This weekI creted a series of products on zazzle Using my painting, Oakridge Reservoir #3

Watercolor painting on Fabriano Uno 300 lb Soft Press 100% cotton paper, 7 1/2″x 11″, 2001. Sunrise over Oakridge Reservoir, on a tranquil Oregon morning. Smooth as glass, the water mirrors calm reflections of driftwood and a fishing boat. Peace and solitude as the day breaks over the cool blue mountains. This is one of a series of 4 watercolor paintings I did of Oakridge Reservoir quite a number of years ago. We went camping in Oakridge during august one year for vacation, and while we were there I took some lovely reference photos of the reservoir early in the morning. It’s a really lovely place, not far from Springfield and Eugene, Oregon–it’s very family friendly with lots of outdoor recreational activities. Painted on a very smooth sample of Fabriano Uno 300 lb Soft Press 100% cotton paper, this early morning scene inspires reflection and peacefulness as well as a sense of the majesty and grandeur of nature and God’s creations. The waters of the reservoir are smooth as glass as they reflect the logs and driftwood within the reflections of the shadowy mountains. An evergreen branch seems to point past the small fishing boat moored alone at the dock towards the pale yellow dawn light filling the sky and creeping across the mountains while three pale gray clouds hover in the distance.

Oakridge Reservoir #3 by dlmtleArt
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Oakridge Reservoir #3 by dlmtleArt
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Oakridge Reservoir #3 by dlmtleArt
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Oakridge Reservoir #3 by dlmtleArt
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Oakridge Reservoir #3 by dlmtleArt
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Images and content on this blog are the intellectual property of Dawna Morton.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Do not copy.

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Shells on the sand mousepad by rharvey1
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Shells on the Beach Poster by rharvey1
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More specifically, I like its default theme. Of course, I like the system as well, but 9.10 is the first Xubuntu of which I actually like the default theme.

Of course, I still had some improvements. I have listed some of them below.

I’m Font of DejaVu Condensed
Browsing the feature requests for Karmic that didn’t make it, I read a request for making DejaVu Sans Condensed the default system font, replacing DejaVu Sans. It was rejected because of the wide implications and because the Condensed variant doesn’t have as much Unicode characters available as the normal variant has. I tried it anyway, and it looked great.

Reshuffeling panel items
This one does not need any explanation. The thing I like most is the System Load Monitor. I can now instantly see why it is a bad idea to have Firefox with 10+ tabs open and OpenOffice playing with large documents at the same time for my near-fossilized laptop.

Terminally Cool
Changing the background of Terminal to the title bar color (#1E1E1E) was inspired by the fact that the default Albatross theme makes the menu bar the same color as the title bar. It was unconventional, but it looks really good once you get used to it. I went even further and made a small Markdown editor (mainly for translating Progit.) I will make the editor, called MEdit, available for download in a while. I just need to make it work on other machines, and make it read a config file in ~/.config/medit/meditrc and more things like that.

Screenshot

Edit
So I found out how to change the background color of Mousepad, short of hardcoding and recompiling it manually (which I failed, by the way — there is a reason I did MEdit in Python). A simple Google search taught me about GTK+ styling, and the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file. The Lauchpad project page for Mousepad also pointed to it’s predecessor, Leafpad. If you scroll all the way down on that last link, you’ll notice a FAQ. With one question. Exactly the right question: “How do I change background color?”. The answer contains a link. With an example. I could almost copy-paste it, and have the insanely awesome style I used for MEdit in Mousepad as well. A screenshot to prove it:

Of course, it has no Markdown-styling, and isn’t nifty enough for anything programming-related, but I’m glad Mousepad looks this nice now.

Now I just have to make XChat obey…

Norwegian Forest Cat, King of Cats Mousepad by catherinesherman

The Norwegian Forest Cat traveled with the Vikings to North America in the 11th century, where it evolved into the Maine Coon Cat. It’s a large cat with a thick, water-resistant coat, tufted ears and toes, a fluffy raccoon-like tail and a mane. Doesn’t this cat look like Erik the Red!

Zazzle.com is having a fabulous Black Friday sale today! The code is ZAZZLEFRIDAY, and gives you free shipping over $35 as well. I posted about this yesterday, but just wanted to let you know that I’ve added a whole new line of items to my Zazzle store, and it is dinosaur themed.

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İşte annemin mousepad açılımı.

Norwegian Forest Cat greeting card by catherinesherman  He’s the feline version of Erik the Red!  The Norwegian Forest Cat is the official cat of Norway, where it has lived for thousands of years.  The Norwegian Forest Cat traveled to North America with the Vikings in the 11th century, where their descendants developed into the Main Coon Cat.  Both cats are large-sized and well suited to the cold with heavywater-proof  fur, bushy tails and tufted ears and toes.  The Maine Coon Cat is the state cat of Maine.

Norwegian Forest Cat postcard by catherinesherman

Norwegian Forest Cat Mouse Pad by catherinesherman

Norwegian Forest Cat Mug by catherinesherman

Clever idea.  Saves you from hunting for a pen or piece of paper.  Click here.

Last week I created a series of new product on zazzle using another photo from one of my hikes in the snow last winter. In this photo the pale blue winter sky is visible through the forest canopy, as the sun’s rays stream through the evergreens. Glistening drops of melting snow fall through the air toward the ferny forest floor covered in a light dusting of snow.

Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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Winter Sunrays #16 by dlmtleArt
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There is a lot of buzz around Twitter these days, but if you aren’t looking to find out what your friend had for coffee this morning or what’s happening in the latest celebrity gossip, does Twitter have relevance for business? The answer is yes. But it takes a little digging to understand when and how to use this exploding social phenomenon as a tool to build your business.

Marketing has traditionally relied on push methods. Content was sent via direct mail, television advertisements, e-mail, and more. Regardless of the channel, the strategy was to push information in front of consumers, whether they were looking for the information or not.

MousePaper Calendar Mouse Pad - email johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com

Today, thanks to the Internet, marketing has become far more reliant on pull methods. Whether it’s news, politics, business or entertainment, people can pull the content they want, when they want it, so they are receiving only information of relevance to them when they are looking for it. For marketers, the goal is to get people to pull information on their products and services or, if the person is searching by topic, to make sure that their company’s products and services get in front of the user’s eyes. (Hence the importance of search engine optimization—SEO.)

One of the places Internet users are pulling information from is social networking sites. While many in the business community are still getting their minds around whether or not it is relevant to their business, social networking itself is exploding—and its influence over branding and word-of-mouth is growing.

In part, this growth in influence is being driven by skepticism about traditional media. Instead of relying on television, radio and publications, people are turning to word-of-mouth sources such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and Facebook. Consumers may not see these sources as more objective, but they may see them as more “pure” in that they are the “real deal” and less influenced by corporate speak. They also provide information that is more diverse.

Make Your Own Easy Button - Press for Sound johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order

Twitter Basics

How are consumers getting information from these sources? They are looking at comments, blogs, trackbacks, feedback and other forms of user interaction. If you’ve read the reviews of a book on Amazon before buying, looked at the seller ratings on eBay, or clicked through a link on a blog post, you know just how powerful these peer influences can be. One of the most powerful these days is Twitter.

So what is Twitter? At its inception, Twitter started out as a content management system. Over time, it morphed into a mass messaging system of the most global and colossal kind. The premise of Twitter is simply to ask millions of people, “What are you doing?” then allow them to answer in 140 characters or less. The result is a free social messaging utility that allows millions of people to stay connected simultaneously. The power for marketing is nearly unlimited—if you can harness it.

Once you open a Twitter account, you can “follow” people that you choose. Once you log into your Twitter account, updates from everyone you are following are displayed to you in a list (like a giant RSS feed) in real time. You can then scan all of the “tweets,” as they are called, to stay updated with what people are posting and what they feel is important at that time. People can choose to follow you, as well. When they do, your tweets are displayed in their Twitter account, along with all of the tweets of everyone else that person is following.

Tweets can be about anything, but from a marketing perspective, you want to keep it about relevant business issues. You might tweet about the status update on a project, an announcement about a new blog post, or a link to a resource you think your followers might be interested in.

RECTANGLE MAGNETS keep your message in front of your clients. johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order

For example, interlinkONE offers multichannel marketing software. As president of interlinkONE, I tweet about marketing information that I think clients, prospects, and others in the industry might find valuable.

You can also do what is called “re-tweeting,” which is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an e-mail message. “RT” stands for “re-tweet,” and the name after the @ reflects the original source of the information. This is hyperlinked so that people can click through to the original source if they find the information of value.

People can also send you personal messages. Unlike e-mail messages, these messages are posted publicly, like posting a comment on a blog. By posting a comment, this not only gives you an avenue for communicating with the person who has the account, but indirectly with others following them, too. Like posting a comment on a blog, which gives you visibility to everyone who reads that post, commenting on a tweet puts your comment in front of every person following them.

Using Twitter for Marketing

How can you use these capabilities to market yourself? Whether you are tweeting, re-tweeting or commenting on someone else’s tweet, you are creating visibility and marketing yourself and your company. From a marketing standpoint, the goal is to begin to attract followers so that you can post information and position yourself as a thought leader to your followers and, by extension, your followers’ larger social network circles. This leads to greater industry recognition, brand building and hopefully, sales.

Although some Twitter members use the platform to sell, sell, sell, I prefer to stay away from this approach. Positioning yourself in terms of thought leadership can be more powerful—and longer term. This means posting things that are of value to the people that follow you. Your posts may be related to trends in the marketplace, links to valuable e-books or white papers, providing marketing ideas, and so forth. It will also help you discover other sites and communities where you can share your knowledge.

Of course, you can post what’s going on in your company, as well. This might include news updates, events and new product announcements. You can also post fun things. Did someone have a baby? Is your company a-buzz with the NCAA tournament pool? It allows you to show the human side of your business. You don’t want to overdo it, but keep in mind that people do business with people, not with companies, so personalizing your business can have long-term benefits for customer loyalty.

I didn't know these were so cheap - find out how low: johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com

Let’s look at some specific steps to using Twitter for marketing.

• Lead Prospecting

Find people who are in your target audience and follow them. One way to do this is to search on specific names in the “Search People” box at the top of the page. Another way is to use the search box at the bottom of the page and search on terms that are relevant to your business. The search results will return the names of Twitter members that include these terms in their profiles.

Once you have leads, “follow” them. This allows you to read these members’ profiles, read their posts and do intelligence gathering before you make contact. Even if you do not contact this person directly, they will get a notification from Twitter that you are following them. This allows them to visit your profile to find out about you.

You can also do searches based on geography. For example, you might find all of the people that mentioned the word “print” in their profile and who live in a 15-mile radius of your ZIP code.

• Join Conversations

Just like networking at a business event, you are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved. On Twitter, this includes re-tweeting posts or making replies to other people’s posts.

Replying to another person’s post serves much the same function as posting a reply to a blog post, except that your reply becomes visible to all of the people following that member. Not only does this put your post directly in front of this extended network (giving them an opportunity to re-tweet your post), but your Twitter ID is hot-linked to your reply so they can click through and find out more information about you. To reply, just add the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name. For example, @JohnFoleyJr, or @PrintingNews. You are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved.

Bayonetta by Sega for the PS3

• Competitive Intelligence

We’ve already talked about using the search functions in Twitter to locate prospects, but you can use them to do competitive reconnaissance, too. Put your competitors’ names (or even your own company’s name) into the search box and seeing what comes up. It’s like having your ear to the wall to see what people are saying.

• Build your network

Twitter is nearly useless unless people are following you, so the first thing you need to do is build your network. Use the advance search tools to find Twitter members who are relevant to you, who you would want to have following you and who might have interest in your product or service.

Twitter also allows you to access the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketing or other senior executives, I’ll follow them to find out more about them, and hope that they check out my profile and follow me.

Nintendo Wii (for Japanese games only)

• Engage with the network you have built

In order to get traction on Twitter, you have to use Twitter. You have to get out there, get the conversations going, post information and make yourself visible. You want to be focused in your target audience and post relevant information. If that person isn’t you, it might be someone else at your company to whom you designate the job.

When possible, let others tell your story. Word-of-mouth marketing has exploded. If you have a great company, product or service, people will spread that message for you. That starts by tweeting relevant information. If you become a good conduit for content, people will return the favor (hopefully) by re-tweeting the information. That’s one reason I find content that is relevant to my followers, even if I didn’t write it.

• Be consistent

There are companies that put in hours a day building their brands on social networking sites like Twitter. Some even hire full-time people for this function. Not everyone can do this, but the more time you spend, the more benefit you get. We put in one-half hour a day on Twitter—it is a consistent brand building effort. If you really want to have a strong social networking presence, you have to work it. Be consistent.

Nightmare Before Christmas Monopoly Game Collectors Edition

• Track and analyze

Yes, the activity generated by Twitter can be tracked. One way we do this is integrating the conversation into a CRM tool. We follow clients and prospects, and put their Twitter activity directly into our records. In other words, we track their Twitter activity the same way we track anything else, like phone contacts or files we’ve sent. In our system, we capture the current five tweets. Good salesmanship relies on knowing about your prospects. That’s a content management issue, and Twitter can be great content! We also track the hits to our Web site that come through Twitter. When we post an article or retweet, we pass that through a Tiny URL that is tracked in our system. We tie together landing pages that people don’t know they’ve been passed through. It’s a highly effective tracking mechanism. We use the same method for links from other social networks, such as LinkedIn.

Not only can we tell where people are coming from, but we can tell where they are going. We know what they are reading on the site. We can also track back from Twitter activity to see how we are doing from our search engine optimization efforts. For example, we might see that people come from Google search to Twitter to the interlinkONE Web site. This tells us that Twitter is having an impact on our Web traffic.

Benefits of Twitter

There has been a lot of negative buzz about social networking sites as being a waste of time. Far from it. From a marketing perspective, Twitter is highly effective, when used correctly, for doing the following things:

1. Finding prospects;
2. Talking to and educating your customers and prospects;
3. Providing a platform for establishing yourself as a thought leader;
4. Enabling you to establish your brand as a useful resource.

At the same time, do not lose sight on the fact that Twitter or any social media is simply one part of a successful marketing mix. As with any channel, it doesn’t act alone. Traditional marketing media must still be used to reach everyone in your audience.

John Foley is the president and CEO of interlinkONE Inc., a company which produces a software solution that manages marketing needs.

Last week I used this photo to make some new products on zazzle. This is one of my favorite photos –I love how as the early morning sun bursts through the trees, illuminating the forest with its heavenly glow, silhouettes of branches and leaves create a semblance of a stained glass window. It also reminded me this last week a bit of the Christmas star, so I thought it would make a nice photo card for Christmas.

Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt

Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt

Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt

Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Early Morning Sun Rays #18 by dlmtleArt
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Dawna’s Gallery of greeting cards, Matted Prints. and T shirts

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Dear Stoodle Readers,

I urge thee to make haste to the nearest bookstore and grab the latest copy of KLue and Junk. The benefits are plentiful, not only you will be kept up to date with the latest goings-on in Klang Valley and the local music scene, but your mouse will also profusely thank you, for letting it graze its trackball (or its optical laser light thing) on a Stoodle-designed mousepad. I can almost guarantee you a 500-fold improvement of mouse performance, almost. But I can guarantee that your workdesk will improve 1000-fold in awesomeness!

Also, run amok at your walls with this Stoodle-designed stencils from Junk, instead of waiting the Stoodlerist to drag her slow ass to finish the Stoodral.

Commissioned by Yahoo! Malaysia, and later purchased by Yahoo! Southeast Asia, these artwork are produced for their YOUREKA campaign. Check out what it’s all about at www.yahoo.com.my.

California Surfers 2010 Calendar by catherinesherman   Twelve Months of  Catching Tasty Waves.

California Surfers Collage Mousepad by catherinesherman

To see more surfing products, including greeting cards, go to my Zazzle store  It’s a Beautiful World! and click on the “Surfers” category.  Surfer greeting cards are also available on Greeting Card Universe.  Click on my GCU store It’s a Beautiful World! You can find the surfer cards by doing a searching for “surfer”.  Both card stores are in my blogroll on the right.

A few days ago I used my photo, Misty Moon Over the Columbia River, to create some items on zazzle.

In this picture the moon lights up misty clouds with translucent white light in a stormy looking purplish sky above Longview, Washington. Surrounded by mountain ranges which disappearing into distant haze, the city lights blaze like dots of fire along the banks of the Columbia River. Seen through the forest on the hills of Rainier, Oregon the river flows thought the Columbia River Gorge towards the sea as the dusk begins to deepen into night…

Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Misty Moon Over the Columbia River by dlmtleArt
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Dawna’s Gallery of greeting cards, Matted Prints. and T shirts

Dawna’s Fine Art Prints at

Dawna’s Zazzle Gallery of items featuring her Art and Photography

Have a look at the newly added Smart Women™ products!

We have also restocked your favorite office supplies…