It's been more than a century since photography knocked on our doors but it still remains a powerful to tool to convey emotions and feelings. It is one of the most expressive and enduring way for us to capture and share experiences. It's hardly strikes as a surprise when we take note of the fact that photo sharing sites were some of the first social sites to hit the web. People love to click pictures and then share them with their friends and family.

In the present times, Facebook, Flickr and Google Picassa dominate the photo-sharing websites' space on the internet. These sites provide users a great, easy-to-use platform to share photographs and videos with their friends and family, online acquaintances and even random people on the web. Now in case, you are kind of bored with these same websites after using them a repetitively, there are several other photo sharing alternatives available on the web.

Let's take look at some of them

SmugMug

It is paid photosharing service on the web. Mashable says its prime focus is making easy for users to showcase and organise pictures - whether they want to sell them or not. There are no bandwidth caps and you can upload and share an unlimited no. of photos. Your photos can password-protected, you can add watermarks, and share them on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr quite easily.

Now the thing with this service is that it is paid. There are Basic, Power and Pro versions of SmugMug and they are priced in ascending order. SmugMug Pro is ideal for a professional photographer who can avail the service for $20 a month or $150 a year and also avail tons of e-commerce options. It also has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android, and iPad.

Smugmug(dot)com

Instagram

Instagram is an easy-to-use iPhone app using which the users can upload photos on Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Filters and customizations can be easily applied to these photos. The application is compatible with any iPhone or iPod Touch running Ios 3.1.2 or above. What sets it apart from its counterparts is its ease of sharing, browsing and commenting. The best thing about it is that comes for free.

Instagram had more than 100,000 downloads in its first week of release.

Instagr(dot)am

deviantArt

Often abbreviated as dA, deviantArt is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. Headquartered in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, devianArt aims to provide a place for any artist to exhibit and discuss works of arts. Photography finds a dedicated spot in this website.

devianArt consists of 14.5 million registered members and receives about 1,40,000 submissions each day. It is a free service and is gaining rapid popularity on the web.

Deviantart(dot)com

picplz

It is a photosharing app that makes sharing of photos on Facebook and Twitter like a walk in the park. Users can browse, comment and upload photos using this website. However, the core focus of this service is the mobile phone. It enables users to apply amazing photo effects and turn “average into amazing” as is claimed on its website. 'Cross Process', 'The 70s', 'Russian Toy Camera' etc. are some of the effects to choose from.

Picplz is free and is available in the App Store or Android Market.

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Promoting our products and services can be a time consuming and daunting task. A lot of us get tangled up in online self promotion without realising the value in collaboration more often with other people through the web. It can be a wise way to expand your network, pool resources and save time, money and work.

The internet has opened up a range of exciting possibilities for gaining value through mutually beneficial arrangements or simply interacting with others in promoting your work effectively and ultimately landing more clients.

Here are eight ways you can do this:

1. Joint Blogs/Sites

Getting a blog or simple website out there that you can use to showcase your work, build credibility in your field, promote yourself, and simply express your interests, is an important element in one’s online self-promotional strategy.

A successful blog requires regular and outstanding content to be in for a chance of attracting many visitors. Particularly for those lacking in time, it is worth considering setting up a site with one or more suitable other people. With others working on the same platform, it is now possible to build up posts quicker, combine skills and resources, and promote everyone’s work through a single site.

Some freelancers might even want to consider using a joint site as a platform to promote the combined skills of several people as a business, as opposed to promoting individual freelancers.

2. Contacts on Social Media Sites

Social media allows people to build up substantial networks of people who we’d want to know about our work. With sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, it has become possible to link up with potential clients, fans, as well as key influencers and even celebrities in your industry. It’s best to add new people to these networks with appropriate personal messages.

What is extremely powerful with being connected to people who are well connected themselves, is that you are effectively ‘piggybacking’ on their networks whenever they are linked to something of yours. For example, on Facebook, if someone with connections joins your page, all their contacts will be aware of this in their newsfeeds. Linked up with key people, you can keep them in the loop with whatever you are working on, which will benefit your online visibility.

3. Content Exchanging

Getting material on someone else’s website can be a great way of having fresh new people seeing your name on the internet. You can agree to put an article or a guest post on another site in return for content for your own, or even agree to swap decent comments with someone else with a site or blog relating to yours.

One underused method of enhancing your validity online as a freelancer is to request a review/testimonial swap with someone. These can be placed visibly on your site, is mutually beneficial, and adds real value to the services etc you offer.

4. Joint Interviews

Find someone in your industry to interview in return for them interviewing yourself. Interview each other, either in written, audio or video format and upload to each other’s blogs or elsewhere. Include each other’s links at the bottom of and incorporated into interviews.

Appearing as an interviewee on another, ideally popular website, is an excellent self promotional method because, apart from appearing a separate site, an interview is a great endorsement of you and will add value to you as a professional.

5. List Promotion

If you send out a newsletter to a mailing list that you’ve built up, you can use this to promote other people and get your name on other lists. Having a feature, link, article about you on someone else’s newsletter is possible through polite asking. However, it’s even more possible through agreeing with relevant people who have mailing lists to swap content like articles or even simply a link in a newsletter so that you and your work get seen by a new and targeted audience.

6. Joint Products

By ‘products’ I mean both physical products such as giclee prints, and non-physical, like information products or audio downloads. Creating products like ebooks are one way of gaining exposure, especially if it is something that will spread through people are sharing it with others.

Obviously, sharing the knowledge, skills and work load with one or more partners is an excellent way of getting a high quality product together faster and to each collaborator’s already established contacts. You might also consider making products to give away for free for the promotional value within them.

7. Exchanging Links

A straightforward but useful promotional tactic is in agreeing to place a link on your site to someone’s work who has done the same for you on their site. People do click on links featured on or recommended by sites and by having many of your web links on key sites around the web, this will benefit your exposure.

8. Working with Others on Collaborated Projects

These can be paid projects, but it is also an option to create an interesting, self initiated project with others that you can add to your portfolio. Pooling skill and talent in this way will lead to high quality projects that will greatly boost the value of your personal portfolio and support your self-marketing efforts.

Really aim for a piece of work that is remarkable as you make use of the benefit of combining talents with others. The ideal partner to collaborate with is obviously someone who is well known in the first place, so that you can ‘piggy-back’ on their success and promote via the contacts they have as well.

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While the online press might see things differently, Twitter certainly is not the only micro messaging service out there. While micro blogging has certainly come into the mainstream recently, it is not even a modern phenomenon. From short form blogs to instant messaging, the short and punchy promotional message has been a staple of advertising since, well, since the beginning.

This short form platform is what is pushing Twitter ahead of so many other online services, at least in terms of rapid growth and user adoption. To put it simply, we love short, snappy messages, especially when they contain the same amount of valuable content and wisdom as a long blog post. Call it impatience or a lack of any real attention span; it is the end result of the internet and it is proving to be remarkably useful, not just for marketers but for everyday people.

Tumblr, a micro blogging service that specializes in varied and powerful blog options, could just be a Twitter killer if it gains the size. Built to allow dynamic multimedia as part of posts, it is a dream come true for marketers. Not only are you given space for micro messages and short quotes, but a built in video box, embedding options, and room for longer messages if you need them.

Flickr, the popular image hosting service, is much more than an image host. How many visual advertisements excel with added commentary? Flickr, while majorly popular amongst amateur photographers and artists, is also a powerful tool for marketers, allowing them to adopt the power of a pure social media website with the multimedia capabilities of an image host.

The point to take home when you read a story about Twitter’s massive growth and huge marketing potential is not just that it is a viable marketing platform, but that its potential competitors and related services are just as, if not more, valuable to marketers. Twitter is packed with potential, but it is also plagued with spam and marketing competition. When you embrace a smaller service with just as much potential, you allow yourself to lay the foundations for a future massive marketing success.

Let us put it this way: When Myspace was developed in the early 2000s, their service was unknown but loaded with potential. Instead of waiting for organic growth to turn them into a success, they looked at Friendster and identified how top users were getting the most out of the service, and how they thought it could improve. Then, they approached them, offering all that Friendster could give, plus a lot more.

For marketers, it might be wise to take the Myspace strategy. While their social media website is not what it once was, their initial tactics were smart. Do not just look for the biggest incumbent service, for they could fail once you arrive look at where Friendster and Myspace today. Instead, look for the service with the best growth potential. For short form messaging, that might not be Twitter much longer.

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Mobile marketing is marketing directly to consumers through SMS messaging, leveraging the growing number of mobile phone owners and users. Mobile (or text) marketing is predicted to be the next major global technology phenomenon, and to a certain extent it is already used across Europe and Asia by businesses of all sizes to deliver targeted marketing messages on a wholesale scale.

Mobile marketing business consultants and service providers already have access to the frameworks for dealing with SMS text marketing, yet still the US market remains behind much of the rest of the world in mobile SMS marketing.

The US is surprisingly far behind when it comes to utilizing available mobile technologies. While the Internet is very much the domain of US business, in mobile communications the US seems to lag some way behind the rest of the world. There are 36 countries in the world that have over 100% per-capita usage of mobile phones, including many otherwise poor and indebted nations. The US, for whatever reason, isn’t one of these countries.

Forecasts predict that the US will reach the 100% mark by 2013, putting it behind many other countries already far beyond that level of market penetration. When we examine the statistics, the US is currently sitting at 86% per-capita usage, compared to Taiwan’s 106%, the UK’s 120%, Italy’s 140% and 150% in Hong Kong and Estonia (this means that there are more mobile phones than people). This also means there is still some way to go before the US is ‘in’ as deep as many of its European and Asian counterparts. However, this may mean that mobile marketing in the US has an even longer lifespan at maximum responsiveness, while the penetration of the technologies reaches the levels of other nations.

There are still gaps to be exploited in mobile technologies in the US. This doesn’t mean that the effectiveness of SMS marketing is reduced, rather it may give it a level of exclusivity that makes it even MORE effective. As noted earlier, signs are showing that the gap in overall mobile phone penetration between the US and Asia is closing. For advertisers, this means the mobile marketing business is still in it’s infancy, but looks like it is here to stay. For those looking to jump on board, the rewards for being an early adopter may prove even more valuable.

With mobile marketing, business owners across the world are realizing the benefits of this kind of promotion on their bottom line. The mobile marketing business looks set to continue to grow at a rapid rate over the next few years. Consumers in the US are yet to be fully exposed to marketing through SMS, and as such are still very responsive to message passed through this medium.

Indeed, when compared to broadcast and print marketing, the results are staggering. As such, it’s only a matter of time before the mobile marketing business in the US catches up with the more established mobile marketing business sectors in Europe and Asia, which will provide advertisers with a whole world of new marketing possibilities.

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Marketers are increasingly looking at new ways and means to reach out effectively to their target consumers, even as they continue to reach out through the conventional routes. Fast emerging as a good medium to reach out and connect are the internet-based social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ibibo and Twitter, and homegrown sites such as BigAdda.

By extension, since they are socially interactive too, gaming sites and apps on social networking sites are also becoming good marketing avenues, offering focused targeting and interactivity. Rahul Sharma, VP - brand solutions, Ibibo.com, says, “A large subscriber base helped us unveil promotional campaigns for Bollywood movies, including Paa and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. We are now looking at social games as the next big thing.” Ibibo has five million registered users.
Besides, a series of new online services such as Foursquare, Yelp and Gowalla are building upon the mobile platform by incorporating ‘location’ into social networking. Foursquare already has a footprint across the world.

Go where the consumers are and interact with them, is the marketers’ growing focus. Mahesh Murthy, founder, Pinstorm, an integrated digital marketing company, says, “Social networking sites such as Facebook and Orkut offer an opportunity for brand engagement, where the audience can experience a brand through an application or a status update. Business networking sites such as LinkedIn and Xing offer brands the ability to do specialised B2B targeting and corporate campaigns. Microblogging services such as Twitter and Identi.ca allow a brand to broadcast entertaining or informative updates to fans and followers.”

Parminder Singh, business head, Google India, says, “Social media are increasingly becoming an integral part of marketing strategies. They offer advertisers micro-targeting opportunities and the means to engage the user through communities and other applications. Social media networks have gained importance with big and small advertisers. In the last one year, it has extensively picked up with small advertisers who’ve ramped up their budgets.” Google owns Orkut.
Reliance-ADAG’s BigAdda.com COO Shivanandan Pare believes social media automatically becomes integral to a marketers’ strategy if the target is youth (18-35 years). “The measurability is scientific and wastage of media spend is less. With high engagement and increasing use of social networking sites, more advertisers are coming back to us. Progressive advertisers are increasing their media spends on social networking websites.” BigAdda has done campaigns for Hindustan Unilever’s Axe, handset makers and telecom players.

Pinstorm’s Murthy says significant social media users in India include the country’s biggest banks, leading travel services companies and consumer electronics brands. “Pinstorm helps Sharekhan, Jet Airways and leading financial, travel, consumer and business brands with digital brand management, including social media.”
Noel Swain, VP marketing, Cleartrip.com, says, “Our digital spend has gone up from two per cent earlier to 70 per cent. The social networking space is seeing more allocation.”

Amitabh Pandey, president and head – ebusiness, Thomas Cook India, says his company is looking at a dedicated ad spend for online social media and may also offer discounts through them.

At Nokia, the digital platform has been popular, including social media that Nokia uses extensively to create a buzz around its product launches. Viral Oza, Nokia India’s head – activation, media, online sales and marketing, says, “Social media are an inherent part of our digital marketing strategy. We use various touchpoints on them to influence active online users.”

According to market estimates, around 25 million Indians are now on social platforms and growing at 20-30 per cent per annum. These consumers are the influencers for their friends and, therefore, advertisers too. Alok Kejriwal, CEO and co-founder of Games2win, says, “Our in-game ad network allows us to talk to consumers and influence them to either see commercial ads or click on other game products. Typical advertisers are FMCG, youth-centric marketers and Internet brands. In interactive gaming, the apps are branded very subtly and appear without disturbing the consumer.” Games2win has created applications for many social networks and claims they get around 10,000 visitors daily from India.

Marketing spends on online social media are still small compared to other online alternatives. But there is agreement that it is a space set to gallop with marketers as they find its interactivity and measurability, along with sharply focused targeting opportunities increasingly attractive. Kejriwal concludes, “Today, an e-mail, SMS or a message on Facebook from your friend, telling you about what she bought, has 100 times more value than the most expensive 30-second television ad.”

Read more…

If you are in any kind of online business, the trick to generating profit lies in generating Traffic. Every article you will come across about making your home business or work at home business successful would always stress the importance of generating traffic.

Traffic therefore is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business. Besides ensuring a great product to sell, and setting up a website, it would be time to get to the task of generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you find that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are willing to stay on in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, and increasing your traffic flow should be your priority.

Here are some seven definite ways to increase your traffic starting with immediate effect.



1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. This will of course cost you some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top bet to increase your traffic.

Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your site and product without any cost or probably a little cost. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your website name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell mobile phones or its spare parts write press releases and articles about mobile phones and its spare parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you. In the process your site will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Read more…

Gurgaon-based Amoeba Webware has launched MeriCar.com, an online car servicing booking site that aims to connect car owners with car workshops in their neighbourhood. MeriCar.com is currently associated with Maruti Authorized Service Station and Bosch Car Service workshops in Delhi/NCR and plans to expand its reach to all over India.

According to the company, MeriCar.com is offering two different directories with a list of Maruti Authorized Service Stations and Bosch Car Service Centres to book car servicing online. Maruti has about 2628 authorized service stations to provide car maintenance support to customers in over 1200 towns across India. Bosch has about 260 multi-brand Bosch car service centres in India.

“MeriCar directory meets the requirement for all makes. The team is promoting multi brand concept in India to bring Bosch Car Service centres on the portal. We also have updated MASS (Maruti Authorized Service Station) directory for Maruti car owners who still prefer Maruti Authorized Service Station,” Rakesh K Sidana, CEO, MeriCar.com, has said.

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Kolkata-based Excess Infomedia, the company which publishes gadget magazine Exhibit, has launched Excess.in as an online B2B platform which provides excess stock solutions for traders and distributors of consumer electronics and IT. According to the company, Excess.in has already attracted around 100 registered users and 200 product listings since its launch on December 11, 2009.

“While working for Exhibit magazine, we deal with many dealers and distributors who have a constant problem of outdated and surplus stock. This resulted in the idea of having an online B2B platform that would help in the smooth transfer of surplus stocks,” Ramesh Somani, director, Excess Infomedia, has told AlooTechie. According to Somani, the company has tied up with around 50 retailers and dealers in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore for posting their stocks on the website.

Excess.in earns its revenues from paid membership plans which range between Rs 2,000 and Rs 75,000. Paid members can display their products and can put up their requirements on the site. Besides, they can also get leads and see contact details of the dealers. Whereas, free members can just view and send queries about any product.

Read more…

One of my favorite styles of web design to take inspiration from is the magazine style. Creating a well-designed site that looks good, allows for good usability, and features a lot of content without cramming items onto the page is a very difficult task.

Blog theme designers can often put some of this inspiration into practice in their own work, as blogs often face the challenge of displaying a lot of content while still trying to look good.

Clutch Magazine

Loop

Good

BlackBook

Boxwish

Macalicious

Giant Magazine

Vanity Fair

Frieze Magazine

Conde Nast Portfolio

New Yorker

The Morning News

Rua de Baixo

New York Magazine

WWD

Dazed Digital

UX Magazine

Ad Age

Space Collective

San Francisco

TheHotMag

Creative and Live

Wired

People

Inc. Magazine

Read more…

Each and everyday you hear stories about some name getting thousands of dollars from the buyer. You also jump right into the game of domaining and hope for that lucky day to arrive when someone might get interested in your domain name. Right?

The main problem with newbies over here is that they do very less research and start spending their money on useless names. After 6 months or a year their moral goes down the drain and they are back where they were but with lighter pockets then before.

Some people get into the trademark mess. They get sued by trademark holding company and then they show their temper openly on forums and other message boards.

Some can’t even monetize their domains to get the renewal fees for the upcoming period.

If you have 4 or 5 domains then you can surely shed the amount from your own pocket. But when the figure goes around 100’s and 1000’s it is very hard to renew the domains for the future.

My advice to newbies would be to stick at 25 to 50 domains. They can earn for 10 or 20 renewals per year if your names are below average. Some domain might get you more revenue and it can fill the gap for you. Ultimately the main thing is to not lose a domain for nothing. You should at least get its registration fees from it. This will not start downfall of your domain empire which you want to build. 1 dollar loss is also a big loss if you have more then 100 or 500 domains in your domain portfolio.

So what kind of domains you should buy?

Choose wisely on which name you are putting your money. Three characters .com’s are creating a lot of chaos right now in the market. Their prices goes sky high in domain name aftermarkets. Generic dictionary words are also long gone. New TLD’s are not so stable right now, dot-com still rules the internet. You might get lucky in some other TLD’s but I wouldn’t advice you if you are new in the game.

4 letters have 456976 combinations from AAAA to ZZZZ. Of them only around 5000 are left. Which is of course the garbage.

What do we do now if we still want to get out feets wet in this?

Look for some guy who is willing to sell his domain for less. There are plenty of places to find this kind of domains available for sale at lower prices. You can go to forums specially created for this kind of discussions. If you don’t know any then here is the one http://www.nameslot.com Go there look for some domains which might fall under our category and then approach the seller. Here also lookout for trademark issues and blacklisting for that particular domain. You can generally get this info from doing a whois search for that domain here http://www.whois.sc

Keep your eyes and ears open for latest news. It might shed some light and you might be the lucky one who grabs that name for just registration fees and sell it for 1000’s. Work on them and get every cent out of them. This will keep you in the game. The main thing over here is not to win the game but to be in it and be till the last.

For more tips and info logon to http://www.nameslot.com

Written by Falguni Patel Admin of www.nameslot.com

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The term “internet marketing” was virtually non-existent a short 8 years ago, now it is a growing phenomenon that is raking millions every year. Because of this expanding industry, the internet landscape it changing. Where are the changes going to be? I fully expect a growth in interactive end-user experiences - an online environment catering to the individual preferences of a singular visitor. I also foresee a massive change in the way we market online. A change could include “personalized” advertisements embedded so deeply into the product that the user does not realize it as an ad.

Where is this marketing going? Where will it be in 2010? Here are some ideas:

Personal Ads:

Not “Single white male seeks”. Advertisements displaying personalized data to the end user. This trend has started with products like Google’s AdWords, where visitors are greeted with ads specific to the content on the page. With the free flow of personal information on the internet, it is feasible that in a few years, the advertisements could be as specific as, “Bob, the Buick is over due for an oil change, here are the 3 closest Quick Lubes”

Advertisement Channels:

Cable channels are expanding so quickly it is hard to keep up, soon, we could be surfing over to channel 1430 for the “2010 Chevrolet Series”, where we actually sit down and watch a one hour special on Chevy’s this mode of advertisement would work for a couple of reasons:

- It is highly targeted

Current television advertising (commercials) often get the MUTE button treatment or we get up to get more popcorn, leaving an unknown number of viewers watching the 30 second ad.

- Accepting market

When viewer tune in specifically for a product, your message effectiveness grows exponentially. For example, if you the viewer are not interested in the “Home Depot Shed Products” advertisement channel, don’t watch. For those of you who are interested in home and garden and Do It Yourself, this channel would serve as your personal how-to expert. Home Depot reaches only those interested in their product while maintaining their orange apron image.

Customized Webpages:

On some webpages now, a visitor can change the color and theme of the webpage. This makes for a more enjoyable destination leading to more recurring visitors. Once a user has spent the time to build their own portal, they will return and use that as their primary resource of information (think MSN).

Webpages of the future must be able to support a “no two alike” mentality. End users must have the option of customizing their content, color, theme, and functionality.

The changes are on the horizon, prepare your business to capture visitors and give them the “one-on-one” feeling.

Read more…

In spite of the tremendous expansion of the Internet, the power of the printed word remains strong and popular.

Print media is where it all began and today we take a close look at some amazing design magazines that can really boost your productivity and expand your design knowledge.

In addition to their printed versions, some magazines also offer online versions on their websites as well as PDF downloads and single issue orders. Order online or pick them up at your local bookstore.

Here’s our recommended list with descriptions taken from each magazine’s website…

Web Designer

Web Designer is the UK’s premier publication for the discerning online author.

Aimed at all those at intermediate to professional levels within the trendy 20-35 age bracket, its predominantly tutorial-based format follows cutting-edge projects in Dreamweaver, Flash, and Photoshop.

Supplemented by the latest industry news and feature topics, Web Designer reflects all that is inspirational and exciting about working with new media content – representing the only choice of its kind on the newsstand.

More info | Subscribe

Layers Magazine

Layers magazine provides in-depth tutorials, cutting-edge techniques, secret tweaks, expert insights, and a wealth of information about the entire Adobe Creative Suite®, including InDesign®, Illustrator®, Photoshop®, Acrobat®, Lightroom®, After Effects®, Premiere Pro®, Dreamweaver®, and Flash®.

Published six times a year, Layers provides the design ideas, 3D rendering tricks, digital video concepts, artist portfolio profiles, unbiased product reviews, and current industry news that make Layers an absolute must-read for today’s creative professional.

More info | Subscribe

Photoshop Creative

Photoshop® Creative is the perfect magazine for learning more about Adobe’s outstanding application.

Each issue is packed with inspirational tutorials covering the whole scope of the software, from creative projects, to practical guides to using tools and techniques.

Readers also benefit from a collectable CD-ROM each issue. Whatever you use Photoshop for, Photoshop creative will help you become a better digital artist.

More info | Subscribe

.Net

.net is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. As well as a host of great features, .net magazine also boasts more than 30 pages of tutorials each issue, covering topics such as CSS, PHP, Flash, JavaScript, web graphics, and more - all written by contributors from some of the world’s biggest design agencies.

Each month you’ll also receive a packed CD, including an hour of video projects, full software, templates, tutorial files, and more!

Each month .net includes the hottest new sites from around the web, features a bevy of brilliant tutorials, and covers the major issues affecting designers and developers.

More info | Subscribe

Print

Print is a bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design. Founded in 1940 by William Edwin Rudge, Print is dedicated to showcasing the extraordinary in design on and off the page.

Covering a field as broad as communication itself—publication and book design, animation and motion graphics, corporate branding and rock posters, exhibitions and street art—Print covers commercial, social, and environmental design from every angle. Engagingly written by cultural reporters and critics who look at design in its social, political, and historical contexts, Print explores why our world looks the way it looks, and why the way it looks matters.

A four-time winner of the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Award for General Excellence, most recently in 2008, Print has been honored many times by ASME, the Society of Publication Designers, AIGA, The Art Directors Club, and The Type Directors Club.

More info | Subscribe

I.D.

Looking for cutting-edge design from every discipline? Insight into what drives the hottest design trends? Unique coverage of the world’s best designers? Then discover I.D. and get the one design magazine that covers it all: concepts, products, environments, interactive, furniture, and more.

Published since 1954, I.D. Magazine is America’s leading critical magazine covering the art, business, and culture of design.

Winner of five National Magazine Awards, the publication appears seven times a year. Issues include the Annual Design Review (America’s oldest and most prestigious juried design-recognition program) as well as the I.D. 40, and Design + Business.

More info | Subscribe

How

HOW magazine’s goal is to help designers, whether they work for a design firm, for an in-house design department or for themselves, run successful, creative, profitable studios.

HOW strives to serve the business, technological and creative needs of graphic-design professionals. The magazine provides a practical mix of essential business information, up-to-date technological tips, the creative whys and hows behind noteworthy projects, and profiles of professionals who are influencing design.

Founded in 1985, the HOW brand now extends beyond the print magazine to annual events for design professionals, yearly design competitions, digital products and books.

More info | Subscribe

Communication Arts

Communication Arts magazine is the leading trade journal for visual communications. It showcases the top work in graphic design, advertising, illustration, photography and interactive design.

Since 1959, more graphic designers, art directors, creative directors, commercial photographers and illustrators have turned to Communication Arts for ideas and inspiration than to any other creative publication. What makes Communication Arts so special?

Our unique combination of respected juried Annuals, in-depth profiles in our multi-topic issues and numerous informative columns makes Communication Arts the premier publication to cover all aspects of visual communications.

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Digital Arts

Digital Arts is the UK’s leading resource for creative professionals, both in print and online. Digital Arts addresses the needs of those within the exploding digital media market by providing relevant and forward thinking content, and by consistently running more exclusive reviews and features than any other magazine or Web site in the market.

Now in its fifth year, Digital Arts consistently delivers high-quality content, providing its professional readership with the latest news and reviews first.

Digital Arts prides itself on providing unbiased product-led information and professional advice, across all platforms and disciplines. Digital Arts uses extensive in-house lab facilities for product assays, producing top-class reviews and trustworthy lab tests.

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Before & After

Before & After magazine has been sharing its practical approach to graphic design since 1990.

Because our modern world has made designers of us all (ready or not), Before & After is dedicated to making graphic design understandable, useful and even fun for everyone.

The magazine is available as a PDF or printed as other magazines.

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CMYK

CMYK Magazine is where aspiring creatives showcase their talents to an industry driven by inspiration and new ways of creative problem solving.

At the same time, CMYK Magazine is where creative directors, agency principals and art buyers recruit students and recent graduates at today’s top art-design schools: art directors, copywriters, designers, photographers and illustrators.

Each issue of CMYK Magazine features as many as 100 selections from more than 80 art-design students attending over 30 of the world’s leading art-design schools, departments and workshops.

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Computer Arts

Computer Arts is the one-stop shop for professional advice on creating digital art and illustrations.

Computer Arts, the world’s best-selling magazine for digital artists and designers, boasts a strong line-up of tutorials every issue, covering everything from manipulating photographs with Photoshop to creating amazing vector illustrations with Illustrator.

You’ll also find tonnes of tips and tricks for web design, typography, 3D, animation, motion graphics and multimedia. It’s the one-stop shop for professional advice.

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Computer Arts Projects

Computer Arts Projects is the only magazine to give you an in-depth guide to a different creative subject every month. Computer Arts Projects is the successful monthly spin-off of Computer Arts magazine.

Each issue gives you an in-depth guide to a different creative subject, and recent issues have covered themes such as print design, web design, Photoshop, typography, packaging, creative advertising, and how to start your own design business.

Inside every edition, you’ll find great step-by-step tutorials and tips from the best digital artists in the business, showcases and profiles of up-and-coming talent and established creatives, as well as explorative features on the subject in hand.

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Advanced Photoshop

Advanced Photoshop magazine is the perfect magazine for polishing up already great Photoshop skills. Aimed towards Adobe Photoshop professionals and enthusiasts, every issue prides itself on its unbeatable quality and sophisticated content.

Every month you can have the chance to develop your techniques with a bunch of creative and challenging Masterclass and Workshop tutorials. Our intention is to give you the chance to learn new tricks and fine-tune your skills.

Whether you’re a design student, an enthusiast who is considering going into the design industry full-time, or an established pro, we guarantee that there will always be something new to get your teeth into.

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Internet scams are by no means a recent phenomenon, but certain scams come back again and again. Here are five popular Internet scams that you should be on the lookout for.

1. Auction fraud. Sure I love cheap stuff on eBay as much as the next guy, but that ’73 Collectors Edition Elvis Plate you’re bidding on might not be that great of a deal. Fake and stolen merchandise aren’t uncommon; even a Certificate of Authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean anything. As eBay Scam Watch puts it, “If a seller is willing to misrepresent a fake item as real, then what is the big deal of throwing in an authentic looking certificate?” Another scam is the “shill” scam: A seller wanting to drive up the price on his auction may bid himself or have his friends bid, just to make you pay more. If you notice a repeat bidder on a seller’s auction history, something’s probably up. One more tip: Never wire money directly to a seller—it’s almost impossible to retrieve the money if your purchase isn’t shipped.

2. Bank fraud. “Phishing scams” are popular email scams. You’ll get an email from your bank warning you that someone has been trying to access your account. They’ll ask you to click on a link and verify your information, so the bank can take care of everything. No matter how legitimate the email looks, banks never email you asking for your information. The email is from a scammer hoping to empty your savings. The most recent scams play off government stimulus checks and EPPICards (for child support payments). Check the National Consumers League’s Internet Fraud Watch for tips to avoid such scams. Similar schemes play off mortgage and credit card debt elimination, with the scammer offering to get rid of your debt for a small fee ($1000-2000) and power of attorney authorizing transactions on your behalf. When this information (and payment) is entrusted to them, you’ll be left with nothing—except that mortgage or credit card bill they still haven’t taken care of.

3. You’ve won a FREE Xbox fraud. Pretty much any time you’re given something for nothing you should be wary. As charitable as Bill Gates is, Microsoft Corporation is a business and isn’t going to give away thousands of free Xbox’s. The email will read something like this: “Congratulations! You’ve won a FREE Xbox (or iPod, or TiVo, or some other fancy gadget)! All we need is your address and credit card information to pay the $5.99 shipping/handling!” Don’t trust it, or you’ll soon find your credit card maxed-out—and probably five or six more cards you never knew you had.

4. Charity fraud. Perhaps the most unfortunate scams in recent years have come in the wake of tragedies like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 tsunami. When such tragedies occur, scammers take advantage of the fact that many people who are willing to help don’t know where to donate their money. Never trust an email asking for charitable contributions before verifying the credibility of the organization. Never open attached images or files, as they may be viruses. And never provide them your personal information. If you want to help, you should preferably donate directly to big-name organizations like the Red Cross or Amnesty International, which always organize direct disaster relief funds.

5. Murder for hire fraud. One of the most twisted Internet scams it the so-called “hit man scam.” The victim is contacted and told that he/she is to be assassinated or a loved one will be kidnapped, unless the recipient wires several thousand dollars to the sender of the email. In another version the “hit man” claims to be a law enforcement official who has recently discovered the recipient’s information in a captured murderer’s pocket. The recipient is then asked to contact the “authorities” to help with the investigation. Even if you feel someone is really out to get you, if you ever receive one of these emails, contact the police—immediately.

The best way to keep your finances secure is to never give out any personal information unless you’re sure the site is reputable. If you think you’ve received a scam email, report it either to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which also puts out yearly statistics on online fraud, or to the FBI’s Cyber Investigation Team.

By Zach Kaufmann of YoungMoney

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Adsense is the best Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising program we had.Every bloggers aim is to make some bucks at the end right? For that we read so many sites,articles and books around the web daily.Apart from blending ads,writing good content,quality and lot more things daily we read on every blog,we need to concentrate more on keywords to get good amount into your pocket.

Keywords are the words that people using on search engines to find their desired stuff.Advertiser will use the same keywords to advertise on sites.Advertisers will buy the keywords with Google to display their ads on sites across who are using Adsense.Finally am saying,ads appearing on your sites will depend on the keywords you’re using in your posts.

If you target using high paid keywords in your posts,then Google will show high paid ads in your site.This way you will get more bucks per click.The formula is simple, High paid keywords target = High you will receive.Finally all you have to do is,just spend some time to search the high paid keywords on the topic you are writing post.Then try to use those keywords to design your post.

Where to find high paid keywords? Ha,here are some of the best tools in the market which will tell you the keywords for free.
Best Keyword Selection Tools:

1. Overture Inventory Keyword Selector Tool


2. WordTracker keyword research tool


3. Google AdWords Keyword Tool External


4. Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool


5. Submit Express Keyword Suggestion Tool


6. Keyword Country free keyword tool

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Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.

Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.

Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

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Once your site is up and running, the best method for getting immediate traffic is pay-per-click search engine marketing. Although you have to be patient, you should also be focusing on search engine optimization as a long term strategy.



Search Engine Optimization – “SEO”



Search engine optimization, or “seo” as it is better known, is the definitive long term Internet marketing strategy. So, what is it? Seo simply refers to taking steps to make sure your site appears high in non-paid search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.


The reason seo is considered a long term strategy is…well, it takes a long time. If your marketing is focusing on highly competitive keywords, such as “Europe travel”, there is so much competition that you could be looking at two or three years before getting top rankings. The time period is really a factor of how fast you can build links. Sometimes you can move up within 6 months, but sometimes it takes a few years.


Is it worth it to wait for 2 years to get into the top five for “Europe travel”? There are over 2,000,000 searches a month for the keyword phrase. What do you think? If you offer a service or product related to traveling in Europe, how much money would you make if even 1 million people visited your site each month? Think about that.



The Big Three



There are three, and only three, search engines that matter when it comes to seo – Google, Yahoo and MSN. What about Alta Vista, etc.? They simply don’t have enough traffic to make them worth pursuing.


There are four keys to seo. First, you must research the amount of traffic various keywords are receiving. Second, you must modify your site to include the exact keywords phrases in the meta tagging and text. Third, you must add and add and add content to your site. The more content, the more the big three will like your site. Finally, you must trade links with other sites that have content related to your site.


The keys to pursuing a seo marketing strategy are discipline and patience. Let’s take a quick look at each.


You must have the discipline to stick with your seo effort when you are seeing no results. The desire to throw one’s arms in the air in frustration is going to be strong. Just remember that every step you take today will pay off down the road.


Patience balances feelings of frustration and you are going to have a lot of those. Look, it is going to take a long time, so resist the urge to whine. Stick a sign up over your desk counting off the months or have a regular exercise routine. If nothing else, you can day dream about all of the free traffic you are going to get one day.


Search engine optimization is not for the weak of mind or impatient. If you can stick with it, this long term marketing strategy always pays off.

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The Different Types of Profesional Internet Marketing Services



Search engine marketing can only be done in two ways; natural rankings and advertising. Top natural search engine rankings in competitive keyphrase environments usually demands the employment of an SEO Service. That is what this article is all about : SEO Services that offer organic results.Pay-per-click searchengine advertising does not require a search engine optimizer at all. It requires a person that can modify an advertising account. There are very few skills involved. Practically anyone can change a bidding campaign.On the other hand, the expertise involved in search engine optimisation requires a unique skill set. Difficult niche SERP ( search engine results pages ) competitions generally demand for the kind of high caliber web site optimization that only a small portion of SEOs are able to actually perform. These extremely powerful optimizing services come in three types : Ethical, Unethical and Somewhere in the middle. In SEO terms : White Hat, Black Hat and Grey Hat.



White Hat SEO Services




These are web site promotion artists, the true SEO masters. Theirs is a craft. Whitehats are long term search engine strategists. They not only follow the search engine guidelines explicitly, they attain and sustain top rankings in competitive search term arenas. Their involvement with a web site only enhances the corporate image of the website owner. These are usually very classy people with high moral values and sound ethical fiber.These are the types of people you can trust explicitly.




Black Hat SEO Services




These are the searchengine manipulators. They follow the trendy search engine manipulation techniques. Their successes are generally short lived. Blackhat SEO experts get web sites penalized and in extreme cases, banned altogether from the SERPs. They care not how their work reflects upon the web site owner. Usually, unethical optimizers like this have little class.Some of these people are truly bad characters.




Grey Hat SEO Services




These are Internet marketing experimentalists in a way. Most of them know they are manipulating the search engines. They often have a clear comprehension of the SE Guidelines but choose to push the limits of what the search engines deem to be acceptable; often surpassing the limits. These expert SEO services don't usually get a web site banned from the results pages, but their work is frequently slapped with penalties or non-rewards for misbehaving. Fortunately, they are skilled enough to reel in their misdeeds and re-establish a web site's credibility fairly quickly.


Greyhats care about how their work reflects the owner of a web site to a certain extent, but are driven to be cutting-edge ( trendy ) so much that they often loose focus on the rules of good behaviour. Thankfully, SEO expert services of this nature are capable enough to rectify their misdeeds. Optimisation specialists of this genre are chameleon in nature, they care deeply about achieving web successes for their clients but clearly have some character imperfections when it comes to playing by the rules.


These are the average Joe web optimizaters, often leaving their sloppy work behind and usually leaving a bad taste of SEO in their client's mouth.

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Rank  Website                Market Share

1.    www.google.com         5.37%
2.    mail.yahoo.com         4.91%
3.    www.myspace.com        4.49%
4.    www.yahoo.com          3.86%
5.    mail.live.com          2.29%
6.    www.ebay.com           1.91%
7.    search.yahoo.com       1.68%
8.    www.msn.com            1.33%
9.    www.facebook.com       0.93%
10.   www.youtube.com        0.73%
11.   images.google.com      0.52%
12.   www.gmail.com          0.5%
13.   search.msn.com         0.49%
14.   www.wikipedia.org      0.47%
15.   my.yahoo.com           0.4%
16.   mail.aol.com           0.37%
17.   www.ebaymotors.com     0.35%
18.   www.pogo.com           0.35%
19.   address.yahoo.com      0.34%
20.   www.amazon.com         0.34%


Source: Hitwise

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Shel Israel, co-author (with Robert Scoble) of the influential book on blogging, Naked Conversations, recently interviewed me regarding social media and IT failures. I used the interview to consolidate my views on several IT failure-related issues.

Causes of IT failure

IT failures are generally caused by management errors in human, rather than technical systems. Poor judgment, dysfunctional organizational politics, and bad planning are far more likely to cause a major project failure than a database failure, for example. The high profile failures that hit the newspapers, or that I blog about, generally arise as the culmination of many bad decisions strung together over time.

Large software implementations typically involve three parties: the customer, the software vendor, and the consulting services supplier. Considering this complexity, and the sometimes-conflicting agendas that result, the high rate of IT project failures becomes less surprising.


Social media and IT failure

To the extent social media improves an organization’s communication and decision-making abilities, it will also improve project success rates. Social media is not a magic bullet, but represents an organization’s commitment to streamline communication, share knowledge, and work more effectively as a team. These are characteristics of both healthy organizations and successful IT projects.

Shelfware and social media


[M]erely making software available does not mean users will actually adopt it.

More significantly, an organization must define “rules of engagement” that encourage users to embed social media in their day-to-day work. From this perspective, planning the diffusion of social media through an organization is little different from planning a traditional enterprise software implementation. Without proper change management, training, documentation and so on, social media becomes yet another under-utilized tool sitting on a server. The annals of IT failures are filled with cases of software that was purchased, deployed, and never fully used. Social media is not immune.

Coordinated deployments of social media across a large enterprise look and behave like any other enterprise software implementation. In both cases, IT and the business are essential partners in making the deployment successful. As with IT failures in general, the success of social media deployments depend more on human, rather than technical, systems and planning.

Social media and centralized IT power

Social media puts power into the hands of individuals and that power ultimately comes at the expense of centralized IT departments.

Strategic business computing decisions, including social media issues, should reflect the involvement of three groups: end-users, business management, and technical management.

To the extent that social media programs are business-based, meaning their core function is providing non-technical benefits to users, then sponsorship should lie in the business domain. In this respect, social media is a business initiative like any other, and should be treated as such.

On the other hand, if IT tries to interfere with new methods of communication between enterprise groups, then it will be doomed to fail. There’s virtue in going with the flow, especially when the flow is inevitable. It should be a partner in helping the enterprise adopt improved tools and work processes. For IT to succeed, it must engage users in dialog and support their desire to improve communications and information sharing.

IT / Business alignment

It’s time for IT to leave the ivory tower and become part of the decision-making culture of the business. The entire notion of IT as being somehow separate, or having independent goals from, the non-technical parts of an enterprise is absolutely ridiculous.

I don’t want to paint this as being entirely the fault of IT – many senior business executives don’t fully understand how IT processes function, nor do they completely grasp the ramifications that technical decisions can have on non-technical business strategies.

Source

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