Random Bytes (WebLens Blog)

WebLens Updated

2011-08-31T10:04:00.001-07:00

More changes at WebLens ... Cayole Cruises added to the Travel Bargains page.

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Announcing .. The WebLens Daily!

2011-06-02T22:02:00.004-07:00

Lots of new developments at WebLens right now. We've been twittering up a storm, so we've just launched The WebLens Daily, a handy digest of relevant Twitter posts delivered to your desktop each and every day. Subscribe or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with tweets relating to Internet and net search news, as well as web design, social media, and SEO and online marketing trends. Updated daily with fresh and timely content, and links to useful resources and interesting and entertaining...

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NEW!! The WebLens Toolbar

2011-06-02T10:39:00.003-07:00

Announcing the brand new WebLens Toolbar. Keep all your favourite resources right at your fingertips, no matter what site you are viewing. Compatible with IE, Firefox, and Chrome, the WebLens Toolbar can be downloaded from any page on the site. It comes loaded with all the WebLens menu contents you've come to know and love, plus loads of extra goodies, like quick links to Facebook, Twitter, local weather, Amazon deals, Groupon, Flixster movies, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Youtube, and more! The...

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WebLens Updated

2011-05-31T14:30:00.006-07:00

Several new resources posted to WebLens today: CruiseNow added to Online Travel Reservations and Trip BookingRestaurant.com added to Destination Research > Dining Guides Study Navigator added to Academic & Scholarly ResearchGovt Navigator and Military Navigator added to Finding GovernmentHope you find them useful.

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Fractallicious Designs Now at Zazzle

2011-05-26T14:32:00.004-07:00

About a week ago, I posted that my Fractallicious fractal art designs were now available as fine art prints through RedBubble. Now, I'm pleased to report that you can buy my artwork printed on merchandise too. I have set up a Zazzle store for Fractalllicious, where you can buy these lively images printed on everything from buttons, magnets, and mousepads to t-shirts, ties, even shoes. Most products ship within 24 hours, and Zazzle provides international mirror sites so you can shop in your...

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Fractallicious Art Now at RedBubble

2011-05-15T22:58:00.010-07:00

After a long absence teaching English overseas, I'm back creating fractal art and I've found a promising new venue for selling my work online. I have sold my work through microstock sites, and still license it (for commercial use) through Fractallicious, but I have never found a satisfactory print on demand solution. After a disappointing experience with CafePress (standing out in the hordes of mediocre merchandise was a challenge), I was a little gun-shy about print on demand, but I thought...

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Ferrofluid Defies Physics

2008-08-04T17:45:00.007-07:00

This is WAY cool! I haven't blogged for a while, but I just had to share this! Ferrofluid is a liquid that becomes polarised in the presence of a magnetic field. Here's the technical definition, straight from Wikipedia: "Ferrofluids are composed of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid, usually an organic solvent or water. The particles are coated with a surfactant to prevent their agglomeration. Although the name may suggest otherwise, ferrofluids do not display...

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Fractallicious Reborn

2008-04-01T07:57:00.008-07:00

Well, I finally did it! I'm out of the stock sites. As some of you know, I have been experimenting with selling my artwork online through half a dozen stock photography and microstock sites for a couple of years. While they were generating income, the experience has never been ideal. Uploading was time-consuming, especially with so many sites. It was frustrating to have certain sites reject an image for utterly arbitrary reasons, while others accepted the very same image. And I certainly didn't...

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Striking Screenwriters Having an Impact

2008-01-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

OK, time to remind oneself I support the Hollywood writers' strike. (Grumble.) I do, I really do. (Grumble.) I'm not a huge TV watcher, but I'm really starting to miss this season's hot new drama — and my newest fave — Cane. The show is about the trials and tribulations of a rich and powerful Cuban-American family, and I was hooked from the very first episode. New episodes of Cane have been noticeably absent, along with those of most other intelligent, well-written shows, for several weeks now....

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Test Your Vocabulary and Help Others Too

2007-12-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

Came across a site a couple of days ago that, as a writer and avid Scrabbler, I couldn't resist. FreeRice lets you test your vocab skills and donate food to the hungry at the same time. Each word you get right is worth 20 grains of rice. You gradually work your way up the levels, with the top score around 50. I hovered between 44 and 47 most of the time, and quit when I hit 48. Can't believe how many words I've never heard of! Give it a try. Great fun.

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The World's Chocolate Shops at Your Fingertips

2007-07-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

Here's one for chocophiles everywhere. Get your daily fix of the sweet treat with Chocomap. This new Canadian web site, sponsored by Ecole Chocolat, uses the Google Maps API to find chocolate shops throughout the world. Using the standard Google Maps interface, you can search geographically then zoom in on a location. Read brief descriptions of chocolate destinations or post your own review. There's lots of other useful information too, including recipes, chocolate e-cards, interviews with top...

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New Corbis Microstock Debuts

2007-06-28T10:26:00.001-07:00

The beta version of SnapVillage — Corbis' long-awaited foray into the microstock arena — debuted a few days ago. I've done quite well online with some of the other microstock sites, so I was curious about how the traditional stock photography giant might approach the business of microstock. They had, after all, been slow to acknowledge the seriousness of the mounting competition coming from this quarter. So far, I'm colossally unimpressed. I uploaded half a dozen images over a week ago, and as...

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Google Overhauls Search Results Display

2007-05-18T12:03:00.001-07:00

Got an email yesterday from a friend, with a link to an article about recent changes over at Google. Seems the search giant has yet again tweaked its search functionality. Such news always alarms me, as I teach Internet search and this usually means extra work. This time, though, the change is a small one. According to CBC News, Google is combining its multiple search offerings (web, images, blogs, etc.) into a single "universal search". The change is only evident at Google.com (not the...

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Monetize Your Blog with Job Listings

2007-05-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

SimplyHired.com's Job-a-Matic service allows any blog or web site owner to monetize a site with paid job listings. Target by industry and set your own pricing for listings you attract, and the company shares revenues with you 50/50. If your listings are on the skimpy side, Job-a-Matic "backfills" with relevant postings from SimplyHired.com's five million strong database of jobs. Click-throughs are rewarded with a 30/70% revenue split. You can target jobs by keyword or geographically, or both....

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New Blogger Layout Conversion No Picnic

2007-05-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

Whew! After hours of frustration, I have succeeded in moving this blog's template over into New Blogger. I did my best to maintain the same look and feel, but there are subtle differences. (You can see the old template by clicking on the thumbnail at left.) And what a learning curve it's been. Hopefully, the results will prove worth it. One of the major benefits of New Blogger (and certainly my primary motivation in upgrading to widgets view) is the new labels/categories feature, evidence of...

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Microsoft's Sexy Search Avatar

2007-04-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Just stumbled across this site in my stats this morning, and I can't believe I've missed it up til now. Ms. Dewey is an attractive search assistant from Microsoft, of all places, meant as an experimental interface for MSN search. Played by actress Janina Gavankar, best known for her role as Papi in The L Word, Ms. Dewey debuted in October 2006. She flirts, pouts, and entertains while waiting for your search term, then produces standard MSN search results, annotated with amusing commentary. She...

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3 Column Widgets Compliant Blogger Template!

2007-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Success! In a previous post, I noted that the New Blogger supports my three-column template in "classic view," but rejects it in "widgets view." I am happy to report that I have solved the problem. After much experimentation, I now have a working three column version that you can open and edit in either HTML view or in "widgets" view. It was much more than just a bit of badly formed XML. The code that the new Blogger uses for its "widgets view" is a radical departure from the XML that the old...

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A Fix for Screwy Blogger Feed Dates

2007-04-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

After updating all 135+ of this blog's posts yesterday with the new Blogger's much-hyped "label" feature, I discovered, much to my annoyance, that Blogger's native feed now defaults to updated rather than published order — that is, feed contents are sorted by the date on which posts are modified not by when they were created! For New Blogger users, unfortunately, this means that every time you make the slightest change to a post, including fixing a typo or correcting a broken link, it will...

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3-Column Template Fix for New Blogger

2007-04-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

Update: Widgets version now available! See this post for details. With apologies for the long wait, I have finally gotten around to investigating why some people were having trouble bringing my 3-column template into the New Blogger's HTML editor. One of the reasons holding me back was my own reluctance to embrace anything new from Blogger, but I finally took the plunge this morning, and so far so good. It's also the first time I have posted in a couple of months due to a heavy workload....

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IT Security Alert: Now PDFs Pose a Threat!

2007-01-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

Update: According to IT security types, certain versions of Internet Explorer are also vulnerable. They include: IE6, Adobe Reader 7 on XP SP1IE6, Adobe Reader 4 on XP SP2 I just received a very alarming alert from my daughter who works in IT security. According to a couple of posts that she forwarded to me, the long-trusted PDF document format can now be exploited for cross-site scripting purposes, meaning that any web site hosting PDF files can be used for perpetrating cyber...

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Fractal Art: the Hidden Beauty in Numbers

2006-12-29T16:27:00.000-08:00

My passion for making fractal art has deepened, to the extent that friends and family are beginning to worry about me. Virtually every evening, around 8:00 p.m. — after spending all day on the computer — I fire up a fractal program, and don't seem to be able to extricate myself til midnight, or later. (At least it's weaned me off the TV!) I started out with Ultra Fractal, which I have blogged about here before. More recently, I began wading into the murky waters of a freeware program called...

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Photo Duck Funnies Right On

2006-11-29T10:40:00.000-08:00

Saw a link yesterday in the Shutterstock discussion forums to a clever online comic strip about the trials and tribulations of daring to earn a living as a photographer. What the Duck is shutterbug Aaron Johnson's wry take on all things photographic. Johnson lets his readers name each strip through his blog's comments feature, and just reading the comments on some of the strips can be pretty entertaining. Check it out. Some of the strips are hilarious.

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Transparent PNG Generator

2006-11-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

A while back, I blogged about CSS transparency techniques, describing two methods for incorporating transparent elements into your design. You can also introduce transparency by using PNG format images. Unlike GIF images, which are either "on" or "off" in terms of opacity, PNG images support full alpha transparency. This means each pixel can display a subtle range of tones from 0 to 255. There are many ways to create transparent PNG images. If all you need is a plain transparent block to use...

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Output Your Designs on Merchandise

2006-11-13T16:50:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a while ago that I was trying out some microstock photography sites as a sales venue for my fractal art images. I have been looking for novel ways to give these images as gifts, especially with the holiday season coming up. My Canon i9900 colour inkjet printer does a surprisingly good job of printing my fractals for use as greeting cards or as framed prints, but I've been looking for something a little more out of the ordinary. A couple weeks ago, I found the...

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Disabling the Blogger Navbar

2006-11-08T12:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a great tip from reader Matt Mc. Matt commented in response to a post about customizing your Blogger template that he finds Blogger's default navbar annoying. Blogger doesn't let you disable this feature but Matt shared a short snipped of CSS that you can add to your template to suppress it. I tested it out and it works great, though I have re-enabled it on this blog, as I don't mind the navbar and its search feature could be useful to you. (For readers new to blogging, the navbar is...

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