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links for 2010-12-23

  • Today we are going to use jQuery and CSS3 rotations, along with the jQuery rotate plugin, to create a beautiful slideshow. You can use it to spice up your web sites, product pages and other projects with some CSS3 magic.
  • Earlier this year, Mozilla convened a privacy workshop that brought together some of the world’s leading thinkers in online privacy. People from the FTC to the EFF were there to answer the question: What attributes of privacy policies and terms of service should people care about? This lead to a proposal presented for the W3C, among other places, which further refined the notion. We are now ready to propose an alpha version of Privacy Icons that takes into account the feedback and participation we’ve received along the way. We’ve simplified the core set dramatically and tightened up the language. While the icons don’t touch on all topics, we do think they significantly move the discussion on privacy, as well as the general level of literacy about privacy, forward. We do not want to let perfection or devotion to taxonomy get in the way of the good. Keep in mind that the target adopters of Privacy Icons are 2nd-tier sites—
  • With Wix its easy to make a free website and enjoy the benefits of a strong online presence. Make a free website with the Wix website builder. Get your business noticed.
  • An anonymous reader writes "I'm looking to build a family tree for a holiday gift. Do the Slashdotters of the world have any recommendations on open source genealogy software? I did try a 14-day free trial of Ancestry.com. What a scam! I submitted the personal information for my parents, grandparents, and me. Then, I received a pop-up telling me that if I would like to get information on my family, I would have to upgrade my subscription for $29.95 US. So, I took the chance. Turns out that the only information they had was my previous addresses for the past 20 years." The venerable GRAMPS is still actively developed, and its site lists several other possibilities, too. Any favorites, or anti-favorites, out there?
  • You can set up Microsoft Outlook 2010 to send an automatic response to some or all of the people who send you e-mail messages. You can combine an Outlook e-mail template with Outlook rules to reproduce the functionality of the Automatic Replies feature available only to Exchange Server accounts.
  • WordPress Shortcodes are very useful, especially in wordpress theme development. People who buy themes aren`t experts in web design, so a shortcode will be very useful. But what is a shortcode? As the name says, a shortcode is a simple and elegant way to display complicated codes using just a word.For example: Imagine that you want to insert inside a post a nice info-box. You have to create div-classes after div-classes and finally you make it. A shortcode gives you the possibility to do this just adding “[information]lorem ipsum[/information] . That`s wicked, don`t you think? WordPress shortcodes are a set of functions created of course inside functions.php (which you can find it in your wordpress theme folder) for creating macro codes for use in post content.I`m going to show you how to create some nice boxes powered by a bit of CSS3 and how to split content in 2 columns. Then, you can extend it in 3,4 and how many columns you want.
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    links for 2010-12-06

  • In this tutorial, I will start and finish a logo while documenting the entire process. I encourage you to open up photoshop and follow every step, it will help you learn a lot more than just reading it.
  • This is the time of year that many of us are thinking about what we didn’t do in 2010 and what we should do for 2011. Even professional online marketers have a long ‘to do’ list of things to improve their online marketing performance – made up of tasks to specifically improve ROI or something to save time and improve efficiency. For those of you that are doing your own online marketing, this sort of tasks may be way down on your list, way below items more specifically related to your business. These are the types of tasks that may not be ‘sexy’ and fun, which is why they are easily ‘put on the long finger’ (as they say in Ireland), but are critical to bring the best results from your online marketing activities.
  • I hope you had a blast fine-tuning your blog with testimonials last week. It’s really encouraging to hear that some are trying out the methods, can’t wait to receive more feedbacks on that! In the mean time, I will be sharing few more practical ways to display testimonials (and portfolio) on your LinkedIn and Facebook Page! Now there are definitely limitations comparing to working on a self-hosted blog because application is the main key. Not the best of plans but hopefully you can be inspired by this post and work out creative ways to promote your brand:
  • Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels.
  • Search operators in Google help you refine and improve search results. For instance, a query like “Taj Mahal AND Hotel” will search for pages related to the Hotel Taj and not the Mughal monument. Similarly, “kindle -site:amazon.com” will find all Kindle related resources outside the Amazon website. This Google cheat sheet [PDF] has a nice overview of all the popular search operators that are supported in Google. Other than this “official” list, Google also supports an undocumented search operator called AROUND(n) that will help you find documents where the distance between two search terms is around ‘n.’
  • Looking for an alternative to the Windows native Windows Media Player? If yes, then look no further; fortunately for you we have gathered a list of 7 great audio players for people running Windows computers. Find the players detailed below and check out which one will suit you best.
  • Google today unveiled its long-rumored entry into the e-book sales world, not called Google Editions, as was previously speculated, but a more anonymous-sounding Google eBooks. The basic idea is to provide an entirely web-based e-book platform accessible from any device with a browser. The business model they’ve opted for is slightly less centralized than the competition, but not quite the distributed seller network I envisioned last week. My wool-gathering regarding the decentralization of the e-book store model are all in that post, so we’ll just focus on the particulars of eBooks service for now. One quick note: I’m going to continue to use the term “e-book,” though the service has opted to drop the hyphen. Like so many new tech-related phrases, the word and its relatives have yet to settle into a single standardized form.
  • Google eBooks is all about choice, so you can use just about any device you own to read any book, anywhere.
  • Google's thrown open the doors to an online bookstore stocked with over 3 million titles, which you can store and read in the cloud as if they were Gmail messages. Google's also offering free reading apps for Android and iOS devices. Beyond Android and iOS, Google's eBookstore supports Nook, Sony readers, and other devices, as well as offering straight-up access through the web. Other retailers, like Powell's, will offer Google's eBookstore offerings for sale, and Google claims it will offer "unlimited storage" of your purchases, with your page progress synced across everything. Google's made an effort to offer up lots of modern, popular books at reasonable price, but there are also a lot of free books in the collection, culled from Google's scanning of more than 15 million items in library archives. A video demonstration of Google's new Books and eBookstore is available, but it's neither playing nor embeddable for us—we'll update soon.
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    links for 2010-11-29

  • This best web 2.0 stripe generator on the net! Generate seamless stripe patterns and textures of any two colors, harnessing the power of AJAX. Generate beautiful transparencies too.
  • As designers, we are used to having quite a bit of control over how things are displayed in a browser. Sure, differing rendering engines don’t always agree on everything, but for the most part we can at least find ways to mitigate variance through workarounds, or by writing for the lowest common denominator. By far, one of the most frustrating parts of dealing with browser inconsistencies has got to be forms. There are two distinctively differing schools of thought regarding (not) styling form elements. For the longest time, we’ve had people on both sides of the proverbial fence, neither group being particularly pragmatic. Some designers advocate styling form elements to match the brand of a site. Others would tell you to leave them alone entirely, so that they adhere to the native look and feel of a given operating system.
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    links for 2010-11-16

  • 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.
  • Only the best commercial- use free fonts Free fonts have met their match. We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We've done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format. Here are some of our favorites:
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    links for 2010-11-06

  • For over thirty years one iconic villain has reigned in the dark corners of so many hearts mdash; and not just of those who proudly parade beneath the banner of sci-fi junkies. Darth Vader has transcended the page and screen to live on in ways most characters will never achieve; but then again, most characters do not have command over the power of the force like the dark Sith Lord does. So when you are looking for a dose of inspiration from the darker areas of the imagination, turning to the artwork inspired by the face of the dark side is a fantastic way to go.
  • Below I’ve laid out a plan for you to find profitable niche markets, produce content, and monetize a niche blog that will make you money every month. And we’re going to do this using completely free and available information on Amazon.com and a little insight from Google. This guide, as well as the niche, are my gift to the person who wants it most. Let’s make money in 2011! Follow these methods outlined below, and with some practice and patience under your belt, I promise you will be producing great content that ranks well in Google, informs consumers about the products they are searching for, and refers them directly to Amazon where you’ll get a cut of the sale.
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    links for 2010-10-23

  • In honor of Banned Books Week, Geekosystem's Susana Polo looks at 10 great science fiction novels that have been banned, or at least threatened with removal from libraries and schools. Including some major classics of the genre! These titles are among the most popular and beloved science fiction works of the last century. They've told us how bad the future might be before we get there, how free you can be if you don't follow blind belief, and that children are perfectly capable of digesting some pretty heavy concepts, actually. But they've all been banned or threatened with banning.
  • Welcome to Damp Gnat's MICROPUTT FREE to play and FREE to host on your own website. Engage visitors with your brand in a fun and tactile way! Customise and add your own LINKS and TEXT to the game. Visitors drive TRAFFIC to your game page with Facebook Share. Or SPONSOR a hole and drive TRAFFIC to your site from Adverputt. Read our FAQ for instructions on hosting the game
  • Games might not yet be recognized as art but they are increasingly being used to explore the kind of deep themes that were previously the preserve of artists and philosophers.
  • After years of breathless anticipation, Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" is finally a go. Though which continent the assuredly massive production will take place on is still up in the air, the cast list has been announced. Click ahead to see who's going to journey to the Lonely Mountain and battle Smaug the dragon.
  • CSS is the fundamental way of styling our web pages. Its deceptively easy syntax allows us to do many things to affect the visual layer of our work. And especially with CSS3, the language has gotten even more powerful. There are many useful CSS techniques and tricks out there for you to take advantage of. This is a collection of a few useful CSS snippets that you might want to keep in your toolkit.
  • We teamed up with some of our favorite designers to create stunning email templates anyone can use. You don't need to know a thing about design or programming to use them. Just plug in your content and you're all set. And the best part? They're completely free for all MailChimp customers with paid accounts.
  • When it comes to SEO, there are certain elements that need to be in place for any newly-designed or updated website. Have 301 redirects been put into place? Is the robots.txt file authored to allow adequate crawling? This infographic depicts a handy checklist that will help get you through any new site launch or transition.
  • YouTube has earned a reputation for featuring brain cell-slaughtering fare such as the truly abysmal Fred and playing host to the some of the most depressingly stupid comments this side of Yahoo! News. But for every participant liberally dishing out misspelled racist, sexist and homophobic talking points, there is at least one whose channel genuinely offers something provocative and educational. For teachers hoping to infuse multimedia into their classrooms, YouTube makes for an excellent starting point. Plenty of universities, nonprofits, organizations, museums and more post videos for the cause of education both in and out of schools. The following list compiles some of the ones most worthy of attention, as they feature plenty of solid content appealing to their respective audiences and actively try to make viewers smarter.
  • In this guide, we will cover an incredibly great feature of WordPress: Custom taxonomy. Custom WordPress taxonomies give you unprecedented power in the way you can categorize and relate your WordPress content with each other. Though WordPress taxonomies were introduced in WordPress 2.3, it has been revamped in WordPress 3.0 for WordPress developers. Recently, we had looked at creating custom WordPress post types in the WordPress custom posts guide, and to further our command of WordPress 3.0 site and theme development, we’re going to now discuss custom taxonomies.
  • Today we are glad to release a Payment Icon Set, a set with 18 payment icons in PNG format, in the resolutions 32×32px — 128×128px. This set was designed by Phil Matthews and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The icons are inteded to be used on e-commerce websites where you can show what types of payment the shop accepts. Each icon comes in curved and straight edge variations. As usual, the set is free to use in private and commercial projects — no credit is required.
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    links for 2010-10-18

  • Nowadays almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable. Here you can find instructions on how to enable (activate) JavaScript in five most commonly used browsers.
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    links for 2010-10-17

  • Nowadays almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable. Here you can find instructions on how to enable (activate) JavaScript in five most commonly used browsers.
  • Typography is so overwhelmingly ever-present we hardly notice it there anymore. As elemental as it is to our culture, it’s actually bizarre to think it has a history at all. This article will serve as a condensed education on the basics of typography, including typographic terms, proper usage of fonts, unusual characters, and history. We’ve become so accustomed to communicating with type that most of us do not notice what it is doing, let alone any of the agonizing design decisions that were a part of their creation. Practically any major typeface has a long history and richness important to how the font communicates about the content it bears. At least, any font that wasn’t created by somebody named “Pizzadude.”
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    links for 2010-08-17

  • Most of the web pages you encounter is presented to you via HTML, the world wide web’s markup language. In this article, I will share with you 20 best practices that will lead to clean and correct markup.
  • * Beautifully Designed We make beautiful WordPress themes that are ready to go right out of the box. * CSS Styling Take full control of your theme styling with our framework without having to learn any coding. * Widgets Themes come stocked with a number of custom widgets that help you to display dynamic content more efficiently
  • I caught this news on Blastr this morning (via techland) and hesitated to report it, partially because I don't want it to be true and partially because I was waiting for comment from Lucasfilm. That second bit never panned out, so I'm going ahead with the unfortunate update on the "Star Wars" live-action TV series. George Lucas spoke out on the series at special 30th anniversary screenings of "Empire Strikes Back" in May. And while he's still gung-ho to get the series done, it seems that cost is going to prevent it from happening anytime soon. Said Lucas, "The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don't know how to do 'em. Because, they literally are Star Wars, only we're going to have to try to do them … a tenth the cost. And, it's a huge challenge … lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be." So excuse me while I go weep in a corner.
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