Year: 2009

Could The Force be with you? A toy due in stores this fall will let you test and hone your Jedi-like abilities. The Force Trainer (expected to be priced at $90 to $100) comes with a headset that uses brain waves to allow players to manipulate a sphere within a clear 10-inch-tall training tower, analogous to Yoda and Luke Skywalker's abilities in the Star Wars films. No, you're not tapping into some "all-powerful force controlling everything," as Han Solo said in the movies. But you are reaching out with mind power via one of the first mass-market brain-to-computer products. "It's been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force," says Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing. Mind-control games may be the coming thing: Mattel plans to demonstrate a Mind Flex game (also due this fall), which uses brain-wave activity to move a ball through a tabletop obstacle course, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Thursday.

boxee – you are now free to be entertained – on a laptop or connected to an HDTV, boxee gives you a true entertainment experience to enjoy your movies, TV shows, music and photos, as well as streaming content from websites like Hulu, Netflix, ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and flickr.

Founded in March 2007, Hulu is co-owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. It is operated independently by a dedicated management team with offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Beijing.

Musicnotes.com is the leading Internet-based sheet music store offering nearly 90,000 pieces of digital sheet music and guitar tablature from Alfred Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Disney Music Publishing, Mel Bay Publications, BMG Music Publishing, Zomba Music Publishing, Brentwood-Benson, Peermusic Publishing, BUG Music, Famous Music Publishing, Word Music, Shapiro Bernstein, ICG, The Loving Company, Manna Music, Spirit Music, Faber Music LTD and EMI Christian Music Publishing with many titles from other publishers continually added to our online catalog. In addition to the instant delivery of digital sheet music, the site also offers music books & more, a catalog of more than two hundred sixty thousand traditional music titles, CDs and videos from Alfred Music Publishing, Hal Leonard, Mel Bay, Word Music, Music Sales Corporation and others. GuitarTabs LLC and MXTabs.net, the first legitimately licensed site designed to provide musicians with advertising-supported

We won’t mention Internet Explorer here. Nor Opera or even Google’s Chrome browser (disclaimer: I may write this post for Chrome in a few months once they have extensions available). Today, we’re going to take a look at Firefox – the browser we all are should be using. In my endless pursuit of the ultimate productivity system, technology always seems to get in the way. Last week, we looked at how you can stay productive inside of Twitter; a place many of us seem to be spending a lot of time lately. Today I want to try and summarize some of the greatest productivity bits that the Firefox browser has to offer. You may be surprised that many of these don’t even require an extension!

St. Louis Classic Rock

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Sure, anyone can write CSS. Even programs are doing it for you now. But is the CSS any good? Here are 5 tips to start improving yours.

Possibly the biggest mistake in any development project is failure to plan. Recently, the owner of a prospective start-up told me that planning was unnecessary and a good developer could just start coding. This, I promise you, will end in tears. Wireframing is one of the first steps in your planning process and arguably it’s one of the most important ones. This is when the idea starts to take shape as an application, becoming boxes and buttons that users will interact with. This article will take you through a wireframing process; who should be involved, the tools to use and tips to enable you to make better wireframes. 1) Be Clear About Your Objective As a developer I can understand the temptation to jump in and start coding. Often the initial idea seems so simple that surely you could just sit down and bash it out? Unfortunately, projects are rarely simple and anyone with experience will know what a myriad of unforeseen issues and challenges await you if you go down this route. A

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use. The term "morgue file" is popular in the newspaper business to describe the file that holds past issues flats. Although the term has been used by illustrators, comic book artist, designers and teachers as well. The purpose of this site is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. This is the world wide web's morguefile.

Eight years ago (almost to the day), Jeffrey Zeldman wrote, To Hell With Bad Browsers, signaling the dawning of “The CSS Age”. Explaining how the use of @import for referencing stylesheets is ignored by Netscape 4, was an important step in shedding away the problems related to supporting an ancient browser. Eight. Years. Completely ignoring a browser in terms of CSS is a wonderfully freeing thing. It certainly can’t be done on every site. The important thing to remember is that it’s a site’s statistics that should determine what level of support you decide to offer.

The Toys Outlet has recently been updated! Let your readers know that they can save 25% to 70% on a large selection of action figures, games, construction toys, plush, and much more. Be sure to come back each week for newly discounted toys and an updated selection of toys and games.

CSS is the thing that makes websites beautiful, without CSS everything would look sad and unatractive. This is why I have decided to compile the top 60 CSS tools to reduce your work load.

“Excellence is not a skill. Its an attitude.” So, give your blog some attitude by applying our all new WordPress theme – Excellence. This is a green-colored theme that comes with validated CSS/XHTML code, 125×125 banner space, Sidebar Tabs, Widgetized sidebars and a cute navigation menu. The theme is free of cost and comes under a Creative Commons License (that allows you to make changes and use this theme for personal use, without removing the footer copyright link). Excellence has been tested with Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Opera browsers without any problems. The theme is also compatible with WP 2.7 and above.

I know other movie geeks are going to have disagreements and that’s fine. And yes, I know some of these movies went more than 3 sequels, but none were ever meant to. These are rated purely on my enjoyment level on each film and nothing else. Frankly I’m surprised by how many sequels were better than the original. And I’m not surprised that the 3rd movie is never the best.

The Honda FC concept car Totally Looks Like a Clone Trooper from Star Wars

9407ba9e-dd67-43ba-9830-906b433fcf22Shashi Bellamkonda SEO 2007 I had the opportunity to do a quick phone chat with Shashi Bellamkonda, Network Solutions' "Swami of Social Media," earlier today to get his reactions to the GoDaddy Superbowl 2009 ad debaucle. My intent was not to sensationalize or stir up controversy, but to try and view this issue through Shashi's eyes as well as to see what lessons could be learned and best practices gleaned. To give you some background, GoDaddy rolled out their usual tasteless, cheap, tawdry, tittilating, sexist, demeaning to women, <insert adjective of your choosing> ads, which featured Indycar driver Danica Patrick and other females showing off certain parts of their anatomy. (BTW, Patrick is an Indycar driver, not NASCAR driver.) A few years ago, it had shock value… you know, the first time they tried it… but, now, not so much.

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32 Indispensable Bookmarklets for Web Developers and Designers All of these bookmarklets/favelets will be useful to all web designers and developers, they are the quickest method for testing, analyzing and tweaking any web page.

Working with HTML and CSS can be quite time-consuming sometimes, there is of course CSS frameworks to help you save time with your design base, but also all kind of tools that help you to save time with specific functions.

A new movie is coming out and it's called The People vs. George Lucas . It seems some former fans and other hater's of his movies are joining up to talk about the effect of George Lucas on the world. Now, if you don't embrace Star Wars, I can be sure to say it's been shoved down your throat no matter where you are. Whether it's Burger King action figures, the force FX wielding teenagers at the mall, or the consistency of movies and games coming out. Some are getting sick of Lucas! According to The People Vs George Lucas, "Featuring (to date) the legendary Gary Kurtz, Sandy Lieberson (former Head of Production at 20th Century Fox), Dale Pollock (author of SKYWALKING), Producer Anthony Waye (JAMES BOND 007), David Prowse OBE (aka Darth Vader), as well as top critics and writers Wendy Ide (THE TIMES), Ian Freer (EMPIRE MAGAZINE), Todd Hanson (THE ONION), Glenn Kenny (formerly with PREMIERE) and Joe Leydon (JOE LEYDON’S GUIDE TO ESSENTIAL MOVIES YOU MUST SEE),

A website's success or failure depends to a large extent on it's navigation system. If it is difficult for your visitors to navigate your pages they will not stay long and, what is worse, they will not return. Is your navigation search engine friendly? Does it rely entirely on javascript? Is it difficult to update? If you are having problems finding suitable menus then look no further.

By day, they’re authors. Really famous authors. But once a year they shed their pen-and-pencil clutching personas and become rock stars, complete with roadies, groupies and a wicked cool tour bus.

Happy Valentines Day! In celebration we thought we’d publish this post on the romantic topic of Candlelight Photography! Have you ever tried to photograph a candle lit scene with your digital camera? The results can be stunning with the warm glow of flickering flames reflecting off your subjects face (can you feel the romance?) but the shooting in such a low light environment make it can make it a challenging situation.

Sometime there are projects or clients that need to be done in one days or so. When you need a quick striped background, a CSS menu, web 2.0 badges these tools are lifesavers. Recently, these generators helped me on one of the photo gallery I was working on. Maybe your are designer who wants to create and do all your design from scratch. But these tools are just a help dose on the side when you need them. So,use these tools when you need and share them.

Over 20% of businesses don’t track how their web sites are used – don’t be one of them! Does your web site generate the number of visitors or sales you expected? Do you know how many visitors are landing on your web site? Do you know where visitors come from when they arrive at your website? Or where they go when they leave? Do you know what your visitors do on your site and which pages generate the most interest? Do you know which of your marketing campaigns generates the best return on investment from your web site? Without this information it is almost impossible to get the best results from your website. A web analytics manager is essential to getting the most from your web site An online web analytics manager is the easiest and most accurate way to learn about visitors and what they do on your web site. Web analytic software takes raw data and turns it into structured information in the form of reports.

If you’re a small business or a one man/woman show, how are you promoting your business online? On the flip side, if you’re looking for a consultant, photographer, or a web design company, where do you start your search? That’s where Qapacity jumps in; they’re hoping to be the middle-man for professionals and service seekers, adding a few unique touches to make the process painless on both sides.

The best way to convince someone we know what we’re talking about is not to shout harder and longer to drown out other viewpoints but to offer up our expertise freely and willingly, accepting that others may have a different take on the subject. Whatever your product, your industry or your particular field of expertise, a strategic article marketing campaign will not only establish your brand advocate as a thought leader in their field but will also significantly contribute to greater search visibility. Article marketing is one of the original cornerstones of organic optimization but recent additions to distribution outlets and the arrival of a more savvy consumer validate a fresh take on this tried and tested formula. Whereas previously article marketing would be a bolt on to link building, it should now play an intrinsic part of reputation management and stand alone as a valuable SEO activity.

All aboard! If you aren’t twittering yet, you’d better start thinking about how to integrate Twitter into your business soon. I think this one is here to stay. Dell has already proven that Twitter works for them, after producing over $1M on sale alerts and now offering exclusive deals to their 11,000+ followers. Sure, Dell is a big name brand… but Twitter is a level playing field. Just as people sign up for your email newsletters today, they can start following you on Twitter too. But here’s the big difference — consumers like to stay in control. As soon as they turn over their email address, they lose that control. With Twitter, consumers stay in total control with the "follow" button, and they can choose to dump you (ok, "not follow") anytime they want. Here is an example from Yahoo! merchant WineGlobe.com, an online wine retailer: