Month: November 2007

LED Icon Set

ModernLife has posted an interesting icon set in the form of LEDs. There are a total of 14 icons in 7 different colors. The icons are available in multiple PNG sizes (16, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 px square), Windows .ICO files (incorporating all the sizes of the PNGs) or in original vector .EPS format. These icons would look great for attracting attention to a specific area of your website. Using your favorite animated GIF creator, you could easily create an animated image that shows a blinking LED light.

Led Icon Pack

GenFavIcon Another Fav Icon Generator

GenFavIconLogo

The internet can never have enough Fav icon generators. Introducing GenFavIcon. As you might of guessed it, GenFavIcon is a Favorites icon generator. Fav icons are those images that come in 16×16, 32×32, 48×48, 64×64, 128×128 in size that represent a website. The unofficial standard for fav icons is 16X16. If you have ever seen a 128X128 fav icon, let me know. At any rate, GenFavIcon makes creating an icon for your site a three step process.

The first step involves directly linking to a an image or you can click on the BROWSE button and upload an image from your machine. The only file formats supported right now are.jpeg, .gif, and .png If you choose to upload an image from your local machine, make sure it is under 4 megs in size or it won’t be processed.

Step1

After uploading the image, the live preview square displays your image with an already predetermined cropping box. After you decide which part of the image you would like to crop, make sure you click on the drop down box and select the size you want to use for your icon.

Step2

After you click the Capture and Preview button, your favicon will be displayed in the Step 3 box along with two links. One link points to the actual .ico file and the other link points to the image. If you plan on using the icon you created, on your site, download the .ico file and upload that to your root directory.

Step 3

Thats about all there is to it.

Flickr Will Award The Gifter

FlickrLogo

Great news for those thinking of giving the gift of a Flickr Pro account to someone this year. Flickr has announced that they will be awarding the gift giver.

For each year of pro you buy between now and January 31, 2008, you’ll receive 3 months of pro for yourself. As an example, if you bought 4 pro gifts, you’d get a year of pro for yourself! How’s that for a stocking stuffer?

Not a bad deal if I must say so myself. Will you be purchasing a pro account for someone this year?

Resource For UI Design Patterns

UIPAtternDesignLogo

If you are an application developer chances are, you have to deal with the User Interface. UI Patterns is a website that contains a number of solutions to common user interface design problems. The site goes into detail as to why, when and how a particular solution should be used.

it is the goal to create a tool that will help end feature debates, get a clear understanding of why we’re doing what we’re doing, and why we’re not doing what we’re not doing.

According to UI Patterns:

It has long been common practice in software design to use libraries of recurring solutions to solve common problems in software design. Such solutions are also called design patterns as described by legendary books.

Collections of software design patterns are standard reference points for the experienced programmer. But why not for the experienced User Interface (UI) designer? This website seeks to better the situation for the UI designer, who struggles with the same problems as many other UI designers have struggled with before him.

Some of the problems the site already covers are Tags, Tag Clouds, WYSIWYG, Live Previews, Wiki’s and more. If you have ever wanted to get into User Interface design or if you’re already an experienced UI designer, this site should be an excellent resource for you to use when you’re in a jam.

Letting Spam Loose For A Day

Akismet Logo

Mark your calenders because on December 15, 2007, WordPress user’s across the blogosphere will be turning off Akismet. Ok, not really. But Jesper Rønn-Jensen has decided to do it. He calls it, Spam Filter Free day where he will disable the Akismet anti spam tool on his blog for 24 hours to figure out, just how much work Akismet does for him. It’s an ambitious project and I can only imagine how much time it will take to clean up the mess after the event is over with.

I’ve seen numerous bloggers writing posts which state that Akismet is asking for us to disable our spam filter on this day and then report back to them with the results. This is not the case. Akismet merely brought Jesper’s post to the forefront and asked if anyone else would be willing to go through with it. If so, Akismet would love to hear back from you.

I’ve decided not to go through with the project. Like so many others that commented on Lorelle’s article, (Are You Willing To Go Naked For One Day For Akismet) I can see just how much work Akismet has saved me from doing by looking at the spam filter statistics. So far, Akismet has protected this site from 4,528 spam comments. I’ve left my blog alone for more than 24 hours and when I come back, I have to sift through over 100 or more spam comments to see if Mike was flagged as a spammer. Akismet is not perfect, but it does a damn fine job of blocking a lot of spam.

So will you be going naked on December 15?

Bear Warning

The Colorado State Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen, and golfers to take extra precautions and be on the alert for bears while in the Dillon, Breckenridge, and Keystone area.

They advise people to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the bears unexpectedly. They also advise you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter with a bear. It is also a good idea to watch for signs of bear activity.

People should be able to recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings. Black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possibly squirrel fur.

Grizzly bear droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper spray.

Free Is Not Cheap

WinXtraLogo

Steven Hodson over at WinExtra.com has published an interesting piece that dives into the subject of how people could care less about their privacy. In my opinion, Steve hits the nail on the head on so many points that I wish I could copy and paste his entire post but that wouldn’t be right. But I will post a quote from his article which I think is the most important point he makes.

The idea that we have any say in what is done with our data once it is in the hands of companies like Facebook is ridiculous. In fact the moment you click on that submit button on the last page of the signup form you have given away all those rights – read the damn terms of service and you will see that. That clicking of the button is your electronic signature – you have just signed a contract … you get a bunch of bullshit free services in exchange for the company being able to do whatever it wants with that data. It is now theirs and any subsequent updating of that data is also theirs.

Over the past few weeks, I have heard so many people complain about Facebook and what they are doing with the data you have given them. I’ve given it some thought and have come to the conclusion that social-networks are nothing more than marketing data harvesters. Asides from having a ton of eyeballs to market to advertisers, most of the user’s on these social-networks provide accurate user data. The reason I believe this to be true is that, you want at least most of your profile to be accurate so your friends know who you are on that network. This accurate data makes for good demographics that the social network owner doesn’t have to work so hard to retrieve.

In the end, you’re not an end user. Your a pawn within a giant game called online advertising. If you don’t like it, don’t use the damn service. Here is a better idea, buy a webhosting account, download WordPress, and create your own social network that you control, around your blog.

URLAO Another Pretty URL Shortener

UrlLao Logo

I know what you’re thinking. We have enough URL shortener’s already, right? Despite that fact, URLAO has come along looking to introduce some new features into the mix. urlao pronounced (“earlao“), is a project that was created by pooliestudios.

Under The Hood:

urlao works like any other url shortener service. They give you a box to place your ugly URL in, and out comes a beautiful looking url. However, there are some useful features hidden underneath the ADVANCED link.

Advanced Link For More Options

In this example, I used the following ugly URL;

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Cupertino,+Santa+Clara, +California,+United+States&daddr=new+york,+ny&sll=37.0625,-95.677071&sspn= 52.152749,73.300781&ie=UTF8&cd=1&ll=39.571822,-98.085937&spn=50.61825, 73.300781&z=4&om=1

Without using any of the advanced features, URLAO spits out http://urlao.com/5sqm6 which if you ask me, is pretty, but far from what I’d like to see. Now let’s dig into the advanced features using the same URL I provided above.

The advanced options give you the ability to customize the URL output, password protect the redirect, cloaking the URL which only shows the shortened URL text within the address bar of a user’s browser and finally, a url preview function. When someone clicks on your shortened link, the user will be shown the redirect and will be asked to click a link to confirm their destination.

Advanced Options Area

In my opinion, for a preview feature, why couldn’t it be automatic by simply copying the Title text of the webpage being linked to into the “ALT” attribute for the shortened link. This would allow me to hover over a shortened link with my mouse cursor and at a glance, preview the destination. Seems pretty simple to me yet, none of the URL shortening services that I know of do it.

Becoming A Verified Owner:

Once you create and save your shortened URL, you become a verified owner for that link. This means you can log into URLAO to check on the total amount of hits for a specific URL, or you can change any of the settings for that URL in case you change your mind or the URL that you linked to has changed.

Conclusion:

I like how URLAO has added in features that I haven’t seen in TinyURL or URLtea. If these guys could implement my idea of making the links automatically descriptive via the “ALT” attribute within a link so that all anyone has to do to preview a link is to hover over it, then you’ve got yourself a URL Shortener service that is damn worthy of using. All of the other bells and whistles of URLAO make it a viable alternative to URLTea and TinyURL.

If you happen to use the service, be sure to chime in your thoughts below.

History Of LoLCats Maybe

Pwned Before Time

This episode of BoingBoing TV talks about the history involved with the site, LoLrCats. Or at least, thats what I thought it was going to talk about. In all honesty, I think this is more of a spoof video than of actual fact but it’s hard to tell. As a commenter mentioned on the BoingBoing site, one of the comic strips shows one of the cats actually saying the word “PWNED“. However, after closer inspection, it appears as though the cat is walking past a Pawn shop and since the comic routinely left out vowels from words, Pwned was most likely substituted for Pawned.

It’s also interesting to note that this comic may have been well ahead of its time. This comic series is most likely the inspiration behind the current naming conventions of Web 2.0 based companies. Seeing the word PWNED used before it’s time is CLASSIC! And by the way, I still think LOLCats is as stupid now as it was when it launched.