Dawlish, Devon, UK

Lille, France

Bermondsey, London

Rydzewo near Ciechanów, Poland

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

Regent’s Canal, Camden Town, London

Barry Island, Wales, UK

Tower Bridge, London

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

The post Postcards from Stunning Places appeared first on 416 Studios.

So Pinterest is a great way of curating things from around the web. It allows you to create virtual pin boards that you and you alone can create on whatever you love. Create a board on any topic you want and pin things from around the web that you like about that topic.

Pinterest is also a wonderful way to find inspiration, using the search tool you can easily find great examples on any topic. What I like about this is that these images are hand picked by Pinterest users, not just generated by some search engine algorithm. Looking to redo our kitchen checkout the first thing we did was search “modern kitchens” on Pinterest. Say you’re looking for somewhere wonderful to visit check “places to visit” pin those you like to your own board.

We work with Photoshop and so we curate this board with techniques, tutorials etc, because pins link back to the source we can always go back and read the article when the time permits. Absolutely the best way to bookmark web pages especially with visual cues.

Not only Pinterest is fun with loads of eye-candy and visual inspiration, it’s a very useful scrap booking tool so follow us over there or if you don’t have an account yet, follow this link to register and start pinning!

Couple of days ago interior designer Sam of Design Lovers was writing about Pinterest on her blog. Next up on the Pin it Forward UK journey, is Laura at Shedraws who is graphic designer & enthusiast for independent design – check out her boards at http://pinterest.com/shedraws.

Happy Pinning!

DISCLOSURE: We were asked by Pinterest to take part in Pink It Forward UK campaign but we were not financially compensated for this post. All opinions are our own.

The post Pin It Forward UK – How Pinteresting! appeared first on 416 Studios.

Demo Map

The first thing we need to do is include the googlemap api in your web page.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script>

Why sensor=false? This is set to true if we’re using some sort of location sensor device like a gps or a we’re using the W3C Geolocation API in a browser that supports it. In this case we don’t need Geolocation so sensor is set to false.

Of course we need to define an area on the page where the map is to be displayed. We will use a div called map_canvas that measures 500×800 pixels.

Now we need a the function to initialize the map. So here’s the code, we’ll go through it step by step

function initialize() {
        var myOptions = {
            center: new google.maps.LatLng(51.529198,-0.15451),
            zoom: 13,
            mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
        };
 
        var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map_canvas'), myOptions);
 
        var myPoints = [
            ["The London Library", "The London Library is the world's largest independent lending library, and one of the UK's leading literary institutions.", "51.507354", "-0.136607"],
            ["Covent Garden", "A former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site", "51.511954", "-0.122793"],
            ["The British Library", " The national library of the United Kingdom.", "51.528891", "-0.127476"],
            ["Swiss Cottage Library", "The Swiss Cottage Central Library is the central library of  the London Borough of Camden, and is housed in an architectural landmark building designed by Sir Basil Spence.", "51.542111", "-0.173026"],
            ["Regent's Park Library", "This library has recently been closed due to savage cuts in the council's budget.", "51.528444","-0.143131"]
        ];       
 
        function setMarkers() {            
 
                var lat = myPoints[i][2];
                var lng = myPoints[i][3];
                var latlngset;
                latlngset = new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng);
                var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
                    map: map,
                    icon: 'pin.png',
                    position: latlngset
                });
                return marker;
 
        }
        // Set all markers in the myPoints variable
 
        for (i = 0; i <= myPoints.length - 1; i++) {                
            setMarkers();
        }
 
    }

Map Options

First we create an object to hold the map properties.

var myOptions = {
            center: new google.maps.LatLng(51.529198,-0.15451),
            zoom: 13,
            mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
        };

center

The initial Map center

zoom

The initial Map zoom level.

mapTypeId

The initial Map mapTypeId; Options include(HYBRID, ROADMAP, SATELLITE, TERRAIN)

Then comes a function to create a map object.

var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map_canvas'), myOptions);

At this point if initialize() is called a map centered at LatLng(51.529198, -0.15451) will be displayed in the map_canvas div. Now all we need to do is add some markers.

Let’s create an array with the data needed for each marker. What we really need is the cordinates for each marker, but I’m going to include some extra information that I may need to use at some point in the future.

var myPoints = [
            ["The London Library", "The London Library is the world's largest independent lending library, and one of the UK's leading literary institutions.", "51.507354", "-0.136607"],
            ["Covent Garden", "A former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site", "51.511954", "-0.122793"],
            ["The British Library", " The national library of the United Kingdom.", "51.528891", "-0.127476"],
            ["Swiss Cottage Library", "The Swiss Cottage Central Library is the central library of  the London Borough of Camden, and is housed in an architectural landmark building designed by Sir Basil Spence.", "51.542111", "-0.173026"],
            ["Regent's Park Library", "This library has recently been closed due to savage cuts in the council's budget.", "51.528444","-0.143131"]
        ];

We can now write a function to add a marker…

function setMarkers() {            
 
                var lat = myPoints[i][2];
                var lng = myPoints[i][3];
                var latlngset = new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng);
                var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
                    map: map,
                    icon: 'pin.png',
                    position: latlngset
                });
                return marker;                         
        }

Here again the important bit is the position of the markers and the map that we are targeting. So we take the latitude and longtude from each object in myPoints to use as a new google.maps.LatLng class. Notice I used a custom icon, if this is left out then the default google marker icon will be used.

Here is a list of Google map marker options

The function creates a single marker, therefore we need to go through over the myPoints array and set a marker for each object.

for (i = 0; i <= myPoints.length - 1; i++) {                
            setMarkers();
          }

Once that’s done, we can call the initialize() function however we deem, in this case we will use:
google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initialize);

In future posts we will look at:

Adding infowindow to google map markers

Customizing infowindows

The post Google Map with Multiple Markers appeared first on 416 Studios.

If you search for “PressReader” in Google the description given with the main result is: PressReader brings over 2100 full content newspapers from 95 countries to the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, smartphones, eReaders, PCs and Macs.

Bold claim and one which by and large holds true.

PressReader brings you digital duplicates of all these papers—ads and all—in a beautiful app interface. However the first question that comes to mind is why would I pay $29.99 a month for content which is almost all freely available online?

2300 newspapers is a lot of information at your fingertips, although my initial concern that most of these papers are available online it’s nice having them all in only place available for your perusal.

It must be said that there are some major papers that are not available on PressReader. Some are papers that are behind their own pay wall and are understandably not on board with PressReader, and others may have their own reasons but considering the subscription fee again it begs the question…

Back to the interface… PressReader is lovely to use, the papers a basically digitally rendered replicas of the real thing. Much nicer to read than digital type, however there are the obvious drawbacks.

Flicking through the pages of your paper is straightforward and smooth but reading an article on a smartphone can involve a fair amount of back an forth due to the column design of newspapers. In this regard PressReader is much more suited to the larger sized tablet devices.

Smartphone users need not worry though, with PressReader’s text-view or text-flow—a long press on the article to select the text-flow option— the article will be presented in a more friendly single column view for smaller screens.

Finding a paper of your choice is a breeze, papers are listed by country, language, your own favourites or you could search by name. once you’ve found the paper you want you could download a single edition or set PressReader to download the latest paper once available. Perfect for your daily commute, you’ll never miss another edition of your favourite newspaper—providing said paper is available on PressReader.

So back to the $29.99 question, if you are going to use PressReader on a daily basis then $29.99 is a bargain considering the quality of the app, especially if you are using it on a tablet. For the non regular newspaper consumer 99¢ per download is a fair price.

Given my initial reservations about PressReader, I have to say that I’ve been won over by the brilliance of this app. If I were a regular paper buyer I would have to hesitation switching over to the digital joy that is PressReader.

With thanks to Caleb & PressReader for complementary PressReader account.

The first image courtesy of PressReader.

The post PressReader App Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

Google image search is available for quite a while now yet not everyone knows about it. Today I spoke to my sister  who had no idea something like this even existed and she is a photographer using computer and internet on daily basis… so I decided to write this short article to show how does it work.

• First of  Google image search is very useful tool to find source of the images found accidentally on the net: wrongly linked images on Pinterest or Tumblr for instance.
• It can be used to search for similar images either for ideas or fun purposes.
• You can also track who is using your images this way… be aware that you may be shocked how many people is using copyrighted images without permission.

Ok, so lets see how does it work.

Go to Google -> Images and drag the picture into the search box.

And here we go, you can see some Pinterest links and then actual website where my lampshade come from, also similar (colour wise) images. Still, pretty amazing I would say.

Ok, lets try again with another image…

Some search results can be quite funny, like this one with our hamster’s look alikes! (!)

You can also drag images from your desktop or any other folder on your computer. Let see who do I look like?

This did not go so well… I will have to try again once Google will work a bit more on face recognition feature.

The post Google Image Search appeared first on 416 Studios.

If you’ve ever come across the dreaded “this content is not available in your location” message then UnoTelly may be just the ticket for you.

You could set up a VPN or use a Proxy Server, so why would you want to use a pay service at $4.99/$7.99 per month?

Ease of setup/use and speed.

Not only UnoDNS is easy to set up on you PC or laptop, but you can just as easily use it on a long list of internet enabled devices as long as you can change the primary DNS on the device then UnoDNS should work. For my part I’ve used it on Windows, Linux (Ubuntu) and Playstation.

When you use a proxy server you’re bandwidth/speed is usually less/slower than usual, UnoDNS claims there is Zero speed loss with their service, and in the time I’ve used it there have been no reason to doubt that claim.

I’ve even tried BBC iPlayer in HD and there’s no difference compared to directly accessing iPlayer. Streaming was smooth and sharp.

UnoDNS is not a catch all that makes “all” websites think you’re from a different region.
UnoDNS still allows you to access sites in your region, smart enough to switch on its services only when needed. There are also option to chose regions by website, so if Hulu will think you’re from the US whilst BBC iplayer considers you from GB, pretty cool if you ask me.

Now everything is not as rosy as it seems. First off my main operating system is Ubuntu, precise pangolin to be, erm, precise. The instructions to change your DNS on that system is out of date.

As with everything Linux there are a few different ways to do things, but editing resolv.conf  on 12.04 is way off the mark. You could edit dhclient.conf but I got errors, with UnoTelly intermittently asking me to update my IP address when I have just done so. The simplest more reliable way to change your DNS was to edit network connection using the gui. Once that’s done UnoTelly is a breeze.

So if you are an Englishman in New York or an American in Paris, UnoTelly may be the best way to access your favourite telly.

With thanks to Nick & UnoTelly for complementary UnoDNS account.

The post UnoDNS from UnoTelly – Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

A quick search of Google yielded quite a few interesting results. The old way of using resolv.conf was the top matches suffice to say editing resolv.conf won’t work,and neither is creating /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail entries.

Editing dhclient.conf secodes to work but it was unreliable with UnoTelly. Another option is adding lines to /etc/network/interfaces, or using dmasq, all of these options scary to most computer users.

So how do we change the DNS without touching the command line or installing another app?

Click on the network connection applet in unity’s panel.

Next click on edit connections.

Now select your connection and click edit.

Select the IPv4 Setting tab and on the “method” dropdown select Automatic (DHCP) addresses only. In the DNS servers area type in the address of the DNS server or servers (comma separated). Click on save and don’t forget to RESTART for the changes to take effect.

See easy as that no need to use the command line.

The post How to change your DNS on Ubuntu 12.04 (precise pangolin) appeared first on 416 Studios.

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was founded in 1906 and is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. They are World’s leading organization creating International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies, electrotechnology in short. Millions of devices depend on IEC standards to perform, fit and work safely together.

I spoke to IEC’s Head of Communications and  IEC e-tech magazine Editor in Chief: Gabriela Ehrlich while she was visiting London couple of weeks ago. I was shocked to learn that there are standards for things I did not have idea about and how many of every day items rely on IEC standards, amazing!

The IEC promotes world trade and economic growth and encourages the development of products, systems and services that are safe, efficient and environmentally friendly.  Their role is to help experts from countries all over the World to reach agreement and to prepare the rules, specifications and terminology that allow manufacturers to build devices that work together, safely and as expected. This way companies don’t have to test the same product for each country so if they spend less for testing, the product can be cheaper, more affordable and less waste is produced on the way…

IEC standards are named with letters and numbers such as IEC 60417 ( standard for graphical symbols for use on equipment). The IEC cooperates with other organizations like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and many more. Standards developed together with ISO will be named for instance as ISO/IEC 26300 (Open Document format for office applications). In UK IEC standards are named with EN instead of IEC, so the mentioned above standard would be EN 60417.

You will be surprised how many home appliances, every day gadgets and big projects is dependent on standards. Little things like plugs or colour management on your computer uses IEC standards. There are standards normalizing how safe the oven glass should be so the child or older person would not burn their hand on the surface, they are standards for vacuum cleaners, phones, toys and everything around us, below couple of examples to show you how important standards are in our life:

• Joint Photographic Experts Group – file .jpeg format
• plus and minus graphics on batteries
• Universal Character Set (USC / Unicode)
• Open Document format for office applications
• wiring colours
• safety of electrical household appliances
• graphical symbols for use on equipment
• VHS/S-VHS video tape cassette system
• compact disk digital audio system
• plugs and socket-outlets for household
• switches for home appliances
• colour measurement in multimedia systems

Even when saving files in sRGB we are using one of IEC standards.

I wish that companies and manufacturers would try to keep everything up to international standards to save not only money testing stuff, produce less rubbish, keep our houses less clattered and safer. Why can’t we just have one standard phone charger instead of having different one for each phone model? Why there can’t be one raw camera file format instead of all those NEFs, ORFs,  CRWs, DCRs, SRFs etc., each one requiring different software to open it. Life would be so much easier (!)

What can we, little people, do is to stop buying merchandise that does not keep the standards.

If you are interested or feel inspired you can read more about IEC on their Newslog.

Below image has been taken on Seven Sisters Road in London.

Most of the images are courtesy of IEC, downloadable posters can be found here.

You can read this article also on our other blog.

The post What Do You Know About IEC Standards? appeared first on 416 Studios.

Have you heard about this new GetTaxi app yet?

It’s a free app enabling you to call—shouldn’t say call, more like order—a Cab to your location or a location where you will be.

Using your phone’s location service it will suggest addresses or landmarks as you pickup location. Once you’ve chosen a location for pickup the app gives you a very accurate pick up time and show the locations of you incoming cab on the mini map.

Get Taxi also displays the name and photo of your driver in addition to the cab registration number, so no there should be little problems in identifying your Cab. The driver can see customer name and picture as well (if added to your profile) and during the whole process of awaiting the cab you can see in real time the progress on the map.

For me, who hates talking on the phone and explaining where to pick me up from, this app is just perfect (!) One time you can as well enter destination address (“details” section) so you won’t have to do any explaining inside the taxi, just enjoy the ride.

It is very convenient especially when you don’t really know exact address of the place you are in, great for tourist visiting London, too. I tested it several times to be picked up from the pub in the middle of London and every time “locate” was working perfectly giving me name of the place as one of the first options. It works also on the street as long as you have some recognizable building near by. Useful when you have hands full of shopping bags.

When ordering you can choose to pay by Card or Cash, this include coupon credit you can add to your phone. If you paying by card you will be prompted to enter you card details and at the end of the ride you will get pop-up window on your phone asking to accept the transaction, that’s it.

What I like is that you can rate your driver when you have reached your destination already, collect taxi miles or earn points by inviting friends. Besides that I was very impressed with their Twitter customer service when I got reply to my question within seconds.

The GetTaxi app is available in UK for Android, Blackberry and iPhone.

The downsides are that the service does not cover all London I tried pre ordering a Taxi from Archway and was informed that the service is not available in that area.

For info on all available locations and platforms visit their website.

I would also expect that if you enter pick up and destination addresses you should be able to get, at least approximate price in advance, before you order, just in case you don’t have enough money on you.

But still I love this app and I would recommend to anyone living in or visiting London or any other city where GetTaxi service is available.

With thanks to Rebecca & GetTaxi UK for complementary taxi credit for the purpose of this review.

The post GetTaxi App – Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

With this tutorial you can create amazing, bright eyes within minutes.

First retouch, adjust levels and do all necessary colour corrections on your image.

With a Lasso Tool  (L) select the eyes (hold Shift key to add to selection). Hit Ctrl+J to copy selection to a new layer. You can copy the whole layer instead of selecting eyes but applying the filter to the large area like this may take a while on slower computers.

Use Smart Sharpen filter on the eyes, the choice of right settings will depend on the size of your file.

Add a layer mask to the sharpened layer, then using a white soft brush on 50% bring back paint only iris’ and pupils to expose the sharpened eyes. Reduce opacity of the layer if it is obviously too sharp.

Using levels brighten the whole picture and then copy mask from previous layer to select only eyes by holding Alt while dragging the sharpened mask (“layer 1″ in the pic) onto the “levels 2″ layer.

With a Colour Balance set desired eye colour, keep “Preserve Luminosity” ticked, again use copy of previously created mask to select eyes only.

Reduce opacity of the colour layer to make the eyes look more natural. Optionally go back to the other masked layers to find the best balance playing with opacity.

And voilà, the image is ready.

The post Eye Sharpening – Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on 416 Studios.

First lets set up the html buttons. I plan to have 4 versions, the normal state, one with an arrow indicating a dropdown/sub menu another with css3 animation on hove and lastly a coloured version just for fun.

<div id="youtube">
<button class="button">Regular</button> 
<button class="button parent">Dropdown</button> 
<button class="button animated">Animated </button> 
<button class="button color">Colored</button>
</div>

I’ve added the extra class for the differing versions. Let’s now look at the css.

The initial state as follows:

.button {
 border: 1px solid #DDD;
 border-radius: 3px;
 text-shadow: 0 1px 1px white;
 -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #fff;
 -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #fff;
 box-shadow: 0 1px 1px #fff;
 font: bold 11px arial;
 padding: 6px 10px;
 white-space: nowrap;
 vertical-align: middle;
 color: #666;
 background: transparent;
 cursor: pointer;
 margin-bottop:10px;
}

Nothing special here. A solid 1 pixel border with a white drop-shadow to mimic a recessed state. Next we add the hover state…

.button:hover, .button:focus {
border-color: #999;
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, white, #E0E0E0);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, white, #E0E0E0);
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, white, #E0E0E0);
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, white, #E0E0E0);
-webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.25), inset 0 0 3px #fff;
-moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.25), inset 0 0 3px #fff;
box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.25), inset 0 0 3px #fff;
}

And a last bit for the active state.

.button:active {
border: 1px solid #AAA;
border-bottom-color: #CCC;
border-top-color: #999;
-webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px #aaa;
-moz-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px #aaa;
box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px #aaa;
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #E6E6E6);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #E6E6E6);
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #E6E6E6);
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #E6E6E6);
}

That’s it for the youtube buttons. If you want a bit of css3 animated goodness add this bit…

.animated {
-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
-moz-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
-ms-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
-o-transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
transition: all 0.3s ease-in-out;
}

And finally make it coloured with this snippet.

.color, .color:hover {background:#E9BB8F;}
 
.color:hover{
background-image: linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(201,161,127) 0%, rgb(233,187,143) 50%);
background-image: -o-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(201,161,127) 0%, rgb(233,187,143) 50%);
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(201,161,127) 0%, rgb(233,187,143) 50%);
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(201,161,127) 0%, rgb(233,187,143) 50%);
background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(bottom, rgb(201,161,127) 0%, rgb(233,187,143) 50%);}

For the dropdown arrow we’re going to use the what I like to call the zero size transparent border technique, like so.

.parent:after {
content: "";
display: inline-block;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border-top: 4px solid #999;
border-left: 4px solid transparent;
border-right: 4px solid transparent;
margin: 0 0 0 4px;
position: relative;
top: -1px;
}
.parent:hover:after {
border-top-color: black;
}

There you have it, css only youtube style buttons. Play around with the code in the fiddle below, remember with great power comes great responsibility.

The post Youtube Style Animated Buttons appeared first on 416 Studios.

cupcake

Poland

tiger lily

romanesco

stripy fabric

the Caribbean

cream rose

fruit tartlets

cantaloupe melon

paper crafts

rice salad

pub

water drop

crab’s eye beans

peach seed

mini flowers

Hello Kitty cake

Bermondsey, London

green peas

flower stall

chocolates

To change the FB cover photo:

• First click to open and save one of the above images to your computer.
• Then in your Facebook account go to your profile page -> Change Cover -> Upload photo.
• Browse and choose previously uploaded image to your computer and then “Save Changes”.

We will be updating this post with more timeline cover photos shortly, so follow as on Twitter or Facebook to be the first to know.

The post 20+ Facebook Timeline Covers appeared first on 416 Studios.

Smashing WordPress Themes by Thord Daniel Hedengren

First let me say that Smashing WordPress Themes focuses solely on WordPress theme development, it is for those who have an adequate understanding of CSS and PHP and are looking get under the hood of a WordPress theme. If you are looking to learn about building websites then this book is not for you.

Having been disappointed with a previous offering from Smashing Magazine I had low expectations going into this book – I shouldn’t have. This book is great, it really gets down to the nuts and bolts of a WordPress theme. Everything from simple tweaks to the default Twenty-ten theme, to creating your own theme. It even touches on Buddypress.
Not only will you learn how to build themes but it helps you with design, layout and planning issues that other books of this type tend to ignore.

Expect to get your hands dirty but don’t be daunted by the technical stuff as the author explains whats going on every step of the way. The explanations are clear and makes things easy to understand.
Again it is for WordPress beginners, if you don’t have some understanding of PHP, CSS and HTML then this book will not be rewarding. However if you do and your are looking to delve into WordPress, then it is highly recommended.

“Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful”

AUTHOR: Thord Daniel Hedengren
PUBLISHER: John Wiley & Sons
FORMAT: Paperback
SIZE: 23.5 x 18.7 x 2 cm
PAGES: 368
LANGUAGE: English
ISBN: 978-0470669907
PUBLISHED: 11th February 2011

A good book for getting under the hood of WordPress.

4 out of 5 stars

Disclosure: We have received this product free as a part of Amazon Vine™ Programme and you can find this article between our other reviews on Amazon website.

Photos: courtesy of Amazon.co.uk.

The post Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful by Thord Daniel Hedengren – Book Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

Smashing JQuery by Jake Rutter

Smashing jQuery is aimed at beginners, with sound explanations of the basic concepts of jQuery, from selectors, filters, working with events and effects to more advanced stuff like handling ajax requests with jQuery and plugin development.
It provides best practices tips and pointers. Beginners using this book will come out with a good understanding of jQuery and how to put it to use. Items are explained and followed by a practical example using the item being explained.

The presentation is great, with lots of pictures which you would not necessarily expect in that type of book. Especially nice are the images with the Firebug panel open.

It’s not all good news though. It’s sad to see that coding examples in the book contain errors, the type that should not make it’s way any book. Simple things that would be caught by the simplest of proofing.
When most of the explanations presented in the book is backed up by code examples it is a worry that any of those examples are broken.

I can’t compare it to anything else on the market as this is the only jQuery book I’ve read but I’m willing to bet that there are better buys out there.

“Smashing JQuery: Professional Techniques with Ajax and JQuery”

AUTHOR: Jake Rutter
PUBLISHER: John Wiley & Sons
FORMAT: Paperback
SIZE: 23.5 x 18.9 x 1.9 cm
PAGES: 336
LANGUAGE: English
ISBN: 978-0470977231
PUBLISHED: 4th February 2011

Coding examples in the book contain errors.

3 out of 5 stars

Disclosure: We have received this product free as a part of Amazon Vine™ Programme and you can find this article between our other reviews on Amazon website.

Photos: courtesy of Amazon.co.uk.

The post Smashing jQuery: Professional Techniques with Ajax and jQuery by Jake Rutter – Book Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #c1248f (pink)

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #e3105b (reddish pink)

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #4d9a9f (duck egg)

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #bb5b74 (beetroot)

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #958860 (khaki)

recommended background colour: #ffffff (white) & links colour: #d9327a (pink), #28b38e (green) or #4165c8 (blue)

To change the Twitter theme:

• First click to open and save one of the above images to your computer.
• Then in your Twitter account go to Settings -> Design -> Customize your own.
• Browse and choose previously uploaded image to your computer, do not tick “tile background”.
• Change colours of the background and links as recommended.
• Save changes.

We will be updating this post with more Twitter backgrounds shortly, so stay tuned.

The post Twitter Themes / Backgrounds appeared first on 416 Studios.

colour palette used on this blog

retro cream, red and brown colour theme

fresh salad colour theme

summer colour palette

green, grey and deep orange colour theme for Bèlbagay website

web colour palette with pink, brown and turquoise

black, red and blue old poster colour theme

floral colour palette

autumn colour palette

aquamarine & olive colour palette for food blog coffeeandvanilla.com

red, yellow and green colour theme for online shop giftsbymarissa.com

baby blue & purple colour palette for micro site gocha.co.uk

pink, yellow and green folk colour palette

red, grey & navy retro colour palette

four seasons colour palette for bigos-uk.com

pink & aqua colour palette

web colour palette in retro green, yellow and blue

colour palette for bedroom lamp project

colour theme for football blog wengerball.com

retro colour palette with red & beige

web colour palette with yellow and blue

This post will be updated with new colours so feel free to bookmark it for future reference.

The post Some of Our Favourite Colour Palettes appeared first on 416 Studios.

The liquid used for the shots is plain water and the colour is determined by the reflection from  the containers / plastic basins we were using, it was also a little bit enhanced afterwards in post production.

Little Blue Water Drop Macro

Purple Water Drop Macro

Green Water Drop Macro

Long Blue Water Drop Macro

• Photography: Michael DYER of 416 Studios.
• Some of the images can be purchased via Gifts by Marissa.

The post Experimenting with Water Drops appeared first on 416 Studios.

ZTE Tania Windows Smartphone

If you are thinking of a budget smartphone the ZTE Tania would be a good candidate but it’s not the best in it’s price range.

BUILD

Simply put, it’s a budget phone so physically it’s budget quality. Plastic, plastic & more plastic. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it shouts cheap.

ZTE Tania is surprisingly light for it’s size.­ It is a bit bigger than the HTC Desire HD which for me is a quite a big phone  I have small hands so I find it a little uncomfortable to use it with one hand but it fits much better my husband’s hands.

SCREEN

The phone’s size allows for a nice large 4.3inch display. The touch screen is very good, bright, even outside in the sun you can see everything clearly on it.

SOUND

The in call volume and sound is OK, you can hear the person very clearly both with headphones and without, but you must use the ones provided with the phone. We tired several headphones from other smart phones and the quality of the sounds was not the same. The low side is the loud speaker, it is weak and you can hear distortion, even before reaching peak volumes

CAMERA

Nothing much to say here except budget.

MEMORY

The phone does not have a much memory, it has 4GB total with no memory card slot. After allowing for the system files and installed apps only a little bit more than 2GB is available for your use.

RADIO & INTERNET

I find that wi-fi connection on ZTE Tania is much better than with couple other smartphones we have in the house. Mobile reception is also better than the HTC HD, I am able to use the phone in places that I can’t get connection with the other phone. Overall the radio on the Tania is quite impressive compared to the other in the house.

BATTERY / CHARGING

Powering up a large screen smartphone is no easy task on a battery, and the Tania is no exception it does not last long. That isn’t to say battery life is poor but it isn’t anything out of the ordinary. A plus is that uses a standard mini usb connection for charging so I don’t have to worry having yet another charger around the house.Unfortunately to connect to your PC—something you must do do to update or simply to add music— you must use the one provided with the phone, otherwise your computer may not recognize the device.

INTERFACE / OS

The WP7  interface is very nice, smooth and easy to use, even with lower powered phones such as this one response is smooth nimble. As it’s a sim free phone you don’t get the usual junk applications bundled onto the phone, which is a boon and in this case necessary given the meagre memory.

If you’re expecting to add loads of apps to the phone, you may be disappointed given the current lack of choice in the Marketplace coupled with the lack of space on your phone.

One major gripe I have with Windows Phone 7 is the dependence on Zune. WP7 doesn’t expose it’s file system to the user. Nor does it connect as a USB Mass Storage device, so you wouldn’t be able to copy files to it as you would another storage device. In order to copy pictures, music, and videos to your phone you must use Zune or the Mac connector.

ZTE Tania Windows Smartphone

VERDICT

I am fully aware that at the price (£209.99 at the time of writing) expectations must be lowered. There is nothing glaringly wrong with it besides the small amount of memory but there are a lot of little things that grates even for a budget phone.

Budget smartphone – not the best in it’s price range.

3 out of 5 stars

Disclosure: We have received this product free as a part of Amazon Vine™ Programme and you can find this article between our other reviews on Amazon website.

Photos: courtesy of Amazon.co.uk.

The post ZTE Tania Windows Smartphone – Review appeared first on 416 Studios.

Bermondsey, London

Big Ben, London

Somewhere in North London

HMS Belfast at Thames River

Old Routemaster Bus, Central London

Tower Bridge, London

Autumn in North London

Regent's Canal, Camden Town, London

Hornsey Road in North London

Canary Wharf, London

London at night, Canary Wharf

Seven Sisters Road, North London

Fountain at Trafalgar Square, London

Mayor's Office, London

Tower Bridge, London

Elthorne Park, Islington

Winter 2010, Sussex Way, London

• Photography: Michael DYER & Margot DOLEWSKA DYER of 416 Studios.
• Some of the images can be purchased via Gifts by Marissa.

The post London’s Photos appeared first on 416 Studios.

According to research carried out by OnePoll, on behalf of BaseKit, 70 per cent of people claim they would not buy from a company with a badly designed website, yet many small businesses enterprises(SME) seem to think that any old website will do. Even worse is the misconception that their business can not benefit from a website.

It is vital that you represent you company professionally online. In this Internet age companies are expected to have a well thought out online presence and it is crucial that a website gives the correct impression of a business.

When you consider that the first stop to find a product or services is Google. Can SME’s really afford not to have an appropriate site when it’s so easy to go back to Google and choose a different company, one that has a better looking site?

The ease of finding businesses online means it is also very easy to find a business that’s not yours. Where you business is located is not as important as how it looks online. A website is the first impression a potential customer gets of a business, and a judgement on whether or not to use the services is usually made in a few seconds. In those few seconds aesthetics is the most influential factor in making that decision

The website is now the digital expression of the business. It is essential to marketing and sales, communications, branding and reputation, and customer service and support.

By allowing their business to be represented by a shoddy website, SME’s are running the risk of:

• Losing market share to competitors who have recognised the value of a good website, and have acquired a better site.
• Damage to reputation and brand caused by the association of a bad website to the brand
• Harming customer relationship when customers have difficulty completing tasks, caused by bad planning and design
• Financial loss associated with customers turning away from your business, caused by poor web execution.

SME’s must stop throwing away money, turning away customers, and damaging their reputation, paying more attention to their oft neglected website. In these austere times can we really afford to be represented by a bad website?

The post Are SME’s harming their business with shoddy websites? appeared first on 416 Studios.

So how do we implement this on a wordpress blog?

The short answer. Copy the following to you functions.php file.

function reading_time() {
$mycontent = get_post(get_the_id())->post_content;
$wordcount = round(str_word_count(strip_tags($mycontent)), -2);
$upper = round(($wordcount / 250), 0);
$lower = round(($wordcount / 180), 0);

if ($wordcount $output = __(“Estimated reading time: less than 2 mins”);
} else {
$output = sprintf(__(“Estimated reading time: %s – %s mins”), $upper, $lower);
}
if ($return) {
return $output;
} else {
echo $output;
}
}

to use this in a post or index of posts simply invoke the function like so.

if (function_exists('reading_time')) {reading_time(); }

Were simply taking the number of words in the post and dividing it by the average reading words per minute(180-250wpm).

The post Estimated Reading Time appeared first on 416 Studios.

You see having written several articles over the years, a client wanted to upload some to his new wordpress site. However he found that once he published those articles they would take on the current date, when what he wanted was the date those articles were originally written.

So how do we get wordpress to show the dates he wants and not the date it was actually posted on?

That’s where the post publish box comes in to play.

The buttons in the post publish box are self explanatory, however it’s pretty easy for new wordpress users to miss the edit links next to Status, Visibility and Publish. Even if they do see the link it is not immediately obvious what those links actually do.

For the purposes of this post we are interested in editing the publish date. Clicking on the edit link next to the Publish immediately text will bring up date fields which we can change to reflect the post date we want show on the blog, providing that the blog is set up to show post dates. This also allows you to schedule posts for future publication.

As with most things wordpress is pretty well thought out, and changing the date on your post is as simple as you would think.

The post WordPress How to: Change Post Dates appeared first on 416 Studios.

Those stupid Flash ads that expand over content.

It’s not enough for some ads to be flashy and irritating but just as you start reading the article they have to expand and cover what you were reading.

What do those people think? The only way I’d click you ad is accidentally, maybe that’s the point. Getting in my way is not the best way to endear me to your product.

What’s even worse are those with no immediately discernible close button aarrgh! In that case I close the window and vow never to return to that site again.

Snap-shots.

I hate snapshots, whoever came up with that idea should be shot. You see the link, you make the effort to move your mouse over it and… it’s not a link. What irritates me even more is when I use the middle button to scroll the pointer will inadvertently move over one of these dastardly things.

Why oh why use snap? It sucks resources, increases page loading time and has all that advertising that your visitors don’t really want.

Speaking of useless unnecessary ads

What’s with those disgusting teeth whitening ads.

You know the one, yes that one with the mouth full of nasty rotten teeth. The funny thing is that I mostly see that particular ad when visiting Food blogs. Not what I want to see next to pictures of food.

At the very least make sure the ads are relevant to your site’s niche.

Comment systems.

Why do comments have to open a new window?

Why do I have to sign in with a twitter, facebook, openID, Disquss account? Suppose I don’t have or want one.

Why is the Last comment first?

I understand the need for pagination, but every 10 comments? Seriously what are you trying to pull?

Having have to scroll back up to the top of the post to leave a comment.

You are kind enough to put the full posts on your front page, and I really appreciate that. However after reading your well written article don’t let me scroll all the way back to the top to leave a comment. A link to the comments at the bottom of the post would be lovely.

Have more?

I know I’ve missed out some —share yours.

The post Top 5 Web Annoyances appeared first on 416 Studios.

A better way or as the wordpress codec says a safer way to use the jQuery libraries or any of the included scripts is to use wp_register_script or wp_enqueue_script.

WordPress comes loaded with several libraries and scripts for your enjoyment, including:

• Scriptalicious
• jQuery
• Prototype
• Thickbox
• jQuery UI

The easiest way to load the jQuery library for would be to add the following code before the wp_head() function,

wp_enqueue_script('jquery');

It’s important to note that the wordpress loads the internal version of the jQuery library in “no-conflict” mode which means the “$” shortcut will not work. You could use “jQuery” instead of “$”, however if you really want to use that dollar sign then in your jQuery scripts use the following code.

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
// do jQuery stuff using $
});

You can also specify the source of the script if it is not included with wordpress and load dependencies using wp_enqueue_script, the path to the script should be relative to the root directory of wordpress. The following example loads candy.js which depends on “scriptalicious” and “scriptalicious-slider”.

wp_enqueue_script('candy', WP_CONTENT_URL. '/themes/name-of-theme/js/candy.js', array('scriptalicious, scriptalicious-slider'), false, true);

The first paramenter is the script name, the second is the path to the script, the third parameter array() will load the files that candy.js needs. The names in this array are not the filenames but rather the handles, these will be loaded before candy.js

After the dependencies parameter comes the version option, it’s a string specifying the version number of the script used if there are more than one version of the script.

The last parameter is the wp_enqueue() function is an option to load your script wherever the wp_footer() hook is located, it should be in the, uh —footer.

If this post helps you better understand the wp_enqueue function, let me know in the comments below.

The post How to Use the Javascript Libraries Included with WordPress appeared first on 416 Studios.

• A:Arsenal.com
• B:Boagworld.com
• C:Coffeeandvanilla.com
• D:Daren Hoyte
• E:Ebuyer
• F:Slideshowpro forums
• G:Guardian.co.uk
• H:heartinternet.co.uk
• I:iPlayer
• J:Jquery.com
• K:Kuler
• L:lite.facebook.com
• M:Marco Bolognesi
• N:Noupe
• O:Oyster
• P:phpmyadmin on localhost
• Q: nothing for q
• R:Radio times
• S:ssp Director on localhost
• T:twitter.com
• U:UX booth
• V:veetle
• W:Wengerball
• X:XKCD
• Y:Youtube
• Z:Zeldman.com

The post URL ABC appeared first on 416 Studios.