Categories
Delicious

links for 2010-02-13

  • These are some important Yahoo! pages that all SEO specialists should have in their arsenal… Webmaster Contact Form Webmaster Guidelines and Help Submit a Site Report Spam Report Copyright Infringement Reinclusion Request Yahoo Search Blog Jeremy Zawodny Blog If you have any questions about these pages or realize something is missing from the list, please post
  • These are some important Google pages that all SEO specialists should have in their arsenal… Webmaster Guidelines and Help Webmaster Contact Form Submit Your Site Submission to Google Local Report Spam Report Copyright Infringements Google Trends Google Keyword Tool Webmaster Tools Reinclusion Instructions You will need to go to the contact form (listed above) after reading here Official Google Blog Matt Cutts Blog If you have any questions about these pages or realize something is missing from the list, please post
  • This year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences arbitrarily decided to nominate ten films for best picture, instead of the usual five. Well, I have to ask, since were going crazy with it anyway, why not nominate five more? (Or at least ANY of these instead of The Blind Side or the shiny-looking quality-void ‘Avatar).
  • I am not just a Linux professional, I also happen to use Windows quite often. In fact, Windows is my primary desktop from which I connect to all the other boxes and do my work on. During the years of Windows usage, I have accumulated a list of must-have Windows programs that I wouldn’t be able to work without. Some of them are commercial, some are freeware, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how productive you are with your setup. If you’re really productive on Linux with your own set of tools, it’s perfectly fine and you have done a great job of finding the best tools of trade.
  • The Escapist presents its first ever Webcomic Contest! Beginning February 1st, The Escapist will be accepting submitted user-created webcomics and granting one lucky winner a grand prize of a webcomic contract with The Escapist. If you're an artist, illustrator or talented writer and want to submit a webcomic to The Escapist's Webcomic Contest, please follow these instructions: Style and Structure * You must submit one (1) single frame of logo or brand and four (4) pieces of art, totaling 5 submissions * All of your work must be submitted at the same time for any particular title * The Escapist uses the complete width of our site to provide the highest possible viewing quality, which fills the page from side to side. We would like to see a full width comic to maintain this quality, so please submit your pages as follows:
  • This site was created by Philipp Lenssen in 2010. Please email me at philipp.lenssen@gmail.com for feedback. Some content of this site is from Creative Commons licensed Wikipedia with credit to its individual authors.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-02-08

  • The random image generator is a free tool that will generate placeholder or dummy images in your specific dimensions. The images are randomly generated abstracts.
  • Dynamic Dummy Image Generator Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go! Example: http://dummyimage.com/640×480 FAQ What is this? This is a simple tool for generating dummy/filler images on the fly at whatever size you want. How do I use it? Simply add the width, an 'x', and the height (example) of the image you want and my script will spit out a gray box to the size you want with the image dimensions in black Arial text centered in the middle of the box. Can I use a dummy image url as an image source? Yup, that was what it was designed for. Try this: <img src="http://dummyimage.com/325×123" alt="A Dummy Image"> How many images can I generate? As many as you want until my server collapses. If you would like to run this script on your own server, here are the PHP files and instructions for doing so. Update: Someone made a Ruby version of this script called fakeimage,
  • Gmail is set to become Google’s next major push into social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, the popular webmail service will soon launch a new feature for sharing content and status updates with friends. [Update: We think Google might announce these features on Tuesday] As WSJ points out, Gmail users can already update their statuses — sort of — through Gmail’s chat feature. Currently, this feature is more akin to the traditional IM “away message.” However, with this new social push, Gmail will offer a timeline-view of your friends’ status updates, just like on Facebook and Twitter. Those updates might come from both Gmail and third-party services. According to WSJ, Google-owned YouTube and Picasa will be integrated into the stream. The huge question then is whether or not the new feature will include updates from Twitter and Facebook.
  • PageRank Backlink Generator software make it easier for you to explore the appropriate backlink to your site theme, was quite easy to use and capable of automating the comments you have previously set… just download the software PageRank Backlink Generator directly here and this is Video Tutorial to use this software, download here PS: Please don’t SPAM with this utility…
  • We’ve compiled six useful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. They cover various topics including: accessibility, SQL, web developer plugins for Firefox, HTML emails, design and jQuery. Feel free to disagree or add your own in the comments below. If you’d like to submit a tip to be considered for future articles, just head over to Tipster and add your own.
  • From the director of the upcoming Captain America movie: The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it… So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight. (Emphasis mine.) They make a super-soldier and then refuse to let him fight, and the captain himself hates his costume. This is incredibly telling, and shows us exactly how the writer feels about the idea of Captain America.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-02-06

  • Twitter is used more and more for finding a job. Don’t know where to begin? Use these lucky (cuz we did all the work) links from our collection on delicious to get started. Link Friday is a regular feature. Do you have another one to recommend? Add a comment and let us know.
  • Email signatures are so easy to do well, that it’s really a shame how often they’re done poorly. Many people want their signature to reflect their personality, provide pertinent information and more, but they can easily go overboard. Why are email signatures important? They may be boring and the last item on your list of things to get right, but they affect the tone of every email you write. Email signatures contain alternative contact details, pertinent job titles and company names, which help the recipient get in touch when emails are not responded to. Sometimes, they give the recipient an idea of who wrote the email in case it has been a while since they have been in touch. They are also professional: like a letterhead, they show that you run a business (in some countries, you’re required to do so). Here are some tips on how to create a tasteful signature that works.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-02-01

  • CSS3 is coming. Although the browser support of CSS 3 is still very limited, many designers across the globe experiment with new powerful features of the language, using graceful degradation for users with older browsers and using the new possibilites of CSS3 for users with modern browsers. That’s a reasonable solution — after all it doesn’t make sense to avoid learning CSS3 (that will be heavily used in the future) only because these features are not supported yet. The point of this article is to give you a glimpse of what will be possible soon and what you will be using soon and provide you with an opportunity to learn about new CSS3 techniques and features. In this post we present 50 useful and powerful CSS3/jQuery-techniques that can strongly improve user experience, improve designer’s workflow and replace dirty old workarounds that we used in Internet Explorer 6 & Co. Please notice that most techniques presented below are experimental, and many of them are not pure CSS3-technique
  • Like many other web developers, I definitely hate Internet Explorer, especially the version 6. At a time where new and powerful techniques as such as HTML5 and CSS3 are emerging, it’s not surprising that IE can’t handle them correctly. Luckily, a few tricks can make your life easier.
  • On January 26th, 2274 Mars days into the mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to stay operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.
  • This update covers tutorials, tips and techniques that you should have read in January 2010. Featured publications include: A List Apart, Perishable Press, DevSnippets, Webdesigner Depot, Nettuts+, Inspiring Pixel, Gaya Design, PV.M Garage, Line25, Woork Up, Six Revisions, Tutorialzine, Papermashup, WPWebHost, TechPortal, Yehuda Katz, Codrops, NuRelm, Queness, PHP Web and IT Stuff, DLOCC, WebM.ag, Jon Galloway, DevMoose, CSSKarma, AEXT, Viral Patel, and JankoAtwarpSpeed. Featured authors include: Lam Nguyen, Tuhin Kumar, Chris Spooner, Jason Schuller, Louis Lazaris, Dan Wellman, Martin Angelov, Siddharth, Ashley Ford, Navjot Singh, Gaya Kessler, Burak Guzel, Piervincenzo Madeo, Peter Verhage, Yehuda Katz, Jeff Starr, Mary Lou, Chris Taylor, Kevin Liew, James Padolsey, Noura Yehia, Jason Cranford Teague, Devin Walker, Bill Peña, McBonio, Jon Galloway, Jean-Paul Bernadina, Tim Wright, Viral Patel, Shelley Powers, Janko Jovanovic,
  • If you consider yourself a geek, or aspire to the honor of geekhood, here’s an essential checklist of must-have geek skills. The term ‘geek’, once used to label a circus freak, has morphed in meaning over the years. What was once an unusual profession transferred into a word indicating social awkwardness. As time has gone on, the word has yet again morphed to indicate a new type of individual: someone who is obsessive over one (or more) particular subjects, whether it be science, photography, electronics, computers, media, or any other field. A geek is one who isn’t satisfied knowing only the surface facts, but instead has a visceral desire to learn everything possible about a particular subject. A techie geek is usually one who knows a little about everything, and is thus the person family and friends turn to whenever they have a question. If you’re that type of person and are looking for a few extra skills to pick up, or if you’re a newbie aiming to get a handhold on the honor that
  • We all know some of the famous on-liners from the movies, but some of them are so commonplace that you may not even know that it’s a quote from a movie or from which movie it originated. But there are some quotes from movies that everyone should know. Some of them have really stood the test of time and are very old. Ironically, these are sometimes the ones that we know the best. Here’s a list of one-liners that everyone should know and also which movie it came from and who in the movie said it. I’ve started with the earlier movies and have continued to go in chronological order.
  • The World Wide Web is a privileged channel for spreading good ideas and, in this time of crisis, it could be very useful to improve a business. Internet provides many possibilities to enhance, in different ways, our activities and one of this surely is the electronic commerce. Here the first words on Wikipedia to describe the electronic commerce: “Electronic commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.” Issues Behind An E-Commerce Website The main goals for an e-commerce website are to sell and promo
  • It’s time to solve a mystery. (A boring technical coding mystery.) It’s been bothering me for years: Why does my site go down when I get linked on Reddit or Stumbleupon? It shouldn’t. I use Hosting Matters, and they host blogs that are far larger than mine without difficulty. Usually my site will just vanish for a few hours, and after the fact I’ll be able to sort out what happened by looking at the incoming traffic.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-31

  • Earlier in the week I released a new HTML template called Jamba which is a single page resume and CV template. In this post I’d like to show you how I designed the template in Photoshop (check out the Jamba features page and the live demo). Before we get started though, let’s quickly cover what needs to be included in an online resume and CV design. There are a number of details that are obviously required such as your name, contact details (email and contact number), and ideally a warm and friendly photo of yourself. It’s also important to include other key areas such as the work experience you have, your academic background, any specific skills you’ve developed, and details of any other related achievements. You may want to include other things as well, but most resumes and CVs will include these sorts of details. Given that potential employers are likely to be very busy they’ll probably only have time to scan the page – so, to avoid irritating them, it’s important that the essent
  • The free bolt on e-Commerce Plugin is WordPress framework designed to help you sell online. We make setting up shop incredibly easy. Plus we've had over 500,000 downloads!
  • Freelancing isn't something you should just jump into, but it makes sense for a good number of workers. If you're looking into, or getting started with, working on your own, here are 10 resources we think every freelancer can learn from.
  • The Microsoft LifeCam VX-5000 – Featuring Windows Live compatibility, World Class VGA Optics, superior low-light performance and a fun flexible design. Share more experiences with family and friends.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-23

  • What’s the point of semantic markup if users will never know or even care about it? There are a number of good answers, of course. Developers like web pages created with semantic markup because that makes it easy to add presentational and behavioral layers to the underlying structural code, and because it means future maintenance gets easier. Beyond that, however, developers can make such semantic markup useful for site visitors by exposing that information with a variety of easy to use tools. Here are some examples of such tools that turn semantic information, in the form of microformats on a web page, into something useful for a site visitor with nearly no extra effort required.
  • I'm an idiot. Last week, someone commented on a post I wrote for SEOMOZ's YouMOZ service that they'd like a Google Analytics Cheatsheet. I wrote back "OK, I'll do it." Guess what? Google Analytics has a ton of features. And even more tricks and hacks that folks have developed over the years. So this 2-page cheat sheet, which took 3 days and nights to pull together, is a tiny sliver of the whole system. But it does cover the stuff that I'd want my staff to use. You can download it for free, no strings attached: Version with links: The Google Analytics Cheatsheet Printer-friendly version: The Google Analytics Cheatsheet, Printer Friendly
  • Custom Visualization
  • Use your mouse to click and drag around the video to change the view. You can also zoom in and out. Pause and explore at any time by pressing the play/pause button under the video to stop and look around. The video below was shot on Monday, January 18, at 9:52 a.m. EST in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
  • Owning a web server that has its own SSL certificate from a registered Certificate Authority (so it won't trigger any browser warnings) does have its advantages. However, the price of a certificate issued by Verisign or a similar vendor usually tends to put a quick end to such fanciful ideas. Israeli vendor StartSSL offers free SSL server certificates that are valid for a year. Since StartSSL's root certificates are already included in all the mainstream browsers, opening a certificate from the vendor doesn't trigger any error messages. This article gives examples of all the steps required to add StartSSL certification, from signing up with StartSSL to integrating the certificate into an Apache web server under Linux. The only requirement for obtaining a certificate for a domain is that a user must be able to receive emails to an administrative account (postmaster, hostmaster or webmaster). There are no additional checks to verify whether the user actually owns the respective domain
  • Twitter has become very popular and has turned into a tool that a lot of websites have used to connect with their customers and promote themselves. A great, and now popular, way to show those who visit your website that you have an active Twitter account is to add a Twitter feed to it. In this post I will show you how to add a custom Twitter feed to your website, providing you with code and styling tips (don’t worry… it is actually very easy). Twitter provides you with various free widgets that are easy to integrate with your website for those who are not capable of easily designing anything custom, but if you can, try to go the custom rout of creating (or having someone create for you) a custom looking feed.
  • Despite any financial recession and economic stress, online purchasing continues to grow. Expansion of the market and evolving technology that simplifies our daily lives help to set the pace of e-commerce design. Customers want the shopping process to be quick and easy, and merchants want to increase sales by making their stores attractive and popular. Thus, e-commerce design tends to combine a look and usability that is at once unique and eye-catching. In this post, we showcase 35 attractive online store designs. One of the trends we observed from this collection is a minimalist design style. Small details and accents (e.g. unobtrusive background patterns, icons, pictograms and typography) reflect a brand’s spirit and match the character of its products. Some websites, though, are unconventional, rich in visual effects. Please note that the selection of stores featured in this showcase was based more on design aesthetics than usability. But we made sure that the websites included her
  • The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (Late night TV show) official NBC page features headlines and videos!
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-21

  • A few weeks ago I was reading an article on form UI by Luke Wroblewski of Yahoo!. For those who aren’t familiar with Luke, he (quite literally) wrote the book on good form design. In the article, one certain section about placing labels inside of form fields stood out to me: Because labels within fields need to go away when people are entering their answer into an input field, the context for the answer is gone. So if you suddenly forget what question you’re answering, tough luck—the label is nowhere to be found. As such, labels within inputs aren’t a good solution for long or even medium-length forms. When you’re done filling in the form, all the labels are gone! That makes it a bit hard to go back and check your answers. Luke Wroblewski He brings up a good point. Generally speaking, you can look at a field that says “Tim Wright” and know that it was a field for your (my) name. But for long forms, yea, I do agree that you can forget some of the questions you answered. For best
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-19

  • The presence or lack of good stock imagery can make or break a design. My best advice is to use custom photography/artwork whenever possible. However, I’m a big fan of stack art because there are tons of scenarios when it makes good sense to purchase someone else’s work over taking the time to create your own. To keep it classy, here are ten things to avoid when you’re working with stock images.
  • With the progression of the Web, hundreds of web design tools have been established around the world to serve the growing demand for such work.Many of this tools are available and widely used by Web Designers and Webmasters. These tools help Them to explore, learn, design and build their projects from scratch.If you’re also a beginner Web designer, these simple tools can help you create the Layout,StyleSheet,Favicons,Buttons,Wordpress Theme and much more quick easy.If you found this post useful please Retweet it.
  • For web developers and designers, it can be difficult to memorize the syntax for multiple programming languages and frameworks, especially since they are always evolving and growing. This is where cheat sheets come in handy. Most cheat sheets are designed to be printer friendly, so you can have them laying around on your desk as quick reference cards. Here is a collection of useful cheat sheets specifically for front end web development that will help you with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
  • Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment on how to build an extensible Web code editor using HTML 5 technology.
  • Now imagine you are an agency with 12 designers who all need (want!) to move to the latest version of Creative Suite. Even more expense. Now imagine you are a looking to learn web design and don’t have pots of cash to spend on the industry standard software. How can you get your hands on a suite of software tools that will help you plan, design, build, debug and deliver a website without spending a penny? Here’s how. We’ve compiled a list of free software, mostly for the Mac, but with a few exceptions where absolutely necessary! We’ll take you through the process of planning, completing and delivering a project, and what free software is available to you at those stages. Be sure to add your comments below and let us know of anything we have missed.
  • CodeRun Studio: A free, cross-platform browser-based IDE CodeRun Studio is a cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE), designed for the cloud. It enables you to easily develop, debug and deploy web applications using your browser. CodeRun Studio can be used instead or alongside your existing desktop IDE. You can upload existing code in order to test it in the cloud or for sharing with your peers. CodeRun Studio also enables you to instantly compile, package and deploy your code to the CodeRun Cloud. CodeRun Studio is a free service. Try It Now!
  • Instructions: Slide the orb Find comfort zone Enjoy auditory zen Uses of White Noise: Aid Sleep Enhance Privacy Block Distractions Mask Tinnitus Configure Audio Equipment Soothe Migraines and more…
  • Having a say in what Google says about you is extremely important these days, especially for professionals such as freelancers, for whom a Google search result of their name is a first impression for potential employers. You definitely want your blog or professional web site to show up before your non-professional social networking profiles. Kirkpatrick discovered a small HTML tag that was missing from his own blog, yet present in Twitter, that could make all the difference: So the long and short of this story is that if you want to make sure that Google understands your blog to be your primary beacon on the web, then you should add the words rel="me" to a relevant link on your blog. I've added that tag to the link on my sidebar that goes to my feedback page, because that's a good page for me. It's as simple as making the link text read a href="http://marshallk.com/feedback" rel="me". It's not necessarily a foolproof solution, but it should help (and certainly shouldn't hurt). If
  • Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found. The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army. U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents. One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light o
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-11

  • * With so few jobs currently available and so many people currently hoping to fill those jobs, standing out in an interview is of utmost importance. While jobs themselves are scarce, job advice is overly abundant. And with an influx of information comes an influx of confusion. What career counsel do you take, and what do you ignore? There are a number of common misconceptions related to interview best practices, experts say. Kera Greene of the Career Counselors Consortium and executive coach Barbara Frankel offer tips below that can help you stand out from other interview subjects, avoid frequent pitfalls, and secure the job. Myth #1: Be prepared with a list of questions to ask at the close of the interview. There is some truth in this common piece of advice: You should always be prepared, and that usually includes developing questions related to the job. The myth here is that you must wait until it is "your turn" to speak. By waiting until the interviewer asks you if you have any
  • Replenish your graphic design arsenal with this week’s freshest design picks. Get on the creative groove by downloading free textures, brushes, fonts, icons and even WordPress themes for your design projects. Spread the good news by bookmarking, tweeting and sharing this post!
  • Google owns our Internet Whether we like it or not, “Google” is almost synonymous with “Internet”. Year after year, Google has developed enough online applications for us to be able to do anything you need to, by only using Google Google is almost synonymous with Internet Now we have a search engine, an online email service, an IM service, a blogging platform, photo and video sharing applications, a feed reader, an online word processor, an encyclopedia, a web site creator, an online directory and even an Internet browser! Not to mention His PPC advertising system, its main source of revenue. Now look at the list above. It´s pretty long, isn´t it? Well you know what? It´s only 10% of the programs, applications, widgets or services Google provides today. Internet without Google? Now the question is: would it be the Internet possible without Google?
  • Bear and Fox follows the adventures of two best friends; a bird named Bear and a snake named Fox. Bear’s name comes from his loud, boisterous nature. Fox’s name refers to his clever, thoughtful disposition. They’ve known each other forever. Their personalities and tastes sometimes clash but they always have fun adventures and they are friends to the end.
  • ]]>

    Categories
    Delicious

    links for 2010-01-08

  • This is a little trick that you can apply to your forms to enhance user experience. We'll display editable form data (indented to be edited, updated) as regular tabular data intended for reading. We're using pure CSS for this one… Actually we WOULD use pure CSS if it wasn't for IE7's lack of support for :focus pseudo-class. 🙁 Take a look at the demo Overview This trick can be useful when you have, let's say, a profile page where your users can view and edit the data on the same page. When users first open the page they see values for various options. You need to make sure that the data as readable as possible so we want to avoid the usual form elements styling. You'll agree that reading content inside input fields is somewhat difficult. This is what you'd want them to have:
  • Pricing a website design can seem impossible. A good website design can cost anywhere between thousands of dollars and under fifty dollars, depending on the type of site, how you build it and a hundred other numbers. Those numbers can make it difficult to decide where the right price point for your own work is: how do you know what your work is worth when other designers’ prices are all over the place? All prices are not created equal: while it may seem to the lay person that all websites are similar, differences like the framework the site is built upon and the process the website designer uses can require drastically different prices. A website design that doesn’t require you to do much more than design a new theme for WordPress probably shouldn’t be priced the same way that an e-commerce site that expects to see plenty of traffic should be. It comes down to the question of what’s in your price. In this article, we’ll look at how four web designers set their prices — and how you can
  • ]]>