140 Characters is just too short a space to recommend people to follow on Twitter. So, Here are my #FollowFriday recommendations. This isn’t a comprehensive list & I’ll try to do this on a regular basis.

• @JimWare – “Night editor and crime team leader at StarNewsOnline.com and the StarNews newspaper”
  I try to follow a lot of news folks (both print & Broadcast). Jim is a genuinely nice guy and always a pleasure to talk with.
• @WilliamLang – “25 year old entrepreneur. // SEO/Social Media Enthusiast. // Larry David Imitator.”
  William is a sharp young man and someone to keep an eye on (but in a good way).
• @CosmicKitchen – “Casual Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Restaurant headed by a Culinary Institute of America Graduate (910) 792-6720″
  Kristin runs the Twitter account for Chris’ Cosmic Kitchen. If you’re a business wanting to use Twitter, look at her tweets and take notes.
• @gwensutton – “Jazz Loving, Hard Working, Woman!”
  If you’re interested in real people that are worth getting to know, this wonderful lady is a must to follow. (She’s a pretty good shutter bug too)
• @DeniseMerritt – “QuickBooks expert, bookkeeper, wife, mom to 2 daughters, scrapbooker, quilter, lover of Jesus, Third Day and Eagles music fan, love 24 and Kay Arthur Precepts.”
  QuickBooks expert, but also another good real person to follow.
• @scottpiner – “Photographer”
  Excellent, Excellent photographer – and a new dad.
• @NatashaNDavis – “Nonprofit updates, gardening, gluten free lifestyle, and Cape Fear area events and news”
  Community minded Tweets (plus, anyone that works with non-profits is more than ok in my book.)
• @CoachReggie – “ActionCOACH Business Coach, OU Sooner Fan, Husband, Daddy, Christian, Business Educator, Mentor, Speaker, Butt Kicker of Small Biz Owners, Social Media Junkie”
  Man, what more can I add to that bio?
• @carolynmejia – “Wife, mom, geek, and all round lover of all things good and/or funny. Media Director at The ROCK. http://rockwilmington.com”
  ‘Followed her on Twitter, met her in person and discovered that we knew each other from more than 20 years ago at a church in Raleigh. (ain’t life funny that way?)

Congrats to all the guys at StarNewsOnline.com! The MyReporter.com website recently won the Citizen Media Award in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

And what can you take away from this? A little quote from their announcement says it all…

“Executive Editor Robyn Tomlin had noticed editors and reporters were connecting with readers on Twitter and other social networking sites, and she saw that readers appreciated the personal connection to people who reported the news.”**

Using social media isn’t about just blatantly promoting yourself. Tootin’ your own horn a bit is ok, but if you’re not making personal connections then you’re probably not going to get a whole lot out of it. In fact, if all you do is toot away, you’re probably going to come off doing a good bit of damage.

link: MyReporter.com wins national media award

** BTW, local TV stations should take note. Simply tweeting teases like you’re tossing to break isn’t going to cut it.

Kevin Spacey explains Twitter to David Letterman.

No post production on this!

(via: adverbox)

I finished reading When You Are Engulfed in Flames this past week and noticed that Chip Kidd designed the cover. A little Googlin’ and I found this cover gallery on his official web site.

Chip Kidd Cover Gallery

Matt Cutts on Over Optimization

via: Search Engine Land

Never assume that everyone knows what you mean.

Found via MetaFilter

One of the most difficult things as a designer is trying to get inside a clients head to figure out what they like visually. It helps to have a few example sites to use as a starting point and with that in mind, I’ve compiled this list of inspiration galleries.

Before the list, here is the obligatory Picasso quote:

“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
-Pablo Picasso

1. The Best Designs

   http://www.thebestdesigns.com/

   
   One of the oldest inspiration-type sites out there.

2. CSSRemix

   http://cssremix.com/

   
   Quick thumbnails that give a fairly good idea of what the pages look like. Nifty search feature as well.

3. CSSMania
   http://cssmania.com/
   
   Nice, big thumbnails and organized by topic.
4. Screenalicious

   http://www.screenalicious.com

   
   Good layout plus ratings.

5. One Page Love

   http://onepagelove.com/

   
   Interesting niche sort of gallery for one page websites.

6. Design Snack

   http://www.designsnack.com/

   
   Similar to screenalicious.

7. Design Shack – CSS Gallery
   http://designshack.co.uk/gallery/all/
   
   Can view by color and layout.

I forget how many years ago it was that Richard Shively called me looking for someone to update his website. He had recently moved to Wilmington from Virginia and needed the new contact information added to his site.

Honestly, when he called me, I wasn’t too excited.

“I’m sorry, you sell what? Turkey calls?”

But then I took a look at his site. The site was nothing great to speak of. It looked like it was designed in the late ’90’s. There was a text crawl near the top (oh my) but thankfully no blink tags. What grabbed me was what he did.

He made Turkey Calls. I’m not talking about plastic, pre-manufactured in china, but real honest to goodness wood – each one made by his own hand. The lines were clean and simple. The only ornamentation came from a laser engraved turkey on the front with a sans-serif font saying “Super Yelper”.

I was instantly convinced that this would be a cool project even if I wasn’t a full redesign. How many things do you find these days that have beauty & craftsmanship? How many things are handmade?

Not a lot.

If you know me, you know that I don’t do a hard sell. If you just want updates, I’m more than happy to do updates. So for about two years I did updates trying my best to keep in the style of the site (late 90’s). Improving things here and there would have  make it look odd. If anything, I try to blend.

But, this year, Mr. Shively came to me asking if I could redesign his site and so we did. A lot of cosmetic work went into it (Thanks Adobe for the extract filter in Photoshop), but the really important thing was making it easy for visitors to navigate and easy for the search engines to index.

As of right now, he’s on the front page for “turkey calls” so I’d say at lest that part is a success.

Thankfully, sales are up and the Star News did a nice little story about him. I’d like to take credit for that too, but I’m not entirely sure I can.

link: Super Yelper Turkey Calls

I just downloaded a new Adobe Air app (in the ever popular “beta”) called Skimmer. As of right now, it puts Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube & Blogger accounts all in one place. Since it’s beta, I’m assuming that more features are to come.

Oh, look. I can upload an avatar! I gotta do that *now*.

Go see it here: http://www.fallon.com/skimmer