Sunday, August 30, 2009

Free Blog Designs from Shabby Blogs

I came across another site for free Blogger templates tonight. It's called Shabby Blogs, and there are plenty of blog backgrounds and accessories to choose from. All of them are 100% free, and it looks like a lot of them are customizable, such as being able to add your own photos to the headers.

I haven't had time to browse through all of them, but there are some really cute backgrounds here, with headers and extras to complement them and help you put together your own custom blog. Did I mention it's free? Yes, yes I did! Free, cute blog backgrounds - and once again I'm tempted to change my blog design.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Good Deal on Sony Vegas

Cory has been wanting Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro Pack for a while now. I found it today at Buy.com on sale for $89.99 with a $30 rebate, which is the best price we've seen so far - so I grabbed it. If you're looking for some good movie editing software, this is supposed to be really good.

I'm linking to this here, because searching for Sony Vegas on Buy.com doesn't bring this page up. Instead you get the software for $90-something with no rebate mentioned. I checked Pricegrabber to find the best price, and when I clicked the Buy.com link there, it got me this page with the sale and rebate. It's only good this week, so grab it now if you want it.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Organize Events and Sell Tickets Online

Image representing TicketLeap as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBase

If you plan events and sell tickets for those events, TicketLeap looks like something you'll want to check out. TicketLeap is FREE for event organizers, and buyers can use all major credit cards.

It's quick, easy, and free to set up an account, and then you can start by creating an event. Enter all the event details: name, category, description, date & time, website, location, etc. Once that's done, you can set ticket prices, add pictures, and even invite people.

I don't have an actual event to plan right now, so I haven't gone through the whole event set-up process, but it looks really easy, and I can see so many uses for it. You can customize it in so many ways - setting ticket prices and ticket types, offering discount codes, even deciding who pays the convenience fees. Set the convenience fees to be paid by the buyer, and TicketLeap doesn't cost anything!

What if you're planning a free event? TicketLeap can handle that, too, and if the tickets are free, there is NO fee. Why use TicketLeap if your event is free? Because you get a list of everyone who registers - for planning purposes that is invaluable!

Once you've set everything up, you can send out invites so people can register for your event and/or buy tickets. TicketLeap also gives you the code so you can put 'Buy Tickets' or 'Register' buttons on your website. There's even a Facebook app so you can promote your event on Facebook. I'm sure there's more, but I've just begun to check it out.

Oh, I bet you're wondering how you collect the money for all those tickets. TicketLeap sends you a check the next business day after your event.

If you've used TicketLeap to organize an event and/or sell tickets online, please leave a comment and let me know what you think. I'd love to hear it!

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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

A Picture a Day

Drew has been doing his Photo a Day for years now. My parents each decided to take a photo a day this year, and they've been doing a pretty good job. I take pictures quite regularly, but I wasn't ready to commit to taking one every day. In truth I probably do take at least one a day because I'm always grabbing the camera for something. My hold up was actually getting the pictures off the camera and onto the computer, but I'm doing better at that, too since I started using the camera cable and the software that came with my camera.

Anyway, I signed up for Shuttercal a while back because I thought it might get me more organized in the whole picture a day thing. The whole point of the site is to upload a picture a day, or at least take a picture every day and then upload them to the proper day. It all displays as a calendar, with your picture on the date you took it. Sounds cool, huh? The only problem is that I signed up for it and then never used it! Luckily today I got an email telling me that someone had friended me on Shuttercal. That reminded me that I want to try this, so I uploaded my first picture. Now we'll just have to see if I can keep up with it.

And the whole friend thing? It looks like you can add other users to your friends if you like their photos, and you can build a network of fellow photo a day people. I'm not sure why anyone would have added me to her friends, considering I hadn't uploaded any photos - not even a user pic - but I'm glad she did because it reminded me of My Shuttercal. And now you have the link so you can check up on me and see if I'm uploading any photos.

I should probably put this in my sidebar or something, but for now I'm putting it here - my latest photo: (it's supposed to change when I upload new ones - if it doesn't change you know I'm not uploading anything)




Free Help for All Things Web Related

A graphical despiction of a very simple html d...Image via Wikipedia

I keep coming back to this site when searching for web design information. The tutorials and explanations are simple and easy to understand, at least the ones I've used so far. They have tutorials on basic html, javascript, CSS, and beyond. You can also find tutorials for using popular graphics programs to create some great effects, free online tools and resources, and a whole lot more.

No wonder I keep coming back - there is so much here! As they say:
EchoEcho.Com is your one stop free help site for all things web related.
I think it's definitely going to be my first stop.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Font Squirrel

Font 006Image by Stewf via Flickr

A question on twitter today led me to this site - Font Squirrel. It's an entire site full of free high quality fonts, all of them licensed for commercial use. That means you can use them for anything you need them for. I've already downloaded a couple I really like. I'm not sure what I'm going to use them for, but you can never have too many fonts, right?

Font Squirrel also provided a link to this cool What the Font tool. If you've seen a font somewhere but you don't know what it is, you can upload an image and they'll find the closest matches in their database. If that doesn't work, you can submit your image to the forum and have font geeks all over the world help you identify your font. This ought to come in very handy, because I'm really bad at recognizing fonts. They'll never confuse me with a font geek!