Looking for Comic fonts and lettering?

Blambot is a great resource for those comic book wannabes. They offer comic fonts, ballons for comics, and even pre-made styled sound effects text.

Check out the free font the offer every so often (maybe monthly) so I can pick up a new font - this month was the Marooned on Mars font.

Link:
http://www.blambot.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

The fastest, free PDF reader released version 3

As a small and fast PDF viewer, Foxit Reader currently has over 50 million users all around the world. After keeping users waiting for almost two months, Foxit Reader 3.0 has been released and introduces many fascinating new features such as multimedia design and Foxit OnDemand Content Management.

Whats New:

• Enticing Multimedia Design - Now users can not only play multimedia in Foxit Reader, but also are empowered to add, edit or delete multimedia files with the incredible Movie Tool and Sound Tool.
• Attachment Panel - Lists all the attached files in the PDF document, and provides a number of common options that helps users manage the attachments, such as opening, deleting and adding description to the attachments. Users can also change the security settings when opening an attachment in this panel.
• Thumbnail Panel - Shows thumbnail images for each PDF page and allows users to quickly view relevant portions of a PDF file. Now users can navigate through PDFs with page thumbnails.
• Layout Panel - Lists PDF layers in the document, allows users to control the display of some certain content areas.
• Metric Unit Support - Within the preferences dialog box it gives users the option to set the unit of page dimension in either metric system or imperial system.
• Auto-scrolling with Middle Mouse Button - In the Hand Tool reading mode, users can perform auto-scrolling by holding the middle mouse button/wheel mouse button down.
• Awe-Inspiring Foxit OnDemand Content Management - This new add-on enables users to organize, share and collaborate on documents and forms online. Users can upload from Foxit Reader or send documents with ease. Advanced features include workflow driven document sharing, revisions of documents, CollabRoom for group collaboration.
• Firefox Support - With Firefox Plugin, users can view and work with PDF files loaded in Foxit Reader with Firefox web browser.

I have been using this for years and its works great. One of the best things about FoxIt is it isn't a resource hog like Adobe Acrobat reader and FoxIt starts in seconds...

Link:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

HowTo: Convert a DVD video to VCD (Mpeg1)

How to convert a DVD format movie (VOB) to VCD (Mpeg1). The reason I had a need to find out how to do this is the Dazzle DVD capture hardware can capture the video to your harddrive in DVD format (VOB) but my DVD player would not recognize the burned media. My DVD player is much more forgiving with a VCD formatted media (Mpeg1).

Software you will need:

• Dazzle DVD Capture**
  
• DGIndex (free)
  
• TMPGenc (free)
  
• StarBurn (free)

** Dazzle is only required if you want to capture video from a digital camera or VCR or other video source

Steps:

1. When capturing video from Dazzle make sure its saving it to your harddrive (will create a folder called VIDEO_TS)
2. Convert the VOB file to an Indexed Mpeg2 using a DGIndex (free).
   
1. Start DGIndex and open the VOB file of your captured video.
   
2. Now save the project, in the same folder as the VOB file, as a DGIndex project file (d2v).
   
3. Close DGIndex
3. Re-encode the video as a VCD compliant video (Mpeg1) using TMPGEnc.
   
1. Start TMPGEnc
2. Choose Video-CD from the wizard and press next
3. Choose the d2v file from Step2 for the video
4. Choose the wav file that was created from Step2 and click next
5. You can set some options on this screen (clip frame is a great way to clean up the rough edges of a captured video)
6. Press until you get to the screen to start processing
7. Save the Mpg file where you want.
8. Close TMPGEnc
   
4. Now you have a proper VCD format from a DVD movie so you can burn this to CD to play in any DVD player. The burning process must be done with software that can burn videos - I use StarBurn as its works great and is free.

Enjoy!

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

Link:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Free Dr. Pepper this Sunday

A voucher for the free drink will be made available on drpepper.com for 24 hours this Sunday at 12.01am. Those who print the coupon will have until February 28, 2009 to redeem it.

Thanx to Guns n Roses for this.

Link:
http://www.drpepper.com/

How to test your HTML emails will look good in Outlook 2007

Using a tool provided my Microsoft called 'Outlook HTML and CSS Validator'.

The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 HTML and CSS Validator helps you check for valid/supported HTML before you send HTML-based e-mail.

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...

Amazing tilt-shift photography examples

Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model.

The above image is an image of a full sized train.

Link:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...

Thousands of recipes from cookbooks at CookStr

Cookstr.com is a new cooking site dedicated to providing our users with great recipes from the best chefs and cookbook authors. It’s still early days for us, and we’re adding more chefs and authors – and more recipes – all the time. We’ll also be adding new features over the next few months. But in the meantime we’re excited to share with you thousands of recipes from cookbooks you know and love, and help you discover wonderful new books and cooks.

The interface for each recipe is extremely clean and well laid out. Also the search can be refined by things like: One Pot, Kid Friendly or Five Ingredients or Less. Very nice...

Link:
http://cookstr.com

Mozilla to end support for Firefox 2

The Mozilla Foundation is planning to end support for the Firefox 2 browser in mid-December, despite the persistence of significant flaws in the most-recent version of the popular browser.

I fear that the support may end but users won't switch - I still get 20%+ visitors using Firefox2. Not sure I can cross this browser off my list of browser which I design websites to render in.

Link:
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-250172.html

10 Advanced PHP Tips To Improve Your Programming

This tutorial is aimed at people who are just past the beginning stages of learning PHP and are ready to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty with the language. Listed below are 10 excellent techniques that PHP developers should learn and use every time they program. These tips will speed up proficiency and make the code much more responsive, cleaner and more optimized for performance.

Link:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/...

ZoneAlarm 2009 Pro Free on November 18th

Get ZoneAlarm Pro for free tomorrow, November 18th. The page linked below should get activated tomorrow at some point. If the link is not correct I will update it when I find out what the actuall published link is.

Link:
http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/sum/index.html

Quickly convert your VHS tapes to DVD with Dazzle

Quickly transfer and share your videos on DVD with Dazzle DVD Recorder. Thanks to its plug-in-play simplicity and a step-by step guide, copying your home movies from almost any video device to DVD has never been easier or faster.

I was looking for a way to convert a bunch of VHS tapes to DVD (or mpeg) as I didn't want to have my VCR hooked up anymore. Did lots of research and cames across Dazzle from Pinnacle. This has got to be the easiest and quickest way as its as simple as connecting the hardware interface between the VCR 'out' and a USB2.0 in on my computer and letting the wizard style software do the rest. The software captures the video feed from the VCR and burns it to a DVD.

Now I can finally get rid of my VCR from the living room. Now I keep it in my office for converting tapes to DVD's...

(more information coming on converting the video from Dazzle (DVD) to VCD or SVCD using only freely available software)

Link:
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/...

Cheap SEO will get you nowhere

The State of Washington has filed suit (.pdf) against a Redmond-based search engine optimization and Web services outfit that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state attorney general contends that these entities have ripped off their mostly mom-and-pop clientele through a pattern of unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans. While the clients may be on the smaller end of the spectrum, they have been forking over real money, with initial startup charges ranging from $3,750 to $9,750, plus a monthly fee of $40 to $100.

This is what I tell clients when it comes to SEO. It costs money and trying to find the cheapest company will get you nowhere.

Link:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/35218

How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You

See, its not just me. Oh, and take a look at the kitty in the websites source code.

Link:
http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

Spell using Flickr images

Spell with Flickr lets you enter a word a a series of images are returned that is the word spelled out with Flickr images. The interface is ok. Don't really like the black background and it would be nice to have a single image of the word. What I do like is you can click each letter of the resulting image and have it call up a different image for that letter.

Fun to play with for a little.

Link:
http://metaatem.net/words/

Video: Free SEO tips from Matt Cutts

Early YouTube Engineer Tells All

When we recently heard about the history of YouTube’s growth strategy from CEO Chad Hurley’s point of view, he described it as “hanging onto a rocket.” But an engineer’s take is always going to be a bit less rose-colored and a bit more about the terrifying situations you brained your way out of. So we were particularly interested to tune in to a talk...

Link:
http://gigaom.com/2008/07/11/early-youtube-engineer-tells-all/

JavaScript error reporting service with DamnIt

DamnIT is a free service that emails you when a user encounters a JavaScript error in your webpages. DamnIT makes it simple for beta testers to provide useful feedback by prompting them after an error occurs and combining their response with error message, file, line number, and back-trace information. You'll receive detailed automated error information instead of vague bug descriptions.

Link:
https://damnit.jupiterit.com/

Yahoo web analytics, who knew?

Yahoo! Web Analytics is an enterprise site analytics tool that provides real-time insight into visitor behavior on your website. With powerful and flexible tools and dashboards, Yahoo! Web Analytics helps online marketers and website designers enhance the visitor experience, increase sales and reduce marketing costs.

Google Analytics needs to step up and start offering a more real-time stats. Yahoo is now doing it (see below)...

Get detailed reporting within minutes after an action occurs on your website. Quickly identify dips in key site metrics or monitor the performance of new content. Seeing the impact of website and marketing changes immediately makes it much easier to optimize them. Yahoo! Web Analytics also maintains historical data so you can go back at any time to review old data for new insight, or compare the present to the past without any changes to your page tags.

Link:
http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/

Cheat in any game with Poke

Poke is the ultimate gaming utility. It's a small program that allows you to cheat in every game out there - published or to be published in the future!

In a computer game, all numerical values are stored 'as is' in memory. We'll use a great game, The Sims, to show you how easy it is to take advantage of this fact using Poke.

Link:
http://codefromthe70s.org/poke.asp

Did you see the CNN holographic interview?

CNN's holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

Link:
http://gizmodo.com/5076663/...

7 ways to track your web traffic for free

Awstats
Awstats is a log file analyzer type of web statitics reporting tool. This means the data displayed will be the most accurate and complete than some of the other methods listed. Awstats can provide all the expected information (page views, visitors, hits) plus it can give you bandwidth used, and filesizes of downloads.


CrazyEgg
One of the first to offer Heat Maps which shows where your user are clicking on your website. This alone makes Crazy Egg worth checking out.


FuseStats
Another website offering Heat Maps, which is a color overlay so you can see where your users click, on top of the standard web stat information. They offer a free account, which is why I added it to the list, which can be used for very low traffic websites.


Google Analytics
This, in my opinion, is the gold standard for client side web tracking (not a server log analyzer). Google Analytics provides some of the most powerful tool for tracking your visitors, analyzing your websites traffic flow, checking on goals for your visitors and general overall information provided. Plus they are constantly pushing out new features and I'm sure real-time tracking isn't far behind.


HiStats
Another great option which provides a very user friendly interface (and quite appealing) and provides a hit counter which can be added to your website so your visitors can see how many visits you get. Oh, did I mention they provide real time tracking? Very nice option.


StatCounter
A very popular web stats choice where a small piece of code is embedded in your web pages that handles all the tracking for your visitors. Not as reliable as Awstats but easy to setup, not tied to a server (so you maintain your history) and you can access your stats at anytime from any computer.


The Hit Counter
Looking for a simple, simple to install (2 steps) hit counter for your website? Then The Hit Counter what you need. They have made the creation of a custom hit counter as simple as it can be.

Vote

Amazon takes a stand to eliminate wasteful, hard-to-open gadget packaging

Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year initiative designed to alleviate "wrap rage," features recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we’ve just streamlined the packaging.

Finally! You would have thought an online retailer would have done this much, much sooner since the hard-to-open packaging was in place to prevent shoplifting.

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/...

Video: Amazing Mandelbrot Zoom