Digital Flier Solution

Are you frustrated with trying to attach your flier to an email because it has so many images and is taking 6 hours to upload?

Well we have a wonderful solution for electronic fliers – we use a free  on line tool called Event Brite for our electronic flier design and digital distribution.

Event Brite provides you the ability to create a flier with out knowing any code. You put in your information push save and they generate a web address you can paste into an email or any social network site.

Try it out it’s free. If you get stuck don’t hesitate to call on me to teach you how to use this program or to create your flier for you. I usually charge people $40 a flier and I am willing to do this service on the fly (ie. no contract – short notice – pay through Pay Pal at: myearthly@gmail.com.)

Check out the flier I created this morning in about 1.5 hours:

http://thehealingbreath.eventbrite.com/

I love tools that let you take your marketing into your own hands. Tools like this give my  clients  a sense of digital power!!!

The 6th Sense

Pranav Mistry is a genius!

Part 1

Part 2

Word Press Channel

If you are having trouble figuring your word press out this gentleman has created 41 videos to teach you the in’s and out’s of working with word press – mcbuzzvideo

I am currently advising my word press clients to watch one video a day and then practice what he shows you.

This is the key to becoming a word press guru in no time!

Wikinomics

NEW! Don Tapscott announces the 2010 NetGen Education and MacroWikinomics!

21st Centery Classrooms

I really enjoy Dr. David Rose’s approach to teaching in the 21st century listen to his ideas in this video.

http://video.scholastic.com/services/player/bcpid1543302482?bctid=79415330001

A few quotes from the video I totally agree with:

“Get students to ask for help, get teachers to ask for help!”

“Create choices for students in how they want to learn a skill – let them choose their own content”

“Tight Goals, Loose Means” is what technology can provide us in the classroom.

“The thing that makes the brain learn is passion, according to cognitive science  you can not separate reason from emotion and have learning occur.”

I found this video on this really excellent blog for teachers – Cool Cat Teacher – created by Vicki A. Davis.

The Form Devil!

Let me share with you a new tool I just discovered called www.FormDevil.com

Form Devil is an excellent tool for building your own database driven(php coded) forms.

This tool is amazing because it allows you to build a custom form for your website – get the code and give it to your designer so they can easily embed it in your pages or a template.

This is their tag line and it’s totally true:

• Professional Online Forms
• No Recurring Fees
• You Keep The Code

We all know the more you do for yourself the less you have to pay your designer. I say teach a man to fish and he will eat forever, catch his fish for him and he will eat once and go hungry.

With their on-line interface the Form Devil crew has made it possible for you to be as savy as a php coder with out ever touching the code. They will give you a 30 day trial for free. If you like the product after that it is $47.00 for the year or sign up at their sister site Form Experts for as little as $7 a month. This is alot cheaper then hiring a php coder, save yourself the trouble and create your own forms with this fabulous tool.

Their forms are great if you want to embed a pay-pal shopping cart in your site and you can’t afford to have your designer do all the work of setting up all THOSE DIFFERENT FORMS. Like wise if you don’t know php and you’re a designer/virtual assistant you can use this service to get all your php code up and running.

I also discovered you can easily tie “form devil forms” into the your go daddy MySql database admin control panel. What does this translate to in non-tech speak – it means the data the form collects can be routed to a database on your server that can be accessed by other tools.

For example, let’s say you are using a form to collect contact information for your clients and you want a database that creates a mailing list on your go daddy server – well with these forms this is 100% possible.

As we give up our fear of technology we find the flow of the universal power – possibly turning us from little angry devils into tech savvy angels floating to heaven!

Joomla and Google Check out Module

Currently adding the Google Check Out Module to one of my client’s Joomla sites.

Will post shortly with my feedback on this product!

Google Buzz!

Google Comes out with Buzz!

This is a  new style of conversing about things you find interesting and yet another social networking tool. The big plus is, it’s  built inside your G-mail account and now  you don’t need to go to another site to check in on your friends!

On the internet the social networking trend is the wave of the future – the speed at which people share things  is going faster and faster. Many of my clients are concerned with how their content will be shared with their social networks on their websites.

I believe You Tubes’ embedded java scripts for easily sharing videos and Facebook’s share buttons are the result of this change in the consciousness of Cultural Creatives with active social change based businesses. Their goal is to through out a really wide net and if their are fish in the net they are lucky – but the net needs to be focus on specific and powerful content in order to catch fish.

Check out  this video to learn about Buzz; it is a brief video for non techies to get started with!

With so much information exchange their becomes a real need for well written short format copy that lets people know they want to immediately share this information with their friends. Humanity has a thirst for knowledge but with so much information you have to sort useful from useless very quickly just to keep up!

If you enjoy the video set up your  own  Google Profile. Once you’re all set up and ready to go feel free to follow my buzz at:  Google Profile Jennifer Houst

Side Wiki

Wow the new side wiki tool is a trip! It allows anyone and everyone to provide side comments on any website on the net, and all of the comments are live and readable by anyone with the wiki installed in their browser.

Power to the people I hope the spammers don’t start causing trouble with this tool. Watch this video to see how it works!

Just a side note – how is this going to effect SEO – if you want to SEO a site are you going to have to get your friends to go make positive comments in the side wiki?

Joomla Doomla Boot Camp

It’s official I have joined the Joomla University Boot Camp. Such a great tool but a bit daunting at first. I have to admit the simplicity of word press is just wonderful – but I am sure in a few days I will feel less like a fish out of water and more like a Grey whale owning the ocean. One lesson at a time in this great journey down the road of Samsara (illusion.)

http://www.joomlashack.com/tutorials

Wow – Joomla is a trip – I think I just had a cognition on the difference between a component, a module, a menu, a section, a category, and an article. oh my!

I found this excellent article below on the basic structure of the php Joomla databases. It is so interesting how the process of designing a database driven web works. When creating database driven webs you have to think about the details first and work backwards to creating the larger picture.

Basically you create your specific articles first, then you create a path from your articles to your categories and then to your sections, and then to your menus, and then to your modules and finally if possible to your components.

The way I see it, it’s like writing a book and organizing it one paragraph at a time. This is impossible with out a larger concept for the book itself.

Usually in the creative process one has an idea which is the point of conception, then the idea expands with vision and then you are able to break it down in to small parts so it can be understood in separate chapters, then sections, then pages, and finally supporting paragraphs.

But, this is not how a database works. In-fact it is the opposite – machines really turn the creative process on its head or require you to make a map before your start your journey.

http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-tutorials/content-is-kinga-beginners-guide-to-organizing-content-in-joomla

A wise women once told me to pay attention to the pebbles as I climb the tall mountain. I believe in this application she was right!