13 Logo Design Services You Can Use Today

As you build your company and website, you probably want to present something unique, something that is memorable about your company image. Many companies choose to create a logo to identify their brand and company. But often, creating an original logo when you are first starting out is too expensive.

So here are 13 logo creation applications or services that range in price from free to affordable. This list of free and paid services should help you find the best tools. One word of warning: Several of the “free” sites are free only for the creation process. Always read the fine print.

If you want to download the logo you’ve created and have unlimited use, there is a charge, and I tried to note when that occurs.  To be totally realistic, you could do some of this work yourself in Powerpoint or a decent drawing program, but there are small companies starting today that don’t have those software programs, and these mostly Web-based tools might appeal.

Free (or Mostly Free)

Supalogo is one of my favorites for creating a super-fast font-based logo. You type in your text, pick some options and hit download. You can even look at samples and click edit and start from there. Nicely done.

Logo Victory is a completely free logo design tool that lets you download a jpeg image. If you want other file formats, they have a small upgrade charge. They also offer paid services starting at $49. This was one of the only sites that offered a no-strings free logo.

Marketsplash is a completely free (with registration) logo design service. I was impressed with it. It is built and run by HP, which I mention in other places, but this tool lets you download a few different versions of your logo with a simple registration.

The Logo Creator is free logo creation software. No trial, no demo, fully free in return for a tweet. Yes, a tweet on Twitter and you can have their software for free. From the logos showcased on the site, it looks like a fairly robust application. The offer was tested and worked at the time of publishing this post.

CoolText lets you type out your company name and then choose different ways to stylize the font itself. Handy, fast and free if all you want is your name with a bit of energy to it.

Logo Ease offers a fully free logo creation tool. You have to register, but they let you create and download (they send you the link) the logo that you spent time creating. When you get your download link, it comes with instructions to include a link back to their site. They also offer paid services.

Logo Craft lets you select an icon from predefined categories, then add text and effects. Once it is ready, save the logo or download it for future use. You can access the logos you created anytime and edit them further. Very easy to use. They also offer a custom design service starting at $49.

Flaming Text is similar to CoolText, but I liked a few of their different options. I could see using sites like these for a young company, a nonprofit or a project. For some companies, this is all they might ever need.

Real World Graphics offers a few Web apps to help you create icons or favicons (those tiny little symbols you often see on websites and in social networks).

Sherv.net offers Icon Maker, which can be ideal for those who are building a company around their personal name and identity. It will let you take your photo into a cartoon-like drawing. It might work well for those building a Facebook page, too. Admittedly, this one is more of a fun creation tool and not a serious branding option.

Logo Venture is another service that appears to be best custom logo design service, you can get a logo for as low as $49.

LogoBlog is a free logo creator similar to CoolText and Flaming Text. No registration, just download your completed font logo in a few different formats.

GRSites offers logo creation, text box creation (such as for a sidebar or additional column area on your blog or site), and other design features like textures. They do ask for a link back to their site, but offer some nifty tools.

Tweak offers a completely free logo creator for a low-resolution JPEG image file. If you want a higher resolution JPEG or an EPS file for a high quality print job, you can purchase them for $9.95 and $29.95, respectively. Fast and easy to create, focused on font specific layouts, and you have to register to get to the download page.

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Infographic : Giving the Trusted Windows PC its Own Spring Cleaning

In this infographic you will learn how to speed up, revive and clean up your Windows PC. You won't have to take your computer to a fancy computer wizard and shell out big bucks or give up your first born son. All you have to is sit down for an afternoon or evening and follow the steps in this infographic and look around your house for a couple of household objects to clean out some dust and you should be good.

1. First we need to actually clean out the dust and grime.
2. Then you just need to get everything up to date in your computer.
3. Now it's time to get rid of unwanted applications and big files that you don't use anymore. 
4. Go ahead and start reclaiming some space on your hard drive with the tools that Windows supplies: Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter
5. Organize your files.
6. Now that everything is tidy, back it up.

Okay, that about covers it, but I'd like to leave you with one last suggestion. You can also buy a registry cleaner that will help you with this. It will schedule scans for you and do almost all of these functions for you, except the dishes and dusting of course!

Guest Author: Erin Walsh is the main blogger at PC Health Boost. She writes many articles on how to speed up and clean up pc errors. http://www.pchealthboost.com/clean_up_pc.php

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ASO - App Store Optimization: How to Get Found On the App Store

Now that you have spent all of this time and money creating your app, you want to make sure it is downloaded and installed by as many people as possible. The most sure fire (and secure) way of doing this is by adding it to one of the big app stores online. There are four of them, and the one you list your app on is dependent upon which operating system you have built your app for.

The big online stores are run by Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry. However, getting listed on one of their stores is no small task. Not only do you have to prove that your app is secure and stable, you also have to have created an interesting or original app (an original idea), otherwise there is a large chance that the app will be rejected.

Surely once I am on an app store the battle is won
Actually, this is where the battle begins. You can create your own website for your app, but few people will download your app because a lot of people have trouble trusting third party sites. People know that if they buy from Apple, Google, Microsoft or BlackBerry, then the apps have been tested and are far less likely to be insecure of holding a virus/malware. So you need to get yourself on a large app store, at which point you need to start competing with the other apps on there.

The app store with the least amount of apps is BlackBerry, who have a store that holds 100,000 apps. This is no small number, and that is a lot of competition. The company with the most apps is Apple who have over 700,000 apps listed on their app store. So how do you compete with so many other apps? Here are some tips that apply to all four major app sellers.

Consider your key phrases carefully
These are similar to the tagged words that you use with a blog. Your key phrases should revolve around the things that users are going to type into Google and the app store search engines. Do not forget that Google posts results from app stores, so you cannot ignore the influence of Google.

You need to pick and include key phrases to go with you app. Each store allows you to add a certain number of key phrases, so look at what other people have used who have similar apps to yours. Think up some key phrases, type them in, and see if any of your competitors appear on the search results. If they do not, then you may need to re-think your key phrases.

Post a very useful and comprehensive description
Some of the app stores will optimize your app on the search results with what you write on your app description. Some of them will actually lower your search ranking if you only add a small description of your app. Try to make the description comprehensive, very descriptive, but easy to read. Do not be overly promotional as most app stores reject overly promotional app descriptions.

Short, sharp and concise paragraphs
This will make your app description more readable, so that when your app is found, more people will be willing to consider buying your app. Your first paragraph on your description is very important in some of the app stores.

A very appealing mini description
The mini description is the description that appears besides your app when it is searched for within the app store itself. On the search results you will see your mini description appear next to the icon for your app. Sometimes this description appears on the Google search results too, so it is very important that you get it right.

There are two ways that this can be done, and the first is to enter your mini description in the space provided. However, some of the app stores will take the first paragraph of your app description as your mini description. So you need to make sure your first paragraph is short, sharp, saleable, concise and very appealing.

A good and attractive app icon
This is something you should do because some people judge an app by its icon. If yours looks cheap or silly then you are going to lose sales, especially when your icon appears besides the more professional looking ones on the app store.

John Kravz is a representative of Vpn-guru.com. Read more about torguard vpn.

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Dropbox Chat 1.1

Hey guys, 

Here is another software release. I've been working on this for 2 days, this is version 1.1 of the application and should work well without any bugs but if you do happen to find anything wrong be sure to let me know. 

About/Using:

Dropbox Chat is an application that you, and your friends use while sharing a dropbox folder. You add a text file to a shared folder, and each person has that file linked to the chat application. Using this we can chat to everyone in that shared folder. 

The first time you run the application a First Time Wizard will be displayed taking you through the steps of setting everything up. You need to enter a display name for when you're chatting, and the text file which must be located in the shared dropbox folder. 

After you've used the First Time Wizard you can use the program to chat by entering a message and pressing enter or clicking the send button. If you need to change the settings again in the future you can right click and select Settings, you can also choose to delete the chat log, but this deletes everyone else's chat too. 

Image: (cause we all love images!)

Requirements:

You will need .Net Framework 4.5 to run the application
You will need an internet connection to run the updater, and to update the chat. 

Download:

This is a direct archive download from my dropbox. 

Click here to download Dropbox Chat 1.1

Since 1.0 I added the automatic updater, designed a new setup wizard and a few bug fixes. Please be sure to let me know what you think of my program, and tell me all of your suggestions

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SEO Tips For Marketing Your App

If you have developed a great app then you need to start marketing it in order to increase sales and make sure you are earning some money with your app. It is a really good idea to learn some basic SEO to guarantee that search engines rank your new app higher and people will be more able to find it.
Here are some essential SEO tips to help you out.

Make Sure You Have Strong Online Presence

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have a strong online presence even if you are only going to publish this one app. Make sure you brand your app by building a website to talk about the app and by joining social media platforms in order to market your app. This is important because the more there is overall talk about your app the more you are going to get people interested. So before you publish your app start building an online presence.

Be Wise With The Listing

When you are listing your app on the marketplace it is really important that you include links to your webpages as these will help improve your search engine ranking. Many major companies are really bad at using their links as part of the listing process and you really shouldn’t do the same mistake. So link directly to your landing pages and make sure your app name is included in this landing page to improve your ranking even more.

Search The Keywords People Use

When you get people using your app it is really important that you look into their use of the app and see if you can find some keywords based on this information. For instance, if you have an app about cooking recipes you should look what are the recipes people using your app are using the most and then take advantage of this recipe as a keyword to get more people interested in your app.

Always Link To A Marketplace

When you are including a link to buy your app you can’t make the mistake of forgetting to use the name of the marketplace and your app name. What this means is that instead of linking with the anchor text of “Buy here for iPhones” you must mention your app name “Buy X here for iPhones”, with X obviously being your app. Search engines pick this up a lot better than if you don’t use it. The same goes for always mentioning the correct marketplace in your app’s anchor text as well.

Talk About Development

You can also get more views and more people talking about your app if you blog about the development process. So from the moment you download an Android software development kit to the moment you publish it is a good idea to blog about the process and get people interested on your product.

Get People Talking

You also want to promote as much organic marketing as possible because this is really the best form of SEO for any app. Marketing Land suggests using social media and encouragement to get people to link and talk about your app as much as possible.

Gary is a big technology geek and he loves to find out how people can market their apps better in order to get into the app market. When he isn't reading SEO tips he likes to spend time learning to speak French.

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