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How to Use About.me as Your Online Business Card Posted: 29 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST You would probably ask, ” I already use so many services – Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Flickr, YouTube etc on a regular basis, what’s the need for another one?” Well, about.me is not really just ‘another one’ , it’s a service meant to put together all your other services. It’s a neat way to merge your multiple online profiles scattered across different service providers in one single identity – either for your personal use or for professional purposes. For me the professional angle sounds more interesting. Imagine if you could have clickable links on your business card to your LinkedIn, your resume, your portfolio, client testimonials etc, about.me is exactly like that. It’s basically your business card online with links to the services which promotes you and gives the visitor an idea as who you are. So next time rather than providing someone with multiple links to your online accounts just direct them to your about.me page. In this post I will walk you through the story of about.me in brief, then visit some nice about.me pages to gather inspiration and then proceed step by step to create one. The Story Launched in December 2010, by Ryan Freitas, Tony Conrad and Timothy Young, the San Francisco-based startup was acquired by AOL within four days of launch. Brad Garlinghouse, President of Consumer Applications, AOL, quoted “about.me is more than just the aggregation of social profiles, it allows people to easily express themselves in an increasingly noisy environment full of disparate social experiences”. The acquisition according to Young will enable the service to “piggyback” on the AOL’s large userbase. The success of about.me, I believe comes from the fact that a true personal brand identity is associated with the .me domain. The site uses a very simple user interface, allowing users to set  up their page in a few minutes, backed by strong back-end analytics which make it easy for a user to see how many people viewed their profile pages and which social networks they went on to view from there, thus providing users with deeper insight into how to build and market themselves online. Inspiration For inspiration you can checkout the pages in the featured section found on the bottom of the first page and the pages of the founders of the site. Featured pages Page of Tony Conrad, one of the founders of about.me (http://about.me/tonyconrad) Page of Ryan Freitas, another founder of about.me (http://about.me/ryanchris) Creating your own page Step 1 : Sign up Start by signing up and creating a unique url for you as about.me/your-name Step 2 : Register Register your name, write a short biography about yourself or leave it for later. Choose the tags which you think are appropriate to you or your work. Step 3 : Customize Background Your page is now online! Customize your page by changing the background, there are some in-house templates that you can use. However since about.me is all about branding yourself try using a high-resolution image of your own to fill up the entire screen, works pretty well for most of the pages Step 4 : Biography The next step is writing a short Biography, here you can write something about who you are and what you do, if you have skipped it in step 2. Step 5 : Color and Font settings Edit the colors to suit your background and your taste. Change the font likewise. Step 6 : Add services Now this is the most important part of setting up the page, adding the services. There are a few popular services. Choose the ones you are subscribed to and would like to add to your profile. Once you click and choose any of them you will be redirected to the website of the service, where you need to login once and approve permission. You are automatically redirected back to your about.me page once you have authorized the use of the service. Step 7 : Add contact preferences Set up your contact preferences using the contact tab. I have selected email contact and AOL chat option, which remains visible on my profile. Step 8 : Using Analytics Click on the Dashboard and select ‘Profile Statistics’ to view how many people have visited your website. Click on the ‘clicks’ tab and you can view the statistics of your added services that were visited in the selected timeframe. I believe this is a very good feature in analyzing which of your online profiles are most viewed, and as I have said earlier it can serve as a useful insight to brand yourself. Step 9: Find friends Click on the Account and select ‘Find Your Friends’ option to see who are already on about.me. Once you find your friends from your other networks you can ‘fave’ their profile, and it will be added to your favorites. Step 10 : Ready to go The last step is sharing your newly made page with your friends on other networks who are not yet on about.me or are not aware of this service. Inspire them to join or have a look at your page by selecting ‘Share Your Profile’ from the Account tab. You can alternatively send emails with link to this page using the e-mail option. So there,my friend is my business card online. Its simple, sleek and easy to share.

SliderWall Giveaway: 5 Commercial Licenses of jQuery Image Slider Posted: 29 Feb 2012 02:00 AM PST Are you ready for yet another amazing giveaway? SliderWall is giving away 5 commercial licensees to our lucky readers! If you have been dreaming of placing a jQuery slider on your website but can’t find the perfect solution for it, then you’ve definitely come to the right place! How do you win this awesome jQuery slider? Read on! What is SliderWall? SliderWall is a jQuery image slider that is made purely using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. SliderWall is a very flexible tool in terms of user customization and responsiveness when it comes to mobile devices. Meaning, it will display just fine on your desktop, tablet, and smartphones, eliminating the worry of cross-platform compatibility. As mentioned, it is very easy to customize if you know a little about CSS. It has a lot of cool transition effects and many uses. You can use SliderWall for: Tours & Presentations If you have a product to sell or a service to pitch in, you can definitely use SliderWall to tell your website’s visitors everything they need to know about your business, with style! Image Slider Are you a photographer, illustrator, painter, or someone along those lines? Then why not show your work to the whole world using this amazing image slider! Video Slider Of course this should be a functionality every image slider should have. SliderWall nailed it! Video slider on your website? Now isn’t that ultra cool? Tab Slider Now be honest, you want to get your hands on it, right?! Don’t forget to check out the SliderWall demo so that you can really feel and experience its awesomeness! Main Features: 15 cool transitions Touchscreen support SEO friendly RSS feed support Video support HTML content support and a lot more! The Giveaway SliderWall is giving away 5 Commercial Licenses worth $99 each which our loyal readers can use on a single domain. With a commercial license, the winners can use it on any type of commercial project. All features included! Can’t wait? You can give it a try right now by downloading the free version of SliderWall. How to Win It’s simple, all you have to do is: Tweet, +1, and Share this so that more people will know about it (spread it across every social network you have!) Comment here containing the links to your Tweet or +1 (people might start following you, who knows?). Tell people you know about this amazing tool! Then the waiting begins. Winners will be announced next week, so check back! Winners will be selected using Random.org.

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