Friday, September 26, 2008
Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios is currently showing the attendees at EE Roadshow how to customize an ExpressionEngine template. I just learned a cool trick. Ok, not a trick really, I just learned something that should have been painfully obvious.
As Susie was demonstrating that you can use a weblog to populate a header, meaning that you can create a custom weblog for your headers, pre-load the information and then set the order to randomly display one of the images, she happily clicked away on the Upload File button and this is what lead to my revelation ...
In EE when you want to reference an image that you’ve already loaded to your system, you click Upload File. And in the second half of the pop-up window, you click View. This will show you all the images in your directory and you can click link to auto-insert the link into any field.
I did not know this. It’s totally obvious! But in the past I have gone to my FTP client, found the filename and typed in the link.
Step 1: Click the Upload File Button to get the pop-up window.
Step 2: Click View
Step 3: Select Your Image. Decide what field it’s going to and select Link.
Ta-da! There’s the code.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
April 11th
10:00am - 12:00pm
Location: Workspace, 400 - 21 Water Street, Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1
Cost: $150
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
Register Online Today
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
February 19
6:30-8:30 pm
Location: Boxcar Marketing offices, suite 302, 70 East 2nd Ave. (corner of Main and Quebec)
Cost: $120
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
Register Online Today
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Do you want to get up to speed on some aspect of online marketing?
Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101 and I are starting a training series for business professionals.
About QuickLearn
QuickLearn is for business professionals looking to hone their skills, or get up to date quickly, on online marketing.
We are offering 2-hour sessions for small groups of 5-10 participants.
Each session will focus on a specific aspect of online marketing, for example, Get Started with Search Marketing, Get Started with Business Blogging, Understanding Web Stats, Improve Your Website Design, and Attract More Visitors.
If you are interested in QuickLearn, take our survey.
Click Here to take survey
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
This month one of our Underwire subscribers asked a great question about copyright and whether the rules for online publishing are different than those of print publishing.
* What are the copyright laws in relation to the practice of posting other people’s full articles on your website?
* Do you need author and publisher permission?
* How are the rules for online publishing and print publishing different?
It is a complex question, and I’m not an expert on copyright, but disclaimers aside, here’s my opinion.
Seek Permission
The internet is a vast resource of excellent articles, images, photos, and videos—all things that we want to filter and sort and compile in order to share with people within our social network.
Social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, ma.gnolia and StumbleUpon, have sprung up to support this miraculous tenacity we have for organizing data.
But what happens when we want to go beyond quoting reasonable amounts of text and linking back to the original source?
In this example, our Underwire subscriber wants to create a database of research articles and allow users to download those full articles. How does copyright apply? Who do they have to seek permission from in order to store these articles in a database?
See, it gets more complex right?
In the case of copyright materials (anything not licensed under Creative Commons—and even then, pay attention), you need to get permission to essentially re-publish these materials.
The question then becomes, who do you need to get permission from? The author? The publisher?
Understand Who Can Grant Permission to Share, Re-use and Re-publish
The answer is that it is dependent on the author-publisher contract. In many cases, when an author publishes an article in a journal or other publication, they sign an agreement with the publisher, which grants the publisher the exclusive rights to that article. In some cases this includes the right to self-archive, i.e., to keep a copy of their own work in an online CV or on their own website or to submit the work to an open repository.
If the author has not retained these rights, you must seek permission from the publisher. If the author has retained those rights, you must seek permission from the author.
So how do you tell who has the rights to the work if the copyright message does not clearly identify the rights holder?
I say cover your bases and make sure you seek permission from the publisher and author. They will be able to determine who has the legal right to grant you permission. Then you must make sure that you have, in writing, permission from the entity that controls the legal right to grant permission.
Each situation must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
The Short Answer
The short answer is that you can create a database of citations with links to original materials. As soon as you want to deal with archiving full articles, you must go through the process of checking how the rights to the work are assigned, confirming who the rights holder is, and, if necessary, requesting permission.
For more information on copyright:
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office offers a guide to copyrights.
The Creative Commons website explains the licenses and legal concepts behind them.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
At Barcamp Vancover on Saturday, Tod Maffin of CBC led a discussion on favourite tech tools, widgets, gadgets and other geekery.
All of the tips were great, but I want to point out one in particular.
Lynda.com is $25 per month service that provides online training programs. The Lynda movie library is the best tutorial site I have ever seen.
Lynda is the show-me tool.
No time to take a course but you learn by watching, check out Lynda.com.
Friday, May 25, 2007
What do you do if you suspect that you have duplicate entries in your Excel spreadsheet?
Just find them. But use a formula.
1. You need to have at least one column that holds a piece of standard data, like an email address, ID number, phone number. Something that is identical against which you can compare.
2. Sort the grid by the column with standard data. For this example, the data is in column A.
3. Create an empty column next to this standard data column. Make sure the column is formatted as General.
4. In cell B2 type this formula:
=IF(A1=A2,“Duplicate”, “Unique”)
The formula reads, “if cell A1 is equal to cell A2, then this is a duplicate record and put “duplicate” into the empty cell, if it is not a duplicate then put “unique” into the empty cell.
5. Copy and paste this formula in the whole column.
6. Then you want to change the data from formulas to values. Select the column with formulas. Go Edit > Copy. Then Edit > Paste Special.
In the Paste Special pop-up, select “Values”.
7. Now you can sort your file by the column showing Duplicate and Unique, and delete the Duplicates.
Fun stuff.
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