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Monthly Archives: August 2009
Invoicera & eWebBuddy Giveaway – Winners Announced
Here it is, the awaited results of the 1st Giveaway on eWebBuddy partnered with Invoicera. Though we would have like to give a prize to everyone who participated we cannot, so the three lucky winners are:
1. Mahip Singh Saluja
2. Nathalie Brault
3. Melanie
Congratulations to all the winners and participants. You will be approached by the invoicera team soon with the details of how you can avail the prize.
We will have more such giveaways in future so to make sure you dont miss them, subscribe to the RSS feed. Follow me on twitter – @onlyyourspiyu
I would like to thank Invoicera for sponsoring this contest. If you would like to sponsor a giveaway on ewebbuddy.com, contact me.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Now Available
Apple’s latest and most powerful OS Snow Leopard is out for all you Mac Lovers.
Snow Leopard
Its now available in stores and you can get a copy for yourself today. Thats not it if are already an owner of Mac OS X Leopard, you can get an upgrade for just $29.
ZD net has already reviewed the OS and the reviewers have rated it at 8.2(excellent). To read the review - click here.
According to ZD, pros/cons are:
Pros
- Exposé in the Dock and better file and folder viewing in Stacks make finding apps and files much easier
- A completely overhauled QuickTime X now sports a cleaner interface and recording tools
- Exchange support across Mail, the Address Book and iCal is huge for those who take their Macs to work
Cons
- Snow Leopard works with Intel Macs only — PowerPC users are out of luck
- Requires £25 upgrade fee
To get one for yourself and check out more details, simply head to Apple’s MAC website.
There’s also a student offer running right now which will entitle you to get a free ipod touch along with a MAC.
Download free eBooks more than 1 million from Google Books
Hey people this is just in and its great news, specially for folks who love reading. Google Books which has been around for quite a long time and has been helping people read books which have been out of print, gone rare, etc is here with a bang. They have added to their collection more than 1 million books which were available in the public domain. And these books will be available as free download in the pdf/epub format.
This is what the google blog says,
I’m excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we’re hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places.
So what does this exactly means?
Rare, old, expensive books available in the public domain is now just a click away. You can search, download and enjoy them. Knowledge is meant to share and grow and google books is what making it easier bu digitizing all of it.
What is EPUB format?
EPUB format is a light weight and free format compared to the heavy image based pdf format. For your desktops and lappy’s, PDF format still works out great but for people who are used to reading on portable devices like palmtops, ebook readers, iphones, etc EPUB format is the best way to read these books. EPUB is a free, open source format so you can be sure that it will be supported by most of the document readers available today.
How to download from Google Books?
Well its quite simple:
- Goto Google Books and search for that book you have on your mind
- The book should be in the public domain for you to be able to download
- Click on the download button and choose the desired format.
- And Voilaaa you have the book in your hands (literally)
Download ebooks from Google Books
So, as always google is upto great things to make our life easier. If you would like to know how a book is converted into a digital format, read it on the Google Blog.
Also, today is the last day for eWebBuddy’s Giveaway sponsored by Invoicera. Participate and who knows you maybe one of the 3 lucky winners!! Contest is over, winner will be announced soon. Good Day…
45 Basic Rules of Creating a Great Logo Design
A Logo is one’s identity and I believe the most important step when one is intending to grow in a brand, recognized all around. Designing a logo is both simple and tough at the same time depending on what exactly you have in mind. Identity design is one of the most challenging fields and demands your creative juices to keep on flowing all the time. But that does not mean you cannot pull off a unique and cool logo for yourself. Whether you are a professional or just a beginner, in this post there are 45 very basic guidelines which you should keep in mind when creating a design. I stumbled upon this one and thought it would be a great help for all my friends here. The credit to these steps go to Tanner Christensen for his post…
Logo Design Process
So here’s the list:
45 Basic Rules/Guidelines of creating a great logo design
1. Do not use more than three colors.
2. Get rid of everything that is not absolutely necessary.
3. Type must be easy enough for your grandma to read.
4. The logo must be recognizable.
5. Create a unique shape or layout for the logo.
6. Completely ignore what your parents and/or spouse think about the design.
7. Confirm that the logo looks appealing to more than just three (3) individuals.
8. Do not combine elements from popular logos and claim it as original work.
9. Do not use clipart under any circumstances.
10. The logo should look good in black and white.
11. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when inverted.
12. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when resized.
13. If the logo contains an icon or symbol, as well as text, place each so that they complement one another.
14. Avoid recent logo design trends. Instead, make the logo look timeless.
15. Do not use special effects (including, but not limited to: gradients, drop shadows, reflections, and light bursts).
16. Fit the logo into a square layout if possible, avoid obscure layouts.
17. Avoid intricate details.
18. Consider the different places and ways that the logo will be presented.
19. Invoke feelings of being bold and confident, never dull and weak.
20. Realize that you will not create a perfect logo.
21. Use sharp lines for sharp businesses, smooth lines for smooth businesses.
22. The logo must have some connection to what it is representing.
23. A photo does not make a logo.
24. You must surprise customers with presentation.
25. Do not use more than two fonts.
26. Each element of the logo needs to be aligned. Left, center, right, top, or bottom.
27. The logo should look solid, with no trailing elements.
28. Know who is going to be looking at the logo before you think of ideas for it.
29. Always choose function over innovation.
30. If the brand name is memorable, the brand name should be the logo.
31. The logo should be recognizable when mirrored.
32. Even large companies need small logos.
33. Everyone should like the logo design, not just the business that will use it.
34. Create variations. The more variations, the more likely you are to get it right.
35. The logo must look consistent across multiple platforms.
36. The logo must be easy to describe.
37. Do not use taglines in the logo.
38. Sketch out ideas using paper and pencil before working on a computer.
39. Keep the design simple.
40. Do not use any “swoosh” or “globe”symbols.
41. The logo should not be distracting.
42. It should be honest in its representation.
43. The logo should be balanced visually.
44. Avoid bright, neon colors and dark, dull colors.
45. The logo must not break any of the above rules.
Hope that was helpful. Do comment and tell me if you do not agree with any of these or whatever you think. Image credit Chris Spooner, SpoonGraphics
Win 3 Invoicera Subscriptions – eWebBuddy Giveaway
News Flash! – Invoicera Partners with eWebBuddy is here for a Giveaway!
Treat for all and no tricks involved.
Being a freelancer myself, I am aware of what a headache invoicing and billing could be and that too when you are dealing with multiple clients, working on several projects simultaneously. There are deadlines to meet and invoicing would be the last task you would like yourself to be involved in, though it is obviously very important else how would you get paid??
These days there are various online invoicing software available but not all work in your favor. Many of them are at a loss on features or there is a high cost involved. There is hardly any software which comes to the rescue of freelancers, entrepreneurs or SMB owners and helps them to sync their all crucial tasks, eventually, saving them from making any bloopers. But things are changing now and Invoicera is one of the latest exciting entrants in the race bringing about this change.
What is Invoicera?
Invoicera is an online billing software which fortifies every individual and helps you to channelize your revenue without commencing any invoicing errors. The software comes with many features, many of them are listed below and many more are yet to come, which every freelancer or an entrepreneur will crave for.
Features:
- Report Generation
- Automatic Invoicing for Recurring/Regular Billing
- Export and Import your Documents
- Multiple Payment Gateways
- Staff Management
- Create Professional Quotes and Estimates
- Data Back-up
- Multiple Currency Support
- Alerts and Reminders
- Invoice Scheduling
- Late Fees Payment
- Invoice/Estimate As Attachment
Is it free?
Well, there is surely a free plan with limited features that will help you try it out. But as some say, “All good things come with a price”. Invoicera plans start from as low as $7/month. But the winners will be getting it absolutely free.
eWebBuddy Giveaways for 3 lucky people
Now, who doesn’t like free stuff here and that too something that is so amazing. The folks at Invoicera have been kind enough to sponsor eWebBuddy’s first ever contest. 3 lucky people among you all have a chance of winning a free subscription to the Classic plan of Invoicera, how cool is that?!
What to do to win?
Well, it’s pretty simple, you can take part in this contest and stand a chance by doing the following things:
- Just simply post a comment of how you think Invoicera will help you or even a simple Hi!
- Subscribe to eWebBuddy RSS feed
- Tweet about this contest and confirm your tweet by commenting here the twitter status URL. ex. http://twitter.com/onlyyourspiyu/status/2604845236. You get this URL by clicking the link just below the twitter entry containing text like this: “about 2 hours ago from web”.
- Stumble, Digg, Spinn, Mixxx this post… Spread the News!!
Important Pointers
- The winners will be decided via http://www.random.org/
- Fill your name and e-mail address correctly because the winners will be contacted via e-mail only.
- Post your comment before the contest ends. Any comment after the due date will not be considered liable to the prize.
- The contest is open till Friday, 28th August, 2009 and the winner will be decided on the same day. Contest is over, winner will be announced soon.
So participate and who knows you are one of the lucky winners. If you are not yet subscribed to eWebBuddy, do subscribe because you wouldn’t like to miss out on our future contests too. If you would like to sponsor a contest on eWebBuddy, please use the contact form to get in touch.
Get all your Social Activity updates in one place
The posts on eWebBuddy are a little infrequent lately but its anyday better than haing no posts at all, what say. But the main reason for this infrequency is in between my hectic schedule, day job, freelance work, churning out quality content becomes a little tough. But worry not, I will always be on the lookout for something great and useful for all my buddies out there.
So what do I have this time? All of us are a big fan of the social networks and are completely hooked thanks to different services. I know many of you are tweeting as you read this. But its becoming quite an hassle managing all the different social accounts and here’s where ‘Social Media Aggregators’ come in picture.
What are Social Media Aggregators?
According to wikipedia, an Aggregator is
Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates, creating a unique information space or “personal newspaper.”
In simple words, an aggregator is a tool or a services which groups several of your interests, subscriptions, services together and makes them available to you in one single place. For all those who were not aware, feed readers like google reader or bloglines are Feed Aggregators.
Moving further, ‘Social Media Aggregators’ (SMA) are meant to help you by grouping all your social medias in one single place. By social medias I mean twitter, facwebook, etc…
How they work?
Well, when you subscribe or register or start using a SMA, you will provide it information of all the social networks you want to follow. By information, I mean it could be something as simple as a RSS feed or your login information to various sites. If you are thinking of security, do not worry there are many trust worthy SMAs around.
Once you are registered, you need to login to just one place and get all the updates and happenings in your network. Multiple browser windows and logins will become history.
Some SMAs you can use?
Here are 3 Social Media Aggregators that have gained quite a lot of popularity, are very different from each other and very useful in everyway:
- Streamy – This is a website which lets you add not just your social networking sites but also your daily blogs, instant messaging tools and a lot more. Log in to just this one site and stay hooked to all your networks.What makes streamy different from other 2 is that it keeps all your social networks arranged in different tabs and does not merge them into one, single feed.
- Flock – This unlike others which are online tools is actually a desktop application, which can be downloaded from here. Flock is a browser like firefox which is better known as a social networking browser and comes integrated with SMAs. A must checkout with several features.
- Friendfeed – If you are a fan of Twitter like interface, then this service is for you. Get all the updates from all the services in one place as part of a stream. Others can follow your soical activities by just following your feed and you can do the same for others.
FriendFeed
Streamy
Flock Browser
So, that was SMAs in simple and I hope this will make your life easier. Do tell me about more such aggregators if you know of. Will update the list. This post was a result of a similar post I saw on PCWorld, courtesy of also a couple of pics. The social media image credit goes to blackglass.
Also, stay on the lookout, we have eWebBuddy’s first ever contest coming up which will give you a chance to win a little something….something!
The Smashing Book – PreOrder & get 20% discount
Now, who hasn’t heard of smashing magazine?! A favorite among designers, web developers and et all. Great resources, amazing articles aamong the highest earning blogs in the blogosphere…
Now they have taken another step and will be releasing there 1st book, the Smashing Book in September end.
The Smashing Book
There are many already queued up to grab a copy just like it used to happen for Harry Potter books and now you can too join the bandwagon. Secure a copy for yourself by pre-ordering. Not only will you be among the 1st people to get the book(printed) but also will get a 20% discount.
Now if you are wondering what the book has. This is what folks at Smashing Magazine saw:
The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.
To know more, click here.
So what are you waiting for? Pre-order now…
Tweet Upside Down, Flip that text – Twitter Trick
This one is a quick post. So many of us hooked to twitter and look for different things to do with it, what else could be the explanation to the release of so many twitter-based web apps every day. This one is just for fun and actually not even a twitter application.
Its a way with the help of which you can tweet upside down, i meant the text. You can simply flip whatever you say for example, (I flipped this text):
¡¡ʇxǝʇ sıɥʇ pǝddılɟ ı ʎǝɥ
Looks cool and fun eh, and its pretty simple…just go this link, http://www.revfad.com/flip.html and type in whatever you would like to flip. It will provide you with the flipped text which you can copy and tweet away!!
So I am for now, Happy Tweeting…and ya you can follow me too!!
Google Labs SMS Channels – Amazing free service for Indians
Hey buddies, I am back after being off the buddy NEWS for a little while and I am here with some goodies.
Google Labs, known for coming out with innovative ideas and helpful services has done it yet again. And this service is something that would prove to be very interesting too. Though these days most of the Indians carry high end phones with GPRS/Edge and stay connected to the world through internet, that does not help one being alert and always informed about everything. This is where Google Labs’ new service, Google SMS Channels scores it.
What is SMS Channels?
A free service available, only for Indian Mobile subscribers right now, enables one to subscribe to Google channels and get updates on various services like blogger, reader or any RSS feed. There are quite a few channels available at present giving updates about NEWS, weather, sports, tech trends, fashion, etc. And the number of Channels are growing everyday. Check out the latest list of popular SMS Channels.
What is a channel, exactly?
A channel is just like a magazine which you can subscribe to and get the content on your mobile. The content can be subscribed by the channel owner or also by all the subscribers based on the channel settings. A channel generally fetches information from Google services like groups, reader, mails and also from any type of RSS feed.
As a subscriber you can subscribe to channels and that’s not all, you can create your own channels and invite others.
eWebBuddy now has its own channel which will keep you updated of all the posts that come of ewebbuddy blog. Subscribe to the service today and make sure you do not miss a post again!
Update: Check out the latest list of popular SMS Channels.
How to subscribe to channels?
You can search for channels in the channel directory of Google. Also there are several editor picked channels which google recommends based on their content.
To subscribe you will have to set a nickname online and then register your mobile number. On registering, you will recieve a verification code which is required to be entered along with accepting google’s term and conditions.
You can also register for the same through SMS. Following are the instructions from Google:
On SMS you can just send REGISTER to 9870807070 to sign up for the service. You will receive a reply ‘You’ve accepted the Terms of Service at http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/termsofuse. To subscribe, reply ON channel name. eg. ON GoogleNews. For more commands reply HELP’
There are several other commands which will help you to subscribe/unsubscribe to google channels. For the full list of commands available, sms HELP to 9870807070.
For more details and queries on the service, click here!
Update: Check out the latest list of popular SMS Channels.
eWebBuddy’s SMS Channel
As I mentioned earlier, now eWebBuddy has its own SMS Channel. Subscribe to it today and get regular updates. And what more, you can unsubcribe any moment, so what there to loose?
You can also subscribe to the RSS feed directly for your feed readers and follow me on Twitter.