Tom Pimental : Web Creative

The Nursery School at Temple Beth Am in Framingham, MA had a simple website that was maintained by several volunteers. Because of this, the site was inconsistent and often had unintentional flaws in design due to novice website editors/tools.

To solve this, we put the site on WordPress and leveraged custom post types for the calendar and alerts and created simple flags for them to highlight important content (events, blog posts, alerts) at the top of their homepage.

Now that the site is on WordPress, their volunteer team can focus on content creation and not worry about accidentally breaking the site’s layout.

Got Kids came to me looking for a simple way to manage their consignment business. The business is unique in that it isn’t physically located in one place, which required the website to be flexible and easy to edit as each sale came along.

We decided to build the site on top of WordPress and leveraged custom menus and widgets to give maximum control to the business owner. Throw in a great looking custom template and Got Kids was extremely happy with the outcome.

Task management for me is more about capturing stuff I need to do than tracking the completeness of tasks. I don’t get high on “checking off” to do lists. I simply need a reliable/consistent place to capture all of the minor tasks I need to get done at any given time. I also don’t use it for project management, because I’m typically aware of the larger projects going on, both in my work and freelance life. Tasks are the random things people ask me to do in a day or things that come out of meetings that I need to address or small bits of a projects that need my attention.

The key to task management for me, and this is the one thing I took out of Getting Things Done (the hard-core task management process), is that I have a reliable, consistent place to capture these tasks so I can get them out of my head. It’s all about trust… if I know I can capture a todo item somewhere and refer back to it whenever I’m ready to do something about it, I don’t need to worry about it anymore. The GTD example is going to the grocery store… if you make a mental list of what you need, your brain is constantly focused on that list… “Eggs, milk, bread, apples…” and not able to think about other things. If you write it down in a place you know you will be able to access it when you need it, you’re brain is free to do other more important things.

Here are all of the processes I have tried in the past that didn’t work:Here are all of the processes I have tried in the past that didn’t work:

tadalist.com
Custom built app
todoist.com
Gmail tasks
Remember the milk
workflowy.com
cohuman.com
strikeapp.com

But through all of these, I’ve never been able to move away from my trusty pen and notebook. The problem with most of these are that they’re online and require an internet connected device to update, which required me to have paper as a backup. This leads to multiple lists, which just can’t work for me. You shouldn’t have to spend time rewriting/gathering/managing your todo list… it should just be there so you can work on the items… not work on organizing them.

So I’ve started yet another experiment. The biggest flaw with a pen/paper todo list is that it’s not searchable or easy to refer back to later… think days or months (well after you’ve moved on to a new notebook). So to tackle that, I bought a tablet. Not an iPad! An Android tablet. I got a great deal at Woot.com on a Viewsonic gTablet. It’s hardware and screen are comparable to the iPad2, but at $270 (on Woot) it’s about 1/2 the price of the lowest tier Apple product. It’s major flaw, according to online reviews, is that the modified Android version Viewsonic added to the device is absolutely horrible. I didn’t even bother finding out how bad it was since there are dozens of tutorials (here’s the one I used) on how to root the device and add a clean version of Android, which I did within minutes of turning it on for the first time.

Note that I’ve only had the device for two week2, but I’m trying to make it replace my notebook/pen completely using the Evernote Android App. The app allows for offline and online updates, it syncs with apps on my PC, work laptop and phone and is able to capture notes, audio, pictures and websites. It’s not really a task tracking app which has me a bit concerned but it’s definitely worth the test. If Evernote doesn’t work out, I’ll probably try RTM or a similar app geared towards task tracking… if that doesn’t work its back to pen and paper :(

If you have an awesome process for tracking your to do list, feel free to share it in the comments below.

I’ve been looking around for a simple forum software, but was disappointed with the bloated offerings from SMF and vBulletin. That was until I found Vanilla Forums. Vanilla is a free, open-source PHP-based forum software that is just about as simple as they come (that’s a compliment).

The tool has a really simple discussion thread format, several user permissions and registration modes and can easily be themed (or even embedded in your current site) to match any site.

If you’re in the market for a dead simple tool to use to host your discussion forum, definitely check out Vanilla.

Amir Levine and Rachel Heller were looking for a simple way to promote their new book, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—And Keep—Love and turned to me to develop a clean, visually appealing website on top of WordPress. They had a very tight timeline as the book was to launch on December 30. Once the design was finalized, the site went up within a month and was ready in time for the book’s debut.

The site also includes a custom developed and shareable Compatibility Quiz based on the findings in their book that can drive further awareness of the book.

You can check out the site and quiz here »

Now you can add short posts (think Twitter) to your Google Places account. Using up to 160 characters you can tell potential customers about upcoming deals, new offerings and more.

Google continues to impress me with their suite of tools to empower the small business owner.

Giuseppi’s Pizza, located on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina, needed to increase their search engine rankings and upgrade the overall look and feel of their website. SEO was enhanced through relevant keywords, sitemaps and targeted local listings while maintaining a user-friendly, well designed site.

Working with Guiseppi’s was easy… fighting the urge to eat pizza every time I sat down to work on the site wasn’t.

Now when you create a location-based page for your local business, users can “check-in” when they are there further exposing your business to their network. You can even buy ads based on “Places”. Small businesses should try to allocate at least some of their day to fostering these types of programs. They’re very low maintenance and have a big potential upside given the size of Facebook’s network. Facebook Places is another great tool for small business marketers.

Google has been really focused on the under-served SMB market creating both easy-to-use promotional tools, but also offering services like corporate Gmail and Google Apps to help small businesses focus on their work and not how to do their work. That’s why it makes a lot of sense for them to launch a Google Small Business Blog.

There’s not a lot there now, but I expect Google to highlight products and enhancements that can help your small business grow. This is definitely a site every small business owner should add to their reading list.

Google continues to help small local businesses reach their customers. Their enhancements and continued expansion of Google Places significantly increases the potential exposure of local businesses. Now, with Google Tags, they’ve made it easy for small businesses to add specials, coupons and other advertisements to Goolge Maps and local search results.

With Google Tags, you can maintain weekly specials or do “real-time” coupons all for $25 per month. Add this tothe free promotion offered by Google Places and this gives small businesses an incredibly powerful and cost effective tool to find new customers.