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Sports Illustrated is looking for a PRODUCTION ASSISTANT with some experience to support the production of a daily news program for the web. Multiple installments will be produced daily under the guidance of a producer and in collaboration with a small team. Production Assistant will be responsible for supporting all aspects of production and post production per the producer’s direction, from staging to shooting to running. A working knowledge of production equipment, cameras, lighting, rigging, and so forth is a plus. General knowledge of and a passion for sports is mandatory.
http://jobs.brassring.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_jobdetail.asp?partnerid=391&siteid=36&jobid=518568
How to import, export, use filters and effects on and with Movie Clips inside Photoshop.
VIA: YNMyesnomaybe
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/filmmakeriq/~3/P-LGHnV56GQ/photoshop-tutorial-using-movie-clips-in-photoshop.html
A tutorial on how to use real time physics in blender.
VIA: cganim8or
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/filmmakeriq/~3/Q0rDqDJHJrY/blender-tutorial-real-time-physics.html
This is one of the very best list of its kind where you can find the simplest online tools that would be helpful for business purposes. You can also use them and will love them whether you are an office worker, a manager, a supervisor, a student, a home user, freelance designer/developer etc. This post contains a diversified collection of free web apps and we tried to make sure to add something interesting for everyone. Most of them are not very well-known, but they are really amazing in respect to their features. This is the list of 21 Free Business Web Apps That Can Make Your Lives Easier. Just take a look at them and share your thought’s here.
You are welcome to share more Useful web tools that will be helpful for your business and our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter as well.
Live Mesh
Many of you guys using multiple computers that are located on different places. How about if your work computer, your home laptop, your Mac, your mobile phone devices live in multiple places. With Live Mesh, you can synchronize, share and access files with all of your devices, so you always have the updated copy of your files. It’s very simple and easy that you can now access your files from any device or from the web, easily share them with others, and get notified whenever someone changes a file. The best of all this service is powered by Microsoft and absolutely free for everyone.
tgethr
tgethr is for Project teams who need a no-frills, secure email-based collaboration solution and useful for families, friends, and clubs who don’t need the overhead of more complicated solutions. This is also best for remotely located people who still use email as a primary collaboration mechanism. With tgethr all correspondence over the web and email can be safely encrypted.
Zoho Invoice
Zoho Invoice is the easiest way to invoice your customers. It helps create, send and manage your invoices online. Using Zoho Invoice you can track customer payments and also accept online payments from customers.
TimeGlider
TimeGlider is a data-driven interactive timeline application built on the (Adobe) Flash platform. You can “grab” the timeline and drag it left and right, and zoom in and out to view centuries at a time or just hours. TimeGlider allows you to create event-spans so that you can see durations and how they overlap. Being web-based, TimeGlider lets you collaborate and share easily.
DialMyCalls
DialMyCalls lets everyone tap into the power of sending voice messages out to entire phone lists in seconds. No messing around with expensive equipment or calling servers. You can use DialMyCalls to send group announcements to your company staff. You can use their free service and send 1 group call per day to 25 people or less that is sounds interesting.
AyeNotes
AyeNotes revolutionizes notetaking, using templates to automatically convert shorthand entries into full, readable notes. With AyeNotes, you can quickly take notes online and access them everywhere.
PDF to Excel
You can use PDF to Excel to quickly and easily create highly, editable XLS files, making it a cinch to re-use tables and spreadsheets from PDF files in Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Google Docs, and WordPerfect Office. Best of all, you can do it entirely free.
DimDim
DimDim is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees.
Onyaka
Onyaka is an online staff time planning software service that takes all the pain out of staff scheduling. Onyaka provides you with easy to use staff scheduling software, with no downloads, no expensive license fees, and no installation hassle. It has a simple drag and drop interface and you can use all of the features absolutely free. As Onyaka is online application that’s why you can use it from everywhere without any restriction on standard web browser.
Deferred Sender
In our busy schedule, its very tough for us to remember things that we need to do in future to perform our different tasks. Deferred Sender is a free service that allows you to schedule emails from any email application or website to be sent in the future. You can prepare an appointments, reminders for meetings and other important events.
Syncplicity
Syncplicity is effortless synchronization, backup, and sharing. Install it on one computer and all your important documents, photos, and music are backed up online, complete with remote access and aversion history. If you are working on a presentation at home, hit save, and it’ll be waiting for you at work. With sharing, it’s a walk in the park to collaborate with colleagues or to share your high-res photos with your friends.
Checkvist
With Checkvist you can easily work with multiple outlines or hierarchical to-do lists. Extensive use of keyboard navigation and shortcuts allows you to create an outline exactly with your typing speed.
Lovely Charts
Lovely Charts is an online diagramming application that allows you to create professional looking diagrams, such as flowcharts, sitemaps, organisation charts, wireframes, and many more… With Lovely Charts’s extremely simple and intuitive drag’n drop drawing mechanism, you’ll be able to focus on what really matters. You won’t have to draw boxes and arrows, you won’t have to worry about what symbol to use.
Zapproved
Zapproved is a lightweight Web tool that makes group decision-making faster, easier and more accountable. It is a unique solution that introduces peer-to-peer and organizational techniques to improve the process of building consensus.
Ubikwiti
Ubikwiti’s Online Software is an easy to use application. You do not need any accounting knowledge nor technical programming skills are required to setup, use and customize the software. This is easy-to-use on demand business accounting and management software that enables you to quickly and easily select a business template that broadly matches your business needs, use DIY-Configuration and DIY-GUI tools to customize a close fit and modify/add business functionality to meet changing business needs, any time, on-the-fly, with no down time.
ShowDocument
ShowDocument is a free service for online meetings with fully synchronized co-browsing of any document. It is a quick and simple way to share a document with other people at the same time. It is a web collaboration platform that lets individuals have a free online meeting. It is an alternative to various commercial desktop sharing applications. One can easily upload any file and during the session mark it up with a pen or a highlighter tool in addition to a text box tool and eraser.
Dial2Do
Dial2Do lets you do common tasks by just calling a number and speaking. You can use it to send EMAIL or TEXT messages, record REMINDERS to help you remember things, post updates to your TWITTER or JAIKU stream and LISTEN to your favourite internet content. It’s easy and hands-free.
CurdBee
CurdBee is a safe and secure web-based billing application. You can use it to send clients invoices and then collect payments via PayPal or Google Checkout, billing them easily in the currency you choose. It’s so simple, you won’t believe it till you see it.
Onehub
Onehub is a web application that provides everything you need to easily and securely share business information and files with partners, customers, coworkers, and suppliers.
Senduit
Most of us are always in the search of good file hosting website that can provide us as much as possible useful features. Senduit is one of the great file hosting service. This is a free service that allows you to upload up to 100MB files and then send a link to your friends or relative to have them download it.
Vyew
Vyew is a new and powerful platform for real-time and always-on interaction between people and connent. Vyew’s clear-view workspaces enable a transparent collaboration flow with content. Review the past, work together in the present and prepare for the future.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingApps/~3/oCkaDhhiFdE/21-free-business-web-apps-that-can-make-your-lives-easier.html
As today’s career marketplace requires job seekers to be ever more proactive. ResumeBear is a great free service that can help you to make the job search process easier, more efficient and more effective for your dream career. ResumeBear allows you to activate alerts so you will know in real time when your resume has been opened and is being read. This allows you to act quickly to secure that initial interview. If the recipient forwards your resume to someone, you will have that information as well. ResumeBear offers statistical information on your dashboard that allows you to track what is happening to your resume at any time. Was it opened? Who opened your resume? How long was it open? Was it printed? Was it forwarded? All this information is available too. Click here to see the sample resumes.
If you are you new to computers, email and/or resume writing? ResumeBear takes you by the hand and guides your every step towards a perfect resume. With all the Internet security risks in the world today, many recipients will not open attachments. Your resume is hosted on their dedicated servers and viewed through a safe, web browser. It’s easy, reliable and secure.
Before ResumeBear was created, job seekers were compelled to send out resumes by the hundreds, never knowing if their resume was read or even if it was received. Once activated, ResumeBear will let you know immediately the status of every resume you send. With this information you may contact the recipient while your information is still fresh in their mind. This gives you a greater chance at securing the all important initial interview.
ResumeBear is compatible with many top job posting website like monster, yahoo hotjobs etc
Brought To You By
Do you want to advertise here? Click to get more info…
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingApps/~3/UJLm30iNfpE/empower-your-resume-to-advance-your-career.html
Aviary [aviary.com] consists of a set of online graphical authoring tools, including Phoenix, an image editor along the lines of Adobe Photoshop, Peacock, a so-called "visual laboratory" for pixel-based images, and Toucan, a color palette tool.
Its newest addition, called Raven, is a vector-based image editor that mimics the features of Adobe Illustrator.
Via TechCrunch.
http://feeds.infosthetics.com/~r/infosthetics/~3/LW0EHJLcqa4/aviary_vector_graphics_editor_for_the_web.html
Now into week 4 of the latest term at fxphd.com. After Effects Grab Bag so far has been interesting as far as workflow but a little light-on as far as technique goes. Cinema 4D and Design is full of great techniques, Tim really know his stuff. I will say though that the audio on those movies is [...]
http://www.motionworks.com.au/2009/02/fxphd-week-4/
In 2008 I did a series of roadshows for Adobe where I presented a neat little animation of a dancing can. In this series of tutorials I’ll walk you step-by-step through various After Effects techniques for creating this spot. This section deals with Puppet Pin tool basics and how to use the cool motion sketch [...]
http://www.motionworks.com.au/2009/02/the-dancing-can-%e2%80%93-part-1/
If you need to receive a message by email, but can’t (or don’t want to) give out your email address? whspr! gives you a URL to share instead.
You can start with filling out the form and they will give you a URL you can post wherever you like. Viewers who click it will go to a form where they can send you a message. Whspr will forward the message to you.
An example to show how it can help you, Let’s say you want to advertise a job opening on Twitter, and you don’t want to share your company email address. Some applicants may not want to post a public @reply, and they can’t send you a direct message if you don’t already follow them. Include a whspr! URL, and they can reach you discreetly.
Brought To You By
Do you want to advertise here? Click to get more info…
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmashingApps/~3/22sdjtbpuqA/get-emails-without-revealing-your-email-address-to-anyone.html
My friend Jim sent me the link to the AENY presentation this week by Lloyd Alvarez.
AENY presents Lloyd Alvarez’s After Effects Scripting Presentation from AENY on Vimeo.
This is a screen capture video from the Jan 29 , 2009 AENY meeting in NYC with Lloyd Alvarez of aescripts.com/ speaking about using Scripts in After Effects to improve your workflow. Lloyd gives some good references to sites like his own aescripts.com and aenhancers.com/ where you can find Paul Tuersley’s Scripts .
You can also find out more information about AE scripts from these links.redefinery.commotionscript.com/mographwiki.net/After_Effects_scripting
You can also find out more about the AENY meetings by going to the page and signing up for the newsletter.We meet every month so sign up to get the info on who is coming in the meetings to follow.http://www.aeny.org/maillist/?p=subscribe
Enjoy,Jim
http://aefreemart.com/2009/01/31/aeny-presents-lloyd-alvarezs-after-effects-scripting-presentation/
Though W3C’s CSS3 specifications aren’t finalized yet, modern web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and WebKit-based browsers already have full or partial support for them.
As a web developer, it’s crucial to be well-informed about modern and future web standards. To help you stay ahead of the curve - here are 20 excellent resources on the topic of CSS3.
1. CSS3 Progress Report
The CSS3 Progress Report is a web page by the CSS Working Group outlining the current status of all the CSS3 modules. For would-be contributors, this may be a helpful resource in discovering places where you can potentially contribute.
2. Get Started with CSS 3
Web Monkey has a tutorial on how to get started with CSS3. It will give you an overview of some CSS3 features that are already supported by modern browsers. This is a great article to read for those that are just beginning to explore CSS3.
3. Progressive Enhancement with CSS 3
Opera – one of the web browsers in the forefront of supporting CSS3 specs – has an excellent tutorial on a progressive enhancement approach to CSS3 usage that discusses how you can utilize CSS3 for modern/cutting-edge browsers yet still have a design that’s accessible to older browsers that don’t support it.
4. Accessibility Features of CSS
With the rise in popularity of mobile hand held devices and non-traditional web browsers such as screen readers, the CSS Working Group puts accessibility as one of the leading issues that will be addressed in CSS3. This W3C document outlines some of the accessibility features and considerations that are inherent in current and future CSS3 specifications.
5. Introduction to CSS3 (Design Shack)
In this 5-part series, Design Shack gives readers an excellent induction to the world of CSS3. The article series goes through an overview of CSS3 in plain-speak and talks about some CSS3 techniques and topics such as borders and text effects.
6. CSS3 . Info
CSS3 . Info is an enormously comprehensive site about all things CSS3-related. They share news, interviews, and resources from around the web regarding CSS3. CSS3 . Info also has a demo section called CSS3 Previews so that you can see CSS3 modules and features at work for browsers that support them such as Opera and WebKit-based browsers.
7. CSS Advanced Layout Module
Learn about one of the more popular modules in CSS 3 specs: the Advanced Layout Module. This resource is W3C’s working draft and will show you just how great CSS3 will be for us developers.
8. Six Questions: Eric Meyer on CSS3
Six Revisions was fortunate enough to discuss CSS3 with celebrated CSS expert, Eric Meyer. In this interview, Eric Meyer talks about what excites him the most about CSS3, the modular approach to CSS3 specs development, and JavaScript’s relationship to CSS3.
9. CSS3 properties tests for webkit based browsers
In this live demonstration, you’ll find properties currently supported (and unsupported) by WebKit-based browsers such as Safari; it also provides you information about iPhone’s support of these properties.
10. WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback
This article is an excellent summary of the feedback received from the Web Standards Project (WaSP) blog post entitled, “Tell the CSS WG what you want from CSS3“. It’s a great read to see what web developers around the world think about current CSS3 specs.
11. CSS 3 attribute selectors
An exciting improvement in CSS3 is the ability for very complex and specific DOM selection. This tutorial on Dev.Opera shows you the potentials of the new attribute selection features in CSS3.
12. W3C: Selectors
W3C’s working draft of CSS3 Selectors is an excellent introduction into the concept of Selectors in CSS3.
13. Conversation with CSS 3 team
XHTML.com’s interview of Bert Bos (former chairman of W3C’s CSS Working Group) is an insightful look at CSS3 development through the eyes of a leading expert in CSS.
14. The fundamental problems with CSS3
This article by Matt Wilcox discusses some of the current issues surrounding CSS3.
15. CSS Working Group Blog
The people in charge of maintaining and developing CSS standards - the CSS Working Group (CSS WG) - has a regularly updated weblog that shares useful information about CSS3.
16. Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way
24 Ways, an annual online publication that puts out articles by top web professionals, has a tutorial on rounded corner boxes written by CSS expert Andy Budd. The tutorial showcases one of CSS3’s styling improvements: rounded corners without using CSS backgrounds.
17. Push Your Web Design Into The Future With CSS3
Smashing Magazine’s article on CSS3 by graphic/web designer Chris Spooner delves into crafting web designs that leverage current CSS3 specs. It’s an inspiring scrutiny of the things that you can do with CSS3 – right now.
18. Introduction to CSS3 Transparency
This article explores and explains the concepts CSS3 transparency; a concept that’s part of the CSS Color Module.
19. Styling Forms with Attribute Selectors
Dev.Opera showcases the benefits of attribute selectors in this “learning-by-doing” tutorial which deals with styling web forms.
20. 5 Techniques to Acquaint You With CSS 3
Practice makes perfect; this tutorial from NETTUTS shows you how to learn about CSS3 by using it. This article covers things like adding drop shadows to page elements and changing an element’s opacity.
Are you using CSS3 today?
Have you incorporated CSS3 into your web development practices? Where are you at in terms of learning about CSS3? Share your thoughts and experiences with all of us in the comment section.
Related content
Resetting Your Styles with CSS Reset
Structural Naming Convention in CSS
Innovative (and Experimental) CSS Examples and Techniques
8 CSS Techniques for Charting Data
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SixRevisions/~3/qiCqZb7e-9k/
New Plugins
No More Frames
Many web sites try to load your content into their own frame, to help sell ads on their sites. This simple plugin ensure your site is protect from this using a simple piece of code in your document header.
Category Checklist Expander
Shows all the categories in the checklist on the Add New Post screen
Fancybox Gallery
Integrate the FancyBox jQuery plugin with WordPress galleries. FancyBox is a “lightbox” plugin for displaying images in a nice overlay.
Populist
PopuList allows you to track the popularity of your posts on social bookmarking sites reddit, stumbleupon, del.icio.us and digg. When PopuList is activated, a page is added to your dashboard giving the number of times a page has been saved or upvoted.
WP-iGoogle
Create a dynamic Google gadget for your WordPress blog. Allow People to add your gadget to iGoogle.
WP DropDown Metas
WP Dropdown Metas allows you to output a dropdown input based on the values of a certain custom field.
Add bbPress Default Role
Automatically give WordPress users a bbPress role of member when registering.
xili-language
xili-language provides an automatic selection of language (.mo files) in theme according to the language of one post.
Our Progress
Our Progress allows WordPress to display a thermometer to measure progress such as fundraising.
Auto Copyright
Automatically generates a copyright notice based on the first and last post published in the WordPress database.
Updated Plugins
Dynamic Favorites
Populates the favorites drop down menu, introduced in 2.7, with links based on actual page accesses. Lists the pages you actually use most.
Old Post Promoter
Old Post Promoter randomly chooses an old post and promotes the post into either the 1st or 2nd position. The effect is to republish the post and insert the post back onto the front page and the rss feed.
WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
Constant Contact WordPress Widget
This widget adds a Constant Contact signup form to your sidebar and allows you to configure the display.
Force User Login
Very small plugin that forces users to login to view the blog.
Flickr Tag
Insert Flickr sets, tags or individual photos in your posts by using a special tag.
Taglets Feeder
Taglets Feeder is a Wordpress plug-in that pushes updates to Taglets.org when you publish a post.
Vertical Response Newsletter Widget
Add a Vertical Response signup form to your sidebar. Lots of configuration options.
XML Sitemaps
Automatically generates XML Sitemaps for your site and notifies search engines when they’re updated.
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/01/26/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-0126/
Continuing with the theme of E-Commerce, this week I had the chance to interview Dan Milward who is the man in charge of the WP E-Commerce plugin. During the hour long conversation, we discussed the feature set of WP E-Commerce, e commerce in general, what its been like to operate a business in and around WordPress and much more. If you have used WP E-Commerce in the past or are just interested in hearing what Dan has to say regarding the plugin, definitely tune in to this episode.
Disclaimer: This interview was not purchased or is sponsored in any way.
Here are some of the questions we covered on the show:
What are the differences between the free version of the plugin and the gold cart solution?
In your opinion, why has WP E-commerce become synonymous with WordPress and E Commerce?
What are your thoughts on the GPL?
How has it been like for you and Instinct to run a business based on and around WordPress?
How well does WP-E-commerce work with WordPress MU?
Announcements: Next week will be Keith Murray’s last episode as co-host of the show. Please stop by for the going away party as we send Keith off to greener pastures.
Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe
Length Of Episode: 1 Hour 12 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode38.mp3
Listen To Episode #38:
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/01/24/wp-free-commerce/
Windows only: Portable note-taking and outlining application The Guide organizes your notes and projects complete with rich text in a hierarchical view. The Guide has a similar feature set to previously mentioned ActionOutline Lite, lacking the ability to use tabs but making up for it with lighter resource usage, no restrictions on sub-items and the great price tag of free. Once installed, the preferences panel has a setting for switching the application into portable mode, which stores all settings in an INI file instead of the registry so you can copy the entire folder to a USB drive. Enabling icons and checkboxes can be done in the preferences pane, and icons for nodes can be changed through the context menu. The Guide is a free download for Windows systems only. Thanks MarsalaAnteater! The Guide
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/Dk1350BlEyg/the-guide-is-a-portable-open+source-hierarchical-note-organizer
Filed under: Internet, Windows, Freeware, Web
Some of the best commercial Windows utilities, like FastStone Capture, or Reaper started out as freeware. If you want the latest versions of these programs with all the new features, bug fixes, and other updates you'll have to pull out your wallet. But if you're OK with using an older version or just want to try the program for a while before deciding whether to pay for the most recent update, you can often install the last freeware version.There's even a web site dedicated to finding the last version of apps that you don't need to pay for. It's cleverly called Last Freeware Version. The site features brief descriptions of each application, a link to the product homepage so you can buy the full version or download a free trial if available, and a download link for the last freeware version of each app. The user interface isn't that pretty, and there's no search feature. But you can always use Google to search for specific apps by restricting your search to site:www.321download.com.Find freeware versions of commercial apps with Last Freeware Version originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/9iRGdAYj0kQ/
CastTV is a wide-reaching video aggregator that can save you some time when searching out a missed episode of your favorite show or looking for a copy of the latest must-see viral video. CastTV searches dozens of sites, including: YouTube, Hulu, MySpaceTV, Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS and MTV. One of the benefits CastTV has over some of the other popular TV-watching destinations like Hulu is that they poll the networks web sites for new shows, so you can frequently catch new shows before they are released to other video hosting services. For other great ways to use your computer to catch up on some quality programing check out the five best sites to stream TV and six ways to catch your favorite TV shows. CastTV [via GeekSugar]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/HWlLOo-t1_E/catch-your-favorite-shows-and-viral-videos-at-casttv
Filed under: Internet, NewsIt looks like the era of tax-free purchases from web based stores could be coming to an end. A while back, the state of New York decided it could raise a bit of much-needed revenue by collecting tax from online retailers. Generally states can only collect taxes if those retailers have a bricks and mortar presence in the region. But New York figured out an interesting way around that - it decided that advertising affiliates counted as a physical presence. In other words, as long as at least one New York State resident made money by placing Amazon ads on his or her web site or blog, New York could collect taxes.And now it looks like the New York state Supreme Court agrees with that logic. Amazon and Overstock.com had sued the state over the law, and Newegg had decided just to stop collecting taxes. This week's ruling could change all of that. This could be the beginning of the end for tax-free online purchases. Or it's possible that we could see Amazon, Newegg, Overstock.com, and similar web retailers kill their affiliate ad programs in order to stay competitive with companies that don't have to charge tax in states like New York. It's worth noting that most states do actually require citizens to pay taxes on items purchased online. It's just that you're supposed to report those purchases voluntarily on your annual tax returns. And almost nobody does this. What's new about New York's law is that it requires the retailers to collect taxes. [via Alley Insider]Court: New York can tax Amazon, other online purchases originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/lC88Vh4XjNM/
Ext4, the next-generation filesystem for Linux storage, is rolled into the latest (alpha) Ubuntu 9.04 daily builds. Considering it nearly laps its counterparts in benchmark tests by Phoronix, that could mean some nice speed-ups in handling larger files (and maybe boot-ups?) [via; graph by Phoronix]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/On6nHbDcl0A/speedier-ext4-filesystem-available-in-ubuntu-904
Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Freeware, Windows x64
There are plenty of free drive space analyzers out there - like WinDirStat, for example. If you like visuals that are a bit more subtle, give JDiskReport a try.After the initial scan (which can take a minute or two on drives as cluttered and full as my C:), several reports are generated. You can view distribution by size, file type, and modification date, or browse a top 50 list to find your biggest space hogs quickly.I did experience a momentary hang when switching to the ring chart in one particularly massive directory, but other than that the program worked very well. The standard pie chart, bar chart, and file views all worked without hanging.It's freeware for Windows (x64 as well) and Mac, and is also available as a Java Web Start app.[ via Life Rocks 2.0 ]
Analyze drive space usage on Windows or Mac with JDiskReport originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/jHsNQHGxm9o/
TiltShiftMaker is a web-based image manipulator designed to give you photos the unique look of photograph taken with a tilt-shift lens for free. What is tilt-shift photography? A lens is used that allows the photographer to tilt the focal plane—in a regular camera the focal plane is fixed in parallel to the film or image sense— and to shift the part of the barrel of the lens up to correct for the distortion in things like tall buildings. One of the more recognizable traits of tilt-shift lenses is how their extremely shallow depth of field creates a feeling that one is looking at a photograph of a tiny model of something instead of the real thing. For the purists, sure it's cheating. But tilt-shift lenses start at $1200'ish and only rise in cost from there. Most people won't be running out to buy a lens that expensive for a little hobbyist fun. TiltShiftMaker allows you to mimic the depth of field blurring that using a tilt-shift lens would create. You upload a picture from your computer or from the web and from there you can adjust size of the focal area and it's location in the picture. Additionally you can tweak the colors to be a little more vivid, as I did with the sample above. Photo by AlyKat. TiltShiftMaker
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/pnzLCy4e3fg/tiltshiftmaker-turns-your-photos-into-miniature-sets
Filed under: Internet, OS Updates, Web services, Open Source, web 2.0
Like the of your machines running a cloud operating system, but you'd rather keep your data and activities local? If so, the eyeOS MiniServer is a download you might want to check out.It really doesn't get any easier to create a DIY server. Download and run the executable, tick a couple checkboxes, and it's ready to go. Other machines on your network can access the server by opening http://hostname:8080 in a supported browser - Firefox, IE, and Chrome all worked nicely.The usual basic apps are available: web browser, rss reader, bulletin board, contacts, calendar, word processor, calculator, and notepad. There's even a basic chess game.Unfortunately, the available version is a bit old. Nevertheless, it's still an incredibly easy way to set up a server to provide the system-in-a-browser experience on your own LAN or WAN. It's very light on resources all the way around: the server only used about 11mb on my Vista x64 machine, and there wasn't a significant increase in Firefox's footprint when running the OS in a tab.If you're after a bit more information, you can check the MiniServer forum on the eyeOS site. It is, however, largely inactive at this point. Download links in this post point to Brothersoft, as I was unable to find any active links on the eyeOS web site.Set up a DIY cloud OS on your LAN with eyeOS MiniServer originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/eiC2swgpof8/
New Plugins
WP-Admin Quick Links
WP Admin Quicklinks is a very simple little WordPress plugin that adds an intelligent, unobtrusive little admin panel to the top-right of all your site’s pages and posts giving you shortcuts to the most commonly used WP Admin sections.
Mailto-staff
For multi-author blogs. Plugin generates mailto links on the dashboard referring to all user groups of the blog. Quite handy way of internal staff communication.
WordPress PageRank Widget Plugin
Allows you to display a PageRank badge as a widget. It is much more convenient than having modify your templates to include such a badge. It can be used either at a page/post level, or a top site level.
Is Child Of
This plugin implements a function called ‘is_child_of’, which can check if a page is a descendant page of another page, regardless of how many levels there are in between them.
Tweet Stats
Tweet Stats adds two widgets to your blog: “Most Tweeted Posts” and “Recently Tweeted Posts”. It works hand in hand with the newly released “Tweetbacks” plugin.
Default Categories
Allows authors to set their default categories for authoring new posts.
Comment Form Quicktags
This plugin inserts a quicktag toolbar on the comment form.
No Update
This plugin will allow you to disable plugin upgrade options for selected plugins.
Updated Plugins
Google AJAX Libraries API
The Google Ajax Libraries API Plugin is designed to make it easy to use the Google hosted libraries without the need to mess with your theme and plugin code.
WordPress Backup
WordPress backup zips the uploads (images), plugin, and current theme directories. Optionally emailing the zip files to an email address of choice. v1.4 Exposes the folders and permissions used for the backup.
Social Bookmarks
The Social Bookmarks plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites.
Visit Counter
Visitcounter is a small WordPress 2++ plugin which counts the visits of your weblog on a daily base. There a several functions which can show different stats: all visits, currently online, daily visits.
Linklist
This plugin allows you to create a personal linklist as a new page. It’s easy to manage and gives you a lot of features. You can control and manage it with the WordPress admin, edit links and categories and much more!
Wordpress Popular Posts
With Wordpress Popular Posts, you can show your visitors what are the most popular entries on your blog.
Duplicate Post
Create a copy of a post.
Shockingly Simple Favicon
A shockingly simple favicon for your site. it changes de favicon of your blog without having to edit the theme files
Custom Field Template
This plugin adds the default custom fields on the Write Post/Page.
Dashboard: Technorati Reactions Extended
Widget for the WordPress +2.7 dashboard to display the latest technorati reactions.
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/01/09/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-0109/
Research firm Ofcom finds that the worst time for traffic congestion (in the U.K., at least) is 5-6pm on Sundays. Also weak bandwidth times: Right after school lets out, and from 9-10pm on weekdays. Maybe obvious to any home net user, but worth seeing in quantified chart form. [via]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/rIjOTFS9TAc/sunday-evening-is-the-webs-rush-hour
Clearpress
The unique feature about this theme is that it divides the blog posts into three separate column. The theme also features a pull-down sidebar which is totally unobtrusive and contains three widgetized sidebars. ClearPress is Gravatar-ready, Image Gallery ready, and consists of beautifully styled comments and archive pages.
Color Plus
Template consists of two columns, supports widgets, comments, is static in size. In the pattern dominated by black, blue, green and red. Good design, which is suitable for any blog.
Satin Rose
Satin Rose is a simple two column, widget ready theme compatible with WordPress 2.7
Pellucid Dashed
Two column, widget ready theme with support for Twitter
Satorii
Satorii is a theme for WordPress (2.7 or higher) with a minimalist, simple, elegant and clean style, a strong focus on contents and readability, with one centered column for content and three widgetized columns in the footer.
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/01/08/wordpress-theme-releases-for-0108/
New Plugins
WordPress Backup
Performs regular backups of your upload (images) and current theme directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don’t get caught without a recent backup of your theme or images.
Automatic Blog Stats
This plugin makes available a number of statistics about your blog, including pagerank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, Feedburner RSS count and more which you can use as shortcodes in your posts. Automatically updates all statistics daily.
Plain Gtalk Status Sync
This plugin will automatically show your GTalk status on your WordPress blog. You can set a max-shown number and the cache interval to make it works more smoothly.
Add a Separator
Simple Plugin to add a separator between the intro and the (more…) content. This plugin adds a separator between the intro text and the extended (more…) text of the content of a post. It simply replaces the span id more tag with the separator that is set in the plugins php file.
WP Click Track
Scans posts and extracts all the hrefs, rewrites them to include an event which handles the tracking. Basic reports are displayed on the post and page modification areas.
Antispam Bee
Protects your blog from spam by replacing the comment field. Page in German
Email Alerts
Allows users to configure whether they wish to be alerted when a comment is added, comment held, post posted.
WP-Slimbox2
An WordPress implementation of the Slimbox2 JavaScript.
Pending Posts Indicator
Will show a bubble in the left-hand admin menu of the number of posts pending review, if more than zero.
Updated Plugins
Simple Shortcodes
Simple Shortcodes provides an easy to use mechanism for creating and using custom shortcodes. Added in this version are options to control how the configuration page works and the 255 character limit on shortcode values has been removed.
AddThis
The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget allows your users to bookmark your site easily with over 45 popular services, and to share it with friends via email.
Daily Top 10
Track the hits of each blog post for the current day and cumulatively at the same time. You may also display sidebar widgets containing a list of the most popular posts for the day and most popular posts overall.
WP Decoratr
WP Decoratr can automatically find images relevant to your post content from Flickr to spice up your posts.
DandyID Services
Displays all of your online identities (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, more) as clickable links in your sidebar.
Textile Live Preview
Allows you to place a realtime comment preview with support for Textile.
Quote Comments
Creates a little quote icon in comment boxes which, when clicked, copies that comment to the comment box wrapped in blockquote.
Admin Menu
The admin menu plugin for WordPress sticks key admin menu links to the top of your blog’s screen.
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/01/06/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-0106/
Industrious tinkers at eclectic technology blog UselessNinjas have put together a guide to building a sub-$240 computer to run Mac OS X. Last year Adam showed you how to build your own Hackintosh, the build at UselessNinjas continues in that spirit of installing OS X on non-Apple hardware. They use an extremely small desktop computer from MSI, the same manufacturer that built the hackintosh friendly MSI Wind Netbook we looked at a few months ago. For the details on their build, check out the full article. Even if you aren't in the market for a mac-clone, the specs and size on the mini-desktop unit they use for the project look promising for a Linux based XBMC project. Homemade Macintosh for under $240 [via HackADay]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/unyTAAx5lXk/build-a-hackintosh-for-under-240
Windows only: We've already highlighted the best free video conversion tools, but if you want to both edit and convert a video, those apps aren't up to it. That's where Free Video Converter comes in. Free Video Converter lets you choose sections of any video and join or split clips so that once you're ready to export or convert the video, you get final say on what you see. Free Video Converter supports most popular file formats, offers simple, one-click settings for converting videos for your iPod, iPhone, HDTV, or YouTube, and it does it all with a friendly, easy-to-use interface. If all you need is a strong video converter, you've already got plenty of excellent options, but if you also need to edit your video, Free Video Converter is a great little tool. Free Video Converter is a free download, Windows only. Free Video Converter [Extensions for Windows via Download Squad]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/h1xEXv8P9TU/free-video-converter-edits-and-converts-your-video-files
by Ken Rotcop
The phone rang.
It was a big shot producer from a major studio. “Hey, Ken, I love what you’ve done! What a great I’m gonna steal it from you.”
Was he talking about one of my scripts? No. What he was talking about was - well, read on.
Let’s say you’ve had a pitch meeting. (And I’ll talk about pitching later in this article.) The producer likes what he’s heard and the usual line is “Send me a one-page synopsis.”
So you go home, knock yourself trying to condense your 118-page screenplay into one page.
And what you write sucks.
It reads flat, you’ve left out too many good parts, your characters have no life to them, the plot sounds contrived, and the big boffo ending just lays there like a whimper.
Synopses are DEATH!
There is no way, in one page, you can bring to life your story or write a condensation that communicates the innuendos, the shadings, the twists and turns, or the flavor of the screenplay. It just can’t be done.
SO STOP WRITING THEM!
When a producer asks you to send him one page – here’s the secret – you instead send him THE FIRST TEN PAGES OF THE SCRIPT! And you send it with the following cover letter:
Dear Mr. Producer,
I was delighted, in our meeting of July 27th, that you asked me to send you a one-page synopsis of my screenplay, For Us The Living.
Instead, please take 8 minutes to read the first ten pages of my script.
This will not only tell you what my story is about, but will show you my ability to write. After you’ve read these ten pages, I’m sure you will ask for the rest of the screenplay, which I will send you immediately.
I may be reached at (your phone number) or my email address, which is (your email address).
(Then, if you have representation, you also can include your agents name and contact information here.)
Awaiting your response,
(Your Name)
In my screenwriting workshops, my students have been sending out ten pages now for the last four years and the response from the producers and executives has been 100% positive.
Remember the big shot producer from the major studio? He is but one of a number of studio executives who now call me telling me they are no longer asking for one-page synopsis but asking for the first ten pages.
So now, dammit, don’t you screw up! Those first ten pages better be dynamite!
In those ten pages, we better darn well learn who the protagonist is, what he (or she) wants, and who or what is stopping him or her from getting it. Look, I’ve been Creative Head of four studios and I know what happens when I used to get these synopses. A quick glance and then right into the wastebasket. A synopsis cannot help you, it can only kill you.
Now, about the pitch. KEEP IT SHORT! Under two minutes. That’s right, UNDER TWO MINUTES! Don’t try to tell the whole story. Just tease them with a piece of business from your script so that they’ll want to read the screenplay. Remember, you’re not selling your script on the pitch. You’re only trying to get them to read the script. Or, at least, get them to read the first ten pages to suck ‘em in to asking for the whole script.
How short should the pitch be? Well, here are two projects I sold with one line.
To Sony Studios: “When I got divorced, I moved into a halfway house - for divorced people.”
That’s all I pitched. They could see the possibilities. Sure, they asked questions. But questions are easier to answer than it is to pitch. After all, who knows my story better than me?
The second project I sold on one line was when I was Creative Head of Cannon Films. I was talking to Stan Lee (creator of Spiderman, the Hulk, and other comic book heroes) and asked him if he had a super hero that was not tied to a studio. He said Captain America was available. I asked him to give me a poster of the ol’ Cap.
I took that poster into my boss’ office; Menachim Golen was an Israeli who probably didn’t know Captain America from Magic Johnson. I held the poster in front of Menachim, and said, “Menachim, you of all people should make this movie!”
He looked at this masked hero with his skin-tight red, white, and blue uniform, a white star on his shirt, and said, “Let’s do it.”
That’s how Captain America got made. (It was a disaster, but that’s another story.)
Sold on one line.
Sometimes you don’t need more. Keep the pitch simple. An example of a longer pitch, let’s say, for the movie In Good Company might be:
“Dan Foreman, in his mid forties, is a loving husband, caring father, and top ad executive. A young hotshot, twenty-six, becomes his boss and usurps all of Dan’s power. And to make things worse, Dan discovers the hot-shot boss, who can fire Dan in a moment’s notice, is secretly dating Dan’s teenage daughter.”
Then I pause and say, “Would you like to read the script?”
I always end my pitches with: “Would you like to read the script?” to let the executive know that I’m done pitching and it’s time for him to ask questions. Some executives might ask: “How does it end?” Don’t tell them! Tell them to read the script. Don’t give away endings. Don’t do their job for them! Let them read the damn script.
So let’s review:
1) Keep the pitch simple and under two minutes.
2) Don’t send synopses; send the first ten pages of the screenplay.
Award-winning writer Ken Rotcop’s latest feature-length film “Baby On Board” started shooting on February 7th, 2008 in Chicago. His musical “Mama Cass” is scheduled for production this spring at the Secret Rose Theatre in North Hollywood. He is the recipient of the Writers Guild Award, the Image Award and the Neil Simon Award for producing and writing, “For Us, The Living; The Story of Medgar Evers.” He may be reached at PitchMart@Juno.com.
http://filmmakeriq.com/screenwriting/selling-your-script/how-to-get-em-to-read-your-script.html
Filed under: Audio, Internet
There's been a lot of buzz over the last few days about how all of Warner Music Group's music videos have gone missing from YouTube. Now Alley Insider reports that Warner, BMG, EMI, and Universal are talking about building their own site for music videos.The would be to create a single destination where be able to find music videos from popular artists. There's some reason to think the site could work. After all, Hulu has become one of the top destination for online video by providing full length, ad-supported streaming episodes of TV shows and movies with the cooperation of several major networks and studios.On the other hand, there's a big difference between full length TV shows and music videos. Like, a 40 minute difference. Part of the reason Hulu has been successful is because it offers users something that wasn't already available: A single location where they could legally watch high quality movies and TV shows to their heart's content. But there are already plenty of places to find music videos, uploaded by the music labels or uploaded illegally by users. As far as I can tell, the world isn't clamoring for a Hulu for music videos, because there already is one. And it's called YouTube.That said, a few months ago MTV launched a new music video page which is actually a pretty good one stop shop for many popular music videos. Maybe the music labels should just work with MV>Rumor: Music labels want to create Hulu for music videos originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/vaBWchzyeB4/
Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, P2P
If you're a frequent uploader of files, Zoom's File & Image Uploader is well worth a download.It supports more than 70 file hosting services, including popular options like Mediafire, Megaupload, Rapidshare, Sendspace and 23 image hosts like Imageshack and Tinypic. Multi-server options like Rapidspread and MassMirror are also included. When adding files to your queue, you can select image or file hosts. Choose a host, and FUP will display key information about the service like maximum file size, duration of storage, and acceptable file types. Multiple files can be queued during a single add action, as long as they're all headed to the same host.Parallel uploading is supported up to a maximum of eight at a time. When uploads complete, FUP displays links to your files and embed codes. Want to verify things? Right click and choose "open in IE" to view your upload in your default browser.File & Image Uploader is a free download for Windows only, and it's a great tool for anyone who uses file hosting services on a regular basis.Upload files to 100+ hosts from your Windows desktop originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/KXG2KS8rLr4/
Web site FeedMyTorrents publishes RSS feeds of torrents for popular TV shows. Just subscribe to your favorite show and let your BitTorrent client automatically download new episodes as soon as they're available. FeedMyTorrents isn't the only web site of this kind—perhaps the most notable alternative being tvRSS—but it's a good deal more simple to understand and use than tvRSS. Where tvRSS has an undeniably larger collection of shows, FeedMyTorrents is strict about a duplication-free feed, meaning you don't have to tweak the feed or weed out downloads you don't want. Just pick the show you want to subscribe to, set it up in your BitTorrent client of choice, and you'll always have the latest and greatest episodes of your favorite shows as soon as they're available. Thanks Jason! FeedMyTorrents
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/84pGWFSf01k/feedmytorrents-offers-tv-torrent-feeds-without-duplicates
2008 was a successful year for us and for Smashing Magazine. Reviewing what has happened on Smashing Magazine over the last year, we could have told a couple of impressive stories that happened here and there, but we won’t do that. Instead, we would like to take a rather critical look back and discuss what we’ve done and what has changed in 2008.
And in fact, many things have changed. The magazine has grown with the tremendous help of articles written by Steven Snell, Jacob Gube, Vailancio Rodrgiues, Dmitry Fadeyev, Andrew Lindstrom and other truly smashing contributors. We express sincere gratitude to our authors for all the and hard work they’ve put into their articles. We also express sincere gratitude to Andrew Lobo, who has been catching errors, typos and grammatical mistakes in our articles before they get published (since summer 2008).
We also genuinely thank our readers for your attention, criticism, suggestions and numerous emails and links over the last year. We have tried our best to improve the quality of our articles and increase its value for designers and developers. In this post, we review what has happened on Smashing Magazine over the last year: smashing highlights, setbacks and small sensations of 2008, in a brief overview, month by month.
You can also compare the highlights of 2008 with those of 2007 (which, by the way, include links to some really useful articles).
January
If you need backlinks, try compiling a list of beautiful Wordpress themes. Our post 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes has gotten over 850 backlinks since January 2008. Not bad for one post.
In January, we kept busy discussing the hand-drawing style and grunge trend in modern Web design. Some of our readers got excited, some were disappointed, but the trend indeed developed and is still apparent today. Our readers found our article 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design useful and the review of innovative designs and devices quite inspirational. And so did we!
February
We start thinking about developing the Smashing community and offering new services and new ways to make the magazine even more useful. For instance, we consider releasing freebies and inviting professional authors to post articles. Result: in February, we launch our first “Smashing project”: Smashing Jobs, and since then several hundred companies with vacancies have been searching for the right talent among our readership.
We continue to pay attention to essential design elements, such as navigation menus, but also start to pay closer attention to small design details — for example, reviewing best practices for the design of date stamps and shopping carts. The best posts of the month are eye-catching and useful: one showcases (really) stunning desktop wallpapers, another presents powerful CSS techniques for effective coding.
Probably the most inspirational article of the month takes a look at award-winning newspaper designs. Unexpectedly, we gain a lot of backlinks and references from small and huge blogs. And our commenters are happy! Now, that doesn’t happen too often!
March
In the beginning of March, we’re concerned with useful guidelines for creating a successful online portfolio and developing a grid-based design. We discover that many readers find the post about Adobe Fireworks Tutorials and Downloads extremely useful and find Adobe Fireworks itself really underestimated. Maybe we should prepare another article on Fireworks in 2009.
We find out that our readers just love to see beautiful photos. The best article of the month is, without a doubt, the showcase of HDR pictures. Some readers love it, some readers hate it, but traffic never lies.
In March, we launch our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. Everybody can participate and feature his or her work in our magazine by submitting a desktop wallpaper for the upcoming month. Our first is the one for April 2008.
All wallpapers are designed by our readers. We have published over 350 wallpapers from over 100 designers so far. Because we offer them in various resolutions and formats, the result is over 2200 files, with a total size of 770 MB. The series will continue until February 2009, so don’t miss your chance to join in for the next 2 months. By the way, the January 2009 edition is coming soon!
April
April at Smashing Magazine is full of beautiful photos. (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos is one of the posts with the most comments in 2008. The photos for the post were collected over two and a half weeks, yet some readers complain that we “push” articles that don’t meet our quality guidelines and that we collect them “in a rush.” We keep it in mind in preparing posts for subsequent months.
In April, we observe a large increase in retro and vintage websites on the Web, which is why we prepare a post on retro and vintage designs. Yes, we love retro, and we love vintage, and we certainly love Web designs that combine these styles!
Apart from that, we discuss Web form design and PNG transparency. And we also pay tribute to beautiful lettering and book covers.
May
An outrageous scandal in May! We decide to discontinue our “Best Of” series. Reason? The posts always take way too much work and don’t get enough traffic (compared to other articles). Still, we continue to collect useful references and bookmark them; they’ll all be presented in one-off posts.
At the beginning of May, it’s all about pixels, baby! Pixels Go Mad, and we get a huge amount of backlinks and positive feedback in the comments.
We look for new and new concepts for our articles. We decide to conduct a thorough review of WYSIWYG editors, CSS editors and other source-code editors. We select the most advanced tools in each category, install them all, test them, compare them and present the results over a few posts. A great amount of time went into preparing these three articles. Our readers appreciate it and comment on the articles with new suggestions and some really useful alternative editors.
We also announce a contest that ends up receiving the most entries so far: the Smashing Texture Contest, a collection of various textures that can be downloaded and used for free. We receive over 740 emails from over 600 participants, resulting in way more than 2000 photos.
June
We invest three weeks in preparing and conducting a thorough study of the most influential blog designs in the blogosphere. We 30 design problems and analyze how 50 popular blogs solve them. The results are presented in two parts: A Small Design Study Of Big Blogs and A Small Study Of Big Blogs: Further Findings. Our readers appreciate our efforts, and we know exactly what articles they want.
We set a new personal (and maybe even world) record: our books giveaway post has 3,875 comments, is 2.5 MB in size and takes 35 seconds to load. Because we don’t want any extra server load, the article isn’t linked. Be prepared: new giveaways are already on the way. We also announce the Style Switchers Contest, with the modest prize of an Apple Cinema 20″ flat-panel display.
For the first time in a long time, professional, profound discussions take place in the comments. The article Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future sparked an interesting discussion — in our magazine and in the design community. We are proud of our small but strong and knowledgeable community. And we take pointers and new guidelines for us and our authors.
July
In July, we believe in the beauty of pop art. We don’t gain much traffic with the post, but we get a lot of new and interesting and suggestions for further posts. We spark new discussions by publishing the controversial article Should Links Open In New Windows? Some readers think we have no others support us, and readers gain new insight from practice and from professionals. We are harshly criticized, but we are happy: professional discussion is taking place in the magazine, and that’s what we’ve been after for a long time!
Probably the most important contest for Smashing Magazine this year is the Smashing Author Contest in August. Its main goal: find good professional authors for the magazine. We receive 252 submissions. The choice is tough and time-consuming, because we want a nice mix of various articles represented in the contest.
In the end, we select 15 articles and publish them. The winner is the author of a post about the top 10 CSS-based table designs and is awarded an Apple MacBook Air. It turns out the winner lives in Indonesia. You can imagine then that delivery of the prize is quite adventurous… and expensive. But we don’t care.
We also conduct an extensive study of Web Form Design Patterns (part 2) and suggest some guidelines for the design of beautiful and effective Web forms. Our readers are partly overwhelmed, and we are completely off our schedule — and tired, too!
August
In August, our magazine is full of posts from the participants in our Smashing Author Contest. Unfortunately, some readers don’t understand why Smashing Magazine suddenly changed its format and publishes briefer articles more frequently.
We try to offer “traditional Smashing” posts as well, and we succeed with appealing posts about 10 Futuristic User Interfaces and 5 Useful Coding Solutions For Designers.
One of the most popular articles is our showcase of 45 Motion Blur Photos. This is among the very few posts that don’t get the “Worst post ever” comment that starts to wander through our posts in August.
In August, we start Twittering behind the scenes. We have been aware of various lifestreaming applications for a couple of months now, and we decide to try one out and see how it works. To be honest, we are quite skeptical at the very beginning, but we get used to it. And we use Twitter almost every day now.
September
In September, Smashing Magazine celebrates its 2nd anniversary. We contact the talented artist James White and ask him to create a beautiful, exclusive poster for our anniversary. We print 10 posters and give them away to our readers. The giveaway post gets over 1700 comments. Please don’t try to load the page now: your browser may crash, and our server may encounter some serious problems.
September is also “toolbox” month at Smashing Magazine. We come up with the of collecting the most useful resources and tutorials for the most popular content management systems. We start with WordPress and Drupal, and in the next months ExpressionEngine, Textpattern and Movable Type are covered as well. Thanks to the hard work of our brilliant author Steven Snell (applause, please).
The award for the most inspirational post of the month goes to 40 Creative Design Layouts, with few comments, few backlinks and little traffic, but many truly creative>
We also take a closer look at the programming side of Web development. We review version control systems, present useful JavaScript techniques and suggest best practices for jQuery.
October
October sees the most articles published on Smashing Magazine in any month. We offer our readers various types of content, a good mixture of different things, we risk new and release a couple of freebies. And it works!
Well, partly. Some articles don’t get the attention they deserve: Showcase of Pricing Tables gets only 59 comments, and Vintage and Retro Typography only 78 comments.
Our readers complain about too few Web design-related posts. We respond with showcases of retro and vintage websites and beautiful blog designs.
The most successful posts of the month are Jacob Gube’s Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions (applause, please) and Steve Snell’s collection of Best Adobe Illustrator Tutorials. We appreciate it and increase the payment to our authors.
November
In November, Jacob Gube strikes again with 15 Helpful In-Browser Web Development Tools. The article spreads like a virus in social media. Steven Snell explores Newspaper Website Design and comes up with interesting trends and examples.
We also declare war on cluttered, unreadable code and present Principles For Keeping Your Code Clean. And in the post about Billboard Top 40 Design Showcase, our community agrees that music industry websites are in trouble: the websites just look bad, both from aesthetic and usability points of view.
December
In December, we once more show our love for small design details. We explore various and techniques for designing the search box. Jean-Baptiste Jung shares useful RSS and SQL hacks for WordPress, and Dmitry Fadeyev discusses 10 useful techniques for improving your user interface design.
We also return to our roots and provide our readers with well-researched posts on CSS and graphics: one showcase on dual-screen wallpapers and another on CSS tools. Neither article gets as much traffic as we expect, and we are a little bit disappointed, but we know we did the right thing and that these articles are the kind our readers expect.
Meanwhile, Steven Snell collects custom shapes for Photoshop, Dirk Metzmacher takes care of Christmas Photoshop tutorials, and Jacob Gube looks around for Digital Photography Photoshop tutorials. This has been a trend throughout 2009; in fact, we have never delivered as many tutorials and resources on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks as we did in 2008. And we’ll definitely continue this in 2009.
Freebies, freebies, freebies
Since the very beginning of the year, we’ve been releasing freebies in our magazine. In the end, we released so many freebies that we had to create a new category for them. So far, we have released over 60 free icon packs, brush sets, WordPress themes and vector graphics. In fact, many readers complained about “way too many freebies” in our magazine, another reason we ask our readers for their opinion.
The poll results were quite clear, and now we know exactly what our readers expect and what we have to do to meet those expectations. In the next year we’ll release fewer freebies, we’ll revise our quality guidelines and we’ll release only the best ones.
Exemplary results of our cooperation with various designers worldwide are the WordPress theme Notepad Chaos, designed by Evan Eckard, and the Dellipack No. 2 icon set designed by Wendell Fernandes.
Smashing Team in 2008
Smashing Magazine is not just Vitaly Friedman, Sven Lennartz and Michael Dobler. The magazine couldn’t exist without the tremendous support of our brilliant Smashing team. Here are some of the people who helped our magazine over the last year. Thanks, guys, we really appreciate it.
Andrew Lobo is happy to have had a little Smashing in his life in 2008. He edited a good chunk of the magazine’s posts this year. Based in Toronto, Canada, Andrew runs Edit Owl, an editing service for online news and blogs.
Jeff Gardner is a business nerd. He loves Excel, making graphs and helping companies figure out how to perform better. He also enjoys writing, building websites, photography and being outside. You can check him out at his blog or look at some of his photos on his photography site.
Dmitry Fadeyev is the co-founder of the Pixelshell web design studio. He enjoys creating functional websites and is especially interested in all the small details that add up to make great user interfaces. Dmitry also runs the Usability Post blog where you can read his thoughts on good design and usability.
Chris Coyier is a web designer, wannabe developer, and amateur banjo player currently living in Portland, Oregon.
Jean-Baptiste Jung is a 26 years old* blogger/web developper/web designer who lives in the French-Speaking part of Belgium. Jean-Baptiste maintains two blogs: Cats Who Code where he and other authors write about Web Development, Web design, Blogging tips and WordPress, and WpRecipes where Jean shares useful WordPress snippets on a daily basis. When he’s not blogging or having fun with codes, Jean loves to spend time with his wife and cat, and travelling everywhere he can (*until january 12 ;o)).
Jacob Gube is a web developer, designer, and founder of Six Revisions. He has 9 years of experience being a web professional, starting out as a freelance graphic designer building brand of small to medium-sized companies and now currently works as a web developer/web designer.
Steven Snell is a web designer from the U.S. who is active in the design blogging world with his own blogs and as a freelance writer.
Andrew Lindstrom is a freelance web designer based in Vancouver, Canada. When not geeking out over design, he’s likely geeking out over film, technology or pretending to play the guitar.
Andrew Gibson is a freelance UK based writer and photographer who writes articles for photography and travel magazines. He’s the owner of Magical Places Fine Art, a photography website for anyone interested in fine art and travel photography.
Torley Wong amplifies your awesome with the useful and fun. His passions include origin stories about art, audio engineering, and using the Web to inspire and enlighten.
György Fekete is a freelance web developer since 2004 also working for other companies. “Living in Romania my main goal is to deliver beautiful and more importantly accessible websites to people. In 2007 I started my own web design company called Primal Skill. I learned a lot on how to run company and deal with large projects. I’m still learning.”
Cameron Chapman is a web designer, graphic designer, and freelance writer based in Northern Vermont. She writes for a number of blogs and is currently working on a variety of fictional works, including three novels.
Sachin Dhall is a Software Engineer and an amateur blogger behind QTP Blog.
When Glen Stansberry isn’t writing about creativity or web development, he’s performing music or running marathons. You can follow him more closely at Twitter.
Vailancio Rodrigues, born and currently living in scenic beauty of Goa, spent most of his childhood in art and creativity. At present a College student doing his studies in Science and Computers, like to try and do different thing at every moment. Also an emerging webmaster – Tiny Goa and author of Technology Tips, which provides reviews, tips and tricks for various gadgets.
Robert Bowen is a freelance copywriter, activist, and celebrated podcaster who explores many facets of the written word. From poetry to prose, from novel to screenplay, Robert lets his pen know no bounds. He is currently writing for five blogs on a regular basis, as he fills his role as the second creative half of the Arbenting dynamic duo!
Ann Edwards is a web designer and developer from the Midwest. Her blog is comprised of the many various issues dealing with web development.
Daved, aka Danny Outlaw has an obsessive fetish with sharpie markers, toys, and all things design-related. He has been working hard at improving his skills and business and has big plans for 2009.
Smashing Magazine in 2009?
We would like to know your opinion. Smashing Magazine wouldn’t be possible without out readers. Therefore please let us know: how should Smashing Magazine change in 2009? What topics (except “traditional” topics such as web design) should Smashing Magazine cover in the next year? Your opinion is very imporant to us. Please vote in the poll and comment on this article — you can change the magazine and make it more useful for you and your colleagues. Thanks!
How should Smashing Magazine change in 2009? ( surveys)
What new topics should SM cover in detail in 2009? ( surveys)
We’ll do our best to deliver useful and inspiring high-quality articles in the new year. We’ll come up with new to keep Smashing Magazine an exciting place. And we’ll be listening to your suggestions, complaints and criticism.
Merry Christmas and Smashing New Year!
(al)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/22/smashing-highlights-2008/
Lighting expert and instructor Rick Wise draws on decades of experience to illustrate how shadows can be the most important part of how a scene is lit. Learn how to control the direction and quality of your lighting design to add texture, dimension, and force to your images.
…There are three keys to good lighting. Learn how to see and use these keys, and you will begin to light well – though learning to see as well as how to shape light is a lifelong journey, one that continues to inform and enrich your art and craft as a cinematographer/videographer/photographer up to the day you cease to be.
— CreativeCow.com| Read The Full Article
http://filmmakeriq.com/production/lighting/lighting-with-shadows.html
I’m currently cutting a digital feature and this has made me think about editing styles. Here are an even dozen tips that I feel will make any budding film editor better at this craft. I’m sure not everyone will agree with all of these points, since they come out of my own approach and style. [...]
http://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/12-tips-for-better-film-editing/
With grunge/textured designs being popular, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide some free textures that you can use in your designs. This set consists of 15 free, high resolution rough textures (2,500px x 1,950px dimensions). I took them from rock and stone formations on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
You can preview all the textures included in this set on this page (clicking on the images takes you to their Flickr photo page). Alternatively, you can download the whole set as a ZIP file (54.4 MB). Enjoy!
SR_Rough_Texture_01
SR_Rough_Texture_02
SR_Rough_Texture_03
SR_Rough_Texture_04
SR_Rough_Texture_05
SR_Rough_Texture_06
SR_Rough_Texture_07
SR_Rough_Texture_08
SR_Rough_Texture_09
SR_Rough_Texture_10
SR_Rough_Texture_11
SR_Rough_Texture_12
SR_Rough_Texture_13
SR_Rough_Texture_14
SR_Rough_Texture_15
Download the Rough Textures Set (50.4 MB)
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SixRevisions/~3/435714625/
Filed under: Audio, Google, AndroidBuying music directly from the Amazon.com MP3 store is one of Android's coolest features. Although it might not be the "killer feature" that some were hoping it would be, it offers a great way to get quality, DRM free music directly to your device. The only downside is that you have to download music over WiFi (the iTunes WiFi Store works the same way).As a huge music junkie (my total collection, including digitzed CDs is probably about 2 TB in size -- and that's not 2 TB of FLAC either, that's 2 TB of mostly V0 LAME MP3s), Amazon's MP3 store is easily my favorite place to buy digitial music. Although it might not be making a dent in iTunes sales figures (here's a hint - get in more countries ASAP and start offering digitial exclusives like iTunes does), its increasing selection and weekly deals and promotions continue to make it the best game in town.So how does the Android version of the store stack up? It hits the most crucial points, but it does lack some of the finesses that could make this a real mobile destination.Gallery: Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 StoreContinue reading Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 StoreRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feeds.downloadsquad.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/431012655/
Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Freeware, Open Source
We've covered many, many Explorer replacements here in the past, so I was a little surprised that MuCommander hadn't been written up yet.What makes MuCommander stand out is that it is free, open source, and cross-platform. The author's web site provides downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux (.tar.gz) as well as a Debian package, portable version, and a Java Web Start package. It's actually the first JWS application I've come across since I started reviewing for Download Squad. It loaded fairly quickly on my netbook, and ridiculously fast on my quad-core AMD desktop.MuCommander presents a skinnable, dual-pane view for file management. There's no tab support, though I don't consider that a major shortcoming - especially considering its other features are numerous, and extremely useful.For starters, there's built-in support for FTP, SFTP, Samba, HTTP, NFS, and Bonjour. Several types of archives can be explored without extracting: zip, rar, tar, gzip, bzip2, iso, nrg, deb, and lst. MuCommander can create archives (press ctrl+I to pack) and even modify zip files on the fly without having to recompress the entire archiveThere's also a command shell window with scrolling output, credential manager, and favorite locations list.MuCommander is a fantastic file manager, and well worth a test drive for any user - regardless of OS.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feeds.downloadsquad.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/430905002/
New image recognition webapp ALIPR (Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time) is a on a mission to assign relevant tags to digital images based on their content, and wants you to help it learn. While digital image recognition has come a long way in recent years, it's still got a long way to go, and ALIPR's got its share of hits and misses. Upload an image to ALIPR or hand it a URL of an image already online, and the engine will suggest tags, and ask you to add to its list. Some of ALIPR's suggestions are spot-on, but others are way off. You can confirm the hits and suggest other tags to help the engine learn. Check out how ALIPR did with a few images from my Flickr photostream. Given a photos of boats in the harbor and a skyline, ALIPR does pretty well with its tag suggestions: But a clear photo of a spider doesn't net any tags that apply: Given a more confusing photo of a rock sculpture outside a building, ALIPR the sky and buildings: But a clear photo of a fire only returns the "orange" tag, not the word fire: The concept of ALIPR is super exciting for anyone who's building a library of digital photos, because the most tedious parts of organizing and searching your photos is adding relevant keywords to them. So automatic photo tagging, when done well and accurately, could be a huge time saver. Can't wait to see ALIPR-like technology built-in to a desktop photo organizer like Picasa. In the meantime, you can also use ALIPR's growing library of tagged photos to search for images by keyword as well. ALIPR [via TechRadar]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/418114450/alipr-learns-how-to-auto+tag-photos
The one DIY skill most of you don't have (according to last weekend's poll) is the ability to tie a bowline (knot, that is). Unless you're a sailor or a Girl or Boy Scout, you've probably never heard of a bowline (pronounced "boh-lin"). But this super-useful knot creates a loop that's strong enough to put around someone's waist and pull them out of the water, or hold down heavy objects, and it's very easily undone. Hit the play button above to learn how to tie a bowline using an easy-to-remember bunny metaphor. Just recently I hung a hammock using a bowline. Any knot nerds out there put the bowline to good use in regular everyday life? Any other knots you know and love? 'Fess up in the comments. How to tie a bowline knot [YouTube]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/417822280/how-to-tie-a-bowline-knot
Lifehacker's on the hunt for a couple of dedicated and passionate interns to help us out behind the scenes. Are you a total rockstar? Do you want hands-on experience working backstage at a leading online tech publication? If you want to work with the Lifehacker editorial team to keep the gears turning here every day, you're in the right place. A candidate for a Lifehacker internship: Is available for 12 hours a week for the next 3-5 monthsIs an established Lifehacker commenter with a solid history of comment contributions to the siteCan be available on instant messenger to the Lifehacker editorsIs proficient using Google search and an RSS reader, and has basic HTML and image editing skillsIs at least 18 years old and located in the United States As a Lifehacker intern, your job responsibilities would include approving incoming comment applications and helping with other comment moderation tasks; hunting down possible stories for posting on-site; closely watching news feeds for breaking stories and new launches; and assisting editors with research projects, like counting Hive Five votes. To apply to be a Lifehacker intern, send an email to jobs at lifehacker.com containing the following information in the body of the email (no attachments!):A link to your commenter profile here on site. (Hint: we'll only look at applicants with a solid comment history; if you've got a filled-out profile including a friends list, web site URL, and image, your chances are even better.)The time zone you're located in, and what time of day you're available (morning, daytime, evening)Any other special skills you might have (for example, Photoshop chops, programming knowledge, tech blogging, any journalistic experience) This is a paid position, but it won't pay your rent—at most it'll buy you a few cups of coffee every month. Note: We will not respond to every email application we receive. If you have questions about the position, ask in the comments below, not via email. When we fill the position we will update this post, so refer back here to find out the status of the position. Thanks.
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/416708511/help-wanted-lifehacker-interns
Todd Kopriva posted color management in After Effects CS4: one new white paper, one updated to his blog, After Effects Region of Interest. Todd is the Adobe After Effects “Documents Guy”.
http://aefreemart.com/2008/10/06/color-management-in-after-effects-cs4-one-new-white-paper-one-updated/
Canada-based Frantic Films announces the launch of Frantic Branded Content + Commercials, a multi-disciplinary production facility that specializes in creating original integrated entertainment content for use across the entire range of traditional and emerging media platforms. With offices in both Toronto and Winnipeg, the award-winning studio has a powerful history of success, working cooperatively and creatively to deliver high-quality, deep-impression content and advertising solutions for brands, agency partners, and entertainment outlets. Frantic's projects include traditional broadcast television series, feature films, documentaries, and branded content for clients such as the Discovery Channel, Slice Network, The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and the Canola Council of Canada....
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/studiodaily/news/~3/406384458/9985.html
Here is this weeks collection of WordPress-related posts:
WordPress Developer’s Toolbox - Smashing Magazine is at it again, this time providing a useful toolbox for WordPress developers. We were fortunate enough to have about 5 of our posts featured here.
WordPress for iPhone Downloaded 100,000+ Times - If you think about how many iPhones are in circulation after only a couple years in existence, this is truly an amazing statistic and a great sign for WordPress.
Feed Pauser WordPress Plugin - Keith of Techie-Buzz (also Weblog Tools Collection) has released an awesome new WordPress plugin that pauses a post from being made available through RSS. Click over to get a more detailed description.
Different Ways to Display Content in WordPress - Devito Design does a great job of sharing a bunch of different ways to display your blogs content in WordPress.
---Related Articles at Hack WordPress:WordPress News & Notes - September 5, 2008Premium WordPress Themes: Flash News and the Gazette EditionWordPress Progress in 2007Adii Giving Away Premium News All-Inclusive PackagePremium WordPress Theme: Fresh News Now AvailableWordPress News & Notes - September 11, 2008
You are reading WordPress News & Notes - September 25, 2008 © 2008 | Hack WordPress | WordPress eBook | Premium WordPress Themes.
Enjoy writing about WordPress? Get your blog more exposure by joining the Hack WordPress writing team!
http://hackwordpress.com/wordpress-news-notes-september-25-2008/
Ko Maruyama created this great new video tutorial for Toolfarm, How to Set Up a Simple Maxon Cinema4D Set Driver. Check it out!.
http://aefreemart.com/2008/09/24/how-to-set-up-a-simple-maxon-cinema4d-set-driver/
Filed under: Internet, BloggingAutomattic, the company behind the popular WordPress blog publishing software has acquired blog commenting service Intense Debate. We've covered Intense Debate in the past. The service provides web publishers a replacement for the default comments systems supplied by WordPress, Blogger, and Moveable Type and other blog platforms. By installing the plugin, you get threaded comments, reputations, and other advanced features. And readers can track their own comments and those left by others across any blogs or web sites that use Intense Debate. Intense Debate will continue to be available for use on blog platforms besides WordPress, but Automattic plans to add some features, like threaded comments to WordPress 2.7, which will be the company's next major release.This can't come as good news for Disqus, another company that provides enhanced commenting features for bloggers. While Disqus has gotten a lot of good press over the last year, and has rolled out an impressive suite of blog comment management features, an awful lot of blogs are powered by WordPress. And pretty soon most of those blogs will have quick and easy access to Intense Debate's features, giving bloggers and blog commentors one less reason to sign up for another blog commenting service.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
http://feeds.downloadsquad.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/401101954/
It is no secret that Weblog Tools Collection is a magnet for comment spam. I am not sure if this is something to brag about but Akismet has caught over 3,588,568 spam comments as of writing this article. We spend a considerable amount of time moderating comments on this blog and lately the time spent has increased many fold. Let me explain.
Since automattic spamming of blogs has mostly been reduced to a trickle due to the likes of Akismet, spammers are now individually targeting blog posts with highly relevant, and in many cases highly convincing comments. I moderated and subsequently spammed a comment today that was over a hundred words long, on the pros and cons of one of the themes on our daily theme posts. I thought the comment was a very well written review of theme until I looked closely. The URI of the poster was a refinancing Made For AdSense page. One click of my itchy index finger and it was gone. Take that sucka!
This sort of relevant comment spam is not new but the time and effort spent on writing them seems to have increased quite a bit, where legit comments are harder to distinguish from spam. They now come with more Kung Fu and we need to spend more time and effort in them. We use a plugin written by Alex King on this blog that can delink the comment authors. However there is lurking danger in just delinking a comment author since if the author was really a spammer, authorizing a comment is akin to authorizing them to post comments on your blog without moderation (they still have to go through Akismet even if the author was previously authorized). So if the comment looks really legit but has a lurking spam link in the URI, and Akismet thinks it is ham then you as the blogger never see it because it never gets put into the moderation queue and the spammer is successful.
In addition to much better comments from spammers, trackback spam have gotten clever as well. Spammy trackbacks from Russian and Chinese sites have increased considerably. They are much harder to as spam because of the language barrier and we have resorted to deleting them if they look anywhere close to being suspicious or add nothing to the conversation. We also delete any and all trackbacks from scraper sites. As a matter of fact, we use the blacklist feature to remove them from contention completely but scapers are another story for another day.
So we are spending more time moderating comments and often feel guilty that we might be spamming or deleting legitimate comments from folks whose site/blog look spammy to us (there was a poker blog that looked spammy but was written by a legitimate poker fan). Sadly, one persons’ spam might look to another person like ham and vice versa. It is getting harder to determine the spamminess of a comment because the distinguishing features that separate ham from spam continue to get more and more blurry. Please be (more) careful when approving a comment because you might be letting a spammer in.
“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/23/comment-spam-with-more-kung-fu/
Autodesk released a Stereoscopic Filmmaking Whitepaper delivering a comprehensive understanding of the state of the industry and its current barriers. The whitepaper provides valuable knowledge for anyone curious about the future of Stereo 3D (S3D) and highlights current industry challenges from technical production complexities to studio considerations and theatrical acceptance....
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news/9957.html
Zen teacher Marc Lesser offers some great advice on how to put more things on your "not to-do list" and accomplish your goals without getting caught up in meaningless busy-ness. This talk, which happened at the Google campus back in January, is lengthy at almost an hour, and some folks might find it a bit woo-woo. If you're ok with getting a little Zen mixed up in your workday, it's a worthy watch before you plan your upcoming workweek. Keep a notebook and pen handy while you watch this one. Coaching Series: Accomplishing More By Doing Less [Google Tech Talks]
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/399207600/accomplish-more-by-doing-less-but-thinking-more
Score Render
This plugin renders inline sheet music fragments inside posts and comments into images. It supports ABC, GUIDO, Lilypond and Mup music notations
C4F Textarea Toolbar
C4F Textarea Toolbar is a plugin for WordPress aimed at providing a simple yet very useful and precise tool to insert emoticons and markup in the comments’ textarea.
BlogWell’s Simple Image Link Widget
Simple Image Link lets you easily add images to your sidebar, be they advertisements, buttons of support or buttons of protest without the need for any HTML.
WP More Feeds
Generate RSS feeds for category and tag archive pages.
Disable Password Protection
Disable the ability for users to password protect certain posts.
wpNamed Users
Intranet / Extranet plugin for Wordpress that allows users to specify which users can access specific posts or pages.
MTR Podcast Recorder
MTR Podcast Recorder offers real-time recording that is saved on the same server where WordPress is installed. All recordings will be saved into the MP3 format using LAME encoder.
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/09/21/wordpress-plugin-releases-for-0921/
The Stanford Engineering Everywhere program offers online access to full courses in the school's engineering program—including in computer science and artificial intelligence. Courses include lecture videos, reading lists, handouts, quizzes, tests, and even a social network for fellow online students. Not quite your speed? Check out other ways you can get a free college education online.
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/396424437/stanford-offers-free-full-courses-online
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