Certainly worth looking into. I found the mouse on mine somewhat harder to control, but with a graphics tablet it was easier to draw. But that again depends on your comfort level with your graphics tablet. If you are interested in graphics design and you don’t have a graphics tablet, then I would recommend an Intuos by Wacom. Go with a bigger one if at all possible. At least a 6×8, but preferably even larger. Your graphics tablet would obviously work for other programs as well, like Photoshop.

But Sketchcast is cool, cranks out the video for you, you can then paste that your site and you got instant video. Give it some playtime!

There is no cost for the service, it is an easy way to generate traffic to your site. It’s based on a credit system and I can’t see a downside to using it. In fact, I have found a few good blogs just in the last hour I have been playing around with it.

To sign up for BlogRush, you can click this link. Then your posts will be automatically added to other people’s blog. It’s that easy. There is also a video that explains all this stuff, and a good help section if you ever get stuck. But it quickly worked the first time I tried it and literally took me 2 minutes to set the thing up. Definitely recommended.

Kudos John!

To add audio to your site, simply record the audio, pick whether or not you want to add a sound loop (sound at the beginning and end of your audio), choose what color and style you want your audio buttons to be and it creates the audio and the button for you. All you have to do at that point is copy and paste it to your site.

It literally will take you about 5 minutes to add audio to your website. You can add it to a web page, a blog or wherever. All you do is copy and paste the files to make it work. It creates all the buttons and code for you. This software makes adding audio so simple, it’s a heck of a deal. And for only $37, you also get resale rights, which means you have the right to resell the software and keep the profits should you decide to sell it yourself. There are no hidden fees and never any monthly or yearly fees. You can create as many audio recordings as you want. No catches, no gimmicks, just a good, affordable, quality product.

Check it out today! Impact Web Audio

Now, I am visually oriented person, I like to SEE things conceptually, get the big picture. Sure numbers are helpful, I use Google Analytics as my traffic logs as well. But about year ago, I ran across something called VisitorVille. It’s a visual representation of your web sites traffic. It’s very cool. It shows your website metaphorically and graphically as a city. And it uses buses (to haul people from specific search engines) to show you which people are visiting which pages. And what page they go to next. What literally happens is wehn someone comes to your site from Google, for example, then VisitorVille shows them as riding a ‘Google’ bus to their destination web page or ‘landing page’. This page is shown as a city building. The person literally gets out of the bus and walks into the building. If they go to another page, then they are shown leaving that building and walking or taking a cab to the next webpage on your site. You can easily see the entire flow of traffic on your site and get one big picture.

After a few hours of watching this entertaining flow of traffic, it dawned on me something was really wrong with my site. Lots of people and little sales. So I redesigned my site, improving flow and changed the text and reduced the columns to just one column and my sales literally doubled almost instantly. I tweaked it some more based on some of the stuff VisitorVille was showing me and sales went up even more. Amazing to think, if I had only done that months ago, I could have made more money in the meantime. Live and learn.

The moral of this blog is that it’s helpful to ’see’ what people are doing at your site. How long are they staying on each page, which pages do they like to go to, etc. VisitorVille has lots of other tools, besides just the map. It has tons of statistics, logs, live chat on your site, and much more. Now, it is a monthly service, but pretty affordable. I truly like it and use it regularly. In fact, it’s already paid for itself many times over. Check it out for yourself.

If you’re like me, keeping track of passwords and user login information is a challenge. At last count I had 70 different usernames and different passwords for various websites. Trying to remember them all was silly. But I started using a tool that makes it very easy to keep track of ALL your login infromation and passwords – securely. It’s called Roboform. And to keep track of your usernames and passwords for up to 10 websites, it’s FREE to use!! If you have different usernames and passwords for more than 10 sites then you’ll have to buy a license ($29.95), but it’s SO worth it. Why?

2 reasons why I like Roboform so much:

1) It’s a toolbar that runs on Internet Explorer and Firefox and it remembers ALL your username and all your passwords automatically. If you go to login to Google for example, Roboform recognizes it and can fill out the form and login for you. And to make it even easier, you can just go to the logins button on the Roboform Toolbar and it will show you a list of all the websites you are a member of, and you can just click the one you want to go to. It takes you to the site and logs you in with only one click.

2) It can automatically fill out forms for you. If you’ve ever had to fill out a form more than once, Roboform makes it a snap. It even has custom fields so special form data can also be stored.

So for only $29.95, it’s a no brainer. Also there is an option to put roboform on a USB key, which means if you have more than one computer, you can take roboform with you. And to top it off, they even offer tutorials for how to use it, although it’s very easy to use (because it’s mostly automatic).

Anyway, as you can tell, I am a big fan and highly recommend it (not to mention it was PC Magazines Editors choice and CNET’s Software of the Year winner), it will save you time and typing…

Click here for more about Roboform

Last time it was sketch-up, now it’s Web Accelerator. Apparently made for high speed connections, it can actually speed up your browsing experience and ultimately save you time.

Finally, if you haven’t had a chance, head over to the main page and check out the updates to useful products and helpful ebooks. I have started listing (don’t worry I am just getting started…) resources that you’ll find invaluable as you begin and continue your web design adventure.

Happy Designing…

Robert

Recently I ran across an ad for Yahoo! Widgets. I’d actually never heard of them and was apparently in the dark. Not too hard to do considering the billions of web pages out there. So I clicked on the ad. I love a great mystery!

Anyway, I bravely downloaded and installed Yahoo! Widgets on my desktop. And I gotta say I like them. Widgets are little applications you can run on your desktop. For example, right now I have the weather (a very cool, 5 day weather forecasting tool with moon information), a small desktop picture frame with my pictures (with a new picture every 5 minutes), and a seasonal college basketball schedule / score reporter (letting me know what games are on and when.). So it’s pretty cool stuff.

There’s no charge for widgets and there are 1,000 to choose from. Others I have running are pictures of the beach to see what the surf is like (I live in Virginia Beach) and some monitors for internet access, computer resources, etc. I ahd the Homer Simpson widget, but after a few minutes of Homer’s audible antics, he got removed. Just don’t like being insulted every couple minutes by a cartoon character.

So, if you get a chance, I’d recommend checking it out… just search for Yahoo! Widgets…