Hi guys as I mentioned in my post last month I’m running a Facebook like competition with a bunch of bloggers. If you want to win some cash money or an Asus laptop or you just really do like me and some of these other bloggers check out the details below.

If you are just interested in seeing the outcomes of the case study hang around and when it’s complete in June I’ll do a full wrap up.

Sponsored by Mom Blog Society

Rafflecopter

This competition uses the Rafflecopter system, simply log in below and start liking and you’ll go into the draw. The winners will be as follows:

• Winner from Rafflecopter 1 will win $130
• Winner from Rafflecopter 2 will win $110
• Winner from Rafflecopter 3 will win $110

And…..the Grandprize winner will win Asus 10″ Netbook PC!

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Hi guys this is a very quick post.

I have just entered a competition where people can like My Facebook page during the month of May and go into the draw to win a laptop computer.

I’m doing this as part of research for a new ebook I am writing on blogging for business so:

1. If you are a blogger I suggest you check it out below, the more people the better and it only costs you $7 and I’m sure you will get some activity on your Facebook page as a result.
2. If you are interested to see what kind of numbers we get from this stay tuned to the blog in June i’ll go back over the results with some specific numbers to help people determine whether it would be a good idea for them. I will be reporting on the traffic as well as the additional likes on our Facebook page and anything else that comes out of it.
3. If you want a laptop computer and you don’t want to pay for it, wait till May and like my page!

SIGN UP HERE

I’m not one of those bloggers that believes you have to write to a certain schedule on your blog (i.e. 2 times a week etc). In fact I don’t really enjoy reading, I generally find it boring so when I come across blogs that have been updated regularly with fairly average content they kind of annoy me. That being said there’s not much point in having a blog if you aren’t going to write so it’s always a good idea to have a constant stream of ideas to cover.

Here are 10 things I do to ensure I always have something to write about.

Check out replace your brain with Evernote for more on Evernote

1. Use Evernote

No matter where I am, if I ever have an idea to cover on my blog I capture it straight away. If in on my Windows computer at home, my Mac at work, my iPad at the cafe, my iPhone at lunch anywhere I’ve always got all of my notes and I can add ideas to my ‘blog post ideas’ notebook instantly (even if I don’t have internet access). You can use it to add text, add pictures, record yourself talking, take pics of whiteboards etc. The first thing I do when I want to write an article for the blog is go through this notebook in Evernote and pick my best idea or the one that is the most relevant at the time and start there.

At the moment I have 15 ideas in there that I could write about today if I wanted to. For more information specifically on Evernote check out my post called Replace your brain with Evernote.

2. Monitor my email

When you run a business your customers tend to overlap pretty nicely with your audience on your blog. Which means if your customers are asking you questions then it’s likely that the answers to these questions would be interesting to your readers. I’ve written quite a few posts as a result of emails I have received. Sometimes I might write a post instead of a long email reply and just send them a link to the post instead. Other times I’ll email back and then I’ll realise that the content is suitable for a blog post. A few examples of posts I’ve written as a results of questions from clients are:

• 15 essential website launch steps
• Choosing a business name
• Editing images for the web for free

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The new iPad is bringing high resolution to the web

*Update 2 April 2011 – We have just updated this post with a few realisations:

1. Resizing images in HTML works fine on the iPad but makes the image look worse in the browser. So our suggestion of just having smaller images always at twice the size has been removed – we now suggest to use the 2X JavaScript technique for every foreground image. 
2. The previous post didn’t mention what to do with background images so we have updated it to include how to handle these.*

For as long as the web has been around, web designers have been optimising images for relatively low resolutions due to the limitations in monitors. With the release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 (with high resolution Retina display) it meant you could now view things in a much higher resolution. But while many apps may have been re-developed to suit the high resolution display, it didn’t really force web designers to change the way they build websites. This was because the screen is so small, the amount of pixels shown is only the same as a typical website anyway so by default the majority of websites looked great on them (i.e. website was shown half the size and therefore doubling the resolution was fine).

It was still assumed at this stage that higher resolution displays were some way off appearing in full size screen devices like tablets, laptops and monitors because of the engineering challenges associated with it.  However with the release of the new iPad, the challenge is here now. And luckily we have one and we can start getting our heads around how to respond.

HTML vs foreground images vs background images

First of all it’s important to understand that your site is made up of HTML (headings, text, some graphical elements like borders etc) and images (foreground and background). The HTML is not restricted by pixels so it automatically looks great on the new iPad. However the images have probably been optimised to 72DPI or similar so these images are going to look a bit blurry.

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We haven’t updated the website examples section of the blog for a while so I thought it timely to showcase a few projects we have been working on lately.

Web Control Room

Web Control Room is a tool that shows a simple 1 page report to help small businesses and web professionals get a quick snapshot of how they are performing. We launched it last week both as a web app and a mobile site.

Mobile site versions

The app itself runs via the browser and also on mobile devices. We are currently working on an app but while we wait the standard version of the site runs fine on an iPad and there is a specific, simplified mobile version that loads when you access it via a mobile phone.

The app is designed to run on the browser via computers, tablets or mobile phones.

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