Category: Delicious

I was talking with Steven Fisher about a few projects we’ve been working on. We realized that most people who start projects haven’t fully planned out what they might need before sitting down with a designer. This, inevitably, ends in the client, the designer, or both frustrated and annoyed with the process/project. This also usually results in the client not jazzed enough about the final product to want to market it effectively or the final product not being the best it could. Now there are a ton of reasons why this doesn’t happen, but the most consistent, from what I can see, is just lack of education on the process. To elevate that, I’ve come up with the eight things I’ve seen that clients can think about prior to starting a project. Having most of these prepared, or planned for, a client and designer might find that they both get everything they need from the project. 1. Be realistic about your goals, budget, and intentions BEFORE you get a designer.

Last night the bGreen team got together to take the next step in our quest for world domination. We’ve decided to get involved with this new thing called “e-commerce.” What’s that you say? It’s not 1997? Oh. Well, maybe e-commerce isn’t a new concept, but it is new to us. This will be our first attempt at launching an online store, and we want to make sure we do it right. While we’re not serial online shoppers, we do know what we like and what we don’t. In our opinion, it’s all about the user experience. Screw that up, and you’re bound to lose customers and not make a sale. Provide a smooth, easy to use experience, and you’re bound to keep people coming back. Seems simple enough. Unfortunately, finding the right software package isn’t quite that simple. Last evening we had the pleasure (or not) of playing around with two software packages. One from Network Solutions, called nsCommerceSpace, and the other from Shopify. Our first impression? We’re screwed.

By now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable websites offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers. Delight and satisfy your visitors, rather than frustrate and annoy them, with smart design decisions. Here are 9 usability problems that websites commonly face, and some recommended solutions for each of them.

Posting your email address on a website is a sure-fire way to get an inbox full of Spam. The Enkoder helps protect email addresses by converting them into encrypted JavaScript code so only real people using real browsers will see them. The Enkoder Form will encrypt your Email address and convert the result to a self evaluating JavaScript, hiding it from Email-harvesting robots which crawl the web looking for exposed addresses. Your address will be displayed correctly by web-browsers, but will be virtually indecipherable to Email harvesting robots. Although the Enkoder should help to reduce Spam, no solution is perfect. The only way to truly prevent Spam is to never publish your address at all, ever, anywhere.

I am a thinker. In fact, I trust my brain over my heart. I don't get overly emotional. I make decisions based off of logic, and potential outcomes and almost never on how I feel. Honestly, it's mostly because I have little intuition or gut feelings. I'm 100% un-woman. That's why most atheists frustrate me. It's their belief that all Christians are illogical, that all faith is emotional and no faith is logical. Of course, I disagree. Logics are why I'm still a Christian today! So, I have to ask…where did this assumption come from? I have a theory. Wanna hear it? Here's why I believe the average, internet trolling atheists thinks they are winning the logics debate. This also has some major implications for youth ministries. Those will follow.

Following are ten songs that are kind of cliches, but that I will not apologize for liking. Some of them are bar-band standards. Some of them are MUSTS if you’re cropping together footage of someone who’s recently died. Some of them are just so iconic you could go 30 years without hearing them, but you’d still know all the words. I’m sure there are some I’m missing…but off the top of my head, I do NOT apologize for specifically these ten.

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly: If youve ever been mildly frustrated, extremely irritated or driven just plain mad by automated customer service lines, rude telephone service representatives or agents who cant speak intelligible English, this book is for you. Yellin (Our Mothers War) dives into the often dysfunctional world of customer service, exploring the multimillion-dollar industry from various points of view, interviewing exasperated consumers, displeased CEOs and infuriated customer service reps themselves. She includes transcripts of agonizing telephone exchanges, such as one where an AOL rep tries to thwart a customers cancellation of his account, blog excerpts from reps who feel abused and as if they are being treated as machines and countless stories from irritated and confused managers.

It’s funny how we began this summer talking about Star Trek, and we’re still talking about Trek. Seems like most people will agree, the JJ Abrams reboot was the film of the summer. Paramount Pictures has decided to re-release Star Trek in 85 IMAX screenings beginning this Friday. A film usually plays in IMAX theatres for a month (four weeks), but Trek only had a two week run in most IMAX locations, as Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian replaced the film in nationwide giant screens soon after the May 8th release. IMAX up-conversions of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince have occupied the theaters since with consecutive runs. Some theaters have kept a couple Trek screenings throughout the Summer, but now almost everyone will have a chance to see the film on the giant screen one-last-time. Check out a full theater listing after the jump, thanks to TrekMovie.

Network Solutions® helps small businesses start and market their businesses on the Web. Vital to their success are “Web Professionals”—Web developers and designers. In recent years, this key customer group had been moving away from Network Solutions, choosing instead cheaper competitors like GoDaddy® and Bluehost®. By creating a private online community of 300 Web Professionals, Network Solutions rebuilt its relationship with this important target segment by understanding and listening to their needs and challenges. This private community was (and continues to be) instrumental in the development of LinkTogether.com, a public community that serves as an “online destination” for these professionals to find the tools and resources to build their businesses. Collaborating with like minded members, the community had input on every aspect of LinkTogether.com—from the features, to the tools, to the design and promotion of the site.

Network Solutions® helps small businesses start and market their businesses on the Web. While it began as the original domain registrar, today Network Solutions offers a full range of web-related services. In addition to domain name registration, it offers website design and hosting, e-commerce solutions, online security products, and search engine marketing and optimization. Vital to its success are “Web Professionals”—web developers and designers. This key customer group has been moving away from using Network Solutions in recent years, and instead choosing cheaper competitors like Go Daddy® and Bluehost®. By creating a private online community of 300 Web Professionals, Network Solutions rebuilt its relationship with this important target segment by understanding and listening to their needs and challenges.

This is the first post in a series covering Landing Page tips to help you improve the performance of your campaign or website Landing Pages. Follow these tips, and see your Landing Pages generate more leads, orders and sales.

Welcome to Thank You Mario, the animated Super Mario Brothers text screen generator. Fill out the form and click Generate » to make your own animated image. It will look like this: After you generate the picture, there are easy, one-click links to save it to your computer, Flickr, or ImageShack.

For website owners who are evaluating e-commerce solutions, there are several good options for powering websites and shopping carts. Regardless of which option you chose, deciding on a design brings with it even more decisions to make. Of course, a custom design is always an option, but for those who want to keep costs down, templates are a popular choice. Premium e-commerce themes are easy to find, but they can be expensive. Free e-commerce templates are difficult to find, and quality free templates are even harder to find. We’ve done the research for you, and in this post we present 35 of the highest-quality free e-commerce templates available. There are templates specifically for WordPress, Prestashop, osCommerce, Magento, Zen Cart, CubeCart, and CRE Loaded, as well as a number of general e-commerce templates. Please notice that these templates aren’t intended to be used 1:1, but should rather be used as a skeleton for your own shop and hence saves a lot of work,

LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. is punching its way into the universe of superheroes and their male fans with a deal announced Monday to acquire Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion, bringing characters such as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and "Toy Story." The surprise cash-and-stock deal sent Spidey senses tingling in the comic book world. It could lead to new rides, movies, action figures and other outlets for Marvel's 5,000 characters, although Marvel already was aggressively licensing its properties for such uses. The deal won't have benefits right away, and Disney stock sank on the news. Disney expects a short-term profit hit, and Marvel characters from X-Men to Daredevil are locked up in deals with other movie studios and theme parks. But Disney's CEO, Robert Iger, promised an action-packed future.

The Walt Disney empire is to buy the superheroes stable Marvel Entertainment for $4bn (£2.5bn) in a star-studded Hollywood deal that unites family names such as Mickey Mouse with lucrative characters including Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men. Disney hopes to put Marvel's 5,000 characters to work on its television channels and in video games, theme parks and movies. The agreed takeover is for a mixture of cash and stock, with Disney shares accounting for roughly 40% of the buyout price. The tie-up unites two companies with similar business models – they both take characters which capture the popular imagination and promote them vigorously around the world on every possible media platform and through third-party licensing deals. While Disney has traditionally been known for its wholesome family creations ranging from the Little Mermaid to Lion King, Hannah Montana and Pocahontas, the purchase of Marvel adds an edgier, more violent element – it recently scored a

Entertainment giant Walt Disney is to buy Marvel Entertainment in a shares and cash deal valued at $4bn (£2.5bn). The deal means Disney will take over ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men. Marvel shareholders will get $30 per share in cash plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share owned. The boards of Disney and Marvel have both approved the deal, which now needs the backing of Marvel shareholders and competition authorities. Marvel shares were ahead $9.68, or 25%, to $48.33 in Monday trading while Disney shares fell 80 cents, or 3%, to $26.04.

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced this morning. Under the terms of the agreement and based on last week’s closing price of Disney, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own. Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the total transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion. Under the deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its portfolio of over 5,000 Marvel characters. That portfolio includes many familiar names like Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor. Says Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in a statement: “We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation.”

DISNEY TO ACQUIRE MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT Worldwide leader in family entertainment agrees to acquire Marvel and its portfolio of over 5,000 characters Acquisition highlights Disney's strategic focus on quality branded content, technological innovation and international expansion to build long-term shareholder value Burbank, CA and New York, NY, August 31, 2009 —Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:MVL) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today. Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own.

BURBANK, Calif. & NEW YORK, Aug 31, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — –Acquisition highlights Disney's strategic focus on quality branded content, technological innovation and international expansion to build long-term shareholder value –An investor conference call will take place at approximately 10:15 a.m. EDT / 7:15 a.m. PDT August 31, 2009. Details for the call are listed in the release. Building on its strategy of delivering quality branded content to people around the world, The Walt Disney Company /quotes/comstock/13*!dis/quotes/nls/dis (DIS 25.79, -0.25, -0.96%) has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!mvl/quotes/nls/mvl (MVL 47.78, -0.59, -1.22%) in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today. Under the terms of the agreement and based on the closing price of Disney on August 28, 2009, Marvel shareholders would receive a total of $30 per share in cash plus approximately 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share they own.

Vibe Streamer is a fun way to share your music with your friends. Although it's basically a file server, you don't have to spend too much time with configurations. You can add groups to have different settings and other kind of shared music for each group: your co-workers, your friends, your family. After adding groups, you should create usernames and passwords for each person who will listen to your music. If you create an account that will be used by more than one person, change "Max number of users" in settings. Then add your shared directories, select your IP address and start the server. You can now invite your friends to visit http://your-ip-address:8081, replacing your-ip-address with your IP. They can browser the directories, choose the music they like and play it as a stream. Vibe Streamer's client is a web page that works with any browser, but the server is only available for Windows. Another limitation is that you can share only MP3 files.

A few nights ago our student ministry put together an informational party for our parents. We indulged in sugar, games and conversation. Our conversation revolved around social networking. Many parents are concerned with how much time their children spend in these networks and so we wanted to hit it head on. Mainly because it is not going away. Here's a video that talks about social networks. It moves a little fast, but if you can catch them, I'm sure the stats will blow your mind!

Since its premiere on PBS KIDS in 1983, READING RAINBOW has helped children build lasting relationships with books at home and in the classroom. As broadcast rights are set to expire, PBS will no longer feed READING RAINBOW after August 28, 2009, and all broadcast rights will discontinue after that date. Production ended on READING RAINBOW several years ago and viewership for the show has declined dramatically. Nationally-recognized stories authored by children will be available online between August and December 2009, at which point the READING RAINBOW Web site on pbskids.org will end. The Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest was just completed with 96 stations participating in local judging and recognition ceremonies. Still available for the classroom, off-air educational rights remain in effect for a year following the last broadcast of each episode. PBS and member station WNED, producer of READING RAINBOW, are discussing plans to continue the contest on a

Call the school to report absences…

was consulting last weekend for a lady in Ohio who was interested in getting a website, but wasn’t sure what she REALLY needed. You see, she had been bombarded with emails, and quotes from various web designers and firms. She was getting offered packages ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars that seemed to really have nothing to do with her actual needs. She was getting overwhelmed and wanted to hear from someone in the industry what the right course of action. Now you might ask, Mike aren’t you a web designer? Why didn’t you offer her your services? To be honest, the greedy part of me thought about it for about ten seconds until I really took a look at my schedule. I could have taken the job and really done her a lot more harm than good by delaying the project while I worked on my other priorities. So I opted to be the voice of reason for someone who knows very little about the services being offered to her. I listened as she read me the quotes, emails,

In its most direct assault on Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) yet, Google on Tuesday evening announced the forthcoming release of the Google Chrome Operating System, a new open source operating system designed primarily for netbooks but also for desktop computers. Chrome OS is Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s second operating system, after Android, the mobile device operating system that the company introduced in late 2008. That's also about the time when Google introduced its Chrome Web browser. Chrome OS is an extension of Google's browser code.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A New Zealand man has been dubbed the Lord of the Ring after he searched and found his wedding ring more than a year after it slipped off his finger and sank to the sea floor. The ring was lost for 16 months in the harbor of the country's capital city, Wellington, before Aleki Taumoepeau found it shining on the sea floor, the DominionPost newspaper reported Thursday. "The whole top surface of the ring was glowing," Taumoepeau, an ecologist, said. Taumoepeau had been married for just three months when he lost the wedding ring while conducting an environmental sweep of the harbor. He roughly marked the spot where the ring had flown from his finger, but was unable to find it despite returning to the area many times. Taumoepeau's wife offered to buy another ring, but he refused, pledging to find the ring. But, equipped with new global satellite based coordinates and offering up a quick prayer, he found the ring after an hour's search.

Making an online gallery of pictures should be a quick process. The gap between snapping some pictures and publishing them on the web ought to be a short one. Here’s a quick and easy way of making a one-page gallery that uses JavaScript to load images and their captions on the fly.

The Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast is Sponsored by GoToMeeting, click here for a FREE 45 Day Trial. Use the code GOLDEN. Ten Golden Rules is an internet marketing consultant based in Boca Raton, Florida. We specialize in internet marketing strategy, online advertising, web marketing and conversion. We will help you get more traffic to your website, and we will show you how to convert that traffic into qualified leads or sales. Our public speaking includes the highly regarded presentation The Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing. This presentation has been shared with thousands of internet marketers at events such as: The American Marketing Association, The Direct Marketing Association, The Small Business Development Center, The PrintImage 2005 Annual Conference, Internet Marketing For Profit, Y2 Marketing, The Advertising Federation, The Marketing Executive’s Networking Group (MENG), The Small Business Development Center, The Gold Coast PR Association, InterMedia,

The Marketing Spot is a small business marketing firm in Waco, Texas. My name is Jay Ehret and I coach, teach, consult with locally owned businesses. I also conduct workshops and seminars to empower small businesses to market more effectively. For free marketing ideas, check out my blog: The Marketing Spot Forget pre-packaged marketing plans. My system is based on the four essential spots of small business marketing. I work with you to build this Marketing Circle of Life into a customized marketing plan for your business.

Did you know that LIFE is a dream and a vision, to be explained by STORIES? Our lives have three stages – past, present and future. The past and the future are dreams that exist in our minds in the form of events(stories) that took place and events(stories) that will take place, respectively. The present is the vision stage. We see things live and record, and recall them for future references in the form of stories. The only way we can paint our lives in vivid colors is through stories. Thus STORIES are full of human vicissitudes, and therefore deservedly appealed to us. Our Mission We have one short-term-goal, one mid-term plan and one lifelong mission: MAXIMIZE HUMAN CAPABILITIES through nature-made stories and poems, before we maximize profits for our owners. and The Purpose We Exist Our founder and one of the world’s best story tellers, we believe so, Abdinasir Haji-Bare (he also goes by Nasir, Abdi, The Story Teller, and Non-Governmental Artist –

There was a time, in the 1990s, when the only place to buy a domain name was at Network Solutions. That storied company has since had its up and downs, but no one disputes the pioneering nature of its products. Recently, Network Solutions redesigned and repositioned its website and its product offerings. This includes its newly-named shopping cart, CommerceSpace. Julia Dalton is senior product manager – ecommerce services, with Network Solutions, and she joins Practical eCommerce's Kerry Murdock.

Constructing a privacy policy is a simple process. Simply fill out the questions below and submit it to us – we'll send you a Web page to post to your site.

Test your Web site to see if it’s ready for mobile customers! Select Skin: There are more mobile phones in the world than televisions and PCs combined. And millions of people are using those mobile phones to connect to the Internet. To see your site the same way these millions of mobile users do, try the dotMobi mobile phone emulator, which "emulates" a real mobile phone Web browser.

I'll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here's ten. R2-D2 Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in slapsticky fashion — and no voice synthesizer. Imagine that design conversation: "Yes, we can afford slapstick oil and tasers, but we'll never get a 30-cent voice chip past accounting. That's just madness." C-3PO Can't fully extend his arms; has a bunch of exposed wiring in his abs; walks and runs as if he has the droid equivalent of arthritis. And you say, well, he was put together by an eight-year-old.

Full List Sites to Visit 1. Flickr 2. California Coastline 3. Delicious 4. Metafilter 5. popurls 6. Twitter 7. Skype 8. Boing Boing 9. Academic Earth 10. OpenTable 11. Google 12. YouTube 13. Wolfram|Alpha 14. Hulu 15. Vimeo 16. Fora TV 17. Craiglook 18. Shop Goodwill 19. Amazon 20. Kayak 21. Netflix 22. Etsy 23. Property Shark 24. Redfin 25. Wikipedia 26. Internet Archive 27. Kiva 28. ConsumerSearch 29. Metacritic 30. Pollster 31. Facebook 32. Pandora and Last.fm 33. Musicovery 34. Spotify 35. Supercook 36. Yelp 37. Visuwords 38. CouchSurfing 39. NameVoyager 40. Mint 41. TripIt 42. Aardvark 43. drop.io 44. Issuu 45. Photosynth 46. OMGPOP 47. WorldWideTelescope 48. Fonolo 49. Get High Now 50. Know Your Meme

In May 2008 I decided to improve my MP3 collection, by properly tagging all the files (including composer data), adding album cover art, fixing VBR headers, re-ripping albums that have poor sound quality, and more. I tried several programs, but I wasn't happy with how they worked. None of them did all the things that I wanted, and some corrupted the files. Worse, none allowed me to "look inside" an MP3 file, so the best way to see what was wrong with a file was to open it with a hex editor and try to see how some specifications mapped to the various pieces of the file. After a while I decided to give up on the tools I was experimenting with and write my own. The result is MP3 Diags. There are many programs that create and edit MP3 files, and many of them are broken. As a result, many MP3 files have various issues, ranging from values that are not standards-conforming but that are tolerated by all players and tools (so they look perfectly fine to the end user)

This Ukrainian Star Wars themed wedding cost a small fortune. I don’t know how Jar Jar got invited but somehow he managed.

Over the past century, violent images from World War II concentration camps, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, and many other times and places have been seared into our collective consciousness. These images have led to a common belief that technology, centralized nation-states, and modern values have brought about unprecedented violence. Our seemingly troubled times are routinely contrasted with idyllic images of hunter-gatherer societies, which allegedly lived in a state of harmony with nature and each other. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like, for example, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who argued that "war is not an instinct but an invention." But now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward:

We don't magically know how to do everything in every program. When we help you, we're usually just doing this:

SoTel Systems, LLC is the premier wholesale supplier for business communications products and services. We offer traditional refurbished and unused voice and data equipment, authorized distribution of VOIP equipment, and commercial SIP Services for both inbound and outbound traffic. With nearly 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry we provide your company with quality products, valuable expertise, and lightning fast delivery.

JEDI MIND INC (Public, PINK:JEDM)

The idea for this film was first conceived by James Cameron 14 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, the Avatar Teaser Trailer has been released. Avatar takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery, as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization.

When we filmed Stand By Me, none of us knew it was going to be the huge success that it became. None of us expected it to be part of that 50s revival that was so much fun in the mid-80s, and none of us knew that it would essentially launch all of our acting careers. But I think that, if you asked any of us – actors or crew – who worked on the film, we'd all say that we knew we were working on something special, something that was definitely not going to suck, something that we could be proud of. The fact that audiences agreed with us was pretty awesome. I don't know about the other guys, but I was totally unprepared for Stand By Me's success and the way it shoved a lot of us into the center of the spotlight. Maybe Corey knew what to expect, because he'd already been in a ton of popular movies (we all saw Goonies together while we were on location in Oregon) but I certainly didn't know what to do when I came home from a family vacation and saw several boxes on my porch, filled with fa

With nsMarketing™, together we can develop marketing programs that are right for your specific business situation and budget. We focus on generating leads and opportunities for your business. Whether that means helping you get quick results today, building long term marketing strategies or helping you keep existing customers engaged, we can help.

Find domain names, web hosting and online marketing for your website — all in one place. Network Solutions helps businesses get online and grow online with domain name registration, web hosting and innovative online marketing services.

At the core of good science and engineering is the careful and respectful treatment of data. We calibrate our instruments, scrutinize the algorithms we use to process the data, and study the behavior of the models we use to interpret the data or simulate the phenomena we may be observing. Surprisingly, this careful treatment of data often breaks down when we visualize our data. Using examples from a wide range of application areas in science and engineering, we will demonstrate how standard uses of color can distort the meaning of the underlying data, and can lead the analyst to incorrect evaluations, conclusions or decisions. We will also establish demonstrate principles we have discovered which can help people avoid these artifacts and build more effective representations of their data. These principles explicitly consider characteristics of the data, how the data are to be used, and how the human visual system processes color information.