As a designer, you know that there are probably millions of ways to arrange color palettes. Our environment is continually informing us of colors that best represent a slice of our humanity at any particular time. Technology, current events and philosophical beliefs are just some things that move and shape our color trends. Since following color trends is an ever changing, organic and creative process, there will never be one definitive resource on the matter. However, designers and manufacturers must stay on top of these patterns, to incorporate them, to respond to them or at least, just to be aware of them. In my efforts to stay on top of this ever changing and inspiring world of color, I have created a handy color trends toolbar to include quick and easy links to some of my favorite sites on COLOR.

(click to zoom)

As a special gift, I would love to share this very helpful color trend toolbar – “Cherish COLOR”.

• Designed for anyone who researches color and trends along with those who just love color and art
• Especially helpful for manufacturers, licensees and artists
• No risk, completely anonymous, no strings attached
• It works on Windows, Mac and Linux and on all the major browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and finally Safari.

This easy to install tool bar has links to the most popular and useful sites in the areas of:

• Color Trends + Palettes (Sites, Blogs, Google Search, Books)
• Color Mixing (Color Tools, Color Management and Color Software)
• Color Me Fun (+ Games)
• Built in Google search engine
• Internet Radio (Add your favorite stations)
• Note Pad
• Weather
• E-mail Notifier
• Plus customize it by adding many “gadgets” of your choice

Please feel free to contact me with any feedback. You are also free to share this free tool with any design professionals you know would benefit. Enjoy!

You may download the browser toolbar here!

lightbox2

And if you want the version with the fancy slide show script, check out Lightbox Slideshow

As a first time entrepreneur you probably have tons of questions. And every time you do a Google search for an answer you are bombarded with too much information and in some cases that information contradicts other things you have heard. Due to this, I have created a list of 54 resources that should help you out.

WordPress › NextGEN Gallery « WordPress Plugins.

http://www.paulvanroekel.nl/picasa/

Lightbox2

by Lokesh Dhakar

An Easy Image Viewer

Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

What’s New in Version 2

• Image Sets: group related images and navigate through them with ease
• Visual Effects: fancy pants transitions
• Backwards Compatibility: yes!

Get started at: http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/

http://net2.com/nvu/

 1. Frames – a HUGE SEO no-no. Since new content is loaded in a new frame, every page has the same URL. Search engine’s (SEs) simply can’t properly crawl and index your site if it’s in frames. The last time I checked, Inktomi and AltaVista won’t even try indexing your page if it sees frames. It’s also terribly dated, doesn’t print properly, and doesn’t display properly in some browsers.
 

2. Flash – I love flash animation, but it should be used sparingly – not as your entire site. SEs can’t see “inside” the flash file, all they see is that a flash file is there. So, if you have all or most of your text inside a flash file – the search engines won’t see it. Try putting a link on every page to a regular HTML version of that page, so the SEs can see, and index, the actual page content.

 3. Missing Meta Tags – I can’t believe how many sites I saw without any keyword or description meta tags. These are what the SEs look at first to tell what your site is about and index it properly. If you don’t know how to add keyword and descriptions, ask your web person, or do a Google search for “meta tags” for some great tutorials.

 4. Title Tags – Just about everyone has a title tags but there are two common problems I’ve noticed. First problem: your title is the same on every page, and is usually just your company name. Every page should have a unique title related to that individual page. Second problem: each page has a unique title, but the company name comes first. A word’s placement in the title is important. Instead of writing “Amy Brown’s Illustrations” write “Illustrations by Amy Brown.”

 Meta Tags are HTML tags used to control your site description in the search engines that support them: Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL Search, AltaVista, AllTheWeb (FAST), HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek (Go), Excite, and WebCrawler. It is important to have well made meta tags because they can help increase your Search Engine position.

Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

websitegrader.com