Dropbox, you gotta love free stuff that works!

Okay I am pitching something that will benefit me, (it will get me a little more free space), but I'm really doing it because it's just a really great product. When I sent my computer in to be repaired recently I had Dropbox set up and had access to my critical files on the loaner Mac I was using, my Phone, and my wife's iPad.

If your not using Dropbox your missing out. It is a syncing tool and it is one of my favorite things a friend at work has told me about, (Thanks Brannon). Let me tell you what it does, and then if you want to try it and you click this link we both get a little extra space.

It sits on my Apple menu bar and in the menus on my Mac. I can grab things like links, photos, notes and toss them in my dropbox and I will have them on my Android Phone, iPad, iPhone, other computes, windows, Mac, Linux etc. It's cool, but that's not the best part.

I use 1Password, (another favorite program of mine), to manage all my passwords and secure notes. I put the 1Password database file in my Dropbox folder. So every time I add a password it is automatically updated on my my phone etc. Cool huh? Anything that saves to a file or database that you set the location of can be set up this way, CDfinder, possibly iTunes and iPhoto, but I haven't tried.

It also gives me a separate folder for people to come grab stuff from me, like files for a client or printer. I hardly use my FTP site anymore. I don't think it lets people upload to your Dropbox, my FTP site would go away if it did that.

Okay here's the best part, 2gigs for free, more if you sign other people up. I love this thing. Sign Up!

Oh, if your already using it, be sure to go hit the "Getting starting" link from the website, you might get a little more space for free.

Be smart when using intellectual property

All designers use the creative property of others, we have to, time and budget constraints don't allow us the luxury to sit for hours and draw, or head out with camera in hand to find the perfect photo for our ideas. But do you always read the small print on those user agreements? You should,  others intellectual property is something that needs to be respected.

Here are some excerpts from a few samples of the fine print.

iStock.com, excerpt from the standard user agreement:
Do not:
use or display the Content on websites or other venues designed to induce or involving the sale, license or other distribution of “on demand” products, including postcards, mugs, t-shirts, posters and other items (this includes custom designed websites, as well as sites such as www.cafepress.com)

Have you ever used an iStock just to show placement on a product image on your website?

MyFonts.com, excerpt from the standard user agreement:
Service Bureaus: You may send a copy of any Nick’s Fonts font data along with your documents to a commercial printer or other service bureau to enable the editing or printing of your document, provided that such party agrees to delete the font or fonts from his/her/their system upon completion of your project.

Is your printer deleting your fonts after your job is finished?

DeviantArt.com, excerpt of EverythingIsInStock's user agreement
6. You MAY use my stocks as drawing references, however I expect to be given credit all the same.

When you do an illustration do you credit every resource you used?

Most of the time when you download fonts or images from the web you'll see something like; Free for personal use or Not for commercial use. Remember, just because it's for personal use doesn't mean you can't contact the creator and buy a license.

Be sure to read the small print, give credit where credit is due, and don't be afraid to contact the creator or webmaster to ask questions.

Operation: Twitter Automation, not autopilot, but a time saver.

I mentioned in my post, Searching Through Web Content, Part One of Three, RSS Feeds, that I search through a lot information looking for things to post to my LinkedIn Group, In House Designers and my Twitter accounts, @YourArtDirector and @IHDesigners. Well it just became too much and I had to figure out a way to automate it.

I took what I had learned from searching through all those blogs and websites and automated it. I choose what I let go to Twitter automatically very carefully. If the site or blog becomes a constant sales pitch I drop it. I also follow some great designers on Twitter and use Google Alerts to find blogs and sites to automate.

First I use a program called SocialOomph. What it does is follow everyone that follows me, and rotates automated messages thanking them for following me. Why in the world would I want to do that? Following others is a fast way to get more followers. I use lists to follow the people I'm most interested in, the rest I glance at from time to time to see if I want to ad them to my lists. It took me about 9 months to get 400 followers. Now that SocialOomph is turned on it has taken me about a month to go from 400 to about 650.

I use TweetDeck to monitor Twitter. I used to use HootSuite, but I switched for reasons I will explain later. I use multiple columns in TweetDeck to follow my lists, direct messages, mentions and other things. One column is monitoring what I tweet so I can make sure the automation isn't getting too salesish. This isn't an obvious function in TweetDeck. Here's what I did to set up monitoring myself. I made a private list of all my Twitter accounts in Twitter, then in TweetDeck I made a column to watch that list. That's where I find my posts for my LinkedIn Group, In House Designers. It allows me to look at only the posts that have gone out in the last day. I can also use TweetDeck to schedule tweets for a time I want them to go out. I use that feature to send out things I want to Tweet about that aren't automated.

I use a site called TwitterFeed to do my automatic posts. I know a lot of people think automating Twitter is missing the point of Twitter, but I was spending two hours a night to search through RSS feeds and posting them to go out the next morning from 9:00am to around 1:00pm my time. Now I enter those same RSS feeds into TwitterFeed and they go out all day and night, which exposes me to a much wider audience, and I post more information. I was doing the same exact thing manually as I do now automatically only I'm doing it better. TwitterFeed also has some filtering you can use to limit some posts. Like I mentioned above, I mix in tweets about my company, products, trade shows, webinars using TweetDeck, but because I am growing my followers, the messages I care about are going to a lot more people.

Lastly I use Bit.ly to track clicks and make URLS smaller for Twitter. Bit.ly ties in directly with TweetDeck and TwitterFeed to shorten URLs automatically. I also have a bit.ly widget in my browser's bookmark bar to quickly post anything I see while surfing sites and blogs. I also recently saw that Bit.ly has Bit.ly Pro in Beta now. It has more features and allows for custom URL shortening.



Best of all, all of these sites and programs are free. I could do the same thing, (except SocialOomph), in HootSuite for $20/month, which is why I stopped using it; I'm not making any money doing what I do in Twitter and LinkedIn. I do it to build resources for other designers and myself.

Take some time to set it up, watch what it is doing, so you don't become a sales tool for someone else. It isn't exactly autopilot, but it is a lot less time than it could be.

Searching Through Web Content, Part Three of Three, Google Alerts

This is the last of my three part post on Searching Through Web Content. The three parts were RSS Feeds,  Twitter and now, Google Alerts. It's taken a while to write this because between the second and third post I completely changed the way I post information to my Twitter feeds, @YourArtDirector and @IHDesigners. I still use these ways to find content online, but I am letting Twitter do the work instead of me. I'll be writing about automating Twitter soon.

What Are Google Alerts?

Google Alerts are a good way to get content delivered right to your inbox. Basically your telling Google to save a search and send you an email when it finds results. Google Alerts are still in Beta, but already it's a powerful tool.

Setting up a search

You have choices of the type of content you'd like to receive, news, blogs, videos etc. Then you can set how often you'd like to be notified—for example as it happens, once a day, once a week. Maybe you just want to see the newest information—you don't have time to wade through a giant list. You can limit the number of posts you receive in your email alerts.

Email is just the start of ways to receive Google Alerts. You can have your alerts come to your RSS feed reader. As I mentioned in part one, Searching Through Web Content, RSS Feeds, this is a good way to look through lots of content quickly.

You can receive your alerts as a CSV file, in other languages and as HTML or plain text. So customizing your alerts to fit how you want to work is very easy.

What can I use Google Alerts for?

Google Alerts are a great way to see who's talking about your company or product on the web. Just enter the name of your company, a product, a person or anything you need to keep an eye on. If you set it up to receive emails in HTML, like I did, it will look a lot like a google search result.

What does a Google Alert look like?

One of my searches is for "In House Graphic Designer". With this search I find a lot of job posts for my Linked in Group, Design Job List. A typical post will look something like this.

Journalist and IN HOUSE Graphic Designer Wanted (Midtown West ...

By admin

Journalists Wanted A weekly newspaper needs experienced journalists with strong writing background and unsurpassed editing skills, as well as very good organizational abilities. Minimum of 2-3 years of editorial experienced required. ...

Web Design Jobs - http://www.thesiteurl.com/

You can see you can get a lot of info very fast and easy. So go to Google Alerts, set up a search and see what you find in your inbox.

Some Related Posts

How To Get More From Google Alerts

Google Alerts: A Great Freelance Writing Tool

Searching Through Web Content, Part Two of Three, Twitter

It's not known how many Twitter users there are now. It is estimated to be about 18 million at the end of 2009. That's a lot of information flying around the web. So how do you sort through the tweets about what Ashton Kutcher's doing and what someone had for lunch and find information you can use?

I use HootSuite, but other popular programs like TweetDeck and Seesmic allow you to save a search. Here's how it works in HootSuite. I have the option to save a column in the window. I can have Search Term, KeyWord, or group users together. For example I have a Keyword column called Illustrator|Photoshop|InDesign. This finds all the Twitter feeds that have those Keywords in them. I find tutorials, and advice on the Adobe programs I use.

Search Columns can be very powerful. You can customize your searches to find words, exclude words and focus your searches.

Here are examples of ways to search for information on a company called Luxul Wireless:

"luxul" and "wireless" = searches for tweets that contain both words

"luxul wireless" = searches for the exact phrase

luxul or wireless = searches for one or the other

luxul -wireless = searches for luxul but not wireless

luxul since:2009-02-02 = search for luxul since the date entered

luxul until:2009-02-02 = search for luxul up to the date entered

luxul filter:links = searches for luxul tweets with a url in the post

With these options you can tweak your searches to find exactly what your looking for.

Another way to find info about a certain topic are Twitter HashTags. HashTags are words that follow the # symbol. For example #HomeAutomation is a HashTag used to focus information about Home Automation products and services. The idea is to let people follow subjects instead of people to find what they are looking for, or post to others with their interests. I use the site hashtags.org to find HashTags on subjects I am interested in. I then set up searches to watch Twitter and report to me when someone posts to those Hashtags.

So there you have it, with a little bit effort you can find the information your looking for, monitor what people are saying about subjects your interested in and really keep you eye on Twitter.

In part three I will discuss how to set a web search to deliver content to your inbox.