Tuesday 19 May 2015

Eagle Nebula, Messier 16, Saying Thank You Greeting Card

A gorgeous best-selling design. Click to customize or personalize. How would it look with your name or monogram on it - why not have a look-see right now?


tagged with: saying thanks, expressing appreciation, thankyous, star forming nebulae, pillars of creation, galaxy, hrbstslr eglneb, inspirational, cosmological astronomy, young star clusters, messier 16 ngc 6611, heavens, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A breathtaking greetings card showing a spectacular three-colour composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611). It's based on images obtained with the Wide-Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

At the centre, the so-called “Pillars of Creation” can be seen and this wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in, or behind the Eagle Nebula.

The cluster of bright stars to the upper right is NGC 6611, home to the massive and hot stars that illuminate the pillars. The “Spire” - another large pillar - is in the middle left of the image.

more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

Image code: eglneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this

Cute ponies for the bedroom and school

Grey Cartoon Shetland Pony Canvas PrintHorse cartoon iPad mini sleevesPony Monogram Letter B Courier Bags

Cute ponies for the bedroom and school

If you know a boy or girl who loves ponies then here's a collection that should give you some gift ideas.
Any boy or girl will love them - some for bedroom and some for school. Which of these would be best?

Click the image for more details and to buy. You'll also see more designs from the artist there.

7 Ways To Build Your Brand In The Blogosphere

Blogging with purpose

original post »

This is a guest contribution from Jeff Foster.

Blogger outreach is one of the most effective ways to build your brand. It’s a great way to connect with potential customers – the blogosphere gives you a ready-made audience who are already interested in your type of product or service. But if you’re going to succeed, you need to build strong relationships with bloggers who want to be your brand ambassadors. This takes work – don’t expect to shoot off a few emails and have bloggers lining up at your door.

The good news is that there are proven ways to make your blogger outreach a success. If you’re wondering how to turbocharge your brand in the blogosphere, here are seven ways to get you started.

1. Use Introduction Sites

Online blogger introduction sites are a very effective way of finding bloggers to talk about your brand. Sites such as Tomoson, Brand Meets Blog, Nuffnang, and Blogger Connect attract high-quality bloggers who want to connect with businesses like yours. You can browse through bloggers by interest area – for example, food enthusiasts – to find the right bloggers for your brand. These sites also have tools you can use to measure blogger influence, which helps you narrow down the list even further. The other advantage of introduction sites is that the bloggers on them are already actively interested, so you’re going to get a better response than if you just send out cold-calling emails to bloggers directly.

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Image source

2. Give Bloggers Your Product

Product giveaways are a great tool for getting bloggers on board – in fact, this is one of the most frequent outreach techniques. Bloggers love to get their hands on products they can use and review. They’ll write better reviews if they can see and feel what you have to offer. Of course, blindly giving away hundreds of samples isn’t advisable, particularly if your product isn’t cheap. But if you target key bloggers with your giveaways, you’ll keep the cost down and get better results. A word of caution, however. Don’t try to control what a blogger says about your product. Bloggers value their independence, so this will just annoy them.

3. Ask For Feedback

There’s no better way to get bloggers on your side than to make them part of the process. By asking for feedback on your products or services, you show them that you value their opinions. A blogger is much more likely to become a brand ambassador if they feel that you are listening to them, and that they have influence over what you are doing and saying. You’ll benefit from this as well – bloggers know your target customers and what they want. Not only that, they’ve already proven that they know how to talk to your audience – that’s how they built a following in the first place. By following their lead, you’ll get insights on how to build an authentic relationship with your market.

4. Give Bloggers Exposure

Successful bloggers are always looking for new ways to expand their audience. They’re passionate about their subject and want to engage with as many people as possible – which would also increase their income potential. By promoting bloggers to your existing social media channels, you give them the exposure they’re trying to build. This can be as simple as retweeting their tweets and sharing their blog posts. To take this to the next level, ask trusted bloggers to write guest posts for your corporate blog, but remember not to try to control what they say. Also, be prepared to pay bloggers to write for you – after all, writing is how bloggers make a living.

5. Meet In Person

You can build a great online relationship with a blogger, but there’s no substitute for seeing them face to face. If you travel regularly as part of your business, make a point of letting bloggers know that you’re in their neighborhood and would love to catch up if it suits them. Offer to meet them for a drink or a meal – and make it a social occasion, not a hard sell.

Blogger conventions and conferences are also excellent occasions for meeting with bloggers. They are an opportunity to get together with your existing brand champions, and also with new bloggers who might be interested in talking about your products or services. You may even find conferences that focus on topics that you want to target – for example, the DBC Conference is for bloggers interested in interior design. If you have enough budget, why not sponsor a blogger conference or even host one yourself?

6. Create A Blogger Network

If you bring new products to market regularly, it’s tempting to find exactly the right bloggers for each one. But this means starting over again every time, which is time-consuming and expensive. It’s much more effective to build a “go-to” pool of bloggers who are genuinely enthusiastic about your brand. By getting them to mention your brand on a regular basis, their readers are more likely to trust what they say. You’re likely to get much better reviews as well – when you build a long-term relationship with a blogger, they’re already well disposed towards you.

7. Show Your Appreciation

Bloggers absolutely hate being used. If you only get in contact when you want them to write a post, you’re going to turn them off very quickly. Every time a blogger mentions your brand, show your appreciation by sending them a sincere thank you note. Make sure you keep them in the loop on what’s happening with your brand – a monthly insider newsletter is one great way of doing this. Send them exclusive content they can share – for example, high-quality images, fact sheets, amusing stories and anything else that will appeal to their readers. Finally, don’t forget to send them product samples from time to time – it’s a perfect way of reminding them that you genuinely care.

Jeff Foster is co-founder and CEO at Tomoson, the influencer marketplace. The platform allows bloggers and social media influencers to get paid for posting sponsored content, and lets businesses connect with targeted, niche audiences.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

7 Ways To Build Your Brand In The Blogosphere

Build a Better Blog in 31 Days

7 Ways To Build Your Brand In The Blogosphere
 #bloggingtips 

Analogue Experiments with Gravity Filmed by Clemens Wirth

Fun and Random

Austrian director and visual artist Clemens Wirth created this gorgeous visual feast of gravitational experiments called Gravity. With the exception of a segment depicting digital black fabric, all the visuals were made with practical effects inside a special rig that can be rotated 360° with or without the camera. Wirth says he found inspiration both from the film Inception, and a similar project from a few years ago by Feedme Design. (via swissmiss, Vimeo Staff Picks)

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#funandrandom 
 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/colossal/~3/DB_O07Qss_Y/

128 ways to frustrate a designer

With my (tool) designer hat on...

I wanted ZazzleMySite's multi-page generation to be easy to use in practice.
The key to this was the ability to redo the page just generated.

Why?

When freshening a section of my website, some pages that didn't have a full product grid (eg wine bags) were getting fuller because peeps have been designing them since I last did the page.
(If you're at all curious, it was the bachelorette pages for Karmani Designer Lifestyle - actually, that's a great example of what ZMS can achieve, in case you were wondering.)

I found some winebags in the product grid that I'd freshly generated that weren't right for the page. I changed some of the exclusions / must-haves but the way ZMS works (worked!) meant I had to begin generating again from the beginning. So frustrating!
It would have been so convenient when on page 7 of 12, to be able to try page 7 again without having to go through generating pages 1..6 every time!

So, with my amateur-coding hat on...

Relatively straightforward I thought.
Not!
Not at all!! >:(

Catering for all the different combinations of circumstances to show the right buttons at the right time was a blooming nightmare!
7 different factors meant 128 different possibilites, of which only so many could arise in practice.

So I tossed the problem of which buttons to show under which circumstances back to the designer (yeah, me but with a different hat on!)

Wearing my designer hat again...


I had to put a spreadsheet together, listing all the different combinations - all 128 of them - and then list next to each one whether that combination could arise in practice and, if so, which buttons should be visible.
One of the most intensely brain-achey things I've done for many years! And so frustrating getting my head round it.

Anyway I did it and then threw it back to the near-useless, amateur-coding chap.

So, with my amateur-coding hat back on again...

(and very fetching I look in it, too!)
I fought battles. I won some and lost many. I got confused and puzzled at times. I ran round in circles for a while every so often (almost caught my own tail a few times!). Progress was made. And then came...

Being able to abandon the generation of a page mid-way through kept dumping my brain into the middle of a logic maze at moon-dark midnight - with the denizens (bugs, bugettes, gotchas and some that don't have a name) all biting and kicking and struggling as I tried to put them to bed - aaaargh!

Many cups of tea helped bring salvation. When it got too much, I carried on redecorating the hallway (...don't get me started!)

Well, it's done now and it's with the beta testers to see if I won the war!

Was it worth it?

Yes. If you're doing more than 2 pages at a time - which I do a lot - it's brilliant!

Enjoy :)
~~Mark

PS If you ever see me heading towards the coding saltmines again, do me a favour and talk some sense into me!

PPS Once the beta-testers give the go-ahead, ZMS V4 with all its enhancements will finally be released. Those of you who've been waiting for the must-haves filter need only wait a few more days!

Odyssey: Otherworldly Macro Footage of Ink, Oil and Soap Shot by Ruslan Khasanov

Fun and Random

Several years ago, Russian graphic designer Ruslan Khasanov was cooking with oil and soy sauce when he stopped to appreciate the strange relationship between the two fluids as the pooled and mixed in unexpected ways. The observation lead to his creation of Pacific Light, a sort of experimental music video meets science project that captures the up-close interactions of ink, oil, and soap. Khasanov just released a follow-up video—now with glitter!—called Odyssey. Music by Ilya Beshevli.

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ruslan-5

 
#funandrandom 
 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/colossal/~3/PGmYjN75VK0/