Posts by Bryan Hoffman
Harvest feature updates before end of ’08
The holiday season was not just for egg nog quaffing and loitering under the mistletoe for the folks over at Iridesco. They managed to push out a new set of minor features to their Harvest time tracking app. Here’s the rundown: Estimate by people hours. Duplicate invoice. Quarterly recurring invoice. Optional project notes. Department for…
Read MoreWeb design business tools
How SD gets the day to day business done. When asked what I do for a living, my response is generally, “I’m a web designer.” And while it’s certainly true that I spend the majority of the time building websites, I also spend a lot of time running my business. I don’t have a full…
Read MoreGiving MarsEdit a test drive
I find that the WordPress Admin window for adding a new post is much too small. Yes, I know you can make it bigger by dragging the form window open, but it messes with the layout of the site and feels more like a band-aid solution than a robust answer. Add the fact that I…
Read MoreAn open letter to Iridesco
Dear Iridesco, Let me start by saying that I love Harvest. It has saved me a ton of time in billing for projects and tracking how much time each aspect of a project takes. I agree completely when you say it’s the ‘worlds best time tracking application.’ It’s worth every cent of the subscription costs.
Read MoreDropping future support for IE6
Checking the stats for spigotdesign.com today revealed that less than 10% of the visitors here are using Internet Explorer 6. This is great news! This means we can now officially drop support for this outdated browser, at least on this site. Now that I’ve reached the vaunted 10%, and with newer browsers continuing to improve…
Read MoreNew Spigot Design logo unveiled
While not a new logo per se, we’re proud to announce a cleaner, smoother version of our logo. The old version was drawn in one quick motion and was meant to be a playful representation of the company. It’s served us well for the last 4 years, but we decided it was time to clean…
Read MoreBetter email communication: Part II
Tame the multi-pointed beast Note: Part 2 in a series on better email communication. Write better, get better results. Here’s Part I. That beast above is called Hydra, a multi headed creature from Greek mythology. It was said to possess the ability to grow back any of its heads that happened to be cut off,…
Read MoreBetter email communication: Part I
Imagine if Moses had come down from that mountain not with two huge stone tablets with 10 commandments for the people to follow, but with one small tablet, with a single commandment. Wouldn’t have that been a lot easier to remember? I wonder if God thought 10 was a pretty concise number for a while,…
Read MoreFirst Hand: How to begin a blog
When starting a section on your site that you intend to update on a frequent basis, its a good idea to ask yourself a few questions first. As this is my first real post, I’ll go ahead and use myself as a real life example to the process. Step 1: Pick your audience Often you’ll…
Read More