Reviews of products and services that I use and like–or don’t.
I've been using Host Gator for quite some time and I have to say I'm liking it. cPanel, toll-free phone support, locals who answer the phone. Oh, did I mention speed? Go go Gator!
I've been using (and loving) iStockPhoto for ages. It's a great place to give your site that extra kick -- if you choose the right images.
Test your residential DSL or cable connection speed here: follow the link and click on any of the options with a green bar (yellow and red bars indicate links currently not available for testing) to test your upload and download speed from that city. The site automatically prepares a report that compares your speed with [...]
Hubspot's Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. I tried it on my [...]
Dropbox is easier to set up than Amazon S3. I'm in love with Dropbox! It's a free service that provides online storage for your files and lets you access them from any computer—your laptop, desktop, work computer, and phone. Your files are also accessible from the Dropbox website, so you can get to [...]
I seem to almost go back to the drawing board every time I'm looking for a new theme (layout/design) for a client. Working together with Lauren Deane for a current client, we found a theme that the client was going to love.
I've been using Vertical Response forever, but been playing with Mail Chimp and so far: I like.
The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a high-quality template system that you can use to improve your site immediately.
I needed some new checks (because I write at least 4 per year and I haven't ordered in six years ... ) but I went through the zillions of images of cute dogs and panoramic vistas and just couldn't find anything I wanted on my checks.
Great stats, easy-to-use editor to create your newsletter, love the backend interface, and, well, yeah, funny monkeys hanging around. Also, like Vertical Response, they don't force you to do a monthly plan, but you can pay per recipient only when you send a newsletter.
I shied away from online backup because I have backup drives scattered around the house, the office, I make DVDs once in a while, I have portable backup drives, and ach, I'd only lose a few days' work anyway, right? Well, yeah, as long as you really do back up regularly. And as long as your house or office don't burn down or get robbed.
I've been using Overnight Prints for years because of their thick business cards and high quality printing. Graphic designers I work with use Overnight Prints for business cards, clients have ordered business cards as well as postcards.
A client said her site looked wonky in Internet Explorer 5.5. Of course, my first reaction is, "Internet Explorer 5.5? Well ... " But I was determined to see if it'd be an easy fix. Otherwise, I'd tell her that 0.00238% of the population uses that browser and ... " You get the idea. The [...]
Cartfly looks like an interesting addition to the e-commerce world. Seems pretty easy to embed in other sites.
I use screencasts (audio/video recordings of screen action) for tutorials for a variety of computer help and I'm testing out which video service works best. I'm looking for good quality video and audio, I'd like the service to not resize my video too much (or not at all), I'd like it to stream so it [...]