Simon Lilly’s Blog

Friday Five – Free Edition

// July 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

I’m currently reading Chris Anderson’s new book Free (Buy on Amazon or read online for free @ Scribd) and this has inspired today’s blog post. I’ve highlighted five sites/blogs that offer you something (pretty useful) for nothing!

1. Creative Commons Imagery via Google Search – This has only just gone live, but Google image search now allows you to search for images that you can use on your site, with your blog posts, etc for free (just don’t forget the credit).
2. User Testing @ fivesecondtest.com – For free? Well it’s not a massively comprehensive solution, but if you want to check if a design is conveying the key brand messages, this online service might be perfect. Simply upload a concept design and people then have 5 seconds to look at the design and feedback to you what stood out.
3. Wireframe Tool – The Pencil Project is a great browser-based sketching an GUI creation tool that works inside of Firefox. One simple download and away you go…
4. Twitter’s taken over the online world, which is probably a good thing. Grab this free Twitter Icon Set made available by the ever-excellent Smashing Magazine.
5. WordPress templates are easy to find, but quality ones that work with the latest versions 2.7+ are not so easy.  Here are 15 high quality, but still free templates that Noupe have pulled together.

Would love to hear any great resources any of you have found for free recently in the comments?

Friday Five – Michael Jackson Edition 03/07/2009

// July 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

The sad passing of music legend Michael Jackson saw some very interesting online impacts from traffic surges on social media sites, through to chart topping sales of digital downloads. As the dust begins to settle a number of sites have looked at the impact it had online:

• Social media gurus FreshNetworks look at the rise of Flash Mobs to celebrate the life and music of MJ. Some great YouTube clips on there.
• Times Online highlights the power of Twitter for real-time news (Every article like this must make Google cringe).
• Twitter and Facebook had massive usage increases as the news spread, the Tech Blog at the LA Times looks at the numbers.
• The LA Times looks back at how gossip website TMZ stole the limelight from TV news channels all over the world.
• TechCrunch reports that the web as a whole struggled to deliver information as everyone rushed online to get the news.

Friday Four 10/04/2009

// April 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

A bit of a mobile/hardware theme this week…

• TechCrunch give us an update on the ‘CrunchPad‘, this large, slim iPod Touch-like device could be a very nice portable netbook rival.
• 12 top tips for starting down the road on iPhone Development on SitePoint.
• MacRumours suggest that 4 million new iPhones have been ordered by Apple
• Engadget sneaked out some early shots of what is rumoured to be the Zune HD.

Friday Five 03/04/09

// April 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

Seth’s back in my Friday Five, along with regular Twitter, a useful quick image sharing app and some advice for anyone creating a mobile website…

• Seth Godin reveals the secret of new marketing
• One-click uploading of images for fast and fun image sharing from Skitch.com
• Ex-Google Lead Designer joins Twitter as Creative Director (this could be funny if the acquisition rumours are true!)
• Graham Charlton over at Econsultancy gives some great Best practice tips for mobile websites
• Pallin give us three nice ideas for Monetizing Twitter

Sunday Seven 29/03/09

// March 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

As I missed my self-imposed Friday deadline, I’ve upped the number of featured articles to seven from the usual five.

• Australian e-mail marketeers Campaign Monitor have a released a birds-eye view of the e-mail client popularity and usage over time. This is priceless for any e-mail marketers out there.
• It used to be ‘If you build it, they will come’ but times have changed, social media guru Chris Brogan contributes an an excellent PDF download titled – Trust Economies: Investigation into the New ROI of the Web
• For anyone using or considering using Twitter as a commercial communication channel ‘50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business‘ and the ‘14 Types of Twitter Personalities‘ are good insights.
• Mashable reviews a nice online way of creating instant Twitter Communities with Tweetizen.
• Brendan Regan looks at homepages for a living (nice work!), he’s blogged about a strong homepage design he recently found whilst ‘working’.
• The final article is a great introduction to developing an Optimisation Culture into the business you work in.
  

Friday Five 20/03/09

// March 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

A great week for browser releases, a major mobile OS announcement, some Magento SEO tweaks and a whole host of Fireworks tutorials await…

• Apple continue to grab media attention with the announcement of iPhone OS 3.0
• Internet Explorer 8 was released on Thursday for general consumption, if you haven’t already it’s time to download and test those websites!
• E-commerce new comer and pace-setter Magento receives some SEO tweaks in this blog post from Yoast.
• Just before the IE8 release, Google snuck out v2.0 of Google Chrome in beta format.
• Adobe Fireworks is my chosen image editing application, it’s the image app that I grew up with really. I spotted this nice post that covers 40 Adobe Fireworks tutorials, well worth a look.

Friday Five 06/03/09

// March 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // friday five

Every Friday I’m going to pull together short post listing my favourite five blog posts from the previous week that are of value and interest to online marketers, retailers and internet entrepreneurs.

• Skittles had either  a moment of genius or madness earlier this week when they let Social Media take over their website.
• Following the new layout debate, the overhaul of Facebook profiles, they’ve finally got around to relaunching Facebook Pages – Mashable has a great overview.
• Seth Godin talks about how engagement can be used to create a relationship in the panhandler’s secret.
• Smarterware.org offers a succinct set of workday guidelines for quality over quantity.
• Smashing Magazine gives some brilliant desktop wallpaper options in their March Desktop Calendar update.