Use a Photoshop-style Eyedropper Tool in your Browser

Have you ever been frustrated when trying to match colors between images, pages, and website stylesheets? If you’re using Firefox or Chrome, you can install a plugin which will allow you to use a Photoshop-style eyedropper tool anywhere, on any page or image, and have it copy to your clipboard as an HTML hexadecimal code which you can paste into stylesheet or imaging program.

On Firefox, check out the colorPicker Add-on. Once installed, click the eyedropper icon on the top right of the browser window, next to your other tools, then hover over the spot you need to find the color of, and press the ‘esc’ key.

colorPicker Firefox Add-on Window

If you’re using Chrome, you can use the ColorZilla plugin, which works very similarly. Install the plugin, then click the eyedropper icon and select Pick Color From Page.

ColorZilla menu

Hover over the area you need to copy, then click, and the color is copied to your clipboard as a hexadecimal value for you to paste.

ColorZilla color identification bar

These tools are sure to save you time and hassle when designing or making adjustments to your site.

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Populate your CRM from your LinkedIn Contacts

Getting started with CRM can be difficult- how to build a lead base quickly can be the most difficult task for any new sales person. However, if they’ve got a personal network, especially using LinkedIn, importing your contacts is easy peasy with this tip:

Export your LinkedIn contacts

You can easily transfer from contacts from LinkedIn to another service by visiting this page: http://www.linkedin.com/addressBookExport and selecting from the available options. You can save your address book in one of several spreadsheet formats tailor-made for Outlook or Yahoo! Mail or as a VCF file which is compatible with a Mac OS Address Book.

via 5 things you didn’t know you could do with LinkedIn – 10,000 Words.

You can also export your Outlook contacts that way as well. Unfortunately the Apple Address book doesn’t easily spit out CSV- only VCF files. Our CRM of choice, the open source vTigerCRM, doesn’t have a really great vCard import capability (best trick- import to Gmail contacts- then export).

The only downfall with LinkedIn is most people don’t have complete contact info available- you are lucky to get name, company, title, and e-mail address at most. However, that’s when you set up a mass-mailing to direct them to a portal contact update page to fill in the rest of the data you need- these are your business associates after all.

Update: Linkedin was bought by Microsoft and they disabled the email downloads. “Your data is yours” as far as who your contacts are, and where they may be working, but, their email is LinkedIns. See this page on how to get what’s left of what they will let you see: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/66844/exporting-connections-from-linkedin?lang=en

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Dolphin 7 CMS- Smart Community Builder

A local site is using Dolphin 7 to build a community site. Check out www.themiamivalley.com and see what Dolphin can do.

While the installed base of Drupal and Joomla both exceed where Dolphin is today, with the way things change on the web, it’s hard to say what will be the leader tomorrow.

From the Dolphin site:

Open-source, independent, downloadable, scalable, customizable, full-featured, free software for building social networks, dating sites and web-communities.Loaded with video chat, recorder, video player, forums, groups, events, video messenger, mailbox, desktop app, video sharing, photo sharing, iPhone app and much more. Build your own business or advance your hobby with Dolphin!

via BoonEx Dolphin – Smart Community Builder.

They have an intro video that has a voice over that’s almost comedic in it’s tone- but, shows a level of sophistication in marketing that other Open Source CMS systems have yet to reach.

Note, Dolphin isn’t entirely free- to remove links back to their site and totally own the brand you have to pay- but, compared to the cost of trying to assemble the whole thing in another CMS- it may be worth it.

We haven’t crawled under the hood of Dolphin yet- but we plan to. If you have any experience with Dolphin compared to Drupal or Joomla, we’d love to hear your feedback.

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