June 21, 2010

Google’s Command Line Tool

Now I do not want to set a precedent here that I only post when Google releases a new tool, but unfortunately this is the most exciting thing since the Google Font API. GoogleCL, Google’s new Command Line tool, comes with access to Blogger, Calendar, Contacts, Docs, Picasa, and Youtube. I dislike Google as much as the next guy, despite using Gmail, gDocs, gCalendar, and having and Android phone, but you have to admit this really covers the gamut of what we use the web for most. The only thing missing is some kind of Facebook and/or Twitter utility via Google.

Google Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/

Google’s Blog post announcing CL

Five Really Handy Google Command Line Tricks

~Nathan Hein

May 19, 2010

Google’s Font API Released Today

Today Google released their Font API giving the web a free choice for high quality open source web-safe fonts. Not only are these fonts easy to use, they are also supported across most browsers including Internet Explorer 6. How easy? You call the Google Font API through a single line of code, and then reference the font-family to your heart’s desire in the style sheet.

How to use Google’s Font API

1. Insert linke to Google’s Font API in the HTML:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Sans" >
2. Then just reference the font family as you normally would in the CSS:
elementName { font-family: 'Droid Sans', serif; }
3. That is it. You are done. I present to you Droid Sans:

Droid Sans in all of its glory

Further Documentation on Google’s Font API

Google’s Font API Directory: http://code.google.com/webfonts This is where you can preview all of the fonts available, a Font Book if you will, and read Google’s documentation regarding the api.

Google’s documentation on the browser specific behavior:
http://code.google.com/apis/webfonts/docs/technical_considerations.html#Browser_Behavior

Video demo from Net Tuts

~Nathan Hein

May 18, 2010

Ad design & performance testing

This week I have been working on designing a few online ads for a client to drive traffic to their blog. It has been awhile since I have assembled a targeted ad like this so it is a lot of fun bringing the concept to life. With the amount of ads we have designed and how pleased the client is, I am pushing to utilize Google Optimization for some A/B testing of the ads. By using A/B testing we can isolate which ad drives more traffic to the client’s blog. Beyond the obvious benefits of driving more traffic, it will also open the door wider with this client to perform more A/B testing on their site so we can really tune the site’s lead generation performance.

~Nathan Hein

February 4, 2010

Day 23 :: Muse 1, Let There Be Traffic!

So after discovering that G Analytics was not setup properly I have since learned that Muse 1’s micro site is performing fairly well. Additionally G Adwords has all of the sudden started delivering a lot more qualified traffic. Though the cost per click has went from about 20 cents to about a dollar. I am still planning to end the testing on schedule and will analyze the market potential from there.

As fore Muse 2, I will be putting the marketing plan together hopefully by end of day. Amy and I are about to board a plane for Colorado for a long weekend of snowboarding. My plan is to put together the marketing plan on the plane. As I mentioned before my full time job has been draining me, so my progress has been slowed on Muse 2. Funny as that is a great reason to get these muses off the ground.

~Nathan Hein
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