December 2006
Our Gift to You This Year: Tools You Can Actually Use!
In honor of the holiday season, we’ve made a list of several online resources that we think you’ll find useful in many of your online endeavors. In true, “gift that keeps on giving” fashion, we’ve compiled a list of tools that we hope will assist you in the creative enhancement of your website and improve your overall web-surfing and web-building experience.
Best of all, everything is immediately available and is at no cost to you!
1. Mozilla Firefox Web Browser
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
We think Mozilla’s brower, Firefox, is pretty hot stuff. Why? It’s
got features upon features that are beneficial for you, yet it will
not harm your computer. Its pop-up blocker comes attached,
is fully functioning and is totally customizable. Thanks to
its higher level of security, your days of dodging inconspicuous
adware and deleting malicious spyware will become things of the past
(or “so 2006,” as we can all soon say). Multi-taskers
will appreciate the tabbed-browsing feature and built-in search toolbars
for easy search engine access. Firefox also shows CSS the way
it was intended to look – allowing users to see websites the
way they were meant to be seen – undoubtedly an important
feature valuable to anyone who appreciates design.
2. Free Image Hosting
http://imageshack.us/
Image Shack is a great tool you can use to host your images (say, from the company holiday party, for example) if you don’t own a server. Do you own a blog or often participate in message boards? Then you know how refreshing it is to look at pictures in a sea of text. Liven up those word-rich pages with a few images – even a few videos if you’d like, since Image Shack can host those too.
3. Color Blender
http://www.colorblender.com
Need inspiration for your company’s color scheme? Yes, even though “they’re just colors,” everyone knows that the particular theme of a company and its website contributes in great part on its image and overall personality. Sometimes we go for the obvious color matches while others blindly employ extreme contrasts in a hope for uniqueness. With ColorBlender, you won’t need to worry about mismatched hues; it does all of the color coordinating for you. Simply choose one color, and the tool will show you five other colors that harmonize with your choice. Sometimes the matches are expected, other times they are not; they are, however, always coordinated. Who knew aqua blue, brown and orange looked so good together?
4. Free Fonts
http://www.1001freefonts.com
We say you can never have too many fonts…unless they all look the same. Just like color, unique fonts can contribute to your company’s distinctiveness when used tastefully in logos and other details. Even purchased, run-of-the-mill stock photos can be personalized once a “company-wide” typescript has been established. Give “Times New Roman” a well-deserved break and head over to 1001 Free Fonts when you’re ready to expand your repertoire.
And by the way, “1001 Free Fonts” is a misnomer, but good one, fortunately: the website actually offers over 750,000,000 free fonts.
5. Blogger
http://www.blogger.com
Blogging about your business can be one way for you to take search engine marketing into your own hands. Believe it or not, blogs can benefit your company by acting as a means of advertisement. Blogger is an easy-to-use online tool with a unique “Google Blog Search” feature. What does this mean for you? If you or your resources create blog entries about your business and link back to your company’s website, whoever reads your blog – yes, even those who found it through Google – has access to information about your company. Indeed, “business” may not be the first word to come to mind when you think “blogs,” but perhaps now is the time to change that. The New Year is upon us after all, and what better time is there for changes to happen?
We hope you’ll enjoy these tips and discover what even the smallest tools can do to help enhance your business and your experiences on the web. That said, we wish you a very happy holiday season and a successful new year!
Best Wishes!
Your santex-net team