Cybertricks

Find out the Gadgets connected to your Wi-Fi Network

2012-04-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

With the increasing number of devices having the feature of Wifi connectivity, we are seeing more and more people connecting to the Wi-Fi network to use and browse the internet. But with this increase in number there have increased the security vulnerability.

Although one should use the security feature of the Wi-Fi network and should password protect their Wi-Fi network so that no unauthorized person is able to use it but there can be some security gaps too if the owner don’t know much about the security.

There are like two encryption types used for securing Wi-Fi network namely WEP andWPA, but selecting one out of the two also depends upon the device type and the knowledge the user have. Thus here is a tool that can let you know who all are connected to your Wi-Fi network at any given point of time.

With the help of this free tool called Wireless Network Watcher, you can not only determine the IP address of the system/gadget using your wi-fi network but also view its name, MAC address , device type and certain other things. You can also save the list too.

To be able to use this program, you just need to be connected first to the Wi-Fi network with your system having this program present and then run it in your machine. The tool isreally great to use and can display all the devices connected to your Wi-Fi network at any time either with authorization or without one.

Download Wireless Network Watcher

Transform your laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot with Bzeek

2012-04-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Android and iOS users must be well aware of the term called Wi-Fi hotspot. Those who don’t know what Wi-Fi hotspot is, then here is the brief description. Wi-Fi works with a router. Sometimes it happens when you don’t have a Wi-Fi router or there is no electricity in your workplace and you have got something urgent to work on internet, then using the WiFi is not possible.

So Wi-Fi hotspot helps you to manage your work and makes your device a Router with which you can access internet. A Wi-Fi hotspot application is there in iPhone and android devices with which you can make your phone as a Wi-Fi router and use your mobilenetwork as internet connection on your device.

Similarly an application is available which can turn your laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot.Bzeek is a free tool for Windows users which allows you to do the same. You can share your existing internet connection with your friends by creating your own Wi-Fi network. Any Wi-Fi enabled device may become a part of your network.

When we are at home there is a lot of underutilized internet bandwidth. Sometimes when you are roaming and you don’t have an internet dongle and the other person sitting beside you may have it, then you can share his internet easily using this application. Isn’t it great? Moreover this comes very handy in case you don’t have a wireless router but want to access internet wirelessly on your phone.

From security point of view Bzeek ensures people connecting to Bzeek cannot access or even see your computer. This means they cannot see your files, know who you are, or have any kind of access to your computer. This is really a very nice concept that will help you a lot. You should definitely give it a try. It works with all versions of windows.

Download Bzeek

Make your Mobile Photos look as shot from a DSLR Camera

2012-04-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Photographers always like exploring new things and want to capture scenes as a piece oftheir work. But it is hardly possible to have a camera with you all the time. However you have your mobile phone to capture new things but we always leave the idea of capturing the images from mobile phones. Why?

Mobile phones don’t provide the same picture quality as a DSLR camera does. Actually it is not the fault of your handheld device. You just need an app that will enrich the picture quality of your mobile phones. AfterFocus is an app developed by MotionOne that can help you in making your mobile phone photos look like a DSLR one.

Confused how installing an app can enhance the lens of your device? The fact is that it will not enhance the ability of your lens; it will actually help you to adjust the focus of a particular region. Use of this application may seem hard in starting as you may not be used to with such apps. You can start by capturing a new image or by importing a picture from gallery.

The app features 3 modes: Smart Focus, Manual Focus and Double Photo (comparison). The Double Photo mode automatically adjusts the image focus on your behalf; in smart focus you can select area by drawing lines, in manual mode you have to select the area by painting it on your own.

You just have to roughly paint over the desired region and the remaining portion of the image separately. The app automatically recognizes and adjusts the selection accordingly, just as Adobe Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool, and then applies a lens/motion blur effect to the background. You can easily apply filters and other effects to the image too.

This app is really very good and easy to use. This application is available for android andiOS as well. The app available for android is free but you have to pay $0.99 to get it for your iPhone. You should give it a try.

Download AfterFocus for Android
Download AfterFocus for iOS

How To Unlock GodMode In Windows 8

2012-04-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

It may be hard to find your files in Explorer on Windows 8. Due to the hidden functions, you are limited in your file searches and basically do not have full control of your own computer system.

The limitations can be very frustrating. Wouldn’t it be great to have access to all settings in just one folder – like having divine overall access to your computer, to have the ability to do anything, with every single option available within reach?

In Windows, this is aptly termed ‘GodMode’. It is a hidden control option, which gives you access to all the options on your computer. In this tutorial, you will learn how to activate it.

Recommended Reading: 5 Top Windows 8 Features You’ll Love

Activate GodMode

GodMode is not a plugin, or a software. To activate a GodMode shortcut, you just need to create a simple folder and rename it to a specific filename with a code.

Create a new folder anywhere on your desktop. Right click on your Desktop and create new folder.
Once created, rename the folder from ‘New Folder’ to this exact code;
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

The folder icon will change to resemble a control panel.

Inside this folder, you will see a whole bunch of control options.

Conclusion

GodMode has made it easy to access all options in one window, eliminating all the hassle of searching for files and options. GodMode is a trick that works on Windows Vista, 7 and 8. Alternatively, you can also download the MyGodMode app for Windows from Google.

How To View Facebook Photos in Pinterest Style

2012-04-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine if you can categorize your Facebook feed to have a photo-only section, and change the display setting preference to mimic the Pinterest layout, browsing photos on Facebook will be an eye-catching and highly addictive experience. Not only will it make commenting and ‘liking’ easier, it will be easier to keep track of your friend’s events and interact with them.

But Facebook is strict with its layout and feed aggregation, I hear you say. There is no way to separate photo content from your feed, you add. Well, we have found a great way to make browsing photos on Facebook more interesting, by using Friendsheet. Friendsheet is a web application that will call every photo on your Facebook, which includes photos from your photo album as well as your friends’, and display them in a Pinterest-style layout.

Browse Facebook Photos In Pinterest Style

To get started with this highly addictive photo-viewing experience, go to the Friendsheet page and click on the button that says ‘Login with Facebook’.

Facebook will ask you to approve access; then click on ‘Go to App’.

Click ‘Allow’ to start enjoying the Pinterest photo-browsing experience.

You will be presented with photo collections from your Facebook feed, as posted by your friends. In other words, you are now ready to browse Facebook photos in a more visual way!

Using Friendsheet

Friendsheet is very easy to use and navigate. The first page you will see is the photo collections from Facebook as posted by your friends. To view your Album, navigate to the top bar and hover your mouse over ‘Browse’.

As you can see in the dropdown menu, you can select from a few categories.

Featured Photos – Select this option to view featured photo collections by other Friendsheet users.
Pictures of Friends – Select this option to view all photos by friends, as it appears in your Facebook feed.
Pictures of You – Select ‘Pictures of You’ to view all of your photos, including those you were tagged in.
Your Albums – Select this tab to view all your photo albums in Facebook.

View Photos And Albums Of Specific Friend

To browse photos of a friend, hover your mouse to the right of the page, and enter your friend’s name in the name field. Name suggestions will appear to help you.

As listed on the suggestion, pick to view photos of your friend, or browse their album.

Conclusion

Now when you’re thinking of browsing through your friends’ photos on Facebook in Pinterest style, you know you can do so with Friendsheet. There’s one thing you may need to take note of: there is no notification feature on this page, so you wouldn’t know if your friends have replied to your comments, but you can always refer to your Facebook page to check your notifications.

Basic Shell Commands For Bloggers

2012-04-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Shortcut to Linux www.itdestination.comHands-on Linux training course with RHCE ,LPIC-3 instructor

The system of shell commands is one of the oldest languages for systems communications. Computers have been able to access command line prompts since the very early days of electronic computing, even before Operating Systems were fully developed. Now in mid 2011 it’s clear to see how fast we have evolved.

For tech enthusiasts and bloggers understanding some basic shell commands can save you a lot of time. Understanding how to interact with the terminal and write command line statements to perform tasks is such a huge topic. By no means should you expect to fully understand the discussions here on your first try. But if possible spend a bit of time researching and putting together the knowledge of using a Command Line Interface.

(Image source: n3wjack)

I’ll be sharing some great tips below for bloggers across the world. Keep in mind that any GUI you’ll be using to access a computer’s files probably has some form of command line. This is the basis for all computing, to input commands and receive direct output. Before jumping into the commands and syntax I suggest we clear up some history first.

Linux Shell Command – In A Nutshell

There are so many terms being used here it may help to clarify some. Below I have included a couple descriptors for some slightly controversial vocabulary.

shell – a basic program which takes user input and executes commands. shell is usually a generic term referring to any command-line interface.
terminal – the connection made between end user and a computer system.
Bash – a type of shell scripting which is most popularly used in Linux environments.
command – input issued into the computer with a set task or list of instructions.
kernel – internal software written into the core of most Operating Systems. The kernel can be given commands via any shell window to handle physical computer processes. ie. memory allocation, hardware, external devices, CPU functionality, etc.

Importantly take note that this system has been around for a very long time. In fact the command line functions between Linux and Mac OSX are for the most part identical. This is because Linux was built as a free open sourced Operating System off a Unix-base operating system. Meanwhile Apple originally built OS X off BSD, which is a Unix system.

Windows stands as the odd-guy out having been written over classic DOS (Disk Operating System). Some commands are similar, but for the most part any command line interaction with a Windows OS will be much different from a Linux/Unix system.

Opening A New Terminal

The Terminal window is the black box with a blinking cursor eagerly awaiting your input. This can be brought up via any GUI menu or also assigning shortcut commands. In the Linux GUI you’ll be looking for an application named terminal or konsole. Consult online with your Linux release documentation for specifics, such as Ubuntu or Debian.

If you are in a Mac environment the quickest way to bring up a terminal window is through Spotlight. command + option + space bar will open a brand new spotlight search, or you can also click the magnifying glass for a dropdown panel. Inside type “terminal” and the results list should populate quickly.

Getting Started

Now that you’ve got a terminal window open we can get started! To begin you’ll want to understand navigating the directories. pwd is a listing command to output your active directory. Coupled with lsyou can parse the current directory and return a files list. The former command stands for Print Working Directory while the latter represents List Files/Directories. Both of these are fun to play with and won’t damage or edit any files.

When you are dealing with a returned file listing you should notice a few things. Firstly the lists will include both single files and directories. Any listing without a document extension (.jpg, .gz, .rpm) is considered a directory. You can move up and down between these with the cd command. This stands for Change Directory and should work as you expect.

A shortcut for maneuvering one directory upwards uses cd ../ – The beauty of this trick is how quickly you can navigate back between directories and find exactly what you’re looking for. Every time you move up a level call pwd to see where you’re at. If you are looking for a specific folder also call ls so you can get an idea of where to move next.

To navigate within the root directory simply append a forward slash to the URL. For example if you are currently within your home directory it’s not required that you move up directories until you reach home. Simply call cd /home and hit enter to move into your root home directory.

Manipulating Files And Folder

Now that it’s possible to traverse the inner workings of your file system, we should get into building files. If you aren’t a fan of the Graphical User Interface for making directory paths look no further than our simple command line. mkdir stands for Make Directory and is the quickest way to build a solid file structure.

If you’re logged in as root then you’ll have no problems messing around. Be on alert, however, as sometimes file permissions can be overly-strict and limit your access to create new directories. Check out the mkdir documentation page for examples of arguments.

To cover this further each command comes with a set of possible arguments. These can be passed after typing the command to apply additional settings. A universal example is --help which always displays a list of features and support topics for the current command. Try typing in mkdir --helpand see what you get back.

The cp and mv commands are used to copy and move files, respectively. You’ll need to have both directories already written out and pointing towards where the file will go. Each command requires 2 arguments, the first being a file of choice and the second a new destination to copy or move into. Similarly rm filename can be used to delete (remove) files and rm -rf directory_name/ to remove directories. But be careful here as there is no undo feature within shell!

Matching Wildcard Patterns

Being able to move files and copy folders does provide a convinience. But ultimately putting this knowledge to good use requires a bit more finesse. Originally you’d be using shell scripting to automate large tasks which you’d rather not handle yourself.

With wildcard commands you’ll be able to target multiple files instead of a single name. When typing in your target URL there are two additional symbols to play around with. An asterik(*) is used to denote any number of wildcard characters, while a question mark(?) denotes any single character.

Brackets can also be used to denote patterns. Within a set of brackets you can define limits to the characters or possible wildcard matches. By imposing a set of colons [::] both before and after the brackets you can choose from a handful of precursors. These include [:alnum:] for alphanumeric and [:alpha:] for alphabetic characters only. If you’re looking to only target numerals [:digit:]works just as well.

This whole system seems abstract without examples, so I’ve provided a few below.

a* – matches all file names beginning with the letter “a”
foo*.txt – matches all text files beginning with the letters “foo”. Note this will only return text files, even if you have other folders beginning with foo
photo?? – matches all files and folders which begin with the word photo and follow up with exactly 2 more characters
[xyz]? – matches any filename beginning with x, y, or z and followed by exactly 1 more character

I think you get the point here. The wildcard system is very complex, it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. Do not expect yourself to fully understand the capacity here after just spending one day in terminal. It takes a lot of practice and repetition to get well-versed in shell scripting and wildcard callouts. Review the Tux Files info page for some more examples and information.

File Compression And Storage

Building and creating archive files is just part of the modern computer experience. I am frequently e-mailing and downloading new .zip archives each day. These contain graphics, icons, library code, fonts, Photoshop mockups, and a whole lot more. The act of archiving directories not only reduces file size but makes transport a lot easier.

When working within Linux/Unix there are a few commands you can use to archive data. The two frequently touched upon are zip and gzip. The differences aren’t very extreme and certainly not notable enough to require one over the other. They are just different mechanisms for compression, data storage, and file schemas.

Each of these commands features a wonderful platter of possible arguments. You can view the complete list from About’s Linux info page on the zip command. zip -r is possibly the most widely known shell statement which stands for recursively pulling up all files and zipping them together. This means if you specify a command such as zip -r myfolder newarchive you’ll be pulling all the files out of myfolder and adding them into a new archive named newarchive.zip. Without -r you would need to specify each individual file name in a bracket list format [file1.jpg file2.jpg etc]. Talk about shaving off time!

Now the command for gzip works very similarly and shares a lot of the same arguments. The choice to use gzip over zip is really a personal one and will not interfere with any of your file structures. If you’re moving files between different operating systems I recommend sticking with .zip as it is more accepted in the Windows community. But we live in an age of bountiful software and open source projects, so it’s not truthful to say Windows can’t handle .gz archives. But the archive file format just isn’t as popular.

When receiving zipped archives you can also unzip them into new directories solely from the command line. Both unzip and gunzip are the counterparts to their original archive commands. Similarly the list of arguments is just as long, if not longer. However the basic unzip command only needs a file location to perform action. If you are comfortable working with archive software this method should be exactly the same in any Mac OS X environment.

Working As A Super User

If you are working with the terminal a lot then super user access will come in handy. Especially as a web developer or blogger, as you’ll find permission errors become extremely annoying after the third or fourth time.

Certainly it’s possible to directly log into the root account and run terminal commands from there. However this is understood as bad practice in the Linux realm, as the root user should only be used in an emergency to fix or correct a system failure. Or if you just happen to forget your main login password!

Now to get into the system as super user you will need the root password. In your terminal window simply type su and hit enter. This stands for substitute user and without any further arguments will assume you’re looking to access root. Type in the password and hit enter, you should be directed into a new line running under root@yourcomputer. To revert back into your account use the exitcommand.

Now this does work well for the majority of Linux/Unix systems. But as you work on a Linux box running Ubuntu or a similar OS you’ll notice changes to the super user interface. Instead Ubuntu users will be working with a command sudo which replaces super user access for just a single command.

This means you won’t be logged into terminal as super user, but can run any command as super user by appending the prefix sudo. Take note that Ubuntu is a choice OS which uses the sudocommand. Apple’s OS X terminal is another system which capitalizes on the sudo super user command. After you hit enter you’ll be asked again to input your root password, and afterwards the command will execute and return you to a new line if successful.

Taking Ownership Over Files

Yet another issue with permissions stems from file access. I can’t imagine how many times I’ve been working on file changes but haven’t been able to apply them because of insufficient permissions. You’ll want to perform any ownership changes under root, if possible.

The command chown for Change Owner is fairly straightforward and works in most all Linux and Unix environments. For Ubuntu users you will need to run sudo before any chown commands, unless you happen to be logged in as root.

There are only two individual arguments required to execute successfully. First you’ll need to enter the user name which will be granted file ownership, followed by a space and the file directory. The system will work out of your current working directory to choose the file. But if you’d like to bypass the overall hierarchy you can begin at root with a forward-slash in your URL.

The system of file ownership applies a lot more fruitfully in server maintenance. If you have shell access to a server you will certainly need to understand file manipulation and taking over file permissions. For example the installation of many common web scripts require edits to the database information. Taking ownership of these files will keep you out of harms way should a hacker get into the server console.

Putting It All Together

Now with all of these new commands you should start experimenting briefly in the console of your choice. A great place to start building your knowledge is of wildcards and selecting files from within your OS. As a DOS and Linux user myself I would suggest practicing with lighter commands at first, so as not to risk any damage to your files and directories.

Bad things can happen with the rm command and some faulty wildcard matches. If you’re planning on deleting anything try running your wildcard selectors under ls first. This will return the list of files you wish to delete, and if everything looks chummy you can always run the command right afterwards! In any terminal window simply press the up arrow key to bring back your last command input. Delete the ls and replace with rm then you’re good to go!

There is a lot you can perform within the command line. But there are also many things which you can’t. Keep humble with your usage and don’t go overboard just to become the technology king. You certainly can start using the CLI(Command Line Interface) for most all of your performance tasks. But quite honestly there are many things you can do quicker from a GUI perspective. If you research and play around with some commands you’ll quickly pick up which tasks perform well in terminal and which are best saved for a mouse and keyboard.

12 Shell Commands All Bloggers Should Know

1. Deleting Nested Folders

With the rm command you can remove (unlink) files and folders from your hard drive. But what about a whole lot of nested folders too? Especially if each folder set contains subsequent files and mismatched data. The option -r will recursively flip through all subsequent files and folders to remove the data and directories.

If you add in the -f option this forces the prompt to stay within your commands and not prompt you for any dialog. There is no return output and will bypass nonexistent files in all sub-directories. The whole command in action may look like this:

rmdir -r -f /home/you/documents/mydir1/2009

2. Connecting To A Database

When you are accessing a website backend system frequently you’ll want to ensure a safe connection is created. This goes double for database connections where website and user information is stored. But if you’re working with a local database install you can probably get away with a lot less security requirements.

Depending on the system you are using there will be different syntax to adjust. The basic call to connect into a database is still generally the same. You will need the name of the database you’re accessing, your username, password, and possibly the database hostname(usually localhost). I’ve added two shell commands to connect into, one for MySQL and the other for Sybase.

mysql -u myusername -h localhost -p

Here you would simply hit enter with no password provided. Then if the shell command successfully accesses that database and host it’ll prompt for your password. Enter this on the new line and hit enter again. MySQL will welcome you upon success.

isql -U myusername -P <<EOF
use gdb_1
EOF

Sybase is another great example of database software. You can access these types of databases with the isql command similar to the mysql above. Here you are only providing a username and password, and then calling the use command to pick your database.

3. Backup A Database

Now that you’re connected into the database there are plenty of commands you could run. Ideally you’ll want to stick with simple SQL procedures and not go through adding new users or articles directly. But ever consider backing up your entire database structure? Well the commands are fairly complicated, but with 15-30 minutes of research you can probably figure them out.

Sybase is much more complicated and requires some heavy shell commands. If you check out Ed Barlow’s database backup scripts I’m positive you’ll be able to work with his packages no problem. He outlines some basic solutions to dump all database tables, dump error logs, database statistics, run logs, etc. It’s fairly robust and works well for almost anything you’d need.

MySQL databases are a similar fashion and require a fairly long shell script. The contents require choosing a local directory to save each backup and calling a for loop in BASH. This will loop through every database and pull out all tables as a .gz archive file using $MYSQLDUMP and $GZIP. The full code can be downloaded at nixCraft’s Shell Script article targeting MySQL dumps. Simply edit your database/login information and save as mysqlbackup.sh somewhere on your harddrive. You can run this manually or alternatively schedule a cron job for every day, week, month, etc.

4. Restore A Database

Now we come to restoring the backup of a database file. This isn’t as complicated as you might think, although from the looks of the previous code I can understand why. But consider that it’s a lot easier to upload previous files than to connect and pull down data from a remote server.

In Sybase you’ll be doing a lot more work in shell. But the basic command is load database dbname. You can follow this up with further options, and of course you’ll need to be connected into the database before this will work. If you’re stuck try using the Sybase documentation file as a reference point.

With MySQL you only need a single command if you’re already logged in. Or even if you aren’t you may connect and call the restore simultaneously. This is because the backup of any MySQL database file is basically SQL code which can reconstruct the database from scratch. This is the reason some backups are enormously large and oftentimes too big to upload via web interface like phpMyAdmin.

You can call the mysql command with a single line. As before you enter -u and -p but only fill in your username since your password is prompted afterwards. The code below should work perfectly:

mysql -u username -p database < /path/to/dump_file.sh

The only variables you’ll want to replace are username, database, and your backup path. The username and database host are the same as before when you connected. So you’ll only need to find where your database backup is stored so you can update it.

5. Direct Shell Downloads

The wget command is very interesting and offers a lot of options. GNU wget is a non-interactive utility to download files from the Internet. This includes standard HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols in the mix.

To download a basic file you would type wget filename where filename is the location of your file. This could be anything online such as http://media02.hongkiat.com/v4s/n_logo.gif for the Hongkiat .gif logo file. If you create a shell script file holding many variables you can download large batch videos, images, music, or other content in the background while you work. And keep in mind you can use wildcards here such as * and ? to pull large directories of files.

Now you may also wish to download contents via FTP. However much of the time you won’t be working with public ftp servers and will need a username/password. The login syntax is a bit confusing, but I’ve added a small example below.

view plain copy to clipboard print ?

wget ftp://username:password@ftp.mywebsite.com/files/folder/*.jpg

6. Compress Folders

We had gone over compressions a bit earlier, but merely in description. There are some very basic primitive examples of file compression which you can call from the command line anywhere. I recommend using the zip command if you are new to Shell, only because the Linux system can get confusing. However if you’d like to use gzip or another alternative feel free.

Whenever you call a complete zip command you’ll want to include all the files within your new archive. The second parameter from a zip command is the folder you’d like, or alternatively a short list of files to zip. Adding the -r option recursively traverses your directory structure to include every file. Below is the perfect example of a small folder compression.

zip -r newfile_name.zip /path/to/content/folder

7. Mass Find And Replace

Whenever you have a large collection of files you’ll often have them labeled or numbered in a similar pattern. For example, with a large collection of website banners they may all include the ‘banner’ prefix or suffix. This could be mass replaced in all files with the shell sed command.

sed is a stream editor which is used to perform basic text transformations and edits on files. It is known as the most efficient command since it will sweep through a single directory almost instantaneously. Below is some example code using the command.

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sed -i 's/abc/xyz/g' *.jpg

So above we would be matching for nonexistent files, but in our example we’re looking to replace a set of images. We look in the directory and plan to replace all .jpg images which contain abc and substitute xyz. With the -i option we can edit files in place automatically with no backup requirements. Have a quick peek at the sed documentation for more info.

8. Create New Files

It can be pesky to create a whole heap of the same files in one sitting. If you would like to create a large set of documents or text files without using software, the command line is a great tool. Consider some of the editors at your disposal directly from shell.

vi/vim is possibly the best and most useful editor for Linux CLI. There are others such as JOE text editor. You could also create a file from the cat command, although you’d be limited to only viewing file contents and not editing anything.

With vi you’ll only need to call a single line of code. I’ve added the code below which is simply vi command followed by your new filename. Once you are in vi editor type ‘i’ to edit and insert new text. To save and exit a file press the esc key followed by colon+x (:+x) and hit enter. It’s a strange combination, but it’s awfully secure and once you get the hang of things you never want to go back!

vi /home/you/myfile.doc

9. Shell Networking Tools

The shell command line offers quite a few tools for networking. The ping command can be used followed by an IP or web address to check the status of a website. A packet request is sent to the server and if you get a response back shell will output the time and server details. This can be useful to check if a website is down, or similarly if your Internet connection is down.

If you’d like to check your current settings call the ifconfig command. This is very similar to the ipconfig command in Windows DOS. But with shell ifconfig you are given a lot more options to configure and deploy custom DNS settings. A very similar command netstat is just as useful for displaying your current open ports and networks.

10. Package Management

When working with software installs via Shell you’ll be mainly working within 2 different versions of Unix. RPM Package Manager (RPM) and Debian Manager (DEB) are the most widely known versions. These are kept up to date with the latest packages which you can download from the closest mirror site.

The commands are very similar to install on either version. yum and rpm are the two commands reserved for the former package manager. Their code follows yum command package-name. So for example:

yum install package-name

For Debian/Ubuntu users you’ll be using the Debian Package Manager. Again the syntax follows a similar format where you call the package manager ID, the command, and follow it all up with a package name. The two examples below are formatted for an install and upgrade, respectively.

apt-get install package-name
apt-get upgrade mypackage1

11. Generate List Of Largest Files

Organization is what keeps you running at all hours of your work sessions. When you start to lose track of files and notice your directories getting too large it’s time for some Spring cleaning. The lscommand is very useful in shell as it gives you a greater perspective into some of your directories.

This includes sorting specific types of files and file formats. If you’d like to find the biggest files in any directory on your HDD simply apply the command below.

ls -lSrh

There are 4 separate options attached to this command. -l is used to list full output data. -S will sort the entire list by file size, initially from largest to smallest. By applying -r we then reverse the sort order so the largest files in your output will end up at the bottom. This is good since the shell window will leave you at the very bottom of your output commands anyways, so it’s easier to clear through the list. -h simply stands for human readable output data so you’ll see file size in megabytes(MB) instead of bytes.

12. Create An E-Mail On-The-Fly

If you are using any software for your e-mail accounts this command will save you loads of time. Often you know a person’s e-mail address you’re looking to send but don’t want to spend your time opening your mail client. the mailto: command will work exactly the same from command line as from any browser or website.

Even if you don’t know the address you’re looking to send, just add in anything.noreply@nothing.com works great! Or be creative with your own filler content. Either way after you type this hit enter to pop open a brand new e-mail message window with your sender address. You can modify your subject/body and CC’s to your own needs all within a quick instant.

mailto:noreply@hongkiat.com

5 Reasons Why Facebook May Face The Ground

2012-03-08T00:21:00.003-08:00

Facebook, the most popular social networking site may very well be inching towards its 700th million user, but a report from Inside Facebook has revealed a peculiar drop of traffic in this May. In particular, it has lost around 6 million users in the United States alone. Countries like Canada, United Kingdom, Norway and Russia experienced losses of more than 100,000 as well.

(Image Source: Forbes)

Make no mistake, Facebook is still growing, but at a lower-than-expected rate for the past two months. It was reported that the average growth rate was around 20 million new users per month over the last year, but it was 13.9 million in the April and 11.8 million this May. It seems that there is a disturbing declining trend going on.

What does this spells for Facebook? It could be nothing alarming, or in the worst-case scenario, the tide is really turning for Facebook. The users might have had enough of the social networking site, but what really bugs them? In this particular post, we’ll explore four key issues associated with Facebook that I have identified as potential triggers for the mass termination of Facebook account. Full detail after jump.

1. Privacy Policy – Keeping Your Words

Chances are that you wouldn’t trust someone who always change his or her words after a promise has been made. Facebook is a service that keeps altering its terms and conditions for their policy. It gets people confused and makes them lost their trust in what it promised to deliver.

(Image Source: Matt McKeon)

Earlier this year, I posted an entry about my opinions on Facebook users’ privacy. Although we might owe it to ourselves when we reveal too much to the free and open internet, it gets worrying when we see advertisements appearing on our accounts that seems to be well-catered to what we want or need. It is apparent to most users that Facebook is collecting and analyzing detailed information about them.

What makes it an even troubling issue is that we do not know exactly what information is mined from our account. It does not help when revisions to the privacy policy are frequently being made. All may be well with the networking service, the content and the games, but can we trust that Facebook values our privacy with the highest regard?

You see, the fact is that privacy is a major issue of the Facebook. True, we all know we are vulnerable to losing our privacy anywhere on the internet, but I’m sure most of us wouldn’t want to be ‘lured’ into a superb site, only to know that we sign up for something we didn’t expect – providing profitable data for marketers. At least not without our consent.

2. Frequent Layout Changes

I have been using Facebook for a couple of years now. I realize that every time it does a makeover to its layout, a number of status updates by my friends would pop up in protest of the latest change. It seems to me that people have a hard time adapting them, and some eventually stop using it as often. Well, most people wouldn’t terminate their account right away, but they would simply leave it alone.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

Gradually, the interest dies off, especially when inactivity in Facebook essentially means less interaction from your friends on the list. This ends up in a vicious cycle, in that your lack of enthusiasm in Facebook makes it less likely for others to want to interact with you, which then sucks even more of your motivation to access Facebook.

Some would terminate it after a long period of inactivity, while others would leave it as it is. In either case, this is bad for Facebook because the life of a social networking site depends on the amount of interactivity among users. I still have my old Friendster account, but I only log in like twice a year. Why? Because only a rare few of my friends are still playing with it. It’s almost dead. No, it’s already dead in term of interactivity.

To make things complicated, such negative spirit might spread like a disease. When one of your friends quits or become inactive in your list, your Facebook notification wall becomes less lively. So, what happens is that your motivation to interact also drops. This affects the rest of the people on your list, since everyone depends on everyone else when it comes to interaction. All these negative effects are stemmed from the frequent change of the Facebook layout, and the fact that Facebook didn’t hear the voice of users.

3. From ‘Fresh’ To ‘Stale’

When Friendster first came about, everyone was excited with the new features that the website could offer. The social networking capability became an overnight phenomenon and it drew large amount of traffic. It was overtaken by MySpace, which subsequently lost its market to Facebook.

It seems to me that each progressive platform offers the users something more than the previous one. MySpace concentrated on its theme of music and entertainment more than Friendster, while Facebook offered third party developers to build new applications rather than relying in-house applications, like what MySpace did.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

Facebook might have reached the life stage where users are expecting something new, be it from Facebook or other upcoming social networking services. There is a need to reinvent itself, in the sense of experimenting with new features for users to explore. Fresh ideas materialize when you put them to the test of viability.

That being the case, there is still a risk of making Facebook too complex for one’s liking when you add in new capabilities. Perhaps one good way is to be subtle in making changes. Sudden big changes would throw users off guard and get frustrated with re-learning how to use Facebook all over. Whatever it is, it will do itself good if Facebook is mindful of striking a balance between experimentation and maintaining user-friendliness.

4. Complexity: The Case Of Functionality Vs User-Friendliness

If you’re given a choice of a TV with a remote control that provides only a few buttons for the most basic functions, and another that enable you to adjust advanced settings with dozens of buttons, which one would you settle for?

Well, to be fair, it really depends on the individual’s preferences. Some people love to tinkle around with stuffs, while others like it simple and sweet. In general though, most people wouldn’t like things to be too complicated when they were using it for the first time, especially when they don’t have the time to learn about the additional functions. The problem: Facebook seems to be getting more sophisticated with each change.

(Image Source: kingkool68)

It used to be the case that it was pretty easy to pick up Facebook, where anyone would instinctively know what to do with it: Updating statuses, uploading photos, posting on walls and poking. When we log in today though, we see an array of activities going on other than the few fundamental ones. We get invites from our friends to join all sorts of game, we get all kinds of pages when we do a quick search. Spams started to appear, and even malicious wall postings that tempt you to click on the link and subsequently make you post the very same viral link to all your friends. All these clutters only bewilder the average user further.

Steep learning curve could turn people off. For myself, I like the advanced features, but only when other users are using it actively as well. If not, it would defeat its purpose of a social networking platform. Yet, when we’re talking about a few hundreds of millions of users, most of them will probably be beginners or intermediates with respect to their expertise with Facebook. Only a small number of them would eventually pick up the more complicated functions and interact with the rest of us.

I guess it’s true you can never please everyone, so it’s logical for Facebook to please just the majority. Simplifying Facebook would probably turn some advanced users off as well, but most users, being amateurs, would support such a move.

5. Rise Of Google+?

Could it be that stage of Facebook’s life cycle where everyone is getting tired of the platform and would welcome something new and different, regardless of what it offers? If it is, then Google+ might have come at the right time to draw that crowd away from Facebook.

As you may have already heard, Google+ is an all-new social networking service that offers even deeper level of sharing and interactivity between users in the community. One feature to look out for is its ‘Hangout’ capability, which allows users to initiate Google Talk or video chat with multiple users. This is something that Facebook does not offer presently, and it may very well be its Achilles’ heel.

While it is still in its trial period, there are speculations that Google+ will soon become the mainstream social networking service that possibly replaces Facebook. Others claim that it is simply mimicking Facebook but marketing it as entirely something different. It has what is called ‘Stream’, which is pretty much the same as the status sharing in Facebook. It’s same with the case of ‘Instant Upload’, which is akin to Facebook’s existing photos upload via mobile phones.

In any case, it is up to anyone’s guess whether Google+ has what it takes to overtake Facebook. The point is, users might be leaving Facebook to crave for something totally different. It will take more than some simple modifications and addition of features to Facebook’s existing platform to satisfy the users. It takes a wholly new and distinctive platform. Google+ may have marketed it well enough to offer such glimmering hope to these disgruntled Facebook users.

Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters

2012-03-08T00:18:00.002-08:00

Knowledge is power. There’s no better way to put it in this information age of ours. In our highly digitize world, it’s easy for anyone to gather information about you if you’re using some form of technology. In fact, the more you put technology as part of your life, the easier it is to gather intelligence about you.

Contrary to popular beliefs, these people do not even have to resort to illegal means to do that. What you say or do online in the comfort of your desktop, laptop or mobile devices can easily seeped out in the public domain of the internet. This is especially true when it comes to social networking sites like Facebook.

(Image source: itia4u)

Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has more than 600 million active users, making it the fastest-growing and biggest social networking site by far. Millions and millions of people log in to it every day, readily updating their statuses and checking out updates by their friends. If you’re not on it, you might experience some form of ‘information gap’ from your peers who swear by Facebook to pass information. You would probably get to hear news of your friends’ engagements, vacation trips and their troubles and woes, but only later. In fact, their acquaintances might get to hear of them sooner than you could, all because your friends have added them as ‘friends’ in Facebook. If the Facebook privacy settings were in default, these posts will also be accessible to any strangers online.

It’s also funny how we all know that Facebook collects data about us and possibly share that information to third parties organizations without our consent, and yet we still don’t really let that bother us much. In other words, the things that we post on Facebook aren’t really erased even when we ‘delete’ them from our profile or wall; they are still somewhere in the cyberspace, perhaps available to be traded. Yet we continue to make our most personal posts, as if to repress such knowledge of privacy violation into our subconscious in a Freudian sense of things. Or maybe some of us think it’s a great idea after all, since we get information that is of interest and relevant to us, and not just random advertising junks.

So, these bring us to the question: Are we trading away our privacy for the sake of an awesome social network?

There are two key privacy issues at stake here. On the individual level, publicizing your life on the net, where all our posts and comments get into the open for people whom we may or may not wish them to have access to, doesn’t seem to be ideal. In the broader context, the mysterious data-mining capability of Facebook is a powerful and scary thought, especially when most of us are unaware of the actual extent.

Publicizing Our Lives

Although Facebook provide us with privacy settings, such that we can configure our account to only allow our friends to view our posts, I don’t think it’s sufficient to guarantee that your data only visible by people whom you want to. Well, it can never be foolproof when we’re talking about the internet. People can still tag you in their own photos (before you try to remove them), and that can be seen by their friends or strangers (if they make their profile public). Even if we make it a point to only reveal our posts to our friends on the list, there’s still and many ways for people to gather information about you. For one, they can peek into a mutual friend’s account and see what you’ve posted.

(Image source: miriness)

In the worst-case scenario, we may run into cyberstalkers. Cyberstalking doesn’t only implicates on your online life; sometimes it can very well translate to the offline world. For example the fact that some Facebook users like to ‘check in’ to places they go (your friends can check in you as well) or post their routine running routes via some mobile phone applications, they can easily be the target of stalkers. Such information, when accumulated and analyzed, is exceptionally useful for them to stalk their victims in real-life. It might happen to all of us, but it does happen to some unfortunate people.

So why do we post such details of our day-to-day routine? I suspect that the need to connect in a social network is far greater than a need to protect our own privacy for some of us. Or maybe we just couldn’t exactly see the seriousness of revealing private information on the net – yet. Or we just discard the possibility that it will happen to us. Whatever the reason is, I think we should exercise caution and not divulge too much informationabout ourselves, allowing our privacy gets violated and end up in unforeseen troubles.

Data Mining?

One of the complaints about Facebook is its frequent revisions to its privacy policies. Apparently, Facebook users aren’t please with the idea that Facebook share information with companies and allow third party application developers to obtain the same information. To appease users, Facebook made several changes to its privacy policies. At the moment though, the social networking site still collect information from other users about us and keep track of actions we take.

It remains a mystery how much information Facebook actually gather from us, but advertisements we see when we log in to Facebook seem strangely well-tailored to our preferences and needs. Facebook is a free service, so these advertisements are primarily where the revenues came from.

In my opinion, the scenario here is Facebook amass details about us such as our demographics, the things we post and comment, the way we interact with advertisement and analyze them to determine what our preferences are, so that it can figure out what kind of advertisements have a higher success rate of us clicking on them. With that intelligence, it is now able to effectively place advertisements that are relevant to us at any moment, contingent on our behaviors and interactions with Facebook. Using such a system to monitor users and position appropriate advertisements ensures better returns for advertisers, which in turn generate greater revenues for Facebook. It may not be the exact path which how it works, but it is still a highly possible process.

(Image source: SelectMgt)

With so much information obtained from a massive number of users, Facebook is also in a perfect position to provide valuable market data for organizations. It possesses a knowledge that not many other organizations have, and that knowledge is its assets hence the speculation of Facebook actually sells what they collect from us and profit from them. Right now, you can tell that privacy is at stake because what we do in Facebook may be closely monitored, kept and passed on without our actual consent.

What I have provided here is my own theory and purely humble opinions of my own and by no means of malicious to any organizations. The informationI have discuss about Facebook may not be completely accurate. Feel free to correct me if you notice any discrepancies in my claims. We would also like to hear from you if you have a comment or two.

Edit your Computer’s OEM Information with OEM Configurator

2012-02-24T23:24:00.001-08:00

Every Windows computer has its own OEM information or we should say Original Equipment Manufacturer information that tells you about the make, manufacturer, and other details about the product. In case you haven’t seen your machine’s OEM information, then you need to right click on the Computer to see its properties which is actually the information that you see in the System Properties.

There are times when you want to change this OEM information of your machine either just for fun or to change this information to your personal information. Whatever be the reason, this is possible using any OEM information changer tool.

Here is a tool called OEM Configurator that can easily change your OEM information for you. An interesting fact to note here is that, the OEM information will appear for you if you have purchased your system from some manufacturer only (not if it is assembled).

If you use this tool called OEM Configurator you change the following information easily:

• Manufacturer

• Model

• Support hours

• Support website

• Support phone

• OEM logo

While using the Extra Options menu of the tool, you can edit the following options:

• Owner

• Organization

• Computer Name

• Processor Name

• Computer Description

• Product ID

Using the tool is very simple and so is editing the OEM value of your computer. The tool is compatible with Windows XP, 7 and Win 8 developer preview on both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Note: If you wish to restore the original information back sometime, do save the old list before making any changes.

Download OEM Configurator

Bloggers: 10 SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

2012-02-24T23:22:00.002-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to any successful blogging campaign. Therefore it should be implemented in the right manner. SEO itself is quite intricate for numerous reasons, but mainly because Google uses an algorithm, which takes several factors into account when ranking a webpage, and they keep changing it.

(Image source: Fotolia)

There are virtually so many SEO myths that it has become very difficult to know what’s 100% true, but I can advise you on which SEO mistakes you should not make:

1. Buying Links

You might get a short term boost by buying links if your website is already popular, but you’re still taking a risk here. Paid links are sometimes flagged by Google’s search engine experts. You may wonder, how will they ever catch me? Well, Google’s bots and a special team at the company search for questionable linking patterns every single day!

For example, if you pay for a few hundred links to be pointed to your website in the very same day, some links will probably be flagged as a sort of ‘irregular linking activity’. Links from totally unrelated categories will seem suspicious as well.

I would recommend the old fashioned method of comment linking, manually — your blog will still be able to grow, albeit at a steady pace. Over time, the end results will be worthwhile. If you are however settled on purchasing links, do not use the same anchor text for all of them; mix it up a bit.

2. Duplicate Content

Many bloggers I know try to target the same topic with a variation of essentially very similar keywords. For instance, ‘make money on facebook’ and ‘making money with your facebook’ are quite similar, and creating a completely different page for each keyword won’t add much value to your site.

How much can you really play with topics or keywords that are essentially identical? If you can’t, then you’ll probably end up writing the same content for both keywords, which poses a risk of a search engine penalty. Instead, you should try to penetrate one original topic or keyword in detail and make an effort to strengthen each post.

3. Chasing PageRank

Don’t get me wrong, PageRank is important for any website’s success. The higher the PageRank you have, the better you rank in search engines, and the more visitors you’ll get. However, it’s definitely not the only metric that’ll help you improve your blog’s success. Furthermore, Google has mentioned previously that PageRank is just one of two hundred (wow!) indicators used to crawl and rank a website. Instead, you should focus on your analytics, ROI, and relevancy as recommended by Google itself.

4. Leaving Title Tags Automated

The title tag is undeniably one of the most important aspects when it comes to search engine rankings.Beginner bloggers usually write a post with a long title that describes the topic in too many words. First, you want to keep the title rather short, (not more than 60 characters) but more importantly, you should aim your focus at optimizing the title tags.

For example, if you write a post titled ‘What Is A Niche Blog And How Do I Create It?’ your title tag should be more targeted towards a keyword, perhaps something like ‘What Is A Niche Blog?’ with ‘a niche blog’ being a possible keyword. You would surely want to check the popularity of the respective keyword with a keyword tool such as Google Adwords before optimizing for it. Consider changing it and you may enjoy a better placement in the search engines and as a result, more visitors.

5. Sacrificing Looks For Content

While many bloggers depend on content to grow their blog, there are some who had become obsessed with the design of their blog. Don’t get me wrong, if you don’t have an appealing design, some visitors won’t be attracted to your website. However, using too many graphics or images will overcrowd your page and slow it down.

I see many sites using Flash and sacrificing page speed for motion and sounds. Definitely an attractive setting, but not a worthy enough tradeoff. This will also prevent search engine bots from being able to crawl your pages at a desirable faster rate.

6. Using Free Hosting Blogs

Blog services that offer free hosting such as Blogger, TypePad, and many others, can offer a decent platform and an excellent value. However, they are not flexible enough to be able to install the Plugins, themes, and other extensions you truly desire for superior SEO results.

All it will take is to register your own domain, and to purchase an inexpensive hosting plan. If you do enough shopping around, you shouldn’t spend more than $50 for both for the year. It’s worth a few bucks per month to have total control over your website. The power of independence can reap great rewards when your blogging operation grows.

7. Keyword Stuffing

Probably one of the most common SEO mistakes is common stuffing. It’s not only unethical, but also will hurt your search rankings. If you really want to rank for a bunch of keywords, create a separate page for each keyword and optimize for it accordingly. Instead of using hidden or duplicate text, focus on creating useful pages that have your keywords implemented in them as part of the content. Trying to manipulate a search engine like Google is a big no-no.

8. Writing Little Content

Many websites, especially blogs, suffer from posts that are too short. I personally get at least a few guest post submissions per day, and more than often, I have to reject them on the basis that they are too short to publish. How great can a piece be if it’s written at just 400 words? Writing extremely short posts hurts reader loyalty plus your page could be considered as low quality when it comes to SEO rankings.

9. Not Doing SEO Correctly

There’s not only one right way to optimize your posts for the search engine, but there are general proven methods you can use. For example, in regards to link building, several bloggers I know make the mistake of only linking to the front page of their website. Instead, you should build links that also point to your top, most popular posts. There’s always something new to learn about SEO, so make sure your optimization knowledge is up to date by reading articles or guides from qualified authors such as Google’s Matt Cutts.

10. Forgetting The ALT Tag

While Google reportedly (WebCEO software) doesn’t place a big emphasis on ALT tags, other search engines such as AOL, Bing, and Yahoo do. The truth is that a picture is just an image file if it’s not optimized for a keyword. To optimize it, use the ALT tag when inserting your image in a post; you’ll definitely see better results. Also, consider naming the file of the image as your keyword or at least to a defining term. If you’re blogging about copyright laws, name your image as ‘copyright-laws.jpg’, not something like ‘picture10.jpg’ — that simply won’t do you any good.

Conclusion

I see additional SEO mistakes regularly, such as the use of generic descriptions for posts, not updating the sitemap, broken 404 pages, and grammatical errors in various site contents. Most of all, I see posts that lack organization and simply contain too much text without separation of any sort, such as spacing or headings. That’s simply unattractive to your valued readers. It takes away from the overall experience, and the quality of your website will take a beating. These SEO mistakes may seem basic to some but shouldn’t be overlooked or ignored. Better yet, consider evaluating your blog right away to ensure that your overall SEO is in check.

IOS 5: 10 More Things You May Not Know

2012-02-22T00:28:00.001-08:00

It’s finally arrived. Introduced by Apple’s pre-CEO Steve Jobs in his last keynote, iOS 5 is the latest Operating System for iDevices like iPhone and iPad, which includes tons of new features and improvement. And today, by connecting your compatible iDevice to the latest version of iTunes, you will be receiving the update to iOS 5!

As you have expected, iOS 5 is not just a regular update that’s nothing but all talk. According to its feature page, it combines 200 features which not only greatly improve user interface, solve serious user experience issues, but also introduce brand new features like Notification Center, iMessage, Newsstand, Reminder, and more!

So while waiting eagerly for the update to complete, we want to uncover more features that add just awesomeness to iOS 5, and you may not know about them. Enjoy reading or exploring new features and rejoice, as your iDevice will look and act better today!

1. Notification Center Customization

If you visited Apple’s iOS 5 feature page or watched the keynote, you probably know about Notification Center. It’s a revamped design of push notifications, with primary purpose to unite all notifications in one place and remove interruption during your iActivities.

Sounds really good, but Notification Center is more flexible than you think. By going to Settings > Notifications > (Application), you will be able to customize the center by either turn off the notification center, set numbers of showing items, choose alert style with 3 options available and even set the alert rate. It’s your notification center, it’s your will to customize it to your liking.

2. Private Browsing

Come on, who doesn’t have a secret? Often we want to visit certain website content that’s either your company’s confidential data, or your first girl friend’s blog which you still care about, and you probably don’t want anybody knows about it.

Apple understands your concern on privacy, thus enabling a Private Browsing mode in Safari to let you browse any website without leaking out a bit of data. You can turn on Private Browsing mode by access to Settings > Safari. Your Safari’s interface color will turn to dark grey after the activation, which means you are browsing website with Private Browsing mode turned on.

Well if you’re too lazy to turn on and off Private Browsing mode every time you want to visit certain website, with iOS 5 you can also remove website data by selection, by accessing Safari > Advanced > Website Data.

3. Camera

This is a killer feature for iPhone camera lover. In past it takes some steps to switch between Camera app and Camera roll, but now you can switch to Camera roll right from your Camera app. All you need to do is simply slide to the right from the Camera app’s interface.

Photos inside Camera roll are shown one by one, and you can continue to slide to the right to view more photos. After you viewed the Camera roll, you can slide to the left until you return to the Camera app. A very brilliant solution, I’m pleased.

4. Delete Button Everywhere

This is a very small tweak to the iOS, but a great step Apple did to improve the iOS’ flexibility! Starting from iOS 5, there’s a red delete button hidden in many applications like Notes, Music, and even Settings.

You will be able to delete everything in list by simply swipe right on the item. Be it songs in the Music app, notes in the note list, or even application data in the Usage setting which I will cover below, you can simply get a delete option by swipe your finger to left or right direction on the item. Say Goodbye to iTunes even just for song deletion!

5. Emoji

A very cool (and sweet!) international language is added into iOS 5! It’s called Emoji and yes, it’s just what you think, an international language about Emoticons. You can add Emoji language by tapping Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Emoji.

A picture worth thousand words. With Emoji, you can express your emotion by choosing 33 different emoticons from the list, yet it’s not the end of the story. Emoji is more than emoticons, it contains different kinds of awesome icons, grouped into 6 specific categories.

Sunshine, Animals, Christmas Santa, iPhone, Pumpkin, any icon you might need in chatting. I’m not too sure about their proper usage, but for my experience these icons allow me to create lots of laughter during my conversation with friends who use iDevice. Nice job Apple, your design is not only user friendly, but human friendly.

6. Custom Keyboard Shortcut

You need no longer to type repetitive long words in any typing work within the iOS 5. A simple ‘OMW’ will create a phrase ‘On My Way’. It’s called keyboard shortcut, and you can create it by tapping Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Shortcut.

The creation is amazingly easy, just input a shortcut and a phrase, then you’re done! Also I’ve been worrying about language compatibility with keyboard shortcut, so I tested it with Simplified Chinese and Emoji, and Apple never disappoints me, it works very well with languages other than English!

This not only saves a lot of exhaustive typing work for common users, but also those coders who do some coding using apps like Editor for iPad, for instance you can set shortcut “pp” for paragraph tag.

7. Custom Vibration

This cool feature is for iPhone only. Originally created for people with disabilities, custom vibration is one of the new magic of iOS 5 which you will love to play with. Just as its name, by accessing to Settings > General > Accessibility > Custom Vibration, you will be able to set your own version of vibration for phone calls.

(Image Source: MacRumors)

By default there are several patterns like heartbeat, S.O.S and Symphony, but you can slide down to the bottom of the option and press on ‘Create New Vibration’ to make your exclusive version of vibration. You can also assign this vibration to certain people in the contacts so next time the iPhone vibrates, you know who’s calling. Pretty cool isn’t it?

8. AssistiveTouch And Custom Gesture

iOS 5 is so amazing that it’s not only available to common people, but also people with difficulties using the iOS device, and the new feature that solves their problem is named AssistiveTouch. Well, the feature is originally designed for people with disabilities, but it can also be a lovely feature for common users!

You can access to Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch to enable it, and a semi-transparent square button will appear at the bottom of the device. With a click on the button, you will be able to perform actions like Shake, Pinch, Lock Screen, Rotate Screen, etc.

If you tap into Settings > General > Accessibility > AssistiveTouch > Custom Gesture, you get an option to create and save your own version of custom gesture. The gesture will be saved into the Favorites section of the AssistiveTouch, and it will do exactly what you’ve done in the recording session. It’s clear that the custom gesture is created as a macro shortcut to do certain task easier, so be prepared to use this convenient feature after you got the iOS 5!

9. Usage Management

Apple hopes to achieve the PC Free era for iDevices, and Usage option is existed to substitute certain features of iTunes. Again, you need to access into Settings > General to get the Usage option. In this option, you will see storage space that’re still available for new stuffs, and allocated space for installed application and its data.

You can also delete the application right here if you’re not happy with its data size, just tap on the application then a red “Delete App” button will do both application and data deletion. Besides, you can also manage your iCloud storage here, without the involvement of any extra application like iTunes!

10. Feature, Feature, More Feature

There’re just too many minor tweaks in iOS 5 that make your iLife easier, so in this last section I will share about some little yet awesome features which are noteworthy. These are tweaks which greatly smoothen your iOS experience, also which iOS users have cried for since the version 4.

You’re now able to use iOS device while it’s still syncing, saves a lot of waiting time! Also there’s an update called Delta Software Updates, which means the software upgrade will only change particular files, so you don’t need to download entire OS with pretty fat size. And it’s OTA (On-The-Air) update, which means you can update your iOS version straight from device through Wi-Fi or 3G.

Besides, you no longer need to memorize or note down what apps you have purchased, as there’s a section called “Purchased” existed in the App Store, and you will be able to check up iPad-specific or iPhone-specific apps you’ve purchased and installed.

Other minor yet notable improvements are ability to create and manage album, open iTunes and Safari links in background, swipe left or right from one’s mailboxes folder list in Mails app to take you to another account’s mailboxes, and more! iOS 5 is just about more features!

Reference

Reflection

In iOS 5′s promotional video, Scott Forstall of Apple said that they are constantly challenging themselves on a question, which is how they can make iOS’ user experience even easier, or friendlier. I always feel that Apple has its own autocratic way to develop the iOS, but this time I’m really pleased with their improvements on iOS 5, which proves that they accepted users’ opinion and suggestion. Good job, Apple.

It can be the 10 key features covered in the keynote, or features shared in this article. Which feature you favored the most in this update? My personal favorite is the Notification Center feature, and do share with me yours!

Beginner’s Guide To SEO: Best Practices – Part 1

2012-02-22T00:26:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization is a complex subject, especially when you consider all the information and misinformation readily available online. Unfortunately it’s often hard to tell which is which. Does the latest tactic you’re reading about work? Does it work for all sites? Only some sites? Or is just another crackpot theory that sounds reasonable, but will never help to improve search traffic to your site?

Let’s face it SEO can become very confusing. The good news is it doesn’t have to be. The basics of SEO are actually quite easy to understand and if you give yourself a good foundation in learning search engine optimization you’ll be able to sort fact from fiction much more easily and you’ll have the tools to delve into more advanced SEO concepts.

This series of posts isn’t going to teach you the latest trendy trick that probably doesn’t work anyway. The goal of these post is to help you build an SEO foundation and point you in the right direction for further study. Through the course of this series (part I, II and III) will look at 3 major aspects of SEO each covered in one post.

General Approach and Research. This first post will look at how you should be thinking about SEO as well as the keyword research you’ll want to do prior to building your site
On-Site SEO. The second post in the series will discuss how to build a search engine friendly site and how to write content with SEO in mind.
Off-Site SEO. The last post in the series will look at building links into your site and page and discuss analytics so you can determine what’s been working and what hasn’t and use the information to continue to improve your SEO efforts.

How To Approach SEO

Search engine optimization is a subset of marketing. It should fit into your overall marketing plan and not be your marketing plan. You can do everything wrong when it comes to SEO, never receive a single visitor from a search engine, and still have a very successful and profitable site. It might seem strange to read that in a post about SEO, but it’s important to understand.

Ironically if you take a step back and generally market yourself well some of the more difficult parts of SEO will take care of themselves. That’s not to say you should ignore SEO, but most of us don’t need to obsess over every little detail. There are many, many factors that determine where a page will rank in search results. Obsessing over one of those factors doesn’t make sense. Try to see the forest instead of staring intently at a single tree.

SEO is not a set it and forget proposition. It’s an iterative process. You do what you can, measure the results, and continue to improve. You can’t SEO a site in a day or month. As with marketing in general, SEO is never ending. It also changes daily and what works for one site may not work for another.

Fortunately the basic principles are fairly constant and building a solid foundation in SEO understanding will carry you much further that trying to exploit the tactic du jour.

That said, SEO can be generally categorized into 5 different aspects:

Keyword research
Search engine friendly site development
On-page SEO
Link Building
Analytics

Each of the above is important and they all work together. The whole s greater than the sum of the parts. Let’s talk about each of the above in more detail.

1. Keyword Research

Everyone would like their pages to rank #1, which begs the question rank for what? Not all keywords and keyword phrases are equal. Some are typed into a search engine more often and some are more likely to lead to a sale. You don’t need or want to optimize for every possible keyword or phrase.

For example say you sell real estate in Des Moines, Iowa. You might think it important to rank well for the phrase “real estate,” but is it? Someone looking to buy property in New York or Los Angeles isn’t going to be interested in the homes you sell in Des Moines. Why spend time and money trying to get those people to your site. You’d do much better to target phrases that include Iowa and even better Des Moines.

As a web designer you might think it important to rank well for the phrase “web design,” but again is it important? Are people searching for the phrases “web design” looking to hire a web designer or are they looking for information about web design, perhaps a definition?

There are 3 types of queries someone might type into a search engine

Informational queries – searching for information from general to specific
Navigational queries – searching for a specific site or page
Transactional queries – searching with an intent to purchase

You probably don’t want to spend time ranking a blog post of information for a transactional query and you probably don’t want people typing informational queries to land inside your shopping cart.

All three types of queries are important and each could ultimately lead to a sale. Someone finding helpful information on your site may very well come back later and buy something. The important thing to understand is that what a person types into a search engine reveals something about their intent and that based on the searcher’s intent you’d want different pages of your site ranking for different queries.

Developing A List Of Keywords To Target

The first step in developing a keyword list is brainstorming. Take some time and write down as many words and phrases as you can think of that relate to your site with the understanding that this is simply the start of your research. You should be able to build a list of 50 – 100 phrases without much trouble.

As you continue to brainstorm phrases some themes should being to emerge. Do you only offer web design or do you also offer web development? Maybe you also offer WordPress development and Drupal development. You might specialize in ecommerce design or small business web design. Perhaps you also offer web hosting. Each of these will likely become a keyword theme around which you’ll build a more detailed list.

Brainstorming will only yield so many words so your next step should be to expand your list through some keyword tools. Here are a few freebies to get you started.

The last two also have paid options that will return a lot more phrases and have additional features for research. There are also a variety of more advanced keyword research tools should you desire them.

Don’t worry about the absolute numbers with keyword tools. The numbers are estimates. For example when I typed “web design” into the free WordTracker tool, 8 of the top 20 phrases were specific to North Dakota web design. It’s unlikely that so many people are searching for web design in North Dakota and more likely that one or more web design firms in North Dakota are searching for those phrases a lot to see how well they rank.

Consider the numbers more in relative terms in comparison to each other. If all of the above tools show that more people search for web design than website design, it’s probably true. Just don’t count on the absolute numbers to hold true, especially as a prediction of future searches for the phrase.

A few tips about building keyword lists:

Find the words and phrases your customers use instead of industry jargon. It’s great that you develop with progressive enhancement. How many of your clients do you think search for progressive enhancement or even know what it means
Look for synonyms – Similar to the above seek the words potential clients will use. You call it e-commerce. They might type ecommerce. Is it web design or website design?
Add qualifiers – Our Des Moines Iowa real estate agent might add Des Moines, Iowa, or both to most every phrase. As a web designer your services might be affordable or professional. Optimizing for “professional web design services” also optimizes for “web design services” Services would also be a qualifier.
Qualify your qualifiers – You might be tempted to add a qualifier like “free” since so many people use the word. However someone searching for free anything isn’t looking to buy. Unless you’re offering something for free it’s probably best to stay away from “free” as a qualifier.
Look to your analytics package to see what phrases are currently brining people to your site. These can tell you what you’re already ranking well for and give you ideas about similar phrases you can also likely rank well for.

Keyword Resources

The above barely scratches keyword research. Here are some free resources to add to your knowledge of researching and selecting keywords

Keyword Research and Selection (PDF) – One of the best PDFs for understanding the process of keyword research and keyword selection
Keyword Research Guide (PDF) – Real experts offer thoughts on keywords for a fictional company

Summary

It’s important to remember that SEO, while capable of providing a valuable source of traffic, is still only one way to attract potential clients and customers to your site. Think of SEO as part of your marketing strategy instead of your whole marketing strategy. Don’t lose sight of the forest staring at a handful of trees.

SEO is an iterative process that can begin anywhere. Most of the time it will begin with keyword research, especially if you’ve yet to build your site or create the initial content. Keywords help you define who your market is and what that market is looking for. They’ll also lead the way when it comes to how you develop your site, what content you choose to create, and how that content is written.

In the next post, we’ll look into:

Search engine friendly site development – Development of your site so search engines can easily find and index your pages, organizing your information can provide cues to search engines for what the site is about and potential pitfalls you can avoid.
On-page SEO – Individual pages of your site and how to write content for both people and search engines. We’ll look at where some of those keywords you found should be used so they can help improve where your pages rank.

Stay tuned.

15+ Tools To Enhance Your Online Shopping Experience

2012-02-22T00:24:00.000-08:00

If you frequently shop online, you know how overwhelming it can be with all the online deals, coupons, and promotions available all over the Web. It’s almost impossible to keep up with everything and it’s even more impossible to compare product prices with hundreds of other online retailers. So where do you find the time to do all of this research?

Well, you don’t! Instead, you can rely on one or more shopping tools to do all of the work for you.

This list will take a look at some of the best online tools that are available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE, and even Opera. These tools will not only save you a lot of money and help you become a smarter shopper, but they’ll also save you a lot of time since they’ll do all the searching and price comparisons for you.

Chrome Extensions

Add To Amazon Wish List

If you have an Amazon account, then more than likely you’ve added items to your wish list. This extension allows you to add products from any website (not just Amazon.com) to your Amazon wish list. This extension makes it easier to track items that you want to eventually buy from anywhere on the Web, all from a single site.

This tool is also available for Safari under the Shopping category, and Firefox in the form of a toolbar and button.

InvisibleHand

This is a very useful tool that shows you the lowest price for whatever you’re currently viewing. For instance when viewing a specific product on Amazon, InvisibleHand will notify you if that product is cheaper on another retailer site. The tool supports over 200 retailers from the US, UK, and Germany. Plus, not only is it great for products, but it can also help you find the cheapest flights from various travel sites.

This tool is also available for Firefox and Safari under Shopping category.

EBay Extension For Google Chrome

Have you ever missed out on an eBay auction because you weren’t able to stay on top of it? With this extension you can keep track of items that you’re selling and bidding on and keep up with daily deals. It keeps you signed in securely and lets you place bid on active items, save searches, and keep up with saved sellers.

This tool is also available for Firefox and Safari.

PriceBlink

This tool is similar to InvisibleHand (mentioned above), in that it shows you the lowest prices for any product that you’re viewing; it supports over 3,000 merchants. In addition, it also shows you coupon codes and shipping codes that you may be able to use for the retailer you’re currently on. This helps you to save even more money on your purchase. For many products it even shows you user ratings so that you can find the best products.

This tool is also available for Firefox and Safari under Shopping category.

Shopping Buddy (By Google)

“The Shopping Buddy displays the rating of stores you are currently visiting right in the omnibar; you can also read reviews by clicking directly on the rating icon.” So if you’re worried about how trustworthy a retailer is, this extension can help you with that. It will also let you know (via a notification banner) if the retailer you’re on offers any discounts for using Google Checkout. You’ll be able to see full details of the promotion along with the minimum purchase requirements.

Craigslist Preview

If you’re a frequent Craigslist user, you know how frustrating it can be to have to click-through each ad just to see the pictures that are included. With this extension, you can actually see the pictures on the search results page. This saves you time (and clicks) when shopping on Craigslist since you can quickly scan through all the pictures at once.

Similar Craigslist shopping tools include: Craigslist Peek (also available for Firefox), Craigslist Image Preview, and Craigslist Fancy Preview.

Craigslist Helper

If you’re looking for more than just image previews on Craigslist (like the extension above), you’ll really enjoy Craigslist Helper. This is the ultimate tool for shopping on Craigslist with numerous features that include:

Image thumbnails and previews
Ad previews – view ad text without having to click-through
Alerts via desktop notifications when a new ad matches one of your saves searches
Searching through multiple cities at once
Ability to add notes to ads – great for keeping track of communication efforts and other relevant information
Totally ignore and hide ads so that you never see them again
Blacklist ads containing specific keywords
and much more

This tool is also available for Firefox and Safari.

The Camelizer

This tool lets you track price changes on various retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and more. It helps you figure out if a price is “good” or not by showing you the long-term price history for the specific product that you’re viewing. Plus, the chart is unobtrusive since it is viewed by clicking on the extension icon in the omnibar.

Similar price tracking tools include: Ookong: Amazon Price History & More (also available for Safari) andPriceTrace: 1-Click Price Comparison Shopping.

This extension is also available for Firefox.

Groolu

If you’re a fan of shopping deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, you’ll love Groolu. It collects coupons on a daily and hourly basis for the above-mentioned deal sites plus Tippr, Zozi, and Dealster. It then notifies you when a new coupon available and gives you relevant information such as an image, vendor details, deal name, percent off, and sale price.

The Best Price

This extension adds a button to your browser that lets you automatically compare prices in real-time. It works with over 300 online retailers and will alert you (via the browser button) when a cheaper price has been found for the product that you’re viewing. Once you click on the browser button and open the window, you’ll notice 3 different color badges:

Green – The product is cheaper somewhere else.
Blue – The price is the same on all retail sites.
Orange – The price is higher on other retail sites.

So you can use these colored badges to quickly see whether you’ve found the best deal or not.

This tool is also available for Safari.

Compass

Compass enhances your shopping experience by providing you with a navigation menu on every product page. This is helpful because it allows you to quickly find what you’re looking for, without having to scroll through the entire page. You can also hide the content you’re not interested in on the menu, so that it’s easier to find what you are actually interested in. Compass is a definite time saver for long product pages and helps you cut back on scrolling.

This tool is also available for Safari under Shopping category.

If you don’t currently shop online, you may want to start because you’ll often find that products are much cheaper online once you find the lowest prices and add in a coupon code.

Firefox Add-Ons

Boo.Ly Shopping

Boo.ly is an all-in-one tool that acts as your personal shopping assistant. You can compare product prices, see special offers and deals, and find coupons to save money on your purchases. It works on thousands of shopping sites and sections like Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In your results you’ll see a little shopping tag with a “b” on it; clicking on this will bring up a window with more options and relevant information.

This tool is also available for Chrome and IE.

WindowShopper

Window Shopper helps to notify you of lower priced items on various retail sites; it covers over 130 million products in various categories. Just click the “See Similar” button on your favorite shopping site to open the Window Shopper window and see identical and similar products. You can then click on the stores like to see all stores that are selling that item. This is great way to save money on and get the best price on an item of interest.

PriceTrace

With PriceTrace you can compare prices, check price history, and subscribe to price drop alerts for any product in just one click. This add-on adds a toolbar to Firefox that lets you “trace” any item on most retail sites like Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, and Best Buy; it also works on the search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing. You can also use the website to search for items and compare them by UPC, SKU, title, or URL.

This tool is also available for Chrome and Safari; IE is coming soon.

Ciuvo

This tool allows you to get the best deals by “presenting contextually relevant information in real-time.” Not only will you see the best prices, but you’ll also see relevant images, videos, customer reviews, and even availability of products in your local area. Ciuvo currently only works for retailers in the USA, Germany, and Austria.

This tool is also available for Chrome, Safari and IE.

FreePriceAlerts

This tool lets you know if the current price that you’re viewing is the best price. If it is, a green check mark will show in the top left corner of the screen. If it’s not, it will show you the best price and where you can find it online. You can also add items to your wish list and set price alerts so that you’ll receive an email when the product hits your target price.

This tool is also available for Chrome, Safari, and IE.

TryPhone – Test Drive Cell Phones Online

2012-02-22T00:21:00.000-08:00

Interesting in a particular cell phone but not ready or not sure which to buy? Tryphone.com allows you to test drive cell phones; play around with the functions before you actually walk into stores and do the purchase. Each cell phones available for testing comes with a phone specification, you also get to read other peoples’ reviews.

Send Free SMS Online With Chawt

2012-02-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve came across free SMS services from time to time, but most of them either don’t work for me or the free service is only applicable to specific region only. Chawt, on the other end here, works just fine! And I have to tell you, it’s really hard to find a free online SMS sending services nowadays.

This free SMS sending services requires you to sign up, and activate the account with your cell phone. Just paste the code sent to your phone on the form, activate it and you are good to go. I’ve tested and my friends received them. The only drawbacks is the fact that every messages come attached with a line of advertisement. Well, for something free I wouldn’t complain too much.

Send SMS free with Chawt.

FileMail – Share Files (Up To 2GB) Over Internet

2012-02-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

FileMail works like any other free file sharing services out there; you upload your files; include recipients email addresses; recipients receive notices via email and start downloading. Nothing too different from the rest, but yet FileMail manage to glow among the rest. Here’s why:

As big as 2GB per transfer
No login require
Simple and nice interface
Secured (encrypted using a 128bit AES algorithm)

If you think 2GB is not enough, FileMail comes with 2 paid plans. Basically bigger upload size, file remains on server longer, and few other additional options. Click here for more info.

Beginner’s Guide To IOS Development: The Interface – Part I

2012-02-22T00:13:00.000-08:00

Apple has been a leading industry in the mobile world for years with its iPhone and iPad series. Despite the hype it can create with every official release like iOS 5, it’s also holding a large portion of market shares in the mobile platform, and this is probably the reason that most clients will want their app to exist in the Apple’s app store, thus becoming the reason for developers to learn and build the iPhone app.

(Image Source: Apple Developer)

The good news is, iPhone application development is not as hard as you might think, and this post exists as a comprehensive guide to walk you through the complete process of building an application for iPhone. We’ll be discussing the reasons, phases, and tools for developing the app, and ultimately you will follow an easy tutorial to design the basic iPhone application using the Xcode 4.2.

So whether you’re learning for business or you just have an amazing app idea that might make you a millionaire, let’s get started on building your first iPhone app!

Note: You will need a computer with Macintosh Operating System (Mac OS) for Xcode installation, application development and app submission, there’s no way you can do it on Windows legally.

Why Develop For Apple?

I see this question asked frequently so I want to explain why you should be interested in iPhone development. Just like I’ve stated in the introduction, iPhone currently holds a large portion of market shares in the mobile platform. I think this reason should be enough for you to learn to develop the iPhone application as whether you’re developing for yourself or clients, most people probably hope their app can be accessed by many people in the world.

From the viewpoint of development, Apple likes things simple, and this applies to their products and frameworks. iOS is the operating system which powers all Apple’s mobile devices. These include iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. So keep in mind when you’re developing apps for iPhone, you could be developing for all of other devices with the iOS!

Besides, what makes the above feature even greater is how much the coding work can be saved. When you write code for iPhone application you’re using the same programming language for all Apple’s computing devices. That means when you’re developing the iPhone application, the app can later be integrated into iPad and even Mac.

Objective-C is the core programming language powering all of their frameworks. Along with Objective-C, you will also develop iPhone app with the Cocoa Touch, the programming framework driving user interaction on iOS.

This is all just a bit of information to get you started on iPhone app development. The development is quite a complicated process but relax, take it slowly. So the reasons are here, and the decision is yours. Whether the answer is yes or not, you can always hop right into the next topic: designing apps for iPhone.

Planning Your IPhone App Structure

In the standard ideology of creating an iPhone app you’ll want to go through a few phases. The first phase includes planning and sketching. First of all you need to have an idea for what your app is going to do.Why would people want to download it? And what features do you want to include? This is the most important phase as if you do it right, you’ll save a lot of confusion and troubles in the coding phase. Worst, it gets you back to the drawing board.

(Image Source: Cultured Code)

I recommend to sketch some rough ideas for a few pages (or views) of your application. Just draw a rectangle shape, maybe 5 or 6 shapes on a sheet of paper, then draw the features you want on each view of your app. You can think of views like different pages in a website. Each view will offer different functionality such as a login form, a list of contacts, or a table of data.

Below I’ve constructed a brief collection of the different UI bar elements:

Status Bar – Displays device’s current battery level, 3G connection, bars of reception, phone carrier, and a whole lot more. It’s recommended that you always include these elements.
Navigation Bar – Gives your users the option to navigate between page hierarchies. This often includes a button on the left side of the bar to enable the user to return to the previous app view.
Toolbar – Appears at the bottom of the iPhone app. This will hold a few icons tied to some functions such as Share, Download, Delete, etc.
Tab Bar – Very similar to the toolbar, except now you’re working with tabs. When a user clicks on a tab icon it’ll automatically be highlighted, and it’ll display a glossy hover state. This bar is used to switch between views instead of offering direct functionality.

This list only contains the toolbars you could find in most apps. There are some other views and styles to consider, which you can find them in Apple’s iOS UI Element Usage Guidelines. I highly recommend to refer to this documentation when you have doubts about iPhone’s UI elements.

In the interest of time I won’t be describing every UI element. There are too many elements to consider, and you won’t end up using all of them in your single app. But as you sketch out your views, you can draw inspiration from the guidelines suggested above, and other iPhone apps you’ve enjoyed using them.

Designing Photoshop Mockups

I’m assuming most of you are fairly comfortable working with Adobe Photoshop. It is the premiere software for creating graphics for website, banners, logos, and mobile mockups. Designing graphics for the web is a fairly straightforward process, but it’s a bit more complicated when it comes to iPhone app design. If you’re looking to build an app you really should create pixel-perfect mockup designs from the start.

To begin, we should discuss Photoshop settings. Since we’re designing for iPhone we need to consider 2 different design styles. The regular iPhone display is 320 x 480 pixels. However the iPhone 4 includes aretina display which doubles the amount of pixels within the same screen size. So you should double the resolution to 640 x 960 pixels and design your layouts to this standard.

This means you will also need to create 2 sets of icons for your mockups. Originally icons would be set to 163ppi but you’ll need to include icons with 326ppi for iPhone 4. The icons are traditionally marked with@2x at the end of their file’s name, such as “icon@2x.png“. To learn a bit more about this I recommend Smashing Magazine’s article, iPhone 4 Retina Display: Techniques and Workflow. It includes some great tips for Photoshop users to build and scale icons properly.

Now let’s optimize our new document settings. First we’ll need to edit some preferences, so access to Photoshop > Edit > Preferences > Guides, Grid and Slices. We’ll be setting our Gridline every 20px with subdivisions at 2. When designing for retina display 2px line will display 1 point on the screen. This is an important rule you need to keep in mind for scaling down your app.

I tend to find it easier to build my designs with higher resolution then scale them down, but you can try both methods and see what fits you best. We’re using 640 x 960 pixels at 326ppi – save this as a custom preset if you think you’ll use it frequently.

Building With Template Elements

Now you can use the Photoshop to create a pixel-perfect layout on your own, but this proves to be a very exhausting and tedious work. I will recommend the iPhone 4 GUI PSD by Teehan+Lax. It includes all of the design resources you need to build any standard iPhone app layout. After the download finishes, unzip your new file to get the PSD file, and just open it with Photoshop.

(Image Source: Teehan+Lax)

This is a huge file with just too many elements. To make things easier you can press V activate the Move Tool and click on the “Auto-Select” on its option bar, then select the “Layer” rather than “Group”. With the settings, you can click on any element and Photoshop will bring you to its corresponding layer!

Feel free to play around with the mockup, or you can even create your application’s prototype from the mockup. Depending on your app you could include a slew of features within the core area, many of which you could find in this PSD file. It’s also possible to go to these elements’ layers and edit the fonts, gradient colors, and other design styles as well. Just make sure you don’t resize anything since all the bars and UI elements are set to default standard sizes.

Developing Apps In Xcode

The developer tool for iOS and Mac OS X programming is named as Xcode. If you’re running OS X Lion you can find Xcode and all applicable packages for free in the Mac App Store.

After the installation is completed, launch the Xcode and its welcome screen should come up. From here you can load an older project or choose to make a new one. For now you need to click “Create a new Xcode project“, then the template window will come up with a few options. Under iOS > Application, click on “Single View Application” and hit “Next”. You can give the new app a name, such as Test (preferably no spaces), then on the Company Identifier, type in any word such as mycompany, and finally pick a directory and hit “Save”.

Xcode will build the file directory and send you into a new window for working. You should see a lot of file options listed, but the folder which is named after your application is the primary focus.

With the new Xcode 4.2 you have two options for designing front end elements. The classic xib/nib format is standard to Mac OS X and iOS apps, which requires you to design a new page view each time. However, as you are creating more views in a single app the amount of nib files can become far too overwhelming, so a newstoryboard file holds all of your nib views in a single editor pane. From here you can remove and add UI elements and features with ease.

Additionally you’ll come across .h and .m files in the same folder group. These are short filenames for headerand implementation code. These files are where you write all the Objective-C functions and variables required for your app to run. It may be a good idea to explain how Xcode works with MVC (Model, View, Controller), which is the reason that we need 2 files for each controller.

MVC Programming Hierarchy

To understand how the app works you’ll need to understand its programming architecture. With Model, View, Controller (MVC) as a foundation, Xcode can separate all of your displays and interface code from your logic and processing functions, and there isn’t really another option to choose. MVC may seem confusing at first but if you tried to understand it and start building a few basic apps you’ll come to love the structure.

(Image Source: Esri)

To make it easier to understand, I’ve presented each object in the list below:

Model – Holds all of your logic and core data. This includes variables, connections to external RSS feeds or images, detailed functions, and number crunching. This layer is completely detached from your views so that you could easily change views and still have the same data working.
View – A screen or display style in your application. A table list, profile page, article summary page, audio player, video player, these are all examples of views. You can change their styles and remove elements but you’ll still be working with the same data in your Model.
Controller – Acts as an intermediary between the other two. You connect objects in your view to a ViewController which passes the information to and from your Model. So in this way it’s possible to have a user tap on a button and register this in your model. Then run a log out function and through the same controller pass a message “successfully logged out!”.

So basically your model holds all the information and functions that you’ll need to display somewhere onscreen. But models cannot interact with the screen, only views can. Views are mostly all visuals, and it can only pull data through a ViewController. The Controller is actually a much more refined way of hiding your back end data from the front end design. In this way you can renovate the design several times over while not losing any functionality.

With this knowledge it shouldn’t be hard to begin building your first few apps. As mentioned earlier, Objective-C is the core programming language you’ll be using to develop the app. It’s built on the C language with updated syntax and a few additional paradigms. You’ll need a lot of time to get familiar with the language, but for the beginner lesson I recommend the tutorial series from Mobiletuts+.

Design View With IOS 5 Storyboards

Now that we’ve looked into the technical aspects of an application, we should spend a bit of time designing the interface. I’m assuming that you’ve kept the “Storyboard” option checked when creating the project, which means you can find a single MainStoryboard_iPhone.storyboard file somewhere in the folder group located on the left side of the window. Click on the file to select it and open the view.

A new sidebar should appear directly to the right of the folder group. This is called the Document Outline and it’s a sort of quick preview method for checking all of the available views in this storyboard.

We want to start by adding just a few page elements into our view controller. We need two different elements: aNavigation Bar and a Tab Bar. Before we grab them, access to the Attributes Inspector (View > Utilities > Show Attributes Inspector) on the right side of the window, then look for the Status Bar label. By default it’s set to Inferred which uses the standard iPhone status color, but you can also choose Black or Translucent Blackif your app design fits the color better.

The Objects Library

If the Utilities pane at the right side of the window isn’t visible, you can enable it by access to View > Utilities > Show Utilities. On the Utilities pane, look at the bottom for a panel called Object Library. It got a drop-down menu with the “Objects” as the first item of the list. If you couldn’t find it, you can select View > Utilities > Show Object Library.

From the drop-down menu of the Object Library, find and select Windows & Bars. Now click on theNavigation Bar, drag it into the view window and position it directly under the black Status Bar (with a battery icon). We can customize the bar’s title description now. Double click on the text which currently reads “Title“, and you will see a label named “Title” on the Utilities pane, which you can change the title description to “Test” from there. Hit “Enter” to witness the change.

Again in the Windows & Bars panel, scroll down to find the Tab Bar, then drag it into the view window and place it at the very bottom of your app. By default these 2 elements look fantastic.

Now maybe you want the Navigation Bar’s gradient to match the tab bar at the bottom, and to do this you can click on the Navigation Bar and look to the right at Attributes panel in Utilities pane. The very first option is called Style, which is set to Default. Change the Style from Default to Black Opaque and we’ll have a matching color set!

Let’s also add another tab button in the bottom bar of the app. Move your mouse cursor to the Windows & Bars panel again and scroll down to Tab Bar Item, directly underneath Tab Bar. Drag this into your app window and place it in the middle of the 2 existing Tab Bar buttons. If you double click on this new button you can see some additional options in the Utilities pane, you change the item’s image and title from there. For example, I have changed the title to “Bookmark” for the newly added Tab Bar item.

So this is a brief tutorial on designing views within Xcode. It’s not a terribly difficult process, but it will require a bit more time to get used to the interface. Play with a few more elements if you feel comfortable, also you can head to Apple’s iOS Development Resources for more learning resources, it’s never a bad thing to discover more!

Stay Tuned For Part II

This concludes our first part of the guide for iPhone app design & development. In the next part we’ll delve a bit deeper into Objective-C and Cocoa Touch, and you’ll ultimately learn to build a functioning iPhone app, stay tuned!

IOS Design Gallery

For designers out there I’m also hoping to bring you some inspiration, so I’ve included a list of awesome iPhone app views below. The list features a large variety of inspiring app elements which you have probably never noticed before. Feel free to share your ideas, app views or questions in the comment section below, thank you!

Race Splitter

Satisfaction Remote

Tweetbot for iPhone

Reeder

Foursquare

MailChimp

Instagram

Joystiq

Piictu

Darkness

Networking Guide For Bloggers: Why It Is Important (Part 1)

2012-02-22T00:10:00.000-08:00

In today’s blogosphere a lot of discussion is going on about various aspects of positioning and growing a blog. Even though the space gets more and more crowded every day, and the game is changing constantly, there are still some things everyone tells you to do – things considered as mandatory for any kind of success.

Among various aspects of promotion, advertising, search engine optimization, social media, and all kinds of other stuff lies the need of contacting other, fellow bloggers, and being in touch with people in general.

Networking?

Networking is a fancy term, and one that I don’t especially like, to be honest. It strips the whole experience of interacting with other people from all emotion and personal aspects.

Networking sounds strictly “businessy,” which simply doesn’t give a good impression. Reaching out to others, or even making friends are a lot better terms here.

Anyway, we all know that meeting new people is essential for both our own and our blogs’ growth, however in many cases we don’t know how to make the initial step, in a way that we don’t get burned from the get go.

By the way, sending an email with a subject like “link exchange proposition for X” is not an optimal solution! (Please, stop sending me those.)

Furthermore, getting in touch with other people can be even more challenging for people not speaking English natively (myself included). And even when you are a native English speaker it’s not much easier anyway.

Challenges Of Networking Over The Internet

You see, communicating with anyone over the internet consists mostly of writing. Essentially, written communication is just that – written, so things like using certain words, and proper punctuation are especially important.

For instance, when you are speaking to someone in person, your tone, voice, and volume of speech create more than 50% of the message, I’d say, but when you are writing the same message none of these things can be used. That’s why there’s so much room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding. And I’m sure the last thing you want is to sound aggressive or maybe even offensive.

(Image source: Fotolia)

And then there’s the problem of building up the relationship along with time… not asking anyone to marry you too soon, so to speak.

What I mean here is that most of the time, asking a stranger for help doesn’t work. Simply because they don’t care about you. But asking a friend for help works almost every time. How to turn strangers into friends?

Well, the challenge of making new connections online has to be tackled from more than just a single angle, and this is exactly what we’re trying to do in this series.

What Is Networking?

As I said earlier, I don’t like the word networking. However, I think I’ll continue using it anyway, purely because it’s a single word, and it’s much easier to apply then a two or three word description.

Anyway, networking is not about getting hundreds of pointless business cards during an event. And it’s not about sending hundreds of spam emails in hope that one or two will get a response. So what is it about then?

(Image source: Fotolia)

For me, networking is the art of meeting new people. Both in the real world and in the online there can be multiple reasons why you want to meet a specific person. It can be business, romance, friendship, let’s-have-a-beer, or whatever else. Here, of course, we’re talking blogging and growing your blog. But blogging is neither purely business nor purely social. It lies somewhere in between.

This makes it particularly difficult because in a purely business-like communication you can send an email starting with “Dear Sir, I’m writing to you to propose my blah blah blah.” In a social relation, on the other hand, you can start with “hey dude, how is U today? Wanna meet 2nite? Blah blah blah.” And in blogging neither one of these is acceptable.

Benefits Of Networking

Big part of this is obvious. The benefit is that you meet other, likeminded people. So what’s the point of meeting new people? – That’s the question we should be asking.

First of all, there are very few blogs or websites that grew into mainstream popularity all by themselves. Most of the popular sites gained their popularity due to the popularity of other sites. By ways of borrowing it.

Borrowing popularity is a fancy sounding term, but essentially it boils down to getting multiple mentions on other sites. It can happen by obtaining backlinks, being featured in interviews, contacting the webmasters directly, or thousands of other ways.

However, one fact remains, no one, not one webmaster/blogger/website owner will mention you or your site if they don’t have any amount of trust in you and what you do.

(Image source: Fotolia)

You see, it’s easy to mention and link to sites that are already popular – those that have a massive amount of social proof working for them. For instance, if you see a new product at Problogger you don’t need to hesitate whether you can link to it or not. You don’t have to be afraid that the product will turn out awful and people will be very mad at you for pointing them to it. You know that Darren produces great stuff, to some degree you trust him, and he seems like a credible person … the social proof simply does its job for him.

But if you stumble upon something new, you find it a lot more difficult to endorse such a thing or even link to it … “what if it turns out a scam?” … “what if the site disappears tomorrow?” and so on.

It all becomes a cycle of death, so to speak. Here’s the cycle: If you’re just starting out you can’t get no one to endorse you because no one knows you because you’re just starting out. So what’s the best way out of this cycle?

Yes, you guessed it – networking. By networking with others you can break the cycle at the point of “no one knows you,” and then, sooner or later, all the other pieces shall fall as well.

Borrowing Popularity Through Networking

Ultimately, once you know some people you can borrow their popularity to build your own, and that’s a big benefit.

Don’t believe me? Try to imagine what a plain endorsement from both Darren Rowse and Hongkiat would do for your business. I mean, the case where they both say “go there and buy.” Of course, getting it won’t be easy, but I just needed an example.

All I’m trying to explain here is that building relationships with other fellow bloggers and website owners is the best thing you can do for your online presence. There’s nothing that will do a better job at keeping you on the radar.

You can work on SEO, social media, advertising and all the other tools, but these are all things that greatly depend on other company’s opinion of you.

(Image source: Fotolia)

For instance, if you build a good position on Google, but one day you get dropped due to an algorithm update, the next day you wake up with nothing. If Facebook or Google shuts down your advertising campaign same thing happens.

But still, no matter what happens you can work with your network of contacts, participate in their projects, do joint ventures, make partnerships, and so on. Essentially, you’re making friends, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain the value of that.

Moreover, by working with other people you’re positioning yourself alongside them. So whenever a complete stranger is considering whether to promote your new product this social proof is something that is very likely to work in your favor.

When people can see that you’ve been working with “Mr. Authority” in your niche then some of that person’s credibility falls on you. Something along the lines of: “if they’ve been working with X then they must be the real deal.”

If you work on this consistently then you can build up your brand in a relatively short span of time. And I’m not saying that anything will get you overnight results here. You still have to be able to put some serious work, but the benefits make it worth the effort.

Is Blogging Really A Strictly Online Thing?

Even though blogging or blogging as a business seems like a purely online activity it’s not exactly like that. Most of the things happen online, that’s true – you’re publishing your content on the internet, and interacting with other people via various online services, and so on. However, the basic offline world’s principles of growing your venture/business still apply. And the online world didn’t change anything, it just made certain things easier to do.

For instance, the whole concept of networking is nothing new. However, since the internet is around you don’t have to leave your home, and you can connect with multiple people at the same time, but the whole idea still remains the same. And it’s not much different from what your father or grandfather used to do over the phone.

In essence, I think networking is that valuable because people don’t like to do business with companies, or websites … they like to do business with other people. Until you introduce yourself to your online community nothing significant is going to happen in terms of your brand going viral. If you don’t do this yourself no one will bother to take this step for you.

This concludes the first part of the series, next week we’ll have a word on setting goals for networking. Until then don’t forget to subscribe to get the posts delivered straight to your inbox.

Lastly, feel free to tell me what you think about the whole concept. Do you find networking valuable? Which side you’re on – do you think that who you know matters more than what you know, or the other way around?

Mac Vs. PC: Myth-Busting Guide For Consumers

2012-02-22T00:07:00.000-08:00

It’s no surprise that the war between Mac and PC users has been going on for ages. Some Mac users can’t stand PC users and vice-versa. Windows users claim that Macs aren’t suitable computers because they’re not practical and Mac users claim that PCs are insufficient and slow. So can we credit these myths?Are Macs not worth their price? Are Windows PCs really that awful?

In this article, we will compare both companies in a very neutral manner! We will first understand which company started first, then the reason of the more successful entity. We also discuss which company is more relevant today and who are the majority users of both PC and Mac. We will also take a closer look to evaluate the important features and technical specifications in both; Macs and PCs.

Image credit.

After you’ve finished reading this article you should be able to determine which company suits you best. Because after all, we are not trying to convince you to change what you find suitable for you. All we want to do in this post is lay out all the facts for you, the consumer, so that you can decide all on your own!

GUI Computers, Who Started It?

According to Wikipedia, the first successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) was the Apple Macintosh, and it was introduced on the 24th of January 1984. About a year later, Microsoft introduced Microsoft Windows in November 1985 in response to the growing interest in the GUIs.

The Apple Macintosh continued to sell successfully through the second half of the 1980s until its sales began to decline in the 1990s when the market shifted towards the IBM PC that was running a Microsoft Windows operating system.

Microsoft quickly took over the world’s PC market leaving the Mac OS behind it. In 2009, Microsoft was reported to have approximately 91% of the operating systems market share.

The first Mac.

The first Windows.

Who Was More Successful & Why?

It’s no secret; Microsoft dominates the world’s operating systems market. The reason for this domination is simply because; Microsoft designed its operating systems to be compatible with various hardware created by a wide range of computer companies such as Dell, IBM, hp, and Sony, etc.

In the other hand, Apple designed its software for close integration of computer hardware and software, which means it’s not compatible with other computer hardware.

To put it in easier terms; Microsoft sold it’s operating systems to various computer companies, allowing a broad distribution for its operating systems. As a result, Microsoft is more popular than other operating systems in the market. In the mean while, Apple has strictly designed their operating system to fit perfectly in their own hardware.

Which Is More Popular, Statistically.

Statistics show that Microsoft Windows has approximately 91% of the market share, while the Apple Mac OS has around 5% of the market share. The other 4% is owned by other operating systems such as Linux.

To be a little more specific, here’s a graph that illustrates which operating system versions are most popular in the market share.

The graph below gives you an idea about how the market was moving between the different operating systems, starting from September 2009 to July 2010.

Who Uses What?

For this post, I tried to search Google for Mac and PC users, when I searched for Mac users, I found a very detailed page on Apple.com showing all the different Mac users and their profiles.

Image credit.

Mac users consist of:

Home Office users such as authors & lawyers
Start ups such as Twitter & Monster Designs
Accountants such as Nelson Accounting Professionals
Architects such as KAA Design Group
Creatives such as LinkedIn, T-Pain, Hallmark, and Francis Ford Coppola
Health industries such as hospitals
IT professionals such as MailWise
Law firms
Real Estate agents
Retail stores such as Paul Frank
Scientists such as The University of Manchester and The American Museum of Natural History

When I tried to do the same search for Windows users, my efforts were to no avail. So I went to the Microsoft website, hoping to find something about their users and where they work, but I couldn’t find that much either.

Image credit.

From the various articles I’ve read online, Windows users basically consist of the following:

Home office users
IT Professionals
Developers
Business owners
Schools
Hospitals
Banks

Kelly Ford, the marketing and content head for Hunch, conducted an extremely helpful report that talks about “Mac people & PC people”. The report focused on their personalities from 3 perspectives: aesthetic preferences, media choices, and personality traits.

The key findings in the report were as follows:

Mac People are more likely to see the existing world in a light of “sameness” and thus express a desire to be perceived as different and unique. This is consistently reflected in their aesthetic choices such as bold colors, “retro” designs, one-of-a-kind clothing and highly stylized art.
PC People are more likely to see the world as “different enough already” and appreciate “being in tune with those around them.” This is reflected in their subtler, “mainstream modern” (neither retro nor extremely contemporary) design choices and their practical choices in clothing, footwear, and cars that favor getting the job done rather than making an overt design statement.
Media choices and preferences vary greatly between the two groups, with Mac People trending toward more independent films, specialized comedians and design-centric magazines, and PC People trending toward more mainstream alternatives as well as sports.
From a personality perspective, Mac People are more likely to describe themselves as “verbal”, “conceptual”, and “risk takers”, with PC People countering that they are “numbers oriented”, “factual” and “steady, hard workers”.

To read the full report, check out the full report: “Mac vs PC People: Personality Traits & Aesthetic/Media Choices“

Comparing Tech Specs & Features

Some Apple users claimed that there aren’t any PC laptops that can compare to a Macbook or a Macbook Pro! After further research, I came across many PCs that are, in fact, very similar to Apple’s products.

Here’s a closer look of the comparison between the typical Apple Macbook and other similar Windows-operating PCs. Keeping in mind that all the data was collected from the official product’s websites. Choices are yours!

Apple’s Macbook ($999)

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache
2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB
13.3″ (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with support for millions of colors
250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive; optional 320GB or 500GB 5400-rpm drive
NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
iSight camera
Battery life: up to 10 hours per charge

Toshiba Satellite Pro L630 ($749)

Intel Core i3, 350M Processor
4GB DDR3 1066MHz memory
13.3″ Widescreen
320GB HDD (5400rpm)
Intel Integrated Graphics
Built in camera
Battery life: up to 4.5 hours per charge

Dell Latitude E6410 ($1,219)

Intel Core i3-370M Dual Core 2.40GHz 3MB
2.0GB, DDR3-1333 SDRAM, 1 DIMM
14.1″ WXGA(1280×800) Anti-Glare LED
250GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Intel HD Graphics with ExpressCard
Built in camera
Battery life: up to 5 hours per charge

Sony VAIO Y Series ($769.99)

Intel Core i3-330UM processor (1.20Hz)
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-800
13.3″ Widescreen
320GB Hard Disk Drive (5400rpm)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD
Built in camera
Battery life: up to 8 hours per charge

Hp ENVY 13 Series ($1,199.99)

Intel Core 2 Duo SL9300 (1.6GHz, 6MB L2 Cache)
3GB DDR3 System Memory (1 Dimm)
13.1″ diagonal High Definition LED HP Radiance Infinity Widescreen Display (1366×768)
250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 4330 Graphics
Built in camera
Battery life: up to 13 hours per charge

So Which Is Best For You?

Well, the sole purpose of this post is to show you all the facts about both companies, and let you decide. After all, the only person who knows you best is YOU!

I have given you a little overview on Apple and Microsoft’s histories, a glimpse on who was more successful and why, statistics on which is more popular and who is using what, and a detailed comparison on the features of similar products. Now, it is up to you to determine which company can cope with your needs and style.

Facts For Switching

If you are considering a switch, check out these two official articles from both Apple and Macintosh to help you decide. I advise that you read BOTH articles as they are both trying to persuade you to switch to their company!

Apple: Switch 101
Microsoft: PC vs Mac

Sources & Further Readings

Wikipedia: Macintosh
Wikipedia: Windows
Wiki Answers: Why does Microsoft Dominate the Market?
Markt Share: Operating System Market Share
Markt Share: OS Versions Market Share
Market Share: Movement for OS Versions
Apple: Business Profiles
Microsoft: Explore Windows
Hunch: Mac vs PC
Kelly Ford

Create Multiple Websites Under 1 Shared-Hosting Account

2012-02-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

Most shared-hosting package sticks with one domain per account; Some comes with 2-5 extra add-on domains; depends on the cost and specifications of your package.

What if you want to add more domains? The direct solution to this is – pay your hosting company more. Here’s a method to add more domains to your web hosting account without paying a penny. This technique allows you to achieve

Multiple domains, one website, one Share Hosting account – Example: Hongkiat.net, Hongkiat.org point back (redirect) to hongkiat.com
Multiple domains, few websites, one Share Hosting account (each with its own domain name)under a single shared-hosting account. – Example: Create websites like car-talk.com, phone-talk.com, etc under one shared-hosting account.

First and Foremost, Sign up with ZoneEdit (Free)

I’ll be using ZoneEdit, so first thing you need to do is to sign up an account with ZoneEdit if you ain’t have one.

What Is ZoneEdit

In short, ZoneEdit hosts your DNS, domains, emails (forwarding) for free. All you need to do is to point your domain’s DNS to ZoneEdit’s. Read more about ZoneEdit.

Multiple Domains, 1 Website, 1 Shared Hosting

This means hosting multiple domains, all pointing to one website on a shared hosting account. Let’s take my implementation for this example. I’ve recently bought few domains (hongkiat.net & hongkiat.org respectively), and ZoneEdit is going to help me point these domains back to hongkiat.com or hongkiat.com/blog

Login to ZoneEdit, click on Add Zones
Type in the new domain, and click Add Zone
You will be given 2 Nameservers Hosts and IPs. In my case, I’m given ns18.zoneedit.com (72.9.106.68) ns9.zoneedit.com (66.240.231.42 )
Open another browser, login to your Domain Control Panel. Look for Nameservers and replace existing ones with both ZoneEdit’s nameservers.
Back to ZoneEdit, click Edit Zone, and click the new added domain name.

Click Web Forward, type in your Destination URL. By default, domain with and without “www” will point to Destination URL unless you custom configure.
Done! It’ll take few minutes (some may take up to 1 day, depends on the Nameservers Update) before you can actually try it out. Upon success setting, typing “hongkiat.net” in browser will direct you to “hongkiat.com“

Multiple Domains, Multiple Website, 1 Shared Hosting

If you have a Shared Hosting account with plenty of GBs of space to kill, you can start few websites with different domains; hosting all of them under one Shared Hosting account although your web hosting company says only 1 add-on domain is allowed.

Create your website in another folder Create new folder to store your new website, get the Direct URL to that website. Direct URL here = Destination URL in ZoneEdit

Example:
If I create “phonesandgadgets” directly under “/public_html/hongkiat/”
My Direct URL will be http://www.hongkiat.com/phonesandgadgets/ Use ZoneEdit Follow steps listed inMultiple Domains, 1 Website, 1 Shared Hosting, BUT change the Destination URL. Done! Whenever you type in your new domain in the browser, it will call the content from where you’ve assigned. You can repeat this method to add more domain but still you will be restricted by:

Hosting Capacity – Determine your space allocations for each of these websites wisely
ZoneEdit free account – Each free account only allow 5 domains to be added.

6 Simple & Effective Ways To Speed Up Your Mac

2012-02-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

We are all impressed with the smooth running of the Apple Mac OS X as we compare with the contemporaryWindows OS like Vista or Windows 7. However, there are times when your Mac might be slowing down as you put in more stuffs in your hard drive and work the system hard. That is perhaps a good time to evaluate where the bottleneck could be and clear it.

In this post I’ll be sharing tips I found useful in speeding up the Mac. While most of the tips do not cost you extra bucks, they also help you to clean up your Mac to not only make it run fast like cheetah, but also keep it as powerful as lion. So spend some time to get really well with these tips, then you’ll be smiling happily as you run your Mac smoothly!

If you are not only looking to optimize your Mac but also seeking to optimize your workflow in Mac, below we’ve got posts with 200 useful applications introduced to you!

Mac: 100 Free Useful Applications (Part I)
Mac: 100 More Useful Applications (Part II)

And you can discover more about Mac in Hongkiat!

1. Clearing Your Desktop

Your desktop plays a part in how long it takes for you to boot the system because it’s the first screen that it has to load up. As much as possible, try to keep it simple by minimizing the number of icons from the dock and clearing up the amount of files you can see. You can either delete them or put them into folders so that the operating system doesn’t have to waste additional resources to load them upon starting your computer.

Doing this will take the toil away from your memory, especially if you’re using an older Mac system. This will not only ensure that your boot time will be shortened, but also improve the performance of your Mac in general.

2. Managing Startup Items

When you install some applications, they automatically configured your startup setting such that these applications would be loaded up when you boot up your Mac. Depending on your usage, such a setting can either make it convenient for you (if the first thing you want to do when you boot up is to use that application), or slow down the booting time with no additional convenience for yourself.

Leaving such applications can also draw some valuable resources away from your Mac such that it slows down the system. As much as possible, try to remove those which you rarely use. For Mac OS X Lion’s user, all you need to do is go to System Preferences > System > Users & Groups > Login Items, and uncheck the application(s) you want off from the startup.

3. Cleaning Up The Hard Drive

Mac operating system actually utilizes whatever free space you have on your hard drive as ‘virtual memory’, which plays a significant role in the performance. In other words, the more data you have in your hard drive, the lesser the amount of memory you would have for the smooth running of your applications. The obvious solution to a slow-running Mac operating system is to free up hard drive space to make room for the ‘virtual memory’.

I’m sure you know where to begin when you’re cleaning up your hard drive, such as emptying your Trash,removing rarely used applications, etc. Alternatively, you can also remove languages that you don’t usethrough programs like Monolingual. This would save at least several hundred megabytes of disk space. It may not be much, but why waste resources?

4. Monitor Your Activity Monitor

Sometimes you wouldn’t know what’s taxing your memory and slowing down the system in the process. This is where the Apple’s Activity Monitor comes in handy. You get to see the CPU usage, Random Access Memory (RAM) and virtual memory usage from the monitor, which the info will help greatly in optimizing your Mac!

When you notice that there’s a spike when you use certain applications, you can infer that these are the ones which are draining away your memory and making your system sluggish. That way, you can either choose to minimize your usage on these applications or make room in your memory like closing down other applications when you’re going to use them.

On top of that, the monitor lists down in details all the applications which are currently in use. You can see how much each application is eating up your CPU, real & virtual memory. You may choose to quit those that are consuming an awful lot of your system’s resources to speed things up.

If you need more explanations on the Activity Monitor, do check out this comprehensive guide.

5. Embrace Cleaning Utility Tools

Perhaps the most straightforward way to optimize your system’s performance is to run multifunction utility tool like OnyX. What it basically does is that it conducts system maintenance and cleaning functions to smoothen the running of your system. Temporary files stored as caches are cleared so that they don’t ‘jam’ up the performance of your system.

If your goal is to sustain a top-notch performing Mac, then such utility tools can be programmed to run as scheduled routines. This way, unnecessary files and browser history or any other cache files are regularly removed from your system so that it will run at its best most of the time. In fact, it is highly recommended that all Mac users do such consistent maintenance.

If OnyX doesn’t seem to cater to your maintenance needs, you can also try out others like CleanMyMac andMacKeeper.

6. Getting Hardware Upgrade

Worse comes to worse, if the above tips didn’t significantly improve your Mac’s performance to your liking, you can always consider purchasing hardware that would more or less guarantee a speed boost. This would, however, require you to throw money to resolve the issue, as compared to the previous tips which are all free.

Upgrading your RAM is probably the simplest way to ensure a faster computer. As compared to upgrading your processor, it is also much cheaper. If you only have one piece of RAM attached in your Mac, consider getting another one.

At the very least, your Mac should have a 2 GB RAM minimum, and 4 GB RAM is recommended for web designer who run premium graphic editor like Adobe Photoshop which eats up a lot of memory and hard drive space. If you are using 2GB/4GB ram and still finds it running slow, consider getting an additional 2 GB RAM that would logically speed up the performance by 50%. Of course, this depends on how much memory your Mac can support, so ask the professionals before you proceed.

Another alternative is to get a faster hard drive or use a Solid State Drive (SSD), but they don’t come cheap. One way is to get the SSD to run only your operating system and other applications, while leaving the other data on your old hard disk. Here is a good site on how to set up a SSD drive.

That’s all from us! What’s your personal secret to speeding up your Mac?

A Beginner’s Guide to Google Website Optimizer

2012-02-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

If you want to make real progress in increasing the conversion rates on your website, randomly trying different headlines, images, and other elements on your pages and crossing your fingers isn’t going to get you very far. You need something that can give you real data about what’s working and what’s not.

Even better is a free tool that can manage your conversion testing. Leave it to Google to provide just such a tool:Website Optimizer.

What is Google Website Optimizer?

Google Website Optimizer is a free tool for creating experiments for conversion rate testing. You set up experiments for various elements on your pages and then Google randomly serves the different versions of your pages to real visitors who come to your website.

There are huge advantages to this method of testing over other sites that test your pages with people who may or may not fall into your target market. With Google Website Optimizer, you know that the people who are participating in these tests are your target market (or at least your target visitor).

A/B Testing vs. Multivariate Testing

Website Optimizer allows for both A/B testing and multivariate testing. With an A/B test, you test two versions of the same page. This is a great option if you want to test two completely different designs or layouts.

Multivariate tests can test multiple elements on your pages simultaneously. This is the way to go if you want to test multiple headlines, calls-to-action, images, or other elements (or all of the above). It saves time to take this route if you have a lot of elements to test, rather than doing them one-at-a-time in A/B tests.

What Should My Conversion Rate Be?

So you’ve figured out what kind of test to run, but I’m sure a you’re wondering what your conversion rate should be. Some of you probably have an idea already, as you know you need a certain conversion rate to take the next step in your business. For those who don’t have a clue, though, I offer this simple rule:

Your conversion rate should be double your current conversion rate or 10%, whichever is higher. So if you’re only converting 1% of your current visitors, you should be converting 10%. If you’re already converting 10%, you should be converting 20%.

If you’re already converting a lot higher than 20% of your visitors, you may not be able to double your conversion rate, though it’s still a good goal to have. And if you’re already converting over 50% of your visitors, then what are you doing reading this article?

Don’t forget that KISSmetrics has powerful tools for tracking your sales funnel and figuring out just where visitors are getting hung up.

What Do I Test

Now that you’ve got your conversion rate goal in hand, it’s time to start figuring out what you should test. The answer is both simple and complicated. There are a lot of possible things you can test:

The size and position of your logo
The size, position, and color of your headline
The overall color scheme of your page
Headlines and call to actions
The body copy (including both the copy itself and the size and font used)
The layout
Images used and how many to use (this is especially important for product pages)
The call(s) to action
Related products (how many to show, where to show them, how to show them)
The length and field labels of any forms on the page

I’m sure you could come up with more than that if you look at your pages. It’s going to be different for each site, but deciding what to test is an integral part of running a successful test. If you’re still not sure or want more ideas, check out these two articles: Top 50 Google Website Optimizer Tips on What to Test and 64 Tips for Getting Started with Google Website Optimizer.

Shouldn’t I Just Start Somewhere? Anywhere?

You hear this all the time: just dive in and start testing! It doesn’t matter what you test, just start testing!

Sorry, but that’s wrong.

That’s like getting hungry, walking into a grocery store and grabbing the first thing you see. Sure, it might be something you like, something that will give your body the energy it needs, or it might be those plastic corn cob holder things. And what are you going to do with those in December?

Think through what you want to test in terms of where you can have an impact. Make sure you’re testing the right pages (most likely your landing page, homepage, or product page, at least initially). Make sure you’re testing the right elements on those pages (your footer likely has little impact on whether someone makes a purchase, so why spend time optimizing that first?). The point here is to increase conversions. To do that you need to test things that actually have an impact on your conversion rate!

Deciding Where to Start

The best way to figure out what to start testing first is to look at your current conversion funnel. You likely have a homepage or landing page, some sort of product page, and a shopping cart page(s). So which page is bleeding visitors the worst? If 70% of people aren’t making it past your homepage, start there. If you’re losing half your visitors at the shopping cart, then test and optimize that first.

It only makes sense to optimize the worst areas first, as that’s where you stand to gain the most.

Brainstorm

Once you know what pages to test, and possibly what elements, it’s time to brainstorm the possible variables. Come up with half a dozen alternate headlines or calls-to-action. Then pick the best ones and test those (or test all the ones you came up with). Look for different images to use on the page and add those to the test.

Remember, Website Optimizer will handle the serving of all these things, so once your experiment is set up, you don’t need to manage dozens of different page versions. It’s easier to set them all up in one test than it is to run additional tests over the course of weeks or months.

One thing to keep in mind is that very similar test variables tend to provide inconclusive results. You’re better off trying out radically different variables instead of variables where only a word or two is changed.

How to Set Up Your Tests

As already mentioned, Website Optimizer has two different testing methods: multivariate testing and A/B testing. They have technical guides for setting up each kind of test, and either you’ll need some basic knowledge of HTML (and access to your site’s code) or you’ll have to get help from someone who does. You can find the A/B testing technical details here, and the multivariate ones here.

But setting aside the technical details, how do you run a test with Website Optimizer?

The first step is to decide what you’re going to test and the alternatives you’re going to use. You should have already completed these steps based on the information above. Select your test page and your conversion page (what the final destination should be, such as a receipt page or a confirmation page).

Next you’ll want to set up the content to test. Remember that trying radically different variables is likely going to give you more conclusive results than slight variations. So your original call-to-action might be something like, “How can we improve?” and your new one might be “Tell us your ideas”. Effectively, you’re saying the same thing, but in two completely different ways.

Website Optimizer gives you the option to limit the test group to a certain percentage of your website’s visitors. This isn’t recommended, though, as it not only takes longer for the test to run and can give you less meaningful results. This is especially true for pages with lower traffic numbers.

When your test is set up in Website Optimizer, you’ll have to insert the code it gives you into your test pages before the tests can run. After that, all you have to do is wait for the results!

10 Tips for Making the Most of Website Optimizer

Don’t just focus on completed sales or sign-ups. Focus on getting visitors from one page of your conversion funnel to the next. Making small gains at each step along the way can result in big gains in the end.
Don’t overlook site wide tests, too. Try testing things like your header, navigation, or search feature to see if they make noticeable gains to your conversion rates. Improving overall usability almost always has a positive effect on visitor satisfaction.
Consider segmenting your visitors to serve different tests for different kinds of users. You can do this based on things like the traffic source, the country or location the user is coming from, and more.
If in doubt, test. Can’t decide between two different headline options? Is your company split over which image to use? End arguments with coworkers and others by testing out different ideas in the real world.
Try what your competitors are doing. If your competition is trying out a new website design or sales style, why not try something similar and see if it actually works better?
Run simultaneous tests. It saves time, which in turn means you can get your optimized page up and running for all your visitors much faster.
Test big changes. We’ve already talked about testing radically different versions of elements on your page. But why not test radically different page all together? You might be pleasantly surprised with radically improved conversion rates!
Don’t run your test for too long. Website Optimizer will let you run tests for as long as you want. But there’s really no point in running a test for longer than a couple of weeks, at most. All you’re doing with longer tests is opening up your results to normal fluctuations, or influences based on what your competitors are doing. (Obviously if your biggest competitor runs a huge sale, you may see a drop in your sales, but you don’t want to make changes based on those kinds of influences.)
Make sure you have your goals clarified before you start. This goes beyond just your conversion rate. What are your company’s long-term marketing and positioning goals? Make sure your tests are reinforcing those things, and not deviating from them.
Test regularly. Tastes change. The economy improves or declines. New products emerge. Make it a point to test new ideas and improvements on a regular basis. And especially test out new ideas if you see a sudden drop (or even a steady decline) in your conversion rates. Better to test some alternatives when your sales are only off by 1% rather than waiting until they’re off by 10%.

Guide To A/B Testing With Google Website Optimizer

2012-02-21T23:53:00.000-08:00

To generate more conversions on your website you’ll have to look into traffic statistics. Google Analytics is a fantastic service, but it can only go so far. The concepts behind A/B testing are sound and have been used within professional Internet marketing for years.

Basically you would create 2 pages with slightly different content: headers, images, and other stuff you want to test out. Google Web Optimizer will tally all your total visitors and split traffic between both pages evenly. Stats are provided regarding the total number of conversions onto a landing page, so you are able to compare which changes are leading to more signups. The service actually ties directly into Analytics, which is a huge bonus.

To get started check out website optimizer’s official page and sign into your account. We will be taking a detailed look at the GWO interface and how you should go about setting up a new A/B experiment.

Website Optimizer – Layout Overview

Once you first land on the GWO home screen you’ll be presented with a table of current experiments. If this is your first visit it’ll likely be empty, for now. Check in the top right corner for your account e-mail address to confirm you’re properly logged in.

Directly beneath this is a drop-down menu of all your Google Analytics website profiles. If you have verified yourself on each one they will be accepted into the website optimizer software. Simply click and select the profile you want to create tests for and GWO will refresh the page data automatically.

In the sidebar you’ll also notice some potentially helpful guides and FAQs for beginners. These can be helpful if you have some time for reading. But for now let’s get started and jump right into the process and we can learn as we go. Click on Create a New Experiment to proceed.

A/B Vs Multivariate Tests

When you first go to create an experiment Google will ask you to choose between A/B and multivariate testing. These terms are likely to scare you off but I promise they’re not difficult to understand.

With an A/B setup you can test 2 different versions of the same page. This option is best attributed to when you are testing totally different layouts for the same page. Multivariate is a bit softer where you just want to update a few key areas. Maybe you want to change the header text and color of your download button, or rearrange some advertisement banners.

From the visitor’s perspective it won’t appear as anything strange has happened. With either method Google will automatically calculate traffic throughout the day to split visitors as evenly as possible between your variable pages and the original.

What Are Your Goals?

You should pause for a bit to think about your goals before moving onto the next step. Most webmasters going through A/B tests are looking to increase conversions from their web traffic. This could be gaining signups for a newsletter, mailing list, user registrations, Twitter/Facebook followers, or any handful of other user actions. But you should have your own idea of “success” which pertain to your own web goals.

The Google team has actually published a large number of tutorial videos onto YouTube. These are fairly extensive yet also lengthy. I recommend you check out the tutorials list just to see if anything jumps out. The important thing is you take your time and plan out decisions logically.

Realistically the multivariate testing experiment is a foolproof method for demoing small changes. We should choose this option for our current experiment setup, but if you’d rather test out A/B the menus are very similar.

Creating The New Experiment

First off we need to enter a name for this new experiment. Then directly underneath this form input the URL leading to the page you want to run tests on. In many cases this would just be your home page. But you can get more creative, such as checking how many visitors onto your contact page will actually send a message.

The third field requires a conversion page URL where you hope to move your visitors after they take some action on the original page. This pertains to the goals discussed earlier since you’ll need some method for testing the success or failure of the new design. The conversion link could even be a page off the navigation. Just stick to something easy for now. To get a few ideas check this Google support article focused on dynamic content within WSO experiments.

JavaScript And Page Sections

With this page all set hit Next to get the JavaScript code for your new experiment. These two blocks need to be added onto the test page and the conversion page, respectively. Google recommends you place the JS blocks within the <head> element, but anywhere in the code should work.

You’ll also need to use special script tags to define each editable area or section of your testing page. This is content which will be dynamically altered through Google WO. You can even segment a few different sections within just 1 testing page. I added an example bit of code below to give you a better idea of this process.

view plain copy to clipboard print ?

<script>utmx_section("FeaturedImage")</script>
<noscript>
<div id="featured-image"><img src="images/1/myimg.png" /></div>
</noscript>

And now back in GWO click the “Validate pages” button. If everything looks good Google will move you through into the next step. Otherwise you’ll be given specific error messages and cues about how to finish the validation process. Note that if you’re having trouble online try creating two local HTML files instead. GWO will let you upload an offline version of the pages just as a test-run.

Designing Variable Content

Since we are using the multivariate test I want to make just a few changes to my homepage. More specifically with a goal to increase conversions onto my videos page. To accomplish this I want to include a sidebar banner above the fold, and maybe a bold text link at the end of my navigation.

I’ve drafted a small list below with a few more ideas. You should try to implement just a few ideas at a time and let these run for 1-2 weeks. It’s always good to come back and change up the styles anyway, and you’ll receive more targeted data based on the smaller changes over time.

New Logo colors, size, position on page (grabs the users’ attention)
Removal or replacement of banner advertising for more clicks
Buttons used to convert users – signup, download, purchase, register, etc.
Web page copy (text on the page) can effect visitor mindset
Frequency, style, and colors of images and page graphics
Flashy JavaScript/jQuery effects for flashy animations or dynamic content
New icons, gradients, tab bars, or in general updated user interface elements

Studies have found that radical changes far supersede the value of minute changes. So if you are going to update parts of the layout do it big! Website Optimizer page sections are setup so that you never delete content, and all your experiment changes are temporary if you choose. But if the differences between page 1 and 2 are barely noticeable your tests will likely return sub-par results.

Replacing Sections In HTML

For each area defined via the script tags you’ll be able to check out and edit the code right from within GWO. After you pass validation the next step will display a table of all your page sections. You can now create as many alternate forms to the HTML as you feel necessary. These will be included in the next A/B test run so make sure you preview everything first!

It’s also important to note how each section really works. You can make edits on this one page to many different sections, but for each duplicate variation (such as 4 different logos) website optimizer will have to break this up and evenly distribute pageviews among your visitors. So it is best to limit 1-2 edits per section for cleaner results – and remember you can add virtually unlimited sections per one(1) single variation page.

To begin making edits press the Add new variation link found to the left of the code box. This creates duplicate HTML content which you can then edit to your liking. The brilliance here is that none of your original HTML code is being edited – everything is replaced dynamically through Website Optimizer.

Final Review And Launch

After much hard work and dedication we’ve finally completed the setup! There are a number of steps in this process, so it’s easy to get lost with so many features. Double-check each of the settings on this page to ensure you’ve put everything in properly.

At the bottom you’ll find a Launch button to confirm and publish this experiment. If everything goes well you should see a success message at the top of the screen. New links also appear directly underneath your experiment headline after it publishes. You can now pause/stop the experiment at any time, or also copy the settings into a new experiment which may save you time in building a few different tests.

This process for setting up an A/B test instead of multivariate differs only slightly. Instead of editing parts on a page you simply provide an alternate URL which Google will split traffic between. Then GWO will check how many conversions each page can generate(you still need to add JavaScript). I mostly prefer to work with multivariate testing, but give both setups a try to see which fits best for your conversion goals.

Juggling Multiple Experiments

Now that we’ve covered the process of creating a new experiment I want to explain the experiments view. This is also the Website Optimizer default home page view where you land initially. As you pause and stop older tests their status is changed and sorted accordingly in the experiments table.

Additionally you are given some metrics to work with for each experiment setup. Page visitors is counting the total number of unique visits between all different pages. The conversions are how many visitors follow through onto your chosen conversion page, and next to this you’ll see the percentage out of your total visitors.

Website optimizer is possibly the best free tool for an Internet marketers’ own curiosity. If you don’t have a reason to track conversions then A/B testing will seem utterly pointless. It’s also true that you should be generating a fair amount of traffic, at least 60k+ uniques/month to see a noticeable impact with any experiments.

But even on smaller websites GWO is still useful to a degree. Don’t feel the requirement to base all your design intuition on traffic analytics. But if you’re even a bit curious I recommend jotting down a few ideas to brainstorm and setup later on. Below I have constructed a list of links and resources online to learn more about Google WO.

50 Freelance Job Sites For Designers & Programmers – Best Of

2012-02-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

Being a freelancer can be extremely advantageous and it is probably a dream for many designers and developers. Not only you get to choose the job you are really interested in, you also have total flexibility in terms of time, whom you want to work with and where you want to work at.

However, there is always a flip side of a coin. What happens when if you are out of jobs suddenly? This following article is dedicated to designers and developers who wanted to achieve financial freedom in freelancing. We showcase a list of 50 Best Freelance Job Sites and you might want to go through to see if you’ve missed some of them. If you a company or individual looking to outsourcing or hire, these following sites might come in handy too. Full list after jump.

GetAFreelancer

Bag a project or post a project on this platform to get the best bids from gamut of skilled web designers, copywriters or freelance programmers. Provide work or get work at the best prices. Sign up today as a work provider or a work seeker. A word of caution – Stay alert before trusting anyone as there are a lot many fraudsters as well, on both sides.

RentACoder

Rent a coder is a website where a software developer can get plenty of jobs there and in return can earn plenty of money. This is perfectly a legit site and the fact that it is only a medium for giving work to interested hunters makes it tempting.

EU Freelance

Eufreelance will help you find new customers around the globe. Submit a project and get the best possible price from skilled developers in India, Ukraine, Russia, Romania and other countries. Eufreelance is targetting the biggest market in the world with buyers from Europe and sellers from the whole world.

Odesk

Since its inception in 2004, this online marketplace truly embarked a revolution in the way world works. It’s win-win approach for both service providers and employers with meaningful work as well as top-flight talent, makes it an asset for both parties. Average size of a job here is $5,000.

Project4hire

This freelance marketplace offers an array of opportunities to contractors and thereby require them to pay a small amount as a commission to tech site, on being awarded a project. Apart from this, it is easy to use and a great platform to post projects and find freelance professionals like coders, consultants, graphic designers, software developers.

Scriptlance

Get access to thousands of designers and programmers with immense in-depth knowledge about an array of programming languages, ranging from Joomla, C++ to SEO requirements.

GetACoder

The growth of a business is decided by the resources that it is able to explore and access, to get the competitive advantage. Save costs and enhance efficiencies by outsourcing your programming, writing and web designing jobs to the right people at this famous online freelance portal.

Digitalpoint Forum

Aside from being a very useful forum for webmaster, Digitalpoint is also an extremely strategic place where you can outsource work and seek relevant freelance professionals.

Smashing Jobs

A great thing about posting your job at this site is that the jobs listed here are soon featured among one of the top 20 blogs of the world. This is again a nice job portal to find programming and designing jobs, besides all others.

Elance

A famous online portal for freelancers, this is an ultimate place to meet professionals with business, technical and marketing expertise to get work done at an affordable price.

Sitepoint Marketplace

Sitepoint is a well-known paid webmaster forum. Looking to hire category providers a marketplace where you can find freelancers or clients from different industries and different countries.

Simply Hired

This online job portal allows you to find all kinds of jobs, whether freelance or full-time, based on your location, skills and experience in the field.

Metafilter Jobs

Search and share jobs with other members of the site and mark the distance of your job from you, based on the latitude/latitude entered in your profile.

Problogger Jobs

If you are also one of the blogging enthusiasts, who has or who wishes to explore the income potential of this fun-filled hobby of ‘blogging,’ problogger.net is your right choice. Collaborate with other bloggers, share experiences and take your blogs to great heights. The jobs section of this blog can land you with several blogging jobs that pays you well along with enjoying what you love to do.

Dice

Dice is a job search engine dedicated to only finding technology jobs. It offers a targeted niche space for finding exactly the technology position you might be looking for. Dice also offers advice on writing resumes and obtaining IT certification, as well as a variety of discussion forums.

Guru

Like other freelance websites, this is another of the sources to find the indutry’s most ultimate professionals from world over. However, safer way to pay through Escrow gives this site an edge over other freelance sites. From business, creative arts to technology, select your favorite category and get started.

99designs

If you like to draw and your drawings are good and you want to earn from it, you can try your hand at 99Designs. 99Designs, basically is a site where various companies fulfill their need of designing their logos, banners, websites etc. They just give you the information about the background of their company, its ideas and goals. The designers use these facts and design logos or whatever is required by the company. If the contest holding company likes the job, it awards the designer with the pre specified prize money.

Behance Job

Find productivity and creativity go hand in hand at the job list section of this site that claims to ‘make ideas happen.’ This exclusive site is known to convert creativity into lucrative services or products to promote unique ideas.

Mistersoft Freelancing

Your needs may encompass a flash designer, a copywriter, a SEO manager, a coder, a data entry expert or any other professional, find the best of the lot at this amazing site for freelancers.

37signals Jobs

37signals job board provides a wide array of content from many geographies. If you’re looking to hire programmers and designers from around the U.S., 37signals looks like a site worth dipping your feet into.

Bixee

This hybrid job portal also form a part of Ibibo, which is a famous Indian social networking platform. Hence, you can find suitable jobs and research innovative content at the same time.

Jobs On Webdesignerwall

Design Jobs on the Wall — a job board managed by Web Designer Wall, where creative professionals come to find job opportunities. When you post your job here, it will be instantly featured on Web Designer Wall and others network sites where designers will see it. Due to website strong following, Web Designer Wall appears on loads of online portals and design publications.

Coroflot

Coroflot is an employment site for creative professionals – design firms post job openings and designers post portfolios – Coroflot makes the connection. Career and hiring advice, portfolio tips, how to find a design job and design salary surveys make Coroflot a valuable resource for the design community.

Freelanceswitch Jobs

Catering to the demands of all freelance professionals, this site is not just another place to find projects or seek the best of the manpower. Instead, it also serves as an information bank for freelancers and clients, providing them tips for easy and beneficial dealing as well as a healthy and interactive work environment.

Designm.Ag

Array of designers and developers can now find full-time or freelance jobs all over the world in just a few clicks. Thank to Designm, talented professionals of the industry are now paid for what they are worth of and no longer have to toil to bag a handful of small and not-so-lucrative projects.

Lime Exchange

Making the ends meet between freelance talent and small or big scale businesses all over the world, Limeexchange allows professionals to not only find lucrative opportunities or get work done but also interact with one another at QnA platform and share recommendations and tips globally, about their respective industries.

Crowd Spring

What makes Crowdspring different is that it doesn’t feel like a marketplace. You’re not trying to outbid each other with a better price. You’re not competing against others who have a better portfolio. How you approach a project, and how creative you really are is what can get you that project. You still get to compete with others, but it’s a healthy kind of competition. You put up your design to win the project, and not your price.

IFreelance

Your need may be of an experienced professional or an affordable novice, this is the place to find the top-notch photographers, web designers, proofreaders, data entry, bookkeeping and other such skilled freelancers. Freelancers are also free to choose projects that cater to their interest. What more? You need not bother to pay commissions to any mediator.

People Per Hour

Based on the simple bidding system, hire efficient freelancers here and enjoy the on-demand flexibility while saving money at the same time. Marketing, legal, accounting, writing, programming are some of the most common industry types covered by this site.

Krop

Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. Whether you’re looking for job, or hunting top-notch talent, Krop’s simple and powerful tools are geared towards connecting the worlds brightest minds with the best companies.

Sologig

Bridging the gap between experienced employees and qualified employers, this site is known to have the best talent in varied industries. You can seek both part-time and full-time contracts as well as consulting opportunities that nurture your talent further while filling your pockets.

Joomlancers

All Joomla professionals an now jump with joy as here is the site that caters to different work aspects of Joomla. Come and find work that adds more to your credibility as a Joomla professional and also reward you with a great sum.

Journalism Jobs

This is your best pick if your industry type is journalism and you wish to associate with a magazine, news group, radio, TV or any other type of media. Besides, you may also stay updated with the latest happenings of the industry with the news feeds and articles that are uploaded on the site.

Authentic Jobs

Creative and web professionals can seek reputed full-time and freelance opportunities here and get associated with well-known names of the industry like Sony BMG, HBO, HP, Facebook and many more.

GoFreelance

Now it’s easy to market your freelance services and find all the business you need to succeed. Gofreelance have thousands of jobs in database, with fresh contracts and projects being added daily. So kickstart your work-at-home career by signing up for the free edition of The Freelance Job Report to get: Hot jobs and cool projects emailed to you daily and a free 10-day course: ‘The Secrets of Freelance Success’.

Freelance Designers

Industrial designer, advertising design, video production, architects, SEO, web designers and programmers are the primary categories at this job site for freelancers. Divided to precision into several sub categories, you can find your relevant category under the above listed major categories, to seek or provide suitable work.

LogoMyWay

Get an ideal logo designed for your company or website here. Let thousands of eminent professionals compete to get rewarded with your offered sum and in turn provide you gamut of logo choices to choose from. The minimum amount for which you can host a contest here is $200.

Freelancer.Co.Uk

Empowered by Escrow, this is another reliable site for freelancers. Get started from the marketplace or open or participate in contests, this exclusive site also contains several unusual categories like sourcing & manufacturing, multimedia & media, child care and system administration along with the famous freelance categories such as writing, translation, photography and others.

AllFreelanceWork

This is a true freelancers den with relevant portfolio creation and job site, all available at one place. In short, you learn as you earn.

Pro-Freelance

Pro-Freelance is a platform where freelancers can find all freelance projects from most important sites and the projects owners can find best experts at the best price. you can also freely propose your services on our classified page.

FreelanceWebmarket

Thousands of freelance programmers web designers web developers and many other proffesionals from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and many other countries, expose your ad to 1000s of professionals. You can outsource worldwide or require professional from your country on FreelanceWebmarket and cut your expenses just paying a small fee.

WordPress Freelance

WordPress is indeed the best blog hosting site. Come and get your wordpress blog designed and programmed by eminent professionals of the field.

FreelanceWriting

As the name suggests, this site is a hub for those earning a living by writing. From reading tips on different writing styles, participation in writing contests to finding the high end freelance writing projects and career options available to writers, you can find it all here. This is what we call freelancing with a difference.

Php-Freelancers

Php-Freelancers is a “One stop ” full service site where a Service buyer can post a project for free and have one of Php-Freelancers highly skilled freelancer’s competitively bid on your projects. Php-Freelancers offers you the confidence that our freelancer’s can meet your project needs no matter how small or large the project is.

Webdirections Jobs

Another online job portal dedicated to web professionals, here you can find jobs at full-time, freelance, part-time or even contractual basis.

Jsninja Jobs

A great site to apply for jobs in US, UK, Canada and other such developed countries. You may also findfreelance work here in the fields for developers, designers and writers.

Bidhire

With no freelancer or buyer costs, bidhire gains an upper hand as compared to several other websites like Scriptlance, Elance and many others that charge a sign up fee from buyers and freelancers to post projects or start bidding respectively.

DesignCrowd

DesignCrowd is a graphic design marketplace that gives creative people opportunities. Businesses can post Open Brief Design Contests or Request Quotes for logo design, business card design, advertising artwork and website design.

Freelance-Projects

Freelance-Projects can be a great resource to help you mine for the experts you need to complete your next project. You can do this by simply using their search engine to find posted projects that are similar to what you are wanting to do or those that require the same technologies or programming language expertise that are required for your project.

Programmer Meet Designer

This is quite a unique online job portal, made exclusively for programmers and designers. Here, professionals from the two industries can collaborate with one another and share ideas to create websites that outperform all others, in design and functionality.

FreelancingJob

Webmasters need to have several jobs put together to frame a compelling website. This includes copy-writing, website designing, coding, web developer and several others. Find them all at this emerging online platform.

FreshWebJobs

FreshWebJobs is an online listing of web jobs. It is a site with a simple purpose and simple web site. It is well-designed, letting you know upfront how many jobs exist in different categories. It is still very young website, but very perspective. Currently are available 24 jobs.

AllDevJobs

This site caters to all kinds of professionals who belong to the development and designing jobs in some way or the other. Again, both freelance and full-time jobs are up for grab.

60 Creative Flash Websites You Should Not Miss

2012-02-18T23:59:00.000-08:00

Flash has been around for ages; from the days of Macromedia Flash to Adobe’s acquisition. It is a platform that opens up a whole new room of opportunities and possibilities how website can be presented.

Despite the fact that Flash has limitations like SEO-unfriendly, plug-in required, slow loading (sometimes), etc, it is still one of the best approaches to create interactive websites that will impress your visitors. In today’s post we’ve collected 60 really creative Flash websites created by expert Flash developers all over the world. Take a look, your inspiration could start from here.

Enjoy!