WASHINGTON D.C., November 6, 2008 — LeftLane Designs has been selected for the 2008 Houston’s Best Award in the Graphic Arts category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA).

The USLBA “Best of Local Business” Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, USLBA members are asked to identify companies they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success and overall customer satisfaction in their local market and business category. These local companies enhance the positive image of small businesses through service to their customers and community.

A record number of surveys were submitted this year by members from all fifty states. The awards represent excellence in local business and rate the best local businesses in three different categories: Marketing, Image, and Community.

“This year marks our 20th Anniversary at LeftLane Designs, and we’re proud of the success that our client partners have enjoyed as a direct result of our collaboration,” said Shawn Hesketh, owner and founder of the design firm, whose expertise lies in the creation of unique identity systems, logos, websites and branding materials for small to mid-sized businesses.

The 2008 USLBA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the overall merits of each category rather than how many votes a local business receives. However, to qualify for a 2008 USLBA Award, a program must receive at least 1 percent of the popular vote.

About LeftLane Designs

Since 1988, LeftLane Designs has specialized in creating unique logos, comprehensive branding systems and cutting-edge websites for small to mid-sized companies in and around the Greater Houston area. Our mission is to create the most innovative communication tools for our clients, enabling them to convey their message in the most effective way and distinguish themselves from the competition.

Got an upcoming design project? For more information about LeftLane Designs and the variety of design services available, send an email to info@leftlanedesigns.com, or visit www.leftlanedesigns.com.

About U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA)
U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA) is a Washington D.C. based organization funded by local businesses operating in towns, large and small, across America. The purpose of USLBA is to promote local business through public relations, marketing and advertising.

The USLBA was established to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to be an advocate for small and medium size businesses and business entrepreneurs across America.

You can help the victims of Hurricane Ike by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. This Fund enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to victims of Hurricane Ike, as well as others.

I was shocked to learn that the Red Cross has accrued more than $70 million in debt, caring for victims of the recent Hurricane Gustav. Now completely strapped for cash, they are literally borrowing from everywhere, but have stressed that they will continue to help victims of these disastrous hurricanes, no matter what.

You can donate $5 to American Red Cross disaster relief efforts simply by text messaging the keyword “GIVE” to “2HELP” (24357). Donations will appear on your monthly bill or be debited from your prepaid account balance. Standard text messaging rates apply.

Millions of Houstonians will be grateful for your help during this difficult time!

For those of you who somehow missed the news, we were recently hit by Hurricane Ike, a Category 2 storm with a storm surge more typical of a Category 3 or 4 storm. We were fortunate to have avoided any major damage, and our power has been restored after nearly 60 hours. More than 2.2 million folks in and around the Houston area are still without electricity. Our story follows…

On Friday, September 12th, we began preparing the house (and yard) for Ike. We setup a shelter in my garage office, since it is the most secure part of our house. Had an air mattress, the kiddos’ sleeping bags, battery-powered lantern and other goodies in there. Outside, I spent an hour tightening up our fence, and then took the reflector from my satellite dish down, since it had the biggest potential to be torn off in high winds.

We spent most of the evening hours in the cul-de-sac, visiting with neighbors who rarely spoke with us otherwise. That was probably the most enjoyable part of the experience. (more…)

Apple announced today the immediate availability of iTunes 8, a substantial upgrade to the popular music software for both Mac and PC.

New in iTunes 8…

1. Genius playlists and sidebar. Create a playlist of songs that go great together and get recommendations for new songs.
2. HD TV shows. Buy your favorite shows, including Heroes and The Office, in high definition. Episodes cost just $2.99.
3. New ways to browse. Browse your music, movies, and TV shows by cover art. Quickly skim albums by artist and genre.

iTunes 8 also syncs with your iPod or iPhone much faster than previous versions. All in all, a must-have upgrade.

Do HTML messages sent from Outlook users appear too tiny in your Apple Mail inbox? You can use the following trick to force Mail to always use a larger minimum font size on received messages - some HTML messages might not look exactly as intended but at least you can now read them.

1. Quit Mail
2. Open the Terminal and type in the following:
   defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 12
3. Restart Mail.app and your HTML messages are readable.

Of course, you can set the point size to whatever you like.

As a highly project-oriented creative type, it’s critical for me to have an easy-to-use system for tracking action items within contexts or projects. While there are a countless number of applications that claim to manage your to-do list, none of them do it as elegantly—and intuitively—as Things, by Cultured Code.

Things combines powerful features with a simple, one-window interface that seems instantly familiar to anyone who’s used a Mac. With tightly integrated support for tags and intelligent filtering, it allows for quick and easy focusing. Together with a beautiful user interface, Things aims at the seemingly impossible: making task management both easy and fun.

They’ve got an iPhone app as well, which lets you access your projects, contexts and to-dos while on the go. I actually find myself using the iPhone interface more often than the desktop software, although they sync beautifully with one another, allowing me 24/7 access to my projects and tasks.

Download the free trial now from their website. Sign up for their email newsletter and get 20% off when they launch the real app in the Fall.

Link: http://culturedcode.com/things/

I can’t tell you how many times per day I encounter the need to resize a photo or other image for inclusion in a web design or blog post. Some time ago, I discovered an AppleScript that let me pre-define sizes and then drag and drop images onto the script icon to perform the resize function. While this method was certainly easier than launching Photoshop every time I needed to make such minor revisions, it still was a bit cumbersome, and required a stack of files—one for each size I commonly used.

Finally, I’ve discovered a simple app that instantly resizes and rotates images, saving them in multiple formats:

Weighing in at a lightweight 5MB, RapidoResizer allows you to resize images to your specifications and easily apply them to your project. With this utility, you can extract and save application icons and images.

Once you have opened an image or a group of images you’re presented with a range of options to apply to the image. This enables you to change the dimensions quickly and easily. It is also possible to apply one function to multiple images at a time with the batch function.

In addition to resizing the image (with or without keeping proportions), RapidoResizer allows you to rotate the image, and change the picture to a variety of popular file types.

Best of all, RapidoResizer is completely free! Click here to check out this FREE image resizer from app4mac.com!

If you’re like me, your iTunes music library has grown over the years to considerably more than your iPhone or iPod Touch can hold at any one time.

Rather than settling for syncing limited selections from your music library, Simplify Media enables you to access your entire iTunes music library remotely and then stream your music to your iPhone or iPod Touch via WiFi, EDGE or 3G.

You can navigate your music library by artist, album or genre, and instantly view cover art, artist bios and even lyrics for the current song selection! Plus, you can share your library with up to 30 friends.

Took me less than 5 minutes to donload the desktop application, install the iPhone player app, login to my iTunes library and begin listening to my music.

You’ll want to get this app now; it’s FREE for the first 100,000 folks to download it. After that, it will cost $3.99 in the iTunes App Store.

Check out Simplify Media for your iPhone & iPod Touch.

Over the years, I’ve assisted many of my clients in setting up email marketing newsletters. I’ve had the opportunity to test the most popular ones, including Constant Contact, Ezine Director, iContact and others. Today, I happened to stumble across what I feel is the best email newsletter application on the web!

OK, so once you get past the quirky name, you’ll discover a simple, intelligent and powerful email marketing utility that anyone can use. Featuring some truly innovative technology, Mad Mimi is the simplest way to create branded, well-designed newsletters and promotions.

Mad Mimi is web-based, which means there is nothing to download or configure. All you need is a web browser and an internet connection. Here’s how it works…

1. Create Your Account
   The best way to see how Mad Mimi works is to complete the 1-minute sign-up for free, and then kick the tires. No credit card, no obligation, and it’s not a trial. It’s fully-functional right away!
2. Add Some Addresses
   Copy and paste your email address list(s) into Mad Mimi. Duplicates and common spacing issues are auto-corrected. Later, you can store, target and organize your list in every way imaginable.
3. Design Your Newsletter
   One of the best parts of Mad Mimi is the instantly-intuitive, uber-simple design interface. You can easily add, modify and move things around in a WYSIWYG environment. It even has an “Undo” feature, which I’ve never seen elsewhere. No design skills necessary!
4. Send Your Emails
   Mad Mimi tracks and displays the viewing and clicking behavior of your mail recipients in real time! Track opens, bounces, and every metric imaginable. Use this data to modify your marketing approach to improve results.

Within five minutes, I had already created my first test newsletter (see right). Images are placed by simply dragging them from the tray on the right into the body of your newsletter. Across the bottom of the editor is a row of handy buttons that enable you to create new sections in your newsletter, including:

• Text with an image to the right
• Text with an image to the left
• Standard text block
• Plain image
• Section Title
• Divider

Just click one of these buttons and Mad Mimi inserts the section into your newsletter, with a WYSIWYG editor, ready for you to start typing your content! Create a custom header if you like, to make the newsletter look even more polished. When you’re finished, Mad Mimi will guide you through selecting recipients from your list and sending your email campaign.

Track your campaigns

Stats are delivered in real-time, and you can track bounces, opens, untraced emails, clicks, forwards and unsubscribes. If you want even more accurate tracking, Mad Mimi also integrates with Google Analytics, intelligently automating your link tags so you can measure your promotion’s success.

Custom sign-up forms

Mad Mimi will let you create your own customized HTML sign-up form as well, adding custom fields as you see fit. When you’re done, Mad Mimi will generate a block of code for you to copy and paste into your own site to add a simple sign-up form for your visitors.

Unbeatable pricing!

Perhaps the best part of Mad Mimi is the price. The most frequent complaint I hear from my clients is how expensive it can be to send regular email campaigns to large lists of subscribers. As I mentioned before, Mad Mimi is completely free! A free account will allow you to send unlimited emails to a contact list of 100 or less. Want more?

There are three upgrade levels available to subscribers. For just $12/month, you can increase your mailing list to a whopping 5,000 contacts! $49 increases your audience to 15,000, and doubles the sending speed of your newsletters. And for you power users, $199/month allows unlimited audience members, and quadruples the sending speed!

Try it out for yourself!

The best way to see if Mad Mimi is right for you is to simply sign up for the free account and give ‘er a test run. I think within a few minutes, you’ll agree that Mad Mimi is simply the most intuitive, easiest to use and best-priced email marketing tool you’ve ever used.

Click here to check out Mad Mimi for yourself!