Carve a Pumpkin and WIN!
All of the details are here to win our Surpass Pumpkin Carving Contest!
Rolling Out New Ideas!
Some ideas may be a little questionable, like this new roll-up PlayStation design, but we love our ideas lately!
As you know we are making a lot of changes and improvements at Surpass.
You can find them all here: Surpass on Demand.
Let us know what you think!
Things We Love : Pidgin
Released under the GNU General Public License, Pidgin is a free, multi-platform chat program that is well versed in many commonly used chat protocols (AIM, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, Google Talk etc.). Here at Surpass, we use Pidgin to host all of our internal chatting needs, and we certainly love it! Formerly called Gaim (changed due to a name dispute with AOL), the Pidgin project has grown to be one of the most popular chat clients around (its OS X sister being Adium). If you’re tired of your proprietary instant messaging client, break free of your chains and give Pidgin a try!
Blog Success
Today we’re doing another blog topic day. Today’s question is: Is your blog a success? What defines blog success to you: great content you feel helps others, a high number of subscribers or just a unique place on the web to call your own?
After you answer this question in your blog, please leave a comment with the link so that it can be shared with everyone. (If you don’t, that’s an epic fail.)
slotMusic
Music, Retail and Tech Leaders to Offer “slotMusic™”: High Quality, DRM-Free MP3 Music on microSD™ Cards. slotMusic cards enable consumers to instantly and easily enjoy music from their favorite artists without being dependent on a PC or internet connection. Users simply insert the slotMusic card into their microSD-enabled mobile phone or MP3 player to hear the music – without passwords, downloading or digital-rights-management interfering with their personal use.
SanDisk has released this news on their new slotMusic cards - albums available on microSD cards. This idea seems messy to me and destined to be a flump. Would you buy slotMusic cards?
Protect Your Lunch
We’re changing things up a bit! Instead of Money Monday today, we bring you Media Monday. Today’s topic is… Twitter.
Twitter continues to gain momentum even when many said it wasn’t going to make it (downtime, lack of interest). With every few blogs I browse through, a few will have their Twitter updates shining from a corner of their page. Even when I watch TV, I see newscasters mentioning comments from their Twitter followers.
Are you on Twitter yet? If not, why? It seems like eventually everyone is going to have an account, for some reason.
Freebie Friday : Thanks, Mark!
One of our Freebie Friday Chick-fil-A winners sent in photos of his daughter enjoying free chikn! We loved the photos and wanted to share!
If you win Freebie Friday your picture could be here. Check in next week for the another giveaway!
Things We Love : Last.fm Spirals
These are beautiful really, they look like seashells or flowers? Either way, if you use last.fm, make a graph for yourself. It’s another way to map your musical tastes.
Blog Block?
For WordPress Wednesday we are changing the rules a bit today. Since this day can really be about blogging in general, we want to introduce a new idea to you. Like many great ideas, this one originated in Surmunity, and from our wonderful clients. This time - Rob and Cass!
We all know how important a blog can be to your website. It shows more about who you are and what you know. But sometimes we all face blog block and we’re not sure of what to write next. To get our creativity flowing, we’re going to start posting topics here for you to write about. Then we can all comment here with a link back to our new posts. Even I (Kayla) am going to do it!
The topic now is:
What made you want to start your own blog?
Ok… go!
We all look forward to seeing your posts! We will have an even better topic next week.
Round Those Corners
Everyone loves rounded corners. Yes, everyone. This website does an amazingly great job of adding rounded corners to any image. Just check it out for yourself! It also can add reflections, mmhmm.
Spare Change Challenge
Are you wasting money? Find out by taking the Spare Change Challenge!
Freebie Friday : Free Treats
THE COOKIE CONTEST is over! Thanks everyone! Results are posted in Surmunity.
We’re announcing Freebie Friday early today since we missed it last week.
The 50th person to leave a comment below will win delicious, Ruby Jewel ice cream cookies. Believe me, you want these! You’ll receive 20 cookies in all of these flavors:
Lemon Cookie with Honey Lavender Ice Cream
Dark Chocolate Cookie with Fresh Mint Ice Cream
Cinnamon Chocolate Cookie with Espresso Ice Cream
Double Chocolate Cookie with Peanut Butter Ice Cream
Chocolate Chip Cookie with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream
When you open the box, how will you choose? I just don’t know. But this is how to win: Invite your friends to leave comments here (and learn about Surpass in the process) to help you win these yummy, all-natural cookies.
The comments can be about ice cream, the weather, whatever you fancy today. But only TWO comments per person. (This means keeping an eye on the comments and waiting for the right moment to stash these cookies!)
Good luck!
Things We Love : Bonding
We bond with our customers on a daily basis, so we’re not strangers to nurturing relationships! But check out this trio - Spider on Frog on Turtle.
“After three days of storms and rain, we found these three floating in a pool filter, clinging to each other to survive. All of them were exhausted from the effort and were reluctant to part ways after being rescued.”
BlogDesk
“Blogging should be simple, but it gets complicated and time-consuming if you are serious about it. BlogDesk makes it easy to write, speeds up lavish processes and assists the author with smart features.
A huge benefit for beginners and professionals who want to focus on content. Even the more ambitious work is done with ease.
BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.
Whether it’s grandma & grandpa or the corporate blogger, whether it’s an online diary or a high traffic blog, they all will profit from BlogDesk. And sure enough, their readers will, too.”
Many thanks to Edwin for contributing the link for today!
Useful Tuesday : Pagealizer
Looking for a new web site tool? Try out Pagealizer for a fresh look into what your site visitors are interested in when they go to your website.
“Pagealizer helps increase page conversion by showing relevant usage data and suggesting page design and content optimizations. We show in great detail how long people stay on a page, bounce rate, how far they scrolled down, and where they clicked. Our patent pending algorithm then analyses page performance so we can suggest what should be done to improve user interaction in your site. Even an experienced site owner would be surprised from the insights gotten from our website analysis. If you are interested in landing page design optimization - Pagealizer is for you.”
Contest : Lite-Brite
Do you have what it takes to create the SurpassHosting logo with a Lite-Brite? Go here or the official website and give it a shot. I know you can do better than what I did above… how embarrassing.
If you do, you could win a Silver reseller plan free for a year.
In an effort not to spoil your technique, email your screenshot to me () and I will post them all in Surmunity on 9/8/2008. Voting will take place the same day.
Money Monday : Chip In
Need to raise money for a cause or a project? ChipIn can help you promote your fundraiser and provides the tools to keep track of who you’ll owe later. ; )
Surpass News : Your Voice
In January 2007 we created a “I wish Surpass would” board in our forum. As of today the board has received 1,176 bits of commentary. The point behind this board was to collect suggestions from our clients to improve their Surpass experience. So far it has been one of the most valuable things we have done for the future of the company.
In early 2008 we had a thought to upgrade the idea and create a Digg-style page to replace that board. The page would have been separate from the forum, thus gaining more exposure, and everyone could vote the most wanted features to the top. This was not released yet but remained a very important idea that we needed to develop. To our surprise, we found a company that is offering this service already which is really impressive. It’s called UserVoice and is exactly what we were going to do in-house. But we like to use and promote third-party services as much as we can if they are truly useful and innovative. UserVoice definitely belongs to that category.
You can find our new suggestion board at surpass.uservoice.com. The feedback button has been placed throughout our website. We are now more open to suggestions than ever before and can keep track of them much better.
Thank you for your feedback and attention. We invite everyone to submit ideas right away.
Mad at me?
I hope not! I went on a trip back home and arrived back to Orlando today. I had the chance to reconnect with nature as you see above. But in the process I missed Things We Love Thursday and did not brainstorm for today’s Freebie Friday. I will make it up to you, starting now!
Need a little creative relaxation? Look no further than Sumopaint. Give it a try and see what you can do.
And I’ll be returning to our normal blogging schedule on Monday. Thanks everyone for subscribing to our cool finds and giveaways.
WordPress Wednesday : A Classy Theme
If you’re looking for a sleek, news type theme, we think Arthemia is for you.
Useful Tuesday : Online Photo Editing
Online photo editing is just the way to go these days, as many applications find themselves a home on the web and off of your hard drive. This blog post has some interesting examples of what online tools can do! The photo above is one of their examples.
Money Monday : How Do You Spend
Just something to think about for today from the article, Spending on Happiness:
“One of the most puzzling paradoxes in social science is that though people spend so much of their time trying to make more money, having more money doesn’t seem to make them that much happier. My colleagues Liz Dunn and Lara Aknin—both at the University of British Columbia—and I wondered if the issue was not that money couldn’t buy happiness but that people simply weren’t spending it in the right way to make themselves happier. Liz had the great idea to explore whether, if we encouraged people to spend money in different ways, we could uncover the domains in which money might lead to happiness. We conducted a number of studies—from national surveys to a field study in which we examined how the manner in which employees at a Boston-based company spent a profit-sharing bonus impacted their long-term happiness—in which we showed that money can buy happiness, when people spend that money prosocially on others (giving gifts to friends, donating to charities) rather than on themselves (buying flat-screen televisions).”
Freebie Friday : Free Chick-fil-A
The first two people to leave a comment on this blog post each receive a $20 gift certificate to Chick-fil-A. So hurry and comment to get your chikin!
Things We Love Thursday : Muppets
Especially celebs who look like muppets. How can you resist checking them out?
WordPress Wednesday : Power Your Storefront!
Can you power a storefront with WordPress? Of course! With WordPress, you can do just about anything these days. Check out The Market Theme for their details on how to do it right!
Useful Tuesday : Flash Photo Gallery
There are many Flash photo galleries to pick from but hopefully this one is new to you! It does show a tiny site logo in the corner but many free galleries do to help out the developer.
Money Monday : BambooInvoice
I almost typed Monkey Monday. Moving along, here’s a simple, quick, PHP5 based invoicing program called BambooInvoice. Let the demo speak for itself!
WordPress Wednesday : Last.fm Plugin
Do you like-a-WordPress? Do you like-a-last.fm? You’ll like-a-this! Sorry, this quote is from their site and I just couldn’t help it:
WordPress + Last.Fm = iLast.Fm! We make your blog a lot more fun, like a music!
Useful Tuesday : PHP Widget
”PHP Function Reference (PHPfr) is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that provides fast lookup of information about the PHP web programming language.”
W3C valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Document validates as CSS3.
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