Webmasters Gallery

A new month, a new set of WordPress plugins that add nice features to your WP blog.

1. Sociable – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

This plugin adds social bookmarking and networking image/links to your posts, which allows your visitors and readers to submit them to their favorite one. Gives you a nice list of ~100 social bookmarking sites.

2. Broken Link Checker – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

I found this plugin the other day, and I must say it’s a must have. It will scan your ENTIRE blog detecting every single outgoing link and will put them in a work queue which will test them to see if they are broken or not, and then alert you to broken links/images and redirect URLs. It’s a great way to clean up your blog of links that lead to dead sites.

3. All in One SEO Pack – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

A must have plugin for any blog that wants to excel in the search engines. It will automatically rewrite your meta description and keywords fitting each post giving you the best SEO gains. The best and most downloaded plugin for WordPress to date.

4. CommentLuv – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commentluv/

A great way to give back to your readers, by allowing the ability for a commenters recent post to appear under their comment. I’ve been using this plugin for awhile now, and I’m proud to support it. You can signup on the official site at http://www.commentluv.com/ to get even more great features. This plugin is suggested to use with the DoFollow plugin for even more luv.

5. Akismet – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

Packaged with the default WordPress core files, this plugin serves as protection against the thousands of bots and people that like to spam comments on blogs on the internet. It will cross check  a persons comment against their database to determine if it’s spam or not, and will automatically place detected spam into your Spam comments section where you can review each comment to make sure it’s really spam. The accuracy rate is pretty good, as of right now I am getting a 95.67% accuracy rate for my Akismet.

admin Others, Webmasters Resources

John Gunther has released GChart 2.5, a client-side library that adds a new canvas-rendering option for sharper, better looking, alpha-transparent, pie, line, and area charts.

John told us:

    “Canvas-rendering corrects GChart’s most serious visual quality limitations (including the most often mentioned problem by its users: the banded-filled pie slice).

    Coupled with its existing feature set and ease of GWT integration, the canvas-rendering option makes GChart an excellent choice for those who want to add basic charts to a GWT application without a lot of fuss.

    To access these features, you’ll need to plug an external canvas library into GChart (GWTCanvas in the gwt-incubator is reccommended) as described in detail in the setCanvasFactory method.

    With the external canvas in place, the next step is to tell GChart you want a curve to be “continuously filled” by invoking setFillSpacing(0).

    With each such continuously filled curve, GChart automatically exploits your external canvas library to improved the quality and speed of that curve’s rendering. Specifically, banded-filled pie slices become solid filled, dotted connecting lines become continuously connected, and (the biggest stretch) bar charts become area charts. See the setFillSpacing method’s javadocs for a detailed description of how each existing symbol type implements this new “continuously-filled”, canvas-powered, rendering option.

    Note that GChart’s previous HTML-only rendering is still available, and is the default rendering mode if you don’t bother to plug in an external canvas.

admin Others, Social Media

Internet usage measurement and marketing service providers Com Score recently reported that total global Internet users aged 15 and older who access the internet from home and work computers surpassed 1 billion for the first time in December 2008 based on data accumulated by them.

Top 15 countries ranked by Internet population:

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million
11. Canada: 21.8 million
12. Italy: 20.8 million
13. Spain: 17.9 million
14. Mexico: 12.5 million
15. Netherlands: 11.8 million

admin Others, Webmasters Resources

 

As freelancers, we’re often only limited by our imagination, so it can be difficult to see whether we are progressing in our given field. Sure, we can produce some great logo designs or write an article, but we were able to do that a few months ago as well. In order to stand out in a sea of talent, it’s often the case that you need to take your skills to the “next level,” something far easier said than done.

Today I want to look at plateaus in terms of ability, and four tried and tested methods to help you get through them. The journey of mastery is an on-going process, but there are lots of ways to improve our talents along the way.

1 — Slow Down

I’m not sure if this is common across the board, but I can have periods of a few weeks or more when I’m really productive, I’m firing on all cylinders, and everything is going smoothly. Then, for no known reason, I’ll start putting things off, focusing on the easy work so I can skip the hard and checking my email just to feel busy.

Put simply, the dreaded p-word kicks in. Yeah, you know the one…procrastination.

This type of slowing down is usually due to a lack of self-discipline, and not what I’m referring too here. Instead, in order to improve your skills, one effective technique is to stop rushing through your work habitually, and slow down to focus on specific actions.

Once World Champion speed-typist, Albert Tangora, would intentionally type at half his normal speed for a few weeks whenever he hit a plateau. He took time to get the feel for what he was doing, and once he started pushing himself again, he found that he easily broke his previous records.

Improving your skills isn’t always about frantically trying to push your limits further and further. Sometimes it’s good to slow down, really focus on what you are doing and take everything in.

There are lots of ways you can implement this ’slowing down’ into your routine, depending on what you do:

• Chase the smaller, easier clients for a while instead of the big fish
• Write your articles slowly, with more care and attention
• Obsess over your lines of code and really force yourself to think about what you are doing

The aim here is to try to turn-off the auto-pilot and concentrate on specific actions at a slower speed. You may only need to do this for a very short time-frame to notice improved results.

2 — Go Back to Basics

The process we have each used to build our current ability is quite honestly, just a case of trial and error. Our mind stores our successful actions and over time these successes become natural. You can look at driving to see a good example of this. Once you have been driving a car for a while, you don’t need to think about when to use the clutch or change gear, you just know.

One of the reasons we can hit a plateau (or at least feel like we have) is because we have forgotten what it feels like to succeed. We’ve forgotten what it is like to notice our own improvements and achieve things we have never thought possible. We’re often lacking, what scientists call (seriously), the winning feeling.

The winning feeling is simply an emotion we get when we accomplish certain tasks. This is a huge necessity for beginners, but when you’re very advanced in your field, it can be hard to know that you’re improving. It’s often the case that the better we get at something, the more critical we become of our own work; practically eliminating this winning feeling from our realities.

Just for a while, try going back to basics so you can re-live this winning feeling in your chosen field. Write a simple program that you know will do its job, create a website design that doesn’t have any fancy features or write a basic article for a directory that nobody will see. Go back to basics and recall what it is like to prosper.

When you return to your more important tasks, you can start to see how far you really have progressed.

3 — Practice

I know this point is fairly obvious, but obvious just means most are aware of it, not that it is bad. “Practice makes perfect” has to be one of the most common phrases in the English language and for good reason, it’s true.

I recently read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and while he missed out one very important point, it was packed with fascinating information. One point that really struck a chord with me were all the examples of talented and successful individuals (in their field) who had spent at least 10,000 hours honing their skills. (10,000 hours, by the way, equates to working on your talent: 5 hours per day, 7 days per week, for just less than 5 and a half years).

What really interested me was that when looking at current professionals such as violinists and pianists, there was not one exception to the rule. There was nobody who appeared to have some God-given talent and didn’t need to practice that much; they all had to put an extreme number of hours in to get where they were.

I think that this in itself really shows the power of practice.

4 — Look at Finished Results

I am under no illusion that I still have a long way to go in order to improve my skills as a writer, but I have definitely progressed a lot over the last few years. One thing that I can recall being very closely linked to my improvements as a writer is when I started to read more books.

I read about one book every week and whether I enjoyed the content or not, I always felt that even just looking at different styles of writing helps me to better my own. This doesn’t just have to be an idea that writers can use though, far from it.

If you’re a designer, look at logo design books or CSS galleries. If you write Facebook applications, look at the developer forums to see how people are doing things or try to dissect what is already out there. Whatever field it is that you are in, take time to look at the end results from other talent, and you’ll no doubt be inspired to improve your own.

If you keep doing this you’ll start to begin to define what is good to you versus the type of work you wouldn’t want to produce, and then use those good examples to benefit your own output.

admin Others, Tips and Tutorials

Tweet or Comment: That is The Question
Not too long ago, I was sitting in the office thinking to myself that I would be doing more service to all of you if I talked about cooler things that would make you go “Hmm” - things that kind of ramble in my head during the day that really could spark a conversation with all of you. More than just the pointing of tutorials and industry news, though you’ll still be getting those anyway. That got me thinking about the entire Is Photography Art? conversation we had a couple of days ago - and while I got a couple of cool comments.. I got more tweets from my Twitter account on it (Follow me on Twitter here). Now, I happen to think that -both- are essential in the grand scheme of things on a blog, but it made me ponder the question: Are comments considered more important than tweets? If you’re considering working a blog I think its worth examining both and drawing your own conclusion.

Commenting on Comments
Let’s take a look at comments- both positive and negative on a blog. You spend some time writing about something you think is interesting and inspiring and you post it. A few hours later, you get some comments in and you’re overjoyed at the fact that someone replied! What does that give you? I believe Comments can be broken down into the following types: The “Pump-You-Up”, The “Know-It-All”, and “The Troll”. Yes there are some obvious exceptions to the rule, and creating a blog with that community is possible.. but we’ll talk about that in a later post. Let’s deal with these 3 first:

The “Pump-You-Up”:
Mostly a “Thank you for saying that” “That’s awesome” “Cheers to you” “I think you rock” as feedback. While this comment is always appreciated because it shows how much someone values what you do, it can be short lived. Think the crash of a candy bar… before you know it, you can spend your time on the blog -waiting- for the affirmation of 150 comments to come in, and you’ll declare anything less a failure on your creative part. In the end, you didn’t create your blog for the immediate adoration of the public, you created it to share a passion, an idea, and in the process of it.. try to make something out of it- some fame.. some money through advertising or promotion, or what have you.. These can be turned into powerful allies, and there are great examples of it on the net.

There are two other types, how it compares to Tweets, a cool tutorial listing, and the contest winners.. all waiting for you at the Read More section. Click below to get to the rest of it.

The Know it All
There are people that just LOVE pointing out inconsistencies for a psychological ‘chit’. Blogs seem to bring people like that out in droves. There will invariably be a misspelling on the blogger’s part, a poor choice of words on one section, a reference to an idiom somewhere that the random person will delightfully bring to the attention of the blogger in an email. People will take offense to the slightest of things, and will make it their mission to construct that correct-o-gram to point out that you, the mighty blogger, have failed in your quest. It doesn’t matter that the content is free. It doesn’t matter that you spent the day coming up with a really interesting idea to contribute to the interwebs- you didn’t know the difference between There, They’re, and Their.. and for this, you must be punished. The great part about this commentor is that you will NEVER have a shortage of free editorial staff available if you retain their services on the blog.

The Trolls
These i’ve pretty much explained out in earlier blog posts.. the people who will comment and say the most incredibly rude thing you will sit back in your chair when you get it, and wonder why you ever began to blog in the first place. The easiest way to deal with these is to just know thy enemy and hit delete. They contribute nothing and don’t really require energy on your part.

Now (as before) there are obvious exceptions to this rules, but I can’t tell you how many people I know that get the “blog” bug.. only to run into these comments and become disillusioned. I also cant tell you how many people I run into that use the comments as the sole marker for the success or failure of a blog. You’ll also notice that over time, the commenting on a blog will be very predictable, making a community of people that traditionally comment on topics. A year later.. a post you make will have 200 comments.. congratulations. But are they the same 200 people that read day after day? Have you -grown- the following any?

The Case for Tweeting
On the surface, Twitter seems like just another fad that everyone’s jumped on - and to some extent that may be true. However, one of the things that Twitter has going for it is a living technology (for the lack of a better explanation). You fire up Twitter and you say “Listening to Depeche Mode while Retouching a Photo in Photoshop” and within seconds, someone can comment on your “Status” - faddish, yes! However, this can be pretty powerful:

• For one, it can ‘humanize’ the person doing the tweeting. Personalities seem more accessible, friendlier, which increases their reach. That accessibility can make you more trustworthy, which makes people more willing to listen to whatever you may pitch to them.
• Because you’re limited to 140 characters, the ‘message’ needs to be concise. No long articles (like this one).
• Because of it’s immediacy, a blog post that you want to have followed on Twitter can be more like a conversation with a group of people. Because the conversation is dynamic and spontaneous, there’s less of a probability of a Flamewar.
• The true power of reach is felt however with something like Tweetdeck. There are people out there that fire up Tweetdeck, click on the magnifying glass, and type “Photoshop” in the search bar. Immediately comes a column of information of people who are talking about Photoshop, in semi-real time! That tweet that I just made about listening to Depeche Mode while Retouching and Listening to Depeche Mode is picked up by anyone searching the Twitter universe for “Retouching”, “Depeche Mode”, and “Photoshop”. Depending on what I have on my profile and on my background graphic, I could get the person to pop by, say “Oh.. this could be cool” and come by my website. I’ve now gained a new follower. How to keep him there is the topic of another blog altogether.

Are there drawbacks to the Tweet? Absolutely. Twitter can sometimes be seen as this technological popularity contest where people aren’t really following you for anything special.. its all about numbers. In that, the message can get diluted and pointless. Because of it’s potential to reach so many different people, there are countless of people trying to find ways to exploit it, which confuses the conversation further. However, it’s a powerful medium, and I dare say one that can take you to a better solution than the comment alone. Which one works? That’s going to be for you to decide. I argue that things like Twitter can give a person operating a blog a tremendous amount of reach, as well as create this technically organic family that can carry your message pretty far, and offer you invaluable information, just by typing 140 characters at a time.

Book to Check Out: SocialCorp
I haven’t read it yet, but I am -really- excited to check out Joel Postman’s SocialCorp. Checking out the Peachpit site the book, “…will help companies of all sizes develop and implement a strategy to become a SocialCorp, a company that has adopted social media intelligently and effectively, in a way that does not compromise the company’s primary obligations as a corporation.” I saw Joel speak at Voices That Matter, and was so taken by the presentation, I couldnt wait to order the book. As soon as it comes in I’ll share what I think.

Using Indesign Multiplace
This tutorial shows a method for using Adobe Bridge with the Multiplace command in InDesign CS3 and CS4. Click on the link below to get to the tutorial:

Using InDesign Multiplace with Adobe Bridge by AJ Wood

admin Others, Social Media Comments, more important, Tweets

In one of the recent posts, we looked at some reasons why some developers switch to the Mac. If you’ve decided to make the switch yourself, you can do a lot to make the transition smoother. We will take a look at some must-have software, configurations and hacks that can make your life easier as you switch and that can get you up to full productivity (and maybe beyond) in no time at all.

We have tried to find as many free solutions as possible, but you have to pay for some applications to get their full functionality. If we have missed a configuration, hack or piece of software that you found helpful when switching, please post it in the comments.

Configurations

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Right-Clicking

One of the most visible differences between Macs and other computers is the former’s lack of a second button on the mouse. The Mac mouse harkens back to the original mouse invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which also had only one button. Eventually, Windows grew to ubiquity, touting its two-button mouse, and the world became comfortable with that configuration. As a switcher, you’re used to that handy right-click, and lucky for you, the habit doesn’t have to end.

All Macs support right-clicking, and it works just as it does on a Windows system, popping up menus and extras. Without messing with your settings, you can always hold “Control” and click to active a right-click on a Mac, but this gets tedious pretty quickly. To make the experience more seamless, go into your preferences and activate “Tap to click” and “Secondary click,” which will allow you to tap the trackpad with two fingers simultaneously to trigger a right click. It may sound odd, but it takes only a few minutes to get used to. You can also just hold two fingers down on the trackpad and click the physical mouse button to get the same effect. Of course, plugging a two-button mouse into a Mac is another way to get your right-click back.

Tweak Mouse-Tracking Speed

The mouse tracking on a Mac feels quite different from that of Windows because it does not accelerate. This can be partly alleviated by turning the tracking speed all the way up. But if you really pine for that Windows feel, you can try SteerMouse, albeit for $20.

Turn Off Screen-Dimmi

While some people want their screen to dim after a period of inactivity, it can quickly become annoying for others. This feature can be turned off in the preferences under the options for “Energy saver.”

Turn on the Firewall

Macs include two firewalls: a packet-filtering firewall called IPFW that filters traffic based on type, port number, origin and destination, and a socket-filter firewall (new in Leopard) that filters based on the application making the request. While the socket-filter firewall in OS X is disabled by default, you can go into “Preferences > Security > Firewall” to enable it. IPFW is short on configuration options, but that can be remedied by downloading either NoobProof or WaterRoof, which give you more security options.

Log-In Items

Setting applications to start upon logging in is actually quite simple on a Mac. If the application you want to start at log-in is on your dock, simply right-click its icon and choose “Open at log-in.” You can also go into “Preferences > Accounts > [your account] > Log-in items” and add applications manually there. Keep in mind that the more applications you set to open at log-in, the longer your systems will take to boot.

You can also change the background for the main log-in screen on your Mac. This handy little piece of freeware takes whatever your desktop background is and mirrors it onto your log-in screen. Or you can use the following command in your terminal to change it to any image you want:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture “/Library/path_to_your_pic/your_pic.jpg”

Hot Corners

Hot corners allow you to set up each corner of your screen to be a hot spot that triggers an event whenever you mouse over it, such as shuffling active windows to off screen to show the desktop or displaying widgets. This gets interesting when combined with the “Expose” and “Spaces” features.

Expose spreads your windows out on the screen so that you can focus on a new one. Once you get used to it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. To make it really useful, set up a hot corner to activate it. Additionally, Spaces allows you to display multiple desktops from a bird’s-eye view. Add this to another corner and you’ve got something really special. You’ll be able to show the desktop, drag a file, switch to a different space, find a window that’s hidden behind several others and drop the file into that window, all with one mouse click. Check it out in the video below:

Play around with different hot corner configurations to find the one that best suits you. I recommend using three of the four for the “Expose All Windows” and “Show Desktop” functions and Spaces. If you have a laptop, setting one of the corners to put the display to sleep is handy because no button or key does that otherwise.

Configure Spaces

Having multiple desktops to work from can be a boon to productivity. Spaces allows you to create up to 16 different desktops, enough to satisfy even the most spastic multi-tasker. Along with these desktops, you can specify that certain applications only open in certain spaces, as well as specify that some apps display no matter which desktop you’re working in. Here are a few applications we suggest displaying in all spaces: Chat applications (Adium, iChat, IRC), movie players (VLC, QuickTime, DVD player), Twitter clients and any application useful in more than one context. I have a space for general Web browsing, iTunes and iPhoto, email and communications, Photoshop and design, coding and development, Windows virtualization, notes and reminders and one that I keep clean just in case.

Add Activity Monitor to the Dock

Activity monitor is the equivalent of the task manager in Windows. Certain items, when added to the Dock, take on a few extra behaviors. In the case of the activity monitor, those items can display helpful information instead of their icons while sitting in the dock: such as a pie chart showing how much memory is being used, a live graph of processor activity and more. While you can always pop up a window and hit Command + Option + Esc (your new Ctrl + Alt + Delete) to force quit an application, you don’t get any information about programs that are running. Clicking on the activity monitor gives you the force quit option and a wealth of information about your processes.

A Smarter Finder

Finder is a file explorer that people either love or loath. You can do a few things to make it more useful, though. Right-click on the top part of the finder window, much like you would to edit a toolbar in the browser, and you’ll see that you can configure the buttons in the finder window. Choose “Customize Toobar” and add the “Path,” “Delete,” and “New Folder” buttons, along with any others you desire.

In the left sidebar of the finder, you’ll see a list of favorites, including your home folder, main disk drives, any attached drives and the most used folders (photos, music, sites, etc.). You can customize this list by dragging folders and other items onto the sidebar. You can also add “smart folders” (File > New smart folder) that filter files based on a set of rules. For instance, one smart folder I keep in my sidebar is a list of all files over 100 MB, in case I need to free up some hard drive space. If you want to add separators to the sidebar, there’s a neat little guide on how to do that here.

You can download toolbar scripts for even more functionality. For instance, you can add a button that opens the terminal in whatever folder you are currently browsing. Check them out here. Of course, if you end up hating the finder, you can try an alternative, like Cocoatech’s Path Finder

Hacks

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Widgets on Your Desktop

Widgets are Apple’s version of Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets), but unlike Konfabulator, they are doomed to exile in the dashboard (a “second desktop” that pops up when you hit the right keys or hot corner). The problem with Dashboard is that the more widgets you have running, the longer they all take to pop up the first time you activate it after a restart. If you prefer to have your widgets available on demand on the desktop, enter the following command into your Mac terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

To place a widget on the desktop, open up Dashboard, start dragging the widget and close the dashboard. Unfortunately, widgets will stay on top of all your windows. Frustratingly, the only way to override this behavior is to get a paid application called Amnesty Widgets, which makes OS X’s widgets more like Yahoo Widgets. Of course, you could just use Yahoo! Widgets and forget OS X’s widgets altogether.

Change Command to Control

This is an adequate configuration for most, but an absolute lifesaver for some. It took me a while to get used to using Command instead of Control, but I eventually broke the old habit. Some people have been known to give up on the platform because of this issue. For those of you who have a hard time adjusting, simply map the Command key to Control. doublecommand and fKeys are popular utilities that let you do all sorts of custom mapping to make your switch easier.

Maximize Your Zoom

One of the weirdest quirks to get used to when switching to the Mac is the behavior of the “Zoom” button on windows (the green button in the top-left corner of all windows). Instead of sticking the four sides of the window to the very edges of the screen, Zoom will simply expand the size of the window to fit the screen but the window will remain draggable. Often it doesn’t even do this and instead changes the size of the window in unexpected and frustrating ways. Luckily you can download a handy little plug-in to force Zoom to use the window’s maximize function. Other than using this plug-in, you’ll have to get used to dragging the bottom-right corner of the window to force it.

Hidden Applications, Hidden Files

If you ever need to find files that are hidden by default, type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

You can hide windows by hitting Command + h, but you get no indication that a window is hidden once it’s gone. To make the application icon more transparent in the dock when it is hidden, type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
killall Dock

Quick Look Expanded

Quick Look can save you precious seconds by showing you a preview of a file before opening it in its default program. Simply hit the space bar on a file to activate it. This is limited to certain files, but a few handy plug-ins out there give you Quick Look functionality for folders, Zip files and more. theAppleBlog.com has compiled a great list of fours such plug-ins.

Safari Debugger

Safari offers a great browsing experience, despite what you may have heard. It’s quick, clean and powerful, although not that easy to customize. You can apply a few neat hacks to make it a little more useful though. To enable the surprisingly rich Web development debugger tool, type this into your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu YES

For a wealth of Safari hacks and plug-ins, check out Safari Hacks and Pimp My Safari. SAFT is a great extension for Safari that provides a lot of great functionality for $12.

Customize Your Dock

Apple has very definite feelings about how the Dock should look because it does not give you many means of customization. To mess with the look and feel of the Dock, you can try Mirage, which removes all styling, Candybar, which gives you a variety of styling options, and Leopard Docks, a website dedicated to custom Dock stylings.

When the Dock is on the left or right side of your screen, it goes from a 3-D look to 2-D. If you prefer the 2-D and bottom-screen configuration, type this into your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

As far as the Dock’s behavior goes, here’s a must-have hack you can apply. Add a “Recent files” stack to the Dock by entering the following in your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’
killall Dock

Open-With Defaults

If you want a certain file to open in a certain program, right-click on a file of that file type and select “Get info,” which will bring up a box with all sorts of information about the file. We’re interested here in the “Open with” section, where you can choose its default program. Once you’ve selected the proper program, click the “Change All” button to make it the default program for all files of that file type. One suggestion: make TextEdit your default program for .doc and .docx files: it opens them much faster than Word or OpenOffice.

Software

While the software library on the Mac pales in comparison to the one on Windows in terms of sheer volume, it does have quite a bit of polish. This polish, however, often doesn’t come without a price. Free software for the Mac does exist out there, but it’s not nearly as widely available as you’re probably used to with Windows. That being said, there are quite a few apps, both free and paid, that you should install on your Mac to make the experience much more enjoyable and productive. Here are a few to get you started:

Multimedia

• Flip4Mac
  Install the free version to play WMV with QuickTime.
• Perian
  Every codec you’ll ever need for QuickTime.
• VLC
  The de facto media player for the Mac. Not only does it eliminate the need for the two pieces of software mentioned above, it provides more features than you’ll probably ever care to use. Use VLC instead of the built-in DVD player as well. VLC integrates nicely with OS X, and you can even use your Apple remote with it. Just download it.
• Connect360
  If you want to stream movies, pictures and music to your Xbox 360, this is a great solution for the Mac; some claim it works better than Microsoft’s implementation.
• Transmission
  A very lightweight and solid bit torrent client for the Mac. It fits in very well with OS X, style-wise.
• Songbird
  Not everyone wants to use iTunes to manage their music collection. Many prefer Songbird, the much-loved open-source alternative.

System and General Purpose

• Growl
  If having uniform system-wide notifications for all your applications sounds intriguing, you’ll want to check out Growl. It works with a vast array of software and is extremely customizable. Some notifications you’ll receive let you know when new email, instant messages or Twitter messages arrive, when your downloads are complete, when your computer has been unplugged and when a new song is playing on Last.fm (complete with artist and details). Growl has a myriad of useful plug-ins and uses. Take, for instance, the growl notification that tells you when your tests have passed in your Web application: a must for any Mac user.
• Unplugged
  http://unplugged.en.softonic.com/mac/download (unplugged)
• Quicksilver
  While OS X does have the “Spotlight” feature, which allows you to quickly find files and launch applications, it pales in comparison to the snappiness and customizability of the application-launcher Quicksilver, which is very similar to Firefox’s Ubiquity. Much like Growl, you can install tons of useful plugins to tailor the experience to your needs. When you start using Quicksilver regularly, you’ll find yourself going to the Dock less and less to launch and interact with your applications. It’s lightening fast and quite powerful. Imagine hitting a keyboard shortcut, typing “email,” “tab,” “compose,” , and “enter” to send a quick email to somebody. Another must have.
• Fluid
  If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of your computer time interacting with Web applications rather than client-side applications. You may miss the neatness of applications existing independently of your Web browser, too. If you do, then Fluid is the solution. It takes any Web page you specify and contains it within its own Mac application, complete with icon and windowing preferences. Imagine having a dedicated app for your Google documents, Facebook, your favorite Twitter client, your Web analytics and more. It draws on the same idea that Adobe is pushing with Air. Fluid is as extensible and customizable as Growl and Quicksilver.
• The Unarchiver
  You’re going to want a program that can handle StuffIt, RAR, ZIP and other compression file types with ease, and the Unarchiver is it. Free and straightforward.
• smcFanControl
  Macs tend to be a bit more of a walled garden than other computers, but that doesn’t mean they have to be. With the right amount of research, you can usually find a piece of software or terminal hack that bends the Mac to your will. smcFanControl is one such application, made for those who want to control just how hot their laptops get.
• Carbon Copy Cloner
  If you ever need to transfer your hard drive to another machine, and you will, Carbon Copy Cloner is truly the best solution to the problem. It’s rock solid, simple to use and makes the whole process extremely pain free.

Communications

• Adium
  Adium is the de facto chat client for the majority of high-end Mac users out there. It covers more networks than are worth listing here. This is another must-have app.
• Colloquy
  Probably the best IRC client for the Mac. Well designed and extremely extensible.
• Thunderbird
  A great alternative to the default Mail application.

Productivity

• Gimp
  Because the Mac doesn’t come with built-in image editing software of any kind, Gimp, the open-source alternative to Photoshop, is a handy install.
• Textmate
  Probably the most popular text editor for the Mac. It’s a hefty $50 but worth every penny.
• Sketchbox
  An improvement to OS X’s Stickies.

admin Others, Social Media

jPolite (jQuery POrtal Lite) is an Open Source jQuery & Ajax Based Portal Framework. This is a lightweight front-end web portal framework based on jQuery.

The focus is easy content integration at the front-end, through an intuitive naming system and conventions plus simple and easy configuration.

 

jQuery Portal Framework Features

• Flexible layout configurations
• Drag & Drop functionality
• Beautiful UI controls like Tabs, accordion, etc…
• RSS Reader

admin Others, Webmasters Resources Ajax, Framework, java script, jquery

Are you an Adboe Flash developers? In this post you can find some really interesting Flash frameworks and graphical engines that help you develop quickly complex Rich Internet Application and Flash-based games. This list includes graphic UI elements, Flash and Flex components, a physical engine and an open source component to create isometric games with Flash.
Gaia Framework
Gaia is an open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2 designed to dramatically reduce development time. Gaia is targeted at anyone who develops Flash sites. It provides solutions to the challenges and repeated tasks we all face with front-end Flash site development, such as navigation, transitions, preloading, asset management, site structure and deep linking. It provides speed and flexibility in your workflow and a simple API that gives you access to its powerful features. For an example of Gaia-made website take a look at Inglorious Basterds Official Site.
Progression
  Progression is a real powerful framework for Adobe Flash with focus on your creative work. You can just focus on user experience matter, how to transit, what dramatical effects you want to provide for your UI. Progression supports wide range of developing styles - from traditional timeline-based style to stylish class-based style. Progression packages all necessary functions of Web site development as component. You can develop web site using the component by drag & drop on the stage.
Yahoo! ASTRA
Yahoo! ASTRA, is an ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Internet Applications. It provides a collection of Flash and Flex components, code libraries, toolkits and utilities developed by Yahoo! for ActionScript developers.
ARP
ARP is an open source pattern-based Rich Internet Application framework for the Adobe Flash Platform. ARP currently supports Adobe Flash and Flex-based RIA development in AS 2 and AS 3 and is designed to be simple to use and lightweight.
JSwiff
The aim of the JSwiff project is to create an open source, pure Java framework for Macromedia Flash file creation and manipulation.
PushButton
The PushButton Engine is an Open Source, Flash game engine and framework that’s designed for a new generation of games. PushButton Engine makes it easy to bring together great existing libraries and components for building Flash games. Spend less time on code, more time on building fun games.
Fisix Engine
The Fisix Engine is a 2D verlet physics engine for Flash. It is written completely in AS3 in order to make use of flash player 9’s improved cpu capabilities. Although Flash is still slower than platforms such as c/c++, or java, which means that you most likely won’t be able to make the next Half-Life in flash, it doesn’t mean you can’t do really cool stuff with 2D particles, constraints, rigid bodies, etc. and make great looking games and simulations. Take a look at the demo here. The result is really awesome.
FFilmation
FFilmation is a really impressive, open source, Flash Engine to create isometric locations for Flash-based games.

admin Others, Webmasters Resources

TokenInput jQuery Plugin allows users to select multiple items from a predefined list, using autocompletion as they type to find each item. You may have seen something similar on Facebook or TextboxList by Devthought.

There is an intuitive UI for selecting multiple items from a large list, the layout is fully in controlled with CSS, and easily customisable. Also, the result caching reduces server load. Users can select items using the mouse or keyboard. TokenInput jQuery Plugin is released under GPL2.

admin Others, Webmasters Resources Forms, gossips, GPL License

Last week, Warm Forest and Six Revisions asked you what you thought the best Flash portfolio website was. To make things fun, Warm Forest kindly donated two Aspen Flash templates (worth $89.00 dollars each) to give away to a couple of randomly selected commenters.

Today, we are happy to announce the two lucky winners!

The winners are…

• chris
• grishy

Congratulations to the winners! We will contact you soon regarding details on how to claim your wonderful prize.

The screenshot

In case you were wondering how the selection process was administered, you can check out the screenshot below to see the MySQL query that was used to pick out the contestants. The contact information of the contestants (email address) was removed to protect their privacy.

admin Others, Webmasters Resources