All we want for Christmas is…more new tools
We know that the toolkit at a full-service agency is already extensive, but we never underestimate the ability of the tech world to create something that makes our lives easier, faster, more efficient and more fun. The best part of “the Internets” overflowing with so many ideas is finding the ones that work for you and passing along their value to your clients.
We’ve experienced a few great upgrades and new finds in the last few weeks – all of which help us do work better and faster, and provide a better product for our clients.
WordPress 3.3
The gang at WordPress just released WordPress 3.3, or “Sonny,” the latest version of the content management system we recommend to our clients. The 3.3 release is chock-full of new features for developers, of course, but we also appreciate the improvements to the user interface, such as mouse-over menus and drag-and-drop media uploads. These upgrades make the back-end of WordPress even easier for us and our clients to use.
Jing
We’ve all had one or both of these problems before. Maybe you’ve shown someone how to do something on the computer a thousand times, even written it down in painstaking detail, but every time they come back to you with questions. Or maybe you want to show someone a procedure but don’t have time or don’t want to schedule a GoToMeeting. Screen-capture software has been around for a while, but Jing rises above the rest because of its ease of use and the free hosting of your screen-capture videos on Screencast. We’ve had some great success in the past week creating Jing videos to demonstrate specific procedures for our clients – and with the Screencast hosting, we can quickly email the link or permanently place it into a list of FAQs.
Shortstack
Facebook is an essential item in the toolbox, so we’re all for anything that makes it more customizable and easier to use as a promotional tool. The folks over at Shortstack have created an easy way to create sweepstakes, voting forms, custom tabs and more – all with full design control in a drag-and-drop interface. No programming experience needed. We see endless possibilities to help our clients run contests and increase “Likes” by creating exclusive content behind a “Like” wall.
