As part of the Tuesday Push initiated by Damien, I am delighted to introduce Pix.ie. It is a fantastic service where you can upload, share and save your photos. It is such a great way to have all your photos in one place. By inviting family and friends, all occasions are safely stored and tagged forever. If like me you never remember to fix the date setting after you recharge the batteries on your camera this function is a godsend. The overall design of the site is friendly and welcoming and really inviting. At this rate everyone I know will have signed up the end of the week! Lovely site, great usability, well done Pix.ie. Flickr had better watch out this stylish brat is fast on its heels!

Posted by Mary Carty

On a personal level that is fine. But professionally it will not do. It effects how long you think a job will take. Which has a knock on effect to delivery times and client relations. Cash flow gets hurt as well as what you are invoicing for at the end of the month. Your first instinct is that you must work harder to deliver on time and bring in more money. What you should be doing is working smarter.

This year Spoiltchild has been on a mission to focus and become better and more efficient at what we do. For the last six months we have been looking closely at our time and ways to track it better. We have tried paper, excel sheets, web apps and big sticks all to varying levels of success. What we have recently settled on is 1Time Tracking, a web based time tracking system.

I was pretty amazed at what I found when I began tracking my own time. As a manager of the team I got to see a realistic report of how much actual design time I have each week. A figure which was much less then I expected. Which would explain all the late evenings I was having to put in to complete the workload I was taking on.
But perhaps even more scary was what the team as a whole began to see. We were loosing out on a large hunk of money each month for work we were just not charging for. You got to see just how much little jobs and tweaks and were adding up to.

How it works is simple. You add in your clients and projects (or simply import all these from Basecamp as we did). Keep a browser window open through out the day with 1time open and record all your activity throughout the day. The big stick comes into play at the end of each day as 1time automatically send out an email reminder to each of the team if they forgot to record their time.

It sounds simple and it is however not every application out there manages to do it right. And trust me we tried a lot. 1time succeed in not getting in your way and providing you the information and options when you need them. It’s not perfect by any means. Having tried a few of the competing applications in this space there are some features I would very much love in 1time. First of those would be a desktop widget/timer. But overall 1time offers a fuller set of functionality then any I have tried and it better suited us as a design and development company. And Derek Organ, the main man behind 1time was nice enough to listen to my feature requests and let me know they are coming soon.

So thanks to 1time we are now:
Charging properly for the work we are doing.
Estimating our time better.
Getting a better overview of what we are all working on.
Have happier clients.
And a happier team as we can all manage to get home on time.

We stated off on the free plan to try it out. When we liked what we found we upgraded to a paid plan to give the entire team access.

You can read it here.

Putplace

Joe Drumgoole the guy behind Putplace does the Technology hour on Newstalk radio every Monday evening with George Hook. And if you have ever listened, you quickly realise the guy talks a lot of practical straight forward sense and gives realistic advice a person can actually understand. A rare skill in the software industry.
Joe has applied that practicality and straight forward thinking to the common problem, backing up your data, and has gone much further by realising how that data fits into your day to day life.

Backup is one of those things you always put on the long finger and don’t fancy paying a few euro for each month. But as I found out recently when my computer died I was willing to pay just about anything to get a few files back. They have a nice case studies section which show how a few folk use it in their day to day. Which explains things better then ever I could.

They are currently an open Beta and are looking for people to test the service. This means you can try out the service for free and you have no limits on how much data you can back up. Sounds like a good deal to me. And if you like it let others know :)

Our new contact details are as follows.

Phone: 041 9830152
Skype: spoiltchilddesign

Address:
Units 1 & 2, Broughton house
Dublin Road, Drogheda
Co. Louth, Ireland

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And as a long shot we are looking do some tests on the Zimbra email client. Before we install it we are doing a quick shout to see if anyone already it up and running and can donate an account.

Thanks

A great example is Jim Brady of Brady wines. He put a small ad in the local paper and front window offering a free wine course by email. He sent out a short email every couple of weeks to each subscriber telling them about wine. He simply used the information cards provided by the wine dealers about what each type of wine and how to identify them. The cards were normally on display in the shop and Jim added a little of his own opinion also. So when the subscribers wanted a good bottle of wine to bring to a friend’s house they knew to go to Jim. Subscribers were armed with the right knowledge to talk about wine over dinner which in turn helped to attract new customers.

An example of what not to do was demonstrated by the The Goldenspider awards who were fined €500 last month for spamming Maryrose of Brightspark.

So what works for you?

Have a very Merry Christmas and happy new year.
The team are taking a well deserved break and the office will re open again on January 3rd. See you then.

Anyone who has tried designing an email newsletter knows what a nightmare it is. Standard support in email clients is almost non existent. Think back to when you had to design two different web pages for Netscape and Internet Explorer and then realise that instead of two browsers you have to contend with numerous web and desktop email clients. Each one has different requirements. It is one of the reasons why we built Toddle. Small businesses should not have to worry about this technical issue and be able to get on with talking to their customers instead.
Thankfully the guys over at Freshview, who make the excellent Campaign Monitor and Mailbuild, have started a fantastic campaign to make the job of designers and marketers easier. The Email Standards Project. Read more about it here.

To use the the Christmas designs simply log in to Toddle, click on Change design at the top of the screen and select the Christmas Wrapping Newsletter.
If you are looking for great Christmas imagery IstockPhoto have a great range you can buy from as little as $1. In fact i think your first image is free.
Choose your image and upload to Toddle.

I guess its time to talk to an expert. Any suggestions?

I would normally post this in spoilt.ie but have had to scale back on my extra curricular activities for the last few months to focus more on the business. It should be back in the new year however.

Below the line
Ambient Media
Direct Mail
Sales Promotion
SMS/Mobile Campaign
Miscellaneous

Interactive Advertising
Banners
Viral Commercial
Viral Commercial Campaign

Interactive Design
Website
Interactive Kiosk & Installation
Electronic Publication Design (DVD, PDF etc)
Miscellaneous

Experimental New & Mixed Media

I found the whole process very interesting to see from the inside. I had heard rumblings in previous years about awards for the boys and how it was more who you knew then the standard of your entry however the reality was very different. The agency who submitted an entry was not revealed, and one judge on each team was brought in from an international agency to ensure impartiality and oversee the process. Of course Ireland being a small country its impossible not to have some connection somewhere but where that happened the particular Judge was asked to leave the room for the duration of that piece being marked.

The winners will be announced at the end of November at the awards event in Dublin and an exhibition will follow.

Oh I must mention ITSA4 restaurant in Sandymount. We were kindly treated to dinner there on Saturday night and I have to say it was some of the most delicious food I have ever tasted. Recommended.