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links for 2010-05-18

  • There’s something about an old video game that does a body good. The 16-color graphics, the 8-bit sound — something about it conjures memories of simpler times, when joysticks seemed larger because our hands were still small, and a dollar seemed like a heck of a lot more money than it does right now. Allow us to take you on a vintage voyage with a time machine of links, if you will. Here are ten computer and arcade games we all know and love that you can now play online and free of charge. If you’re of a certain age, you probably played these games while waiting for your mom to finish grocery shopping. Or they might have been on your very first video game console. We hope you remember them fondly and enjoy playing them again.
  • This Template Repository is a place for the submission of new templates made by you, the community! You created a nice template? Submit it, get feedback and help others to be more productive!
  • You'd be hard-pressed to find a company more beloved than Google. And why not? They make the Internet easier to use, pamper their employees and foot the bill for YouTube even though it loses money like it's got a gambling problem that's made of cocaine. Unfortunately, much of what is awesome about Google also makes them increasingly terrifying with each passing day.
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    links for 2010-05-15

  • Foldr Monitr is a free tool that runs in the background and watches a selected folder (and optionally subfolders) waiting for you to add photos to it. When photos appear in the folder, Foldr Monitr automatically uploads them to your Flickr account for you. Set it to watch the location you transfer your photos to from your camera and they'll be automatically sent to Flickr straight away. Photos can also be uploaded to a chosen set or to automatically generated sets based on the names of the subfolders in which they reside on your computer.
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    links for 2010-05-07

  • WordPress is the most popular and the best (in my opinion) blogging platform, created by Automattic. It’s really easy to use and it’s very powerful, giving you the opportunity to build any kind of site, from blogs to shopping carts and CMS’s. In this series of tutorials, we are going to create our first WordPress theme. For this tutorial you need to have a little more than basic knowledge about HTML and CSS. Let’s get started.You can Download source files and you can also Live preview the theme here. It’s a basic css layout so it will be easy for beginners to convert it into a working WordPress theme.
  • When we talk about editing, resizing, manipulating of pictures/images most of the people use adobe photoshop program and few other softwares. But now we have so many other softwares in the market that are free for download and they allow us to edit and manipulate pictures of any type. Purchase of photo editing softwares is not easy for every one so, we came here with 20 best and useful softwares which allow us to edit photos without spending a penny.
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    links for 2010-04-19

  • There's any number of great antivirus tools that help protect your PC from viruses, but what about when you encounter an already-infected PC? Your best bet is a boot CD, and the free AVG Rescue CD cleans viruses easily. The AVG Rescue CD comes in two flavors: an ISO image that can be easily burned to an optical disc, or a compressed version that can be installed to a bootable flash drive. Once you've done so, you can simply boot from the drive of choice directly to the AVG menu, where you can scan for viruses, edit files, test your drive, or even edit the registry. Since the bootable CD is based on a version of Linux, you can also access a number of common Linux tools to make changes to your system and hopefully make it bootable again.
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    links for 2010-04-14

  • I love messing with settings and geeky file-sharing programs. My spouse doesn't, but digs Hulu and appreciates free. So I set up a media center that satisfies my geek cravings but is actually easy-to-use for non-nerds. Here's what I pieced together. Photo remixed from 96dpi. The Goal (and Geeky History) For more than a year now, I've been messing with computers connected to TVs, trying to make it just as easy to watch last night's shows on Hulu as it would be with a DVR. I wanted my wife to be just as enthused about this kind of Living-in-the-Future project, but, until recently, none of what I'd set up could be called actually "easy to use"—unless you happened to write about computers and software tweaks for a living.
  • I love a good DVD as much as the next guy, but the whole optical media world has been on my shitlist lately. I'm sick of renting or Netflix-ing a DVD, getting an hour into it, then hitting the scratchety-skip zone that freezes up my DVD player and leaves me unable to finish my stories. My solution to this problem is to rip every DVD I rent to my hard drive as soon as I get it. In my experience, a rip smooths over those un-renderable sections of the DVD without issue, so when I'm ready to watch the ripped DVD, it's certain to be scratch and skip-free. Since I've got no time to sit around clicking through dialogs to rip my DVDs, I've put together my very own one-click DVD ripping solution.
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    links for 2010-03-31

  • Typical non-programmer question: Why are there so many programming languages? Why doesn’t everyone just pick the best one and use that? Fair enough. The definition of the term “computer language” can be really nebulous if you encounter someone who is in the mood to engage in social griefing through pedantry. Instructions for a machine to follow? Does that include 19th century player pianos? Machine code? Flipping switches and wiring on those first-gen electric computer-type contraptions? Considering over half the “language” consists of dragging and dropping icons, does Scratch count? Let’s just sweep that all aside and assume languages began with the idea of stuff like COBOL and FORTRAN and we don’t care to refine the definition further. Humor me.
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    links for 2010-02-19

  • As of today, we have decided to make using Aviary's suite of editing tools FREE for everyone. At Aviary, we believe that everyone in the world should have access to powerful creation tools. We therefore chose our company mission to be We make creation accessible to everyone. Our powerful set of tools helps fulfill this mission by enabling small businesses, students, artists & creators across different genres. As a business, we did need to bring in revenues to cover our costs and development and to accomplish this we created a tiered pricing plan for certain types of uses. Although this was financially successful for us, the side effect of this was that our tools and their features (in their full capacity), were not truly accessible to everyone. We have long felt that to better serve our core mission our complete feature set needed to be in the hands of everyone – not just those who could afford it. Fortunately, our recent round of funding (by Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions & other
  • To convert a file located on your computer : Check File mode, click Browse and choose the file, select input format (if autodetection fails) and output format, submit the form.
  • Although CSS is generally considered a simple and straightforward language, sometimes it requires creativity, skill and a bit of experimentation. The good news is that designers and developers worldwide often face similar problems and choose to share their insights and workarounds with the wider community. This is where we come in. We are always looking to collect such articles for our posts so that we can deliver the most useful and relevant content to our readers. In this post, we present an overview of useful CSS/jQuery coding tips, tricks and techniques for visual effects, layouts and web form design to help you find solutions to the problems you are dealing with or will have to deal with in future. You may want to look at similar CSS-related posts that we published last months:
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    links for 2010-02-04

  • These wonderful posters are by an artist called Jamie Bolton. They sum up each of the films in an amazing minimalist style. I would love to have them all on my wall.
  • By following a few simple guidelines, you can maintain your computer and keep it running smoothly. This article discusses how to use the tools available in Windows 7, Vista, and XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) to more efficiently maintain your computer and safeguard your privacy when you're online. 1. Free up disk space The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk to improve the performance of your computer. The tool identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.
  • You will find lots of useful guitar lessons and information here – it works on an "honour system". If you can afford to pay for the lessons then please donate for what you use – imagine it was a pay site. If you can't afford to donate it is no problem at all – the site is free for you :). Updates and new material is pretty much donation dependant. Donations give me more time away from paid work to develop this site and make new lessons and features. BIG THANKS in advance :).. Donations keep the site free for those that can't afford to donate! Click here for details on how to donate or contribute to the site. Thanks. J Please register in the space on the left, I only send out newsletters once a month and the emails will come from me, I won't pass your email address on to anyone else – and you can unsubscribe automatically at the bottom of any email I send you.
  • Despite the glamorous reputation, freelance design is no walk in the park. It takes an incredible work ethic, significant entrepreneurial prowess, and a little bit of insanity to pull it off effectively. This article will discuss how to effectively make a living as a freelancer (designer or otherwise). Since we are in fact a design blog, I’ll scatter in some well-designed freelancer sites along the way for inspiration.
  • Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files. Do not link to the smushed images on Smushit.com since they will only be available there temporarily. Instead, download the zip file containing the smushed images for your web page and replace your image files with those files.
  • Ever wonder how to super style your blog’s post date? I am going to show you how to do this using CSS sprites in about 18 minutes. Editorial Note: This post is geared toward theme designers. Prior knowledge of CSS and WordPress is recommended. What you will need: * A graphics program (I use Adobe Photoshop CS4) * A simple text editor What you will accomplish in this tutorial: * The dates on your blog’s posts will be super styled using CSS Sprites Let’s get started… Step #1 Fire up your graphics program. You can download a PSD or PNG template to help with the layout of all of the dates in our Sprite.
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    links for 2010-02-03

  • We like free stuff. That’s why we posted links to download and play 365 free games so you could have a decent game to play for every day of the year, free of charge. Unfortunately, GamesRadar has yet to wrestle the most formidable type of free games into submission so that they can be preserved in their proper list form for eternity. We’re talking about the free games that were good enough to sell, important enough to review, and memorable enough to warrant a second play through years later. Luckily, we’ve somehow managed to sort through over a hundred previously-for-sale titles that you can now play for free, and synthesized our list down to just the essential games you’d still want to play. Most of them look dated, for sure, but whether you’re looking for some decent side-scrolling action, nostalgic hits from the golden age of adventure, classic titles of interest, or even MMORPGs, you’re bound to find something in the following pages.
  • Check out these great online resources on creating liquid/fluid and elastic layouts, including sources for design inspiration, downloadable templates, frameworks, articles and tutorials. I often get asked for my recommendations of resources to learn how to create liquid/fluid and elastic layouts. My first answer is, of course, my own book Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS. Hey, is it so bad to be proud of your work? It’s the only book out there entirely devoted to designing and building flexible web sites, and the dozens of layout techniques it covers can also be applied to fixed-width design. But I’ll shut up about my book now; if you’re not the book-buying type, here are over 70 online resources to get you started creating attractive and robust flexible web pages.
  • If you’re a web developer, you’re almost certainly constantly looking for ways to improve your skills, expand your technology arsenal, and keep on top of the latest trends in development and design. Whether you need to pick up a new coding language, get informed about new standards, brush up on best practices, or simply get inspired by great examples from your peers, we’ve collated a number of great resources to help you stay at the top of your game. Have a look at some of the online repositories for great development information and inspiration below, and be sure to tell us about any other trusted sources we haven’t included in the list that other developers should check out.
  • The field of web design is constantly changing and growing. Getting in a rut is often the result of not staying up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the industry. Even if we do stay up to date, many of us at one time or another feel anxious about whether we’re advancing. If you’re at a firm, you may be working towards a raise or promotion, or perhaps you’re thinking of jumping ship to a bigger and better company. For the freelancers out there, we of course determine our own destiny; but far too often our careers feel stagnant, too. This article goes over some ways to reignite your growth as a web designer.
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    links for 2010-01-30

  • It is a little hard to talk hard numbers here since this will vary wildly from agency to agency, firm to firm, freelancer to freelancer. But let’s just throw some out there just for fun. $75 / hour. That’s a fair rate, I think, for a reasonably skillful freelance web designer.
  • Personal computing — having a computer in your house (or your pocket) — as a whole is young. As we know it today, it’s less than a half-century old. It’s younger than TV, younger than radio, younger than cars and airplanes, younger than quite a few living people in fact.
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