eDesign-Pro Company

Author: Kathleen Toler

  • BabyGoodBuys.com: Graphic Design {Social Media Icons}

    BabyGoodBuys.com: Graphic Design {Social Media Icons}

    I was privileged to meet Marybeth in person a few weeks ago when I attended a blogger meetup in New Orleans, LA called Bloggers On Bourbon, hosted by MomDot and BookieBoo/Mamavation. I absolutely adore her :) I was ecstatic when she came to me for a blog design on a new project she hasn’t yet launched. Subsequently, she entrusted me with revamping her existing blog’s header to include some custom social media icons. It was SO much fun for me to figure out the perfect way to add a creative touch while prominently directing her readers to connect with her across her social network. Marybeth was overjoyed when she saw her new header and her return email read, “Oh my goodness. You are AMAZING!” You’re pretty dang awesome yourself, Marybeth. I’m glad you’re happy with it!

    Header, Before (Click to enlarge):

    Header, After (Click to enlarge):

  • ‘DROID: Ten FREE Must-Have Apps on the Android Market

    ‘DROID: Ten FREE Must-Have Apps on the Android Market

    First things first, if you don’t have an Android phone, get one. I have to say that even though I’d prefer NOT to have to sift through all the bloatware AT&T insists on installing (and refusing to allow the end user to uninstall) I still can’t see myself owning a non-Android phone now that I have had the pleasure of owning one. After playing around in the Android market for a while, here are the apps I’ve decided my phone just isn’t worth having if they aren’t installed:

    1. Barcode Scanner: Let’s say I’m browsing around the internet and come across a killer Android app. Do I really want to have to find that app in the market? Not really. How about an app that lets me just scan the app’s QR code to download it? Let’s say I’m shopping around for a new microwave oven and I find one that I think is a good bargain. Do I want to assume I’m getting a good deal? Not really. How about an app that allows me to scan a barcode (UPC label) then gives me the option to search the web, do a product search, or look through Google Shopper to find comparable pricing. Barcode Scanner was developed by ZXing Team and uses your phone’s camera to scan QR codes/barcodes to download applications or find information about products. It also supports bulk scanning if you want to get information on multiple barcodes at once. If you already have a basic scanner installed and want more functionality in an easy-to-use interface, scan the QR code to the right to install Barcode Scanner or run a search to find it in the Android market.
    2. CrossConnect Bible: I’m a Theology Major so the Bible is essentially one of my textbooks. Having it on my phone is an excellent way to ensure I’m able to have a study reference available at all times. CrossConnect has a Daily Verse widget for your home screen (and a daily verse function for viewing within the app itself), audio playback which will read your selected passage to you, a randomize feature called “Inspire” which displays a random verse each time you press it, audio sermons by John Piper from DesiringGod.org that you can download or stream, and a share button that allows you to publish Scriptures across your social network (or via text message and email). The app’s settings allow you to set the text size, type, and color as well! You can find CrossConnect in the Android market or just scan the QR code to the right.
    3. Fake-Call Me: Imagine you’re at the park. Some wacko comes up and starts babbling on and on about a fight they had with their spouse, the way their kid keeps peeing in the wastebasket, and how Verizon keeps overcharging them on their cell phone bill. You nod and smile, hoping that your silence will give Captain Awkward a hint… but alas, it does not. Fake-Call Me gives you a way out without seeming rude (because you know, someday this person could end up teaching your child’s history class) by letting you schedule a “phone call” to come in which is obviously going to be an emergency! It allows you to program the number and name that will show up on the caller ID and choose the time delay before your phone begins to ring. There is also a 99-cent pro version that lets you choose a contact from the phonebook so that the contact’s photo displays, add an audio functionality so that a pre-recorded message is played when you ‘answer,’ store the fake call in your call log, AND schedule multiple fake calls at once – you know, because it’s urgent :) That’s well worth a buck if you ask me!
    4. Foursquare: Not everyone has gotten warmed up to this trend yet, but as someone who was once VERY skeptical about Foursquare, I must admit that once I started using it I’ve gotten quite addicted. I find myself checking in just about everywhere I go. I’m still pretty cautious about it and a majority of the time, I will actually check in as I’m walking out because who knows who might come lurking where you are!? It is a pretty fun app for people who are meeting up with friends or who are out of town with a group and want to keep in contact, letting one another know where they are as they bounce around from location to location. I use it around town here when I stop for sweet tea or run in Walmart to shop… I’ve gotten quite competitive trying to oust people from Mayorship of my favorite places! You can also read and leave tips about places you visit. Was there an awesome waitress that you want to recommend or a dish that was downright terrible you want to warn people about? You can do that on Foursquare. The app lets you keep up with your friends’ activity, use your GPS to suggest places in your vicinity, and show you your recent history.
    5. Google Voice/Maps/Navigation: I put these three in one because most of Google’s Android apps come pre-installed on the phone. If you want to know all the apps Google has available for the Android, you can find and download them on the Google for Android page. Google Voice is an excellent service which assigns you a telephone number which you can integrate with your Android seamlessly. You can set it to use ONLY Google Voice to make calls, prompt you, or disable it altogether. I love the app because it allows me to get transcripts of my Google Voice messages delivered to my handset and since I am on a family share plan with FOUR other people, I can add my Google Voice number to our A-list and use it to make unlimited free calls domestically and VERY inexpensive international calls. That sure would have come in handy when Barry was in Germany — we spent a small fortune talking on the phone! Google Maps uses the phone’s GPS to not only tell you where you are, but give you directions to where you need to go… use it along with Google’s Navigation program and you have GPS Navigation right there on your phone. Navigation also speaks to you, so there’s no fumbling with the phone or trying to look at the screen while you drive. My husband and I used it on a recent trip and it was pin-point accurate in telling us where to turn and when!
    6. Pandora: This app is an absolute LIFESAVER on long trips. When you’re tired of listening to the same old songs on your mp3 player or rotating out CD after CD and flipping through every radio station or satellite radio channel known to man, you can plug your phone up to your vehicle and feed the Pandora radio stream through your car’s audio system. Alternately, if your spouse is like mine and actually ENJOYS listening to the same horrible music for hours on end, you can always plug in some ear buds and listen all by yourself :) It’s also useful when you’re jogging or even just sitting at your PC — I plug my phone up to my computer using a 3.5mm jack and listen to Pandora as I work!
    7. PayPal: The PayPal app for Android is amazing. You sign in using your phone number and a 4-digit PIN to access your PayPal balance, transaction history, and account information. You can also send/receive money, request money, and it supports the all too popular “bump” mechanism which allows the transfer of funds between two PayPal customers simply by bumping the phones together. There are also some pretty cool tools in the app like a bill reminder and a function that lets you actually split a bill while you’re out with a group. It’s a pretty simple app; there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles, but it’s certainly handy to have for those like myself who use PayPal on a daily basis for business. It allows me to check my PayPal balance within seconds so I’m not embarrassed when I try to pay for something with my PayPal card and the funds aren’t available :) It will also pull email addresses and phone numbers from your phone’s contacts to help you send money or an invoice while you’re on the go and has a quick search field so you don’t have to sort through 453 records to find who you’re looking for. I couldn’t find a QR code for the PayPal app, but it’s searchable in the Android market.
    8. TweetCaster: TweetCaster is by far my favorite and most used Android app. It allows me to view the tweet timeline of all the people I follow on Twitter, find and follow people, view who is following me, reply, retweet, and direct message all from one screen. It also lets me see the lists I’m on as well as the lists I’m following and see as well as add to my favorites. I can upload photos to TwitPic (or yfrog/tweetphoto) and videos to TwitVid, filter my stream by a search term (great for following a hashtag), and even update my Facebook status when I publish a tweet (or update my Facebook status without publishing a tweet and vice versa). I can also manage MULTIPLE twitter accounts on this thing – I can switch between accounts with two taps of the screen. There’s also a couple of nifty little features like ‘shake to refresh’ and finding tweets of people near me by entering my zip code or using my current GPS location. Seriously this app does everything but cook me pancakes.
    9. SMS Popup: While I love the way Android’s notification menu slides down and up I’m one of those people that can appreciate the “old” way of doing things… I like my text messages to display on my screen without having to click over to view my messages. SMS Popup is a simple tool that does just what the name says – pops the new text message up on the screen and has four buttons whose functions you can choose out of the following commands: close, delete, delete with no confirmation, reply, quick reply (this lets you select a pre-typed response to send), reply to phone number, text-to-speech, and inbox. You also have the option to disable any of the buttons if you don’t have a need for all four. There are also a ton of other little nit-picky options for you to customize the way this app operates.
    10. WordPress: As a blogger, there is nothing more valuable to me than a tool that gives me the opportunity to draft articles while I’m waiting in line at a checkout, a drive through, or anywhere else for that matter. With the WordPress for Android app, I can add ALL of my blogs into the UI, regardless of whether they are self-hosted or hosted on WordPress.com (and for those who don’t yet have a blog, this app will help you create one – SWEET!) and it stores all of my login information so that a simple touch brings up my dashboard where I can moderate comments, view and edit posts, publish articles, modify or add pages, and view my stats. When I add a blog posts, I can format the text, add media from my phone, select tags and categories, and publishing is optional which means I can save drafts to my blog directly from my phone so that I can add custom fields and whatnot before actually publishing them for the world to see. That would be my only gripe about this app – I would LOVE to be able to manipulate the custom fields… then my life would be complete :)

    Are you an Android owner?

    What apps could you not possibly live without? Leave me a comment and let me know what I’m missing!

  • Twitter Tools Connection Failure? Try Hootsuite!

    Twitter Tools Connection Failure? Try Hootsuite!

    I’ve seen a lot of bloggers with the Twitter Tools dilemma since Twitter changed their authorization method for third party connections. Now, your password can’t be stored in a third party application – it has to go through OAuth which has cause a lot of disarray in the blogging world for those who typically were dependent on Twitter Tools to display their tweets in their blog sidebars and publish their blog post links to their Twitter streams automatically, complete with hashtags, mentions, and even bit.ly URL shortening. OAuth is actually a wonderfully fabulous thing. There are a ton of benefits, the most important of which is that it is definitely a lot more secure.

    While developers get the kinks worked out of their software, we’re just going to have to do some working around the issues we’re seeing on our end. I’m not terribly disappointed about not being able to feed my tweets into my sidebar, but if you are, try the Twitter Widget Pro WordPress plugin and you’ll be back in business in no time :) For blog post link feeding into your social media networks, use Hootsuite. You set up an RSS feed that will feed your blog posts into your tweet stream. You don’t have the option of hashtagging… and your URL will now either be a ht.ly or ow.ly link rather than bit.ly but I’m sure it’s better than manually posting your links, right?

    It’s easy – and to make it even easier, here’s a visual aid:

    If you don’t already have an account, visit www.Hootsuite.com and sign up. Set up your social media accounts and you’re good to go.

    Click the little owl’s head in the top left hand corner to bring down your user control panel menu – go to settings, then click on RSS/Atom:

    Once you’re there, click on the Add New Feed button, complete the form with your feed information and preferences, select the accounts you want to publish to, and then save. That’s it. Your blog feed will now publish into the social media accounts you chose.

    I’ll update when I’ve found a solution to the Twitter Tools issue because I certainly enjoyed the features it offers, such as archiving tweets and of course hashtagging.

  • HOW TO: Fix the Custom File Editor’s Fatal Call Error in Thesis Theme on WordPress 3.0

    HOW TO: Fix the Custom File Editor’s Fatal Call Error in Thesis Theme on WordPress 3.0

    If you have upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and use the Thesis theme, you may have noticed that now you receive a fatal call error when trying to access your custom.css file via the Custom File Editor within your Thesis options that looks something like this:

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function use_codepress() in /DIRECTORY/public_html/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/lib/admin/admin.php on line 42

    In order to correct this, you’ll need to disable the syntax highlighter, which is what is creating the issue. Doing this is simple.

    • Find your admin.php file located in /wp-content/themes/thesis_17/lib/admin/ (you’ll need to download an FTP client if you don’t already have one — my favorite is FileZilla)
    • Open your Notepad or other text/html editor (do not do this in Word or any other program that uses an autoformatting feature)
    • Hold down your CTRL key and press the “F” key. This should pop up a find function. Paste the following string into the box and search for it in your file:

    if (use_codepress()) add_action('admin_print_footer_scripts', 'codepress_footer_js');

    • Comment that line out of the file by placing “//” in front of it like this:

    // if (use_codepress()) add_action('admin_print_footer_scripts', 'codepress_footer_js');

    • Reupload your file using the FTP client

    VOILA! You’re done. Reload your Custom File Editor and it should work like a charm. Of course, the syntax highlighter is now disabled, but at least you can access your custom.css file from within your WordPress dashboard! :) Happy blogging to ya!

  • HOW TO: Organize Your Client Projects into Manageable Task Lists

    HOW TO: Organize Your Client Projects into Manageable Task Lists

    Three words: Project Task List! If you are anything like me, you typically accept more than you should, have more going on in your life than just clients, and end up having to bounce back and forth between projects to make progress on all of your concurrent jobs simultaneously. Here is the strategy I developed over the last few weeks to keep myself productive and keep my clients happy:

    LOG EVERYTHING!

    It may sound like common sense to some, but to many businesswomen/men the little details get lost in the grand scheme of things. When was the last time you talked to Client #3? What was your conversation? What was that change that Client #7 wanted to make? Who was it that asked for me to return a phone call today? What price did I quote Client #4 for the additions she requested? When you have several projects going, several phone calls/emails coming in daily, and several “lines of communication” open at once, no matter how good you are at multitasking, you’re going to forget something! You will do yourself a HUGE favor by logging it all in ONE place that gives you easy access to all those little details any time you need them.

    GET ORGANIZED AND BE PREPARED!

    I have 5-subject notebook that is dedicated solely to work. I do love to keep track of things digitally and accessible by my computer and smartphone but I also prefer to keep my information written in a book so that I am able to jot more detailed notes immediately and organize them more efficiently. No matter how much technology improves, I’ll always believe that paper is KING ;) Why? Because I’ve had one too many overwrite, sync, and deletion mishaps to trust a digital version as my only source of information.

    I do keep a very condensed version of my project tasks in GTasks, which is an app based on Google Tasks that I have added to my Android smartphone, my iPad2, and my web browser on all of my computers and syncs across all platforms. In addition, a simplified version can be accessed in my Google Apps email account. The items in GTasks are very basic and include my client’s name and the most broad task descriptions that need to be processed on each particular project. They are hierarchical and have a check box to click when a task has been completed. This is mainly for me to keep track of the main events, and to keep my clients in order according to priority which isn’t always possible in my notebook since I can’t move pages around to accommodate changes.

    Here is a snapshot at the organization of my log book:

    • The first subject of the notebook is strictly for correspondence logging. If I send or receive an email or phone call from a current, former, or potential client I write it in there. I write the date, time, and take notes that will remind me about the high points of the conversation. If I quoted them a verbal price, I notate that beside the record. I also have notes I put out to the right side of the line, such as “follow up” or deadline information for certain things.
    • The second subject of the notebook is my actual work log. I make a note of when I start and stop and what exactly I’m working on as well as how much of it I completed during that time span. This helps me to get a better feel for how much I’m actually getting paid in respect to the work I’m doing (I then transcribe this information into my Freshbooks timesheet and apply it to the project there to keep a permanent record). Without knowing exactly what resources I’m putting into my business, there is no way to be able to gauge what I’m getting out of it, so periodically reassessing my pricing structure based on this continuously compiled data helps to ensure I’m always turning a profit and getting paid what I’m worth for the work I perform. It’s very important to know how long certain tasks take to carry out, especially since time slips away from me most of the time. Toggl.com and Freshbooks.com both have great time-tracking tools integrated into their services, and both provide a free option. {Neither of those links are affiliates — I’m simply sharing intuitive functionality I’ve found that works for me.}
    • The remaining three subjects of the notebook are for client project tasks lists. I allot two full front-and-back pages for EACH project. I write down their preferences at the top, any applicable login credentials and contact information, and notes that include details like the HEX codes for their color scheme, font families used in the graphics and/or text styles, and other pertinent information. Next, I make a list of EVERYTHING that needs to be done to complete the project. I check each item off the list as I finish them. Last, I have room for notes about processes I have run (such as import tools, installations, custom modifications, etc) and various other information that needs to be recorded along the way. This is all valuable information to refer to when my client wants an update on our progress.

    Operating this way allows me to quickly see where I left off of a project and thus I am able to know immediately where to pick up when I come back to it. Keeping track of things this way means I won’t forget to do something. Because I’m typically working on several projects at once, I’m always double and triple checking to make sure I haven’t missed something; it’s easy to omit an element or skip a step when you’re working on similar projects if you aren’t closely keeping up with which task was performed for which project… I don’t worry about that anymore because if it is not checked off the list, it is still pending. If it is checked off, it’s no longer a worry of mine :) Plus, marking an item with a “check” gives me an unparalleled sense of accomplishment LOL!

    What are YOUR productivity tricks? How do you keep yourself in check when you are your own boss? Share your tips in the comment section below!