These days, more and more emphasis is being put on beautifying the graphic user interface (GUI). One of the easiest ways to attract the attention is to put some eye candy there. It should hold the attention and make a viewer dig deeper in to the your application. If the Website or application has drab looks, it will give a bad first impression.

While surfing through the jungles of internet, I came across icons-land.com, a website that provides icons for your applications or Websites. Provided your software is useable, these icons will give you value addition to the products. There is a wide collection of icons for toolbars, places, sports, emoticons, transports, multimedia devices, and modern hardware. The icons are designed in Windows Vista style, so this will give you an idea about how cool the icons look. They will be a treat for your eyes in the Windows Vista Aero interface.

Icons-land has cheap high-quality icons in stock. You can visit the Website and get the ones that you like. If you don’t like what you see, then custom design service is also available out there.

There is a set of icons for variety of purposes like Points of Interest (POI), GPS, basic software, weather, etc. A set will cost you around $50-$120 depending on what you are buying and you can also purchase a single icon for $5.

These icons are a good option for developers who are looking for icons for their applications or Websites. I have seen a lot of iPhone apps using icons made by Icons-Land and was pleased with them.

The quality is top notch, it adds to the beauty of the user interface. The icons looked fresh, clear and they use vibrant colors.

Other highlights of this service are:

• Icon formats, which depend on the icon set. You can check the package details that you will be ordering. Mostly, the icons are given in .ico and .png format. The former is for Windows applications whereas the latter is for Websites, Linux applications, mobile phone apps, toolbars and Windows apps.
• Icons are given in Alpha channel+TrueColor. Maximum size of the icons is 256×256. You might need icons in different sizes like 128×128, 96×96, 80×80, 72×72, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16. You will get icons converted in your preferred size for free!
• Icons, once purchased can be used for unlimited websites and software applications. You buy them, you own them! You can also modify these icons according to your needs. However, you cannot distribute them to any other party for their use.
• The service uses eSellerate for payments. All major credit cards like JCB, American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa are accepted. You can also use PayPal while placing your order.
• Accepted currencies for payments are Swiss Franc, Sweden Krona, South African Rand, Singapore Dollar, Norwegian Krone, New Zealand Dollar, Japanese Yen, Hong Kong Dollar, Danish Krone, Canadian Dollar, British Pound, Australian Dollar, Euro and US Dollar.

I will be asking all my developer friends to have a look at Icon-land.com for icons on their applications.

We have talked enormously about how to set up an online business (selling service or products) and improve it consistently in the past years. However, many of our customers and readers are advanced – technologically, mentally, psychologically, commercially, and in many other ways that are impossible to gauge.

There are countless websites, blogs, and online businesses today on the web. However, if we don’t ensure that we are at par with the 2010 standards, it quite useless to expect something great of our business. This advanced world demands advanced methods to survive the competition and ever-changing trends.

Here is a comprehensive list of things you need to ensure your website has, if you intend to boost your business, in 2010 –

1. Make regular use of Videos

   I admit I haven’t used this tool till date. Frankly because I wasn’t aware about the power it holds in augmenting a business today. Say, you have a travel blog and instead of explaining every minute detail about a place, you can supplement it with a video of that place. It’s perfectly okay if you don’t have your own video. Find it on any of the search engines and I am sure you will get video for about everything on earth.

   Not only travel or health blogs, this goes for every kind of online business. If you aren’t using this tool, you aren’t utilizing much of the facilities internet has to offer. Make your own videos with tools like Windows Movie Maker or any other software and start uploading frequently. People love video. More importantly, Google loves videos. Be prepared to receive double traffic, if you website has helpful videos.

2. Be Unique; stand out from the crowd

   This point have been discussed over and over again by every blogging expert and it will remain a priority even in 2050 or 2500. Yet we see boring blogs and tedious affiliate marketing sites everywhere. It’s simple. Why would people be attracted to your website, if there are 50,000 other sites offering same service or product in a similar way?

   Make the offer tempting and irresistible in a unique, original way. If you are writing a blog, develop a Unique Selling Point (USP). Have a unique name, unique logo, unique punch line; make everything unique. Check out the top performing websites and list down what’s good and what’s not. Now start thinking how you can beat those sites. Yes, you have to do this. The competition is tougher, tougher than ever.

3. Increased use of Social Media Tools

   

   The year 2009 witnessed astonishing blend of internet and social media tools. Anything and everything is being linked with the social media. So, it’s obvious and commonsensical that the dependency and usage of social media tools will increase rapidly in 2010. Here’s the bottom line: if you aren’t making much use of these tools, either wind up your business or start using it today.

   Use tools like facebook, twitter, dig, etc to expand the availability of your business. Constantly update your facebook page; answer all the questions on linkedin, create your communities; establish yourself on twitter and tweet frequently about new products, news, information, etc. If you have decided to run a business, become an expert in it.

4. Your readers and customers is your priority

   Every business on earth thrives on customer service and customer relation. You’re your readers/customers are happy, they are the most effective source of advertisement available today. However, for this to happen, you need to take little pains. Have a very close and personal relation with every customer. For those who don’t have time for this, forget about success.

   Try to find how you ca improve your service or product with their comments, suggestions, and feedback. Have good email etiquette and reply to all queries, appreciations, suggestions, etc. use Google alerts to know customer views about your business. Retain existing customers and attract huge new traffic by only one tool: extremely excellent customer service. Ask yourself: Don’t you like buy from a store where every sales person knows your name and shopping habits? Everyone loves it. Treat them like KINGS.

5. Let everyone know about you and your business

   

   If you are involved into something, do it wholeheartedly or simply quit. What’s the use of having a site that known to only few of readers, most of them being your friends and relatives?

   Promote! Advertise! Endorse! Let the world know about your website. Make sure to use every possible tool on internet to promote your business. Have your presence everywhere on the internet, yellow pages, directories, guides, indexes, and search engines. Be a part of forum discussions, press releases, write classified ads, targeted lists, and every other source. If you are wealthy enough to afford offline advertisements involve in sending mails, posters, business cards, etc.

6. Wiki it

   Millions of internet users use wikipedia to avail information about everything on earth because they consider it as a reliable source of information. Here is how you can use it to promote your business. Write a short description about your product, service or business or hire some professional writer to draft it and post it in wikipedia. Search engines especially Google love wikipedia. This source can help you spread your business quicker than wild fire because it has excellent page rank. Remember, there are over 685 million wiki visitors. Do you know any market bigger than this to promote your site?

7. Stay alert with media, stay ahead of your competition

   Be alert. Know everything about your business, industry, competitors, and target audience. Sing up for Google alerts, read news articles, explore details and be well-informed. Read news articles regularly, trace them and contact the mead reporters who are always searching stories for their next article. Similarly, get connected with the fellow bloggers and promote your business.

   If you are successful finding a reporter, send out press releases every month. However, make sure make sure it has something useful and you have drafted it properly. These press releases form an amazing source of promotion and trustworthiness among readers.

8. Target, Monetize and Improve

   Target the right market, monetize your website effectively, and improve to generate more value. This isn’t 2010 specific. If your business lasts till 2100, it will still be a significant and constructive point. It’s important to get traffic to your website. However, it worthless if the type of traffic attracted isn’t what you are looking for. Get the right kind of audience and you are sure to succeed, even if you don’t have a great product or service to offer. That’s monetizing your site.

   Lastly, all the stuffs mention here is nothing but an improvement. Your focus should always be how you can improve the service quality, provide better and variety of products, improve overall designs. If you look at your website, even today, you will find every corner needs an improvement, in order to achieve perfection.

Irrespective of the year or century you are in, things are changing everyday, every hour, and every minute. This world, especially internet has developed into a place that needs constant modification, value addition, and commitment to survive and be on the top. Have you done the necessary changes? Are you advanced than the others?

Intrinsically, there is nothing erroneous about working. In fact, it’s quite appreciative if you love your work and find it stimulating, motivating, and gratifying. These reasons are enough to keep you busy with inexhaustible work for most of the hours of your day.

However, there comes a time in your hectic life when you realize there is something more than work that needs your attention. You realize resting is essential, and the pressure of work is beginning to become a major issue. It’s time to sit back and explore a different approach when work starts affecting your relationships, cheerfulness, and fitness.

I can’t really fling a readymade expedient on your table nor would you want me to. However, I am sure you can derive some help in your exploration from the below mentioned steps.

1. Why do you achieve your work targets?

   No, I ain’t saying you don’t have to. It’s perfectly normal to achieve it and quite natural to be proud about it. However, it shouldn’t be the only focus of your life. When was the last time you listed down a ‘to do list’ for your family? When was a last time you thought about doing something about your hobby, passion, or something you love?

   If working hard is your passion, that’s great. But, there has to be something more. Something that you love other than work. There would be a hobby, maybe you haven’t started it yet, but you love thinking about it. Or maybe you love being with a family member or a friend.

   I wouldn’t buy it if you say “I don’t love anything except work”. This happens only when you act being a workaholic, not a real one because a human, workaholic or not, has some desires, hidden passions, or simply likings.

   Take a pen and paper, and start jotting down 5 things that makes you happy. Remember, none of them should involve your office work and at least one of them gotta be a person. Do it. Don’t you need a balanced life?

   Start giving some time to these 5 things. You can start by sparing just few minutes to each of them out of your busy 24 hours.

2. Are you a workaholic?

   The answer to this question is yes when you literally dream about it every night in your sleep. And you think about it in while you are awake, all the hours.

   

   If you are one of these workaholics, consider these three points.

   First, set a deadline and follow it. For instance, decide not to work after 6 pm. Inform your office staff not to call after 6 and avoid working from home.

   Second, this deadline means no even checking emails about work. Turn off you mobile phone and even your personal computer. And please, don’t take those heaps of paper when you are out with your wife and kids.

   Third, do something. Don’t just sit home and think about work. Join and gym and work out every evening. If you are a lucky single, go for a date. Spend some time listening to your kid or take him to a café or zoo. Think about a hobby, generate passion and spend some time developing it. There is so much to do. It just needs your ‘Yes, I will do it’ to initiate.

3. Just relax

   Minimize your stock-market window and explore ways to relax and fight stress. Search for one and I am sure your search engine will pop thousands of them.

   Select any couple of them to start with. Make sure you involve one physical activity. You can opt to walk, jog, swim, or do anything. But do it. Spend some time doing it every day, at least 10-15 minutes.

4. Feel good about what you do

   Working twenty hours a day is not a way of living. Accept that anything in access is harmful. You need a balance, professional-personal balance. You are motivated to experience the contentment of achieving work targets. Now is the time to motivate yourself to experience the pleasure of relaxation, being fit, meditation, quality time spent with your family, a smile on your loved one’s face. These are real pleasures of your life.

You won’t enjoy relaxing when you first do it. It takes time to adjust, to alter your lifestyle, to de-stress. A transformation cannot happen in a day, nor will you feel happy about it. But you have to do it, from small steps to big ones, from negative to positive, from happiness to contentment, from workaholic to a human.

The world over, businesses are setting up their store online and building bonds with far off customers settled in different continents of the globe, the common that binds them altogether are their mutual ties through networking or a business site. More often than not, you will see its through business sites that customers know each other and they get to interact with the owner personally. This is one of the biggest advantages of setting up an online store but along with that you need a good appealing design for the visitors on your site. For long I have been searching on and on for such valuable resource until I came across this wonderful site, which design graphics for business owners and have different packages to select from. The site www.algozone.com, it helps you build a good presence over Internet, it has different types of e-commerce templates to help you design a good web portal. There are varied modules, design, graphs to select from.

www.algozone.com has all ready to use templates, not requiring much of the time to set up, it is affordable and easy to use. The site is expert in providing you with custom solutions for your business along with ecommerce tools and development done from their end. The various e-commerce solutions that the site provides are CRE loaded, zen cart, oscommerce, , oscmax, magento and other various solutions. It works on different types of platform and is compatible with any applications you might be using.

They have some largest collection of advance ecommerce template not found in common laymen’s site providing you with awesome features. They help you improve your products navigation in the site thereby helping surfers on the site with easy access. Each of your products presentation will surely appeal to your customers, in marketing field the presentation is what all counts and its just 10% that depends on your customers to buy so 90% is on the way you present along with valued features and advantages. They have improved conversion rates, which are beneficial for template layout and the modules. Their designs are latest in markets all over the globe, taking in to consideration the tastes of young generation with different styles, techniques, and fashion quotient. The list of their templates keeps updating every few days thereby providing space for new designs to emerge and for you to use the latest available templates for your websites. The new templates lately listed on the site are DIV based so that it help in fast loading and rendering elements of the site with clarity. The templates are SEO friendly, not interfering in the rankings of your site.

They are easily edited with back ends under your control with unified code structure and customized images to suit your body texts, each of the images placed on the site are optimized for faster downloading so it helps to build the first impression on your site visitors. Its one of the best design solutions I ever came across, I am really happy with their templates performance on my site and my clients are happy with me!