Welcome to DIF Design Blog

November 2010 Wallpaper

Posted on Oct 28, 2010 by Anne Lopez in Freebie, News, Wallpaper

November’s wallpaper features an artwork created by Peter Ellis for a clothing line collection for a client in NYC. This wallpaper is rich with fall colors, so if you’ve missed the foliage this year, you might need to download November’s wallpaper to make you feel better. Enjoy! Light up your desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone or netbook screen with this great addition to our FREE wallpaper collection.

Choose your size below:

640×960 (iPhone)
800×600
1024×768
1024×1024 (iPad)
1280×800
1280×1024
1440×900
1680×1050
1920×1200

Square

Posted on Oct 27, 2010 by Peter Ellis in IT, News

I have to start by saying, “THIS IS AMAZING!”

Square is a cutting edge innovation, it’s a device that allows you to accept credit card payments with your mobile device. The device is compatible with iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android.

Square allows you not only to punch in the credit card number and process the charge (like many other mobile credit card processing apps), but to actually slide the credit card right on your mobile device.

On top of this amazing feature, the cost of processing in cheaper than what most credit card processing services offer – 2.75% and 15¢.

There are no contracts, no monthly charges and no setup fees – it’s free to get started, and after you are all setup you just end up paying per each transaction.

The software that runs the device helps you track your customer’s information, taxes and charges.

The system is completely secure, compliant with all PCI standards and is backup by VeriSign.

If you don’t believe this after reading it, see this video for yourself. I didn’t believe it at first!

Web Wednesdays – October 27, 2010

Posted on Oct 27, 2010 by Dennis Driscoll in IT, Web Wednesdays

Web Wednesdays – each Wednesday we will feature a website that we’ve come across while in our process of searching for inspiration, the latest trends, or learning about anything and everything we can get our hands on that interests us.

This Web Wednesday it’s all about the functionality and efficiency. Have you ever felt like there weren’t enough sticky notes to right your to-do list? (it’s a rhetorical question, so you don’t have to answer it!)

Forget those sticky notes and long lists and get activeCollab.

activeCollab is an amazing project management and collaboration tool. Whether your company has 3 employees and 10 customers or you own a Fortune 500 company with many many clients. activeCollab is right for you.

activeCollab is a project management and collaboration tool that you can set up on your own server or local network. Work with your team, clients and contractors in an easy to use environment, while keeping full control over your data.

There are a lot of similar products out on the market. Most of them offer exactly the same features. activeCollab does too, but it also gives you 2 options that some other solutions don’t:

Option 1:

You can rent/lease the program as a hosted solution for a small monthly fee.

Option 2:

You can purchase the program and deploy it on your own website for one-time affordable payment.

Here at DIF Design we’ve been using activeCollab for a while now, and it has been very helpful in organizational, management and communication aspects of everyday business.

Some of our customers have access to the program to be able to update project status, upload files and collaborate with us on their project.

Advertise on DIF Design Blog

Posted on Oct 19, 2010 by Peter Ellis in Advertising

Get your message out in front of our audience.

DIF Design is dedicated to providing quality website design, graphic design and marketing to local businesses. Our blog is about new technology, advertising strategies, innovation, web and print marketing, social media, networking and other topics related to every day business operations.

Would your company like to reach a captive audience of local professionals? Advertise now to get brand exposure and targeted traffic from the DIF Design Blog and social media websites (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn).

Here’s what you get:

• 300×250 ad space on every blog post/page
• We will design your ad for you (you own the artwork to use anywhere else)
• A Facebook Fan Page post about your company with a link to your website
• 4 Twitter shout-outs with a link to your website
• 4 LinkedIn updates with a link to your website
• “Sponsored by” link to your website in our monthly email blast to all of our customers

Who sees it:

• 1,000+ visitors to our website
• 300+ email blast subscribers
• 250+ Facebook fans
• 100+ Twitter followers
• 250+ connections on LinkedIn

Price: $40/mo

iPad for Business

Posted on Oct 15, 2010 by Peter Ellis in IT, News

I’ve recently have purchased an Apple iPad. Considering the nature of our business, everything in our studio is from Apple. The iPad was a natural addition to DIF Design’s Apple family.

I am sure you’ve heard people say, “Why do you need an iPad? Its just a bigger iPhone.”, “It will never replace a laptop, plus you can’t view Flash videos on it.”, “It’s just another useless gadget that Apple want you to get”.

I am sure that some of them are true – to each their own, but the purpose of this post is to show case how I’ve personally was able to use this “gadget” as a benefit to our business.

Internet browsing and research.

Ok, I have an iPhone as well (it was not heard to guess), but its much nicer to be able to view the entire web page on the screen, rather than sliding your finger a million times to see the content. iPad has a beautiful sharp screen, and, yes, it is much bigger than the iPhone or your smart phone screen. I used to do most of the research on my 17″ Apple Mac Book Pro, but it got to the point where the laptop was just too bulky and hot to have around while doing casual browsing or any type of social surfing/networking. iPad became my new solution for research and internet browsing.

Sales presentations and such.

I am not bragging, but I sold a prospect a logo and a website just because he saw my iPad and was curious to see how I liked it. We began to talk and I went through some apps that I’ve downloaded, one of them was the “Photos” app. He was so impressed with the interface and how intuitive the photo albums and faces were while I was showing him some of the logo designs that we’ve done.

Most presentations are done on a big screen TV or a projector, when you are on the run – a laptop, but I was able to have a successful unintended sales presentation on the iPad. Plus, you can purchase a set of AV cables to be able to plug your iPad to the projector or that big screen.

I can definitely see how sales people that are on the road a lot can utilize the iPad.

Mail, Calendar and Contacts.

Every business professional used to have a Rolodex on their desk, well, those times are gone (if you still use one, that’s ok, just don’t let your business colleagues see you). I store all of my contacts (business and personal) on a “cloud”. For those who are not familiar with the term – cloud is a remote server that stores your desired information (contacts, passwords, files and other information) and makes it available to you via internet connection. Apple offers a paid monthly service call MobileMe, it allows you to have a mirror image of all the information you wish on multiple devices. For example, I can access my contacts from my iPhone, iPad, Mac Book Pro and the office computer. If I am meeting with a customer and I decide to add their new email address to my address book, its not only added to my iPhone, but all other devices that are connected and sync with the cloud.

Google offers a similar service for free with Gmail. You can sync your calendar events and email with multiple devices.

Apple had redesigned iPad’s Mail, Calendar and Contacts apps to have a better user interface than the iPhone. So accessing all of your important business information on daily bases is a breeze.

Documents, presentations and reports.

This one is for people who say that you can’t be productive with iPad. iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) is Apple’s version of Microsoft Office. Pages is Word, Numbers is Excel and Keynote is PowerPoint. You can purchase all three apps for your iPad for $30 (you can’t get Microsoft Office for that!).

You’re on the plain and did not want to bring your bulky laptop with you, don’t worry, you have a three-hour flight ahead of you and your iPad also. You can work on that marketing report for about an hour, and than watch a movie on a beautiful HD screen.

Productivity at your finger tips – literally!

iPad has become an irreplaceable addition to DIF Design’s Apple family and my everyday work flow. If you want to find out more, feel free to contact me, and may be, I will even let you play with my iPad.

Images courtesy of Apple.com