We recently commissioned this video to promote our local Swindon Directory at www.OpenSwindon.co.uk, and it already appears top of YouTube for search terms like – swindon websites.

Video is an easy way to promote your business and it’s great for getting a message across.

See also Tips for Professional Video Podcasting.

Zoner opens to display a media manager, from which you can easily switch to the editor. Crop tool works nice, with the area outside the crop lines darkened out. Plenty of resize opitions with sharpening. Auto quick fix button to improve contrast and colour balance also works well.

Zoner gets our best graphics software award because we love the easy good looking interface, the stable build and because it focuses on the most useful and common photo editing tasks. Visit their website here.

Creating Graphics for Your Website

We often get asked to recommend graphics software, here are a few recommendations.

• don’t bother with expensive high end packages unless you really want to get serious,
• free, reliable and easy to use software is available from places like www.download.com,
• it’s worth putting in a few hours to learn some basic tasks,
• add photo processing into your schedule, do it once a week for 30 minutes,
• adding photos and images to your website regularly is easy and helps to keep it updated,
• remember to use alt tags when adding images to your website,
• using a content management system to upload images makes things easy, we can help with that if you don’t have one.

Our aim was to review and score the graphics software based on:

• ease of use
• intuitive interface
• the number of clicks required to perform the task
• quality of results

Need help with creating quality graphics? Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Top Five Free Graphics Photo Editing Software

1. Zoner Photo Studio

The winner, see our review above.

2. PicPick

Easy installation and really easy to use. Simple, attractive and clear tools along the top include zoom, select, effects, colour palette, painting and drawing.

Scrolling capture option that lets users capture Web pages and other scrolling documents all in one image.

3. PhotoScape

A tiny 16mb download, PhotoScape provides all the features you need to edit digital photos and it’s really easy to use.

The photo editing interface has a retractable file tree and viewer, easy to find and select the photo you want to edit. Once selected, editing tools are along the bottom, clearly marked and easy to use.

4. Fly Free Photo Editing and Viewer

Easy to use with a full list of commonly used tools on the left hand side including crop, resize, brightness and contrast, but no auto adjust. Clunky interface.

5. The Gimp

The Gimp, strange name but this free open source graphics has high end features with interface similar in style to Adobe Photoshop.

Other Graphics Software we Tested

Also tested but didnt’ make the top five were Paint.Net,  virtualStudio, Photo Perfect Express, Photobie, Pixia and Image Tuner.

The Graphics Test we Ran

1. Open large jpg image from the desktop. 2. Crop and resize to a width of 400 pixels. 3. Adjust image quality (sharpness, contrast, colour balance etc.) 4. Save As or Export.

Where to Get Free Software

We can recommend download.cnet.com as a good source for free software.

See more of our tag clouds and graphics at Flickr. We can help you with creating graphics and infographics to upgrade and improve your website, please get in touch!

I love to take photographs so setting up a Flickr account after joining Empire Avenue seemed like a good way to go. Empire Avenue is a social networking game where credits are earned from activity at social media websites like Flickr.

Flickr is a free online photo gallery and photo sharing community with over 6 billion images and over a million members, the features are cool and it’s easy to use, but getting a high Flickr score isn’t that easy on Empire Avenue, and when my score failed to move I decided to investigate why and have a look at what some other users are doing.

It can take a few weeks to get the Flickr score moving, but once you have a network of contacts, good quality popular images and link backs from other sources you should be able to grow your score quite easily.

Of my 50 shareholders surveyed only 32 had Flickr accounts connected, so 64%. About half of those had scores of 2 or less, so a lot of people are missing out on a high Flickr score.

What Determines Flickr Score?

Flickr Score on Empire Avenue is determined by a mix of number of photos uploaded, views, comments, favourites and contacts.

The score for (e)RUBBERDRAGON moved when we had the following Flickr values:

Flickr score = 2 when we had 194 uploads, 242 views, 17 favourites, 15 comments and 208 contacts and 48 people who call us a contact.

Flickr score = 3 when we had 202 uploads, 358 views, 54 favourites, 35 comments and 321 contacts and 87 people who call us a contact.

Flickr score = 4 when we had 202 uploads, 408 views, 61 favourites, 43 comments, 342 contacts and 103 people who call us a contact. It’s worth noting that the score jumped from 3 to 4 in just 11 days and during that period we added no new photos and spent almost no time at all networking on Flickr. Have gone for a Pro upgrade.

Flikcr score = 5 when on Flickr Pro and with 218 uploads, 462 views, 50 comments, 64 favourites.

Empire Avenue Flickr Score from Leonard the EA Advisor

Screen shot from September 2011.

How to Grow Your Flickr Score

The key is to get lot’s of views, comments and favourites, so upload your best work, not just a picture of your backgarden. Choose photos which are interesting, catch the eye and look good at thumbnail size.

Go through this list of daily tasks which should take no longer than 20 minutes.

1. Upload 4 images each day, include titles, descriptions and tags.

2. Connect with other people, either from EA or from your field.

3. Add some photos to groups, in particular the EA group.

4. Favourite, comment and tag other peoples photos.

5. Create a link back to your Flickr url from other locations.

Flickr isn’t a popular channel on Empire Avenue, just over half the accounts we surveyed had Flickr connected, but it can be a great way to earn credits if you have good quality image content to share, it’s free, account setup is easy and you can start adding photos in minutes.

Flickr Account Suspended?

It should go without saying, but only upload your own photographs to Flickr, your account could be suspended if you upload other peoples photographs.

Flickr Pro Account

According to Leonard, the EA Flickr Advisor, data obtained from Flickr is different and more accurate if you have a Flickr Pro account. We haven’t upgraded yet, but will update you when we have.

Checking Your Flickr Values

Easiest to use EA stats, go to Advisors and employ Leonard, he gives you a break down of photos added, total views, comments and faves.

On Flickr, go to your Photostream, click on Popular in the main navigation, you’ll see some tabs appear, Views and Favourites, looking through those should give you a rough idea of numbers.

Contacts information can be found in Contacts – click on Contact List or Who calls you a Contact?

Where to Promote Your Flickr Photostream

There is a Flickr group for EA members at add one photo, comment on 2 and tag 3

xBar Members on Facebook, add your Flickr link to the list in documents.

Case Studies – Actual Flickr Scores

(e)MICHAELQTODD has a Flickr score of 17, posting just 30 photos but had 531 contacts. Clearly there is no need to upload a lot of photos to get a good Flickr score, Michael has a lot of comments next to his photos, and presumeably a lot of views.

(e)THEWORLD365 beautiful photographs but low score of one. Only 107 photos posted and just 100 contacts.

(e)RGAGE just 33 uploads, but already had score higher than one, contacts here seem important – has 404.

(e)UIX over 3790 uploads and 16032 views, but only a score of 3, lacking Favourites, Comments and Contacts.

(e)MABER no favourites and only 2 comments, but already had a Flickr score of 3! In this case it looks like the 349 uploads that are adding to the score.

(e)JSTSWEETANGL already on a score of 3 with just 20 uploads and only 14 favourites!

(e)MISSM Flickr score 36, 83 uploads but with almost 5000 views and over 200 favourites and lots of comments.

Please get in touch if you’d like to have your Flickr score featured here! (e)RUBBERDRAGON.

References

Thomas Hawk has tips on what gets attention on Flickr.

Improve Photography have some great tips for getting on the Flickr Explore page,

Thanks also to anyone missed out of here!

Related EA resources take a look at EA Luxury Items calculations.

There are plenty of free open source content management systems available now, either for download or available from your hosting provider via an easy installation wizard, but website administration custom designed around your business and inline with your needs has several advantages that standard off the shelf systems don’t offer.

The Benefits of a Custom Content Management System

• a custom system allows easier integration with back office systems and business processes
• it can save you time on administration, no need to click thru mulitple menus, have the most important functions on the dashboard
• automate your business processes stage by stage by developing the cms
• unique website layout, so your designer can go town and all the important elements will still be editable via the administration area, no sticking to established templates
• often it’s easier to code something from scratch than to search through pages of plugins and add-ons that don’t work correctly when you find them
• flexibility, out of the box systems are limited in what they can do
• custom systems also allow add ons, modules and upgrades, a custom system built with Ruby on Rails (our chosen development platform) can be easily developed and upgraded over time
• a custom system is more focused on your needs, with concise unbloated code
• security, all other things being equal, commonly used systems with open source code are more likely to be attacked, with already established gateways for breaching
• and finally, a cms allows you to update your website, whether it’s new products, special offers, price changes or text amends, you can login anytime to post updates, a custom cms will simply make that task easier, by allowing us to design and optimise the dashboard and the update process for you.

Difficulties in Customising an Existing Cms

Free open source content management systems will usually come with a template. The standard template is unlikely to fit your business, so the template can be amended and changed using plugins, control panels, css, html and the like. Sometimes, only a few changes are required and the website can be up and finished quickly, this is the case particularly for simple websites and flexible customers. However, in our experience, clients often want to have custom designs which stand out and custom features and functionality which aren’t necessarily easy to implement with an off the shelf system.

In other words, it’s often easier, quicker and more direct to build a custom cms based on the requirement, than to change an existing system to fit the requirement.

Amending existing features and modules inside existing systems can take more time and it can have unexpected consequences on other functionality.

How Much is a Custom Content Management System?

Prices of our custom content management systems start at £500, and for a larger system with back end integration, user and email communications management and other functionality, prices can stretch to over £5000.

Prices include free hosting for one year and training. Contact us today and let’s talk about your idea, the estimated costs and the next steps.

WordPress Installation £400

This blog was originally created as a test run of WordPress. It’s worked well, it’s easy to add new posts and gives us a lot of capabilities, after choosing an existing template, adding a few plugins and editing the css a little, we stuck with what was given. If you are flexible and there is a template which suits your business, we also provide WordPress installation including setup, free hosting for one year and training starting at £400.

Notes.

If you’d like more information, see this interesting discussion and article on a coding competion, designed to answer which type of cms is best? The article includes a discussion on how to make the call on whether a client’s needs are best suited by a CMS, and whether the job needs a custom build, worth reading.

Since launch, a number of new advertisers have come on board.

Online calculator tools can be used effectively to encourage user interaction, to provide users with useful information, to collect data and to initiate first contact with potential customers. We have a couple of new calculators on the drawing board, if you’d like to have one for your website, do get in touch.

In light of recent security breaches in the UK, including phone hacking, infiltration of organisations by the secret police and document leakages, VTE provides an easy, low tech, secure and affordable method of communication.

The added benefit of VTE is that it brings people closer together, in addition to message content transmission, use of VTE by it’s very nature includes additional sensory perceptions such as sight, atmosphere, touch and smell, all these senses add to the strength and power of the message, enabling users to transmit far more information than they could normally send through use of digital technologies.

Rubber Dragon are comfortable with continued use of the mobile phone and internet communications, “we are an open organisation, we don’t really deal with secret information, we generally work on small local projects” claims Chris the Managing Director, but for big corporates running dodgy deals such as BAE Systems who recently accepted guilt in a multi billion bribary scandal, VTE presents obvious benefits – no paper trail and no digital copies.

VTE a Solution to Document Leaks

VTE overcomes document leaks such as the recent release of the US Embassy Cables by Wikileaks and The Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera, because with VTE there are no documents. If you have information that you really don’t want anyone else to know about, if it’s really secret, don’t use email and don’t use mobile, it’s as simple as that.

Of course there are significant downsides, VTE doesn’t work over large distances, even a few feet between voice and ear can result in security breaches. Voice to ear is best performed close up, added security measures include covering the lips (to prevent lip reading from distance) and implementation of background sound, dance music like the new hit from Miley Cyrus, Who Owns My Heart, is it Love or is it Art?

Voice to Ear Market Opportunities

Let’s face it, VTE is free for everyone to use and doesn’t offer any market opportunities for the big players in the security industry, indeed they’d prefer and can continue to expect the digital communications market to keep on expanding.

Meanwhile, at Rubber Dragon our services include social networking, guerilla marketing and online promotion services.

Take a look at some of the industry front runners, there are lots web awards websites illustrating use of new features and functionality, mouthwatering design and profit making business accumen.

Interactive Media Awards, run by the Interactive Media Council, Inc. (IMC), a nonprofit organization of leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals.

The Webby Awards, established 1996, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Favourite Website Awards, established in England in 2000, showcasing websites who use cutting edge technology together with inspirational ideas. Features awards for site of the day, site of the month; and user participation.

See more on web design awards from Wikipedia, not to be confused with Wikileaks!

This is software for link building and general seo tasks, we are testing it out at the moment and will report back.

To get a 60% discount off this software, click here.