“Drop the Presets!” Create Your Own Unique Drop Shadow
Jun 28, 2007 by Patrick Winfield | Design, TutorialA Drop Shadow is a visual effect that gives an object an illusion of depth by placing a shadow beneath an object. It is often used functionally to draw attention to an object, say a button or a text box. Text is also sometimes rendered with a subtle drop shadow that further emphasizes it and pops it off of the background.
In Photoshop you have the ability to create a Layer Style of a Drop Shadow and go back and change it at anytime- that’s helpful! You can even make all the layer styles the same and create a Global Light that they will all retain.
Sometimes it is better though to just make your own-why? Well it is surely unique. By using this simple technique the Drop Shadow will be on its own layer and also just as easy, or easier, to edit later on in the process.
Step 1. Start by making a selection of the object. A lot of working in Photoshop is about making selections- so make it the best you can. Use a Magic Wand tool or Magnetic Lasso Selection and then jump into Quick Mask Mode and further refine the selection with the Brush tool. Zoom in on the pixels and make what you are working on fill the whole screen.
Step 2. Copy and Paste your selection onto a New Layer.
Step 3. Duplicate the layer one more time. Now you have 3 layers total- 2 with the object and 1 with the original photo or image.
Step 4. With the layer below the top layer selected open up Hue and Saturation. Slide the Saturation and Darkness all the way down till the layer is darkened out.
Step 5. Go to Filter/Blur/Guassian Blur and create a slight blur with a low radius.
Step 6. Move the layer around and create the angle that the light would be hitting the object above. Using the Transform controls you can manipulate the Skew, Scale, and Perspective of the shape. That’s it…
Extra: Play with the Layer Mode settings, Opacity, and also try applying a Pattern Fill to the shadow to give it some texture.
Side Note: With the anticipation of the June 29th release of the iphone I thought this graphic of the evolution of Apple’s work was very cool and informative…what does the future hold?
apple_evolution.jpg Click to view the full sized image.
(via: chomp-chomp)
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mdog is a new mobile portal site that allows one to browse the Internet’s latest versions of mobile web sites from major companies and publications. It displays sites without images and in text only format using a proprietary technology. It also includes a search feature which does not perform all that well, yet. The search feature is most prominently placed at the top of the browser, so that is great, and it also has a radio button selection to narrow your search to “local” results.mdog looks to align all of the latest web site versions in mobile display for the mobile browser on your SmartPhone, blackberry or PDA. From the mdog.com homepage you can access 1. Web 2. Blogs and 3. Sign In (to customize your experience). From the “Web” section, one has access to the following categories of sites:
News, Business, Sports, Weather, Webmail, Travel, Food and Dining, Entertainment, Information, Technology, Ebay, TV Networks, Classifieds, Social, Lottery
I happened upon mdog just the other day as I was using my new Blackberry World Edition 8830 from Verizon Wireless, and while reviewing news on the The Wall Street Journal Online. At the bottom of the WSJ page, I found a link that said “WSJ Mobile Edition Beta 2.0 Powered by the mdog mobile Portal” and this linked over to mdog. That perked me up. Mdog seems to pull tons of content from major news publications positioning itself to compete well with Yahoo! News and Google News. They also have a ton of sports news aggregated and from their mobile web homepage, you can access key news sites such as CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, FOX News and more…
One of the great features as well is that you can access your blog on your mobile device. This will allow bloggers to do more real time updating from the field (so long as their fingers don’t get tired typing on a mobile device) which should enhance the quality of real time news and commentary overall on the web.
Another feature that will probably catch fire is eBay access where you can actually access your account, manage the basics of actions and bid. Michelle Menga at Ecommerce-Guide.com quoted Keith Gerard, President of mdog as saying “In the case of eBay, mdog.com displays auction searches in complete detail and even allows users to submit secure, real-time mobile bids from wherever they are. It’s all automatically available to shoppers, so sellers don’t have to do anything, because we’re accessing the actual eBay site, it’s seamless, We do the SSL interface and all that.”
There is not a lot of info out there about mdog at this point, but back in October 2006 Michal Lev-Ram wrote on Third Screen a bit about this Chicago based start-up. A Google search for example pulls up very little information other than the homepage, but there are not a lot of people out there writing about it yet
I like the concept and I think that they are on to something.
I’m wondering if mdog can compete with Google’s mobile version packet? I’m thinking so. I also still believe that creating a mobile version of a web site on a dot-mobi top level domain is a wise choice for business owners and marketers.
Lastly, as for mdog’s own marketing tactics. I like the fact that on most of their pages, they have a link to have a user “send Mdog” to a friend”. This is a great viral tactic. But what about mdog’s search engine optimization (SEO)? Opera currently has the #1 Organic Rank on Google.com websearch for “Mobile Web Browser” mdog is nowhere – at least not in the first 2 SERP’s on Google. On a first visit to mdog’s homepage, there is a flash intro which may not be the smartest approach to their marketing. As well, there is hardly any keyword optimization on the site at all.
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Chris Winfield in Investor’s Business Daily re: ‘Google Placement Performance Reports’
Jun 21, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Google, Press
Last week, I spoke with Investor’s Business Daily regarding Google’s latest AdWords enhancement Placement Performance Reports and the article was published yesterday.
This enhancement is something that advertiser’s have been requesting for quite a long time. If you’re advertising on the AdWord’s Content Network it allows you to see the exact sites where your ads appear. From Google: “Placement Performance reports also provide site-by-site performance metrics – including domain, URL, impression, click, conversion and cost data – as well as aggregated metrics for traffic generated from AdSense for domain sites.”
My thoughts from the article:
A maker of steak knives, for example, might prefer to have its ads on Marthastewart.com and food-related sites than on the risque Hotornot.com’s photo-rating service, said Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, a search marketing firm that helps advertisers place ads online.
“This will help improve performance because advertisers will now have a better idea of which sites are working and which aren’t,” he said.
To me that’s what it always comes down to – what’s working and what’s not and you need to be able to have that information in front of you to make informed decisions.
Here’s the full online version of the article: New Google Service Helps Advertisers, May Drive Ad Sales
For a good overview of Placement Performance Reports – check out Jeremy Luebke’s post or these help sections from Google.
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How to create: Line Effect Patterns in Photoshop
Jun 21, 2007 by Patrick Winfield | Design, TutorialCreating line effect patterns in Photoshop is easy and can come in handy for that little bit of texture applied to a background of a page or another way to spice up a photograph.
Line patterns can also make a ‘heavy’ image, one with lots of gradients and tones, a bit smaller in file size thus better for web use.
Line effect looks great on the screen because it mimics, to some degree, the way a screen displays light. This can work with printed images and give your images a more graphical feel, like a screen printing process, digital screen shot or transfer.
Step 1. Create a new document with dimensions of 2 pixels by 2 pixels and a transparent background. Zoom in till the document is larger and easier to work with.
Step 2. Using the Pencil Tool with a 1 pixel radius create a diagonal line by making 2 marks- one top right and the other bottom left. Or you can play with the marks and make any pattern you like.
Step 3. Select everything on this layer by going to Select/All. Copy it by going to Edit/Copy.
Step 4. Go to Edit/Define Pattern and name your pattern then hit OK.
Step 5. Create a new layer above your photo or image and fill it with your pattern by going to Edit/Fill and choose Pattern from the drop down menu and also select the pattern you created which should be the last in the list.
You can also play with applying the fill directly to the image/photo and then going to Edit/Fade Fill and looking through the various Layer Modes and levels of Opacity. Try working in a Layer Mask over that layer and only make parts of the pattern visible.
Extra: I am always looking for Photoshop Brushes to add to my arsenal and found some here from Stephanie Shimerdla at Obsidiandawn.com
They are all about trees and leafs and can also be used creatively to make some distressed looking textures to any image. Download them into the Brushes folder in your Adobe Photoshop program file. Then when you are using the brush right click and select Load Brush and then select the file from the list.
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IRS + Linkbait: What Are Two Words I Never Thought Would be Together
Jun 20, 2007 by Chris Winfield | UncategorizedWhen I say “IRS” what’s the first word that comes to mind? Maybe: Taxes. Audit. Scary. Perhaps: I’d rather not say….
Did anyone think of: Sarcastic. Fun. Linkbaiters? Probably not. Well it looks like that all is about to change with this article they put out: 10 Reasons to Put Off Saving for Retirement. The article is a top 10 list (we know they work) and is completely sarcastic. Here’s the list (without their witty explanations for each):
1. There are so many important things I need that money for NOW.
2. There’ll always be time to save later.
3. Maybe I won’t live long enough to retire.
4. I love a challenge.
5. Social Security payments alone will take care of my needs.
6. I don’t know how to begin.
7. I don’t know how much I need for retirement.
8. Planning for retirement is such a big, complicated undertaking.
9. I might get lucky.
10. Taking care of me financially will provide wonderful character-building opportunities for my children.
Considering the source it’s funny and it will have some people look at them in a different way (kinder, gentler IRS) but there is one part that concerns me. There is no mention on this page that it is written in a completely sarcastic manner and that they really don’t want you to follow this advice.
Say I stumble on to this page and I read through the list, it seems strange to me but then again – it is the official website of the IRS – so I take their word for it and start following the advice here… Now you might say “Who is going to think this is real?”. Don’t forget how many people fall for fake IRS phishing schemes or think they just got $40,000,000 from a Nigerian prince…. My point is that you have to know your audience and think about any possible adverse effects before putting out a viral piece.
Found Via Mint
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The 2008 election promises to be an exciting and hotly contested one. Jake Matthews takes a look at how some of the leading candidates are doing in their search marketing efforts on Google in Part 1 of a four part series – and gives each one of them a grade in the 2008 Presidential Candidate Search Marketing Face-off .
There has been a fair amount of community coverage of how the leading candidates of the 2008 Presidential elections are leveraging or missing the boat on SEO and in the Social Media networks. There are interesting posts that follow the quality and strength of the campaigns. Mima looking at backlinks to Presidential hopeful sites. Further on March 13, 2007 Michael (Solo) Jensen did a great candidate SEO review on WebPro News. Rand-Moz chimed in May with insight regarding keyword rankings, missed opportunities and John McCain’s nasty SEO blunders, while Jonah from Alchemist discussed the grassroots value of the web for campaigns.
With regard to eyeballs on campaigns through social media, perhaps the most celebrated and widespread demonstration is the YouTube YouChoose08 section devoted to the election. Google has this section in the paid results on candidate name searches in Google Web search, so they are promoting it fair amount, and just from speaking with other heavy internet users, it’s definitely a place where people will form opinions. YouChoose08 allows candidates to create a video dossier and for visitors to interact with the campaigns and voice opinions. It’s a totally new town-hall, and you don’t even have to go all the way to small town “New Hampshaâ€, to listen to the candidates speak. You Tube is a powerful venue for campaigns.
But what of SEO/M? I’d like to compare and discuss the recent candidate name search results on Google.com for the candidates Rudy Giuliani (R) | Mitt Romney (R) | Hillary Clinton (D) and Barack Obama (D). At this point, it seems that these candidates are the real players with big money and an honest chance to pull it off (even though Fred Thompson has made a splash without even officially entering). And, let’s admit it, as much as we’d like grassroots to make things happen, it’s going to probably come down to money.
So which candidates are using Google to their greatest advantage? Which political campaigns are running the best name-based search marketing campaigns?
For this discussion, we’ll begin with Google and we’ll continue on with Yahoo, MSN Ask.com at a point in the near future.
Candidate #1: Rudy Giuliani
#1 Organic Result – Official website www.joinrudy2008.com
JoinRudy2008 – Home
|
The Official Website of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee. … Paid for by the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, Inc. … |
#2 Organic Result – Wikipedia Page
SERP Results – 1.7 mm
Stats on Canidate’s Offical Website:
PageRank – 6
Age of Website – 1998
Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes
Official Site AdWords Top Result Copy – Rudy Giuliani for President 12 Commitments to
Search Marketing Grade: B-
I rate this a B- for one major flaw. If Rudy does not make it in ‘08, and there is a distinct chance he will not, he’s going to have to have a NEW DOMAIN for 2012, if he wants to run. Then, all the authority that he gains from this site in 07 and 08, will have to be redirected to the new site. Would Rudy’s 2012 site be www.joinrudy2012.com and they’d have to start all over again, building authority for that site? So, I believe that they made a mistake right off the bat by not using www.rudygiuliani.com or www.joinrudy.com
As well – Look at this! http://www.rudygiuliani.com
That’s pitiful Rudy. You’re scaring me. I might reconsider and give a B-minus or even a C for that one. This is a site running Yahoo Publisher ads and buying and selling domains. This is kind of sloppy, ugly stuff.
Also, for the title - ending with “HOME� C’mon Rudy, you’re from
Candidate #2: Hillary Clinton
#1 Organic Result – Official website www.hillaryclinton.com
HillaryClinton.com – Welcome
|
Official Site of Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee. |
#2 Organic Result- official campaign site
SERP Results – 14.3 mm
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 6
Age of Website – 2001
Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not when I searched during this post! That’s a problem.
Search Marketing Grade: B+
Senator Clinton is lucky enough to have sitemap links site links below her first result which is great. These direct links to important pages on her site are an indication of good, clean, clear crawling. As well, she has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd organic results. Her US Senate page is 3rd. With regard to title, Hillary’s campaign may want to tinker with it a bit. The slogan on her website logo is “Hillary for Presidentâ€, so why not just do a variation of that and keep with the theme while being relevant to a searcher. Try Hillary Clinton for President – Join Hillary. “Welcome†is good, but not a great call to action. And, after all, the end goal with the political campaign is to have people join them.
Candidate #3: Mitt Romney
#1 Organic Result – Official campaign website www.mittromney.com
Mitt Romney for President 2008
|
Official campaign site provides his biography, news and information on how to support his candidacy. |
#2 Organic Result – Wikipedia page
SERP Results – 2.10 mm
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 6
Age of Website – 2002
Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not on name-search at the time of writing this post.
Search Marketing Grade: B
Not showing any site links, not showing any official site advertising on Google AdWords
Great title, but not leveraging AdWords properly, at least in my NY geographic region – that’s a travesty at this point; at least on a name search.
Candidate #4: Barack Obama
#1 Organic Result – Official campaign website www.barackobama.com
BarackObama.com | Welcome to Obama for America
|
Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign. |
#2 organic result – Wikipedia page
SERP Results – 2.15 mm
Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:
PR – 7
Age of Website – 3/2002
Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes
Official Site AdWords Copy? Volunteers welcome: Sign-up to volunteer at Obama campaign events
And another one that is displaying in NY:
Get to Know Barack Obama
BarackObama.com Learn more about Senator Obama at campaign events: Register Online
Search Marketing Grade: A-
Compelling title: Welcome to Obama for
So, for now, Obama is the winner in this Presidential Candidate name-search campaign.
One of the biggest surprises was to not see all candiates leveraging AdWords properly.
I’m going to leave it to a later post to discuss Yahoo!, MNS and Ask.com and I’ll let our site usability experts discuss the actually sites, because that’s the other part of the equation. I’ll also leave the on-site SEO analysis to someone else.
One question that I have for the SEO/M community and the candidate’s campaign managers themselves: Is it worthwhile to run campaigns or to pay any attention to search results abroad – such as on www.google.co.uk now or further, when you know the candidate has a distinct chance of winning the campaign. Hillary Clinton for example has a ton of strength to with the 08 Presidential election, so, she may be President one day. Should she begin to influence a search result on Google
Lastly, Amy Schatz at the Wall Street Journal did a great job of covering the spend on internet marketing as a whole among the Presidential candidates. I found it most surprising that Rudy Giuliani spent only $7,000 on AdWords during Q1 2007. Obama, by contrast spent nearly $72,000. which is a bit more in line with reality. So, another plus for Obama, but not quite A+ yet.
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Chris Winfield in USA Today: ‘Yahoo co-founder Yang becomes CEO’
Jun 19, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Press, Yahoo!
Yesterday I spoke to Jeff Graham from USA Today regarding Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang taking over for former CEO Terry Semel. My thoughts from the article:
“Yahoo had to do something,” says Chris Winfield, who runs 10e20, a New York firm that helps businesses run search-marketing campaigns. “I’m hoping Jerry gets in there and really tries to fight to get Yahoo back on top, so Google isn’t the only option in town.”
There are lots of different ideas and rumors flying around about this move. CNBC has sources that say Yahoo! is going to buy MySpace in a $10 billion dollar deal (giving News Corp a 25% stake in YHOO) and then Yahoo! is going to go back to outsourcing their search to Google. Others think that it will be much of the same (Yang carrying on in much the same way Semel did) and then Yahoo becoming a possible acquisition target.
Personally, I hope that Yang builds upon a theme from his blog post yesterday about his “new job”:
I look forward to teaming more closely with her as we pursue our joint vision. What is that vision? A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline.
For awhile many (from inside Yahoo! and outside observers) have said that the company has become to beaureacratic and”heavy” – this is what allowed Google to surpass them in search and many other facets. This was especially brought to light by the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” and the executive shakeup that followed it. It seems to me as if Yang is addressing this head-on and looking to change that. I hope he can. We need another dominant player in the search field right now, someone to challenge Google and continue to spur innovation & opportunity.
You can read the whole USA Today article at Yahoo co-founder Yang becomes CEO.
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Using Masks in Photoshop: Add New Skies to your Landscape Photography
Jun 13, 2007 by Patrick Winfield | Design, TutorialSometimes you get an amazing landscape shot, but the sky is so drab and lacks emotion. Out in the field you can not control this aspect of the weather, but with some post production in Photoshop you can create some interesting new images.
Skies with a lot of small details in the clouds towards the horizon, and very little interference, are great to have.
Step 1. On the new document select the layer of the landscape and using the Magic Wand tool select the sky by using a tolerance of 20 or less and add to that selection by holding the shift key. Enter into the Quick Mask Mode to further correct the mask and use other tools such as the Polygon Lasso and Brush.
Step 2. With the selection still activated click on the new sky layer and then hit the Layer Mask icon on the Layer Palette.
Step 3. Refine the position and scale of the new sky layer. Use the Transform tools to scale down or re position the sky so that it fits and looks right. Make sure that the layer image and the mask are not linked, the ‘chain link’ image will be gone.
Step 4. Click on the Layer Mask and go to Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur and create a slight blur with a radius of 1 maximum.
Step 5. Create an Curves Adjustment Layer for Previous Layer go to Layers/New Adjustment Layer/Curves. Try to get the lighting of the sky close to that of the buildings. Create a Layer Mask to this layer and use the Gradient tool to make a fade of black to white from top to bottom, this will add to the depth of the horizon.
Step 6. Flatten the document or save a new version of the file and then adjust the Curves and Contrast to this flat version. You can create New Adjustment Layers based off of Curves and Color Balance. A Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask filter can be the final step.
Looking at Old Renaissance masters paintings like Giorgione’s The Tempest can give you some creative ideas and modes to try and emulate.
Enjoy the new emotion to your landscape photos and keep this in mind when you are out taking pictures!
Also of interest is this article from the BBC about the National Gallery in London using both sides of the walls to bring art into the streets.
(via: woostercollective)
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Many times before a company launches a product or service, they will roll it out to a test market. You do this to see how viable that product or service will be in the mass market prior to a the full roll-out. This can be a very expensive process but it can also be worth every penny. Would you be willing to spend $1 million to help prevent you from losing $10 million?
I came across another version of this today being run by National Lampoon, the makers of Animal House, the Vacation movies and much more. They have a potentially polarizing feature length film that they are contemplating releasing. It’s called 72 Virgins and it tells the tale of two idiot college students unwittingly join an Al Qaeda cell in order to get the 72 virgins promised to terrorists when they die. This started out a viral film on their website and they now are asking their fans – Should we make this into a feature length movie?
I have seen this spreading through the social networks like Digg and people getting involved in the conversation there as well. Is this the most accurate metric to find out if you should launch a movie? Probably not because anonymity makes it too easy for people to game or influence. But it is a good way to get a quick, easy and inexpensive gauge of how your potential audience or customers may react to a new product or service.
For National Lampoon’s this type of outreach was a no-brainer for a few reasons:
- The idea was built around a film made for the web – so why not solicit feedback on the web
- No need to worry about someone stealing this idea – its too unique and would be too easy to prove that it was stolen
- Get people on a mass level engaged in the debate. Whether they are for it or against it, they will be talking about it. This means more traffic to their website, more links and more publicity.
Interestingly enough, at time of writing – voting was 3 to 1 in favor of NOT making the movie…
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Sk*rt is a new social networking site that that has recently launched. To put it simply, it is like Digg for women. I found out about it through a blog I read regularly.
When the announcement was posted I went over to check it out right away. I understand the importance of Digg but I have to admit that the stories on there aren’t really my cup of tea.
The first thing I noticed is that there is no way to bury a story or push it down. Long-term (or more like short-term), I think this is going to have to be implemented especially once the site gets more popular and the people try to “game†it. I noticed today a few comments where people questioned the validity of something, but there was no way other than in the comments section to flag it.
The site is well designed and welcoming. It looks similar to Digg but the style is more appealing. It’s one of the better implementations of Pligg that I’ve seen. There are stories like “When Parenting Styles Sour Friendshipsâ€, “The 6 Myths of Creativityâ€, “10 Things you should never say to your bodyâ€. These stories are much more my style.
One of the tag lines they have going is: “Sk*rt. Just like that friend who always finds the best stuff. Only better.†They seem to be living up to that.
So how is the site doing?
On the first day of launching, Sk*rt made it to the homepage of Digg and experienced the “Digg Effect†first hand. (Weird right? Kind of like looking at a picture of yourself holding a picture of yourself, holding a picture of yourself…..you get the idea.)
At the time of writing this, Yahoo is showing 522 links to Sk*rt. Technorati is showing 343 – many of these are from high PR, authority sites. Which means that they have been good at getting the word out about the new site and helping it to spread virally.
They are running a contest for bloggers and site owners to be automatically entered into a drawing for $500 worth of products, simply for putting a badge and a link to Sk*rt on their site. The prizes are totally targeted towards women. There are aprons, tablecloths, necklaces, personalized stationery, all things that their audience would find more appealing than say, the typical “Nintendo Wii†in the usual giveaways.
Sk*rt appears to have exceeded the founders expectations since they’ve had to move to a new host within the first week (next time don’t choose a starter account at BlueHost 
). The site has been going down periodically since the launch.
Verdict on this so far is that this site is great if you are going for a niche audience or looking to get the word out about your site to early adopters. As a user and a member of their target audience I think the content is compelling, and I’ve already spent significant time on the site. I welcome a new site into the social bookmarking space that is targeting the female audience. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
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