Try A New Free Photoshop Version From Adobe

Digital images are a very common term for most of the Internet users. There are many free online services providing tools for image storage, presentation and editing (processing). Adobe Systems Incorporated has released Adobe Photoshop Express, a Rich Internet Application that allows you to edit,
publish and share your photos in image galleries for free. Adobe Photoshop Express is made with the help of Flex, the Adobe framework for creating Rich Internet Applications.

After a quick process of registration, you will be able to upload photos and organize them in albums (you will get 2 GB of storage space for your photos for free). The photos could be sent through email and edited online. You should not think that the online photo editor is a web version of Adobe Photoshop desktop application.

As compared with the desktop version, Adobe Photoshop Express image editor has only a few features, but they are enough to enhance your photos online. The set of tools provided to tweak your photos allows you to remove red-eye, auto correct images, perform various tuning actions (highlight, sharpen, white balance, focus) and apply effects (filters). You can also return to the original image any time by reverting all of image processing actions.

The images can be shared in various ways. Adobe Photoshop Express provides you the possibility to upload or download photos from other social networking websites like Facebook. The photos are displayed by default in image albums that could be linked in other social networking websites or blogs.

To be able to use Adobe Photoshop Express, you will need Flash player version 9. You can test the free Adobe Photoshop Express Rich Internet Application performance by going to the Adobe website.

Article Source: Softpedia

Third Largest Social Network Goes Mobile

Hi5, the third largest social network in the world, according to a comScore study, announced that it had expanded to include the mobile platform as well. Users from all over the world will have the possibility to login to their favorite (or maybe not favorite, if we’re to believe the numbers, but close enough) social network by using a mobile phone. Moreover, hi5 assured that the 26-language support available on computer access to the network would also be included with the new platform.

“Mobile use represents a huge opportunity for social networking and this functionality is particularly relevant to hi5's international user base who are more advanced than their U.S. counterparts in terms of mobile device usage. We are providing the tools for users to connect and share information with their hi5 network from almost anywhere in the world,” said Ramu Yalamanchi, CEO of hi5.

Moreover, the global mobile market is offering greater opportunities, since, in the US, mobile phone sales are reportedly on the decrease. A couple of weeks ago, the NPD Group released a report that showed that the mobile business had just registered its lowest peak – a 13% drop in sales during the second quarter of 2008 compared with last year. In other parts of the globe, the accessibility to mobile devices is under development, so the chances are greater for hi5 to enlarge its non-US audience.

The company will also get contracts with local advertisers, which, in turn, will offer better quality ads to hi5 subscribers. “In addition, as we see the number of users accessing hi5 via their mobile phones increase, it will open up the opportunity to roll out hyper-localized advertising.”

hi5 seems to understand that the US market is allotted to rivals MySpace and Facebook. This is the main reason for which the company is trying to make the most of its localization business method. “Because we've focused on the international opportunity from the start, we've developed a very acute sense of the unique behaviors and needs of users in different countries,” Yalamanchi underscored on a previous occasion.

Article Source Softpedia

20 tech habits to improve your life

A few new habits can make the difference between staying on task, finding what you need and getting things done — or having a tech meltdown.

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but it doesn’t seem that way when you’re struggling to wrangle 289 new e-mail messages, dealing with a hard-drive crash or suddenly realizing that you left an important file on the office computer. Thankfully, plenty of tools can help. We’ll tell you which ones are worth trying, and we’ll suggest some practices that you can incorporate into your workday to use tech tools more effectively and efficiently.

1. Telecommute by Remotely Controlling Your Office Computer

You can work from home — but use the computer in your office — through remote-control software such as LogMeIn (free version available) or TightVNC (free). You can have a full-screen view of the remote computer, launch and close programs, read e-mail, copy and paste text between PCs, and access any files you left behind. Save money on gas, claim home equipment on your taxes, and convince your boss that you’ll be more productive without leaving your house. Even the iPhone has some VNC clients, such as Mocha VNC and Teleport.

If you don’t need full remote control but you do require access to your office or home files, set up Microsoft Corp.’s free file-syncing tool, FolderShare. Your files will always be up to date, no matter where you’re working or where you last updated them.

2. Schedule Automatic Hard-Drive Backups, Locally and Remotely

Backing up your critical files is as exciting as purchasing home insurance, but it’s just as important. Don’t risk losing your irreplaceable digital photos by making empty promises to yourself to burn a couple of DVDs every few months. Instead, set up software and services to do the job for you while you concentrate on more-exciting projects. First, save yourself from an “OMG my hard drive crashed!” catastrophe with a top backup program. Or get started now with a free copy of SyncBackSE, and schedule regular backup jobs to your external FireWire drive, thumb drive or network drive. (If you have FTP server access, SyncBack can back up to that as well.)

Of course, local backup isn’t enough. To protect your data against fire, lightning, theft or other disasters, you’ll want to back up your data to a remote server over the Internet. Both Carbonite and Mozy Home offer affordable unlimited server space and utilities that quietly back up your data in the background while you work.

3. Work Faster and More Efficiently Without a Mouse

Streamline your computer work by teaching yourself keyboard shortcuts for your common actions, such as Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-T to open a new tab in Firefox, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste (see our list of additional shortcuts). Then, become a keyboard master with the help of a keyboard launcher such as the free Launchy (for Windows) or Quicksilver (for Mac). You can start programs, open documents and even do advanced actions such as resizing images and moving files without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You can also assign key combinations that automatically type out common phrases — such as usernames, passwords, addresses and e-mail signatures — with utilities like TypeItIn (Windows) or TypeIt4Me (Mac OS X).

4. Lose Weight, Get Fit, Save Money, and Increase Your Mileage Online

A new crop of social self-improvement sites help you monitor how much you’ve eaten, exercised and spent, to motivate you and keep you on track.

Web services such as FitDay and Weight Watchers log and guide your diet and fitness regimen.

If Quicken or Microsoft Money has become too complicated to update, you can track your spending, balance your checkbook and run charts on expenditures versus income at personal-finance sites Mint.com and Wesabe.

As for your car, avoid online gas scams. In addition, you can squeeze the last bit of mileage out of every expensive tank of gas with a miles-per-gallon tracker such as Fuelly or MyMileMarker. Entering your information into such sites gets you personalized suggestions, comparisons and a community of like-minded people who can offer support and suggestions.

5. Clear Out Your In-box Every Day

Beat e-mail overload once and for all by emptying your in-box completely — and keeping it that way. The “In-box Zero” philosophy says that e-mail messages are just calls to action — not clutter that we need to hang on to. Create three folders or labels in your e-mail client: Action, Later and Archive. Each day, when you check your e-mail, make a decision and do something with every new message you’ve received until you’ve moved them all out of your in-box and reduced your message count down to zero. Ruthlessly delete the messages you don’t need, on the spot. Respond to the ones that will take under two minutes. File messages that you want to keep for future reference in the Archive folder, those that will take longer than two minutes to reply to in Action (and add those to-do items to your list) and messages you need to follow up on at a subsequent date (such as Amazon shipment notifications) in Later. Then breathe a sigh of relief when you see that glorious declaration: “You have no new mail.”

6. Get Your Cables Under Control

When you have a tangled mess of dust-coated cords knotted into a bundle under your desk, disconnecting a laptop or setting up a new printer can seem impossible. The cords for power, USB, speakers and FireWire all look the same. Simple labels can help you avoid accidentally killing your entire rig by pulling one wrong plug. Print out your own with a label maker, or buy a prefab pack of Pilot ID labels to stick on your home-office or living-room plugs. When the cat knocks one out or it’s time to rearrange, you’ll be glad you did. Then, get cords up off the dusty floor with an under-the-desk cable tray such as this $10 Ikea model. To keep gadget and laptop cords from falling off the back of your desk when they’re not plugged in, affix a simple cable catcher (or a binder clip) to the edge of your desk to hold them. Finally, plug your workstation and your collection of peripherals into a single power strip or uninterruptible power supply to shut down the energy hogs with a single switch when you’re not using them.

7. Stay on Task With the Right To-Do List

The key to staying on track with the stuff you need to get done is writing it down and checking it off — whether you do so online, on your desktop, on your smart phone or in a plain text file. PC World has tried a number of online task manager sites, and our pick is Remember the Milk (RTM). It provides all the bells and whistles you’ll ever need in a to-do list online, on your desktop and on your phone. RTM offers task categories (such as Work and Home), file attachments, notes, priorities, tags, due dates and even “honey do” items (you can send tasks to other RTM users, such as your spouse or assistant). RTM also offers a Firefox extension that integrates the service with your Gmail in-box, so you can turn e-mail into tasks. Of course, no matter how good your software is, nothing can replace the visceral satisfaction of crossing off a line on your paper to-do list with the stroke of a regular old ballpoint pen.

8. Replace Your Laptop With a Thumb Drive or iPod

Instead of lugging a laptop on your next trip, save your aching back by taking your computer’s desktop with you on a thumb drive or iPod. Portable Windows software offerings such as MojoPac and U3 put a full desktop on your USB thumb drive (or disk-use-enabled iPod), letting you run applications like Microsoft Outlook and save documents all on that drive. All you need is a host computer. You can plug the MojoPac drive into your in-laws’ PC or a coffee-shop workstation, for instance, to access your documents and applications without leaving a trace behind. Alternatively, you can save and run free portable applications — like the Firefox browser, Pidgin IM client and Sumatra PDF reader — from your thumb drive. Download those and other programs for free at PortableApps.com.

More: 23 Things to Do With a Thumb Drive

9. Use Your Camera Phone as Your Digital Photographic Memory

Almost every cell phone model now includes a built-in camera, and they’re good for more than just snapping pics of your buddies’ bar shenanigans to blackmail them with later. Use your phone’s camera and memory card to capture the spot where you parked, the label on a bottle of wine your spouse loved, the price on a new gadget to look up online or an amazing meal you’d like to try to cook at home. A new crop of Web services can turn digital photos of whiteboards and documents into searchable PDF documents, too. E-mail your camera-phone shot of a whiteboard or document to Qipit, and the service will recognize the text and e-mail you the resulting searchable PDF.

More: Six Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

10. Create Your Own Price-Protection System

Deal search engines such as RetailMeNot.com or SearchAllDeals.com and social sites like BeatThat are great at finding the best prices before you buy, but PriceProtectr.com and similar services will save you money afterward by monitoring over 130 stores that have price-protection policies. If the price goes down after your purchase, that store might owe you money, but knowing whether the price went down is the trick. You can take advantage of Amazon.com Inc.’s 30-day price guarantee by going to RefundPlease.com or by using the free Amazon Price Watch software. Travel sites like Farecast and Orbitz also have price-protection systems and e-mail alerts for when prices reach a certain low point.

11. Consolidate Multiple E-Mail Addresses With Gmail

You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of socks — so it makes sense to keep them all in one drawer. If you have mail coming to your Internet service provider’s account, your work address, your school address and your throwaway Yahoo account from 1998, and you’re having difficulty juggling everything, it’s time to consolidate all those messages into one in-box. Google’s free Web-based Gmail service is both an e-mail host and an e-mail client. Use Gmail’s built-in Mail Fetcher to retrieve messages from up to five external e-mail accounts using the POP3 standard. In Gmail’s Settings area, visit the Accounts tab to set up your external e-mail addresses, and you’ll then receive all your mail in one roomy in-box. You can even send mail from your non-Gmail addresses via Gmail’s Compose screen, too.

More: Get Organized in Gmail

12. Never Forget a Birthday, Teeth Cleaning or Oil Change Again

When you’re tired of scrambling to send Mom flowers at the last minute every year, set up a scheduled e-mail reminder for her birthday — and for any other long-term recurring tasks. Google Calendar can send upcoming-event alerts via SMS (”Pick up the dry cleaning at 3 p.m. today”) or e-mail (”Schedule a hair appointment; it’s been six weeks!”). Most Web-based calendars (like Google Calendar) and task managers (like Remember the Milk), as well as Web sites such as HassleMe and Sandy, support e-mail alerts.

More: 26 Tricks to Help You Tame Google Calendar

13. Never Forget a Password Again

Your Web browser can save your username and password for sites you log into often, but you still have lots of other passwords to remember — Wi-Fi network names and passwords, computer log-ins, personal identification numbers and passphrases, even security questions and answers. Instead of writing everything down on a sticky note tacked onto your computer monitor, lock up your store of sensitive passwords in a secure, encrypted password database. The free KeePass works in Windows, Mac and Linux, and it assigns one master password to your database. Park your passwords, PINs and software serial numbers in your personal secure database, and save yourself the hassle of having to call the IT department for the umpteenth time to reset your password.

More: 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads

14. Encrypt Your Private Files

Everyone has a folder or two of private files that thieves, children, competitors, co-workers or casual passersby should never see. Whether you want to secure your stealth start-up’s business plan or some personal photos, the free, cross-platform TrueCrypt encryption software (see review or download) is ideal for storing sensitive files in a password-protected virtual container. Only someone with the master password can open that container and read or write the files within. To everyone else, it’s a nondescript single file full of jumbled-up junk. TrueCrypt can secure a single folder on your hard drive or an entire disk — it’s great for a thumb drive carrying precious data that could be exposed if the drive is lost or stolen.

15. Stream Content From Your PC to Your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii

You don’t need yet another box under your TV in the living room to enjoy your digital music and videos. If you own a game console or TiVo box, you’re ready to start streaming media from your PC today — no Apple TV or set-top media box needed. Find out how to get started.

Microsoft also recently announced that, by this holiday season, Xbox 360 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to stream “thousands of movies” using just their game consoles. In the meantime, you can stream Netflix movies from your PC to your Xbox 360 with the vmcNetFlix plug-in.

16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Forget basic cable — there’s plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don’t want to catch your favorite shows at the networks’ own Web sites, hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost or Comcast Corp.’s Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer or Slacker.

If you’re on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web

17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly. (Here’s how to set them up.)

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox’s address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don’t involve searches, too — for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark’s Properties dialog box. Once you’ve set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.

Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up to date wherever you’re working.

More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips

18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

Extend your router’s signal, throttle your bandwidth, and review usage charts and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs and even router overclocking to extend your signal.

Want to make your Wi-Fi router’s signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they’ve achieved gains by fashioning a foil “windsurfer” parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.

19. Master Search Techniques to Pinpoint Files or Web Sites

Drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in “Don’t tase me bro” or “Michael Phelps”) to get exact-phrase matches. Use the plus and minus signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, “salsa - dance”), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as in “budget filetype:xls”).

You can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge with the word recipe to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.

Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista’s Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files that contain the term “NYC,” for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail’s built-in e-mail search capabilities are also killer. Use the “from:,” “to:” and “subject:” operators to find specific messages, as in from:”Bill Gates” subject:”dinner date”.

More: Advanced Google: Search Faster, Find More

20. Print Smart to Reduce Costs

You’ve already paid an arm and a leg to refill your home printer, so get into some smart printing habits to save money on ink and paper. Wherever possible, preview your document before you print, and shrink the selection down to fewer pages, or print only the pages you need in the document. Set your printer to the lowest quality (draft mode) when possible, and opt for double-sided printing or print several pages per physical page, such as when you’re printing out PowerPoint slides. When you’re printing Web pages, use the Aardvark Firefox add-on to delete big colorful advertisements and other unwanted elements before you print. When you don’t really need a hard copy, opt to print to a PDF document instead. Mac users can do this by default; Windows users can download the free CutePDF to print any document to PDF.

Source : computerworld.com

Google Will Reduce IP Retention Time to 9 Months

Google has announced on its official blog that, following the concerns expressed by privacy regulators in Europe and US, it will anonymize IPs in the server search logs after 9 months instead of 18. After being the first major search engine to clearly specify a retention time for IPs of 18 months, Google claims that the new change will demonstrate once again the company's commitment to data protection and users' privacy.

Google's decision to anonymize IPs in the search logs after 18 months was also implemented by the other search engines, although the privacy advocates and government leaders continued to ask the Mountain View giant to justify the necessity of this retention time in detail. The announcement explains that this data was and still is critical to the process of innovation. "When we began anonymizing after 18 months, we knew it meant sacrifices in future innovations," the announcement notes.

In a response to the EU authorities, Google explains that it has been working closely with Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Mr. Billy Hawkes, at the company's European headquarters in Dublin in order to address their concerns. The search giant has complied with one of the requests regarding the presence of a link to the Privacy Policy on its home page and has provided one for all localized versions of the Google website.

It is also noted that Google's engineers have been hard at work to find a way to limit the loss in logs data quality while further reducing the retention time of IPs. The company uses this data to produce better search results and more relevant advertisement campaigns based on the user's location and language preferences. Its current conclusion is that, while the anonymization methods will suffer changes, the time can be reduced to 9 months. "After months of work our engineers developed methods for preserving more of the data's utility while also anonymizing IP addresses sooner. We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work," the announcement points out.

Even so, the company still has concerns regarding the constant pressure from the authorities regarding strict privacy regulations, because "it's difficult to find the perfect equilibrium between privacy on the one hand, and other factors, such as innovation and security, on the other."

Article source: Softpedia

Three Firefox extensions engage Google, Opera, and Microsoft

There’s a bit of chatter about Google Chrome overtaking Firefox in coming months, after it fulfills more than a few wish lists (like this one). Yet, independent Firefox developers have a record for quickly countering features that crop up in rival browsers with a well-placed extension.

Take Fast Dial, for instance, one answer of many to Opera browser’s speed dial feature, and another potential challenge to Chrome. Like Opera browser, Fast Dial displays thumbnail clips of your nine favorite Web sites. It runs in any blank window or in the current window if you click the toolbar shortcut, and can be configured to reign as your home page if you change your Firefox default to about:blank.

While Chrome may not presently be developed enough to earn its Firefox challengers or converts, that’s not stopping people like Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal from paving a pathway between the two. Open In Google Chrome is a new extension that plunks down an option in the Firefox context menu to see how the Web page looks in Chrome. In the options menu, you can also earmark certain sites you want to open exclusively in Chrome.

Setup requires you to browse for Google Chrome’s executable; a quick enough, but somewhat clunky step. (After opening the download file with Firefox, open the Add-Ons window from Firefox’s Tools menu and click the Options button for Agarwal’s extension. Then browse through your program folders and double-click the file ending in ‘chrome.exe.’)

Agarwal hints that he wrote the add-on, tweaked from code for an Internet Explorer extension, for serious browsers who are weighing Chrome alongside Firefox.

Source: download.com

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and Web Standards

The fourth installment to the Adobe Creative Suite series was launched yesterday with updates to the web and graphic designers favorite software tools. The list of new versions go a long way: Photoshop (with two versions), Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere and Soundbooth. With a tagline “Shortcut to Brilliant,” Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) aims to build on the addition of former Macromedia products in the previous version.

I looked at the features list of Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, the app that focuses on the building of websites and web pages, and there’s a feature that caught my attention:

CSS Best Practices
Implement CSS best practices without writing code. The new CSS tab in the Properties panel shows the styles for the current selection as well as all the applicable CSS rules. Hover over any property to view a tool tip with no-jargon English explanations of CSS principles. New CSS rules can be created and applied in the Properties panel and stored in the same document or an external style sheet. Dreamweaver CS4 even gives you control over the specificity of your rule: Just click Less Specific or More Specific in the updated New CSS Rule dialog box to target your style precisely.

I haven’t tested the actual software myself, but this looks promising, especially for the budding web designers who need to layout easily and get familiar with Cascading Style Sheets. However, I do hope that it won’t spoil the designers into taking CSS for granted, ie, not caring enough to work with CSS without Dreamweaver or similar tools. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m not too high on the prospects that CSS becomes a mere “feature.”

Source: webstandards.raquedan.com

First Look: Photoshop CS4

Typically a first look at a newly-updated product starts out with phrases like, “the long awaited” or “the much anticipated.” Not so with Photoshop CS4. The truth is that latest version of Photoshop will hit the streets practically on the heels of Photoshop CS3, its predecessor which debuted a little less than 18 months ago.

What kind of features could Photoshop CS4 have now that it didn’t have slightly over a year ago? As it turns out, the Photoshop product managers have barely slept since herding CS3 out the door and the answer is, “Quite a lot, thank you.” Photoshop CS4 sports an overhauled workspace, OpenGL features like a rotating canvas, new panels for Masks and Adjustments, on-image controls for some adjustments (a la Photoshop LightRoom), a 3-D engine, and that’s just for starters.

Here’s what to expect from the latest version of Photoshop when CS4 ships in October.
Workspace overhaul

In an attempt to significantly streamline your work environment and lessen window clutter, the new Application Frame was born. It confines all things Photoshop to a single resizable and movable window. You can grab the whole mess—documents and all—and move it to the side of your screen (or better yet, to another monitor) so it’s out of the way. If you open more than one document, they’re displayed in tabs (just like in Safari).

At the very top of the frame, you’ll notice a new row of tools called the Application Bar. Here you’ve got one-click access to handy stuff like Extras (grids, rulers, guides), zoom percentages, and more. The real gems, though, are the new Rotate Canvas and Arrange Documents menus. Rotate Canvas will make tablet users squeal with delight because it creates a more natural way to paint or draw. The Arrange Documents menu lets you view several open documents side by side, which is handy for before/after evaluations or just managing a bunch of open windows.
New masks and adjustments panels

With Photoshop CS4, palettes are out and panels are in. In an effort to reduce dialog box clutter, adjustments like Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, and so forth now happen in a single Adjustments panel, meaning dialog boxes will no longer litter your screen. The new Masks panel is a little more exciting because it lets you feather masks on the fly (nondestructively) and control their density, which lets you make them partially see-through. (Why it’s not called opacity is a mystery.)

Also new are “on-image” adjustments for Curves, Black & White, and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. Instead of making a selection, you can apply the adjustment to a specific tonal range by clicking on the image itself and dragging up or down with your mouse.
Extended exclusives

If you pop for the $999 Extended version, you’ll notice a couple of new tools gracing your Tools panel called 3D Rotate and 3D Orbit, as well as a new menu stuffed full of commands like New Mesh from Grayscale, Invert Visible Surfaces, and Create UV Overlays.

With CS4, Adobe has stepped rather firmly into the realm of 3-D modeling, giving you the ability to convert 2-D into 3-D, along with a fair amount of control over object textures and lighting. You can even paint directly on the surface geometry of a model in real-time and open models downloaded from Google right there in Photoshop. Adobe also added a reparameterize command that can quickly rebuild the surface geometry of your 3-D object for smoother painting.

If you’re a video editor, you may appreciate Extended’s single-letter keyboard shortcuts, smooth display of no-square pixels, and the ability to preview and export audio.

Other features

Among the other enhancements are smoother screen display at odd zoom levels, the ability to “toss” your pixels with the spacebar, a bird’s eye view quick-zoom, a new Vibrance adjustment layer (straight from Camera Raw), spring-loaded tools allowing you to temporarily switch from one tool to another, a pixel-grid view above 600-percent zoom, linked masks for Smart Objects, drag-resizing for brush cursors, and the ability the delete layers by pressing the Delete key. (You can’t believe how handy that latter feature is!).

Camera Raw 5 also has major improvements like the ability to edit selectively using an Adjustments Brush or Gradient Filter. Adobe Bridge wasn’t left out either and now boosts faster performance, one-click previews, Spotlight integration, a super handy path bar (like a trail of breadcrumbs), and more.

Source: macworld.com

What’s new in Photoshop CS4

Earlier today, Adobe announced major upgrades to their entire line of products - except for Acobat - to the new Creative Suite 4. Since most of the applications in the various incarnations of the Creative Suite 4 are not necessarily relevant to this blog, I’ll just focus on what’s new in Photoshop CS4.

Already, there seems to be a lot of questions out there by designers and photographers wondering “should I upgrade to Photoshop CS4″. I think there is and I’m not just saying that because I work for a company that develops plug-ins for Photoshop. I really believe it and here’s just a few reasons why.

1. Photoshop CS4 is taking advantage of your GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). This makes rendering of effects or processing of filters ridiculously fast. I was in the audience at CS4 launch event in San Francisco and watching Johnny L from Adobe spin a 2 gigabyte file around like it was 100 kb JPG was incredible. Accessing the GPU for more processing power isn’t anything new. Video applications and 3D applications have been doing it for years, but it is great to see it happening in Photoshop CS4.

2. The new Mask palette. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but I like how Photoshop CS4 has brought the options from the Refine Edge dialog box into the new Mask Palette. When I use Mask Pro 4, I like to save those selections because sometimes I need to go back and refine them depending on the situation. Having these options available in the palette as opposed to the Refine Edge dialog is a nice time saver for me. Your mileage may vary.

3. The new Adjustments Palette. Adjustment layers are nothing new to Photoshop. In Photoshop CS3 and earlier, you would typically access these by going to the bottom of the Layers palette and then clicking on adjustment layer and then choosing the type of adjustment you wanted to make. Or you could go to the Layer menu and choose New Adjustment Layer. Now in Photoshop CS4, you get the option to click on the new Adustments Palette (which happens to be grouped with the Mask palette) and you get a nice icon representation of the various adjustment layers that can be added. Maybe this hasn’t gotten you too excited yet, but what’s nice is that right below those icons are a bunch of Adjustment Layer Presets.

For regular readers of this blog, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of presets (onOne makes presets for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw in addition to our new onOne Exchange site for PhotoTools presets). They can save you tons of time. Well, now Adobe has given us Adjustment Layer presets and they are written in a way that they are easy to understand no matter what your skill level in Photoshop is. The presets are very similar (perhaps identical, I haven’t checked yet) to the adjustment presets in Adobe Camera Raw. I love having access to these in Photoshop CS4 though.

4. Share My Screen. This is a great new feature that will be very familiar to those who have ever used Acrobat Connect before. It lets you share your screen with another person (client, co-worker, etc) over the internet so they can see what you are trying to communicate. Also, you can grant access to the other person so they can take control of your mouse. It’s pretty cool. We use Acrobat Connect all the time at work, but having the ability to stay within Photoshop CS4 and say Share my Screen, well, I think that’s kinda cool. Not everybody needs this feature. For example, you work alone and never need to show anybody anything. This feature isn’t for you and won’t entice you to upgrade to Photoshop CS4. But I’ll use this feature all the time and will be very valuable to me.

5. Improved Auto Blend Layers. This feature was in Photoshop CS3 and I used it to blend my panorama shots that I stitched together using PhotoMerge. Now in Photoshop CS4, when you select two or more layers in a document and choose Auto Blend you get a Blend Method dialog box (you didn’t before, it just did its thing) giving you two options. The first method is the Panorama method and pretty much does what it did in Photoshop CS3. But new in Photoshop CS4, you get a second option called Stack Images.

This is cool. What you can do with it is take areas of focus in the different layers and have Photoshop CS4 automatically mask out the out of focus area leaving you with an image that has everything in focus. This is going to have a lot of application and use for macro photography and for landscape photography where you want to be able to have pretty much unlimited depth of field. Just take a bunch of shots (on a tripod) and manually focus to get the areas you want in focus. Bring them into Photoshop CS4 and with this feature, you’ll get a final image that has everything in focus. Pretty cool stuff. If you’re having a hard time envisioning this, I’ll prepare some examples for a future blog post.

That’s all for now. I think this is a pretty compelling upgrade for the serious Photoshop user that will provide lots of new benefits.

Source: ononesoftware.com

Upcoming Fedora 10 release foreshadows Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) administrators, handling software packages, administering policies and managing networks all are going to get easier. At least that’s the promise.

Fedora, a Red Hat-sponsored community software development project, will introduce these changes first in Fedora 10, which is scheduled for release on Oct. 28. After more than a year of testing and user feedback, the improvements will be incorporated in production-ready RHEL 6 which is planned for release in the first quarter of 2010.

“Fedora is Red Hat’s bleeding edge, an incubator for new technologies and features,” said marketing manager Andy Cathrow. “Fedora sets our direction and gives you a good idea of what will appear next in RHEL … and other Linux distros, too,” he said, citing recent Fedora-initiated Linux kernel and wireless innovations.

For starters, new Fedora 10’s PackageKit will add a cross-platform front end that works with all Linux distributions. An improvement over RPM, or Red Hat Package Manager, PackageKit will simplify package management by bundling all components and dependencies required for a software install or change into a single entity. PackageKit also can issue software alerts and/or proceed with automatic update installs.

PolicyKit graduated access controls

Second, Fedora 10’s PolicyKit will improve security by refining authentication privileges to specific users for specific purposes and conditions rather than granting unrestricted root, or universal, privileges.

“This is a framework to define rights, responsibilities and roles … that gives developers rules for granting authorization and deciding who is allowed to do what,” Cathrow said. “Now it’s an all-or-nothing approach … that could toss security out the window.”

Similar to rules adopted by other Linux distros, PolicyKit complements the hard-and-fast access controls in SELinux with more granular guidelines for numerous specific roles and circumstances, he said.

Third, Fedora 10 improves power management by incorporating two energy-saving features initiated by Intel’s Less Wattsinitiative. Specifically, Fedora 10 adds Tickless Idle, which stops unnecessary compute activity during idle mode, and has been a part of the Linux kernel since version 2.6.21. Fedora 10 also adds PowerTop, a tool for pinpointing applications that consume excess power in idle mode.

Fourth, the new Fedora version improves NetworkManager, especially helpful for desktops and laptops, with improved encryption, a virtual file system and other changes. A new encryption technology called Luks enables a laptop’s entire hard disk to be encrypted instead of just a single partition, Cathrow said. The encryption also works on removable disk drives and thumb drives, he added. NetworkManager also adds a graphical user interface for tasks such as assigning multiple passwords, he said.

Virtualization Improvements

Fedora 10 also improves the Gnome Virtual File System (GVFS) by way of an abstraction layer that makes it possible to share files or add new features without worrying about underlying technologies such as Samba, Bluetooth or FTP, Cathrow said.

As for virtualization, Fedora 10 provides full interoperability between KVM and Xen with the addition of Xenner, which Cathrow described as a “compatibility layer” between the two hypervisors. Specifically, Gerd Hoffman, a Red Hat engineer, described Xenner as “a utility which is able to run xen paravirtualized kernels as guests on linux hosts, without the xen hypervisor, using kvm instead.”

A glimpse of Linux’s future

Paul Frields, Fedora’s project leader, said that the purpose of the community open source development team is to advance the leading edge of technology with every new version.

“We work with Red Hat and the community to drive innovation and deliver new features and technologies,” Frields said. “Fedora provides a preview of what’s coming in RHEL and the enterprise Linux market as a whole.”

Article Source : www.netfordownload.com/news/2008/09/upcoming-fedora-10-release-foreshadows-red-hat-enterprise-linux-6/

Top 20 Most Important Rules of Email Etiquette

The rules of email etiquette are not "rules" in the sense that I will come after you if you don't follow them. They are guidelines that help avoid mistakes (like offending someone when you don't mean to) and misunderstandings (like being offended when you're not meant to). These core rules of email etiquette help us communicate better via email.

* All email etiquette rules and hints

1. Take Another Look Before You Send a Message - Email Etiquette Tip
Don't send anything you don't want to send.

2. Do Not Default to "Reply All" - Email Etiquette Tip
"Reply" is good. "Reply to All" is better. Right?

3. Keep Emails Short - Email Etiquette Tip
Do not intimidate recipients with too much text.

4. Properly Format Your Email Replies, and Be Lazy - Email Etiquette Tip
Do you think quoting original text in your email replies perfectly is a lot of work? Don't let the '>' intimidate you! Here's a very comfortable, relaxed, quick and still clean and compatible way to reply properly.

5. Clean Up Emails Before Forwarding Them - Email Etiquette Tip
Forwarding emails is a great way of sharing ideas, but make sure the original idea is not hidden in obfuscation.

6. When in Doubt, Send Plain Text Email, Not HTML - Email Etiquette Tip
Not everybody can receive your fancily formatted emails. Some may even react furious.
To be safe rather than sorry, send plain text emails only when in doubt.

7. Don't Forward Hoaxes - Email Etiquette Tip
Email hoaxes often contain stories that are intriguing, and sure to irritate. Here's how to spot and stop urban legends.
8. Use Current Antivirus Software, Keep it Up to Date, Scan for Free
Make sure you're not spreading worms and viruses via email or act as a vehicle for spreading spam. All this can be caused by malicious emails. Fortunately, there's protection.

9. Write Perfect Subject Lines - Email Etiquette Tip
Do you make these mistakes in your email subjects? (The key to getting your messages read is not to be clever.)

10. Do Let People Know Their Mail Has Been Received - Email Etiquette Tip
Did the spam filter eat my message? Spare others this nagging question and let them know you got their email.

11. Ask Before You Send Huge Attachments - Email Etiquette Tip
Don't clog email systems without permission.

12. Talk About One Subject per Email Message Only - Email Etiquette Tip
Help make the world less confusing. Try to talk about one subject per message only. For another subject, start a new email.

13. Punctuation Matters; in Emails Too - Email Etiquette Tip
Comma, colon, hyphen and semicolon — all exist for a reason: they make it easier to understand the intended meaning of a sentence. Don't make life more difficult and possibly less interesting for the recipients of your emails. Pay some — though not too pedantically much — attention to punctuation.

14. Use Acronyms Sparingly - Email Etiquette Tip
DYK? Not everybody knows every acronym, and they don't save that much time anyway.

15. Resize Pictures to Handy Proportions Before Inserting Them in Emails
When your photos look good in your email, you look good, too! Here's how to make sure your images are not larger than screens and mailboxes by resizing them in style — online and for free.

16. Writing in All Caps is Like Shouting - Email Etiquette Tip
Don't shout in your emails (and all caps is so difficult to read).

17. Be Careful with Irony in Emails - Email Etiquette Tip
No, really! I mean it. Honestly!

18. Set Your System Clock Right - Email Etiquette Tip
Make sure you don't send messages from 1981.

19. Avoid "Me Too" Messages - Email Etiquette Tip
"Me too" is not enough content, but too much annoyance.

20. In Doubt, End Emails with "Thanks" - Email Etiquette Tip
If you don't know how to say good-bye at the end of an email, there's one thing that will almost always be appropriate. Thanks.

Source Article: http://email.about.com/od/emailnetiquette/tp/core_netiquette.01.htm

Mozilla Firefox Going Mobile

For some time now, alongside Opera and even Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox has been one of the favorite Internet browsers used on most PCs. Unfortunately, until now, only Internet Explorer and Opera could be used on mobile phones, while Firefox remained available for PCs alone. So here is the good news for all Firefox fans: Mitchell Baker has revealed the long-term goals for Firefox, and they're aiming to have a proper mobile product out by 2010.

Also, Mike Schroepfer wrote on his blog that work on it was underway, so it wouldn’t be long until users were able to run Firefox on their mobiles. What we have been able to find out is that Mozilla is adding mobile devices to the list of “first-class” development platforms, and Mobile Firefox will be able to run Firefox extensions on mobiles, and allow third party development via XUL.

In the meanwhile, the Minimo will stop being developed, and Mobile Firefox will ship after Firefox 3. Mozilla didn't pick any platforms yet, so whether users will be able to run Firefox on Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian or other platforms is still uncertain. One thing is sure though and that is that it won't run on iPhone, since it's locked.

However, we can't help but wonder why Mozilla entered so late in the mobile world, especially since, until now, Opera and Internet Explorer have already grabbed almost 100% of the market, which means that space for Mobile Firefox is a bit tight.

Anyway, nothing is impossible, and sudden overturns are known to happen quite often. Just think about the fact that Nokia is working on installing Linux on its MID instead of Symbian, which it owns in a proportion of 47.9%. So, if Mozilla comes up with a reliable mobile version of Firefox, this might just become the default Internet browser in upcoming mobiles in the near future. Until then, Mozilla still has a long way to go, so only time will tell about that last statement.

From Softpedia News

Adobe Introduces Photoshop CS4 – 3D Painting

Adobe has officially announced Creative Suite 4, along with Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended, the latest iterations of the applications found in Adobe's suite. Optimized to take advantage of GPUs, Photoshop CS4 simplifies tasks, like with content-aware scaling, auto-align and auto-blend modes on 360 degree panoramas.

The primary enhancement from which users
benefit is, of course, Photoshop's new GPU-aware nature. This allows the program to share tasks with the graphics card, speeding up several intensive operations, such as panning, zooming, canvas rotation and several others. These actions are offloaded to the GPU, speeding things up.

Where “Extended” is concerned, Photoshop CS4 allows users to paint directly on 3D objects, or texture them with 2D images. Animating 3D objects is also possible with CS4 Extended, and, if the user wishes to create more realistic renderings, a new ray-tracer is included. Last, but certainly not least, users can edit light, or compile DICOM image stacks into three-dimensional models (aimed at medical personnel), to mention a few of the tweak-able parameters.

“Photoshop is about delivering cutting-edge innovation that really pushes the boundaries of digital image editing,” said Kevin Connor, vice president of product management for professional digital imaging at Adobe. “This version is no exception with some stunning new imaging technology that complements our work to bring more control, simplicity and speed to everyday tasks. By streamlining the most popular workflows for the professional, technical or home user, Photoshop CS4 brings new levels of accessibility to the gold standard in digital imaging software.”

Photoshop is Adobe Systems' flagship graphics editing program. It is the current and primary market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation. It is an industry standard for graphics professionals and was one of the early "killer applications" on Macintosh.

Photoshop CS4 ships in October for $700. Photoshop Extended will cost $1,000.

From Softpedia News

Great Logo Ideas

You have decided to assign the task of logo designing to a professional logo designing company. But, how can you get the great logo you are looking for? Great Logo Ideas Great logos are off springs of great logo ideas.

Great logo ideas come from personal interest and a clear understanding of what your business does. All this once clear to you must be vividly understood by the logo designing company that you have hired. You must submit a lot of details to the professional logo designer that help them come up with a creative and a successful logo design.

The process
Usually, a brief summary is given to the graphic designing firm and then they are expected to come up with some excellent variation of logo designs that might suit the company’s need.

Stimulate great logo ideas
You must take personal initiative in stimulating great logo ideas. Great logo ideas make great logos. If you know what you need and have studied some successful logo designs, then define your choice of your corporate color, describe the message you want to convey to the logo designing company. These details must also was accompanied by the product details.

Details that make great logos
You must keep the answers to the following questions ready when you have decided to assign the logo designing task to a professional logo designing company.
• What is your business?
• What are the driving forces that lead you to this business?
• How long have you been in this business?
• What is the corporate structure of your company?
• How will you describe your business in one sentence?
• How will you describe your business in word?
• Where do you see your company in future?
• Who are your competitors?
• How is your product better than your competitor’s product?
• What market segments you cater to?
• What are your personal preferences for a logo design?
• What colors you would like to be your corporate colors?
• What are the reasons for your choice of colors?
• Which corporate logo influences you and why?

This seems to be a long list of questions but all of the above questions are aimed to achieving a successful logo design. Get more information on Logo Design at LogoBlog.

Article Source: http://www.webdesignarticles.net.

Know about Icons and their Uses

Icons are illustrative representations of objects. They are designed for aesthetical visual identities of programs. These pictorial miniatures are symbolic representations that convey instant meanings to the users. An aesthetically designed high quality icon can provide the user with a graceful experience and can facilitate user productiveness along with an overwhelming response. You can access the functionality behind an icon by clicking or double-clicking it. Operating systems often allow you to customize visuals of various objects by applying your own custom icons. A good icon will improve the visual communication of your program. It can change the overall impression of your program’s visual design. It can improve usability by quick identification of programs and objects.

Icons can be classified into different types according to their function some of the examples include Global Button Icons, Information Quantifier Icons, Inline Icons, emotion icons ,Functional Icons, Component Icons, Object Type Quantifier Icons, Diagram Icons, and Base Graphics, Multimedia icons. All the above come under two general type called the flat icons and the three dimensional icons. Flat icons are commonly used for file icons and for objects like documents or papers.

Three dimensional icons look elegant with shadows and special lightings. Each icon image features its own size and color depth. The most commonly used or standard sizes are 16 x 16, 32 x 32, 48 x 48, or even 128x128. The beautiful icons that you see or use in your systems are the end results of hard work by experienced designers. Making an icon requires good amount of experience in illustrations using vector art or 3D programs. The job involves from initial conception to mock up sketches and then the final product. The designer will be using subtle range of colors to get the desired outcome. Using shadows apart from beautifying the icon will provide depth for three dimensional icons.

For an effective icon development the following steps should be adhered. Conceptualization: This is the first step in creation of icons. As a rule established concepts must be used as for as possible in order to ensure consistency of meanings. Consideration of how the icon will suit the context is a must. Illustration: A vector tool such as Macromedia Free hand or Adobe Illustrator must be used to create the icon. First a free hand sketch should be done then the final touch must be given in adobe illustrator. Finally creating the end product and evaluating it before use.

The two widely used application icons are the XP icons and the MAC icons.They have different file type extensions and cannot be exchanged until they are converted into the required format. The file type extension used in XP icons is .ico extension, and .icns extension is used in the MAC. It is easy to convert MAC icons to be used in XP style applications and vice versa using various available softwares. Tools used in the process of creating icons vary from the simple pencil and paper to Gif Movie Gear.

Initial concepts must be listed and sketched in a paper using a pencil. 3D Studio Max is used to render 3D effects to the icon. Free hand sketch is don in Macromedia Freehand or in Adobe illustrator. Adobe Photoshop is used in finalizing the details. Either Gamani Gif Movie Gear or Axialis Icon Wrokshop is used to produce the .ico file with required compression.

Article Source: http://www.webdesignarticles.net.

Basics of Web Layout

When you create a Web design, one of the more overlooked aspects of the design is the layout. Now, many people think about how to do a layout (CSS, tables, frames, etc.), but the basics of Web layout are often completely ignored.
Space and Whitespace

Use the whole space, but don't be specific in your use. In other words, use relatively sized layout sections on your Web pages, so that they expand and contract to fit the browser window.

Keep screen resolution in mind. While the majority of computer users have moved away from 640x480 resolution, keep that in mind when you're designing. Having customers leave because all they can see is a logo on their monitor is not good customer service.

Use color to define spaces. If you want to have a page that's a specific width, why not center it on the browser screen and make the background color of the page a different color? This will help the page appear to resize for different browsers; larger browsers will just have more background color showing, while smaller browsers will have less or none showing.
Images and Graphics

Align your images. One of the most common newbie layout mistakes is to slap images into a page willy-nilly without thought to layout. If you just use an img tag and then write text to follow it, you'll have the image and then one line of text to the right of it. Using the align attribute will help make your images part of the layout.

Balance the graphics and text on a page. It's easy to get carried away with lots of images and animations, but they can make a page very hard to read. When you're considering your layout, remember that images are a major part of the design, not just afterthoughts.
Text Width

Think about text width. This is often called the "scan length", and refers to how many words are displayed on one line. Most people can comfortably read about 7 to 11 words on a line. Longer than that, and the text is hard to read, shorter than that and it's disjointed and distracting. When designing your layouts make sure that the major text area displays the text in a readable width.

Centering text is inadvisable. One of the first layout techniques that a new designer learns is the center tag, and they center everything on their pages. However, centering is very difficult to do well and it's often hard to read.

Articles source : http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa062104.htm

Adding a Favicon or Favorites Icon

Have you ever noticed the little icon that shows up in your bookmarks and in the tab display of some Web browsers? That is called the favorites icon or favicon.
First Create Your Image

Using a graphics program, create an image that is 16 x 16 pixels. This is small, so try out many different versions until you create the image that will work for your site.

Save the image as a GIF or BMP file with 256 colors or less. Icon files, like Web images, have to display on computer monitors, so they can't reliably display millions of colors. However, since an icon file is for Windows displays only, it can be 256 colors, rather than the Web standard 216.
Converting it to an Icon

Once you have an acceptable image, you need to convert it to the icon format. There are many icon editors available, and Sue Chastain, the Graphics Software Guide, has a list of some good ones. I used IconForge by CursorArts. Be sure to save the file as favicon.ico.
Publishing the Icon

It is simple to publish the icon, simply upload it to the same directory as the file you want bookmarked. For example, for this page on the HTML site at About, I would place it at
http://webdesign.about.com/library/weekly/favicon.ico

You can also put a different icon on every page of your site (if you like), or point to one icon in many folders. To do this, you add a link reference to the head of every HTML document that you want the favorite icon associated with. e.g.[blockquote] [/blockquote]

Article Source: http://webdesign.about.com/od/advancedtutorials/a/aa070300a.htm

To Flash Or Not To Flash: That Is The Question

The Downfalls: This is one of those popular debate topics in web design forums. What types of web sites should use this new technology and what types of sites should not? If you have ever visited a site that asked you to download the Flash 3 or 4 plugin, then you know exactly what this article is trying to portray. For those that are not familiar with Flash: Flash is a plugin and program developed by Macromedia that gives sites dynamic animation and interactivity. The only downfall is that in order to view sites that use this technology, you must first download the plugin, which on some computers can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 mintues depending on your connection speeds. This is not an obstacle for most surfers, since many are now leaning towards cable connections. But for some, it isn't a matter of fast or slow loading - some surfers are very cautious about what they download from the internet, and they may see this "Download Now" box as threatening to their system. Some surfers do not even go into sites that require plugins for this reason only. And some do not enter because they do not like waiting for components and animations to load. These are the people that want the information that they went to the site for - not to watch an animated bear introduce them to the site.

E-Commerce and Flash Don't Mix: It is not advised for E-commerce sites to use Flash Technology. The purpose of an e-commerce site is to sell items to consumers that visit their site. The visitors want to see the products and get the information quickly and easily. By implementing an e-commerce site in Flash, that company is limiting the amount of consumers that go into the site, and could potentially lose sales because of this. Most sites that use Flash also offer an HTML version for the customers that do not have the plugin, or that choose not to download the plugin. This is strongly advised for all companies to do that use Flash in their E-commerce site. Let's put it this way: If you owned a company that sold products, and this company was on an island in the pacific very close to the shore, would you require that everyone that wants to go into your store obtain a boat to get to your store? Or would you build a bridge for them to cross? Better yet, you probably would have been better to build it on the main shore in the first place for "easy access". This is the problem with Flash today. Until at least 98% of the consumers out there have their Flash plugins already installed, it is not advised to implement an E-commerce site in Flash. Of course, that is ultimately the company's decision.

The Good Side of Flash: Yes, Flash does have its good points. Flash is very beneficial to Entertainment web sites. Sites that are mainly for entertainment purposes and do not run the risk of driving sales away are ideal for Flash Technology. Informational sites are also starting to use Flash in parts of their sites to depict moving images and sound as a guided tour or clips of information that make the site more interesting. Flash is also great for children and game sites. With Flash Technology, your site can interact with the visitors in the form of games or funny cartoons. It adds fun and excitement to the web with sounds of music, voices, and colorful moving images and pictures. So yes, Flash can be very good for some sites.

Bottom Line: If you have an E-commerce site, do not limit those that can view and purchase from your site. If you own an Entertainment or Artistic site that needs the technology of Flash, but that will not hinder the purpose of your site, then by all means, Flash like there's no tomorrow.

Article Source: http://www.edezines.com/article2.shtml

Differences Between Dreamweaver 8 and Dreamweaver CS3

So, you've got Dreamweaver 8 and you're not sure if you want to shell out the $$$ to upgrade to Dreamweaver CS3. This can be a challenging decision. Now that Adobe has bought Dreamweaver, have they ruined it? Or is it so much better that you will kick yourself that you didn't upgrade earlier? Or something in between? My opinion: somewhere in between.
Adobe Bought Dreamweaver

No, this isn't news, but for many Web designers, this is a critical reason to purchase Dreamweaver CS3. This is the first version of Dreamweaver to come out with a full integration between Dreamweaver and Adobe graphics tools like Photoshop. Now when you have an image in your document, you can click on it and edit it right in Photoshop quickly and easily.
Better CSS Support

One of the coolest new features in Dreamweaver CS3 is the addition of better CSS layouts. They are well commented in the code, so it's easy to start understanding how CSS layouts work. Plus they have over 32 layouts to choose from in fixed and liquid designs and 1-, 2-, or 3-column formats. You can also define where you want the CSS (in the head, in an external file, or in an existing file) right while you're creating the new page.

I also really like how easy it is to move CSS styles around. When I'm testing a style, I often start out by styling the exact tag right in the HTML in a style attribute. But this isn't scalable, so once I get the style working I have to move that rule into my style sheet. With Dreamweaver CS3, all I do is right-click on the tag in the inspector and choose "Convert Inline CSS to Rule". Dreamweaver will build a custom class for that style rule or style all of those tags or create a full CSS selector based on the position of the element in the document tree.
Mobile Support

Creating pages for mobile devices is becoming more and more popular, but it can be very difficult to design pages that display well on both a standard Web browser and a cell phone. With the integration of Adobe Device Central, Dreamweaver makes it easy to preview your pages in various cell phone emulations. My only problem is that it didn't have my phone (a PalmOne Smartphone), but I suppose I can continue to test on that browser manually.
Implement Ajax on Your Site

Dreamweaver CS3 includes the Spry framework to make it really easy to add Ajax widgets and effects to your Web pages. It's just a matter of dragging and dropping and incorporating your dataset. Spry components include: widgets for lists, tables, tabs, and forms; effects to make transitions like shrinking, growing, fading, and highlighting; incorporating data from an XML feed such as RSS or database.
XSLT Support with XML as Data Sources

Dreamweaver now has extensive support for XSLT using XML files as data sources. You can view the XML in a tree form, and then connect it to your HTML document with XSLT. This means that if you have lots of XML files in the same format, you can create a template for them in Dreamweaver using XSLT.
Better Support for Macintosh Intel Processors

If you're on an Intel-based Macintosh you'll be very pleased with the performance improvements of Dreamweaver CS3. Since it is now native to the platform, rather than running on Rosetta, it loads more quickly and simple actions like typing in your text seem to respond more quickly. According to the MacWorld tests, "updating a template in Dreamweaver CS3 on our 2.66GHz dual-core Xeon Mac Pro took just under a minute, as opposed to nearly four minutes in Dreamweaver 8." I haven't done specific testing, but it does feel faster.
Should You Upgrade

I have upgraded and I haven't looked back. I really appreciate the new CSS features and Device Central. I haven't used the Spry framework, but with the better support of XSLT I will be testing that out soon. The biggest missing piece is something that most Web editors don't do well: design-time programming. Dreamweaver CS3 is still just as hard to use live databases and server-side scripts as it ever was. However, there are extensions available that can help you out - check out the Dreamweaver Exchange.

Article Source: http://webdesign.about.com/od/dreamweaver/a/aa101607.htm

How Blogs Help To Promote An Existing Business

Blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. It helps you in many ways to promote your business. If you belong to any of the following groups, then this article is for you.

* Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.

* You need a site wherein you can promote your affiliate links.

* You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your venture. Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already recognized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.

You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won’t mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more probable clients you have. And blogs can most certainly help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:

1. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.

2. Download the Word press blogging software, which is available for free, An alternative is to go with blogger. I have posted instructions for setting up a Blogger blog at your own server in this PDF file.

3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant’s site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.

4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes important in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.

5. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to surpass its competitors in the search engine rankings. One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.

6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.

7. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.

8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog’s page rank, and consequently, your main website’s traffic.

Article Source: http://www.webdesignarticles.net.

How screens diplay colors

Technically speaking, colors are the way our brain, by use of our eyes, interprets electromagnetic radiation of a wavelenght between 350 and 750 nanometers.
The different wavelengths are seen as different colors, as in the spectrum below. You have probably seen a spectrum like this before. Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of over 750 nm is called infra-red, and radiation under 350 nm is ultra-violet.

As discussed in my section about, Color Theory, a computer monitor is made up of thousands of tiny little red, green and blue dots which are grouped three and three. These little dots are close together-- so close that we don't really see them as dots, but rather our eyes mix them up to form one homogenous color.
All colors in the spectrum can be generated with this system of dots. For instace, if the red and green dots are shining at 100% their strength, while the blue not lit at all, you will see the result as a pure yellow color. Each of the three dots can have any value from 0 to 255, which means that the total number of possible colors is 256*256*256 = 16,777,216.

Any color can be represented by a specific combination of three numbers. The yellow mentioned before would have the number 255, 255, 0. The first number represents the red dot, the second represents the green dot, and the last represents the blue. Therefore, a pure blue color would then be 0, 0, 255. The lower the number, the less that color dot is lighted. For instance, by lowering the number for the blue dot-- to the color identified as 0, 0, 100-- you can produce a darker blue. White is produced by the combination of the highest amount of all three colors, so the code for white is 255, 255, 255. Black, on the other hand, is produced by a lack of other colors, so the code for black is 0, 0, 0.

From Sitepoint

First Beta Release of openSUSE 11.1 Is Here

A few days ago, the openSUSE Team announced the first beta release of openSUSE 11.1, which includes many new additions over the previous alpha releases, such as new GNOME, KDE and kernel versions, as well as numerous improvements and bug fixes.

A delay in the release of this version occurred partly because the ISOs have been created using KIWI and RPMs within the openSUSE Build Service, which is now undergoing a transition in terms of shifting all development within it.

This version comes with lots of new or improved features, the most important of them being listed below:

GNOME 2.24:

· Banshee 1.3;
· New deskbar plugins;
· Ekiga 3.0;
· PulseAudio improvements;
· File manager improvements (including tab support and "compact" view in Nautilus);
· Power Manager improvement (Tab added to configure time to automatically wake from suspend/hibernate);
· New screen resolution controls.

KDE 3.5.10:

· it will be included on the media DVD, under the "other window managers" category.

KDE 4.1.x:

· Amarok 2.0 Beta 1;
· Enhanced SVG support;
· Autohiding panels;
· KWin has compositing enabled by default;
· KWin cube effect.

New YaST Modules:

· Re-written YaST Printer module;
· Re-written YaST Partitioner module;
· Re-written YaST Security module (checks the security of your system configuration).

Also featured:

· Linux kernel 2.6.27 RC5;
· GCC 4.3.2;
· Samba 3.2.3;
· OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC1;
· Python 2.6 Beta 3 and 3.0 Beta 3;
· Xen 3.3.1 RC;
· PackageKit 0.3.2;
· X.org 7.4.

openSUSE 11.1 release schedule:

· 24 July 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 1
· 21 August 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Alpha 2
· 18 September 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 1
· 2 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 2
· 16 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 3
· 30 October 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Beta 4
· 13 November 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Release Candidate 1
· 27 November 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Release Candidate 2
· 4 December 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Goldmaster release (internal)
· 18 December 2008 - openSUSE 11.1 Public release

From Softpedia News

Social Networking, a Mystery for Half the Population

A survey performed by research company Synovate showed that 58% of the people questioned didn't even know what a social network was. This result is all the more surprising given the fact that, nowadays, social networking is considered, among people with an Internet connection, to be as popular as, say, email.

The survey took place in 17 countries, the inhabitants of the Netherlands being the most social networking savvy. Eighty-nine percent of them answered in the positive to the question of the operator, of whether they knew what social networking was. Japan came in second, with 71% affirmative answers, followed by the US, with a 70% rate of knowledge of social networks among the respondents.

Reading into the statements released by the company after the survey, officials probably expected more Americans to be aware of the technological advancements regarding socializing. Synovate's Senior Vice President of the US-based Consumer Insights group, Bob Michaels, also offered an explanation for the US being topped by the other two countries. “While a majority of Americans have access to computers there are still others, particularly seniors and immigrants, who do not. Online social networking just is not part of their world.”

Twenty-six percent of the 13,000 respondents said they were members of a social network. Here too, the Netherlands took the lead again, with a 49% rate of social networking, being followed by the United Arab Emirates (46%), Canada (44%), and the US (40%). The positioning of the first runner-up is perhaps the most surprising, but it can be easily explained – in a country where traditions sometimes shape personal relationships, the online space is the only one that allows uncensored socializing.

The survey also showed that people have gradually lost their interest in online social networking. 36% of the current members said that their interest level was dropping. The most weary of Facebook, MySpace & co. were the Japanese users, 55% of them saying that social networks had lost the importance they once had. Slovakia came in second, with 48%, followed by Canada, with 47%. Oppositely, Indonesian and French users said that their interest was on the increase (82% and 79% respectively).

“When you're in the world of marketing — reading about it, planning campaigns, researching people — it's sometimes easy to overlook the basics. So we started our study by simply asking 'do you know what online social networking is?' And that's where our first myth was debunked. It turns out social networking is not taking over the world. Well, not yet anyway.” Global Head of Media Research for Synovate, Steve Garton, concluded by saying.

From Sitepoint

5 Countries Stand Between Google and World Domination

The Financial Times says that there are just five countries in the world where Google isn’t the search leader among locals. That means that Google impressively owns more than half the search market in almost every country in the world (there are 194 countries at last count (not including Taiwan, which we’ll leave off the list because China is one of the countries where Google isn’t tops, and I don’t know if Taiwan is included in those measurements)).

Who are the five local search engines beating Google?
Yandex in Russia, which FT says has about 43% of the market.
Baidu in China, which has about 60% of the market.
Seznam in the Czech Republic — 63%.
Naver in South Korea, which also controls about 60% of the local search market.
Yahoo! Japan, which comes in at a little more than 50%.

There’s good news and there’s bad news for Google. The good news is that they’re apparently the dominant search engine for over a billion world wide Internet users. The bad news is that the markets where they’re falling behind represent about 420 million users, and are among some of the fastest growing emerging markets (i.e. China and Russia).

So why is Google able to so dominate the rest of the world, but can’t seem to crack these five countries? According to the FT, there are three reasons: quality, regulation, and culture.

According to FT, Google was slow to enter some of these markets and as a result was beaten on quality in local language results by local startups. Google now finds itself in the unfamiliar position of playing catchup in places like Russia, where users associate the highest quality results with Google’s rivals.

Laws in some countries restricting how foreign competitors can enter the local market have also hampered Google’s progress. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Financial Times that in China, the reason Baidu got such a head start was “largely because of the various bizarre laws that China has with respect to foreign media.”

Jordan McCollum over at Marketing Pilgrim thinks Schmidt sounds like a whiner for blaming government for his company’s inability to compete yet in those markets.

The last reason, according to FT, is culture. In Japan, for example, users actually prefer the portal approach taken by Yahoo! The complete opposite has been true for Western markets, where the portal approach has fallen out of favor in the face of the simplified search-first-and-above-all-else approach that Google has perfected.

As we said, though, the good news for Google is very good news. Dominance in all but 5 countries world wide is no small feat, and Mohammad Gawdat, Google’s head of emerging markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, agrees. “It may take more time [to catch up to local competitors], but who cares? The rest of the world is doing really well,” he told FT.

Of course, when your mission statement is to organize the world’s information, it’s hard to succeed when almost a third of all Internet users are turning somewhere else for search.

From Sitepoint

It’s Time For the Interns to Do the Rating

Want to know what your interns really think about your company? InternshipRatings.com gives interns the opportunity to rate the companies which rated them over the summer, during a semester, or any other time they were forced to make copies and fetch coffee.

Students can register on the site and voice their opinions on current or past internships with the option of anonymity. Once the narrative is complete, the students then input a rating based on their experience at the firm. The company’s overall rating is then based on a five coffee cup scale, which is the average of all scores students have given the organization. The top-rated company on the site right now is XM Satellite Radio (with five reviews). The worst-rated company is Monster.com (with only one review).

Along with reviews, InternshipRatings surveys students about their salary, work environment, and networking opportunities while at their employer.

The real value of InternshipRatings comes from research. Prospective interns and employees can browse the site to learn what the experience was like and find out what it takes to be successful at the firm.

For example, one user reviewed the Walt Disney College Program and said that interns “work at Disney World in the resort hotels or the theme parks” and the best time to do it “is in the Fall when it is not as hot as summer and you get to be there for the holidays, which is when the parks are absolutely amazing.”

For added help, the site also features an interactive career advice column written by career services professionals, human resources directors and company executives. So far, representatives from Major League Baseball, General Mills, Pfizer, and Ernst & Young LLP have contributed to the site.

InternshipRatings is quick to note that anonymity is made available for those who don’t want to be identified giving a company a bad review, which should help the site considerably given the importance of a good reputation when applying for a job.

InternshipRatings is free to use and is being updated daily with more companies, making it a site well worth checking out for college students that are looking to find a job.

From Techcrunch

Arianna Huffington: The Secret to Success is Passion

The secret to success is passion, said Arianna Huffington, founder and editor-in-chief of the web’s top ranked blog (according to Technorati) the Huffington Post, as she sat down for a keynote chat with Tim O’Reilly on the final day of the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this week. The “obsessive compulsive nature of the web” is what first attracted her to blogging, said Huffington, and the ability for people to make a difference on the Internet by just plugging away at what they believe in, regardless of how small their voice is.

If you are passionate about a subject, you can be successful at it if you keep pushing, said Huffington, echoing what Gary Vaynerchuk had told the crowd a day earlier.

Founded in 2005, the Huffington Post now attracts 3.6 million unique visitors per month, according to Compete, and employs about 60 people. Conceived to be a “news aggregator with an attitude,” Huffington told the crowd, the site provides a platform for around 2,000 bloggers, both known and unknown. Central to their success, though, is the community that they’ve been able to build around their content.

Allowing comments on the site was a smart early move, and stories now routinely get hundreds or thousands of comments daily. Huffington is glad that from day one they made the decision to pre-moderate the comments. The site employs about 30 moderators now, whose sole job is to remove any ad hominem attacks before they are published. “Without the moderation the attacks would undermine the conversation,” said Huffington, who lightheartedly appealed to developers in the crowd to accelerate efforts on automated content moderation tools.

In addition to passion and a strong sense of community, Huffington told the crowd that their success can be owed to the great team they have been able to assemble. “The key is to create a community of people who constantly want to invent and reinvent,” she said, noting that being based in New York has made recruitment of young, passionate editors much easier.

Huffington drew some big laughs when O’Reilly said that he thought she had a lot in common with News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, because they both seek use news as a vehicle to shape the way people think. “Huge difference,” said Huffington to a round of applause, “we want to shape the debate based on facts.”

The job of journalists, according to Huffington, is to seek the truth, and the Internet makes that easier because of its self-correcting nature. “If I have one name or anything wrong in my blog post I know that it will be less than a minute before a commenter points in out and I can correct it transparently,” she said.

But what’s the next big thing on the Internet? According to Huffington, the next big thing is going to be disconnecting in order to get connected with ourselves. She urged the audience to “unplug and recharge,” saying that sleep deprivation was a bad thing. After a hectic week in New York, I’m rather inclined to agree.

From Sitepoint

5 Ways to Keep Tabs on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the most powerful sites on the web, as we noted earlier this month. We found that Wikipedia pages appeared on the first page of Google results (the most dominant search engine in the world) for more than 50% of the most searched for web topics. But who is wielding all that power?

Because Wikipedia is open to edits from anyone, it means that anyone can influence one of the most influential sites on the web. That’s all at once empowering and potentially dangerous. Below are five sites that can help you keep tabs on Wikipedia.
Deletionpedia

A lot of attention is paid to the number of Wikipedia articles being added every month, but less is paid to the thousands of articles that are deleted. Some of these articles probably don’t have a place on the site — such as this rather useless list of Wikipedia article with the word ’system’ in the title — but others might be more contentious and were only deleted after long, and often times heated debates.

Deletionpedia keeps archives of all the pages removed from Wikipedia and the cited reason for removal. Its archive has over 63,000 pages removed from the encyclopedia site. Ironically, there is a debate raging right now over whether to delete the Deletionpedia page from Wikipedia. Seriously.
Wikipedia Trust Project

The Wikipedia Trust Project from the University of California Santa Cruz scans articles at Wikipedia and color codes them based on a trust rating of the people who wrote the article. The way it works is by looking at editors of the Wikipedia article in question and assigning trust to each editor based on previous edits — more trust for those whose edits are often kept and less for those whose edits are often changed or reversed. The article is then color coded based on their contributions.

The project has a demo site up using a dump of the Wikipedia database from February 06, 2007, but the project page has more up-to-date version of WikiTrust source code available for download under and open source BSD license.
WikiScanner

WikiScanner, a project by Virgil Griffith at the California Institute of Technology, matches up Wikipedia edits with the organization where they originated by IP address. The idea is to search out and expose so-called “salacious edits,” in which companies, politicians, or others scrub their own articles.

Wikiscanner has received probably the most mainstream press coverage of any site in this round up, but unfortunately hasn’t updated its database since August 2007. A major overhaul of the site was promised for summer 2008, but so far it hasn’t materialized.
WikiDashboard

A project out of the famed Palo Alto Research Center, WikiDashboard is a Wikipedia browser that adds a stat bar that shows who is editing articles and how often. “The idea is that if we provide social transparency and enable attribution of work to individual workers in Wikipedia, then this will eventually result in increased credibility and trust in the page content, and therefore higher levels of trust in Wikipedia,” writes PARC’s Bongwon Suh and Ed Chi of the project.

The Augmented Social Congnition Research Group maintains an interesting blog that often includes insights learned via the Dashboard project.
Wikirage

Wikirage is a trend application for Wikipedia that keeps track of the most popular articles based on edits. Not surprisingly the most edited article today is the one on Yankee Stadium, a night after the famed American ball park closed.

Wikirage is helpful for keeping track of the most popular articles on Wikipedia, which are often ripe for vandalism. Popularity is sometimes an indication of a contentious article that might be prone to bias. Wikirage also keeps track of reversions and undos, making it easier to identify articles where content arguments between editors are more likely to be taking place.

From Sitepoint