• Performancing has announced their Blog Awards 2007 Winners – definitely the cream of the crop here!
• Ben at InstigatorBlog just redesigned his blog and it looks great – read how he did it at ProBlogger.
• SOBCon 08 has been announced! Last year’s event was amazing and I was so bummed I couldn’t be there. This years theme is Biz School for Bloggers and will be held May 2-4 in Chicago. With any luck, I’ll be in attendance this year.
• Seawaves has a great post on LinkBait and using it to create more repeat visitors and long term links – a must read.
• On a similar note, Wake Up Later has three rules for retaining website visitors. Which of these rules do you follow?
• Looking to get funding for your latest project? EntrepreMusings has posted her Fundraising Toolkit – what’s in yours?
• There are so many ways to monetize your website but joining an ad network can be one of the best ways if you know where to look. Wendy at eMoms at Home has posted a very comprehensive list of the ad networks and tips for finding the right one.
• Charity from Design Adaptations took a break from client work to do some creative exploration. The result – 4 fabulous Firefox desktop wallpapers that you can download for your own use. Beautiful.
• PopStalin Designs always has creativity ON! She has just redesigned her site and it is too much fun.
• Finally, if you are like me and have to manage a gazillion internet passwords, pop over to MomGadget and enter to win a very cool internet little black book for organizing and keeping your passwords safe.

Have a great weekend!!

You Know You Are Living in 2007 When…

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list.

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, pass this to your friends you know you want to!

PS – I found this at the Paranormal Playground on a Stumble.

In this case, the team behind Blog Action Day has come up with a quick and right on the money quiz to let you know what kind of a blogger you are. Part of the motivation for creating this quiz is to raise awareness about Blog Action Day on October 15.

So what is Blog Action Day? According to the Blog Action Day website:

On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future.

So, what are you waiting for? Take a few moments out of your Friday (or over the weekend) and take the quiz - don’t forget to come back and let me know what kind of a blogger you really are. Then Monday, October 15, participate in Blog Action Day by publishing a post relating to the environment.

Have a great weekend!

So, just a few random thoughts today.

• Did anyone notice that I put the 164 Essential Tools up top and right at your fingertips? And it is on the right at the moment, too – as the most popular post on this site. Thanks to all my contributors! And speaking of contributors, I am accepting candidates for future Essential Tools posts now. If you are interested, leave me a comment and I will send you the guidelines.

• CrazyEgg. Wow. I used CrazyEgg to get a feel for where visitors were coming from, clicking on, and such back when the service first debuted. It was very useful, but I eventually removed it. I decided to check it out again as I tweak a few of my sites and have been most impressed. Not only can you use the heat map option to quickly see where your visitors are clicking, but the new Confetti view ROCKS. I love its sleek “iPhone” look, but the referrers, top search terms, browser info, and time to click information is really valuable.
• And from the crew at Mingle2 who also brought you the “How addicted to coffee are you?” and the “How addicted to blogging are you?” quizzes, I bring you “How Geek Are You?” – Me, I’m 64% geek. I’m sure it would have been higher without the comic book and Star Trek questions.

64% GeekMingle² – Free Online Dating

Here is hoping you have a great weekend! I have plans to relax and recharge my brain!

I am truly amazed at the people I have met and the things I have learned in this past year. What started out as research for some clients, has turned into a tool to really take my business to the next level. All I can say is THANK YOU to all of my readers, commenters and friends for joining me on this journey.

Anyone who really knows me will tell you, that when it comes to my own birthday, I always manage to stretch out the celebration for a full week! I plan on doing that here, too. And I won’t be the one getting all the presents – it will be you. I have a full week of spectacular posts planned and as of right now I have three giveaways planned, too.

Be sure you are subscribed to my feed or make a point to stop in all week – you won’t want to miss the fun.  Looking for some cake? We are dishing up the virtual party treats at my other blog, Casual Keystrokes – afterall, it’s Friday. Come join us.

PS – If you have a giveaway you would like to donate to the party, let me know! In return, you will be showered in link love and gratitude.

• I love this comparison between ads, PR, branding and user reviews using cartoons at Bazaarblog.
• Design Adaptations shares a really cool tool for those who like stripes – an automatic stripe generator!
• The Times Gives You 50 More Blogs to Read – the 50 best business blogs according to the times – thanks Leah.
• What is Sk*rt? It’s Like Digg for Women. You can also read Ponn’s take on it.
• b5Media celebrates 200 blogs! (I am proud to be a part of those 200 – you can catch me at WearyParent)

What was your favorite read this week? I’d love to know! Leave the link (no junk please – I’ll have to use my veto powers) of one of your favorite posts this week – one you think my readers will like too, in the comments. And have a great weekend.

Having just survived (I mean enjoyed) three kids home on Spring Break and the thought of summer vacation being right around the corner, here are a few of my tips for working from home with kids:

1. Get Caller ID – If you haven’t done this already, you should have. This way you can choose to speak to a client now, or later when things are a bit more sane.

2. Divide and Conquer – With a little (okay, alot) of planning, you can still get quality hours in. Are your kids early birds or night owls? Capitalize on that time to get the bulk of your work done. After lunch each day, my kids have to take an hour of Quiet Time – on their beds. They can read, write or sleep. This gives me a chance to get in the office and check email, return phone calls, and regroup.

3. Enlist Some Help – When my kids were younger, I would hire a responsible teenager from the neighborhood to come over a few hours a few times a week and watch the kids while I worked. She would take them outside and play, and I could work. Now that they are older, my friends and I just take turns having all the kids over. It works well for everyone.

4. Communicate – Let your clients know about your new schedule. Chances are, they’ll understand. With good communication, you can effectively manage their expectations and keep them happy. Most everyone is a bit more laid back in the summer.

5. Put the Kids to Work – I have explained to my children since they were very young, why I work from home and the importance of their cooperation. Now that they are getting a bit older, they are ready to help out – even if that means helping with housework so Mom has more time to play later in the day. My almost 11 year old has dabbled in web design a bit and I purchased him a domain name – blogging in on the docket for this summer – it will help him with his writing skills.

I would also like to share a few other posts on the topic of working from home and maintaining the balance:

• The Pros and Cons of Working as a Freelance Designer by David Airey – so many of the pros are also the cons, but it all boils down to your attitude about them.
• Tony Clark’s Success from the Nest is full of excellent posts on working from home, but I really like his latest one, Balancing Work and Family as a Home-Based Entrepreneur.
• Business, It’s a Family Affair is another good post out of the archives of Dawud Miracle’s blog.
• And Wendy Piersall at eMoms at Home has an entire category full of great resources for maintaining the life/work balance.

Do you have any additional tips for working from home successfully? Please share!

Kuler

Thanks to Blogologist Alister Cameron (love the new look, btw), I have spent a few hours playing with a new color scheming tool from Adobe Labs called Kuler.

Kuler is a flash-based, interactive toy/tool for creating color schemes. There are currently 3,870 user created color schemes loaded for you to adopt, adapt, or use as inspiration. You can find schemes based on their popularity, freshness, rating or you can create your own.

Go play – but be prepared to be there a while. It’s a little addictive.

Picnik

Digital Inspiration reported that online picture editor Picnik has added some great new features to its free photo editing capability.

Picnik is a web-based photo editing tool – no software to download or install. It is free and gives you access to a variety of basic photo effects like sepia, black and white, boost, and soften, as well as the ability to quickly give your photo a border or super clean rounded edges. Then you can add additional techniques like tinting, doodle or gooify.

One thing I did notice is that when I saved the image to my computer, it did not assign the file the standard .jpg extension. When I went to upload the file to here through WordPress I got an error. I went back and designated the extension when I saved and all worked fine.

What other graphics toys, I mean tools, do you find yourself enjoying too much to be considered work? Leave me a comment and let us know! 

I started this blog as research but also to educate. I want to help you! Just let me know what it is about Web design, marketing, graphics, html, css, podcasting, rss, and emerging technologies that you want to know!

Leave me a comment and tell me how I can make this blog better for you!

And a few other notes for Friday:

• Get Reviewed At ReviewMe! – I have joined ReviewMe and you can have your site reviewed here. (Essential Keystrokes is a PR4 blog that gets more than 40,000 page views per month and has a Technorati ranking of 44,018.)
• GoDaddy.com is having a sale on domain names from now until March 31. All domain names (all extensions) are 15% off. Just use the gdm0303e code at checkout.
• Need new fonts? Check out UrbanFonts.com – there are plenty to choose from.
• More free stuff! FreeCSSTemplates.org features pages and pages of free css templates to inspire you and give you a jump start on your web site design.

Happy Friday!

Mike at Converstations is getting frustrated with Web Developers who don’t get that blogging is an important part of creating a company’s online brand as well as connecting the ever important customer relations link.

Randa Clay is a Web Designer who totally gets it and her work proves it.  And she led me to another post that hits home too – Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal. How’s that for a headline?

BloggerDesign asks “Where is above the fold?” In the rapidly changing arena of web design, this is definitely a moving target.

And Mike Markie of Typertappers reminds us to give our computers some yearly maintenance!

Have a great weekend and I hope some of these posts inspire you, too!