Madison Ave. Collective

Win professional evaluation of your new-business investment pitch

Lainie Turner — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:16:33 +0000

The New York Times invites entrepreneurs to submit a video pitch for the chance to get feedback that will help hone your pitch, attract attention, and refine your business model. Videos will be judged for content, production, and confidence in telling your story to the camera.

Video pitches that meet the submission guidelines will be featured on The New York Times small-business Facebook page.

The winning pitches will be featured on their Small Business “You’re the Boss” blog and evaluated by business strategist Carol Roth, “who has helped clients raise more than $1 billion in capital.”

This seems like a great opportunity get valuable feedback and expose your pitch to hordes of potential investors.

“If you type two spaces after a period, you’re doing it wrong.”

Lainie Turner — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:32:01 +0000

We all want to present our proposals, articles, and other documents in the best possible form and style. Here’s an easy way to clean yours up: use only one space after periods.

Using two spaces after a period is “a sign of amateur typesetting,” a hold-over from the days when we composed text using a typewriter, a machine that employed mono-spaced characters on metal keys. Using two spaces after a period with any proportional spaced font is plain wrong. It creates an interruption for the reader (spaces indicate pauses; one is enough at the end of a sentence), and it destroys the intentional styling of the type in the flow of your document. But wait—there’s more. This Slate article explains.

Eye-tracking for website “first impressions”

Lainie Turner — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 23:46:02 +0000

Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology used eye-tracking software to assess how college-aged users formed a first impression of a website, a factor that can lead to a quick jump-off or better stickiness.

“When viewing a website, it takes users less than two-tenths of a second to form a first impression, according to recent eye-tracking research conducted at Missouri University of Science and Technology. But it takes a little longer — about 2.6 seconds — for a user’s eyes to land on that area of a website that most influences their first impression.”

More about the study is here on the ScienceDaily website. (My first impression of that website is: credible.)

How will you use this info when creating your next website design?

Felt and Wire Finds: Getting Upper

Amy Dasso — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:31:16 +0000

I didn’t get to go to this show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art but I’m thrilled to share the limited edition silkscreen prints at Felt and Wire Shop with my beloved Mad Ave friends. Twenty six designers and artists were invited to deconstruct and reconsider a letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here. And don’t just look at the pictures. Read the captions by curator, Amos Klausner. You’ll never look at letters the same way again.

In his parallel career as a street artist, Knueven snuck onto the Hollywood sign and painted it white as an homage to Robert Ryman. After his release from jail, he said, “Maybe I aimed too high, but the post-modern contextual implications were huge — and so were those letters. I almost fell off the Y.”

Knueven’s letter F is an homage to the optical illusionists throughout time who have helped us see common objects and ideas from a new perspective. It is also a reminder that today’s graffiti artists have moved beyond the wall into new dimensionality.

Getting Upper Letter F

Thanks to Felt and Wire for writing all of the text for this post! ;)

Amy

M is for Madison Ave. Collective

Amy Dasso — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:50:35 +0000

… and C is for Craft. Intricate hand work is making a come-back and these Creative Crafties are continuously cutting and collecting paper of all colors to arrange beautiful intricate designs. Feast your spherical light receptors on this colorful eye-candy:

Sabina Karnik

FurFX wet and dry

50 Examples of Logo Design Process

Lainie Turner — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 22:34:31 +0000

The web design blog at 1st Web Designer has a cool page: From Concept to Completion: 50 Examples of the Logo Design Process. Many styles, many stories. Some of these examples include preliminary sketches and others show the refinement of logo concepts. It’s a long list, but there are some real gems, giving the viewer insight into a variety of designers’ work and the processes they use.

Where’s the Fold?

Donna McMaster — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:03:28 +0000

Web designers are urged to place key actionable content “above the fold” to ensure that it is seen by visitors to the site who might not stick around long enough to scroll down. But with mobile devices, iPads and various monitor sizes, where is the fold these days? And how much should we care?

Emily Smith explores the history, research and controversies around the topic in her article, “The Fold Exists but Does it Matter?” She concludes that “since we have no control over how people access our sites and what portion they see, we need to focus on the things we can control.” She offers several suggestions for making careful and educated decisions about the content above the fold, and providing indicators that encourage people to explore the rest of the page.

Do you want to see what areas of your site’s pages are typically above the fold? Try Google Browser Size. Enter your site’s URL, and this tool displays it with a transparent overlay indicating what percentage of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least that size or larger.

How about you? How do you make decisions where to place key content? I’d be interested in hearing your strategies!

Be strong, TimThumb!

Donna McMaster — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:58:56 +0000

There’s been lots of press about WordPress sites being compromised because of the “TimThumb vulnerability.” What’s this about and what do you need to do?

TimThumb is a is a popular script that is used by many WordPress themes and plug-ins to manipulate image files. Unfortunately the TimThumb developers left open a doorway through which hackers can insert code into WordPress template files. This code adds links to Russian sites and inserts malware to try to infect the computers of anyone who visits the infected site. Google has begun listing infected sites as malware and blocking them.

If you have a WordPress site, how do you know if it has been infected or is vulnerable to attack?

First use Sucuri to scan your website for malware. Sucuri checks 10-12 links on each site. This is sufficient if all your site pages and posts use the same template files, but if your site uses multiple templates (e.g., blog, page, home page, single-column, multi-column), make sure you scan at least one example of each template. If the scanner finds problems, follow the suggestions there.
Site clean? Great — no malware has been installed. But your site may still be vulnerable to attack. The good news is that many theme and plugin developers have already updated their code. Update your theme and plugins to the latest version.
Some plugins, such as the popular Verve Meta Boxes, are no longer actively supported and have not been updated. To be sure you get all copies of TimThumb updated, search the files in your plugins and themes directories for “timthumb.php.” If you find a copy that has not been updated as part of a plugin or theme update, you can replace it with a new version. Download the latest TimThumb file from http://code.google.com/p/timthumb/.
Some developers have changed the name of the TimThumb file from “timthumb.php” to “thumb.php.” We recommend searching for both names, and updating all the files.

For more information on TimThumb and how to protect your site:

Zero Day Vulnerability in many WordPress Themes by Mark Maunder – details about how the vulnerability works and what can be done about it.
Breaking: Google starts to block hacked WordPress blogs as attack widens also by Mark Maunder – details about how and why Google is blocking infected sites.
WordPress Codex: Hardening WordPress – good practices for protecting your WordPress site from hackers.

Note that this vulnerability is not unique to WordPress. Some Joomla and Drupal themes and plugins also use TimThumb, and all the warnings apply to them as well.

Love is in the air

Jeff Jimerson — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:09:25 +0000

MAC member Ali Smith has snapped some fab photos of our local love birds Ron Sparks (engaged to be married to Julia Patton) and Amy Dasso (aka Amy Williams, recently hitched to Austin).

See wedding photos of Amy and Austin.

See engagement photos of Ron and Julia.

Nice job, Ali!

7 Ways I Use My iPad for Business

Bill Zipp — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 07:00:59 +0000

Okay, I’ll admit it. I bought it on a whim. Being a bit of a gadget guy, I had to get the iPad 2. There it was in the store, and it looked so cool and slim and professional (In a word, so Apple). It spoke to me, and I ponied up the bucks and bought it. What began as a whim, however, has quickly become an indispensable business tool. Here are seven ways I use my iPad for business:

1. Meeting Notes

Being an executive coach and business consultant, my week is full of meetings. I prepare for meetings, conduct meetings, and record my thoughts during and after meetings. Apart from the cool factor of opening up an iPad instead of a manilla folder in a meeting, I’ve found my iPad unbelievably easy to use to quickly jot notes and capture random thoughts. The pre-installed iPad Notes app is okay, but not robust enough for what I needed. For awhile I used an app called Notability, but (inexplicably) it didn’t have spell-check, so emailing meeting notes to clients was unwise. What I now use for all my meetings is an app called Notably. It’s incredibly elegant, well-designed, and automatically synchs with Dropbox.

By the way, with your iPad video camera you can easily conduct virtual business meetings anywhere using WebEx, GoToMeeting, or Skype. My favorite, however, is the multi-user, multi-screen app from video upstart ooVoo.

2. Tasks and Projects

I’m a raving fan of a software called Things by Cultured Code and have it on both my laptop and my iPad. From the first day I bought a MacBook Pro, I’ve used Things because iCal task management is just deplorable (Let me tell you how I really feel). The iPad app is even better than its software cousin. At $20 it’s a bit on the expensive side for an app, but, in my opinion, Things is worth every penny.

Things allows me to closely manage the dates and deadlines for both my tasks and projects, set reoccurrences, assign tasks to areas of responsibility, and tag them for quick reference–all quickly and easily. The underlying architecture of Things is based on David Allen’s immensely popular book, Getting Things Done, but it’s not overly dependent on it. The iPad app automatically synch’s with my laptop via the wireless network in my office and allows me to stay on top of everything I need to do everyday. Cultured Code’s online support and resources are second to none.

3. Appointments

Speaking of synching, you can’t beat iCal and Mobile Me for keeping track of appointments and meetings. I put an appointment in my iPad and it’s automatically posted online, on my laptop, and on my iPhone. From all reports, Apple’s IOS 5 and improved cloud service will only make this better. For me the best part of this iPad functionality is that my wife can check my calendar at any time and know exactly what I’m doing. She can also schedule appointments for me, which is how I ended having a colonoscopy recently (but that’s another story).

4. Document Management

The big concern, of course, with using an iPad is reading and managing documents and fulfilling the quest for a paperless workplace. Enter GoodReader, the best five dollars you’ll ever spend in your life. It reads every conceivable document, from Word files to TXT files, iWork files to PDF’s, allowing you to mark them up as well. It also views pictures, plays audio and video, and reads maps. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what it can do on my iPad, but it’s amazing. In addition to all this stuff, GoodReader synchs with a half a dozen different remote servers to keep everything up to date. Technology expert, Mashable, calls it, “the Swiss Army knife of awesome.”

5. Travel

When you travel, you have your airplane ticket, your hotel, your car rental, and God knows what else to keep track of. My iPad helps me keep all that stuff in one place through an amazing app called Tripit. Download the app and forward your travel info to Tripit, and, voila, it’s all there for you to see along with other great things to do in the region you’re traveling to. If anything changes in your itinerary, Tripit will send you an email alert and text alert to your phone. Almost makes those body scans worth it. Tripit is provided free from a company called Concur, who also has an excellent app for business expense tracking that fully synchs with your credit card. Check them both out.

6. Books and Magazines

My Kindle was cool when I first got it, but there’s nothing like reading a book in vivid color like you can on an iPad. In fact, Amazon’s Kindle app for iPad is simply amazing and their book selection way beyond what’s available for iBooks. The coolest of the cool, however, is an app called Zite. Zite is an online magazine that crawls the internet for articles that match your personally customized categories. Read an article and rate it, and you’ll get more of what you like. In other words, the more you use Zite, the smarter it becomes, all for free. Who needs magazines?

7. Background Music

No, I don’t want music gobbling up the memory of my business devices. But there are times when I want to listen to music as I read, write, and reflect at work. If you’ve ever listened to Pandora, you already know how online music streaming works. But Pandora’s become a commercial wasteland, so I listen to the app IHeartRadio. There’s tons of commercial-free music of any genre, as well as live streaming of radio stations across the country. All for free. A nice set of Bose headphones almost makes the workday seem like a vacation (Not really, but Bose headphones are pretty great).

I’m sure I’m just getting started using this post-PC tool for business. I love the exceedingly responsive touch screen and find the keyboard easier to use than the mechanical ones we’ve all become used to. With cloud computing advancing at an amazing rate and ubiquitous wireless networks, look for your iPad to become even more useful in the future. BTW I tried out about three or four different iPad covers to protect my investment, and landed on this slick leather one from Snugg. It’s perfect!