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links for 2010-06-11

  • Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. Follow the steps below to install Readability in your Web browser.
  • Researchers at Tokyo University have come up with a technology that is a first and significant step away from the mouse and keyboard – touchable holograms.
  • Whether you have a brick and mortar or you want to bring a new idea to life, the online world is likely a good option to explore. So, where do you start? Hopefully I can walk you through the steps I took to create my own website (www.UrbHub.com) and show you some useful things to do (and not to do).
  • In your WordPress theme folder, there lays the most powerful theme file known as functions.php. As the name suggests, this file adds unique functions to your WordPress installation. This file works just like a plugin within your theme. So you can modify/override WordPress core features without editing any core file. If used correctly, this file can do wonders for your WordPress site. It also speeds up development because you can have all the codes at one place. In this article, we will share some of the most incredible and most wanted tricks for the WordPress functions.php file. Note: This article is targeted for WordPress theme developers. You may need have some PHP knowledge for some hacks.
  • One of the lesser-known jewels of HTML 5 is link prefetching. The idea is to extend the time-honored concept of image preloading to HTML content (and without any messy AJAX code). Here’s how it works: You add a line like this to your page: <link rel="next" href="page2.html"> Then the browser automatically downloads page2.html in a background process as soon as the user’s computer is idle. When the user finally clicks a link to page2.html, the browser serves it from the cache, and so it loads significantly faster. Link prefetching is currently only supported by Firefox. But since Firefox is the second most popular web browser in the world, you can noticeably decrease load times for a significant chunk of your users just by adding one line of code to your HTML. Pretty cool, huh?
  • Free fonts – designers always looking for free fonts because client always can’t afford to put money on expensive fonts due to tight budget of some projects. So, in this article, I am gathering high quality free fonts, which are almost suitable to be used for any design project. And I am sure it will surely save lot of time of designers out there which they spent on computer surfing for free fonts. Please be sure to read copyright and legal documents before using it for commercial projects because some of these are only for personal use. Clicking on font name and image will redirect you to the font page where you can read terms and conditions to use these free fonts and make your design more beautiful and professional. So we have a collection of fonts from dafont.com. I hope you like these fonts and appriciate the designers for this wonderful work.
  • Use Aviary's music creator to simulate dozens of musical instruments including piano, guitars and drums. Create music loops and patterns for use in Aviary's audio editor (Myna) or as ring tones.
  • When it comes to email marketing on the web, you have many choices. Two of the most popular hosted services for internet marketers include aweber.com and getresponse.com. They both offer good service at an affordable price (at around $20 per month). But if you are just starting out and prefer to run your own email marketing software, here is a free script for you to use. It is called Phplist from phplist.com. It is fairly easy to install and configure. You could be ready to run your first email campaign within an hour. Here is a quick lowdown on how to install the free email marketing software.
  • Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam. WordPress (WordPress) is the fastest growing CMS platforms in today’s web design industry (yes, it’s a true CMS). Much of the action in the WordPress community is largely driven by the market for WordPress themes. The vast selection of free and commercial themes is what makes WordPress so attractive. But the theme is often only a starting point for further customizations. Web developers and DIY website owners like to start with a great theme and tweak it to perfectly suit their (or their client’s) needs. Many themes, particularly commercial themes, come packaged with a robust theme options page, which lets you to configure many aspects of it. You should check out those available options before diving into the code. That said, all themes are different, and sometimes you need to get your hands dirty to fully customize it
  • Welcome to the world of Dark Sun! Beneath a crimson sun lie desolate wastelands and cities of cruel splendor where sandaled heroes battle against ancient sorcery and terrible monsters. This is Athas, the world of the Dark Sun setting. Rich Baker, lead designer for the new 4th Edition Dark Sun setting, and Rodney Thompson, lead developer, introduce you to the process of creating a new D&D game world from the bones of one of TSR’s most popular 2nd Edition settings.
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    links for 2010-06-10

  • Comodo Firewall and Antivirus is now Comodo Internet Security. The Latest version of our award-winning Firewall.
  • While the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has inspired a ton of outrage (and rightfully so!) over the past 45 days, directed primarily at the company responsible for the disaster, BP, a certain grunge band from Seattle has been raging against the Big Oil behemoth for years. As the Phoenix New Times pointed out last week, Pearl Jam were so angered by BP’s pollution of the Great Lakes back in 2007 that they performed an original protest song during their headlining slot at Lollapalooza. As Eddie Vedder knows, the best protest anthems consist of a simple, repeated rhyme, hence his band’s tune, “Don’t Go: BP/Amoco,” which features a basic chord progression behind a chant of the title words with increasing intensity (other lyrics include “no no no no no no…”). Stream Pearl Jam’s anti-Big Oil song below (starts around the 1-minute mark):
  • Being a freelance designer entails more than just the act of designing. Master the business side of design and you’ll thrive. Neglect it and watch your business take a dive. There can be severe consequences for those who mismanage finances, fumble along without a business plan or don’t understand clients. Fortunately, this article will serve as a crash course for beginners who want to learn about the business side of freelance design. In this broad overview, we’ll take a look at creating a business plan, choosing a location to work, determining a going rate, understanding financial information, the importance of insurance, obtaining clients, showing your portfolio, writing proposals, keeping clients happy, writing contracts, understanding copyright laws and finally, taxes. Buckle up!
  • The beauty of typography has no borders. While most of us work with the familiar Latin alphabet, international projects usually require quite extensive knowledge about less familiar writing systems from around the world. The aesthetics and structure of such designs can be strongly related to the shape and legibility of the letterforms, so learning about international writing systems will certainly help you create more attractive and engaging Web designs. Pick any language you like: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, maybe Nepali? Each is based on a different writing system, which makes it interesting to figure out how they work. Today, we’ll cover five categories of writing systems. This may sound tedious and academic, but it’s not. If you take the time to understand them, you’ll find that they all give us something special. We’ve tried to present at least one special feature of each language from which you can draw inspiration and apply to your own typography work. We’ll cover: East Asian wr
  • CSS has a pretty useful property called white-space that I’m guessing goes unnoticed among CSS beginners. You can probably live without this property for quite some time, but once you learn how to use it, it will come in very handy and you’ll find yourself going back to it over and over again. This article will attempt to describe, in a very practical, no-nonsense way, the different values for the CSS white-space property, and how each one can be used. I’ll do my best to avoid overly-technical jargon, but with this property, it’s not easy to explain without sounding overly-complex.
  • How many times have you picked up a project that someone else started, only to discover that the creator's original code is a mess? Or you work with several team members, each of whom has their own way writing code? Or you revisit a project you created years ago, and you don't remember what you were thinking? It happens to me all the time. In fact, I recently spent almost 300 hours fixing a vendor's facepalm-inducing CSS. Those 300 hours were filled with frustration for not only myself, but other members of my team. And it stole valuable time and resources that would've been better spent on new development. If that vendor had simply followed some basic guidelines in his CSS, precious time and money would've been saved for my employer, not to mention my own sanity would be in a much better state. In this article, you will learn best practices for writing CSS to help you avoid inconsistency and redundancy; in effect, setting standards that streamline team-based development.
  • It is arguable that there is no goal in web design more satisfying than getting a beautiful and intuitive design to look exactly the same in every currently-used browser. Unfortunately, that goal is generally agreed to be almost impossible to attain. Some have even gone on record as stating that perfect, cross-browser compatibility is not necessary. While I agree that creating a consistent experience for every user in every browser (putting aside mobile platforms for the moment) is never going to happen for every project, I believe a near-exact cross-browser experience is attainable in many cases. As developers, our goal should not just be to get it working in every browser; our goal should be to get it working in every browser with a minimal amount of code, allowing future website maintenance to run smoothly. In this article, I’ll be describing what I believe are some of the most important CSS principles and tips that can help both new and experienced front-end developers achieve as
  • As a web community, we’ve made a lot of exciting progress in regards to CSS3. We’ve put properties like text-shadow & border-radius to good use while stepping into background-clip and visual effects like transitions and animations. We’ve also spent a great deal of time debating how and when to implement these properties. Just because a property isn’t widely supported by browsers or fully documented at the moment, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be working with it. In fact, I’d argue the opposite. Best practices for CSS3 usage need to be hashed out in blog posts, during spare time, and outside of client projects. Coming up with creative and sensible ways to get the most out of CSS3 will require the kind of experimentation wherein developers gladly trade ten failures for a single success. Right now, there are tons of property combinations and uses out there waiting to be discovered. All we have to do is connect the dots. It’s time to get your hands dirty and innovate!
  • Have you ever had a DOM element that you wanted lightboxed, but didn't want all the fanciness of all the lightbox-related plug-ins out there? Lightbox_me is for you. Lightbox_me is an essential tool for the jQuery developer's toolbox. Feed it a DOM element wrapped in a jQuery object and it will lightbox it for you, no muss no fuss.
  • Whether it’s textures, Photoshop brushes, or icons, we love finding top notch free files and sharing them with our readers. We try to post at least one collection of freebies every week. We do the searching so you don’t have to. This saves you time and helps you focus on what’s important. This week, we are bringing you elegant fonts for clean design. There are 20 in all and they’re all free. A few require a quick registration, but they’re well worth it.
  • After The Addams Family premiered to big box-office success in 1991, the floodgates opened for classic TV shows to be adapted into movies. While 1993's Beverly Hillbillies movie performed dismally, the success of The Flintstones (1994) and The Brady Bunch (1995) kept the creatively challenged studios raiding TV Land for big-screen bounty. Ultimately, for every Mission: Impossible, audiences also had to endure Car 54, Where Are You?, Sgt. Bilko, Leave it to Beaver, Lost in Space, and McHale's Navy. With The A-Team opening this week, can a deluge of movies based on '80s TV shows be far behind? Should The A-Team become a success, we've compiled a list of small-screen shows from the decade of leather ties and hostile takeovers that we'd actually like to see in theaters.
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    links for 2010-06-08

  • There are ways by which you can stop harassing phone calls from collection agency. One such way is to send a Cease and Desist Letter to the collection agency thereby requesting them to stop contacting you. Given below is a sample Cease and Desist Letter.
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    links for 2010-06-07

  • A Dark Sun novel I’ve read over a hundred Forgotten Realms novels, a dozen Ravenloft novels and all of the Eberron novels, but this was my first Dark Sun novel. Having never played in the Dark Sun camping setting when it was originally released back in the early 90s I never had any desire to read about a world I was unfamiliar with. However, in light of the upcoming re-launch of Dark Sun for 4e D&D I felt it was time to give the Dark Sun books a chance. I had no idea what I was in for. Part of the reason I read and enjoy the books form Wizards of the Coast (and TSR before them) is the familiarity that comes with a shared world. Regardless of who the characters are and how the story unfolds, the setting is constant. The rules of D&D apply in these worlds so I know what’s reasonable to expect in any given situation. I quickly learned that Dark Sun is unlike any of the D&D shared worlds I’d read about before.
  • Just picked up my package for season two of Encounters. So far it looks pretty cool. Having not played the original I'm not sure what to expect. My biggest concern is that the books, minis, and tiles aren't due out until Aug. I already have questions about the geography and geology of Athas and I'm not even half-way through the module. I'm guessing I should just revert to the original for any questions. It appears that they are using the same places and races in this incarnation. Also troubling is the fact that there is no big map of the Tyr region. Now, in the forums it's been said that the '91 maps were consulted. How much, I'm not sure. If anyone has heard anything different please let me know. Here's to 15 weeks of fun.
  • Earlier, we have indexed “20 Mozilla Firefox Add-ons For Your Browser” and we are back with “7 Best Mozilla Firefox Add-ons for Web Development Of Year 2010”. We believe that these Firefox add-ons will help you in solving your web development challenges much easier. Mozilla Firefox is first and foremost choice of every Internet users so its community always try to introduce best solution for everyone’s need and rang of interest whether they are common user or professionals. We are lucky that we are having a brilliant development community.
  • This is a blog about the miniature world that can only be explored with the aid of a microscope. Most of the images were taken with a basic, inexpensive microscope and a consumer digital camera (Pentax W20) held against the eyepiece. Some images were taken with the same camera but using a more sophisticated research microscope that I use professionally, which is capable of showing minute structures more clearly. Whenever I’ve used this more elaborate instrument, I’ve indicated it in the text. Comments and questions are very welcome.
  • We have so many things to worry about right now, I figure we can stand a little good news, right? Whenever I read a story like this column by Rick Reilly, it makes me feel a lot less hopeless about humanity: We live in a world where Peyton Manning walks off the Super Bowl field without shaking anybody's hand. Where Tiger Woods leaves the Masters without a word of thanks to the fans or congratulations to the winner. Where NFL lineman Albert Haynesworth kicks a man's helmetless head without a thought.
  • Wedding Anniversary Quotations
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    links for 2010-06-05

  • French psychologists recently spent some time analyzing Darth Vader (we're not sure why) and determined that the Sith Lord was mentally ill, according to LiveScience. Specifically they say he probably has a borderline personality, described by Wikipedia "as a prolonged disturbance of personality function in a person (generally over the age of eighteen years, although it is also found in adolescents), characterized by depth and variability of moods." The psychologists are going to publish their findings in the journal Psychiatry Research, but LiveScience has a preview: Skywalker hit six out of the nine borderline personality disorder criteria as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV). He only needed to meet five criteria to qualify as suffering from the disorder. For instance, the future Darth Vader showed both impulsivity and anger management issues as an overexcited, lovelorn Jedi. He went back and forth between idealiz
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    links for 2010-06-04

  • Very cool trick on how to open your car door using just a tennis ball if you ever lock yourself out.
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    links for 2010-05-27

  • Throughout my career in interactive marketing, I have maintained a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) checklist for my own use. I have updated the best practice guidelines for each item on the list along the way. It's by no means comprehensive, but I still find it extremely helpful as I approach any new project. I thought I'd share it with you and see what you might add to this list to help make it more useful. As with any check list, it needs to be broad enough to fit most websites, but most high-level SEO guidelines generally are that broad. The other thing to keep in mind with SEO is that the formulas are not definite. Google does not publish the exact formula for title tag length or keyword frequency/density, but throughout years of SEO expert analysis and commentary, these general best practices have come to light and tend to drive top 10 results for medium to long-tail keywords for any business with a relatively "search engine friendly" site. I will tell you that the last few
  • Star Wars Starring You!
  • Spider crawls across News 4 camera
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    links for 2010-05-26

  • This is LEGO Digital Designer. The program that lets you build with LEGO bricks on your computer. Learn more about LDD and how you get started by using our new tutorial movies.
  • WORDPRESS THEMES – Free Premium WordPress Themes with High-Quality Screenshots are available for DOWNLOAD.
  • To determine how much to charge for your services is often one of the biggest challenges for a new freelancer. If you charge too much you'll have trouble landing a job, but if you charge too little you'll starve. If you're a new freelancer, you've probably scoured the Internet in search of the average rates of professionals in your field. Don't even bother. I'll let you in on a secret… now that the Internet is here, there aren't any "average" rates, because the demographics are too widespread. Furthermore, in the United States, it's now illegal for competitors to discuss rates amongst each other in light of antitrust laws, which explains the absence of rate survey information online. Instead I'll show you how to figure out what rates you should charge by using a formula.
  • Tech companies are in a race to redefine the TV experience by combining web video content with traditional programming. The goal: to control your living-room screen by creating an experience where using the remote to view BoingBoing’s latest video on your 52-inch plasma is as easy as playing the last episode of Lost from your Tivo, or clicking over to a live broadcast from Yankee Stadium. Google announced a new set-top-box platform called Google TV last week. It will be based on Google’s Android operating system and will have access to Flickr, gaming sites such as Club Penguin, and music sites such as Pandora and Rhapsody. With Google TV, the search company enters a crowded space where big companies such as Apple and Microsoft and scrappy startups such as Boxee and Roku have been trying to make headway for years. Where Google TV hopes to score is in its ability to integrate cable programming with web video. Most other alternatives only offer access to free TV channels or select cabl
  • The internet is undoubtedly a wonderful place, but let's face it: some web sites are only too happy to serve up annoying ads, unnecessarily heavy Flash elements, and all-around user-unfriendly experiences. Here's how to make your browsing experience as annoyance-free as possible. Google's Chrome browser already takes care of some of the web's biggest annoyances—like browser slowness (Chrome is impressively snappy) and entire-browser-crashing plug-ins (if Flash crashes in one tab, for example, it won't take down your entire browser session). Throw in some great extensions, and you can block annoying ads, browser-jacking scripts, and other bad behavior. We have to put it out there, right up front: Chrome is not quite as extensible as Firefox at this point. So while the How-To Geek could show us how to fix nearly all of the web's biggest annoyances with Firefox, Chrome lacks for the same in-depth tweaking abilities (most notably Firefox's powerful about:config tool). Its Chrome Extensio
  • The story follows the adventures of Aang, a young successor to a long line of Avatars, who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. |
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    links for 2010-05-25

  • Src: http://www.colorhunter.com/palette/500579
  • Designers often don’t take the time they should to learn about how basic psychological principles can effect the experience their visitors have on the sites they build. Psychological principles are either looked upon as unnecessary, or too complicated. But the truth is that they’re neither. There aren’t that many concepts associated with basic design psychology, and most are relatively straight-forward and easy to learn. They’re also mainly easy to implement, though some take a bit more care and planning than others. Read on to learn more and please leave your feedback and comments at the end of this post.
  • © 2010 Lucasfilm Ltd. and TM. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
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    links for 2010-05-24

  • We've been overwhelmed — but not surprised 🙂 — by the success of our 30th anniversary PAC-MAN doodle. Due to popular demand, we’re making the game permanently available at www.google.com/pacman. Thanks to NAMCO for helping to make this wonderful collaboration happen. Enjoy! Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience
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