Odd things .... this and that

PostgreSQL and JSON

2012-01-18T22:10:00.001+05:30

Native JSON features submitted for PostgreSQL 9.2 http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/native-json-features-submitted-for-postgresql-92.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss (UC Browser)

Patterns photography

2012-01-18T22:00:00.001+05:30

Digital Photography School » 33 Inspirational Images that Feature Patterns and Repetition

Our world is filled with patterns. They’re everywhere when you start looking for them and they can be a powerful element to think about when out and about with your camera.

Silly Gaga, not going gaga

2012-01-11T17:45:00.001+05:30

Photographer David Bailey Has No Time for Lady Gaga

Are we in any better condition?

2012-01-11T09:34:00.001+05:30

Sharing News From Dawn Android Application

Another doctor who resigned from Civil Hospital and now runs a private clinic narrated his experience saying, “I left because most of the officials working as Head of the Departments are assigned their respective positions because of their ‘political affiliations’. Moreover, they feel threatened by anyone who has a command over research and is more competent, hence ‘references’ supersede ‘academics’.”

Animals and tickling

2011-12-30T11:20:00.001+05:30

Watch "Robin Williams has a tickle fight with Gorilla" on YouTube

Technology for saving whales

2011-12-30T06:54:00.001+05:30

Osprey UAV Helping to Save Whales

Technology being used for conservation.

Technology predictions

2011-12-29T05:58:00.001+05:30

Predictions For 2012 – Add Yours!

Donation

2011-12-28T21:41:00.001+05:30

Swarna’s organs transplanted on three recipients in Bangalore

A really touching action by the girl's family.

I have pledged my eyes. Have you pledged yours ?

Gender bias

2011-12-28T21:35:00.001+05:30

Ultra-Orthodox Jews ask Israeli media to help rid them of extremists - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

Taliban of Israel has just begun. If the people do not wake up to this threat, Israelis are the philistines.

Click and weep

2011-04-09T23:09:00.001+05:30

Sent to you by rajooda via Google Reader:

Click and weep

via Why Evolution Is True » Stenger on evolutionary convergence by whyevolutionistrue on 3/20/11

The dire state of scientific knowledge in America, from an article by Mark Roth in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

It's stupefying that nearly half of Americans don't think that regular tomatoes have genes!

Although scientific literacy is increasing, it's still quite low. Roth identifies several causes for this reprehensible state of affairs, but of course we know the real ones. They are:

The stridency of Gnu Atheists, which makes Americans refuse to learn science and flee to religion instead
The lack of scientific "rock stars" and cheerleaders to make science sexy for the average American

h/t: Hempenstein

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The History of Web Browsers (Picture)

2011-04-09T22:49:00.001+05:30

Sent to you by rajooda via Google Reader:

The History of Web Browsers (Picture)

via Web Browsers News and Reviews by FavBrowser (Vygantas) on 3/28/11

From the dark ages to this day.

Via: WinBeta
Source: TechKing

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News and it's worth

2010-07-25T13:11:00.001+05:30

Just now I posted a news article which appeared on the Online version
of DNA, a news paper from southern India. DNA was wondering if Paris
Hilton has gotten herself a boob job.

Why Paris Hilton boob job should be on the news section of a main
stream news organization ? Had she gotten herself a brain job or DNA
got itself a brain job which they really need, that would be a real
news item.

Sensationalization of news items by TV news channels like "Aaj Tak",
Star News and hordes of online and print media is completely removing
any respect people have for credibility of news agencies.

Surrogate adds in programs like Zee channels "Dance India Dance Little
Masters" a dance competition for children, which has started
surrogate adverts for health drinks like "Complan" when this kind of
products are legally challenged for their exagerated claims about
their product's benifit for the growth of children leaves you
wondering what's happening.

Who gives a damn about about Paris Hilton's boob job? Is there an iota
of sincerity about their jobs in these false news agencies?

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Snaptu: Did Paris Hilton get a boob job?

2010-07-25T12:49:00.001+05:30

"The 'House of Wax' star was recently spotted jet skiing, and sunbathing topless and hanging with her friends on a yacht on an Italian holiday."

Click here to read the full story

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Maharashtra loosing the advantage.

2010-07-20T11:52:00.001+05:30

Recently I have been going around to remote and not so remote
locations in Maharashtra. What is amazing is the lack of transport
infrastructure in the state.

Many in Bombay ( I can't stand the name Mumbai as it is called now),
are so short sighted, that they hardly know anything beyond Bombay
borders. Not that within it's border Bombay is any better. The roads
are apalling. I agree that the huge ever increasing population because
of the urbam migration puts enormous strain on the public
infrastructure.

But then, Bombay has the financial wherwithal to handle that. What
lacks is the political will. All the political parties are engaged in
their one-upmanships and hardly any time for anything constructive
contribution to the society.

Ilks of MNS or Maharashtra Nava Nirmana Sena ( Maharashtra
Reconstruction Party or what ever bullshit name they have coined
themselves) or Shiv Sena ( army of Shiva, again a bull shit party) are
do nothing but beating up hapless north Indian migrant workers. So
they think can protetct the jobs for Maharashtrians.

Many places I have travelled in the border areas of Gujarat and
Maharashtra, the difference in the rural development is shockingly
visible. Gujarat is ruled by BJP a party which I loath. And the
chiefminister is a Hitler incarnation. Despite my disgust for their
political philosophy I can confidently say that Gujarat has advanced
far ahead of Maharashtra. If the same trend continues, Bombay and
Maharashtra will be the dump of lazy and inefficient . This has
happened in West Bengal and Calcutta. It will happen here too.

I do not want to say amen. But I think its amen without my own wisshes.

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A profound philosophical approach to life ....

2010-07-16T10:45:00.002+05:30

For a change Rediff.com came up with a really heart touching article today. The story they covered is of a young boy who works as an auto mechanic in Calcutta.

http://business.rediff.com/report/2010/jul/16/child-labour-dreams-help-me-survive-on-rs-200-a-month.htm

Its really touching story of determination of an young boy against all the odds. There are countless children like him and I hope no child, any where, either in India or else where, had to go through the hardship like this.

Calvin and Hobbes for Tuesday, June 01, 2010

2010-06-04T09:09:00.000+05:30

Calvin and Hobbes for Tuesday, June 01, 2010: ""

Snaptu: How Oil-Filled Lenses are Bringing Sight to Those in Need [Adspecs]

2010-02-04T06:37:00.000+05:30

This isn't a review. It's not even breaking news. It's just a reminder that someone somewhere is doing something awesome.

I've been fascinated by the...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/7c5K8CgC_zA/how-oil+filled-lenses-are-bringing-sight-to-those-in-need

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Snaptu: Bhitarkanika National Park may get world heritage site status

2010-02-02T06:27:00.000+05:30

The Park has been shortlisted from among 27 additional sites by the UNESCO, official sources said. The only World Heritage site in Orissa is the...

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/50085/bhitarkanika-national-park-may-get.html

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Comic for December 12, 2009

2009-12-12T17:28:00.000+05:30

Comic for December 12, 2009: "

Comic for October 4, 2009

2009-10-05T09:08:00.000+05:30

Comic for October 4, 2009: "

Snaptu: Five Best Disk Defragmenters [Hive Five]

2009-08-31T07:53:00.001+05:30

Your computer's a busy beaver, rapidly accessing and utilizing files all in the name of bringing you what you want, when you want it. Sometimes it...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/hAgZP6jsLcE/five-best-disk-defragmenters

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Snaptu: Nine Alternate Uses for Dryer Sheets [Household]

2009-08-16T04:09:00.001+05:30

Dryer sheets give your laundry that so-fresh-you'll-sneeze scent, but they also keep bugs away, make stuffy hotel rooms and second hand smoke more...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/94NlIzPGlos/nine-alternate-uses-for-dryer-sheets

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How To Effectively Communicate With Developers

2009-08-15T09:51:00.000+05:30

How To Effectively Communicate With Developers: "

If you have ever worked with a developer or a development team, this article will probably strike close to home. As designers, we work with dozens of developers across the globe each year. Some of us are fortunate enough to find a gem; a developer that just gets it. A developer that you feel is on your same wavelength in terms of what needs to be accomplished with the user interface, and what it needs to happen. Most often, however, we find developers that we generally don’t see eye to eye with.

When many people are involved in a project, it is very important to make sure that they have a common understanding of the problem and its solution. This cartoon shows how projects really work in practice.

This is not meant as a slam on developers, as I believe they are a much different breed than designers; rather, the hope is that if you follow some of the principles outlined here, your development process can hopefully be streamlined a bit more than it was before.

Want to learn more about web design and development? Take a look at our upcoming Smashing Book ($23.90 ~~$29.90~~, available worldwide). Pre-order now with 20% discount!

1. Provide an adequate level of documentation

Modern software development methodologies may lead you to believe that less documentation is better, however this isn’t necessarily always the case. For starters, the best documentation that is provided is the user interface. Not only does the UI show the developer where data should be and how it should be formatted, but also represents the basic flow of what needs to happen. A well thought-out and complete UI will make you a developer’s dream colleague. Granted, there will always be developers who don’t like everything defined and love to take liberties with your interface. These developers are rare (and most of the time unwelcome) in the design community.

Stay ahead

As a designer, you don’t need to have every single page thought out before starting development, but it is helpful to stay ahead of the developers. Plan your features accordingly, and make sure you at least have some type of structure (HTML, etc) ready to go when they need it. It is a lot easier for developers to come through on a polished page and insert data where it is needed instead of creating the page from scratch and having the designer come in after them.

2. Be decisive

As designers, we make hundreds of decisions on each interface we work on. Whether it is the height of navigation, the amount of text in a table cell, or the alignment of text in the footer, we need to make many decisions each and every day. This is very much like for developers who have just as many (or more) nitpicky decisions to make on every piece of functionality they write. But the beauty of development is that it is less subjective than design. Sure, the architecture, code style and language could all be subject to opinions, but not in the way that design is subjective. Some people prefer stock images, while others illustrations. Everyone has a favorite color, while many colors may be perceived differently by every person.

As designers, we need to decide what the interface should look like. Although some developers may enjoy tinkering with the UI, it’s not their job; and ultimately slows them down from what they should be doing: developing.

Don’t change mid-cycle

It is also important to try not to change the design while the developers is in the middle of developing that specific feature. Agile and Scrum methodologies insist that the developers work with the requirements they had at the time, and in the following sprint, the developer could revisit the feature and make modifications. As designers, we should try to avoid any type of refactoring of the UI as we can. It is tedious work for developers to go back and change HTML.

Choose an HTML structure and stick to it. Try to account for any type of design feature in your first draft of the HTML (even if it makes your HTML seem somewhat bloated). CSS should already control the look of your interface, so try to think of HTML as backend code that is more difficult to change than a font color in CSS.

Developers don’t like refactoring their code as much as we don’t like providing revisions to clients. Get the ‘most perfect’ result as soon as you can.

3. Communication is key, so be available

You have spent countless hours mocking up the UI, polishing it to your liking and you’re ready to hand it off to the development team. Often times, this is where design ends and development begins. As designers, this is where we should be most involved to ensure that the design concept is fully realized in the working application. Avoid just ‘throwing the design over the fence’, and hoping the developers implement it exactly how you have envisioned it in your mind.

Stay Involved

it is also important to not drop off the project here. At the least, be available by e-mail so the developers can contact you about issues with your designs. Respond quickly to ensure your developers are staying on track with the final product. Once again, be decisive in your communication. Most of the time, the real data doesn’t match what you mocked up, and there are many issues you will need to work out in conjunction with your developer.

4. Avoid feature creep

The crew over at 37signals recently wrote a book called Getting Real which talks about this exact problem. This topic probably stems more toward product managers, however it is also important for designers. Always ask yourself, “why does this feature matter?” Avoid a UI that is far too complex, as it only adds time on to development, and ultimately forces you to miss deadlines. If you can’t come up with a good reason why it should be included, then it doesn’t need to be there. It will only slow your team down, as well as create more for you to support.

Stay Focused

Focus on what is important for your users. For example, if your users aren’t going to use invoicing heavily, or you already know better alternatives exist in the market that you can’t beat, don’t include them.

As we developed one of our recent projects, we weren’t planning on providing a full suite of tools that included invoicing. We wanted to concentrate on proposals, bids and RFPs; knowing that we still needed to serve a small userbase that may require invoicing. We choose to add in a bare-bones system (simple line items, nothing recurring), because we felt it may be useful to some people that didn’t already have an invoicing solution. We also realized that users probably wouldn’t want to switch to our invoicing system (mainly because they already had a solution), so there was no sense in creating something robust.

5. Set realistic deadlines, and stick to them

As designers, we can quickly turn around designs in a few days and be done with it. Unfortunately, this is not the case for development. The ratio of design to development hours is not even close to 1:1. Make sure your deadlines allow enough time for the developer to implement the features, as well as any back and forth time for questions.

No matter how hard you try to hit your deadlines, something always comes up. Perhaps another project, kids, family, etc. Try your best not to announce any hard dates until you are absolutely sure you will hit them. Announce the week before (or even month before) if you feel comfortable. If you just started a project, never commit to launching in the next 6 months. It just won’t happen, and your users may or may not hold you accountable for that date.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep

As irritating as missing deadlines is for you and your team, its even more irritating for potential customers that are waiting for your app to change their workflow. Be vague about deadlines, and keep people wanting more.

6. Test it yourself

Don’t rely on your developers to write perfect code, as it will never happen. You can’t always rely on developers to test their code to make sure it functions properly, fulfills requirements and ultimately works in the manner you described. But remember, developers don’t write buggy code on purpose. They would rather write perfect code and work on newer, cooler features each release. Since your developers are so close to the code and system, they will inevitably miss something. Don’t blame them, help them fix it. Explain to them where it’s failing and what the desired action should be.

Also as you take on the testing, this frees up the developer to keep moving on the back-end, which once again, is where they should be focusing. And as you find bugs, make sure to fully document them, including screenshots, how to recreate and most importantly, the desired outcome.

Of all the developers we’ve worked with, none of them have been interested in any type of testing past in-the-code unit testing. Large enterprise shops higher entire Quality Assurance teams to follow-up on developers work (which doesn’t make it right, but it’s the way it is). Help your developers out by testing their features — your app will be much better for it.

One last point is to measure performance. Set milestones and goals and make sure you are hitting your marks. Try to monitor how your team is doing on fixing bugs versus creating new features, as there will always be a snowball effect. Fix bugs early and often to prevent them from growing into larger and more complex bug colonies in the future.

Related Resources

Getting Real - The Book by 37signals

A List Apart - Visual Decision Making

Communication Tools from Fast Company

An Agile Case Study from Salesforce.com

Jason Friend Thinks Less is More

Is your debugger making you stupid?

Carsonified: A Developers Guide to Working with Designers

About the author

Ryan Scherf is a freelance web designer, developer and entrepreneur. When he isn’t wasting the day away on Twitter, he can be found building his most recent venture SixCentral, a client proposal organization & management application.

Want to learn more about web design and development? Take a look at our upcoming Smashing Book ($23.90 ~~$29.90~~, available worldwide). Pre-order now with 20% discount!

SilverX converts Flash video to Silverlight

2009-08-15T09:48:00.000+05:30

SilverX converts Flash video to Silverlight: "

Filed under: Utilities, Video, Windows

SilverX is a Windows app that converts Flash (.SWF) videos to Microsoft's Silverlight format. It recognizes all the vectors, images, text and animations from the original Flash file, so you can extract all of those elements and edit them in a Silverlight app later. If you want to manipulate the individual elements, you can edit them like any other Silverlight solution, and even apply XAML. If you just want to play the movie back in your browser using Silverlight, you can do that too.

There's not a lot of fiddling necessary to use SilverX. Just pick a SWF file and an output directory, and everything happens under the hood. You can either output the file as a standalone app or a Silverlight solution. To work with solutions, you'll need Microsoft's Expression Blend 3 or Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

[via AddictiveTips]

SilverX converts Flash video to Silverlight originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sponsored Topics:
Microsoft - Microsoft Expression Blend - Microsoft Visual Studio - Microsoft Silverlight - Extensible Application Markup Language"

Snaptu: 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging

2009-08-10T07:52:00.001+05:30

I have reached the conclusion that most organizations have a blog simply because they feel they should. Many marketing departments fail to...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/09/10-harsh-truths-about-corporate-blogging/

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Snaptu: Buffalo adds 16GB microSD card / reader to its line of incredibly small USB memory

2009-08-08T07:57:00.001+05:30

We've seen Buffalo shrink USB drives down to preposterous sizes in the recent past, and now the company is throwing a microSD card reader into the...

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/SIiGG8QHb-M/

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50 New Beautiful Blog Designs

2009-07-23T09:21:00.001+05:30

Sent to you by rajooda via Google Reader:

50 New Beautiful Blog Designs

via Smashing Magazine by Smashing Editorial on 7/22/09

There are things that can't be showcased too often. For instance, beautiful blog designs. We have presented hundreds of beautiful blog designs in the past and now it's time to provide our readers with a fresh portion of tasty design inspiration.

All blogs listed below have an original, unique design. They aren't based upon some ready-to-be-used WordPress templates, but are the result of a hard, time-consuming work – therefore they deserve respect and admiration. Yes, many of these design are quite "heavy" on graphcs, not only because they look impressive on a tiny 550px-width-screenshot.

Below we present 50 new, beautiful, creative and (hopefully) inspiring blog designs. We feature many various styles and designs – hopefully, everybody will find some inspiring elements and design solutions for his or her next design. And, of course, thanks to all designers and artists featured in this post! All screenshots are linked to the original designer's site.

Beautiful and Original Blog Designs

Questionable Characters

Huwshimi: A robot blog

Markup & Style Society

Get and Give

The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely

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Snaptu: Avoid These Automobile-Destroying Foods [Safety]

2009-07-21T08:08:00.001+05:30

Who hasn't partaken of a little dining while on the road? While the best bet is keeping your hands at ten and two with no interstate munching, at...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/dzlxGQGQ9vc/avoid-these-automobile+destroying-foods

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50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design

2009-07-20T23:07:00.001+05:30

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50 New CSS Techniques For Your Next Web Design

via Smashing Magazine by Cameron Chapman on 7/20/09

CSS is almost certainly one of the best developments in web design since the first graphical web browsers were adopted on a wide scale. Where tables created clunky, slow-loading pages, CSS created much more streamlined and usable web pages. Plus, CSS has allowed designers to achieve a number of different styles that used to only be possible with images.

One of the best parts of CSS is that it's so simple once you know the basics. Where tables used to make incredibly complex and sometimes impossible-to-decipher code, CSS keeps things clean and simple. Add a few comments to keep everything organized and it becomes an absolute dream to work with.

Below are 50 fresh CSS tricks, techniques and tutorials that will help you to improve the quality of your next web design. Be sure to check out our previous article: 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn't Live Without.

1. Security and Performance

While CSS is often thought of as merely a styling language, there are ways you can use it to add security to your site. There are also ways you can optimize your CSS to improve page load times. Both are discussed below.

Make your pages load faster by combining and compressing javascript and css files

This tutorial shows you how to create a PHP script to compress and combine multiple CSS and/or JavaScript files with gzip when they're called for by a browser. It speeds up the page load times while making it possible to still edit the individual CSS or JavaScript files without having to combine and re-compress everything each times.

Informal testing showed that a group of JavaScript files were reduced from 168Kb (and 1905 ms to transfer) to 37Kb (and 400 ms). There wasn't any data available for the effect it had on CSS files, but I'd guess it's probably pretty similar.

The Definitive Post on Gzipping Your CSS

This post covers the best and most recent methods for using GZIP to compress your CSS. It currently covers two different methods, both equally effective. One involves adding a bit of PHP to your CSS file (and renaming the file with a PHP extension instead of CSS) while the other method involves using the same PHP code with some additions but in a separate file.

Clickjane.css: A CSS User Style Sheet to Help Detect and Avoid Clickjacking Attacks

This post covers how to use clickjane.css to prevent clickjacking, a class of security vulnerabilities kind of like phishing scams and more formally referred to as user interface redressing. It's cross-browser compatible but, admittedly, probably only covers a small range of potential clickjacking vulnerabilities. It's still a good place to start, though.

5 Step Style Sheet Weight Loss Program

This post shows five different ways to trim the size of your style sheets. Techniques range from learning how to group selectors to using CSS shorthand. Each technique is thoroughly explained and includes related resources.

2. Page Layout

This is what CSS was built for. The options are almost endless, especially as CSS3 becomes the new standard.

Aligning Inline Images with the Vertical-Align Property

The default vertical alignment for inline images in text sometimes looks not-so-great. This tutorial shows you how to better align inline images with your site's type. It goes over the different types of vertical alignment and what they mean in relation to type.

CSS Centering

This post includes instructions for centering liquid layouts with CSS. It's very simple and straight-forward and works in virtually all browsers. Basically, it just uses left and right margins combined with some additional code to make it cross-browser compatible.

Making Your Footer Stay Put with CSS

Keeping footers at the bottom of your pages can be a real hassle with CSS, depending on how the rest of your page is set up. This tutorial shows exactly how to keep your footer where it should be—below the rest of your content! It's a very thorough post, with complete, step-by-step instructions.

Vertical Centering with CSS

This post covers five excellent ways to center your content vertically. It includes the good and bad for each method along with complete instructions for implementing them. The methods range from using divs that act like tables to using absolute positions.

Handy Tips for Creating a Print CSS Stylesheet

This post is filled with great tips for creating better print stylesheets. It includes instructions for everything from including link destinations after the link text to splitting comments onto a new page. Pick and choose from the techniques offered or copy the whole stylesheet.

Fluid Images

Fluid layouts are great. They generally look and function just fine until you start introducing fixed-width elements within them—like images. This post shows how to make your images fluid, too. And it works for most embedded video. And while the basic technique includes just one CSS property, there is a workaround necessary to make it work on Windows machines.

Flexible Equal Height Columns

This tutorial shows how to create completely versatile equal height columns using valid and semantic markup. It's cross-browser compatible and works with both fixed, fluid, and even elastic designs. It's a very complete tutorial but not at all complicated.

CSS Columns with Borders

This is a technique for creating equal-height columns with CSS that have borders. It uses a series of nested divs to achieve the effect instead of images. The end result is fantastic.

Creating a Polaroid Photo Viewer with CSS3 and jQuery

The photo gallery created with this technique is absolutely awesome. The HTML and CSS aren't super-complicated, and everything is explained really well. While CSS3 isn't supported by every browser, this does appear to degrade gracefully, making it perfectly fine to use as long as you don't mind some visitors not getting the full effect.

A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles

An incredibly complete collection of global resets, this post covers pretty much every reset you could possibly need. Some are short and sweet, consisting of only a couple of properties, while others are very complete and reset everything you might consider resetting.

Making Module Layout Systems

This tutorial gives complete instructions for creating modular layout systems using CSS. This makes it practical to use different grid-based divs as needed for individual content elements. The end result provides tons of flexibility for dealing with everything from images to text while keeping everything uniform and balanced.

Multiple Backgrounds (CSS3)

This tutorial shows how to implement multiple backgrounds using CSS3. It's currently only supported by Safari, but the tutorial includes tricks to make it work in non-supported browsers. Currently, it doesn't validate, but once the CSS3 standard is completed it's likely it will.

CSS3 Multiple Columns

Here's a tutorial for creating multi-column layouts with CSS3. The CSS is pretty simple and straight-forward, much easier than most current solutions to multi-column layouts. Unfortunately, this only works with Firefox, Safari and Chrome at the moment.

Smart Columns with CSS and jQuery

This tutorial shows how to create smart columns inside liquid layouts using a combination of CSS and jQuery. Basically, it fits as many columns into the base column size as possible and then distributes any leftover white space among the columns there. A very elegant solution if you want to allow for a variable number of columns without ending up with a bunch of leftover white space in your design.

CSS Hack for Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer

This tutorial shows how to apply different style sheets based on the browser your visitors are using (at least in IE5-8, Google Chrome, and Safari 1-4). A very valuable technique if you want to use styles only supported in certain browsers without making your site look bad in unsupported browsers.

3. Menu and Navigation Customizations

Menu and navigation styles can really set your site apart if done well. Just remember, menus need to remain usable and functional no matter how they look.

Overlap That Menu!

Have you ever wanted to create menu items that overlap? This relatively-simple tutorial shows you how to do just that using unique classes for your menu items. It also tells how to reorder the navigation items using the z-index. It's a nice effect that isn't difficult to achieve.

Super Awesome Buttons with CSS3 and RGBA

With a little CSS3 magic, you can created a scalable set of sexy buttons with nearly half the CSS it would have taken with hex colors. Give it a go in your next project and see how it can help add that extra polish you want without huge impact on your code.

Custom Buttons 3.0

This page shows a variety of rounded-corner (1px radius) buttons that don't use images (other than for the optional background gradient). Just look at the source code for the page to see how it's done.

Centered Tabs with CSS

This tutorial provides an alternative to the sliding doors method of creating tabs in CSS that allows tabs to be centered instead of only right- or left-aligned. It's a multi-step tutorial but isn't complicated.

Styling the Button Element with CSS Sliding Doors

An updated tutorial on sliding doors buttons that now includes creating them with CSS image sprites. It's also been simplified to work with a single block of CSS in all the major browsers (including IE 6-8). The markup is simple and straight-forward and the end result is perfect.

Styling Buttons to Look Like Links

Sometimes you have to use a button (like with forms), but realize your design would look so much better with just a simple text link. This tutorial gives a complete overview of how to make your buttons look like text links using CSS.

Simple, Scalable CSS Based Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs can be a great addition to your site's navigation and can really improve your site's usability. This tutorial shows you how to create breadcrumbs with CSS. The code used is simple (the HTML portion is just an unordered list) and there are only six CSS styles defined.

Recreating the Button

This article covers how to make a button that look very similar to regular HTML input buttons but can handle multiple types of interaction (like dropdowns or toggle functions). These buttons were originally developed at Google and are skinnable with just a few lines of CSS. The buttons created are entirely CSS-based, including the gradient background.

List of 10+ Usability-Conscious Link Styles

This page offers a good overview of different effects you can use for links, including color and underline, backgrounds, and animations. It's a good starting place if you're trying to figure out exactly how your links should look and act to make them more user-friendly.

Create Vimeo-Like Top Navigation

Here's a tutorial to create a drop-down top navigation bar similar to the one Vimeo.com uses. It's all done with images, CSS and HTML and isn't particularly difficult, though it is a bit complex. It's explained really well, with images illustrating the structure and very well-written CSS.

Beautifully Horizontal Centered Menus/Tabs/List

This tutorial explains how to create cross-browser compatible, centered menus or other items in CSS with no hacks and no JavaScript It's compatible with liquid layouts, too. Not only does it give the code to achieve the effect, but it also fully explains exactly how and why it works.

4. Typography

Here are a few tutorials and tricks for creating advanced typographic styles using CSS. There's everything from line-wrap functions to faux anti-aliasing to adding gradients and shadows.

Wrapping Text Inside Pre Tags

This tutorial shows how to wrap text within pre html tags. It's useful for displaying code on your site, especially when lines of code are quite long and end up breaking your site's layout (especially in IE). It's a relatively simple and there are a few different options presented.

Make Cool and Clever Text Effects with CSS Text-Shadow

Creating text effects without the use of images is a big advantage in terms of both file size and the time required for maintenance. This tutorial shows how to take advantage of the text-shadow property in CSS to style your text. While this effect doesn't work in IE, it does in most other browsers. And it looks incredibly cool if done well (I'm a big fan of the "milky text" example).

Safari's Text-Shadowing Anti-Aliasing CSS Hack

This tutorial shows how to use the text-shadow CSS property to create an anti-aliasing effect on your text. It only works in browsers that support text-shadow (so not IE), but the look is pretty awesome. It can definitely make text more readable, just don't overdo it or you end up with text that's blurry.

Safari's Text-Shadowing Anti-Aliasing CSS Hack Revision

This is a revised version of the technique above to create a slightly different anti-aliasing effect, especially useful for light text on dark backgrounds. It uses an extremely transparent black background to force Safari to render the text more legibly.

Snazzy Pullquotes for Your Blog

If you have a blog or other site that's text-heavy, using pull quotes to highlight important bits can look really awesome while also making your content more scannable. This tutorial shows how to format those pull quotes with CSS. It shows how to create both left and right aligned pull quotes while also preserving your regular blockquote style.

Codename Rainbows

Here's a technique for creating two-color gradients for text using a combination of JavaScript and CSS. It also works to apply shadows and highlights to text. The possibilities for the use of this technique are pretty endless. Of course, this is also one of those things where a little bit goes a long way (ie, limit gradients to your headers, titles, and other text you want to stand out—not your site's body copy).

Build Better CSS Font Stacks

This article gives some great guidelines for creating better CSS font stacks. It includes information on the most common font stacks currently used and then goes on to cover Tuck's Definitive Font Stacks and Ford's Better Font Stacks. It's a great resource when you're determining a site's typography, with the information presented in a very scannable, well-organized format.

CSS3 Embedding a Font Face

Here's a great tutorial on how to embed fonts using CSS3. While it's still not widely supported, this technique makes it much easier to embed special fonts into a site without having to resort to images.

CSS Gradient Text Effect

This little trick makes it easy to create gradient text by applying a 1 pixel gradient PNG to it. It's a quick and easy way to create gradient text pretty much anywhere on your site. There's even a fix to make it work in IE6 included.

5. Other Cool Techniques, Tips, and Tricks

Below are a ton of other techniques and tricks you can use to really make your CSS stand out.

3D Cube Using CSS Transformations

This is probably one of the coolest CSS techniques I've seen. This tutorial shows how to build a 3D cube with text or other content on each side of the cube. It does it entirely with CSS; there's no canvas, SVG, imagery, or JavaScript. There's even instructions for creating multiple shaded cubes on a single page. The only real drawback is that it's only supported in recent WebKit and Gecko browsers.

Nine Ways to Obfuscate E-mail addresses compared

This article gives two different methods for obfuscating email addresses with CSS. One involves using the display:none attribute while the other involves reversing the code. Both supposedly cut the amount of spam received to zero.

Forms Markup and CSS - Revisited

Here is a CSS template for form styling. The markup of the form is based on the Accessible Forms Markup from Derek Featherstone. The template is semantically correct, flexible and accessible.

iPhone CSS

A very short and simple tutorial on how to make certain elements of you CSS render differently on the iPhone. It's surprisingly simple and easy to implement.

Improving Your Process: Faster Front End Development

While this post offers plenty of information on things other than CSS, it also offers some great advice for improving your efficiency with CSS: mainly, write your CSS in blocks. This technique is usually done progressively as you get used to coding in this manner. The steps are simple, though, and it's sure to make you a much faster designer.

Image-Free CSS Tooltip Pointers - A Use for Polygonal CSS?

This tutorial explains how to create triangles (to be used for pointers) using CSS, without the need for any images. The end result is great, though it only works for single-color images. The CSS used is incredibly simple while still being really versatile. You can create a triangle of almost any size using just a single div.

How I Implemented My Cookie-Based Switcher

While not strictly a CSS trick, this post shows how to create a cookie-based CSS theme switcher for WordPress. It allows users to choose to use a different theme when they visit the blog while allowing new users to see a nice, simple, easy-to-read theme that puts the primary focus on the content.

CSS Swap Hover Effect

This great technique will replace any image with another image when you hover over it. The tutorial shows it applied to a portfolio site, but the possibilities are endless. It's very slick and cross-browser compatible (though IE6 does require a bit of a workaround, as usual).

CSS Stacked Bar Graphs

Here's a tutorial for creating stacked bar graphs using CSS and some images. It's a pretty in-depth process, but the result looks fantastic.

Changing HTML Images on Hover / A Quick CSS Trick

Here's a quick and easy CSS technique for swapping out images on hover. It's pure CSS, no JavaScript required. The biggest issue this technique solves is that when the page is printed, the base image is the only one that shows up.

10 Properties that Were Impossible to Implement in IE6

This collection of CSS tricks shows how to implement a number of styles that were supposedly impossible in Internet Explorer 6. It includes tricks for opacity, fixed positions, and text shadow, among others.

10 Challenging But Awesome CSS Techniques

Sometimes the coolest things just take a bit more effort. This collection of tutorials covers ten different CSS techniques that aren't exactly easy to achieve, but the end results are well worth the extra effort. Techniques include pull quotes, dynamic variables, and style changes based on the time of day or even the weather, among other awesome examples.

Further Resources

CSS3 Exciting Functions and Features: 30+ Useful Tutorials from Noupe
Covers more than 30 new features and functions CSS3 is capable of.
A Harsh CSS Environment for Testing Widgets
This stylesheet creates an incredibly harsh environment for testing your widgets. If it looks okay here, it will likely look okay anywhere.
24 CSS (in some cases with jQuery) Navigation and Menu Tutorials
A huge list of awesome navigation and menu examples, with links to the tutorials.
15 CSS Tricks That Must Be Learned
Covers a variety of techniques, from fixing PNG transparency in IE6 to using CSS to fight spam.

About the author

Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She also writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, Internet Famous.

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How to Print with Colored Backgrounds in Lightroom

2009-07-19T22:03:00.001+05:30

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How to Print with Colored Backgrounds in Lightroom

via Digital Photography School by Helen Bradley on 7/19/09

One issue with Lightroom is that all the images that you print from the print module print with white backgrounds.

One DPS reader recently mentioned this in a post I did on creating a Triptych in Lightroom. While the reader is correct in supposing that Lightroom does not offer color backgrounds for images, there is a workaround that you can use to print with any color background you like.

Here's how to print with colored backgrounds in Lightroom:

Start in Photoshop or another bitmap editor that lets you create and save JPG images. Create a new image the size of the page that you want to print.

For convenience, I'd create images for all the paper sizes you plan to use all at once. This means you may want one for 5 x 7″ paper, one for 4 x 6″ and one for Letter paper for example. Whatever size you print at, create a new image that size and at around 96 pixels per inch if you're using a solid color background.

Fill the document that you have created with the color background that you want to use. For example, if you want a black background, fill the documents with black and for another color background, fill the document with that color.

If you typically use an Identity Plate to print your name or other details on the image in Lightroom then you'll need to know that what you're doing right now is creating something that will replace the Identity Plate in Lightroom so you can't use both a background and a text identity plate.

However, if you know this ahead of time you can add the same details you add to your identity plate to this image as text.

If you plan to do this, you'll will need separate documents for each paper size in each of the two orientations: Landscape and Portrait. If you're just using plain backgrounds you won't need to create one in each orientation as you can rotate the images later on - you just won't want to rotate something that has text in it. You will probably want the images to be a better size for printing so 1500 x 1000 pixels will print on 6 x 4 paper at 250 dpi so the text will look crisp and neat.

Once you've created all your documents, save each with a name that indicates its size and color and, if relevant, its orientation. I suggest you save it somewhere that will make it easy to find and so they are safe from being removed accidentally.

Return to Lightroom and switch to the Print module. Set up your image or images to print. You can use a Contact Sheet/Grid layout or a Picture Package.

To add your background locate the Overlays panel on the right and click the Identity Plate checkbox. Click on the Identity Plate to display the menu and select Edit. When the Identity Plate Editor dialog opens, click the Use a graphical identity plate option and click Locate File.

Select the image that you created for this paper size (and orientation, if applicable), and click Choose. Click Ok to add the image as the Identity Plate.

When the image appears in the document set the scale to 100 so it fills the page layout and drag it into position.

You might notice that you cannot make the image any bigger than the page itself and you can't drag it out of its original aspect ratio - this is why you need to create multiple versions of the image one for each paper size as the ratios 8:10, 5:7 and 4:6 are all different.

Once you've dragged the background over the entire page, click the Render Behind Image option in the Overlays area.

This moves the solid color image behind the pictures on the page.

You can now change the stroke border if desired to, for example, add a white or gray stroke if you're using a black or dark gray background.

Then go ahead and print your image.

You might realize by now that any image can be used as a print background.

So, for example, you can crop an image in Lightroom to the size that you need for the background, export it to disk as a JPG and then reimport it as an Identity Plate to use as a background for your printed images.

You could do this with a black and white version of an image or a color version. The Overlays > Identity Plate area also provides an Opacity slider allowing you to make the image partially opaque to lighten it so it doesn't overwhelm the images you are printing.

When you are done, save your Identity Plate by clicking on the Identity Plate option, choose Edit and then from the custom dropdown list, choose Save As and save it so that it can be easily accessed next time.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Print with Colored Backgrounds in Lightroom

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How To Automate Optimization and Deployment Of Static Content

2009-07-19T21:58:00.001+05:30

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How To Automate Optimization and Deployment Of Static Content

via Smashing Magazine by Christian Baeuerlein on 7/19/09

A lot of traffic between users and your site comes from the static content you're using to set up the user interface, namely layout graphics, Stylesheets and Javascript files.

This article shows a method to improve the providing of static content for a web platform. Further, it will show you a way to automate the deployment of these files, so you can deliver them with least effort but with maximum performance.

This tutorial will take some time to set it up, but it's going to save you hours of work in the future and will improve your page speed significantly.

1. Why do I need this?

There are several approaches to optimize the delivery of contents.
Some use on-the-fly compression via the server itself or a scripting language, which costs performance and does not optimize the structure and content of the files.

The method shown here prepares the files once and also merges and optimizes the code of CSS and Javascript files before the files are compressed, which makes the delivery of them even faster.

Most browsers download only two files from a source at once. If a page needs to load more files from one domain, they get queued.
More files to transfer mean more requests to the server, more traffic and more usage of the server's performance. For the users of the platform, this means longer loading times.
The more steps you need to deploy these files, the more space for mistakes is given.
Deployment is boring. It's far more exciting to invest some time once, to set up a reusable automation, than wasting time doing the same copy/paste/upload actions over and over again.

Compare this two screenshots that show the same content before and after the optimization.
The apricot colored parts of the bars stand for the status "in queue" while loading the page.

The "in queue" status means nothing less than: Wasted time of the user.

In this example, the loading time was reduced by 33%, the transferred data size was reduced by 65% and the number of requests to the server even by 80%.

By using CSS sprites and merged CSS and Javascript files, there is no queue for the loading of the basic static content.

2. How to improve your static content

Besides caching, there are some principles to make the whole setup of static content more efficient right from the start of development.

Use CSS sprites for your layout graphics. It not only saves you a lot of traffic and loading time. If you got used to maintain your graphics like this, you'll notice that it can be much more comfortable to have your layout elements e.g. in a single Photoshop file.
Don't blow up the loading time with your CSS and Javascript files. Combine the files of each kind into one single file, minimize them (e.g. by removing line breaks and other unnecessary characters) and compress them using GZip to get the load even smaller.
This is covered in this tutorial.

3. Automating the deployment using Ruby

This automation is written in the Ruby language. So you need to have Ruby installed on your development computer. The installation is pretty simple on Windows and Mac OS X even ships with Ruby.

Please keep in mind: The scripts are completely independent from the language you're using to run your site! You can also use them to deploy content e.g. for a PHP project.

If you're not used to work on the command line, the next steps might look cryptic to you. Don't hesitate, clench your teeth and take care that you always pass the correct path of the files to deal with. You only have to go through this once. When you're finished, all you need to do is to type one single command to start the whole process.

To make it easier for you, this is the folder structure used for this tutorial:

 + css/ - fonts.css - grids.css - layout.css - reset.css - static.min.css (generated) - static.min.css.gz (generated)  + js/ - framework.js - gallery.js - plugin1.js - plugin2.js - start.js - static.min.js (generated) - static.min.js.gz (generated)  + deploy/ - batch - ftp.rb - gzip.rb  index.php (or something similar)

Requirements for this tutorial

Don't worry, besides Ruby you won't need anything, that you don't probably already have:

A simple text editor to save the source code.
A command line tool, like Windows cmd.exe or Mac OS X Terminal to call the scripts.
A FTP account to try out the upload script.
A project to enhance.
Optional: The Firefox add-on Firebug (or something similar for other browsers), to see the enhancements afterwards.

Juicer

Christian Johansen created a tool called Juicer which enables you to merge and minimize CSS and Javascript files. To install it on Windows, simply type

gem install juicer

in the command line. When you're using Mac OS X use

sudo gem install juicer

After the successful install, Juicer will ask you to extend it with YUI Compressor and JSLint for Javascript compression and verification. You do this by typing

juicer install yui_compressor

and after that

juicer install jslint

in the command line.

Preparing your files

The good thing is, you don't have to change anything in your present files. But to make sure, the files are merged in the order you want to, you need to set up two additional files.

Let's assume you have four CSS files and five Javascript files:

 <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/fonts.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/grids.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="./css/layout.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />  <script type="application/javascript" src="js/framework.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript" src="js/plugin1.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript" src="js/plugin2.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript" src="js/gallery.js"></script> <script type="application/javascript" src="js/start.js"></script>

Create a new Javascript file, called static.js with the following content:

 /**  * @depends framework.js  * @depends plugin1.js  * @depends plugin2.js  * @depends gallery.js  * @depends start.js  */

After that, create a CSS file static.css with this content:

 @import url("reset.css"); @import url("fonts.css"); @import url("grids.css"); @import url("layout.css");

Now you're ready to run Juicer in your command line.

For Javascript:

 juicer merge -i --force ./js/static.js

The parameter -i means that the merging process won't be cancelled, if JSLint thinks you have errors in your Javascript code. The parameter --force means older versions of the minified file will be overwritten.

For CSS:

 juicer merge --force ./css/static.css

As a result you will see two new generated files named static.min.js and static.min.css. You probably want to know if they still work for your site, so go ahead and test it, by replacing the old bunch of link and script tags in your html header with the two new ones.

GZip Compression

When your minified files work fine, you can go on to compression. If you get Javascript errors or your CSS layout looks weird, you should re-check the order of the files to merge.

Below you see a small Ruby script that saves a gzipped copy of a file.

 require 'zlib'  file_to_zip = ARGV[0]  puts "Gzipping #{file_to_zip}..."  base_name = File.basename(file_to_zip)  file_name_zip = "#{file_to_zip}.gz"  base_name_zip = "zip_#{base_name}"  File.open(file_name_zip, 'w') do |f|    gz = Zlib::GzipWriter.new(f)    IO.foreach(file_to_zip) {|x|     gz.write x   }       gz.close  end  puts "Gzipped version saved as #{file_name_zip}"

Save it as gzip.rb and call it like this:

 ruby gzip.rb ../js/static.min.js

When you look at your folder, you'll notice a new file called static.min.js.gz. Now do the same for the CSS file:

 ruby gzip.rb ../css/static.min.css

Important: Make sure that your server provides the right content encoding and content type information to the clients, so they understand that this files are gzipped content.
You can do this in many ways. For Apache, an example for the .htaccess file would be:

 <FilesMatch "\.(js.gz)$"> AddType text/javascript .gz AddEncoding x-gzip .gz </FilesMatch>  <FilesMatch "\.(css.gz)$"> AddType text/css .gz AddEncoding x-gzip .gz </FilesMatch>

FTP-Upload

You're on the home stretch. Now you have all improved files together and need to upload them to your host. Again, here's a little Ruby script that does exactly that for you.

 require 'net/ftp'  ftp_host = ARGV[0] ftp_user = ARGV[1] ftp_password = ARGV[2]  localfile = ARGV[3] #e.g. "../js/static.min.js.gz" remote_dir = ARGV[4] #e.g. "www/js"  ftp = Net::FTP.open(ftp_host, ftp_user, ftp_password)   puts "FTP - Status: #{ftp.status}."  puts "FTP - Go to directory: #{remote_dir}." ftp.chdir(remote_dir) puts "FTP - Uploading file: #{localfile}..." ftp.putbinaryfile(localfile)  files = ftp.list puts "FTP - Your file was uploaded here:" puts files  ftp.close

Save it as upload.rb, put in the credentials of your host, eventually change the destination directory and then call it like that:

 ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../js/static.min.js www/js

Which stands for:
ruby ftp.rb ftp-host ftp-user ftp-password file-to-upload ftp-destination-folder

The minified Javascript file should be uploaded now. Repeat this for the CSS file and the gzipped versions of both.

Please note that the folders on the ftp server, where the files are copied to, must already exist.

Putting it all together

You got all the pieces of this puzzle and now you can finally put them together, by grouping the commands in a batch file. On Windows it would look like this:

 @echo off  echo -------- MERGING JS FILES --------  call juicer merge -i --force ../js/static.js   echo -------- FINISHED MERGING JS FILES --------  echo -------- MERGING CSS FILES --------  call juicer merge --force ../css/static.css  echo -------- FINISHED MERGING CSS FILES --------  echo -------- COMPRESSING FILES --------  ruby gzip.rb ../js/static.min.js  ruby gzip.rb ../css/static.min.css  echo -------- FINSISHED COMPRESSING FILES --------  echo -------- UPLOADING FILES --------  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../js/static.min.js www/js  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../js/static.min.js.gz www/js  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../css/static.min.css www/css  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../css/static.min.css.gz www/css  echo -------- FINISHED UPLOADING FILES --------

Save it in a file called e.g. batch.bat, insert your FTP credentials and call it like this:

 cd deploy //switch to subdirectory batch.bat

On OS X you can do it like that:

 #!/bin/bash  echo -------- MERGING JS FILES --------  juicer merge -i --force ../js/static.js   echo -------- FINISHED MERGING JS FILES --------  echo -------- MERGING CSS FILES --------  juicer merge --force ../css/static.css  echo -------- FINISHED MERGING CSS FILES --------  echo -------- COMPRESSING FILES --------  ruby gzip.rb ../js/static.min.js  ruby gzip.rb ../css/static.min.css  echo -------- FINSISHED COMPRESSING FILES --------  echo -------- UPLOADING FILES --------  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../js/static.min.js www/js  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../js/static.min.js.gz www/js  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../css/static.min.css www/css  ruby ftp.rb example.org admin mysecret ../css/static.min.css.gz www/css  echo -------- FINISHED UPLOADING FILES --------

Save it in a file called e.g. batch, insert your FTP credentials and call it like this:

 cd deploy //switch to subdirectory sh batch

And the content gets merged, minified, compressed and uploaded in one rush.
Additionally to the CSS and Javascript files, it would be a good idea, if the graphics file for the CSS sprites would be uploaded too? Just add an additional call of the upload script in the batch file. It can be used with any filetype.

4. In your template

Further development and bug fixing is hard to do in a minified file. But you can add an if-clause in your templates to vary the referencing of your files, depending on your environment.

Take the original files for your local development and the minified for your online version. Additionally you should check if the users browser supports gzipped content (most modern browsers do).

An example for PHP:

 if($_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] == "localhost") { 	//local development server - load all files } else { 	if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')){ 		//production system - client accepts gzip 	} else { 		//production system - client does not accept gzip 	} }

And an example for Ruby on Rails:

 <% if RAILS_ENV == 'development' %>   <%# local development server - load all files %> <% else %>   <% if self.request.env['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'].match(/gzip/) %>     <%# production system - client accepts gzip %>   <% else %>     <%# production system - client does not accept gzip %>   <% end %> <% end %>

5. Get even faster with subdomains

Like mentioned before, most browsers only download two files per host simultaneously. You can bypass that rule by creating some subdomains for your static content and referencing the files through them.

For example, create a subdomain on your web hosting account, that's called img.example.org, which points to example.org/img.

Do this for all of your folders, containing static content and use the subdomains to reference your resources:

 img.example.org/sprites.jpg css.example.org/static.min.css js.example.org/static.min.js

This way, the rule won't be applied and all files can be downloaded at the same time.

6. Conclusion

If you got all of this working for one of your projects, you surely recognized the advantages for you as a developer and for the users as the consumers of your content.

These examples don't claim to be perfect. But if you didn't approach to automate recurring tasks in your daily workflow as a developer, you hopefully have an idea now, how it could look like.

Always keep in mind, that computers were invented to spare you the boredom of repeating, simple tasks. So save your time for more important things.

Of course, this doesn't have to be the end of the line. If you're interested in the automatic deployment of whole applications, you should have a look at Capistrano. Again, it's written in Ruby, but you can also use it for PHP platforms.

Further Resources

Yahoo! Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site
Lots of best practices, how to enhance content delivery.
Yahoo! YSlow
A Firebug add-on to test sites against the best practices above.
Google Page Speed
Another Firebug add-on to test the loading performance of pages.
How To Optimize Your Site With GZIP Compression
Another approach for the delivery of gzipped contents.
JavaScript und CSS schneller laden mit htaccess gzip
Another .htaccess snippet to decide, if the content should can be delivered compressed to a client or not. (German)

About the author

Christian Bäuerlein has recently obtained his degree in Media System Design. He's passioned about web development and creating all kinds of projects with Javascript, PHP, Ruby and/or Java. You can follow him on this journey on his twitter profile.

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Snaptu: Our Favorite Homemade Ice Cream Recipes and Tricks [Beat The Heat]

2009-07-18T06:22:00.001+05:30

Ice cream may not be the best choice when you really want to cool down, but that doesn't stop it from being a favorite summertime treat. Here's a...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/cMVJFRo_zpw/

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Snaptu: WWIGO - Webcam Wherever I Go for S60

2009-07-17T18:07:00.000+05:30

Enjoy the freedom of wireless webcam with your mobile phone camera. WWIGO by Motvik stands for Webcam Wherever I Go. It converts every cameraphone...

http://My-Symbian.com/main/index6.php?p=6038&c=6

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Snaptu: HDR imaging done the cheap, and inevitably complex, way

2009-07-17T17:56:00.000+05:30

People who are seriously after HDR output tend to pony up the dough for a big and chunky DSLR, knowing they'll get the highest quality possible. But...

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/1eD_8bTdqeE/

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Snaptu: Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet”

2009-07-17T06:40:00.001+05:30

On Tuesday evening more than 300 confidential Twitter documents and screenshots landed in our inbox. We said we were going to post a handful of them...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eKL3CrX0ALo/

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20 Incredible Photo Manipulation Examples

2009-07-16T22:12:00.001+05:30

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20 Incredible Photo Manipulation Examples

via Digital Photography School by Nate Jelovich on 7/13/09

Photo Manipulation is, in my opinion, among one of the most fascinating photography techniques out there. Photo Manipulation is the process of editing a photograph in such an extreme way that it takes on an entirely different look. Photo Manipulation goes beyond mere enhancements or corrections. Often using PhotoShop or other photo editing software and combining various elements from several photographs and other resources, Photo Manipulation blends reality with illusion to create something truly remarkable.

Check out 20 incredible Photo Manipulation examples below for inspiration in your own work. All images can be found at Imagekind.com.

Desperation by Josh Sommers

No One Wanted To Be Sued by M Fortune

Dizzy crowd by Martine Roch

Limits by Stephanie Bennett

Corsairs from Sirocco by Bartlomiej Jurkowski

Anatomy by Lisa KC

Hope Springs Eternal by PhotoDream .

Everything inside never comes out right. by Karen Biggs

Untitled by Sarolta Bán

The Whisper by Neil Carey

squid,seashell and crab by Pawel Wewiorski

One With the Earth by Day Seriani

DREAMING AGAIN by METROFADER

Storm by Lydia Marano

the loss of innocence by Ana Fagarazzi

My dream is to fly by Amalia Iuliana

The Last Angel by WanderingSoul

Day 144 - Little darling, it feels like years since by Miriness Photography

I am not a perfect man by O O

Little Fae by Tara Naomi Boliek

See more Photo Manipulation artwork at Imagekind.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

20 Incredible Photo Manipulation Examples

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Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

2009-07-16T22:08:00.001+05:30

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Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

via Digital Photography School by Neil Creek on 7/14/09

Photo: Rainer Ebert - CC license

The following post is from Australian photographer Neil Creek who will soon be teaching a class in portrait photography in Melbourne Australia, and is developing his blog as a resource for the passionate photographer.

Welcome to the seventh lesson in Photography 101 - A Basic Course on the Camera. In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the 'exposure triangle': shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.

This week's lesson is The Light Meter.

Here's What We've Covered Previously in this Series:

Lesson 1: Light and the Pinhole Camera
Lesson 2: Lenses and Focus
Lesson 3: Lenses, Light and Magnification
Lesson 4: Exposure and Stops
Lesson 5: Aperture
Lesson 6: Shutter
Lesson 7: ISO

In previous lessons we have talked about the basic theory of how a camera works, including some basic optics, and introduced the idea of exposure and how we control it with the exposure triangle. Now that we have covered each of the points of the exposure triangle, it's time to bring them all together with the tool at the core, the light meter.

What is the Light Meter?

A challenging scene to meter

For as long as people have been taking photos, there has been a need to determine how bright a scene is. Any method of recording light can only work in a relatively narrow band without over or under exposing the image. To find the correct exposure that will record the image without over or under exposing it too much, photographers need to know how bright the scene is. An extremely talented photographer may be able to guess a near-enough exposure, but a light meter is a far more accurate and convenient way to do it.

Light meters in cameras react to how intense the light is as seen from the camera. SLRs measure the light (called metering) through the lens - TTL. They collect light that has actually passed through the camera's lens and measure its intensity. There are problems when the scene has parts that are much brighter or darker than others, for example shadows on a sunny day. This can trick the light meter into measuring the intensity of the light incorrectly, depending on which part of the scene was illuminating the sensor.

Modern SLR cameras use multi-point light meters, meaning that several light meters are actually scattered around the projected scene, each measuring the light intensity at that point. Very sophistocated cameras may have dozens of metering points. How much the measured intensity of the light at each point influences the final meter reading depends on the metering mode selected by the photographer.

For a more detailed look at metering modes, you can read: Introduction to metering modes.

How to Use the Light Meter

As we now know, the correct exposure is created by juggling the three points of the exposure triangle: aperture, shutter and ISO. The light meter is the tool that puts us in the right neighbourhood for how these should be set. If you are shooting on full auto, then when you meter the scene - usually done at the same time as focusing, by half pressing the shutter - the light meter gives its best guess for each of these variables.

If you want to take creative control of the photo, you can manually set each of the three variables yourself. Typically ISO is left at the default, or previous setting, and you take control by choosing aperture priority or shutter priority. On most DSLRs that's done by turning the exposure mode dial. If you set the dial to Av - aperture priority, the photographer chooses what the aperture will be, and the light meter adjusts the shutter speed to mantain the correct exposure. The reverse is true for Tv - shutter priority.

When using these modes, it's useful to refer to the exposure meter display on the camera. The exposure meter (display) shows the result of the measurement taken by the light meter (sensor). It will typically look something like this:

Exposure meter display on LCD

Exposure meter display in viewfinder

Each number represents a stop change in the light, as indicated, with the central mark being the "correct" exposure, as determined by the light meter. Each pip between the numbers represents one third of a stop. The arrow underneath indicates how close the current settings are to the correct exposure. Usually in priority modes, the arrow will stay in the middle as the light meter will be able to set the exposure correctly. However, if for example you set your aperture to 1/400sec in Tv (shutter priority mode) and the light meter indicated that you needed an aperture of f4, but your lens was only capable of f5.8, then the exposure meter will display one stop of underexposure. You will need to compensate for this by setting a longer shutter time, or increasing the ISO.

The juggling act becomes more complicated, and the light meter's assistance more valuable, when you go to full manual control of the exposure. Here the exposure meter simply displays whether the current settings will under or over expose the image, according to the light meter. The photographer can freely change any of the values on the exposure triangle, and see the change to the predicted versus recommended exposure.

Exposure compensation

Even though the light meter in your camera is pretty sophistocated, sometimes it can get it wrong, especially with harsh contrasts, or highly reflective surfaces. Changing metering modes may help this, but a more controlled approach is to use exposure compensation. Imagine you are photographing a person against a large bright sky. The light meter thinks the sky is the most important part, and exposes correctly for that, leaving the person a dark silhouette. By using exposure compensation, you can tell the camera to take the metered exposure and make it brighter by a chosen amount. This will then allow the photographer to correctly expose the person. I'll look at exposure compensation in more detail in a future post.

Examples

To show you how the different exposure modes might work in real world situations, here are some scenarios. The settings given below are what they happened to be for the examples shown. Settings for your own photo will be different.

Scanario 1 - Sports

High speed is needed to freeze action
Use Shutter Priority
Set shutter speed to 1/800sec
The light meter sets the aperture to f10
If under exposed, change ISO to compensate - ISO400

Scanario 2 - Portrait

An artistic narrow depth of field is desired
Use Aperture Priority
Set aperture to f5.6
The light meter sets the shutter to 1/160sec
If under exposed, change ISO to compensate - ISO100

Scenario 3 - Night scenery

Ambient light is too low to accurately meter
Use full Manual
Set aperture to suit scene, erring to wider - f11
Set a long shutter speed to light meter's best guess - 20sec
Set ISO to lowest possible for correct exposure - ISO100
Take a test shot and adjust settings if the light meter got it wrong

Scenario 4 - Off-camera manual flash

On auto, meter the scene and note settings
Set camera to one or two stops under exposed
Set up flashes and tweak power to expose correctly
Tweak the flashes exposure by adjusting aperture
Tweak the ambient light by adjusting shutter speed
Settings for example shot: 1/160sec f8 ISO125, click image for flash details.

Homework

Put the camera in auto mode and half press the shutter. While looking through the viewfinder, pan around a scene and see how the automatically selected camera settings - f ratio and shutter speed - change. This preview will disappear after a few seconds, so half press the shutter again for another look.
Set the camera in shutter priority mode and choose a shutter speed for effect, eg: short for sports, long for motion blur. Shoot different scenes and note how the camera adjusts the aperture to balance the exposure.
Do the same as above for aperture - wide for shallow depth of field, narrow for focus detail at all distances.
Get adventurous and put the camera on full manual. Adjust the camera settings yourself, and watch the arrow below the exposure meter. Tweak the settings to get the arrow in the middle of the meter - half press the shutter while looking at your scene to take a meter reading.
Try to apply what you have learned to make creative photos that take advantage of the different exposure modes.

Resources

Light meter - at Wikipedia
Understanding Camera Metering and Exposure - At Cambridge in Colour
Ultimate Exposure Computer - At fredparker.com
Aperture and Shutter Priority Modes - at Digital Photography School

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

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Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

2009-07-16T22:06:00.001+05:30

Sent to you by rajooda via Google Reader:

Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

via Digital Photography School by Neil Creek on 7/14/09

Photo: Rainer Ebert - CC license

This week's lesson is The Light Meter.

Here's What We've Covered Previously in this Series:

What is the Light Meter?

A challenging scene to meter

For a more detailed look at metering modes, you can read: Introduction to metering modes.

How to Use the Light Meter

Exposure meter display on LCD

Exposure meter display in viewfinder

Exposure compensation

Examples

Scanario 1 - Sports

High speed is needed to freeze action
Use Shutter Priority
Set shutter speed to 1/800sec
The light meter sets the aperture to f10
If under exposed, change ISO to compensate - ISO400

Scanario 2 - Portrait

An artistic narrow depth of field is desired
Use Aperture Priority
Set aperture to f5.6
The light meter sets the shutter to 1/160sec
If under exposed, change ISO to compensate - ISO100

Scenario 3 - Night scenery

Ambient light is too low to accurately meter
Use full Manual
Set aperture to suit scene, erring to wider - f11
Set a long shutter speed to light meter's best guess - 20sec
Set ISO to lowest possible for correct exposure - ISO100
Take a test shot and adjust settings if the light meter got it wrong

Scenario 4 - Off-camera manual flash

On auto, meter the scene and note settings
Set camera to one or two stops under exposed
Set up flashes and tweak power to expose correctly
Tweak the flashes exposure by adjusting aperture
Tweak the ambient light by adjusting shutter speed
Settings for example shot: 1/160sec f8 ISO125, click image for flash details.

Homework

Put the camera in auto mode and half press the shutter. While looking through the viewfinder, pan around a scene and see how the automatically selected camera settings - f ratio and shutter speed - change. This preview will disappear after a few seconds, so half press the shutter again for another look.
Set the camera in shutter priority mode and choose a shutter speed for effect, eg: short for sports, long for motion blur. Shoot different scenes and note how the camera adjusts the aperture to balance the exposure.
Do the same as above for aperture - wide for shallow depth of field, narrow for focus detail at all distances.
Get adventurous and put the camera on full manual. Adjust the camera settings yourself, and watch the arrow below the exposure meter. Tweak the settings to get the arrow in the middle of the meter - half press the shutter while looking at your scene to take a meter reading.
Try to apply what you have learned to make creative photos that take advantage of the different exposure modes.

Resources

Light meter - at Wikipedia
Understanding Camera Metering and Exposure - At Cambridge in Colour
Ultimate Exposure Computer - At fredparker.com
Aperture and Shutter Priority Modes - at Digital Photography School

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Photography 101.8 - The Light Meter

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Subscribe to Digital Photography School using Google Reader
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A Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools

2009-07-16T21:57:00.001+05:30

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A Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools

via Smashing Magazine by Paul Andrew on 7/16/09

Google Analytics is undoubtedly the most widely used web analytics application. Emerged from and based upon the analytics-package developed by Urchin Software Corporation (which was bought by Google in April 2005), the tool has become publicly available for free under the new flagship of Google Analytics. In May 2007 the application was heavily edited, developed and released; the design was simplified and more advanced featured were added. Over years Google Analytics managed to gain on popularity because of its simplicity and many advanced features for curious site owners and professional marketers.

You probably use Google Analytics on a regular basis, for basic stats tracking the performance of your site. And, just like most GA users, you probably very rarely venture far from the comfort of the reports shown on the dashboard. That's all the analytical information you need, you may be thinking … or is it?

Did you know that Google Analytics can generate up to 85 different reports that will help you analyze all possible data about your website traffic. It not only tracks visitors to your site or the number of page views, it can be used to see which content gets the most visits, time on site per visit, which ads are driving the most visitors to your site, it track the performances of your marketing campaigns, including AdWords, Adsense and emails and much, much more.

This post is not a be-all-and-end-all look at GA, but a rough guide to its many under-used features and reports. It is an easy to read guide that will help you understand and use the full power of Google Analytics. Honestly, it's not that daunting.

General resources: Google Analytics Help Center, official forum and official blog.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

Perform Better With AdSense: The Ultimate Round-Up

The GA Tracking Code

Google Analytics will only track pages that contain the Google Analytics tracking code, this is a small Javascript snippet that needs to be added to each page of your site, either manually or through the use of plugins or tool. You will find some tools and plugins to help you do this near the bottom of this post.

For a static webpage or if you want to manually install the code into your pages, copy and paste the code segment into the bottom of your content, immediately before the body tag of each page that you wish to track.

To access your tracking code

Sign in to Google Analytics.
From the Analytics Settings page, find the profile for which you would like to retrieve the tracking code. Please note that tracking code is profile-specific.
From that profile's Settings column, click Edit.
At the top right of the Main Website Profile Information box, click Check Status.
Your tracking code can be copied and pasted from the text box in the Instructions for adding tracking section.

The Dashboard and Analytical Reports

Log into Google Analytics and you'll arrive at dashboard, the central hub that gives you an overview of all the popular reports (visitors, content, traffic sources and the cool map overlay) generated by Google Analytics. You can customize this page by changing what reports are shown, as well as dragging and dropping the reports into a format that suits your needs.

Google Analytics Interface Tutorial
A brief overview of how to use the Google Analytics interface. If you are new to Google Analytics or you'd like to pick up a few tips on how to use some of the different features, this video is a good place to start.

Interpreting Reports

Google offers comprehensive tutorials and guides to using Analytics, in the form of a series of Adobe Breeze Presentations. Below you will find the guides and presentations to understanding and using the reports generated by GA.

Guidelines to interpreting GA Reports
In this presentation you will learn the best practices for analyzing data, how to analyze data trends and how to use the data visualizations in Google Analytics.

Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors
Learn where to find Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors metrics, how Pageviews, Visits, and Visitors are calculated, the difference between Pageviews and Unique Pageviews and the difference between Absolute Unique Visitors and New vs. Returning Visitors.

Time Metrics
How Time on Page and Time on Site are calculated, how Avg. Time on Page and Avg. Time on Site are calculated and learn about the Length of Visit report from this presentation.

Traffic Sources
Learn about the different kinds of traffic sources, how to identify quality traffic, how to identify revenue and conversion drivers, what kinds of information to look for in keyword reports, how campaign attribution works in Google Analytics

Content Reports
How to use and interpret the Top Content, Content by Title, and Content Drilldown reports; how to use the Top Landing Pages report; how to use and interpret the Navigation Summary report; how to use and interpret the Entrance Paths report.

Analyze Traffic Sources, Content, and Navigation
Use your Google Traffic Sources, Content, and Navigation reports effectively. In this video you will see the different sources of traffic, tracking content performance and analyzing visitor navigation.

Analytics and Flash and Flex Content

One of the most common Google Analytic implementation challenges has been tracking Flash content. In the past, Flash tracking was not provided out of the box, and every implementation had to be tailored to each individual site, developers who tracked Flash had to create their own processes to get it working.

Google now provides easy to implement tracking libraries for both Flash and Flex, the libraries include: Flash visual component, Flash AS3 library, Flex MXML component and Flex AS3 library.
Download: Flash and Flex Analytics Tracking Libraries.
Documentation: Developer Documentation.

Learn how easy it is to track Flash content using the new Google Analytics Tracking For Adobe Flash.

Analytics and Ecommerce

After you have enabled ecommerce transactions, Google Analytics will generate very detailed reports about every single transaction

Tracking Ecommerce with Google Analytics
By using Google Analytics with your Ecommerce website, you can gain valuable insights about your transactions, ROI, and customers.

Step-by-Step to enabling Ecommerce Reporting

The first step of tracking ecommerce transactions is to enable e-commerce reporting for your website's profile.

Log in to your account.
Click Edit next to the profile you'd like to enable.
On the Profile Settings page, click edit next to Main Website Profile Information.
Change the E-Commerce Website radio button from No to Yes.

Analytical Goals

As a simplified explanation, Goals are only a page view, nothing complicated about that. If you define a goal in Google Analytics, you are telling it what page view constitutes the completion of a Goal, and Analytics then tracks it. It is an easier way to generate the reports that you need as well as a great way to measure your business objectives.

How to create Google Analytics Conversion Goals
In this video you will be shown how to create conversion goals in Google Analytics.

Step-by-Step to setting up Goals in Analytics

Log in to your Google Analytics account at https://www.google.com/analytics/.
Select the account that contains the profile you'll be creating goals in from the Overview page.
Find the profile for which you will be creating goals, and click 'Edit' under the 'Actions' column.
Under the 'Conversion Goals and Funnel' section, select one of the four goal slots available for that profile and click 'Edit.'
Turn the goal 'On' or 'Off.' If you choose 'On,' that means you want Google Analytics should track this conversion goal at this time. Since there are no ways of deleting goals, turning it 'Off' can make the goal inactive.
Select from one of the three match types that Google Analytics uses to identify the goal.
Enter the Request URI in the Goal URL box. Reaching this page marks a successful conversion. For example, a registration confirmation page, a checkout complete page, or a thank you page.
Enter the 'Goal name' as it should appear in your Google Analytics account.
If your goal URL is case sensitive, this means your goal URLs are capitalized exactly like the visited goal URLs.
Enter the 'Goal value.'

10 Must Track Google Analytics Goals
The author of this article gives you 10 ideas for using Analytics Goals. He advises to setup goals for visitor comments on your blogs, social bookmarking actions, newsletter subscriptions, track feed subscriptions… and much more.

Import your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords and use them with Conversion Optimizer
In order to track your ROI from AdWords, you need to be able to see which keywords, ads and campaigns lead to conversions on your site. If you use Google Analytics, you can now import your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into your AdWords account to use as conversion actions. This lets you track the ROI from your AdWords campaigns directly inside the AdWords interface.

Custom Reporting

Custom reports in Analytics give faster access to the information you need and less data reports to sift through. Simply, they remove the data that is relevant to you, leaving you with the bare bones reports that you need. You choose the information and metrics you want to see, organized in the way you want to see it.

Quick Start Guide to Custom Reporting

If you are stepping into custom reporting you should really read this official guide, from Google Support. You'll learn to get from conceptualizing your custom report to actually building it, and will give you a basic insight into concepts and terminology involved in analytics and custom reporting. Check out also Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting and Google Analytics Glossary

Custom Reporting in Analytics Video
Learn how to create custom reports in Google Analytics that show the information you want to see, organized in the way you want to see it.

Spotlight on Google Analytics features Custom Reporting
Conversion Room has written a great overview on custom reporting. It includes basic tutorials and how-tos.

Eyes on the Prize with Custom Reports
This is an in-depth article covering custom reporting in Analytics.

Google Analytics, Adsense and Adwords

Google Analytics has lots of tools and can generate reports that can help you with AdWords and Adsense campaigns.

Adsense Reporting in Google Analytics
If you are an AdSense publisher, you can use Google Analytics to see and perform in-depth analysis on your AdSense data.

Step-by-step guide to linking Adsense and Analytics

Log in to AdSense (adsense.google.com).
Click the link that says "Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics" on the Reports > Overview tab.
Follow the on-screen instructions.

Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration (Breeze Presentation)

This is an official lesson from the Google Analytics IQ Lessons series, in this presentation you will learn:

how to track campaigns using tagged links
how to track AdWords campaigns
when to use autotagging and how it works
how to enable autotagging
where to find AdWords data in your reports
the expected kinds of data discrepancies between AdWords and Analytics data
when and how to manually tag URLs
how to use the URL Builder
best practices for tagging links

Campaign Tracking and AdWords Integration (Breeze Presentation)

Linking Adwords with Google Analytics
Linking Google AdWords and Analytics helps provide insights on keywords, ROI, visitors, and more! Learn how to easily link your accounts.

Step-by-step guide to linking AdWords and Analytics

Below you will find the simple step-by-step guide from Google Support.

Login to your AdWords account at adwords.google.com
Click the Analytics tab.
If you don't have an Analytics account, click the Continue button to sign up for one.
If you already have an Analytics account, click I already have a Google Analytics account.
From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down list, select the name of the Analytics account you'd like to link to. Can't see it there? You'll need to add your AdWords username to your Analytics account as an Account Admin ( Learn how).
Keep the checkboxes selected on this page, unless you're sure you'd like to disable auto-tagging and cost data imports.
Click Link Account.

Google AdSense Reports in Analytics - Guide
This article gives you a basic guide to Adsense and Analytics, it covers top content, referrers, revenue, trending and revenue sharing.

Google Analytics Desktop Apps

Polaris for Google Analytics
The sleek and stylish Polaris is the most popular and quite possibly the best desktop application for Google Analytics. It has been developed using Adobe AIR, making it cross-platform desktop widget for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports available, you can view your stats instantly.

Polaris is a free download for everyone who manages one website profile, and for those who are managing multiple profiles, the upgrade to the full version is $15 a year.

Analytics Reporting Suite
This is another useful and feature rich Adobe AIR app for Google Analytics. It uses it's own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all features of Analytics. With Analytics Reporting Suite you can use multiple profiles from different Analytics accounts, all popular reports (visitors, traffic and content) are available and you can also view your goal values and data segmentation.

Dashalytics - MAC Dashboard Widget
Dashalytics is a free Dashboard Widget for your Apple Mac that offers quick access to Google Analytics statistics.

Google Analytics Firefox Extensions

Fire Analytics
The Fire Analytics extension allows you to view your Google Analytics reports within a popup from Firefox.

Is Google Analytics Installed
This is a great little utility for web developers, checks automatically that Google Analytics is installed on any given page.

Web Analytics Solution Profiler/Debugger (WASP)
WASP provides detailed information about the data being collected from Google Analytics, through Query String and Cookies by web analytics solutions (called "tags", "trackers" or "web bug"), ad networks, behavioural targeting and multivariate testing tools.

Grease Monkey Firefox Extensions

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. You will need this extension to run the following useful little scripts.

Google Analytics Report Enhancer
Better reports with Greasemonkey

Integrate Google Analytics with Google Docs using Greasemonkey

Keyword Trends in Google Analytics With Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey: Automatically Show All Profiles

Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin For Google Analytics

Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension
Firefox Extension with Greasemonkey Scripts for Google Analytics.

The Better Google Analytics Firefox Extension (BetterGA)
BetterGA is a compilation of the best Greasemonkey userscripts from various authors, brought together to create this feature (Auto Access, Content Search, Cleaner Profile Switching, Export to Google Docs…) rich extension. Remember and install Greasemonkey first.

Auto Access Your Google Analytics Account
Bypass the "Access Analytics" button that is displayed to you on the Google Analytics login page automatically.

Google Analytics Full Screen Reports
With this easy add-on, you can quickly expand the reporting view by hiding the left-hand navigation.

Google Analytics Advanced Date Selection
With this script, an option is added for one click access to year-over-year reports.

Include Today in the Default Google Analytics Date Range
By default, Google Analytics shows you the statistics for a 30 day period up to the previous complete day. This Greasemonkey script includes the current in all reports.

Google Analytics Table Sorter
An easy to use table sorter for your analytic reports.

Add the Digg count of your page to your Content Details
This Greasemonkey script will retrieve the Digg count of a page and display it to you on the Content Detail report of your Google Analytics (?) console.

Google Analytics Referrers
This user script adds an external link to see referrers on Google Analytics.

CMS & Website Plugins & Extensions

Silverlight Analytics
SilverlightAnalytics lets you use the power of Google Analytics within your Silverlight application. You can track web stats such as button clicks, mouse-over's, events, page views, or anything else you might want without having to call Invoke().

Insert Google Analytics' code - Dreamweaver Extension
This extension allows you to Insert/Update, Remove, Report the Google Analytics' Javascript code("urchin.js") on any static website.

Wordpress Plugins

Google Analyticator
Google Analyticator is an easy to implement WP plugin that adds Google Analytics tracking support to all WordPress posts and pages. It comes with an easily customizable widget that can be used to display specific information from the Google Analytics API. It supports all of the tracking mechanisms that Google Analytics supports such as external link tracking, download tracking, tracking without counting administrative users, and any other advanced tracking the user wishes to add.

Google Analytics for WordPress
This useful plugin adds the ability to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you're sending where.

Dashboard Reports Plugin
Wordpress Google Analytics Reports plugin helps you to get real time live reports from Google Analytics using the data API, and viewed from the Wordpress Dashboard.

Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports Plugin
This plugin allows you to easily view quick and basic Google Analytics and Feedburner reports in your WordPress admin area. It adds a top-level Reports tab and when you click on it, you'll get a quick 7 day overview of what's going on with your site (pageviews, visits, referrers, etc). You'll have to login to Google Analytics or Feedburner directly if you want more detailed stats.

Drupal Module

Google Analytics Module
This powerful and feature rich Drupal module allows you to add the following statistics features to your site: Selectively track certain users, roles and pages; Monitor what type of links are tracked (downloads, outgoing and mailto); Monitor what files are downloaded from your pages; Cache the Google Analytics code on your local server for improved page loading times; Track user segmentation from Drupal profile data; Site Search support; AdSense support.

Installing & Configuring the Google Analytics Module for Drupal 6.x from Brian Stevenson on Vimeo.

Joomla Module

Google Analytics Tracking Module
Google Analytics Tracking Module is a simple module for Joomla! 1.0.x. and Joomla! 1.5 used for inserting Google Analytics tracking code into a Joomla site via a module. This module makes it possible to add the tracking code before the closing body tag in template, which is recommended by Google.

Mobile Apps

Analytics App for iPhone and iPod Touch

Ego — You're important

myAnalytics - Google Analytics on the iPhone

Mobile GA for Android
Mobile GA for Android is a secure, fast and lightweight application for accessing your Google Analytics data. The app is intended to help you keep an eye on your key summary statistics while you're on the move. The price for this app is only $2.99.

Google Analytics Tips and Ideas

The Google Analytics: Power User Guide
This guide is a compilation of VKI's Google Analytics: Power User series, presenting an overview of several key features and uses of Google analytics—some basic, some advanced—and how you can use these features to analyze, interpret, and optimize your websites traffic. Also available as PDF.

Google Analytics Tips You Should Know AboutA round-up of six useful resources, with some of the handiest Google Analytics tips out there, starting from the simplest and moving on to trickier stuff.

50 Resources for Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a very useful free tool for tracking site statistics. For most users, however, it never becomes more than just a pretty interface with interesting graphs. The resources below will help anyone, from the beginner to those who have been using Google Analytics for some time, learn how to get the most out of this great tool.

The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips
"I've been compiling the list of advanced Google Analytics tips that open up plenty of possibilities to track and evaluate."

Youtube Channel
The official channel for all videos about and related to Google Analytics. 13 videos at this time.

Advanced use of Google Analytics and the new interface
Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now that the waiting list has been removed anybody can sign up to use this great service.

8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips and Tricks
There are a lot of things you need to tinker with in order to get some of the data you need from it.

5 Lesser Known Google Analytics Features
Google Analytics is a great program that can do a lot more than most people realize. Here are a few features that you may not know about.

Measure Online Advertising with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics application that is quickly becoming one of the most widely used web analytics tools around. A common misconception that many people have is that GA can only be used to track Google AdWords. That's simply not true. GA can be used to track any online marketing activity.

Forcing Google analytics to show real time data
So here is how you can get real-time data from Google analytics.

Twitter and Google Analytics: What to Track
By default, traffic from Twitter will be tracked as referral traffic in Google Analytics. A better way to track a Twitter campaign would be to use GA's campaign tracking feature.

Tracking Email with Google Analytics
Tracking email campaigns in Google Analytics is done using a process called link tagging. This process is the manipulation of the links in your emails.

PPC Management: AdWords Keyword Data Exposed With Google Analytics
You CAN expose your specific AdWords Keyword Data beyond the dreaded "other unique queries" in the AdWords Search Query Report with Google Analytics.

Speed Up Google Analytics
"Last year I wrote about hosting Google Analytics urchin.js file on your own server, to speed up the loading of your site. Well, google has migrated to a new analytics javascript, ga.js. You can read the urchin.js to ga.js migration guide if you want. They also wrote about the changes on the Google Analytics Blog. And if you want to learn about advanced features of ga.js check out this Google Analytics Documentation."

Some Basic Setup Tips
Get you more effectively using your Google Analytics account.

Optimize Form Length with Input Analysis
In this post, I will share with you E-Nor's technique in determining the forms fields that people are most likely not to complete. I will show you how to make this data available to decision makers and web optimizers so they are able to make the necessary changes.

Keyword Trends With Google Analytics and Greasemonkey

Google Analytics Reporting Suite
The Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google Analytics to the desktop, with a host of features that help you understand how your website is performing and where you can improve. From tracking your visitors, referrals and campaigns to viewing your AdWords ROI metrics, the Google Analytics Reporting suite is a must-have for every web business.

Articles, Tutorials and Tools

Introduction to Google Analytics
A screencast by Chris Coyier.

Forcing Google analytics to show real time data
Google Analytics generally updates your reports every 24 hours. This means that it could take 24 hours for data to appear in your account after you have first installed the tracking code. Learn how you can get real time data from Google Analytics.

Measure Online Advertising with Google Analytics
A common misconception that many people have is that GA can only be used to track Google AdWords. That's simply not true. GA can be used to track any online marketing activity. And not only will Google Analytics track online marketing, it will also identify the conversion events that your online marketing creates.

5 Lesser Known Google Analytics Features
Google Analytics is a great program that can do a lot more than most people realize. Here are a few features that you may not know about.

The Ultimate Web Analytics Data Reconciliation Checklist

SiteScan
It may take some time to check the correct and complete code integration manually. This service helps you to check the correctness of the code snippet automatically.

No Google Analytics API? No Problem!
Learn how to read and use data, e.g. for the block with "Most Popular Posts".

How to track Social Media Users with Google Analytics
One of the questions we are often asked is how we track various social media sites users and their interaction with sites the answer is in a variety of ways but here is just one of the techniques we use with Google Analytics.

Tracking regional Search Engines in Google Analytics
Google Analytics recognises 41 search engines by default. Although this is constantly being added to, there are of course a great many other search engines in the world – language and region specific, as well as price comparison and vertical portals.

Adding Business Data to Google Analytics Data
"We tried using Google Spreadsheets to store business info but it never worked. People did not take the time to open up a spreadsheet and add information. We figured that adding some type of 'note' functionality to GA would be the easiest way to change this behavior. That's how GA Notes was born."

How to Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics
A new filter that shows exactly the Search Term (i.e. keywords that are searched on) rather than just the Bid Term (i.e. the keywords that triggered a PPC advert).

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking
This series of article has 4 parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Blogs about Google Analytics

The official Google Analytics Blog

Advanced Web Metrics
A blog of Brian Clifton's blog about analytics, with many useful tips and ideas.

Google Analytics Results
A Google Analytics blog written by the company Mangold Sengers.

Luna Metrics Blog
A blog of an Internet consulting firm that specializes in configuring and evaluating Google Analytics.

Analytics Talk
Justin Cutroni's blog about Google Analytics.

And finally…

Google Analytics may be lying to you, even though it tells the truth — simply because you're not telling it how to track your site effectively. Are you guilty of any of the following?

Are those really your conversion rates?
Do customers actually find your site using that keyword?
Are you sure that Digg story sent you all that traffic?

If you are, you may want to read this article: 8 Stupid Things Webmasters do to mess up their analytics.

About the author

Paul Andrew is a freelance web designer. He is chief admin for Speckyboy - Design Magazine, a web design, web development and graphic design resource blog. Follow him on Twitter here: twitter.com/speckyboy.

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Snaptu: Clever PNG Optimization Techniques

2009-07-16T06:32:00.001+05:30

As a web designer you might be already familiar with the PNG image format which offers a full-featured transparency. It's a lossless, robust,...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/15/clever-png-optimization-techniques/

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Snaptu: Man tries to fix airbed, blows up apartment

2009-07-16T06:29:00.001+05:30

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German who tried to fix his leaky air mattress blew up his apartment instead, the fire brigade in the western city of Duesseldorf...

http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/oddlyEnoughNews/~3/synmT1NKMJ8/idUSTRE56E3XV20090715

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Snaptu: From the Tips Box: Phonetic Pronunciations, Mass Murder by Batch File, and Hangover Beauty Tips...

2009-07-16T06:27:00.001+05:30

In which you show us how to hack our A/C timers, remap our keyboards, teach our iPhones to listen, kill useless processes with one batch file, and...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/tXPE5SQb04I/

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Snaptu: Bill Gates calls Chrome OS more of the same, "surprised people are acting like there's something...

2009-07-16T06:15:00.001+05:30

We've already heard from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Chrome OS, and it looks like Bill Gates has now had his say on the upstart operating system as...

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Eh-oavs-6ek/

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Snaptu: My favourite US national park

2009-07-15T19:22:00.001+05:30

It would be a crime to close any of America's parks. We asked experts for the best ways to enjoy the epic landscapes of 10 national parks

In...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jul/15/usa-national-parks-wildlife-holidays

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Snaptu: Alterian Acquires Techrigy, The “Google Alerts On Steroids”

2009-07-15T19:08:00.001+05:30

Alterian, a global provider of integrated marketing solutions, has added social media monitoring to its suite of services in one swoop with the...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Tl0lyxq7JBg/

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Snaptu: Indian tiger park admits it has no tigers

2009-07-15T18:42:00.001+05:30

One of India's main tiger parks, Panna National Park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, admits it no longer has any tigers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/south_asia/8150382.stm

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04072009438.jpg

2009-07-13T09:05:00.002+05:30

You goto an amusement park to get amusement. What do you get when you go to a polio park?

This is what you are greeted with when you go to Haria Rotary Hospital in Vapi, Gujarat. I had to goto this hospital for a basic health check up as I moved to a new job here. The hospital is extremely dirty and it was a shock. I hope the authorities will wake up to this fact. I will post one more picture from this hospital. That is even more an important photo than this. Wait for it.

Snaptu: Repel Flies with a Bag of Water [Summer]

2009-07-06T22:46:00.001+05:30

We've featured many, many, many different ways to deal with mosquitoes using DIY solutions. But what about the even more common household fly? Turns...

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/xeszDzDPXsw/repel-flies-with-a-bag-of-water

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Snaptu: Clever JPEG Optimization Techniques

2009-07-06T22:42:00.001+05:30

When people talk about image optimization, they consider only the limited parameters offered by popular image editors, like the "Quality"...

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/01/clever-jpeg-optimization-techniques/

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Snaptu: In India, Google Searches For Users With Print Ads

2009-07-04T05:43:00.001+05:30

Different markets have different needs for marketing products or services. We all know that much. But that doesn't take away the weirdness of a...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/H80ngaUW9fs/

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Snaptu: Turn Web Content Into A Map With GeoMaker

2009-07-04T05:39:00.001+05:30

At the end of last May, Yahoo released an experimental version of Placemaker, a "geo-enrichment" platform. What it does is help developers make...

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FQ66v9erlFs/

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Snaptu: 100,000 swine flu cases a day 'by August'

2009-07-03T05:18:00.001+05:30

Government moves to 'treatment phase' as health secretary says infection rate could reach 100,000 a day by end of August

Swine flu is spreading so...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/swine-flu-uk

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Snaptu: 'The most revolting dish ever devised'

2009-07-01T06:42:00.001+05:30

Elizabeth David was the doyenne of food writers. But, says Tim Hayward, the bitchy annotations she wrote in her cookbooks reveal another side of...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/01/elizabeth-david-food-cookbook

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Snaptu: FDA panel: Lower maximum daily dose of Tylenol (AP)

2009-07-01T06:31:00.001+05:30

AP - Government experts called for sweeping safety restrictions Tuesday on the most widely used painkiller, including reducing the maximum dose of...

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mostviewed/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090630/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tylenol_safety_fda

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Snaptu: Dance around the world

2009-07-01T06:29:00.001+05:30

We humans are natural dancers. Dances can be celebrations, or for praise, or for an audience - or just a simple act of letting the rhythm move your...

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/dance_around_the_world.html

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Snaptu: Dell's Mini 10 getting GPS / WiFi tracking upgrade next week

2009-07-01T06:15:00.001+05:30

Dell's Mini 10 already offers GPS with an integrated 3G chip, but if you're not interested in mobile broadband, starting next week you can opt instead...

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/fPa0uFZpug0/

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Snaptu: Garden wildlife photography contest

2009-06-30T07:39:00.001+05:30

Shortlisted images sent in as part of the RSPB's Make Your Nature Count event

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gardening-blog/gallery/2009/jun/26/garden-wildlife-photo-competition

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Snaptu: 13-year-old trades iPod for Walkman, reports on mysterious ancient artifact

2009-06-30T07:34:00.001+05:30

If you want to get an idea of just how fast technology moves, a brilliant piece from the BBC should help light the way. The setup is simple enough:...

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/pPJ0_uvqp4U/

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Probably last picture of Hyderabad in a while.

2009-06-26T11:49:00.001+05:30

I have always been attracted to Indo-sarsanic architecture and this particualr monument in Hyderabad close to Buddha Bhavan near Necklace Road has been a great beauty in my eyes. The only sore point has been the ugly modern structures coming up right next to it and ghastly sight of electrical wires.

It reminds me of a poem i had to study in my school days (I think a english poet, name escapes me) where the neck of a damsel is compared to the ivory tower by the poet.

Sent from my Nokia phone

How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise

2009-06-26T02:28:00.000+05:30

How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise: "mesomorph"

Eat Your Apple Seeds - Vox

2009-06-26T01:51:00.000+05:30

Eat Your Apple Seeds - Vox: "Eat Your Apple Seeds

* Dec 20, 2006 at 4:23 PM
* 9 comments

'Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud…' - Linus Pauling PhD (1901-1994) Two times Nobel Prize winner.

Vitamin B17 (also called Amygdalin or Laetrile) is one of the most controversial substances in cancer research. It is a nitriloside, which occurs naturally in fruit seeds, some berries, flax, millet, and some beans, leaves, grasses and nuts. Touted as a cure for cancer several decades ago by Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, it has since been discredited by orthodox medicine as “quackery.” Respected researcher Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura was fired after refusing to publish false test results on Laetrile – he stood firm in his belief in it. One of the most famous proponents of B17 is G. Edward Griffin, whose book, video and articles attempt to explain what the fuss is all about.

These and other researchers contend that cancer is little more than a deficiency disease, much like scurvy or pellagra. In cultures that eat foods high in nitrilosides such as the Hunza or the Eskimo, cancer is unheard of. But today, our modern diets have all but eliminated this vital nutrient. The medical establishment, on the other hand, has worked hard to undermine confidence in this substance. Their “official” reason? Because it contains a molecule of cyanide. But Mr. Griffin’s video and many other articles and websites explain how the molecule is uniquely absorbed and used by the body: the only enzyme that can break it down exists only in a tumor cell, so in a sense it becomes a kind of “cancer smart-bomb,” and is neutralized in the body’s other healthy cells.

Of course many also contend that the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of financial incentive to ensure that vitamin B17 remains illegal and unacceptable by the medical establishment. Unable to patent a naturally occurring substance (and thereby in risk of losing a $200 billion a year industry), a war is being waged on the forefront of cancer research – each side supporting various studies on its effectiveness. In fact it is even illegal to sell Laetrile as a cure for cancer in the U.S. – and some have gone to jail for it. Despite this I found information online about proper dosages and “The Little Cyanide Cookbook” which explains how to prepare foods high in Vitamin B17. Foods containing B17 include berries, beans, nuts (especially the bitter almond), and various veggies – but the most is found in apricot seeds (the little seed found inside the pit) and apple seeds – in fact it’s said three apples a day, including the seeds, could prevent cancer.

What’s that old saying, an apple a day? Could be more important than we know.
'...when government officials spend money on weapons instead of cures;...all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.' -Tao Te Ching #53"

WHFoods: The World's Healthiest Foods

2009-06-26T01:36:00.000+05:30

WHFoods: The World's Healthiest Foods

The Big Deal about Vitamin C

2009-06-26T01:24:00.000+05:30

The Big Deal about Vitamin C: "The Big Deal about Vitamin C
by Phillip Day

Dr Linus Pauling, known as the 'Father of Vitamin C' and twice awarded the Nobel Prize, declared that daily intakes of vitamin C aid anti-cancer activity and assist in repairing damaged arteries and removing arterial plaque (atherosclerosis). Pauling was largely derided for making these declarations (he lived to be 94!) but today, large doses of vitamin C complex are used by many doctors to great effect who believe Pauling was right and that the popular nutrient is indispensable to the body in its fight to regain or maintain health.

An associate of Pauling's, Dr Matthias Rath, writes: 'Animals don't get heart attacks because they produce vitamin C in their bodies, which protects their blood vessel walls. In humans, unable to produce vitamin C (a condition known as hypoascorbemia), dietary vitamin deficiency weakens these walls. Cardiovascular disease is an early form of scurvy. Clinical studies document that optimum daily intakes of vitamins and other essential nutrients halt and reverse coronary heart disease naturally.

The single most important difference between the metabolism of human beings and most other living species is the dramatic difference in the body pool of vitamin C. The body reservoir of vitamin C in people is on average 10 to 100 times lower than the vitamin C levels in animals.' 1

So what can we do about that? Effective supplementing is all about obtaining optimal blood plasma levels of the nutrient, say Drs. Steven Hickey and Hilary Roberts in their book, Ascorbate:

'An individual who wanted protection from, say, the common cold by taking vitamin C, would raise their blood levels more effectively by taking divided doses or slow release formulations…. If a single dose of vitamin C raises blood levels for about six hours or one quarter of the day, the subject is unprotected for the other three quarters of the time…. The biochemical data supports Pauling’s hypothesis that, for a large proportion of the population, the optimal dose of vitamin C is several grams a day…. A single megadose tablet will only raise blood levels for a short period and is likely to be therapeutically ineffective. The aim is to raise plasma levels consistently and this requires either multiple tablets taken at short intervals throughout the day, or the use of slow release formulations.' 2

*

Optimum vitamin C intake for most is between 600 mg – 3 g daily (depending on bodyweight and stress levels), along with supportive intakes of Vitamin E (600 - 1,000 IU), the amino acids lysine and proline, the B vitamins, essential fatty acids (EFAs), magnesium, minerals, trace minerals and amino acids to provide healthy arteries. Sick people require high levels of vitamin C – the sicker the higher
*

A long-term vitamin C deficiency will lead to atherosclerotic deposits in the arterial walls to cover the breaches caused by the disintegrating collagen, resulting in coronary heart disease and, further north, strokes to the brain
*

Vitamin C depletion over a few months will lead to massive blood loss through collagen disintegration, resulting in leaky artery walls, collapsing organs and death by scurvy3
*

Heat destroys vitamin C. Any cooked meal has no vitamin C content. This goes a long way toward explaining why those living in wealthy nations are still dying of diseases of chronic malnutrition, such as cancer, heart disease and stroke

Dr G C Willis demonstrated vitamin C complex could reverse atherosclerosis. Willis gave a sample of his patients 1.5 grams of vitamin C a day and gave the remainder no vitamin C at all. After a year, the atherosclerotic deposits in the patients fed the vitamin C had decreased in 30% of the cases. In contrast, no reduction in deposits was observed in the control group, which had grown further. Sadly, in spite of the clear evidence over 40 years ago of the benefits of just vitamin C through Willis's work, no follow-up study was ever commissioned.4

Professor Gey, from the University of Basel in Switzerland, conducted studies in which he compared the vitamin C, vitamin A (beta carotene) and cholesterol intakes of citizens living in Northern Europe with their counterparts in the southern regions of the continent. He found:

*

Those living in the northern nations had the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and lowest blood levels of vitamins
*

Southern European populations had the reverse statistics of their northern counterparts and were much more healthy
*

Optimum intakes of vitamins C, E and A had far greater impact on decreasing risks of cardiovascular disease than the reduction of cholesterol, now becoming increasingly viewed (correctly) as a secondary factor in heart-disease risk (an inevitable result of the primary deficiency of nutrients leading to the breakdown of arterial walls)

Gey's report also highlighted the preference for the Mediterranean diet, rich in wine and olive oil, abundant in bioflavonoids (a part of the C complex) and Vitamin E as a main prevention regimen for heart disease in almost all its forms.5

Further studies showed that these nutrients separately produced impressive results for cardiac disease prevention:

*

Vitamin C intake lowers cardiovascular risk by 50%6 7
*

Vitamin E intake lowers cardiovascular risk by one-third, documented in 87,000 study participants over six years8
*

Beta carotene (vitamin A) intake lowers cardiovascular risk over 30%, documented in more than 87,000 study participants over six years
*

No prescription drug has ever come close to matching these figures in preventing heart disease9

However, when these nutrients were combined with other synergistic agents, such as magnesium, vitamin B3 (nicotinic acid), vitamin B5 (pantothenate) and the amino acid carnitine, and levels of these maintained in the body over the long-term, near total prevention could be expected, and in those already suffering from a variety of cardiac ailments, a clear record of efficacy in reversing these conditions was consistently observed. 10 11 12 13

Scurvy in the industrial nations is rare (vitamin C depletion), even with the ghastly diets we feed ourselves today. However, long-term C deficiency is common in many, hence the prevalence of heart disease, cancer and stroke in their various forms.

The whole story

Vitamin C is best viewed, not just as ascorbic acid, but as a complex of co-factors common in fruits, vegetables and other foods. Several studies have suggested that vitamin C may reduce levels of lead in the blood. Epidemiological studies have shown that people with elevated blood serum levels of C had lower levels of blood toxicity. An examination of the data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, enrolling 4,213 youths aged 6 to 16 years and 15,365 adults 17 years and older from 1988 to 1994, found a correlation between low serum ascorbic acid levels and elevated blood lead levels. The authors concluded high ascorbic acid intake may reduce blood lead levels.14

Ascorbic acid or the ascorbate salts (calcium, sodium or magnesium ascorbate) should be taken with bioflavonoids in divided doses throughout the day with a healthy, alkalising, raw diet to boost and maintain plasma levels. This is especially important for those suffering serious illness. Oral dosage recommended for prevention is between 600mg and 3g a day, or 10g/day plus for those with cancer and other degenerative conditions. Extremely high levels of C are used intravenously to great benefit with cancer patients and those with viral illness (30,000 – 200,000 mg/day). At extremely high blood levels, vitamin C is selectively toxic to cancer cells.15

VITAMIN P (bioflavonoids): another part of the vitamin C complex. Hungarian Dr Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1937 Nobel Laureate for his isolation of vitamin C, later found other factors intrinsic to its action. Originally believed to be a single nutrient, Vitamin C became the subject of further testing by Szent-Gyorgyi, who fought hard to have the co-factor (bio)flavonoids included in the description. Coining the new bioflavonoids ‘vitamin P’, Szent-Gyorgyi argued they were essential for proper metabolic function. Derived from plant pigments known as the flavonols and flavones, bioflavonoids are widely accepted today for their health benefits and are available in hydroxylated and methoxylated forms. They are found in the pith of fruits (mostly citrus). Quercetin, rutin, catechin, anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins are examples of flavonoids and are great-sounding names. The sound of 'vitamin P', however, was less well received by Szent-Gyorgyi's medical czars.

Summary

I have been supplementing powdered, bioflavonoid C complex for years and enjoy paramount health. Finding a decent C supplement that is not just ascorbic acid and not in tablet form (avoiding the binders and fillers) has proved a bit of a trial, however. We have since developed a highly successful C product in cahoots with manufacturers in the Netherlands, so if you're stuck for the best stuff locally and fed up with burning holes in your tum with ascorbic acid, click here.

Last word

Of course, regular dosing with vitamin C is great insurance, but there is no substitute for a proper varied, wholefood diet, a high percentage eaten raw. This 'doses' your body to obtain desirable blood plasma levels of not just C but other nutrients. Reducing stress, adopting a positive outlook and exercising regularly will help cover most of the bases.

Phillip

RESOURCES

Simple Changes - Your 100 Ways to a Happier, Healthier Life by Phillip Day

Don't want to get sick?

Vitamin Complex (3/5 g a day - divided doses)

Vitamin D3/K2 capsules (4,000mg/day divided doses)

Krill oil (2 capsules/day)

60-70% raw food diet

2-3 litres of water a day plus half a teaspoon of Himalayan salt

45 mins exercise (get the heart rate up)

Stop reading newspapers!!

1 Rath, Matthias, Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks – But People Do! MR Publishing, 2000, p.10

2 Hickey Steven and Hilary Roberts, Ascorbate, Lulu, 2004

3 Rath, Matthias, Why Animals Don’t Get Heart Attacks – But People Do! op. cit.

4 Willis GC, Light AW & WS Gow, “Serial arteriography in atherosclerosis”, Canadian Medical Association Journal (1954) 71: pp.562-568

5 Gey KF, Puska P, Jordan P & UK Moser, “Inverse correlation between plasma Vitamin E and mortality from ischemic heart disease in cross-cultural epidemiology” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1991) 53: p.326, supplement

6 Ginter E, “Vitamin C deficiency cholesterol metabolism and atherosclerosis” Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine (1991) 6:pp.166-173; Ginter E, “Marginal Vitamin C deficiency, lipid metabolism and atherosclerosis” Lipid Research (1978) 16: pp.216-220

7 Harwood HJ Jr, Greene YJ & PW Stacpoole, “Inhibition of human leucocyte 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase activity by ascorbic acid. An effect mediated by the free radical monodehydro-ascorbate” Journal of Biological Chemistry (1986) 261: pp.7127-7135

8 Beamish R, “Vitamin E – then and now” Canadian Journal of Cardiology (1993) 9: pp. 29-31

9 Rath, Matthias, op. cit. p.53

10 Sokolov B, Hori M, Saelhof CC, Wrzolek T & T Imai, “Aging, atherosclerosis and ascorbic acid metabolism” Journal of the American Gerontology Society (1966) 14: 1239-1260

11 Opie LH, “Role of carnitine in fatty acid metabolism of normal and ischemic myocardium” American Heart Journal (1979) 97: pp.375-388

12 Avogaro P, Bon GB & M Fusello, “Effect of pantethine on lipids, lipoproteins and apolipoproteins in man” Current Therapeutic Research (1983) 33: pp.488-493

13 Altschul R, Hoffer A & JD Stephen, “Influence of nicotinic acid on serum cholesterol in man” Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics (1955) 54: pp.558-559; Carlson LA, Hamsten A & A Asplund, “Pronounced lowering of serum levels of lipoprotein Lp(a) in hyperlipidemic subjects treated with nicotinic acid” Journal of Internal Medicine (England) (1989) 226: 271-276

14 Simon JA, Hudes ES, “Relationship of Ascorbic Acid to Blood Lead Levels” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1999;281:2289-2293

15 www.doctoryourself.com; www.orthomolecular.org"

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

2009-06-26T01:23:00.000+05:30

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

also fibromyalgia, ME, etc.

by Phillip Day

Profile

For years, the medical establishment would not recognise chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia or ME as stress conditions, even though doctors were reporting cases showing up at the surgery with disconcerting regularity. Known variously down through the years as Iceland disease, post-infectious neuromyasthenia, chronic Epstein-Barr virus syndrome, etc., CFS, for example, has had a rocky ride getting itself taken seriously by all save those suffering from its debilitating symptoms. Many doctors for years wrote it off as Yuppie flu (malingering).

Symptoms

Flu-like symptoms, constant sore throat, listlessness, fatigue, allergies, muscle pain, sleep disorder, stiffness, visual blurring, swollen lymph nodes, multiple chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia, migratory joint pain, depression and emotional disturbances.

Commentary

CFS is a classic immune system challenge. Those suffering from its various symptoms have likened it to driving with the handbrake on. As mentioned, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a member of the herpes group, has been blamed, as have others, like Cytomegalovirus, Brucella, Human herpes virus-6, etc. CFS sufferers often discuss with others how tired and debilitated they are, and how hopeless their condition is, which is one of the first clues to what is going on.

Nine out of ten people who approach me with complaints of CFS actually do not think they will recover. This is what I refer to as ‘tossing yourself under the bus’. Emotional negativity and depression are key features in Candida albicans and fungal infestations (gastrointestinal overgrowths) which sometimes accompany, since fungi and yeasts release toxins that manipulate their host’s environment to their advantage, often having a direct impact on mood and motivation.

In a nutshell, stressful, 21st century lifestyles, one-off shocks and emotional non-linearities are at the heart of this group of problems, which are not helped by poor diets, dehydration, the consumption of excess alcohol, fizzy sugar drinks, foods saturated in sugar, and coffee abuse in particular – all of which depress the immune system, giving rise to a number of spin-off conditions such as hypoglycaemia, hypothyroidism, food allergies (sensitivities), Candida overgrowths, etc. Patients often get talked into taking psychiatric drugs in an attempt to alleviate emptional symptoms. This is a major wrong turn. A multi-factorial lifestyle approach to CFS almost always brings relief from symptoms in time, but only if the patient is prepared to take action consistently. Part of the problem with CFS/ME, etc. has always been that the patient all too often cannot bring themselves a) to appreciate that recovery is waiting for them and b) to do what it takes consistently (there’s that word again) to work their way out of the problem. Many are in denial about lifestyle issues, stress and poor diet because stress loops in the subconscious mind, which caused the condition in the first place, seek to keep the patient in their thrall. Remember, your thoughts affect your biochemistry. Dr Bruce Lipton gives the example of you running in the Olympics. Everyone around the world is looking at your coming performance on satellite TV so the pressure is on. Your body is tuned like a Stradivarius. On your marks! Get set! But what if the ‘go’ never comes? The body has prepared for explosive action but there is no release. How many of us are living in a ‘get-set’ world where the go never comes? Asks Lipton. Remember also, Pavlov patterning in the subconscious is all about routine, and there is the danger. The brain hates to be jerked out of these comfort zones once they are established. The whole idea of taking time off to view the pyramids in Egypt is met with horror by the subconscious mind because actions like this jerk the patient out of their geographical and psychosomatic stress zones and overwrite their patterning. Which is precisely what we want to happen!

Take action

Working your way out of these conditions takes time, so be patient. The more consistent you are about taking action, the quicker you will recover. Change your worldview. Change your location and scenery. The regime is all about what you stop doing as well as what you take. It always helps to have professional supervision to ensure compliance with the measures below. Needless to say, avoid psychiatrists and their drugs.

*

DIET: 60-70% raw organic wholefood diet with veggie juices. If suffering from overt fungal/yeast overgrowths, COMMENCE THE ANTI-CANDIDA DIETARY REGIMEN and anti-fungal supplementation, taking special care to avoid the foods in the exclusion section (see candidaisis section). After three months, or as directed by a physician, change to THE FOOD FOR THOUGHT LIFESTYLE REGIMEN, a more liberal regime. The diet should comprise superfood juices such as mangosteen, noni, goji, etc., along with green mix juices and regular salads sprinkled with seeds and nuts. Avoid concentrated fruit juices which yield sugar and acid.
*

RESTORE NUTRIENT BALANCE: COMMENCE THE BASIC SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM
*

DETOXIFICATION: Conduct a magnesium oxide bowel cleanse
*

DETOXIFICATION: Ensure that harmful lifestyle actions, such as taking drugs, smoking and excessive drinking are halted immediately
*

TIP: Exercise regularly. Join a gym and exercise to the degree that you are able
*

TIP: Rest, rest, rest and get into a good book or do something that takes you emotionally out of your day-to-day grind
*

TIP: Give up reading newspapers and watching the news
*

TIP: Are you on medication which might be depressing your mood and creating side-effects?
*

TIP: Avoid stressful situations. Take a four- to six-week holiday where you can relax and have fun while eating good, wholesome foods with people you enjoy being with and getting some sun (Vitamin D)
*

TIP: Compel yourself to stand back from your situation and evaluate it for what it is. You are burnt out. Have you been jamming the needles to the red and smoking the rubber to the cord?
*

TIP: Working your way out of CFS, in my view, is actually about working your way out of the stress and diet cycles you have compelled upon yourself over the years
*

TIP: You may not know it at the moment but it’s a beautiful life. Embrace it"

2009-06-25T11:52:00.001+05:30

traveling

2009-06-18T18:11:00.001+05:30

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I want to apologize to some of regular followers of Calvin and Hobbes here on my blog for not being regular recently. There is a lot happening both in my personal and professional life, might move out of Hyderabad for greener pasture and now I am visiting my father and sister’s family at Bangalore and hence I have not been very regular in postings. I promise I will be soon.

1986:16 Calvin and Hobbes - I don't want to be spanked !

2009-06-18T18:05:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
--W. C. Fields

1986:15 Calvin and Hobbes – Girls have more delicate heinies.

2009-06-17T01:02:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
--Winston Churchill

2009-06-14T16:23:00.001+05:30

1986:14 Calvin and Hobbes – Calvin is a squealer.

2009-06-13T13:52:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
I not only use all the brains I have but all that I can borrow.
--Thomas Woodrow Wilson

1986:13 Calvin and Hobbes - stink head.

2009-06-12T14:45:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.
--Johnetta Cole

1986:12 Calvin and Hobbes – Mom always takes your side.

2009-06-11T15:08:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1986:11 Calvin and Hobbes – be prepared.

2009-06-10T13:02:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
Nature has given to us the seeds of knowledge, not knowledge itself.
--Lucius Annæus Seneca

1986:10 Calvin and Hobbes - A bag of dead bugs

2009-06-06T06:14:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.
--Bertolt Brecht

1986:09 Calvin and Hobbes - Who do we smooch then ?

2009-06-04T14:08:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
--Napoleon Hill

1986:08 Calvin and Hobbes - So you believe in heaven ?

2009-06-03T16:13:00.001+05:30

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Quote of the Day:
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
--G.K. Chesterton

Re: Essential Guide To Regular Expressions: Tools and Tutorials

2009-06-02T09:22:00.003+05:30

This document has been imported into Google Docs on your behalf:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhd6cpwx_1100hqwrn8cj&invite=
Just FYI,
The Google Docs Team