So I have been using this web app called Batchbook CRM for almost two months now. They let you sort and tag all your contacts with a ton of great features that make keeping on top of your networking so much easier. I won't go into all the details of how it works here, but one of the things that was holding me back from completely loving it was that they don't let you send an email from directly within the app. They have 'mailto' links that open your email application. The problem for me is that I use gmail so I would have to go to a new window and just copy and paste addresses. It may not sound like a big deal, but it slowed things down enough that it was really making their whole system (slightly) less appealing. The other day I was messing around with Greasemonkey, an

Posted In: Blog.
Tags: app reviews, articles about me, crm, Resources, tips, web apps

Just a quick screenshot for now. I'm off to Vegas for the WPPI convention, where we are introducing abrand new JulesCafe.com.

Posted In: Blog, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, html, php, web clients, web design, WordPress

In a post last week, PIFPhoto.com talked about Google's Keyword tool, one of the great free tools made available by Google for free to help analyze, enhance and promote your website. I left a comment mentioning a site called grader.com, which offers a number of great free tools to analyze your site's visibility to the search engines. It even offers suggestions for how to improve your site specifically. Lindsay at PIF, asked if I would be interested in writing a guest blogger article going into further detail on using the Website Grader. I was happy to take her up on the offer but the PIF site has undergone a redesign and now the post is no longer available. So I have recreated it below: There are three sections to the site: the 'Website Grader', the 'Twitter Grader' and the 'Press-Release Grader'. I have only used the website and Twitter sections, but

Posted In: Blog, How To, SEO.
Tags: products I endorse, Resources, SEO, tips, web apps

After finding and commenting on this post from pifphoto.com, I was contacted by Lindsay from PIF (Pay it Forward) and asked to do a follow up as a guest blogger. I had mentioned a site that I have been using called website.grader.com which does a great job of analyzing your site and grading it's SEO performance on factors like keywords, incoming links, whether or not you are listed in some of the major search and listing sites. It works as a great starting point for assessing your site's visibility. You can read my post at PIF. I also wrote a couple follow up ideas, just to get out some of my other thoughts on SEO - An Introduction to SEO & Why SEO is not Enough.

Posted In: Blog.
Tags: guest blog posts, SEO, writing

Sauce Creative Group does some great design work for some major brands, including a lot of recent work with Redbull. So when they asked me to help turn their design into a Wordpress site, it was a great opportunity for me - not to mention a chance to just build a site and not worry about the design process myself. The biggest job I had on this was creating the fading slideshow at the top of every page. I found a sample site that had something similar, but i had to tweak the code to be more flexible. Now it reads any image uploaded to the right folder. So all they have to do is upload some new images and they have a new slideshow. I will try to add a description of what I did, because it is a pretty slick addition to any site and is user-friendly enough for

Posted In: Blog, Featured, WordPress Development.
Tags: clients, web clients, web design, WordPress

Yesterday, I got the chance to be the wedding videographer for Kristen and Scott at the Newport Beach Marriot. What made the day especially great for me was that I shot along side an amazing photographer, Jules Bianchi. You can see her blog post with some of her highlights from the shoot here. Jules brother, Jeffrey came along to operate my second camera and Tom Benedek shot some 8mm film that I can't wait to see and incorporate into the edit. The ceremony ended with an amazing sunset, so I put together a quick teaser with some footage from the last moments of daylight, before everyone headed inside for the reception.

Posted In: Blog, Featured, Video, Wedding Videos.
Tags: clients, director, editor, videographer, Wedding Videos

Last night I attended an event for the APA (Advertising Photographers of America), with photographer Jules Bianchi. I found it all very interesting, however. New technologies are blurring the line between still and motion cameras and this was the major topic of the night. The featured speaker was Vincent Laforet, a renowned photographer for the NY Times, famous for his amazing aerial photography. Most recently, he has garnered a lot of attention for 'Reverie' - the short film he made after getting his hands on a prototype of the just released Canon 5d Mark II, a DSLR camera that shoots both stills and full HD video. Here is Vincent Laforet Me, Jules Bianchi & Dina Douglass Photos from Jules' Blog.

Posted In: Blog.

Yesterday I put up a new splash page for wedding photographer, Jules Bianchi. We worked together on the look as she had an existing site and blog that the page needed to match and she had a very specific idea of what it should look like. Here is a screen capture of the new page: And the old one: (click for a larger view) It gave me a chance to use a new technique I had read about using "CSS Sprites". I have to thank A List Apart, a site full of amazing resources and how-to's which talked about this technique. Here is a link to their great Tutorial on CSS Sprites. I will post a more technical version of how I tweaked their code to work for this situation later, but here is a quick explanation: Normally to create all the rollover buttons on the page, eight separate images would be used and the old

Posted In: Blog, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, html, personal projects, php

Company Cafe wanted a basic informational site but needed a look that matched their business. They offer quality food service in corporate environments. So I tried to balance a color scheme that I thought would work well for a cafe with a clean, crisp layout that I might use for a more corporate setting. I also knew I wanted to use a dark solid background to bring out the colors in the pictures they sent me. They needed a custom logo and this is what I cam up with, just a simple cursive font with some buildings in the background made to fit into the header at the top of the page... They also wanted a splash page with a movie that would act as a little teaser for their company and what they do. They had some pictures and a script with the words they wanted to say, I just had

Posted In: Blog, Video, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, html, php

I had a nice surprise in my inbox today. Apparently Five Day DVD is a featured design on We Love WP (WeLoveWP.com) - a site that showcases custom Wordpress sites. Only a few days ago, I found the site and browsed all the amazing work on there, getting inspiration and ideas for my own designs. They had a section where you could submit your own site, let them know about it and if they like it, they would include it on their page. Well, I guess they did, because here it is: Five Day DVD was my first go at Wordpress and to have it noticed on a site like this means a lot. It took me so long to get it to look like it does! I have big plans for a new site which I plan to do all in Wordpress. Plus - I am working on my first custom theme, built from

Posted In: Blog, Web Design.
Tags: custom web design, html, personal projects, php, web clients, web design, WordPress