The ever-arrogant Kevin Rose might have to pass his chair to Google’s executives, as acording to roumers, Google is about to buy Digg. While Digg’s venture capital stands on  $11.3 millions (only..),  the merge of Digg and Google will be yet another big step in Google’s growing  dictatorship over the web. According to TechCrunch.com, the deal is close to be closed.

Interactive Images and Photo Resources

Dumpr.net - While their logo is not particular web 2.0, they offer a great way to play around with photos - just upload and select the effect you want. Many interesting effects to chose from and the site is integrated with flickr.com. Most of the site is free to use but some effects require to have a paid subscription.

Sumopaint.com

Here you can doodle online, it’s somewhere between paintbrush and Photoshop, very interactive and works in external window, no need to download any program.

PhotoViewr.com

If you are a Facebook junkie, you are going to love this one. While everyone uses the standard in-built gallery facility of Facebook, you can stand out with a splendid 3D flash gallery. All you need to do is add their application to your Facebook account and add images.

Flickr Tools - Flickr is good, but we want more. We want to convert images to flash galleries, make puzzles from our photos, search for Creative Commons content and see what we can use, we want to integrate, optimize and pimp our Flickr profile, and the huge collection of tools offered here should keep you busy for a few days days.

AncestryPress

Very cosy and cute application for bringing your family together - create family trees and albumns online, could be an ideal present for a family member. You need to register to create a project, but don’t worry, it’s free (but printing s not).

Bloggers Tools

BlogRolled.com - Make money with your Blogroll. Similar model to Text-Link-Ads only the process is less painful since you add the links manually (if purchased) and need not add any scripts to your server. Why not, better than keep promoting 7 default link pointing to wordpress.org.

FeedJit.com

I am sure you have seen this one on other blogs, but maybe you didn’t know how to add it. This widget built and offered freely by FeedJit, allows you to show live traffic stats, popular post and display a visual map of visitors. You can add the widget to Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress, as well as customize the colours.

Blogged.com - Submit your blog for more exposure on the Blogged.com and find other great blogs that has interesting stories.

RatingBurner.com - There is a huge informal competition over the FeedBurner readers count and here you can see who has the biggest readers community with subcription trends (up/down and percentage). Submitting your blog to the list takes seconds.

RSSHugger.com This is a new website developed to help bloggers promote their blogs, and to help visitors discover new blogs that write about subjects that the readers are interested in. Through the power of the internet and viral marketing, rssHugger looks to bring blog writers and blog readers closer together.

Wigitize.com - Generate your own widget. Show the latest site updates of any RSS/Atom feed, embedded in your Blog with a few lines of code — fully customizable with CSS.

Online Design Tools

BgPatterns.com

Incredible tool for creating backgrounds online, simple choose colour, shape, scale, rotate and experiment. Very useful for designers who seek a nice background but struggle to find — here is a chance to make your own without any software.

Bomomo.com - Create abstract art online - very engaging and interesting tool for doodling. You can create an abstract image and put it as a header for your website.

jQuery.com

Revolution in themes building - the ThemeRoller tool by jQuery.  Simply choose your style and colors, backgrounds image opacity, font and then download a custom theme file to your computer. Incredibly simple to use for outstandingly neat results.

Adobe’s Kuler - If you are struggling to come up with a professional, juicy yet not eye-blinding colors-scheme for your design, you should definitely try this tool, offered to you by the mighty Adobe.

Icons, Icons, Icons…

IconsPedia.com

Submit and choose from an incredible variety of glossy, high quality Icons, devided into categories.

IconLook.com - Search through a big database of glossy and juicy, as well as tiny and neat icons. You can set desired icon size while searching as well. We don’t recomend to use their tagcloud, you will go crazy..

IconBuffet.com

Choose from a big variety of icons, professional, bold, minimalist, fun, standard, for blogs, and so on.. Many styles for different oocasions, but all are very pro looking.

FreeIconsDownload.com - Aggrigate database of various icons, by different designers.

Iconika.com

One of the most well known Icons designers brings you the freebies.  Quite a few high quality and very original icons to chose from.

Frexy.com

Tons of free icons from the designer behind Frexy.com — all of them are unique, very beautiful, and even though they are what you’d call “web 2.0″, they are by no means cheesy and too glossy, they can be used now and in 20 years from now, they will still look good.

web20badges.com - Oh well, some people still hunt the glossy web 2.0 badges, so if you didn’t staff a few badges on your website while the crazy was still on, here is your chance to do it without any knowledge in design, Photoshop or… or anything else.

Just Cool Tools

subyo.com - With this tool you can find, use and create subtitles for YouTube videos. Quick and easy.

Startyourtube.com - Start your own online video sharing website in a few simple steps.

Orgoo.com - Put all your IM addresses, sms, video chatting in one basket.

According to the FBI, “Internet auction fraud was by far the most reported offense, comprising 44.9% of referred complaints. Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment accounted for 19.0% of complaints. Check fraud made up 4.9% of complaints. Credit/debit card fraud, computer fraud, confidence fraud, and financial institutions fraud round out the top seven categories of complaints referred to law enforcement during the year.”

Effectively, this means that almost ½ of the fraud complaints out there originate from Internet transactions.  Of the Internet fraud present out there, some of the main types include the following:

Credit Card Schemes - Involves the use of fraudulent or illegally obtained credit card numbers to purchase services or goods on the internet.

Investment Schemes - Involves the use of the internet, spam emails and fraudulent company information to inflate or deflate the stock price of a public company in order to profit without the Buyer or Seller being aware.

Identity Theft - Involves using the personal details of someone other than you without the knowledge of said person to obtain funds whether they are through credit card applications, bank loans or other.

Business Opportunity - Involves the promoting of a business opportunity scheme (typically “Work from Home” scheme to exact monies from unknowing victims for business materials or information to enable the Work from Home experience but fail to deliver said information in the end.

Auction / Wholesale - Auction and Wholesale purchase scams are some of the most prevalent scams operating currently.  Typically these schemes offer seemingly unbelievable prices for quality genuine goods but often either fail to deliver or deliver counterfeit goods instead, if at all.

Whilst it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid internet fraud, particularly if you are firm on getting the best deal ever, there are a few measures that you can take when approaching your transaction online.

Reducing Internet Auction Fraud

-    Read and understand entirely the details of the auction, how payments work and all costs involved.  All facets of the transaction should be understood before you make your first bid.
-    Learn about the buyer protection offered by both the site and the Seller.  If you are unsure about any of the procedures then email the respective party involved and keep the correspondence as your proof incase problems arise and they need to be provided.
-    Gather as much information as possible about the Seller. eBay and similar auction websites often provide the facility to obtain Seller information once you have won the auction, but it is often better (if possible) to obtain this information before you place your first bid (check seller’s feedback score and if he has negative / red comments, take the time to read about users dissatisfaction — there is a difference between late delivery date and, for example, fake product).  Check with country relevant authorities for business registration information.
-    If possible, use a payment method that offers you levels of security including chargebacks and refunds.  Major credit cards and similar payment facilities such as 2CheckOut and PayPal offer facilities to dispute purchases and assist in payment recovery.
-    Escrow services can provide incredible peace of mind when dealing with larger transactions due to payments being held until the satisfaction of the Buyer ultimately releases the funds.

Reducing Business Fraud

-    Typically regarded as Wholesale fraud, this business to business fraud occurs when a smaller business attempts to purchase significantly reduced-priced stock from a larger Company with infinitely greater “buying power”.
-    Research the company you are intending to trade with.  Be sure to read through as much information as possible about the company obtained through your search engine results.  Be careful to discriminate between useful information and those posted by merciless competition as you may be missing on a genuine good deal.  Overall, if you find yourself presented with several instances of “business fraud”, chances are you might be next if you proceed further.
-    Be weary of businesses operating with free email addresses.  This is not to say that they aren’t legitimate, just proceed with caution.  Most successful businesses with developed websites will often have their own domain in their email address, and not and hotmail or yahoo extension.
-    Once you find contact information of a business, try to communicate with them along these channels to be sure that they are active and not simply random numbers or email addresses included in an attempt to alleviate your anxiety before you purchase.

Reducing Investment Fraud

-    Do your research before investing in a company.  Check with the relevant authorities as to the legitimacy of the enterprise, the Website alone is not enough.
-    Be wary of unscrupulous emails claiming to provide any kind of opportunity to make money.  Scammers well versed in the art of conning you out of money will often request only a small amount at first.
-    If you are thinking of investing your hard earned money into the cause, be sure you acquainted with all of the terms and conditions of the investment.  The investment may turn out to be real but you may ultimately receive much less than expected due to the clauses in the terms and conditions.

Reducing Credit Card Fraud

-    Do a background check on the site you are purchasing from before you enter in your details.
-    Check to see if the site is secure on the page you are entering your credit card details on – usually indicated by a padlock in the right-hand corner of your web browser.
-    Verify the business information provided by the company in their contacts page. Check to see whether they have an actual physical address, phone numbers and valid email address.
-    If possible, use a payment method that offers you levels of security including charge backs and refunds.  Major credit cards and similar payment facilities such as 2CheckOut and PayPal offer facilities to dispute purchases and assist in payment recovery.
-    If any part of the transaction appears questionable you should contact your card provider immediately so they can monitor the transaction.

In the unfortunate instance that you are adversely affected by a fraudulent internet based scam, you can file a complaint online directly with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (http://www.ifccfbi.gov) – a joint initiative by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

As frightening as I may have made it appear to trade on the internet, there are definitely bargains to be found.  With effectively billions (if not trillions) of dollars traded as a result of internet transactions daily, there are certainly profits to be made out there. Remember, if a transaction looks too good to be true, it usually is.  Always proceed with caution.

Many thanks to moshenarte.com for the info in this post!

The Concept of Bandwidth
Bandwidth refers to the amount the data transferred to the visitors computer from your web space. In other words, bandwidth refers to the amount of data transferred through the network wire in a specific period of time.  When you are planning to buy a hosting service, the bandwidth that your host will suggest you, is typically counted on a monthly basis. This is mainly due to the reason that the web hosting service providers pay a huge fee for their massive broadband internet connection. This is the few that is ultimately carried over to the consumers in the form of payment against their individual service plan.

Calculation of Bandwidth
There is a simple calculation for estimating the required bandwidth size of the website. The formula is: total size of the web pages in the site x monthly traffic volume = required bandwidth. I know it sounds confusing, but here is a brief explanation of the formula along with an example.

Say, you have 5 web pages in your website and the average size of the web pages is 70 KB. That means, the total size of the web pages in your site is 70 x 5 = 350 KB. Now, if your expected traffic volume is 3000 per month, your required bandwidth should be 350 x 3000 = 2.1GB per month. This is the simplest formula for calculating web hosting bandwidth. However, this does not mean each visitor will view all the 5 pages, so it could be less. On the other hand, if you offer any downloads or media on your website, you should take them into consideration as well when calculating the bandwidth. Also remember that .php pages are heavier than .html static pages.

So… Bandwidth Management
If your site allows download facility, make it sure that your hosting plan combines enough bandwidth option. Offering download facility for software, music, flash or video files requires sufficient bandwidth support. In fact, if you only host PDF files on your server, it will take at least 1GB bandwidth in your web space.

Therefore, if you want to manage the bandwidth size, you should be careful enough about choosing the web site components in order to keep the size minimum. As a matter of fact, you need to make the web page size as minimum as possible, because that way not only you won’t need to pay crazy fees for hosting, but also offer visitors a fast loading website, which is always a plus. Try not to use lots of heavy images in your web pages and when you use images, do not forget to optimize them for web. Moreover, you must not allow multiple files downloading feature and try to keep them under 1MB of size.

No matter what your estimate is, there is always a chance of failure, so you must not forget to look at the fee for exceeding bandwidth in your monthly web hosting plan.

Thanks to Rodrigo Rehn from http://www.hospedagemlocal.com.br/ for the info!

Weather you want to start up a blog, but have no time or the right skills to create content and update it daily, or need to add a few good compositions to your site to get it noticed by SE — nodoubtmarketing.com can do this job for you. The guys behind this company are specializing in SEO article writing, but they also offer a wide range of services including custom e-books, solo ads, classified ads, article marketing, press releases with distribution and pretty much anything else you need to generate massive exposure.

So, what are the advantages?

Quality. First of all, all the articles you receive are written by Native English writers and US citizens, and guarantee flawless grammar and spelling. You can download the samples of their work on the nodoubtmarketing.com, and judge the class of their work for yourself.

Cost. The prices for their seo article writing services are practically beyond competition — $9 per article (each article is approx. 500 words).  This is one of the cheapest services I came across, not to mention that for this unbelievably low price you get premium content. I am pretty sure they will be raising the costs in the future, so I suggest to hurry if you plan to place an order.

Speed. The turnaround is just as unbelievable as the price - orders for around 500 articles take nearly 5 business days to complete (can be faster as well), but smaller orders are done, normally, in 24 hours.

To eliminate any doubts about NoDoubtMarketing.com, I’ll add that the company is approximately 1 year old, launched last year by the freelance writer Justin Stewart, and since then it’s been growing continuously, thanks to the high level of offered service. If you compare his prices to the ones offered on forums, you will understand that his deal is as good as SEO article writing service can get.

But… Want even LOWER price? If you sign up for their feed using the feedburner, you will get 5% off your next order, so your next article will cost you only $8,55. You really won’t find a better deal, and if you hire them to maintain your blog, rest assured that they will be adding images, links, tags, and everything else you may wish, to keep it a natural looking and SEO friendly.

So, toptut.com approves!

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Yes, AGAIN! Can you believe that? I can’t.

I wanted to post about it 2 days ago, but due to some circumstances in my offline life, my “online life” was put a little bit on hold. So, remember Lunar Pages blog held a round 2 contest for best wordpress design? Lilucious wordpress theme won this time! Yes, unbelievable, I couldn’t believe my eyes myself when I seen that  I am the winner, so of course first of all I want to is this opportunity and thank Lunar Pages staff for choosing me! This time it was not my online herd of fans who chose me, but the guys and girls behind LP!

When the second round contest started, I didn’t think of entering again, mainly and primarily because I already won Round 1 with ‘Modern Magic’ theme, and thought it would be rather cheeky and unethical to try and win a prize again, so I didn’t even promote my campaign. The only reason why I did enter eventually, was because I seen my Eco Leaf theme so shameless ripped and submitted for a vote on one of the rounds, so I thought if others enter with my themes, why won’t I? Thankfully LP took a quick action and removed the rip-off, many thanks for that too!!

Anyway, apart from the honour, exposure, ego-boost and glory, I also put $1000 of cash in my porcelain piggy and got 5 years of hosting (which is by the way incredible, I host my pswish.com blog on Lunar Pages, since I won the hosting package a few months ago and it’s by all means a great hosting service!).

Want to win too?

The third round is about to start, so yes, you can grab $1000 and 5 years of hosting too! (unless I will take it from under your very nose again, that is..) If you are a wordpress designer, and I know a lot of designers are reading my blog, give it a shot. Follow the updates on Lunar Pages’ blog and submit as many designs as you have, the more you submit - the bigger are your chances. I will also post here when contest will begin, to make sure no one will miss his chance.

Yay, I am still in euphoria!!

Very elegant and professional wordpress theme with rounded corners, strong colours and very easy structure. Perfect or any business blog.

Demo | Download

Ombres means “shadows” in French. This is a clean and professional theme for anyone who wants to maintain a neat identity online. Enjoy!

Demo | Download