Archive for the 'General' Category

Are newsletters still an effective way to keep in touch with your audience?

Published on April 14, 2008 in General. 12 Comments

I’ve been running the killersites.com newsletter (among a few others) for several years now. Though I’ve found it to effective, with regards to keeping in touch with people, it is clearly not what it used to be.

Stupid Spammers

podcast icon

Yea, the porn and pill spammers have really done a lot of harm to newsletters. These days, if you send out a newsletter, you will have to deal with a few things that just get in the way:

1. Email filters – gone wild.
2. Angry (crazy) recipients.

These days, email filters are really fined tuned to catch just about any type of spam. Unfortunately, they tend to trash real email from time to time. So when writing my newsletter, I have to be careful to avoid certain keywords that might get my newsletter blocked.

Continue reading ‘Are newsletters still an effective way to keep in touch with your audience?’

Running Windows on your Mac

Published on October 16, 2007 in General. 4 Comments

imac

A major question that many Windows users are facing (who are considering the move to a Mac,) is whether or not they will have the choice of software on the Mac, that they have on Windows.

For web designers, this is typically a no-brainer since all the commonly used programs in web design:

  • Dreamweaver
  • Flash
  • Photoshop

… have Mac versions.

That said, there are still some great programs that are simply not made for the Mac.

Runnings Windows on your Mac

Fortunately, there are a few options out there that allow you to run Windows only programs on your Mac. Actually, there are even a couple of options that allow you to run Windows itself on your Mac! This is all made possible because the Mac now runs on the Intel chip (which is the same processor that Windows uses,) so it is much easier to ‘translate’ between Windows and Mac.

Continue reading ‘Running Windows on your Mac’

idea22.com Updates

Published on August 14, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

idea22.com Logo

Hi,

With some of my post, I try to come up with a story to add a little ‘color’ my writing…. my mother complains when I don’t.

Unfortunately, unless you want to hear about the ongoing saga of my teeth, I haven’t much to say.

:(

OK, I have something to say:

One thing that painful teeth have taught me; take care of little things before they turn into big things. Otherwise you risk an expensive and painful punishment for being lazy.

Which reminds me of an expression (I think?) I came up with:

“You either pay now … or you pay later with interest!”

Keep that in mind in all aspects of life.

Onto things nerd-like:

We made some good progress getting the new free video tutorial website up and running - www.idea22.com.

We now have a cool new interface that allows you to quickly browse through the last 50 videos. We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and polished up the look of the site overall. You should also check out the full-screen view of the videos - I think they are the sharpest on the Web.

That’s all well and good, but what’s in it for you? Well, we got a bunch of new videos up on things like:

* - Web design
* - PHP
* - Photoshop

I invite you to take a look, join up and please comment on the videos and the site. We are still doing a lot of work and your input will help us build a better web site.

Some specific pages:

http://www.idea22.com/video/details/id/200708147122666750

http://www.idea22.com/video/details/id/200708082373232020

A few of videos are actually from the killersites.com archive … buried deep in killersites.com. I am moving them all to idea22.com over the next little while so they are easy to find.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

Why Youtube became so big so fast and what its’ growth can teach you about the Web

Published on August 13, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

youtube logo

Youtube is the new big thing on the Web. But you have to wonder why Youtube got so big so fast?

… Consider that there are web sites that have existed long before Youtube and did the exact same thing - user generated videos/video sharing.

As a web designer/web developer, my first instinct would be to look at:

  1. Functionality
  2. Usability

I found that Youtube is very good in both camps (for the most part,) but so are several other video sharing sites.

The answer to Youtube’s success:

Youtube went to the top because of content.

Unfortunately, the content that drives Youtube is the content that the other big video sharing sites (ethically) removed from their websites - all the professionally produced videos.

.. We all like to see videos of cats falling off tables once in a while, but let’s be honest, most of us go to Youtube to see copyrighted videos:

  • The Daily Show
  • Colber Report
  • Family Guy

… etc.

While the other video sharing sites removed copyrighted material, Youtube turned a blind eye (at least that is what I think,) and Youtube saw its’ traffic skyrocket.

So now Youtube is being sued left and right … they deserve it. If someone was selling ad space from an audience largely attracted by my hard work (not that would ever happen …) I would be pretty pissed off.

Side note:

My relatively simple video tutorials take a while to produce: you are taking about 5-7 hrs of work (easily) for every hour of video!

-

Google says (Google bought Youtube) that in September it will introduce its’ video filtering technology and flush out the stolen content. I wonder if Youtube’s traffic will go the way of Napster?

Just in case you forget; Napster was the big name in music sharing (again stolen content,) until they were sued and forced to remove all the big-name songs. Napster has since fallen off the radar … no content.

Content is King:

That was the first rule of web design I learned back in 1994: content is king. You have to have good usability etc .. but at the end of the day, a web site needs good content.

… And that (my nerd friends,) is what Youtube and Napster can teach us about the Web.

Thanks for reading,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

Microphone Sound Test

Published on June 25, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

In my attempts to get the best sound possible for my video tutorials, I’ve tested a bunch of mics. I kept the budget under $800 for the whole setup (mic and audio interface) because .. well, I didn’t want to spend more!

That said I have narrowed my choice down to two mics:

The EV R20 @ $500 USD.
re20 Microphone

Another Option

Another really good mic that sounds about the same and is much cheaper ($99) is the Audio-Technica AT2010 or the Audio-Technica AE-6100.

The Audio-Technica AT2010
Microphone-audio-technica

SO WHAT’S AN ‘AUDIO INTERFACE’?

In a nutshell an audio interface (ex: FAST TRACK PRO) is a piece of hardware that allows you to connect XLR microphones to your computer. An XLR is a type of cable that is used in professional audio.


M-AUDIO FAST TRACK PRO @ $200.
m-audio-audio-interface

Thanks!

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com