Links Roundup, 23rd July 2013
Here’s a roundup of things that have caught my eye of the past few weeks:
Things to read
Benefits of Green Spaces in London
The great folk at BOP have published a report for the City of London Corporation looking at environmental, health, social and economic benefits Londoners enjoy from the city’s parks and gardens.
Creative education: is now the time for realism or optimism?
An article by Simon Ofield-Kerr in the Guardian which in context of the current world, makes a rallying cry that “more than ever, we need creative optimists and risk-takers”, and that the Creative and Cultural sector is a fruitful place to find these folks!
How to have ideas at your desk!
Feeling brave! Follow some of the tips in this article and see how it unlocks your creativity! Whether a refresher or an eye-opener, James Allen‘s most useful article has hastened me to consider how I find my ideas.
Courses
Crafty Skills workshops: if you’re in Birmingham and the surrounding area, take advantage of these small business workshops covering a raft of business areas. The more you sign up to, the more offers you receive.
Blogging Bootcamp – run by Dave Briggs, boss man and colleague at Kind of Digital, this six lesson course promises a full-on introduction to blogging, crammed full of useful tips, anecdotes and tools. Great for those who are fairly confident using a computer but looking to get going on what blogging is about. All for £100 + VAT.
Useful Digital Stuff
Works.io: yes, what the world needs is another online curation tool, but this one has been built with the visual artist, photographer and designer maker in mind. Works.io allows fine artists to document, organize, and show their works online. Curation tools: easy upload, organise artworks, keep CVs up to date.
Streak – for gmail users amongst you, here’s an uber effective and simple CRM system that operates within your inbox. Very cool stuff.
Remove Image Backgrounds – Clipping Magic allows you to easily remove the background from your photos to create masks, cutouts, or clipping paths, all done instantly online.
Brand Yourself – this looks really useful. Not tried it fully yet, but Brand Yourself promises to enable “you to control what people find when they Google your name.” Something which gets your personal brand up those and the mystifying world of Google Algorithms sounds like a good thing …. eh!
Invoice-o-matic: This useful tool comes courtesy of the folk at FreeAgent and a few of my customers have already felt the full force of this one. If your invoicing and payment needs are straightforward enough, this link allows to create quick and simple invoices, send them to your customer and get a PDF for both parties. Cleverly it also prompts you to chase if you’re coming up to that 30 day non-payment threshold.
Get free images with Pixabay: if browsing through Flickr or the equivalent is proving difficult for the images you require, be sure also to pay pixabay a visit. Useful for a quick image or two for your blog or your new product pages on your website.
