One of my clients (ARMS – Athlete Relationship Management Software) needed a billboard design to be displayed in a university stadium. Here are some of the revisions we made, going from the first draft to final version. The requirements were to build two square billboards, one 24″x24″ and the other 8′x8′.
First version:
In the first draft, I simply pulled elements from the existing ARMS website and adapted them for use in a square billboard. This involved scaling up the background gradients and building the rest of the artwork from the original elements — logo files and fonts to ensure maximum crispness when printed.
Second version:
In the next revision we decided to emphasize the software messaging by putting the URL into an easily recognizable button element. We also substituted some different language in place of the website’s tagline.
Third version:
Changed the button color to blue to stand out more against the orange background and adjusted the wording to be more concise and less crowded.
Fourth (final) version:
In the final version, I made a number of final tweaks to the design, including emphasizing the logo highlight more so it will show up better when viewed at a distance. I also whittled the marketing message down to 3 simple bullet points, more easily read by the intended audience — coaches and athletic directors. A final increase in the height of the button helps the URL to stand out a bit more, and some bottom gradient arcs help complete the design and add additional movement and interest.
The final full-size Photoshop PDF for the 8′x8′ 150dpi file is 46.6 MB, compressed into a ZIP file only 6.9MB.
It’s surprisingly simple to get a Fictitious Name registered in Missouri, and it only happens to cost $7.00.
Simply click here: Missouri Registration of Fictitious Name and then fill out two simple online forms (takes about 1 minute), submit your credit card info for $7.00 and you’ll get an immediate confirmation of your name and PDF invoice and registration documents to download.
Very handy if you’re applying to something like the iPhone Developer Program and they need to see documentation…
I’ve had this domain name for a while and finally built something on it. The idea is to figure out good ways to save money on car insurance. We have USAA for ours, which makes it nice because it is a pretty good rate. Some people need extra help, though, to find the best prices. Hopefully this site will assist them in their search.
I’ve fixed it so that adding feeds to RSS2.com should work again now. There was a small flaw in the logic for adding the feeds that I hadn’t caught. All fixed now.
So far there have been almost 130,000 total items retrieved from almost 700 feeds since it the site launched in December.
If you’ve ever tried to get your website featured on the front page of a site like digg, reddit, or Slashdot you might have felt frustration when you didn’t get the right number of votes to make it.
There is a site called RSS2.com that will automatically put your website’s content directly on its homepage.
How to get onto the homepage
Here are the 3 easy steps for you to take to get your website featured on the homepage of RSS2.com:
Go to the site and make sure that your RSS feed is in the database. The easiest way to do this is to paste in the URL for your RSS feed into the “Read a Feed” input box at the bottom of the page.
Verify that your existing site RSS feed was imported correctly. You should be forwarded to the page that shows you your feed’s page on RSS2.com if it was imported successfully. (For example, the page for this site is http://rss2.com/feeds/Gabriel)
Publish a new item on your website. RSS feeds are updated every 5 minutes so you should only have to wait for a minute or two. Refresh your feed page until you see your new item appear. Now check the homepage. Your new item should be at the top of the list, and will remain until 9 newer items are published by other people in their RSS feeds.
Bonus tip #1 – how to get into the top 30 feeds list
If you want to make it into the top 30 feed list (featured at the top of every page), all you have to do is tell people about your RSS2.com page that features your feed and increase your view count. The easiest way to do this is to use the RSS feed stats widget at the bottom of your feed page (copy and paste the HTML into your blog sidebar or another HTML page) — note that your site must allow <script> tags to enable the live updates of your RSS2.com feed stats information. You can also promote yourself to the top 30 by linking to your feed page in your blog roll and by sending the link to your friends.
Bonus tip #2 – Pretty site icon
To have your site icon show up nicely in the all feeds page and in the explore lists make sure you have a favicon installed for your website. RSS2.com will look for that and use it for your site icon. If it doesn’t find one, it will use a generic one that doesn’t set your site apart from any of the other ones. See the Wikipedia entry on favicons for how to get one installed for your site if you don’t already have one.
So, 3 easy steps to get your website content promoted on the RSS2.com website.
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