Wildli Creative Services Blog

Stay tuned for the new Willdi blog...

I've never been a fan of Microsoft PowerPoint - either as a viewer or a designer of PowerPoint presentations. It's possible to get great looking presentations from PowerPoint, but you don't seem to see it too often. Partly because the tools seem to work so hard against you...

I came across Prezi.com which offers a web-based, Adobe Flash-based alternative to PowerPoint. Instead of defining one slide after another as in PowerPoint, Prezi asks that you organize all your info on one big stage and define a path to jump from one section to another which it automatically animates.

I gave it a test drive today.

You don't have to have the camera do all the gymnastics of zooming in and out and rotating all over the place -- but it was definitely built to do that. There are issues, I think, of this being overused and frustrating viewers. There is also the issue of having the source of all your presentations tied to this one small company.

I haven't tested it beyond using the tools to build the above presentation. I haven't tried downloading the file/player, blowing it up and presenting it to a room. Will Prezi kill PowerPoints? No. Certainly not. But my first impression is a positive one. Your mileage may vary...

View it here full size: www.prezi.com

I've wanted to do something for veterans as a small "thank you" for everything they have sacrificed in their service to the freedoms we now enjoy. I figured the best thing I could offer is the one thing I'm good at: providing design, dev, marketing services for businesses. So I want to offer my services free of charge to a handful of veteran-owned businesses.

If you know of a veteran who runs a business please let me and/or them know. I put up a page w/ more info here: http://www.wildli.com/veterans

- Nat

I'm now in the same zip code where I grew up as a little tyke some 25+ years ago. Hopefully I will get some more pics up here...

1810 W Kennedy
Tampa, FL 33606

- Nat

The following was first written on WIldli's Facebook Page via the Facebook Notes app:

The short and simple answer is: "probably the one you are already using." And if you are not already using a blog service?

I'm not talking about a full-featured, standalone blog for serious bloggers. Installing the WordPress application on your server is hands down the king for that type of use. I'm talking about simple blog services for small businesses who simply need to post news, information and thoughts without a lot of fuss or installation of applications.

Tumblr and Posterous

Google's Blogger.com doesn't make the list. I like Tumblr, though more recently I prefer Posterous which lets you post blog posts by simply emailing your text, images, audio and video to a Posterous email address. No new administration environment to log into. And their newsfeed allows for segmenting by tag which means I have some flexibility when displaying latest posts on my Wildli Lifestream Website. Tweaking the Posterous blog's design is pretty straight forward.

Recently, Posterous has been the victim of a denial of service attack that has knocked out everyone's blogs this past week. They moved to Rackspace cloud servers and hoped that such outages were behind them. Though just now their blogs are down again -- and hence the Wildli blog. I feel their pain. Our Big Contact and Feed Player services have experienced growing pains as well in the past.

Some might say "this is another reason you should install your own blog on your own server." Which is true. Exept imagine that you are the one who has to deal with similar server outages or issues with YOUR blog application on YOUR server rather than Posterous staff? Points for the services.

Facebook Notes

I'm writing this on the Facebook "Notes" application of the Wildli Creative Services Facebook Page right now, a service with such minimal functionality that Facebook knew that calling it a "blog" application would not really be accurate. But it really is Facebook's blog application and one of the only Facebook apps that offer a simple, public newsfeed.

It also gives you the option of importing the blog you created somewhere else into it. But we are looking at originating the content within this app rather than importing content from somewhere else.

Facebook Notes "Pro"s

In the "Pro" column, Facebook Notes may be good for the 500 million folks who already have Facebook accounts and don't want to bother with setting up service with another service. And it's integration into Facebook means it can be simpler for your friends and fans to share posts within Facebook. I even appreciate some of it's super pared-down simplicity.

Facebook Notes "Con"s

In the "Con" column, many folks might not like the slim functionality and don't want to deal with adding html in their posts just to add a link or some of the other items from the Notes cheat sheet. I've also experienced bugs with managing photos and editing past posts.

A Non-typical Facebook Notes Case Study

A non-typical case study: ex-VP candidate, ex-Alaskan governor and now semi-private citizen Sarah Palin uses Facebook's Notes as her primary blog which some scoff is not a "serious" venue. But it seems to be working for her. Her posts reach her 2million + Facebook fans, generate 5,000 to 12,000+ "likes" each (meaning mention of the posts are spread to the dozens or hundreds of friends of these 5,000 to 12,000 people) and thousands of comments each. And the professional political pundits on the right and left can still access it, parse it and link to it like any other blog.

Of course, you can always have a Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress or some other blog and import it into Notes via those services' newsfeed and have the same affect as creating the posts from within Facebook Notes.

Posterous Back Online

As I write this I see on Posterous' Twitter account that the cause of this outage is that they are still the target of a denial of service attack but have gotten things back online. I wish them luck. Like the first paragraph of this post, Wildli Creative Services will most likely stick with what we use now: which is Posterous, unless outages become frequent. Facebook Notes is on my radar though and I will recommend it as an option for those who are comfortable in the Facebook environment and don't mind a bare bones application.

Wildli Creative Services is live! Have a look at www.wildli.com and let us know what you think. We also have a few new things on our Facebook page. Start a conversation with us via the site, the comments on this blog post, Twitter (@wildli) or on Facebook. We'd love to hear from you.

Welcome to Wildli creative services!

What is it? Wildli creative services are geared to be great-looking and innovative applications and custom services that are designed to get your small business more customers.

What's different? Wildli is for fellow small businesses who want wildli great design, technology and marketing services that well outperform the low-end and/or conveyor-belt options out there (for websites: WebSite Tonight, Homestead, your sister-in-law's friend's nephew) but with simple, reasonable, pre-set prices and packages that many boutique shops are not set up to provide.

Bye bye request-for-proposals, waiting on the proposal, negotiations, proposal revisions... and hello simple pre-set prices for exceptional services.

We'll open shop soon with our first product: Wildli Websites. These are custom websites powered by your social media like Twitter, your blog, Youtube, Flickr and Google Calendar.

As a small business owner I'd guess you are like me and you'd like to keep info fresh on your website but you have no time to manage another system. Solution: power your site with the content you -- and optionally your customers -- are already creating marketing your business on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and elsewhere. Don't use those services yet? Set them up in seconds and kill two birds with one stone.

Combine that with top-shelf design and messaging that accurately communicates who your business is and why potential customers should care and now you're talking.

Tech-wise, Wildli Websites want the best of both worlds. Like a basic, static html website it's lightweight with no database to set up and manage and no new content manager to deal with. But it's powerful and dynamic and engages visitors with fresh messaging you (and optionally others) are already creating elsewhere.

An unsolicited quote from an advance Wildli Websites client:

We are pulling more traffic than ever from our sites. People can get there easier, it's very clear and professional.

Who is it for? Wildli Websites are great for small and medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, start ups, special events, supplemental microsites and for the front-facing "explanation" component of web services -- though it's flexible enough for all kinds of uses. I'm interested in seeing how it will be used.

A little history. After making the first (and some have said -- 'blush' -- best) feed-based media players on the web (www.FeedPlayer.com) used by thousands of individual podcasters, musicians and companies like Sony Music, NYC's Hot97, Fox Sports Radio and Deloitte & Touche reaching millions of individuals a month I thought it a good time to get back to my roots and launch something geared to the workhorse of the web...

"Brochureware" is used as an unflattering term in technorati circles to mean, snottily, a less-than-glamourous, marginally effective, rudimentary website. My goal with this first Wildli Websites offering is to create workhorse "brochureware" that is exciting and effective for its owners. Willdi so.

For geeks who care: building blocks used in Wildli Websites adhere to being: great performers, widely used, have large active developer communities, have great documentation and are open source. So: the fastest performer of the major MVC frameworks: php-based Codeigniter as well as other open source best-of-breeds like SimplePie, jQuery and standards-compliant grid-based design.

I'd love to hear your thoughts: comment below, talk with me on Twitter @Wildli or on Facebook. To know when we launch add your address here: www.wildli.com.

Thanks much,
Nat Guy

I'm updating the Wildli Posterous blog design. Getting it to jive with the website, Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Hello. This is the first post.