New legislature would do away with tax-free online shopping

via digitaltrends.com

Say goodbye to tax-free shopping! Yesterday, the Senate voted for a bill that if legalized, will take away a nice perk we’ve all taken for granted while shopping online. This bill is called the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would force online retailers to tack on a sales tax for all online purchases. The bill will be voted on in the Senate for a final time on May 6.

The bill would change a 1992 law that didn’t require online-only retailers to pay a sales tax in states that require retailers to charge a sales tax unless this retailer had a brick and mortar store in the United States. Right now, how online shopping works is that if you’re shopping for something on BestBuy.com and Best Buy has a physical shop in your state, you’ve had to pay your state’s sales tax. However, if you bought something from Etsy, and the seller didn’t have a brick-and-mortar location, you didn’t have to pay the tax. If the proposed legislature passes, you will start paying that tax. With this bill, the state you live in will collect taxes for everything you buy online.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

7 Tips for More Effective Social Media Marketing

via freelanceswitch.com

We all read articles about how important it is to market ourselves through social media.

I’ve been talking to successful freelancers to find out the realities of using social media for business and getting their tips for the best ways to network and promote their work. Here are 7 tips that will boost your social media effectiveness.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

All Your Tax-Free Internet Shopping Is About To End

via businessinsider.com

States could force Internet retailers to collect sales taxes under a bill that overwhelmingly passed a test vote in the Senate Monday.

Under current law, states can only require stores to collect sales taxes if the store has a physical presence in the state. As a result, many online sales are essentially tax-free, giving Internet retailers a big advantage over brick-and-mortar stores.

The bill would allow states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. The sales taxes would be sent to the states where shoppers live.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Amazon's 14 Original Series Pilots Are All Online Now

via gizmodo.com

Amazon just launched the 14 pilot episodes for its original series showdown—six kids shows and eight comedies. Surely at least one of these programs will be good. Actually, we're pretty excited for a few of them, and why not check them out because they're free with your Amazon Prime account.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

iTunes is still the most popular way to buy music online

via digitaltrends.com

If you’re someone who actually purchases music online for download as opposed to opting for a streaming service, a new report suggests that you’re probably using Apple’s iTunes to do it. The study, released on Tuesday by the NPD Group, revealed that Apple’s music service continues to dominate the digital music download space for the final quarter of 2012.

The NPD study shows that iTunes had an impressive 63 percent marketshare for the final three months of last year, meaning that more than six in every ten music downloads were made through Apple’s storefront. That puts it significantly ahead of perpetual runner-up Amazon, which ranked second with 22 percent of the market.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Who's tracking you online? This app can tell you - and stop them

via digitaltrends.com

If you hate targeted ads, the Internet can be a very frustrating place. Online juggernauts like Twitter, Facebook, and Google keep developing partnerships with third-party sites that track your every mouse hover, all while developing native tracking programs. The goal: targeting you for ads with scary accuracy, and even if the objective is peddling wares and not peeping at your personal life, it’s at least invasive and at most a gross abuse of power. And the companies keep introducing new ways to bombard you, like how Facebook is testing targeted ads in its Graph Search and tightening its partnerships with third-party trackers.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

10 Tips To Optimize Your Online Presence (For Job Hunts)

via hongkiat.com

Everybody is connected, and it’s as easy as pie for companies and their recruiters to run a quick search on their prospective employees to find out about their attitudes toward work and assess their suitability for the job.

As a matter-of-fact, Dan Schawbel from Forbes goes as far as to suggest that our online presence will replace our resume in the near future. Given such an emerging trend, it is high time we become cognizant of what the Internet has to say about us. In the midst of a job-switch, it’s good practice to keep your online profiles presentable and optimized for your future employment opportunities.

You never know if a headhunter has ever considered you as a potential candidate for an attractive post but decided not to because of your less-than-appealing online presence. Follow these 10 simple and practical tips on managing your social profiles to make them resume-ready and increase your odds of getting the interview.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

What happens on the internet every minute?

via techi.com

In 60 seconds, Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, and their friendly carjacking cohorts can boost a high-dollar ride for sale to their fictional employer/nemesis. This is nothing compared to the things that happen on the web in any given 60 second period.

The folks over at ixtract put together a visualization that demonstrates some of the millions of activities that happen on the internet every minute. They include:

12 websites hacked
14 Spotify songs uploaded
20 victims of identity theft
50 blogs created
70 domains registered
100 LinkedIn accounts created
320 Twitter accounts created
411 Facebook accounts created
......

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Selling Photos Online - A Beginner's Guide to Selling Your Photographs

via medianovak.com

Selling Photos Online | When it comes to selling your photography online (or offline for that matter) it can seem like a daunting task, and if you’re not sure where to start, we’ve put together a basic guide which offers a few avenues that you can take, from where you to post your photography, to how to make sure your work gets noticed.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

7 Tips to Enhance Your Online Sales

via inspirationfeed.com

It goes without saying that the main purpose of your online store is to sell more and more. If you don’t have a clue about the psychology of online buyers and if you can’t exactly characterize yourself as a persuasive and skilled craftsman then this article is for you. If you want to be more prosperous, then you should definitely become acquainted to various psychological methods and engaging approaches.

Even if it seems hard at the beginning, any web designer will soon realize that understanding psychology could turn into gold. A simple suggestions would be for you to visit your local supermarket and observe how products are arranged. Once you focus on the details, you’ll notice that related products tend to go in pairs (for instance, the fish and fries are likely to be placed together in the freezer).

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Why kids must be taught digital manners

via techi.com

It’s a different era. The digital world is molding children in a way that is completely different from their parents. Some may say that it’s always the case as technology, culture, and societal norms change, but this is different. It’s faster. This isn’t just a matter of, “I don’t understand the music you kids listen to these days.” It’s a major shift in the way that kids interact with the rest of the world.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Amazon Shopping Tips And Tricks

via businessinsider.com

Amazon is the definitive e-commerce monster and the go-to destination for buying anything you could want over the Internet.

Here are the tips and tricks we use to make our Amazon shopping easy, painless, and incredibly convenient.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Total Bitcoin value passes $1 billion

via theverge.com

The combined value of all Bitcoins in circulation surpassed $1 billion this Thursday, as the exchange rate for each individual unit of the encrypted digital currency rose above $92. The milestone comes as the total number of Bitcoins nears 11 million and represents a huge jump from the record value of $32 recorded just one month ago. At the time of writing, the currency's market capitalization has dipped back below the billion mark, but small ups and downs are not uncommon — the current rate listed on Mt. Gox, the most popular Bitcoin exchange, is still well above $90.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

How to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft Online

via mashable.com

Identity theft has always been a concern, but with more and more details of our private lives openly accessible on the Internet, it's easier than ever for cybercriminals to steal somebody's identity — which is worth $5,000.

Criminals are also getting more sophisticated and tech savvy, but sometimes, we do most of the job for them. After all, "password" is still one of the most popular passwords on the Internet. And there's no need to tell you why that's a bad idea.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

10 Online Collaboration Tools for Creative Professionals

via designrshub.com

Online collaboration tools make work easier wherever you are in the world. Whether you are a designer or a businessman, these tools are designed to help you achieve your goals. Driving stronger relationships with clients through collaboration tools is a great focus. Since customer engagement is an important factor in a business, collaboration tool is essential to bridge a connection to improve client relationships.

Here’s a collection of online collaboration tools for creative professionals that you can use to develop your corporate strategy, name a product, create mockups or identify the solutions to issues in your organization as a team. If you are planning to conduct a web-based collaboration together with your team, the collaborative project management tools we gathered below will be a big help wherever you are.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Are smartphones the key to better online security?

via digitaltrends.com

Hundreds of millions of people use passwords every day — they unlock our devices, email, social networking, and even bank accounts. However, passwords are an increasingly feeble way to protect ourselves: Barely a week goes by without a major security gaffe hitting the news. This week, it’s Cisco — maker of much of the hardware that essentially powers the Internet.

Right now, almost everyone is looking to move beyond passwords to multifactor authentication: requiring “something you have” or “something you are” in addition to something you know. Biometric technologies that measure eyes, fingerprints, faces, and/or voices are getting more practical, but frequently fail for some people, and are hard to bring to hundreds of millions of users.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

20 Best Free Online Data Backup Tools

via smashinghub.com

In this digital age, when everything relies on data; losing important files and documents can be a great disaster. This is more so if the operation of your business relies on it. It is for this purpose that online storage tools were created as backup for import data that may get lost due to system failure and natural catastrophes like earthquakes, fire, flood, etc. Data backup not only save you time and guarantee the protection of your documents and files, but is also easy to do. It can also save you from tedious and expensive data recovery process, which does not even ensure that you will recover everything.

Subscribing to free backup tools online is the cheapest way to protect your data nowadays; as this also provides the benefits of large file-sharing, handy for collaborative tasks, and allows access from different computers in different locations. Here are the free online backup tools that you can access for your peace of mind.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Online Resources for Creating a Startup Marketing Plan

via designm.ag

After brainstorming your brand new idea it is time to put this company into action. The tech industry loves to refer to these new innovative business ideas as “startups” when they are in a heavy growth phase. Marketing is a huge proponent to the success of any startup, regardless of the idea or market base.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Are You That Person Who Clicks On Ads?

via readwrite.com

Admit it: you're that person. You're the one who spends over 23 hours watching online video every month. You're the one that is driving the online video market to $37 billion by 2017. You are the 83.3%.

Are you the same person who clicks on ads? The same person who is clicking the online advertising market into $100 billion territory in 2013?

Come on: is it you?

There's some evidence to suggest that the two go together. Most online video isn't the BBC soccer news stream that !%!%!% auto-plays whenever I visit a soccer news site (which, I will admit, is every 3.2 seconds - hey, someone needs to keep tabs on just how bad my Arsenal is). As a recent comScore report showcases, it's entertainment-oriented video on YouTube and Facebook, primarily, that people watch...

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

How to Build Your Online Reputation

via creativefan.com

Writing is a creative work. Like all creative works, it becomes very important for the creative minds to develop their own style. Having a distinct style will ensure a good online reputation. Today’s generation is a generation of virtual world. Everything is online. The creative world has now shifted its focus from print and television to internet. Internet not only reaches to millions but it also helps in sharing your creative work with others. Sharing your work online with others will also help you in finding people with similar interests. As more and more people are reading online, it becomes very important for a writer to have his article or blog on the net.

One of the advantages of having your writing online is that it gives you the opportunity to learn well. There are options where people can like or dislike your article or comment about the same. For a writer, it is very important to know how his/ her writing is received by the readers. Usually in print or television media, the response is not known immediately. On the other hand, the moment your article or blog gets posted on any popular site, the response is almost immediate. Hence, the writer will know how well his/ her work is received. The readers will either appreciate or criticise your work. But, as a creative person if you take criticism carefully, you will be able to become the most read writer.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios