It will take you to a fabulous service called Freshbooks. They provide a service to help you bill your customers. And, here are the best parts, it’s free (for up to 3 clients) and easy to use!

One thing I hate to do is invoice. Such a boring activity that I dread. To many steps involved and I would usually do it so late in the game that the client is always a little surprised when they get it. No more friends, no more.

With Freshbooks, I’m an invoicing machine. They make it easy to set up new clients, fill out an invoice, send it out and get paid. Support for recurring billing works great as well and I’m told there is on iOS app that helps you track time when you are working on projects that automatically updates your billing.

If you are one that has to bill and are looking for something that is more elegant and efficient than Excel, check this out. You can thank me later.

Related posts:

That is for my new place of employment, Encore Creative. Site is powered by WordPress using a few plugins to manage things like the contact form and testimonials.

This site is unique for me on a few levels. First is that the layout was created using a pre-made grid. I must say that I really enjoy using that as a base for a new layout and plan on using it again in the future. Second, this site I built a few conditional pages as well as building out separate theme pages for each section of the site. It’s one of the largest themes I’ve built in terms of files, but it’s also one of the largest sites that I have ever managed, weighing in at over 70 pages plus a blog!

Revisions will be trimming down the number of files by recycling some code and making a little more compliant with IE7 and 8. It looks good, but not as good as it should. Finally, tweaks to the header and the blog for some good, old fashioned, calls to action.

The other new addition to the portfolio can be found at stellasingleton.com. Full WordPress powered site with a blog as you would expect. First time I have imported a TypePad blog into WordPress and the process was seamless.

With this site, I’m practicing running WordPress with as few plugins as possible. So far, it’s working quite well. Not for nothing, you should click over, visit her blog and follow along. She is working on doing a photo 365 and her pictures are amazing!

Comments are open. Feedback is always appreciated!

Related posts:

I was reminded about this, yet again, with the latest ‘notes’ meme circling through Facebook. I’m also reminded that Facebook Notes aren’t the greatest platform for publishing. I’m also reminded that Facebook notes also aren’t a good platform if you want to share anything you write with friends that aren’t on Facebook or not your Facebook friends.

Enter Tumblr. For those of you that follow me on Facebook, you already know that I use Tumblr quite a bit. In fact, it’s what is powering wind(the)frog(dot)net and has been for the past 3 years and change.

At first, I used Tumblr as an aggregator of everything I did online (see this page as an example). It allowed me to bring in the RSS feeds from a bunch of things and combine them into one. For that, it worked amazing.

Now, I’m using it more as my personal blog and collection of random crap I find on the internet. And for that it works equally amazing. One of the features that makes that easy is the bookmarklet that you drag to your browsers bookmark toolbar. When you find something you want to share, you click that and click post. Done and done.

It also has settings that will automatically send your posts to Facebook or share them on Twitter. When you share on Facebook, your posts show up in a way that is very similiar to Notes. Your friend can still click (or not) to view the entire post. But, when you post that stuff in Tumblr, you can share it with people that aren’t on Facebook or aren’t your Facebook friends.

I talked about it in the last video blog. Jump ahead to 1:45 to get started.

Tumblr is free and easy to use and does so much more than I’m telling you about today. If you are looking for a way to start a blog that you can easily share with anyone you like easily, then set up a Tumblr. Sure you can do this with WordPress or Blogger, but Tumblr makes it easy. tumblr.com.

Related posts:

Full WordPress. Mobile compatibility. Lightbox.

Who’s next?

Related posts:

Site Updates

Donburnside.com has been chugging along nicely for about 5 years in some form or another. Back in 2008 I moved all blogging functions to this site and spent about 6 months dialing in the layout and functionality. Over the years, I have continued to tweak it until I’m happy, then tweak it some more. Which is what I have been doing this morning.

• The Blog. Nothing today, but I have recently created a custom page dedicated to recipes if you haven’t seen it.
• Photos. My entire Flickr stream is avaible right here, in case you were wondering.
• Portfolio has been updated to display my latest web projects first.
• Tech projects have been updated to include some of the more recent projects I have completed that weren’t previously listed.
• Services has been updated with more contact options and a few more services listed.
• The About Page was updated a few months ago if you missed it. If you wonder what WordPress plugins I’m using here, it’s a great place to look.

I hope that all of you Mom’s out there had a great day!

Related posts:

Most Days (2009-01-22) from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

Click thru for the links (one of the songs is really, REALLY good) and follow along, if you dare, at Mostdays.org

Related posts:

It’s stuff that I’ve been doing (or trying to do) for a while now, but Merlin has a way of boiling things down to the simplest parts so that it makes sense.

The short version is right there and it all makes sense if you think about it. If you want more details however, you will need to follow the link.

I would be interested in reading in comments you might have about this. You know what to do.

Related posts:

Specifically this post made back when the good lad actually spent a few months here with me.

Enjoy!

==============

Gatorade Girl is the cute girl working at the Vaquero Mini-Mart (”Home to the same Mexican old cowboy every day since 1984″) that sells me Gatorade when I bike down the mountain. I oughtta learn her name or something…

Josh: Hmm… Instead of doing walk-ins, i might pick up both Riverside county newspapers from the Circle K and do some callin’ today.

Josh: Or maybe i’ll go to the Vaquero Mini-Mart, and buy newspapers from Gatorade Girl

DB: LOL

DB: Yo, that might work better.

Josh: Hehe… How else am I going to establish reparte with her?

DB: “Oh, hey? Tthis is the local paper, right? What do you think about it?”

Josh: Hehe

Josh: “So, do you like farm boys? ‘Cuz i’m a farm boy, and, umm… Wanna go out?”

DB: LOL

DB: You can take her for a ride on your bike…

DB: How romantic.

Josh: LOL

Josh: Shuttup.

DB: Have her ridin’ up on the bars or sumptin’.

DB: LOL

Josh: She’ll ride the bars and I’ll sing her some Gregory Isaacs and we’ll ride off into the sunset…

Josh: And it’ll be all like awww yeeeah…

Josh: Hibbity dibbity and such.

Good times, good times. Josh even worked at the local DQ for a spell.

Oh, and the number in parens above? We will call that a count down to post number 1K here at w(t)f. Maybe happen before I pack up for MTTS. We’ll see.

Related posts:

It started off with a bunch of spammers and this guy. Then a few more readers came along. The long way too, usually following the link to donburnside.com that adorns the bottom of many pages I create. This brought the readership total up to about 7.

Then I started the show. about another 10 of you took the trouble to find this. Thanks!

Then I did the theme change. Including links to all of my sites on all of my sites. Recipe posts at flickr brought in some n00bs too. And the videos at Viddler.

After all of this, you, the wtf reader, are now about 1200 strong! Yes, holy crap indeed.

Now, in comparison, you are only about 1/2 as many as the MINI site. But that site cheats. It gets mentioned in the show. It’s linked up at MF among other places. It gets better search refs too, and has a higher google ranking. For the most part, it’s been fairly organic.

Now, to do the same with w(t)f.

You might see a few minor changes around the site. I’ve added tags (since all the kids are doing it). And, I’m going to be a keyword whore. But only for the next month. But I’m not going to do any overt promotion short of the occassional link on twitter. But only if I think it’s an awesome post. Remember, I hate spam worse than you do.

Right now you are on track to be 1500 strong this month. I want to see if my tweaks and whatnot can increase that by at least 500 for the month of June. While I’m not going to ask for your help, if you do come across a post that you think is worthy of sharing, please feel free to do so. Time to bring w(t)f out of the closet and into prime time.

Here we go!

No related posts.

Today, HD DVD was dealt a couple of big body blows: Netflix announced that it would stop renting movies in the HD DVD format and Best Buy has decided to exclusively recommend Blu-ray players to consumers.

NetFlix and BestBuy?

As much as I still wish HD will dig out of what it’s in, I’m afraid that, at least for entertainment purposes, this battle is just about over. Not much left except the sad singin’ and deep diggin’ for HD-DVD I’m a afraid.

Could thing I skipped this bandwagon. Would have hated to get stuck with the 21st century version of a BetaMax or VideoDisc player.

Related posts: