDesigner Depot, I had the distinct pleasure of selecting works to display in the post. It’s hard to have a favorite, each are magnificent and if you didn’t know they were created on these devices with the use of a $4.99 app, you’d likely think they were painted on canvases with a variety of different media.

Check out the full post on WebDesigner Depot.

LinkedIn: Recent Lessons Learned

Recently, I set out to learn more about LinkedIn for research I was doing for two upcoming blog posts. LinkedIn had been my most under-utilized social networking presence and it hadn’t exactly wowed me previously…Sometimes I think we end up learning what we need to learn what we write new blog posts. And this was really the case for me with these two recent posts.

Recently, I set out to learn more about LinkedIn for research I was doing for two upcoming blog posts. LinkedIn had been my most under-utilized social networking presence and it hadn’t exactly wowed me previously. I was mostly on it because others suggested it was a good place for me to be. For the longest time my profile was incomplete and I ignored the percentage read-out on the right-hand side of the page to get it to 100% completion. Eventually one day I sat down and added the missing content and got the page to 100% in very little time. There, I thought.  I did it. Enough of that. But when I embarked on the LinkedIn research I found that LinkedIn has added many new features and it’s a lot more useful than I originally thought.

Sometimes I think we end up learning what we need to learn when we write blog posts. And this was really the case for me with these two recent posts. I also had the opportunity to speak with Ryan Roslansky, LinkedIn’s Director of Product Management, in a phone interview who was enormously helpful in showing me the new features of LinkedIn’s company pages.

The first of the two posts 26 Tips for Enhancing Your LinkedIn Experience was published on Social Media Examiner, and the second, How to Use LinkedIn for Your Web Design Business was published on WebDesigner Depot. While the second one speaks specifically to designers, you’ll see that the steps for professionals in any industry are really the same and will only be slightly altered to take into consideration certain factors (e.g. keywords, industry-specific groups, etc.)

Check out the posts to learn more about the in’s and out’s about LinkedIn. Today, I learned about LinkedIn Swarm on LinkedIn’s blog. If you don’t already receive it by email, signing up for new posts will help keep you up-to-date on LinkedIn news.

What do you find most helpful about being on LinkedIn?