Smartlife

QR codes (an abbreviation of “quick response codes”) were invented in 1994 by a subsidiary of Toyota Motors. They were originally designed to track car parts during the manufacturing process, but it quickly became clear that the technology could be re-purposed for a wide variety of uses.

Despite being around for over a decade, QR codes were a fairly obscure technology until the advent of smartphones made them a fairly common part of modern life. Marketers and technologists are experimenting with all sorts of different ideas to make the most…

When you’re putting together a blog, outsourcing some of the writing is a good place to start. But you can outsource far more — from the actual setup and design of your blog, to SEO and marketing, there are a wide range of blogging professionals ready to help you. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of 50+ blog service providers — browse through their sites, look at their portfolios, and see which professional fits your blog’s needs.

If you’re trying to build an online presence for yourself or for your business, you almost certainly have asked this question: “Who will make the website?” Often one of the most difficult parts about building a website is quite simply finding someone to build it. There are definitely a lot of web developers on the Internet. So many of them in fact it’s actually quite difficult to figure out whom to hire.

Last week, Smartlife wrote a review of CSSRockstars and found that there are plenty of other HTML/CSS conversion companies out there worth a look — for example, XHTMLizers, XhtmlMagic, PSDChopstick, W3 <MARKUP/>, and many others.

Given the large number of companies who perform HTML/CSS conversion as a service (i.e., transform website designs into hand-coded markup), it’d be a challenge to narrow the playing field down to just one that meets everyone’s unique requirements across the board.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a review of 99designs, which hosts an online designer marketplace where you can crowdsource your design needs such as logos, graphics, website designs, and business cards. One question that came to mind while reviewing 99designs was, after you receive your new website design, then what? I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to spend the time coding it myself. Thankfully, this is where HTML/CSS conversion companies come in handy — they take your web design and transform it into a static, hand-coded HTML/CSS markup.

A few weeks ago, I posted an article outlining the steps that I followed in outsourcing the design of my professional blog. Check it out in case you haven’t read it yet.

In that post, I described how I compiled a list of blog design service providers, narrowed that list down to a manageable few, solicited request for quotes (RFQs) from those that made the shortlist, evaluated each designer against a set of criteria, and then made a selection based upon “best fit.” I personally chose E.Webscapes to complete the design for this site, but I recommend that you conduct your own evaluation based upon your unique needs and preferences.