If you had kept an eye on my twits, you would had noticed that I had become one of the so many that got the Apple iphone, well I have had it for 3 weeks and I must say, there are a few things that does not impress me. I have noticed a few times as I am surfing along some sites, especially the ones that use the lightbox module, sometimes it does not work and I had a few sites where the lightbox does work but then there are times when it doesn’t work, there was one website (which will remain nameless) I had clicked on one of there portfolio thumbnails, the larger image showed up, which was fine but then when it came to close the image it would not close and I could not even zoom in to close it, usually with lightbox you can also click on the blacked out area to close it and go back to the website but that did not work either, so I gave up and closed Safari. Second problem with the iphone I do not find exciting is working the settings, unlike other phones you have built in features where you can change the ring tones or change SMS settings but I reckon I can get by without there, I guess as I still have a second mobile to use. Emails was another one I understand the Microsoft and Apple thing but it would be nice to have a feature for the hotmail service or Microsoft live email.
The things I do like about the iphone are the Gmail and Google features, I am a big fan of these features. The App store, big fan of the Wordpress app, very helpful when a Computer or Notebook is not available. Notes and the Calendar Apps are useful; my day would not be organized without these features, the Safari features like bookmarks are useful to a point. For some people Youtube would be useful but I have never been a big fan of using the video site and the other things I find useful is the Itunes and the Ipod features they become very useful for long trips, the WIFI feature is useful, becomes handy when I am at a Starbucks or Gloria Jeans store. The Maps feature I find helpful especially when I have to meet clients in a unfamiliar locations and the stocks I enjoy, I am a big fan of business and seeing how the big companies like blue chips and yahoo are going with there stocks, If a person asked me how I would rate the Iphone I would give them a rating of 80 percent, it needs a bit of work on the browser, would be nice if I could add firefox to it, this post is coming from a amateur at the moment as stated I have had the Iphone only for a couple of weeks, feel free to leave a comment on your thought on the Iphone.
Weblogs can be a great way for one self to gain exposure on the net or to help promote and grow a business, If you have a search on the net for weblogs you will find many providing a service of some kind or wanting to provide a means of identity to a online comunity. I was recently reading a article from smashing magazine and not realizing but there are a few other blogging software out there i could be using beside wordpress. Since i first started doing blogs i only used wordpress, since it was easy to maintain and to use but now i am thinking of venturing out into other software mentioned in this article. Blogs are a great tool as they are search engine friendly and they help to get the right traffic coming towards your site, what better way to help increase business or gain a online presence.
Starting out on your own is a daunting and unpredictable thing to do, but with some guidance and perseverance this task can be a lot easier. When doing freelance work why not start of with something that you are strong at doing, take for instance when I started of doing websites I got involved with small businesses and people who required an identity or an online portfolio just to get me started. Once you get things up and going then you can make the transition into other things, they say that freelancing is not for everyone but I found with a little bit of focus and a goal freelancing can pay off in the long run.
When you do finally decide to start of on your own, there is the question of where you going to find work or clients to get you started. Let’s go back to the small business thing, if you are good at doing something in that area why not find maybe ten or twenty clients who can provide you with work and maybe go of that or if you are very persistent you could have more. Cold calling and meeting in person is another way to find clients it can pay off, this shows you are interested in them or there product, and they may setup a meeting or maybe a job, another useful thing when you do this is, have a business card handy so they do not forget who you are.
Money Wise
When you start of you will have to take a hard look at, how much will it take for you to get by and also to make a profit out of what you enjoy doing, when I first started I did not think of business cards, marketing research, advertising, bank loans, hosting plans among many others, these all cost money and it was not much I had of. For me I was like most people I kind of jumped into the deep end of things and clawed my way out. Also you will need to think of a backup plan and put money aside, just in case the work goes quiet and you have no work for that week or two.
When you figure out what it will take for you to get through that week or month then it will make things a little easier to determine your hourly rate and get you moving forward.
Stay posted on the second article of this post, it should be good. i will put the link here for you to find it. Feel free to share your experience or what you did when you started freelancing.
while you are here why not check out some other comments from other freelancers about what it is like in the freelancing world at - digital web magazine
As you can see i have a new wordpress template, there is still a few kinks in it that need to be finalised. As i going through checking out the jquery menu i noticed that my contact link was not working at this moment, if time permits i will hopefully get around to inserting the link into the header. I am also working on some banners to insert into the sidebar for advertising and trying to keep the adsense to a minimal, with the banners and badges i am looking at providing links to useful material that can be of benefit to web designers and developers like myself while also provide links from adsense on the content that i provide.
I am currently available for freelance work, what i am currently looking for at the moment is small websites that do not require to many pages and concentrates more on the design side, i find i am more coding than anything and my design side of things is lacking, so if you have something that fits into that category i would be more than happy to take it on, it be a worthwhile and challenge and it will help me improve on my design side of things.
Posted on July 26th, 2008
Tags: updates
If you are like me and like doing polls and surveys online, well here is a open source jQuery and PHP dynamic poll which you can insert into your site. The best thing about this is that the page does not need to be refreshed or open another window to see the results, with the help of Ajax it does it right in your webpage. There is a bit of coding required but with the help of the jquery.js and the jquery.cookie.js it will makes things a little bit easier. Nettuts provided an article on creating this dynamic poll with the code provided.
When i first started out in freelancing, it was a struggle for me to find suitable work for myself and to keep the work flowing in, as time progress and the pocket got deeper, i had to find another means of getting clients coming in, so instead of going through the yellow pages and advertising on classifieds, i decided to go onto sites that provided a means of people looking for freelancers like myself. The first one signed up to was linkedin and then moved onto elance, well in later time i happened to stumble upon an article providing a huge list of freelancing job sites from freelanceswitch. So as i know there are a few more people out there just starting of in there chosen area of freelancing, i figured i would share this link as a means of finding clients.
When i first started of in web design i need all the information and help i could get and the one place i could find a lot was online, i found resources on coding, photo manipulation and and resource sites like - pixel2life, tutorialized, smashing magazine, digital web magazine and sitepoint to name a few, also to draw inspiration and creativeness there were also gallery sites like best web gallery, CSSelite and CSS vault, i believe these sites can give a newbie or a professional some enlightenment into there next project. So i thought i would share some of this knowledge towards you i will also keep updating this with new sites i find in my travels of surfing the web, enjoy.
Do not forget i will keep updating this with new sites and new information, this will post will be ongoing so do check back if you want more resources for learning.
Why do we need a blog? well a blog can be very useful in meaning cases here are a few i found,
It can be used as a Marketing and networking tool.
Useful for learning and a quick way to find something specific that a person is looking for
Good for Individuals and Businesses
Provides high quality content for users and search engines
Great way to find loyal readers, if you provide articles that capture there attention and keeps them coming back for more
Nice way to get referrals from other sites
Provides sustained traffic
You can gain a reputation from having a blog, if you provide the right content
Creates an income if done right
Obtain back links from other websites and blogs or social networks like stumbleupon or digg
Provides RSS feeds for people to read later on
Promotion of one’s self on the net
And the best one of all is that it does not cost a fortune to run and maintain
Blogs can be linked up to one’s own online website, it is easy to intergrate and maintain. One of the reason why i provided a blog was to get traffic coming towards my site and to get myself out there and show what i can do as a freelancer. I believe a website is great for all types of people and situations.
Other sources for information on this topic
Here’s why you need a blog - freelanceswitch
What is a blog and why do we need them - mensnewsdaily
The effects of creative blog content - vandelaydesign
The impotance of blogs - mallory
Blogging Sites
Well i thought i would give ya an update on what has been happening lately. If you had been to my portfolio you would had noticed that it has been changed, i found i was not comfortable with the layout and color of the old design, so i thought i would go with a different color scheme, with the blue and grayish outlay i found it was much easier to work with and that i can change things around without it making much change to the layout, if you had clicked on one or two of the links you would notice that there is a sliding effect, this is done by using jquery and some classes and ID’s used to create the effect, i never realized how effective jquery can be until i gave it ago. I have also included a link to our store provided by Amazon, some items i find worthwhile and have tried myself.
If you are looking a web designer or freelancer and have an online project or ideas that you would like to get up and running feel free to give me a buzzzz! i would be more than happy to negotiate or work something out with you, feel free to contact me through my portfolio site or give me a call at MOB: 0405615089 this is an Australian number so if you are overseas add 0011+61+2
When Mozilla officially released there new version of Firefox 3.0, they did not predict that there would be a vulnerability in there browser, the problem was discovered by researchers, names unknown, but Tipping Point had verified the bug and reported it to Mozilla. Mostly what could be gathered is that if a link is clicked on in an email or visit a malicious Web page then the user has a chance of being infected, the severity of it was ranked high, the new browser was launched on Tuesday along with a marketing strategy of setting a new record for the most downloads in 24 hours, however the huge volume of downloads had crashed Mozilla’s site for 2 hours but Mozilla had stated that they had logged more than 8 million downloads.
Posted on June 19th, 2008
Tags: firefox
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