60 Useful Online Generators for Designers Today’s competitive market makes it necessary to stay updated in all the dimensions in designing industry and designers need all the latest software to be in the top. But purchasing software or downloading a huge one may not be in the top priority especially if it is going to be used only after a trial. In such cases online generators can be of great help which do the necessary job and some tools don’t have to be downloaded also. A lot goes in designing the backgrounds with different textures and patterns, choosing the right colors and a lot other factors. You may be interested in the following application related articles as well. Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links that our readers may like. Don’t forget to and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates. Useful Online Generators for Designers 256 Pixels 80 x 15 brilliant Button Maker AJAX loading GIF generator AJAX Info Background Maker Background Patterns Badges
OpenX launches the first global exchange for real-time bidding on native mobile advertising 26 February '14, 06:00am Follow Ad tech leader OpenX today announced Native O|X, a new ad exchange with an unprecedented combination of several of the most popular trends in the industry: mobile-first, real-time bidding and native advertising. While the new offering might sound like a pile of buzzwords to those outside the advertising space, Native O|X represents a natural next step for OpenX and the industry. The firm helped pioneer the rise of real-time bidding and programmatic advertising, which relies on software algorithms to automate the buying and selling of ad inventory. With its rich media and video content, Native O|X should result in a better overall ad experience on mobile for us consumers. “The 320×50 banners that are cemented in mobile sites and apps are not that effective…What publishers are telling us is that those units just don’t perform well,” Rob Kramer, OpenX’s general manager for mobile, said in an interview.
Storm Type Foundry When You Fly, Beck's New Album Is Free How's this for in-flight entertainment? Singer-songwriter Beck, who gained worldwide fame in 1994 with his mellow hit single "Loser," will stream his new album at no cost to airplane passengers using Gogo Inflight Internet starting Monday. Capitol Records and Gogo told Mashable that Beck's album Morning Phase, which goes on sale Tuesday and marks his first in six years, will be free to stream for 30 days. The album's early availability on Monday as a stream on Gogo's homepage means people in the skies will get to hear Morning Phase before it's even offered on the ground. The unconventional release follows a string of elaborate album unveilings. The unconventional release follows a string of elaborate album unveilings. Earlier this year, for example, CBS.com debuted Bruce Springsteen's High Hopes album more than a week before its wide release, as part of a promotion for CBS show The Good Wife. Have something to add to this story? BONUS: 20 Songs Turning 20 in 2014
NEWTYPOGRAPHY - free fonts for the cloud A guide to getting everlasting traffic with keyword research Denis Duvauchelle is CEO and co-founder of Twoodo, helping your team organize itself using simple #hashtags. When you look at any of the thought leaders in marketing and copywriting, read any top keyword research guide (from Hubspot, Copyblogger, Moz) they will all tell you the same thing: You gotta get your keyword research right. What will keyword research impact on? SEOSEMsocial media activitycustomer discoverygetting the right people into the funnelbranding Why? Language links to identity. We are a team collaboration tool. Language is a tool you can use to build data about your ideal users, where they are, how to find them and how to attract them. People identify with the things they use – here are some amazing survey results about iPhones, Androids and Blackberry users: iPhone users are quite vain and travel moreAndroid users are good cooks, work longer hours and drink moreBlackberry users are richer and eat out the most These companies got their language right. Next: Step-by-step guide
20+ Tools to Create Your Own Infographics A picture is worth a thousand words – based on this, infographics would carry hundreds of thousands of words, yet if you let a reader choose between a full-length 1000-word article and an infographic that needs a few scroll-downs, they’d probably prefer absorbing information straight from the infographic. What’s not to like? Colored charts and illustrations deliver connections better than tables and figures and as users spend time looking back and forth the full infographic, they stay on the site longer. Plus, readers who like what they see are more likely to share visual guides more than articles. While not everyone can make infographics from scratch, there are tools available on the Web that will help you create your very own infographics. In this article, we’re listing more than 20 such options to help you get your messages across to your readers, visually. Read Also: The Infographic Revolution: Where Do We Go From Here? What About Me? “What About Me?” Vizualize.me Piktochart easel.ly
How to Make your Content Stand Out: Give it Muscle If you want your online content to have an impact on your audience, it pays to give it some serious muscle. Here’s how… Make it longer, better, slower, stronger Sure, your audience has limited time, but if everything is brief, “snackable” and relentless, you may end up getting more unsubscribes than you’d like. Yes, there will always be the scores of OMG political gaffes, animals jumping on trampolines and Ryan Gosling memes. When experiences are immersive and compelling, users become more invested. Patagonia does a great job with slower, more thoughtful, yet simple content: elegant photo essays, gorgeous, immersive big wave surfing videos, and in-depth profiles of their Ambassadors. Adjust the volume Try slowing down the cadence, too. Speaking of longer, as we’re all more comfortable reading vertically, there are more and more sites employing scrolling, usually Parallax techniques to tell a visual, interactive story. Do it live! What’s better than cooking from a recipe on your iPad?
Ghostlab One site. One experience Whether you want it or not, your site is going mobile - every day. Use Ghostlab to make sure all your users get the same neat experience - whatever operating system, browser or smart phone they are using. Synchronized Testing. Really Ghostlab synchronizes scrolls, clicks, reloads and form input across all connected clients. Page scroll Form inputs Clicks Reload Inspection Use the superior built-in inspector to get to the bottom of any problem fast. Any client. Any JavaScript-enabled client can instantly connect to Ghostlab - no setup required. Firefox latest Chrome latest Safari latest Internet Explorer 8/9/10 Opera Mobile Opera 11 FireFox Mobile Blackberry Windows Phone Safari mobile Android 2.3 through 4.2
7 Tips for Igniting Your Content With Social Media Angie Pascale | March 5, 2014 | 7 Comments inShare62 You can't just create a video, post it on Facebook, and expect it to generate tons of awareness, engagement, and sales. "Content is fire. Jay Baer uses this analogy to explain the idea that content is the main substance in any digital marketing campaign; social media channels ignite that content and help it to spread. But you can't just create a video, post it on Facebook, and expect it to generate tons of awareness, engagement, and sales. 1. In addition to the standard methods of audience discovery - industry research, focus groups, and brand surveys - you can also use social media data to build audience personas. 2. Take Charmin's Sit or Squat app, for example. Charmin isn't selling anything with Sit or Squat. 3. To broaden the conversation and take the spotlight off your brand, you should create content pillars.
Harvard Library Is Hiring a 'Wikipedian in Residence' The school's Houghton Library is seeking someone to help make its collections as accessible as possible. WIkimedia Commons The Houghton Library on the Harvard campus holds the university's collection of rare books. Inside its walls—in addition to objects culled from the old "Treasure Room" of Widener, the school's principal library—you'll find Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts; information about the creation of books; and collections of papers from, among many others, Louisa May Alcott, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry James, William James, Samuel Johnson, James Joyce, John Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Theodore Roosevelt, John Updike, and Gore Vidal. The Houghton Library on the Harvard campus is awesome, is what I'm saying. Yesterday, John Overholt, Houghton's Curator of Early Modern Books & Manuscripts, posted a job listing. Overholt explained the reasons for the creation of the Harvard version of the job over email:
The Best Length for Every Online Content 18.7K Flares Filament.io 18.7K Flares × Every so often when I’m tweeting or emailing, I’ll think: Should I really be writing so much? I tend to get carried away. And for the times that I do, it sure would be nice to know if all this extra typing is hurting or helping my cause. I want to stand out on social media, but I want to do it in the right way. Curious, I dug around and found some answers for the ideal lengths of tweets and titles and everything in between. The ideal length of a tweet is 100 characters Whom should you trust when it comes to advice on the ideal length of a tweet? Twitter’s best practices reference research by Buddy Media about tweet length: 100 characters is the engagement sweet spot for a tweet. Creativity loves constraints and simplicity is at our core. The Buddy Media research falls in line with similar research by Track Social in a study of 100 well-known brands that are popular on Twitter. The ideal length of a Facebook post is less than 40 characters Recap
Commenting Platform Disqus Introduces Sponsored Comments Disqus, which says it powers the comment sections on almost 3 million websites, is announcing a new type of ad unit today — Sponsored Comments. Since Disqus already runs ads through its Promoted Discovery program, the idea of a Sponsored Comment seems like a pretty natural addition. However, in a company blog post, General Manager David Fleck said this actually stems from the launch of Featured Comments a month ago, with the Disqus team asking, “Can we use the concept of Featured Comments in order to make more money for publishers and allow brands to reach specific audiences?” It sounds like a Sponsored Comment is basically a Featured Comment that advertisers pay for, occupying the same spot at the top of the thread. As for the reader, Fleck said Disqus will be upholding the quality of Sponsored Comments with a team of its own that reviews these comments and applies an “extremely high threshold” before allowing them to be published.