The Creative Design Blog

Archive for August, 2009

True Stories Have A Unique Way of Imparting Guidance When We Are Faced With Similar Circumstances

by Afric Wright on Aug.31, 2009, under multimedia

We love to entertain ourselves watching a good movie. It does not matter if it is fiction or based on true events, we are addicted to movies that emotionally influence us. Each month millions of DVD movies are purchased and rented in America. Now, with high speed internet, you can get access to movies at the click of a mouse.

Movies help us escape the current reality of our business lives. The journey that a good film can take you on gives you a chance to enter a world of fantasy and fiction as you imagine along with the characters. Movies not only help us by taking our mind off pressures and life in general, but they have a strange way of making us feel good in an entertaining way.

Movies also have to power t educate. Many true stories are filled with conventional tidbits of wisdom that could help if you are facing the same situations and circumstances as the lead character. As an example, movies such as A Home of Our Own, starring Kathy Bates, portrayed what it was like to live in the trappings of steep poverty in America and how to maintain your integrity as a human being.

True stories are filled with valuable life lessons. They are not all about slashing and dicing, but about the same problems we all face at on time or another. As such, we tend to emotionally connect with the characters and what they are going through; all the while introspectively evaluating our own real life events.

The events of true stories seem to resonate with millions of people. The plot, setting, season and the circumstances in which characters find themselves entangled in make us reflect upon a time in our lives when we faced similar situations or challenges. Oddly enough, some people can and do get wisdom from watching movies based on true events when they are going through a similar experience.

When the movie, The Burning Bed was released, it increased awareness to spousal abuse in America, as women all over the country identified with similar abusive relationships. This movie not only helped to influence new laws designed to give women great rights and protections, but also inspired an entire generation of abused women to seek help.

You should be careful forming conclusions based on real life stories. While it is okay to identify with the circumstances of the leading character, it is not always okay to follow the conventional wisdom behind a movie. Your life circumstances although similar in nature are very unique and therefore require specific reassessments and evaluations.

The next time you rent of buy a movie based on a true story, realize you are identifying with the synopsis of the movie in some way. The characters, the scenarios and the plot all mean something within your subconscious mind. Could it be you are looking to see how others handled a particular problem or dealt with a set of unsettling crises? Who knows if the wisdom of their outcome will ebb into your subconscious mind and influence you.

Thank you for reading about free movie download. We help you stay informed.

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Web Design Firms and Website Design Service

by Brad Dalton on Aug.30, 2009, under web design

Website design service can be a little difficult and distressing to hire out sometimes. Web design firms all have different policies for deciding the way layout your site and how to promote your new site. A little research before selecting the firm to work with in these areas will help to guarantee that you get the site you’re after.

Website Design

A professional web design company will also have its own idea of how to structure the design of your website. Some methods are obvious and universal in all good and useful sites. But successful sites can be very different from each other.

Take a look at other companies or competitors in your industry or genre. It is safe to assume that you can build your website close to how most of those do. One thing that should be universal in web design is resolution consideration. It is still important that on any web site, design firms house most of the main content within a rectangle that is 1024 px wide by 726 px high.

Search Engine Marketing

SEO stands for “search engine optimization”. A lot of web marketers claim to have it down pat. All you have to do is ask for their results. Listening to someone about how to promote or market your website should be approached very carefully. Ask for details about their successes.

Search engines are always changing their methods of ranking. You never know when you will need to adjust your methods because you are slipping in the ranks. Always keep an eye on your progress and the return on your investment for any internet marketing. Avoid auto-pilot.

When it comes to web designing, companies may disagree about which format to use, how to manage your content, how to lay out your web pages and then how to promote your site. But researching these key areas will give you a great advantage. Your website is an important part of your company and your overall success.

When choosing your web design company, be thorough in explaining your expectations and in collecting from them the details of their plan to complete your website. Learning what to expect will save you money and grief and hopefully put you well on your way to expanding your business onto the web.

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Check out the Latest Nintendo DS Lite, He is Coral Pink!

by Gerard Lon on Aug.30, 2009, under multimedia

If you are looking for a gaming device that will give you some hot and exciting play, consider buying the Nintendo DS Lite. With the DS Lite, you get some of the most interesting games for play and once you begin playing the games here, you won’t feel like stopping the action.

The Nintendo DS Lite comes in many different colors of which the Pink or Coral Pink color is the most attractive. Get an exquisite Pink or Coral Pink Nintendo DS Lite and enjoy some of the most thrilling games offered by this gaming device.

You will find the Pink Nintendo DS Lite to offer some very special and unique features that will definitely amaze you. It includes touch-screen technology by which you can have a unique and thrilling playing experience.

Along with this feature, the DS Lite includes ultra-bright dual screens which make your gaming playing experience pretty exciting. It includes powerful dual processors which render 3D graphics that gives you an almost real game playing experience.

What you get with the Nintendo DS Lite is some very exciting and thrilling Nintendo. There are games suitable for every kind of player in the Pink Nintendo DS Lite or a Nintendo DS Lite Coral Pink. You can enjoy playing at whatever skill you are most comfortable with this device.

What is interesting when you play games in the Nintendo DS Lite is that not only can you use the usual controls for playing games you can also have more interactive fun with the games you play through the built-in microphone port.

You are not restricted to playing just the games available in this device. You can use the device’s backward compatibility mode to insert Game Boy Advance cartridges through which you can play the Game Boy Advance games that you like, in single player mode.

You can continuously play the DS Lite for a period of nineteen hours with just one single charge. You cannot find so many options offered in any other technology than the Nintendo DS Lite.

Now there is more to this device than just playing games. It has a Wi-Fi Connection by which you can chat with Nintendo DS Lite owners located across the globe. This service is available to you, absolutely free of cost.

With the festive season here now, good discounts are available on your purchase of Pink Nintendo DS Lite or a Nintendo DS Lite Coral Pink.

So, Hurry Up and Buy the Nintendo DS Lite now and enjoy owing this really great gaming device at a bargain rate. You can have so many hours of thrill and excitement with it. If you enjoy playing games at home, you will find the Nintendo DS Lite to be just right for yourself. It also the best Christmas present that you can get for your kids.

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How to Increase Your Google Rank in 10 Minutes

by Cheryl L. True on Aug.30, 2009, under web design

How often have you found a web page that carries the name “Home”, “About Us” or “Contact Us”? It’s a sad thing. Old habits die hard. When will web designers get the idea that the title tags for your web pages must be quickly searchable by search engines?

Calling a web page “About Us” is the worst thing to do. Why? Because when Google (or any other search engine) indexes your web site, terms like “About Us” or “Contact Us” mean nothing. For example: when potential customers are searching for your services or products, they won’t do a Google search for “About Us”.

As of this writing, there are more than 1,230,000,000 web pages found on Google using the search term “About Us”. Do you think your web site has a good chance of appearing on the first page of Google when it is going against over a billion other web pages?

Web site title tags are extremely important to use if you want high ranking on search engines. If you sell shoes, then you need to tell Google that your web page is all about shoes. Title the web page “Quality Leather Shoes” and then make sure the content of that web page is all about quality leather shoes. You might have another page on your web site about Italian leather shoes. So title that specific page “Italian leather Shoes”. Again, make sure the content of that page is all about Italian shoes.

It really isn’t rocket science but a lot of web designers don’t have a clue on how to name web pages correctly for good search engine placement. Many web designers are designers. They’re good at making web sites pretty. They’re fond of using all kinds of flash and visually interesting bells and whistles. But from a web site title tags viewpoint, visuals don’t help a site appear near the top of the search engine list when making a web site.

Web site title tags not only help search engines find your web pages and list them accordingly; they also help you – the business owner – clarify each page of content on your site. This leads to excellent navigation as well. The idea is focus, focus and focus. Be 100 percent sure that every word is fully concentrated on the subject of each web page. This will increase your Google rank. Otherwise, how can search engines like Google or Yahoo understand the content if you aren’t sure about it yourself?

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ACS File Management System Goes Beyond Organizing Files

by Donald D. Lacy on Aug.30, 2009, under web design

A File Management System is more than migrating through the root-directory, then through many folders to the very end of the file system to load the file. The standard method of locating and loading files, along with the appropriate program, has been used for decades. To a computer user, this portion of the traditional management system should be eliminated.

File management systems create, enter, change, query and produce reports on one file at a time. All of these types of systems require the user to act upon files, put them in a relational database for many users to access from many locations. Most electronic document management systems solve a particular problem of managing, finding and tracking documents.

ACS has developed a user-friendly File Management System that accumulates all the files on a computer, via a user selected path, throws away the folders and displays all of the files by extension on one screen! The selectable paths enable the user to gather filenames from numerous possible locations in one pass-literally from any source connected to their computer or through a LAN.

Once the user-selected path has been established, the computer finds the files along the selected branch(s) of the entire file system, ranging from data bases to thumb drives. Nothing is destroyed, changed, created or entered-it simply collects all the designated filenames! The filenames are then sorted and organized by extension type. An extension list shows only those extensions that one or more files were found within the selected path. The number of filenames range from 1 to tens of thousands of filenames.

The automated computer program takes from a few seconds to a minute to find all the designated filenames. It depends on the speed of your computer and the number of filenames to be collected. When compete, the user has only one screen from which to issue commands via a mouse or keyboard. The screen has four identical columns that will display 40 filenames at one time. Behind each column are files with the same extension ranging from hundreds to thousands of filenames, all available faster than pressing the Up and Down arrow keyboard keys. The filenames can be sorted one of 10 different methods, selectable by the computer user.

Traditionally the user creates files and save them in a folder on their computer wherever they choose. This is what we all have been doing for decades. In fact, the user could put all of the files in one folder-it no longer matters. Let’s face it. When we create folders past a depth of five levels, they become unmanageable and we have problems finding the files. You see, with the program created and patented by ACS locates the filenames, not the files. The files stay where they were put in the first place-they never move.

Our coins and paper money are designed to look uniquely different for a good reason. Once the dresser drawer becomes too hard to open we dump the contents on a table and start sorting the money into piles. Thanks to banks, they provide a computerize machine to sort, count and package our money for us. It saves a lot of time. With a similar analogy, that is why ACS created a program to locate all the filenames in your computer, identify each filename extension and place them into visible piles. There is no regard of the starting place or contents of the file. With a double-click, you can launch any of your 160 visible files and associated programs. This saves us time!

The approach of saving considerable computer user time is what makes this program valuable. Every time a user loads a document, plays a video, views a picture or listens to music, you are operating the computer faster. Allowing the computer to do what it does best, and faster, reduces the user input time of operating a computer. The user can simply click the mouse or stoke a key. This File Management Systems does save the computer user valuable time, every time a filename is clicked upon!

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Combining SEO With Web Design

by Cheryl L. True on Aug.29, 2009, under web design

Planning to have your web site designed or re-designed? Professional help from an experienced web design firm can definitely bring positive outcomes. Many companies operate in various areas since web design companies can serve businesses in virtually any industry. In order to build professionally proficient web sites, specialized skills are essential.

To create a good web site, keep search engine optimization or SEO in mind. This is where a web site is adjusted or redesigned to make it search engine-friendly. So if anyone looks for a phrase or word associated with your web site on a search engine, the site will appear ideally on the front page of the search engine. In a nutshell, this is what SEO does. It pushes a site up the rankings on a search engine. It can also include pay per click management too.

If your site is not appearing on Internet searches, it means you aren’t going to sell a lot of products or services. The key here is to realize that visibility is important with any commercial undertaking. Unless you’re a big brand like Nike or Amazon, the only way to get noticed is to have an SEO web design.

If a site utilizes SEO web design, this means that all its material will be written to attract traffic. Content will be optimized for this purpose and links will be changed to draw search engines to it. This is not a difficult thing to understand but the process takes time and can sometimes be complex.

There are a lot of SEO services all promising to put your web site on the front page of Google in a week or a month. As more companies use SEO experts for SEO services, the question arises: how much space is there on the first page of Google?

If 20 companies are all offering the same service with only 10 spaces on the first page of Google, 10 companies are going to be disappointed. This is why the SEO service you choose has to be one of the better ones available.

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Using SEO For Your Web Site

by Cheryl L. True on Aug.29, 2009, under web design

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique that helps web sites become more pertinent to search engines. Having more Internet traffic means lots of people are going to your site. This means you’ll have more potential customers and better sales. Attracting people to your site usually takes time. But with SEO, this job becomes a breeze. To make SEO work for your web site, here are essential points to remember:

Title – The HTML title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.

Keywords – The HTML meta keyword tag should contain all keyword phrases promoting your products or services. Don’t use the same keywords and stay away from capital letters. These should not be more than 250 characters.

Web page text – It’s wise to have good content in every page of your web site with the appropriate keywords. Articles should be at least 200 words and above. Informative text should be placed in the HTML body section of the web page.

HTML code validation – Search engine’s crawlers become better in indexing web pages if the latter don’t have any html errors. Keep in mind that mistakes can make search engine crawlers give up indexing web pages. So examine your work carefully.

Links – These are essential to search engines. The quality of links will tell how good your web page is. So don’t just connect with another web site but pick those with higher page ranks to make your site popular.

Registering with directories and search engines – In closing, make it a point to register your web site with directories and search engine web sites. This is a great way of telling the world that your web site exists. Stay away from automatic search engine/directory registration.

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Increase Your Google Rank in 10 Minutes

by Cheryl L. True on Aug.29, 2009, under web design

How many times have you seen a web page that reads “Home”, “About Us” or “Contact Us”? It’s sad but true. Old habits die hard. When will web designers learn that the title tags for your web pages need to be easily searchable by search engines?

Calling a web page “About Us” is the worst thing to do. Why? Because when Google (or any other search engine) indexes your web site, terms like “About Us” or “Contact Us” mean nothing. For example: when potential customers are searching for your services or products, they won’t do a Google search for “About Us”.

As of this writing, there are more than 1,230,000,000 web pages found on Google using the search term “About Us”. Do you think your web site has a good chance of appearing on the first page of Google when it is going against over a billion other web pages?

Web site title tags are essential if you desire a high rank on search engines. If you sell shoes, then you should tell Google that your web page is all about shoes. Name the web page “Quality Leather Shoes” and then ascertain that the material on that web page pertains to quality leather shoes. You could create a different page on your web site about Italian leather shoes. So call that particular page “Italian leather Shoes”. As always, ensure that the content of that page is all about Italian shoes.

It really isn’t rocket science but so many web designers have no clue about how to properly name web pages for excellent search engine placement. Most web designers are designers. They like to make web sites look pretty. They like to use all types of flash and visually appealing bells and whistles. But from a web site title tags point of view, visuals are nowhere near the top of the list when designing a web site.

Web site title tags not only aid search engines find your web pages and list them accordingly; they also enable you – the business owner – to specify each page of content on your site. This creates excellent navigation too. The thing is to focus, focus and focus. Be very sure that every word concentrates on the topic of every web page. This will improve your Google rank. Besides, how can search engines like Google or Yahoo make out the content if you’re not sure about it yourself?

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Developing Powerful Logos for an E-Learning Courseware

by Trevor Howard on Aug.29, 2009, under web design

In the process of developing and preparing e-learning content for migration to a learning management system, many choices must be made. There are navigational choices and multimedia options. Then there is the LMS service choice itself. Beyond those, there are aesthetic choices to be made; in other words, your courseware’s design. One element of your courseware design is your e-learning course logo.

First, a disclaimer: compared to many other e-learning course choices, a logo is really quite unimportant. Your content itself needs to be unique, strong and effective in order to survive and thrive. However, it’s also true that no one says “Don’t judge a book by its cover” for nothing. The reality is we all do it; we make quick, visually-based judgments all the time. We do it when we decide about everything from soap to dinner to cars, to even more important choices involving education and romantic partners. Considering this, it must also be acknowledged that a smart and memorable logo can distinguish your courseware from others. It can pique the interest of potential users, and stick with them in the future.

So what types of logos work the best? Keep in mind this rule: your logo acts as the visual illustration that represents your e-learning course. Essentially, it will embody your learning content. But it will also, after some time, facilitate viewer recognition of (and trust in) your product.

Logos can be a simple name or logotype or an ideograms (visual including icons, signs and emblems). Ideograms are often easily recognizable alone. For example, the McDonald’s arc is easily identifiable without the necessity to see the word “McDonald’s.”

Although some courseware developers and companies rely on pre-packaged logos, your own design might be the best solution–not to mention the most fun to come up with. Remember, it’s your content and your vision. And in any case, a logo can be very easy to design.

Just how do you go about designing an interesting and unique courseware logo? Brainstorm relentlessly. Don’t be afraid to use up lots of paper writing out your ideas by hand. Doing it the old-fashioned way is key; large design firms use this strategy, sketching out everything by hand before even thinking of using a computer. Sketching is just the most effective and simplest way to quickly create and imagine a logo.

Now that you have a simple but unique logo in front of you, it’s time to test it out. Be adventurous. Experiment with your design, adding new colors, mixing up shades and tones, and adding and subtracting images. Test your logo in various situations, inserting text in different positions to find out where it looks best. Test different font sizes and styles.

No matter how you do it, strive to design an e-learning logo whose structure and uniqueness best suits your learning management system course.

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Importance Of Color In Web Design

by David Bungay on Aug.28, 2009, under web design

Color should be an important feature to consider while designing your webpage. Web designers should be careful about color. Since browsers share 216 colors, your web design should be built using only those.

To understand how this happens, you have to understand that colors are formed out of a pallet in the web browser. If you use a color that does not exist in the pallet, the browser has to mix other colors to form the one you have chosen. This can distort the appearance of your website. It can also make your content illegible. So play safe and use safe colors in your design element.

Use colors that are simple to comprehend and do not hurt the eye, even though they may be safe colors. For instance, I have come upon webpages that are black with white script. My eyes hurt when I try to read the content. This is okay for flashy websites that are designed solely for the pleasure of the site owner and his friends. In a professional setting, it can hamper the business. A customer may just be put off and go purchase from a competitor.

Use yellow sparingly. Pure yellow strains the eye. It is sharp and noticeable. Use it in banners and advertisements for maximum effect. It will draw attention to the banner but since there is not too much content in a banner, it will not hurt the eye. Yellow can also irritate. Perhaps this is why it is used to mark out crime areas and on caution boards.

Use red sparingly too. Bright colors attract visitors but cause eye fatigue. Visitors will want to move away from your website if these colors are used all over. It makes your website appear flashy and therefore not very serious in the business world.

The human eye is muscular. The muscles get fatigued and start paining. Moreover the eye nerves respond negatively to flashy colors. The rods and cones in the eye respond by putting patches of mismatched color that obscure the vision and do not allow you to read the website.

Traffic is hard to attract and it is even harder to get that traffic to convert into sales. You do not need to give your customer reasons to drift away from your website by filling it up with tiring colors.

You may well ask, so what colors do I use? Well, the answer is obvious. Use colors that are soft. White or soft backgrounds are good. You can add content in simple black fonts. Use Arial, Times, Calibri or any other popular font that the eye is used to. Remember you want your customer to feel comfortable while browsing your website.

Avoid pop ups and flash banners. They will irritate the customer. Your website has to be simple. Avoid too many contrasting colors. It makes the website appear irritating. Do not go to the other extreme and use boring colors. It will make your website appear dull. You can keep your background cream or light blue, use black fonts. Add headers and banners to give you the splash of color you need. Your pictures should be colorful. This will be visually appealing to your visitor without irritating him.

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