Category: Momentum Monday

Down for everyone or just me – show those IT guys you mean business!

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President’s Day is over and even though I’m not a President I had yesterday off.  But now I’m back with a new tip for Momentum Monday Tuesday!

Have you ever tried to get to a website (or, more likely, your own website) and not been able to?  Of course there is a moment of panic when you can’t see your site.  But before you start making phone calls, think about the other times this has happened.  What does your IT person, vendor, host ask you?

  1. Can you get to other websites?  This one really hurts because the last thing you want to do when you think your website is down is go to a different website.  But you should.  In fact, we recommend bookmarking DeMicco.com for just that purpose!
  2. Can other people in your office see it?  This always comes next.  Usually if there is trouble you will see heads pop out of cubicles like prairie dogs asking if the Internet is down.

Well, that’s not a very long list of things.  But I am here to tell you that there is one more thing you can do to make yourself feel better (or at least be able to give your support folks some more info).  The site is http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it’s name is as long as the site is handy.

All you need to do is type in the name of the site you want to check and hit enter.  It will tell you whether or not it is just you.  The way it works is by accessing the site from another location, which means that the problem is most likely localized to your building or area.

This is by no means any reason to not check into the issue further, but it should be enough to give you a little peace of mind (if the site says it is just you) or to call for assistance (if it says it isn’t).

Momentum Monday- Fences

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If you use windows, I am pretty confident that when you first got your computer you thought: “I am going to keep this new computer soooo organized nobody will even believe it!”  And you try, in the beginning.  The million email attachments you get per day get put in their own folders and you are all happy with yourself.

But then one day you are in a hurry and you just save something to the desktop “real quick”.  And then once there is one thing, there will be more.  You don’t know what they are or why they’re there.  There is something called Untitled(1)(2)(3).jpg.  Seven word docs where the first one is called FINAL and the seventh is called FINAL-APPROVED-EDITED-JAN-11-VERSION-To-SEND.doc.

You need help.  We all do.  And I’m here to tell you that Fences will be your deliverance.  Got some icons you want to corral?  Just right click and draw a box around them.  Name it, and BAM, all that stuff is in one spot.  And it will SCROLL within your desktop so you can fit way more junk in it than it looks like it will hold.  So you can make boxes and put all your stuff on them and make your desktop LOOK neat.  It might not make any sense to anyone but you, but you can name the boxes cool sounding things like: “Project Candlestick” and make people wonder what you’re doing.

Or…you could look super organized and just hide all the icons with a click or a button.  That way, you can be as messy as you want but if someone comes over you can be all: “look at my Darth Vader wallpaper that you can actually see because my desktop isn’t messy”.  Then when they leave, boom! back to being an e-hoarder!  Give it a shot!

Photoshop.com – Make Yourself Feel Artistic!

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Photoshop.com is, hands down, the best free photo editing site on the web.  It’s not the ONLY one, but it is the best.  It’s easy, it’s fast and it is fun.  Fun?  Yep.  It’s fun, and I’ll show you why.

Now, please note that I am talking about working on your own pictures.  Maybe your dog or something funny you want to send someone.  If you need to have a lot of pictures edited, then hire a professional.  The things I’m going to show you are basic and can make things look nicer when you dump your camera.  It’s not going to help you tweak all the product pictures you have.

OK, so with all the introduction out of the way, let’s see what we can do!

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YouTube – It’s Not Just Cats

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OK, so it DOES have some pretty good cat videos, but it’s good for a whole lot more.  And if your business needs to show anybody anything, there aren’t a lot of scenarios where the video sharing site doesn’t work.

Now, it’s true that not every business has or needs video, but if you have a product you can highlight or demo, a service you can describe, or even commercials you have done before, making sure they are attached to your YouTube channel and linked from your site is a must.

And if you DO have the kind of business that does a lot of custom work or has products that can be demonstrated, seriously consider using videos to tell the story.  You can create an asset that stays with you and a resource you can leverage forever.

A great example of good use of video can be found at RonI Ergonomic Lifters.  They have a lot of products and a lot of ways to configure them.  They are made for video.  And notice that these aren’t Hollywood productions.  They are people getting the job done in a professional manner.

You can do the same, and you can use YouTube to source suppliers as well.  Spend some time looking around for yourself.  Just don’t blame me if you lose a whole day watching cat videos…

Pixie – A Great Way to Add Color to Your Discussion

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Ever look at a web page and say: “What a pretty color” and then not be able to describe it to your web designer or printer?  And then later on when they ask you what the page is you either forgot to put into Evernote (I told you!) or even worse, the page doesn’t look like that anymore!

Well, forget all that.  If you have Pixie, you will be all set.  You can download it safely from download.com here (click on “direct download when you get there”) and once you install it you will have a tiny little program that only does one thing.

It tells you the “hex color” of whatever you mouse over.  The hex is the 6 character alphanumeric code that is used to make colors on web pages.  For instance, black is 000000.   And web designers use those numbers to make the colors you see.  And Pixie shows them to you!  That web page? No problem.  Your desktop?  No problem.  The green in the Evernote logo?  It’s: 78C636.  The pink in the little logo in the upper left of this post? FF0CFD.  The color of the orange share button up there (that you should click regardless of what color it is)? FB7756.

That’s all it does.  But from then on instead of being stuck sending emails like this:

“I want it to be bluer than you have it now, but still some green.  I will know it when I see it”

You can say:

“I want it to be 17C3E6.”

And if you want to just mess around with colors, head to colorpicker.com.  Warning, though: it can be addictive!