A really cool blogging utility.

03-05-2008

Whilst on the hunt for an alternative to the shiteous built-in WordPress WYSIWYG Editor, I found this little gem. I am posting from it now, in fact! It’s available for Mac OSX and Windows, which is great, because I am running Leopard on my main machine, and XP on my laptop… so I don’t need to worry about being on a certain computer to use it.

The beauty of this app is that it allows you to queue posts, draft posts and edit everything offline.

I am terrible lately at updating my blog, mostly because the mental effort (shyeah, I know…) required to open my browser, be online, save drafts, etc, becomes too cumbersome. Yeah, my life is so hard.

Anyway, check it out!

Email problems

02-11-2008

I have been going about my usual business, working my arse off, the usual, and have discovered that my host is having intermittent issues – if you consider “intermittent” to mean “no-mail-server-emails-for-2-weeks”.

It was strange, because I usually get a lot of enquiries, but this week have not received any! SO Annoying!

So, if you have tried to email via the Enquiry form, I hope you read the blog, because you can email me direct at tea@linkartist.com.au instead. In the meantime, I have been reassured that the email server will eventually be fixed and I HOPE that the queued emails get through…

And yes, I will have a non-boring, non-business related blog post later in the week ;)

You Get What You Pay For…

01-13-2008

I have found that people can be surprised when quoted our price for web design, but the simple matter is that our services are worked out at $100.00 an hour which is, more or less, an industry standard. Web design, and then redesign, can greatly increase the price when you take in the fact that a page design, by itself, can take eight hours or more to create. Add together coding and all the other bells and whistles that make up a unique site and you have your price.

In the end you get a site, tailored to you and your business, which is unique. Your site becomes your front line in marketing your business and can generate you thousands upon thousand of dollars over the life of the site. Is that not worth paying for?

Two web sites, both belonging to design companies, were sent to me this morning that really show that you get what you pay for. One is in English and the other is German but both could be one and the same. The both want your business and both are cheaper than LinkArtist Multimedia, way cheaper.

I’ll talk mostly about the one in English as I can read their site but it’s not that hard to navigate the German site for reasons I will point out.

OK, example 1. Joyvill Inc.

On first impressions, Joyvill’s site is nice and clean. It’s jam packed full of all those buzz word that you expect to find from some of our competitors. Straight away you know where they are located and that they know what Search Engine Optimizations is.

The front page then goes on to things you should already expect, like a site that will impress your competition and your clients will be able to use. Would you expect anything else?

OK so sounds pretty good huh? A cheap easy to use, pretty site from a ‘Web Design’ company! Where do I sign? Not so fast!

Example 2 Design Bits

Have you clicked on the link yet? Notice anything? I’ll make it easier.

joyville

Photobucket

Kinda similar huh! There is a reason for this. They use templates for their ‘design’. Both sites come from the same template then are populated with content specific to their own site. If I had a template to use, I’m pretty sure that I could knock up that site in five hours or so. Five times $100.00 equals $500.00 not ‘from $1600.00′! So it’s easy to see where the profit is.

But what if both businesses are connected and or owned by the same group? I did consider that and it could be true. Instead I took a look at their previous work. Now using what you know about internet templates, do you see any similarities?

Basically it comes down to this. You get what you pay for. If you like what these guys are selling then how about this.

1. Go to Template Monster , Free Site Templates or one of the many other thousands of template sites on the net.

2. Pay between $25 and $65 for a basic template.

3. Using Google or any other search engine to hunt out step by step information you need to upload and populate your very own site!

4. Enjoy. Just don’t worry when you see a copy of your site somewhere else.

Bioshock…wow. Just wow.

09-22-2007

Let me tell you how I came upon BioShock: a new client liked the 1950’s dark, art deco feel to it, and asked me if I had seen it as a reference for their site design. So, being the ever-selfless businesswoman, I decided to spend some time playing the game to see how it felt. And a conversation like this took place:

Me: “I know I have made it when I get to justify playing games for a client.”

Jason: “No, Téa, you’ll know you’ve made it when you get to charge clients for the hours spent playing the game”.

Man he’s a smartarse.

A couple of weeks later, I have just, right now, finished playing it. And I have to say, I think… I have found the perfect game. Not too hard that it alienates me (Hello Far Cry-where-I-played-the-last-level-in-God-mode-because-I-have-carpal-tunnel-and-suck), and enough depth and choice to the story that keeps my goldfish-like attention span.

I really don’t know that I can fault this game. There are so many ways to play it (and apparently the ending reflects *how* you played the game…of course, I am always the good guy and can’t bring myself to play the bad guy… so I am just going on rumour :) )

Anyway, if you haven’t played it yet. DO. IT. NOW.

It is creepy. It is intelligent. And, it is currently 12:35am and I don’t know that I can sleep just yet because I may just have nightmares. But boy, is it fun!

Check out the demo here.

What? Widdle ol’ me…?

05-25-2007

I got an email from my friend, Former President James Taylor this morning that said:

Hey Téa, just had to share…

I’m disappointed that Trevor didn’t include the screen cap in the lecture notes (I think he respects your IP ;P), but go to page 11 of this PDF and check the references.

We had a look at online writing in Journalism class the other night and, for an example of a personal blog, what came up on the big screen in the lecture theatre but ‘Trash Talk with Tealou’.

I laughed heartily :)

Just letting you know that your inner most rantings now have even more academic merit ;)

JT

The attached PDF, sure enough, referred to my website as an example. Holy Shit. It is so funny, and also weird, because I have also been copping some flak from my sister and her mates because I called her suburb shitholesville on my blog and they only just found out about it. Heh.

Its funny how you can go on a journey with a blog. It has chronicled some ups and downs, from moving house to having children, to being in the public service and wanting to glass the Town of Esperance in the face with the nearest bottle, to writing about Politics and world affairs, and the odd random quip between me and my equally insane soulmate.

I know it may sound strange, but its not often that my web life and my real life collide. I know it may sound funny when I make my living on the web, but really, it was always just this thing I do, representing my thoughts at the time, random observations about various things, and I have never actually thought that anyone read it, let alone putting it in a Journalism class.

I can think of maybe once or twice where something I have written in the heat of the moment has gotten me in hot water in the “real world”, like the time I upset the in-laws, and I think my mother reads occasionally… and a previous employer called it “Undergraduate but well written” (thanks Jeff!)… but its always just been a place where I let off steam, and a place where I attempt to log what life was like in my 20s. When my grandchildren google me one day, they will see that I was not always reliant on other people to wipe my arse (with the exception of this brief time), and was actually an ok human being.

I actually quite like that little bit of acknowledgment, particularly from a lecturer at my old University. And its not an ego thing, its not even out of a desire to share my stories, but just to have someone that is outside my immediate group in the blogosphere and circle of friends say “hey, look at this” – well, thats pretty cool.

It makes me think that I am kinda on the right track.

Even if my sister’s friends from Leda want to smash my face in for expressing myself, so what? Nothing they write will ever be used in a University classroom. So there.

And Leda IS a shithole.

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