Ever wished there was an easier way to edit photos on your computer? We recently discovered a free online image editing tool that’s perfect for businesses that don’t want to invest in Adobe Photoshop, but have the occasional need to prepare images for their blog or Facebook page. It’s called Pixlr Editor, and it’s similar to Photoshop and other well-known software, but it’s very intuitive and it’s free!

Pixlr allows you to easily crop, resize, filter and adjust your images. You can even create new images from scratch and layer one image over another. The novelty of this tool comes from the fact that all editing functions are performed directly from your browser on an easy-to-use interface, with no purchase, no registration and no installation necessary. Once you’re done editing, you simply download your image and save it to your computer.

While Pixlr is not meant to replace professional applications like Photoshop, it is definitely an easy solution for handling quick image edits or fixes with a polished look and feel. And oh, did we mention… it’s free!

Give it try: http://www.pixlr.com/editor/

Signal is partnering with the Society for Marketing Professional Services to create promotional materials for their upcoming regional conference in Music City, USA – Nashville, Tennessee.

The conference is March 24-26 at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Nashville.  The conference will bring together marketing professionals from service businesses in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee.  There will be many opportunities to learn the latest techniques in service marketing, including branding, social media marketing, and winning the pitch.

Signal will also be attending the conference.  We’re excited to be attending sessions, manning our booth, and giving out fabulous door prizes.

Come on down!

The Full Belly Project is a non-profit organization whose mission is to design and distribute income-generating agricultural devices to improve life in developing countries. Feast AGAINST Famine is a globally inspired evening of exotic cuisine, live music and auctions to benefit The Full Belly Project’s charitable efforts.

Signal donated our design services to create a set of promotional materials for the event, including a flyer, poster, tickets, program and email design. Among the local artists donating their work to be auctioned is Kristin Gibson, wife of Signal partner John Gibson.

To learn more, please visit The Full Belly Project.

Feast AGAINST Famine
Coastline Convention Center
501 Nutt Street, Wilmington, NC
Saturday, February 20, 2010
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

If you look closely at consumer packaging, magazines or any other printed material with a web address, you might notice the term “Augmented Reality.”

Wikipedia defines Augmented Reality (AR) as “a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery — creating a mixed reality.”

A complex example of AR would be a head mounted display that allows the user to view superimposed graphics and text. Remember RoboCop? Real-world AR technology hasn’t quite reached that level of sophistication yet, but AR on the web is presently mixing graphic elements (3D, Video, text, etc.) with live video footage to create a unique user experience. The final image is a taken with the user’s web cam and displayed on the web page, as opposed to a cyborg policeman’s digital visor.

Take a look at a Science Channel special on AR and how it’s being used to engage students.

Some web users aren’t sure what to make of AR. It’s a little far out, but depending on the success of AR on the web, it could be commonplace within the next few years. And with companies like Home Depot and Target using this technology to reach their audience, it’s gaining exposure fast. Here are some examples…

Home Depot Gift Card

Target Holiday Campaign

InStyle

Esquire

So what does this mean for you and your business? Well, that’s all part of the fun. There is no road map for how to use AR. Signal is seizing the opportunity to get creative and think of ways to engage your audience. Maybe you have a product that you’d like to showcase. You may have pictures of this product online, but the ability for someone to interact with a three-dimensional product could make a lasting impression.

Signal developed our own AR site to tie in with our 2009 holiday greeting card. If you’d rather get back to non-Augmented Reality, I understand. But if you’re interested in just a little more, check it out.

Have a great holiday and a happy new year!

Signal recently announced the launch of a new web site for Sequentric Energy Systems, LLC, an innovator in developing demand control products for electric utility companies and their customers.

Within a compressed time frame, Signal delivered an intelligent site that clearly outlines Sequentric’s objectives through clean design and informative content. A flash component within the site depicts the company’s various products and how they assist customers in conserving energy. The structure of the web site is designed to easily build upon as the Sequentric brand grows.

“This website is exactly what we needed at this point in time,” says Tina Jacobs of Sequentric. “Signal’s flexibility and willingness to deliver what we needed within an impossible time frame was very impressive and greatly appreciated.”

To view the new Sequentric web site, visit www.sequentric.com.

We are pleased to announce that Ann Howard has joined Signal as an account executive at our Wilmington office. Although she’s our newest hire, Ann is a familiar longtime member of the Signal family as the wife of Interactive Director Adam Howard. So she already knows what we’re all about, and we already know what a huge contribution her talents will bring to the company.

“We are very excited to have Ann join our Signal team,” says Signal President Rick Haynes. “With Ann’s unique abilities and expertise we are confident that she will add tremendous value helping clients grow their business while helping us grow ours as well.”

Ann earned a BA in Journalism from Salem College and an MBA at UNCW’s Cameron School of Business. She previously served as a business counselor at the Small Business and Technology Development Center at UNCW’s Cameron School of Business. She also has experience as a marketing and public relations manager, and in business valuation and technology transfer.

Ann’s duties include working closely with clients to reach their revenue goals using Signal’s creative and technological strength. She will also play a key role in the company’s future expansion to new markets.

“I have always admired Signal’s rare balance of strong design, technical chops, and strategic expertise,” Ann says. “I look forward to working with clients to use these strengths to create growth and profit in the ‘new’ economy.”

Google has pioneered the principle of “blended search,” or “universal search,” which means that search results from a variety of content categories – including video, news, images, shopping results and more – are brought together on a results page in an attempt to bring the user the most relevant possible matches.

A search for something like “landscaping” in Google will return not only regular web pages, but also images of landscaping ideas, local business listings pinpointed on a map, related news articles and more.

If you search for something more specific like “growing a pumpkin patch” videos will appear as thumbnails directly in the results page. See how it stands out on a results page otherwise dominated by your basic blue links and black preview text.

Although it is possible to earn a thumbnail spot like this from any online video service, you’re likely to see better results if you host your videos on YouTube. Google tends to rank YouTube videos more favorably over Hulu, Metacafe, etc. Google also tends to favorably rank web pages with embedded video content. Notice the top results for our search for “landscaping” all have embedded video content on their page.

Signal has found excellent results from adding and optimizing online video for numerous clients. YouTube specifically outperforms the rest. It’s easy to use, it offers cool ways to embed and share your videos online, and it greatly amplifies your chances of being found by web searchers. Not too shabby a deal.

Twitter is a great resource for companies to further market themselves, post company news, drive traffic to their web site and much more. Although tweets are typically viewed as simple text messages, there’s opportunity to create a memorable Twitter landing page that can tie in with an existing web site design or corporate standards.

Backgrounds
Twitter allows you to customize the look of a Twitter homepage by either selecting a provided theme or uploading a custom background image. The latter option gives you the ability to make the Twitter homepage communicate a company’s brand identity, culture or graphic style.

But Twitter backgrounds are a tricky canvas for designing on, because the entire central area of the page will be taken up by Twitter content. In effect, you’re only designing around the edges of the page. The Twitter content area floats on top of the background and remains centered at a width of 763 pixels. In the case of a smaller monitor, the content area could cover up a rather large percent of the background. The most failsafe practice is to create a layout that covers a 1920 x 1200 pixel area. This will accommodate most screen sizes and the design will appear seamless. You also have the ability to tile a smaller background image. Don’t forget that visitors are there for the purpose of sorting and reading the content that dominates the page, so make sure the background is not so loud and distracting that it competes for attention.

One good practice is to work in a company logo, mission statement and contact info into the left side of the background image. See sample below. Bear in mind that these elements could be covered up or cropped when the page is viewed on smaller monitors.

You can find more examples of creative and compelling Twitter backgrounds at the Smashing Magazine site.

Customizing Colors
Within the settings menu you are allowed to make some simple adjustments to change colors in the page layout. Twitter gives you the options to set colors for the background, text, links, sidebar and the sidebar border. This is helpful if you’re trying to match an existing web site, and you can also view these changes instantly.

Picture
The last item I would like to discuss is the personal picture, the thumbnail image that identifies a user on Twitter pages. This is another opportunity to get the corporate branding displayed. The picture image is always square, so make sure when uploading the image or logo that it’s in a square format. Otherwise, the corporate identity may be arbitrarily cropped. The maximum size is 700k and can be a jpg, gif or png file. If a complex or oddly proportioned logo doesn’t work when reduced down to this size and shape, use your judgment to find a tasteful solution — even if that means tweaking the prescribed corporate identity standards just a touch. You might zoom into or isolate a distinctive part of the logomark in a way that that works well and stands out in this format.

Got a Favorite?
We want to hear about your favorite Twitter profile backgrounds – send us a tweet! We’re @signalinc on Twitter.

After clicking the Translate button, visitors see the translations directly on the page.

This can be a great addition to pretty much any site, but particularly useful for site owners who know they have potential with international audiences and may not have the budget to pay professional (human) translators to do a thorough job. Keep in mind Google states that “Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist of the page. However, its not a perfect substitute for the art of professional translation.”

If you’re worried Google’s “gist” may do more harm than help, test it! The gadget is powered by Google Translate – test your content here and get an opinion on the quality of the translation. You can also use the Google Translator Toolkit to edit weak areas in the translation of your web pages and set that version as a preferred, global translation.

Site owners should also keep in mind that although this gadget will help make their content more accessible, it will not help them increase visibility in international search engines. And the gadget can’t translate everything. If you’re using elements like text in images or Flash, it’s important to note they will remain in their original language.

On a related note, another new offering from Google Translate is 1-click translations from your browser’s toolbar! Just drag and drop your language from this page (scroll to the bottom) into your browser’s toolbar. Then whenever you want to translate a webpage, just click the new button on your toolbar.

Often when designing a site I find myself spending a good deal of time organizing content and thinking through how the end user can best absorb the information displayed on a page. Recently many companies are beginning to include social media as another method for viewers to become engaged with their site and their company. This becomes another level of content that needs to be well planned before the site moves to the design phase. Below are a few important considerations.

Level of Presence
The first step is to determine which forms of social media the client wants to be involved in. For instance, do they want or have a Facebook, Twitter or YouTube page? Then you need to find out the degree to which this media will feature on their main site. Would they like a simple link or something more attention-getting? You also need to determine whether this needs to be integrated into the landing page or located within a news page.

Adding Social Media Icons
The easiest and most understated approach to show that a company is involved with social media is to include a simple link or icon to the site. This can be placed easily within in a footer or strategically within the main content. Each social media has its own distinctive icon available as a download. Many sites also offer a wide variety of free icon styles from buttons to hand-sketched looks. One good source for finding unique social media icons is Smashing Magazine.

Using Social Media Widgets
As discussed in a previous blog post, social media widgets provide an easy way for a web site to display a few lines of recent news, drive more site traffic and generate a higher level of awareness of their social media involvement. When including a widget within a site design, it’s important to know how much you can customize these small applications. For instance, can you change the size, background color, text color, etc. to fit your design. Some widgets are more customizable than others, which can help determine which style of widget to use or whether to include one at all. Take the time to show the client how it will appear on the site and what the widget can do. Each method of social media offers its own type of widgets and there’s also opportunity to use third party widgets.

For example: a YouTube Video Bar widget allows users to watch the selected video channels without leaving the site.

Twitter offers a Profile widget that displays recent Twitter updates on the site.

And Facebook offers a Fan Box widget which invites site visitors to become the company’s Facebook fans.

One last thing to note as you begin the site design process is to be aware of and understand this growing form of communication. As designers we need to continually seek out fresh ways to incorporate this media into our layout and adapt our design to fit the customer’s social media needs.

Coming up next: Tips for Designing Twitter Pages