May 25th, 2010
When you are hosting an event, you want to spread the word, and you wanto to do it as efficiently and cheaply as possible. I know I do. We all know Facebook and all those big monsters, that can be used to send invitations. I am not going to talk about Facebook here, primarily for the fact that I don’t like their policies very much. There are plently of smaller alternatives, that are geared specifically towards making some noise for your event. Use them to send people invites, either to their mailbox, or by snail-mail. Some of the sites even let you rpint out the invitations, and some will even mail them for you.
In any case many of these services offer integration with Facebook, so you can still have use your account there.
- Anyvite seems to be easy to use for creating online invitations. Choose one of the many provided designs for your invitation, or create your own by uploading a picture, searching Flickr, and/or choosing a pattern or color. Use the “Search For Location” link to find possible venues for your event. Public invitations allow anyone who accesses the provided URL to RSVP for your event. Great for large, open events. Lots of features. Both a free and Premium version.
- Crush3r is a free service. Just click the “create event”, and add the geo-location for your event. Wil also let you poll your guests as to when is the best time for the event.
- Enclude is an online invitation and eCard web site without ads. Enclude online invitations are clutter free, classic and easy to customize with your own photo. You can set-up, personalize & send your online invitation in just a few minutes.
- My Punchbowl is free, if you can accept ads. They have a Plus and Premium membership, that cost USD 3 and 4 respectively. You can use them for all kinds of party planning and E-cards, etc.
- Paperless Post is not ad-supported so your invitations will always remain personal and free of pop-ups and ads. Use it to send custom, personalized invitations and announcements with the same thought and care as previous generations, but the way we communicate today: online. Members can send out invitations for any occasion- dinner parties, anniversaries, save the dates. Not free.
- Pingg lets you send online invitations and e-cards for free. They have something called Pingg Plus, which has lots of added features. It seems that Pingg Plus will coast a USD 10 one time fee, and it seems to be worth it, as iot gets you ad-free, and lots of good stuff.
- Purple Trail is a free and ads-free online E-card maker. You can make, and send them online, and them choose to download them and print yourself, or have them mailed to you for an extra fee. They have more than 5,000 designs to choose from, and your guest replies are tracked automatically.
- Sozializr lets you add it all, music, photos, video, flash for free. No ads in the invitations. Seems to be 100% free.
- Zoji provides you with useful tools to help create and manage your group events and online invitations. Group forums, unlimited photo uploading and custom skins are some of their features. They are a free service with no hidden fees and no ads. You can create groups and events and send out email invitations to your friends to attend an event or join a group.
Tags: advertising, invitations
Posted in Social | 5 Comments »
May 16th, 2010
Icons is something that can spruce up the look of your website, but they can be really hard to draw. Luckily, there are sites who specialize in serving up 100’s of beautiful and colorful icons, and let you download them for free. Here is a list.
-
Favicon is a little different from the rest of the sites on this list, because they let you design socalled favicons. A favicon is the icon you see next to the URL, when you type in the web-adress. A neat site, with a free service.
- Icones is a searchengibe that specialises in finding icons on other sites. Works pretty much like Google, but for icons.
- Iconfinder provides high quality icons for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way. You can search thousands of icons from outside websites. Loads really fast, and is very intuitive.
- Iconpot is another collection of icons. All are freely downloadable, according to the site.
- All Free vectors is an index of free vector files available on the World Wide Web. They link to free and public domain vector files, and allow people to upload their own vector files for free download.
- Vista Icons is a very professionol looking site with thousands of great looking icons. Some restrictions apply to the icons, but you will find lots and lots of icons avalable for download for personal and even commercial use.
Tags: colors, Creative, Graphics, HEX, icons, images
Posted in Creative | 3 Comments »
May 16th, 2010
If you need to design your own website, you don’t need to have lots of programming experince, thanks to a lot of really nice webites, who let you design websites from the ground up, with all the beels and whistles. Using one of these sites, you can be your own webmaster, and create high-level and fully functional ecommerce sites. Check out the sites below, and get inspired to start designing!
- Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application. Communicate with and present to your clients using clear mockups. Brainstorm using Mockingbird, then use your mockups going into the building stage. This tool is free.
- Wix deserves honorable mention here. This site is in a league of its own, if you like flash, but have always thought it was too hard to do. With Wix, you can eliminate the learning curve, and have a really flashy looking site up and running in no time. Seriously, it is a cool site, and you need to check it out! They have a free version, and also plans prices at USD 5, 10 and 15 per month. Their ecommerce version will cost you USD 15/20 per month.
Tags: business, editor, hosting, webshop, Website
Posted in Website | 3 Comments »
May 15th, 2010
There are some really nice sites out there, where you can create your own graphics, images etc., without paying a dime. They will let you edit and store them on the site. Using online editors from some of these sites, you can create really great looking images, even if you have no experience with working with images. Some of these sites are really amazing, and offer some pretty unique tools.
Tags: colors, Creative, editor, Graphics, HEX, images
Posted in Creative | 16 Comments »
May 12th, 2010
Listening to music is always great, and there are plenty of really nice sites that offer free legal streaming of first rate music. Many sites offer the ability to make your own playlists, and many of them have really extensive libraries of great music. Whether you like pop, r ‘n b, deathmetal, classical, or whatever, you can find it all online. If you are on this site, you already know this ofcourse, so lets just cut the cr.., and get on with it!
Tags: fun, music, radio, streaming
Posted in Creative | 2 Comments »
