Creativity is one of those things that is very hard to measure. At the same time, there’s just a certain something that you recognize when you say that you like a particular design. And I like what Loaded Designs has to offer.

Nathan is the guy behind Loaded Designs and he’s the BlueFur customer of the week. If you head over to his website, you’ll learn that he is a freelance graphic designer with “creative solutions” that will “capture engaging results.” He offers print, branding, and interactive services, ranging from brochures to logos, website design to product packaging.

To get a sense of Nathan’s particular brand of style, be sure to check out the portfolio on his site too. There, you can see the campaigns that he helped to create for DLish Urban Kitchen, Western Living Homes, Caritas Home Lottery, Experience Realty Group, and others. I particularly like the logo he made for Urban Games.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

The great thing about WordPress is that it can be used as the platform for so many different sites. We’ve seen themes that are great for business sites, blogs, and even e-commerce stores. Now, let’s look at Fliphoto theme, which is designed largely for photo blogs.

The design itself is quite clean and simple, but it is remarkably robust in its feature set too. You get the main header image at the top, of course, while the main content area is divided up to show six very large thumbnail images that can then link out. Interestingly, each also has a “more info” link that animates the panel, flipping it over to reveal more information about that post. That’s very slick!

The thumbnail images are automatically resized within WordPress, so as an avid photographer or graphic designer, you don’t need to resize your images to suit the blog’s dimensions. Other nice features include the widget-friendly footer, no need for a plugin to get related posts, and integration with various social bookmarking networks.

Check out the live demo of Fliphoto Photoblog Theme at SimplyWP.net. Read up on the features and then hit the download link to get this theme for free.

What’s happening in the ‘sphere this week? Let’s have a look.

Teague Publishing‘s Derek Semmler starts us off with a call out to poets. He’s looking for submissions from all the poets on the Internet, putting together and publishing a compilation where all the proceeds will go directly to charity. Donate your words to a good cause.

Anny Chih had a revelation the other day. Despite thinking she’s Canadian, she discovered she’s really American. She was born in the United States, but never lived or worked there. Upon gaining this tidbit of knowledge, she must now figure out the taxation situation. Does she have to pay taxes in both countries?

Bob Buskirk runs a tech review site, so it only makes sense that he lives on the bleeding edge of technology. Check out how he is using the cloud to perform his daily duties. From Gmail for e-mail to Dropbox for file management, Bob really does live on the Internet.

Raul Pacheco-Vega continues on the technology trend by offering us his review of the HP TouchPad. This tablet might not be on the radar of folks who might otherwise focus on the iPad or an Android tablet, but that doesn’t mean that it should go unnoticed. HP’s webOS has a lot to offer!

John Biehler finishes off with more fantastic technology, but with more of an artistic spin. He lets us know what he’s learned after using a 3D printer for a few weeks. In his own words, “Yes, it’s as awesome as you think it is.” Check out his Colbert timelapse for a look at how it works.

Social media and social networking have absolutely taken the world by storm. It really has opened up the communication channels for individuals and businesses alike, but are you getting maximum value out of it?

Absolutely, a big part of getting the most out of Twitter is to get active engagement with your customers and fans. However, even if you’re not as active on Twitter as some other companies, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get some value from it. In fact, just make sure your customers know that you are on Twitter and that they know your Twitter username.

This is critical, because it means that when they mention your brand, they are more likely to use your username (@company) rather than just your company name (company name). This lends itself to having their followers click through on the username and learn more about you. It’s much less likely that someone would copy and paste the company name into a search engine to learn more.

This is why, above all else, your Twitter bio, background image, and profile URL be kept up to date. They need to be informative, directing interested parties to your website to get more information about what you have to offer. Get on Twitter, get the mentions, and build your brand presence online.

Many people are making sizable incomes through their blogs. For some, it’s a part-time endeavor with part-time money. For others, it’s a full-time job. Whatever the case, selling advertising on a blog need not be too difficult.

In place of or in addition to the various advertising networks, you may also be interested in selling private advertising. If so, you’ll want to have some good ad management software. The A.M.Y. Lite WordPress Plugin is one option that you might want to consider.

This ad management extension is a more basic version of its paid equivalent, but it still gives you the functionality that you need to run private advertising. It automatically tracks expiration dates, so you don’t need to pull expired ads on your own. The plugin allows for ad rotation too.

Go to CalendarScripts.info for screenshots and more information about the A.M.Y. Lite plugin. That is also where you can access the free download link.

Depending on the size of the business and the number of employees, I can understand why a number of companies use automated menus for their telephone lines. A customer phones in looking for certain kinds of information and they have to navigate a “for X press 1″ kind of menu. That’s understandable, but it needs to be user friendly.

A couple of weeks ago, I called a store looking to get their business hours. I was already on the road and wanted to make sure that they would still be open by the time I got there. You would think that the automated menu would be designed to provide this kind of information, as well as the physical address, as quickly as possible. It should be one of the first options.

It wasn’t. In fact, I ended up having to go through four levels of menus before I was able to get the business hours. I had to first choose “business info”, then “more options”, then “store information”, and finally “business hours.” It shouldn’t take four levels of the menu hierarchy to get to something as basic as opening hours.

If you must use an automated phone menu, make sure that the most commonly asked questions are addressed as quickly as possible. Also try to minimize the number of total options and total layers. It also helps if “0″ is always to speak to an operator and this should be accessible at any point in the menu.