Tel: 0113 2170419
www.littlefishwebdesign.com
What's happened to LittleFish Web Design
Monday, February 25, 2008
Although I'm still a computer coding geek at heart, other commitments have taken over and I'm reducing the amount of time I am spending on web design projects.
I'm going to spend more time updating the blog than I have done in the past few months but am not taking on any new design projects.
Apologies if you've heard of the fantastic reputation and pricing of LittleFish Web Design, but you're going to have to find someone else.
There are plenty of tips in this blog about what to look for in a web designer, or for websites in general, so you shouldn't be caught unawares.
The Internet Marketing Myth - A Review
Friday, October 05, 2007
Yes, I got a few e-mails about Russell Brunson's new report that he's giving away. With catchphrases such as "The IM-Myth, Showing Why Internet Marketing is Like Having a Lamborghini on a Dead End Road and what you HAVE to do today if you want to still be around tomorro..." and "What If Everything You Were Ever Taught About Internet Marketing Was A Myth...?" I was naturally skeptical.
However, curiosity got the better of me, especially as I was sent the e-mail from a respected name, and he promised there was no big one time offer upsell, just a $1 offer. The fact there was no big OTO finally made me visit the site - ALL internet marketers offer a free report to try and then sell you a $97 offer - why was Russell Brunson different?
I signed up, downloaded the report and started reading...It's 44 pages long, of which only three aren't useful content - header, copyright and contents pages. There is a prelaunch offered, but only as a hyperlink in the footer - it's not in your face at every opportunity.
So what about the content? It really does blow the Internet marketing theory of "the money is in the list" out of the water and gives you some incredibly good ideas for leveraging more sales without irritating your customers / people on the list. Most Internet Marketers seem to think the more they bombard you with offers, the more likely you are to buy. In actual fact, with me, I'm more likely to unsubscribe from the list.
And the ideas he gives aren't just for Internet Marketers - you can apply them for all sorts of businesses, both online and offline. To be honest, this report was a complete shock - I was expecting fluff and got something that I can actually use. And in fact, when you read the report you'll see just how good his ideas are - you'll have already seen something in action without realising what it was.
Go and have a read now - it is free after all, and you'd be daft not to!
And just for your information, here is the 'hype' e-mail:
Hey (Firstname),
I've taken a lot of internet marketing courses and read a lot of ebooks. Most of them talk about the same :
--Sign up for an autoresponder
--Create a squeeze page
--Create a series of emails
--Rinse and repeat
You can make a LOT of money doing this...don't get me wrong.
But you can make a lot more if you start harnessing offline marketing in your business.
You see, online marketing is preached as the "holy grail" of marketing.
But ask the big information marketing powerhouses like Agora, Boardroom, and Weiss
where the REAL money is made. They absolutely clean house offline...humiliating any online marketer who comes in their path.
Here's the deal: Millionaire internet marketer Russell Brunson has just released a special offline report: "The IM Myth" where he shatters the myth that internet marketing is the "be all-end all" of marketing.
You can check it out here.
Believe me, this stuff is the real deal. The marketers who absolutely annihilate their competition are the ones that incorporate offline marketing into the mix.
So check out Russell's report today before you're competition discovers it.
Thanks,
Emma
P.S. One of Russell's tips he reveals is how he moved his offline list online. This absolutely blew me away, and is something I'm going to implement in my own business immediately. So get it today, right now, while it's still on your mind.
Nikon D80 Raw Converter for CS2
Friday, August 24, 2007
This is a slightly off-topic post, but I'm hoping will be useful for some. After purchasing the very expensive Nikon D80 digital SLR camera, my husband took hundreds of photos in RAW format. That was great until he wanted to edit them on the PC - the D80 format is very new and not many software manufacturers have brought out plug-ins or upgrades yet. After hours searching, we finally came across the Adobe Camera Raw 3.7 Update - carefully hidden away. It states the update is for the Nikon D40 and Pentax K10D, but it does work for the D80. Hurrah. The actual plug-in applies to Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 and5.
Beware the Internet Marketing hype
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
If you've ever looked at the sales page for an info-product, you'll know it looks impressive. Screenshots to show earnings, highlighting on the key points, reasons why you will never be successful without that particular software/e-book etc...
Well, it's all persuasive stuff, designed to make you reach into your pocket and fork out the $47 dollars (only until midnight tonight..when it goes up to $97!) and get the product immediately etc...
If you're ever tempted by these pitches, just take a look at Buy My Stupid EBook first, then go back and read the pitch again...it may just save you a few $$$.
Quickly rewrite PLR content at no cost
Friday, August 03, 2007
If you use PLR content, I'm sure you've seen all the hype surrounding content rewriters. Some free ones just insert a useless comment at the header, footer and somewhere in the middle, so require you to come up with alternative ways of saying the same thing. Some are free, some cost $97 etc...
You do need to rewrite PLR content - otherwise you will suffer by either not being listed in the directories to which you submitted the article, or if it does get accepted, it probably won't feature until number 798 on the SERPS (search engine results position) in which case, you might as well not bother. Google will accept a few copies of the same article in its index, but then decides that only the few in the most respected locations will actually be listed in a good position in the results - that's the duplicate content penalty in a nutshell.
Anyway, I was wondering how to rewrite PLR content fairly quickly but manually, to increase the chances of it being accepted into article directories and I had a brainwave. And trust me, it works. It's not a magic bullet - you will have to do some work, but your article will be a better quality and therefore get you more visitors for it.
Very simply - open your PLR article in notepad, Word, whatever format it's in, select the text, copy it and paste it into Google Translate. Choose to convert from English to French (or German or Spanish etc...), then select and copy the translated text and paste it right back in, converting it from the language it's in back into English.
Now, you have an original article in pidgin English which you can quickly rewrite.
Rotary District 1270 Website now back online
Monday, July 09, 2007
The Rotary District 1270 website can now be found at www.rotary1270.org and documents events happening throughout the district, provides information on Rotary and displays the latest news stories.
Labels: misc
Get Keywords and Internet Marketing Niches
Monday, April 23, 2007
Get Keywords is my latest project. It's a site that gives you suggestions on different niche and keyword ideas, either for your latest AdSense site or for an Internet marketing campaign (or for anything else you can use it for!).
For every word, there's the daily search count in both Overture and Wordtracker and different search terms to consider.
If you find a keyword you like, just click the 'bookmark' icon in the left hand menu and if you want to receive an e-mail everytime a new post is made to the site, click the 'subscribe' by e-mail link.
Save multiple attachments in Outlook 2003
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
If you're used to using Outlook Express where it's easy to save multiple e-mail attachments in a few clicks, changing to Outlook may come as a surprise. Using the same method to save your attachments results in...nothing! You can't do it, just save each attachment one at a time.
However, there is a really quick solution - Microsoft just changed the way of saving more than one attachment. With your e-mail visible in the preview pane, go to File > Save Attachments. All the attachments will be listed but there is a 'Save All Attachments' option at the bottom of the list. Click on this, choose the folder to save to and click 'OK'. Done!
Labels: misc
Free toolbar builder
Monday, April 16, 2007
So you've seen the Google toolbar, the Yahoo! toolbar, and in fact a whole host of others. Wouldn't it be nice though to be able to offer your website visitors a free toolbar of your own? It can remind people your site exists, and help increase the traffic to your site.
A company called Conduit allow you to build your own toolbar to offer to people. You can brand it with your own news, offers, alerts, podcasts, RSS. Add a popup blocker, multiple search engines, weather, chat, radio player and multilingual versions and you've got a powerful customised solution to adding 'sticky'* content to your site, even when your visitor is elsewhere on the web.
Conduit says their toolbar is completely safe with no spyware, adware or malware and that you can create a toolbar in 15 minutes with their easy wizard.
*sticky = visitors will come back as they like what you offer!
Labels: biz, internet, misc, resources
Free Software Every Day!
Friday, March 09, 2007
It's not often that you find a website that gives away free commercial software which is actually useful and of value. Giveaway of the Day and Game Giveaway of the Day do just that.
So far I've had free mindmapping software worth $119 and a powerpoint-to-flash converting software worth $199.
They guarantee that the software is AdWare and SpyWare free and it's really simple to install - just download the file, unzip it, run 'activate.exe' then run 'setup.exe'. You must do it the same day though else the software won't run.
Positives:
+ Free commercial software
+ They don't take any details, just download it straight away
Negatives:
- Can only download it within a 24 hour period (hence 'download of the day' I guess!)
- It seems that if you reformat your hard disk, you may have lost the use of the software - it can only be installed and activated on the day that you download it.
How to copy your laptop hard disk
Friday, February 16, 2007
Well, it may seem a slightly unusual post, but there's a good reason for it. Just before Christmas, my laptop starting hanging for no reason, and I had to reboot each time. There was no pattern to it, and sometimes the hang corrupted my data.
I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new hard drive, make a copy of my old drive and restore this to the new hard disk. The reason for this is that I had about 20Gb of data, including lots of utility programs and I had XP configured how I wanted it. I didn't want to have to reinstall the operating system and start again. Anyway how hard could it be?
So...much angst, sleeplessness etc. later I live to tell the tale, and thought I'd share the process in case anyone else needed the help! I am assuming a basic level of competence - knowing where programs are located etc., and also that your setup is similar to mine. There may be easier ways to do this process and if so, please contact me so I can simplify this process.
You will need:
- A couple of hours and plenty of patience
- A new 2.5" HDD
- Your old laptop hard disk drive
- Your laptop manual (for how to take out your old hard drive)
- A PC with at least as much free space as the amount of data on your laptop disk
- Your Windows XP disk
- 2.5" USB external caddy
- Bart PE
- Acronis True Image 10 Home - trial
- Download and install Acronis.
- Download and install BartPE.
- In the Acronis directory you will find a folder called 'BartPE' or similar. Rename this to Acronis. Copy it to the BartPE plugins folder.
- Put your XP disk in the CD/DVD drive and run BartPE. In the box for source, put the drive letter of where your XP disk is.
- Click 'plugins' and ensure that 'Acronis' is both present and enabled (highlight and click the enable/disable button).
- Close this, put a blank CD in your CD/DVD writer and in the media output box click 'Burn to CD/DVD'. If you only have one CD/DVD drive, copy the i386 folder to the BartPE directory on your PC and change the 'source' accordingly. Click build.
- Remove the new HDD from it's protective wrapper. If you're not used to handling hardware, be very careful, only touch the edges and make sure you aren't full of static electricity.
- Remove your old HDD from your laptop and put this in the protective wrapper.
- (Make sure you know which drive is which - to make the process easier don't worry, you won't harm anything!).
- Install the new hard drive in the laptop.
- Boot the laptop using your XP CD and make the largest partition possible without installing XP (press 'C').
- Exit and reboot the laptop using the BartPE disk.
- When loaded, choose the A43 file manager and right-click the C-drive. Choose format (NOT quick format).
- Switch the laptop off when done.
- Put the old hard disk into the 2.5" USB caddy.
- Attach it to your PC and ensure that you can see your data on the drive.
- Run Acronis and make a copy of your entire old hard drive. Save it to a location on your PC and ensure you verify the backup. (For my 20Gb this process took less than 30 minutes).
- Once this is done find the 'tib' file Acronis created and copy this to your old hard drive.
- Double-click on the 'safely remove hardware' icon in the system tray and remove your USB caddy. (If you don't do this, you could corrupt your data - this applies to any USB device).
- With your old HDD still in the USB enclosure, plug it into your laptop. It's important to do this whilst the laptop isn't on.
- Switch the laptop on and boot using BartPE.
- Ensure you can view your old hard drive files.
- When booted, go to system > storage > Acronis.
- Choose restore and select the 'tib' file that you copied onto your old hard drive.
- Select both the drive (in my case F:) and MBR and track 0.
- Select the new drive to restore to, and again ensure that you have both the drive (should be C:) and MBR and track 0 selected.
- Restore.
- When done turn off your laptop, disconnect the USB hard drive and boot the laptop normally (take out the BartPE CD).
Any other advice?
When buying a new hard drive, it only has to be as large as the amount of data you have on your old hard drive. My old one was 60Gb and my new one 40Gb - this was fine as I only had about 20Gb of data. Don't go for one that is slower (fewer RPM) than your existing drive. Buy it locally - it's much easier to take it back under warranty than if you've bought it over the Internet.
Try cleaning up your disk before transferring - uninstall unused programs, use a freeware program like CCleaner to remove unused files and do a general cleanup. Defragment your disk if it needs it.
My caddy/enclosure only seems to be recognised just after installation - I go to control panel > system properties > device manager > Universal Serial Bus Controllers and delete the entry for my caddy. Next time I boot my PC, it sees the caddy and installs it so I can see the files. Slightly irritating but not the end of the world.
Good luck!
Fight global warming for free with your PC
Sunday, February 04, 2007
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll notice a new button in the sidebar, and some new banners at the foot of every post which promote Local Cooling. This is an initiative aimed at getting 100 million people to download and use their software in order to help fight against global warming.
The Local Cooling Website states "...it [the software] automatically optimizes your PC's power consumption by using a more effective power save mode."
The software itself is a quick download and when installed sits in your system tray (that's the one in bottom right hand corner of your desktop with the clock and other icons). Right-clicking on the icon brings up a small window telling you in realtime how much energy your computer has saved by using the software. To enable you to understand this more easily, you are given the amount of energy in the equivalent of trees, gallons of oil and in kilowatt hours.
You can then use the software to easily edit your power settings - how many minutes of inactivity before switching down the monitor, spinning down the hard disk(s) and finally, to switch off the PC. Changing the settings is no more difficult than one click, or you can choose a custom profile to better suit your computing habits. You will then see the estimated saving in energy you are making.
As well as doing your bit to save the planet, think of the money that you'll save over a month, year or even decade!
Christmas Holidays
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Just to wish everyone who drops by the blog a happy Christmas and New Year.
Remember to put 'check the LittleFish Web Design blog regularly' on your New Year's resolution list, if you don't already do it!
Labels: misc
Zoomquilt - zoom infinitely into one painting
Monday, November 06, 2006
It's not often that something on the web literally takes my breath away, but take a look at ZoomQuilt.
Available as a flash file or a screensaver, this beautiful fantasy landscape literally never ends. Okay it has a very clever seamless loop eventually, but this just adds to the charm.
By moving your mouse forwards or backwards, you move through the landscape - forward to get closer and backward to move further away to get a different view of that particular image and to move into the next.
Very quirky and cool!
Labels: misc
Where does idiocy stop?
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
I subscribe to very few online newsletters as mostly they tend to be thinly disguised sales letters. However, there is one, written by a successful Internet Marketer that I look forward to for his commonsense on writing and promoting websites.
In his last newsletter, he reprinted part of an e-mail sent to him by a subscriber and blanked out the domain name referred to and the name of the person who sent him the e-mail by replacing these details with a number of X's.
This to me indicated that the real details were masked. However, it seems that some people failed to grasp this concept and he had to issue an apology:
"In one of my articles, I used Xs to hide the real domain name. Well, it seems that in one case, the XXX domain actually pointed to a real site, and as you can imagine, the content wasn't for a family audience. If you did go to those URLs, I'm sorry. It was an honest mistake."
If you are a sensible person, don't take everything literally, are capable of independent thought and don't need your hand holding all the time, perhaps you too could benefit - see http://ezseonews.com/.
Labels: misc
Light sabre battle extraordinaire
Monday, July 31, 2006
For a bit of light relief and choreography worthy of Star Wars itself, if not better (in my opinion) see Ryan vs. Dorkman on Google Video.
"What began as a friendly rivalry between two effects artists explodes off TheForce.Net's FanFilms Forum and into the real world in a lightsaber battle royale.
Originally created for the forum's lightsaber choreography competition, this fight to the death will decide once and for all who is truly most skilled with a saber.
There can be only one."
Labels: misc
Personal news - I got married!
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
My apologies to anyone trying to get hold of me for the past few weeks - I was kinda busy as you can see from the picture!
Despite the fact that I giggled through the ceremony (well it was funny when my two year old nephew decided to lodge an objection in reply to "Does anyone here know of any reason why Emma and Chris should not be joined in marriage?", and the fact that when Chris said "Why I, Christopher" he sounded like a Geordie), we did get through it in one piece!!
Labels: misc
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Just a quick post to wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah and a very happy new year.
Labels: misc
Hello!
Friday, October 21, 2005
Well, this is a brand new venture for LittleFish Web Design, so I should start with a proper introduction. My name is Emma and I'm a web designer in Leeds, West Yorkshire. I set up LittleFish Web Design earlier this year with the aim of providing a fast, friendly and affordable service to small businesses - they are not in a position to spend thousands on an all-singing all-dancing webpage, and in many cases this isnā??t necessary anyway! I don't design with bells and whistles, but write fast-loading accessible pages.
In addition, the LittleFish Web Design shop sells high-quality e-books to people wanting to increase the quality and earning potential of their website(s), whether they are just starting in web design or are a seasoned webmaster!
This blog will be published regularly with loads of tips on how to make the most of your website, whether by improving its design or by increasing its earning potential. Other topics covered will include computer safety, how to keep on the right side of the law in cyberspace and links to some fantastic freebies.
Just use the links on the left to navigate the rest of the LittleFish Web Design site and check back here regularly!
Labels: misc
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