2.0 on SWiK

Increase productivity with Todoist

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 05:04:50 -0700

A guide to increase productivity using Todoist online task management tool.

18 Awesome Photoshop Brushes

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 05:04:50 -0700

Adobe Photoshop Brushes that innovates the trends of graphics and logo designs. Best for art designs that makes your design more unique, custom and creative. There are several Photoshop brushes wich maybe helpful on your side. No need to create you own patterns or even style just to come up with custom graphics.

ModalBox - User-Friendly Popup Box and Wizard

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:03:57 -0700

The Lightbox effect hit the web by storm a few years ago, but its use and functionality is growing each day. From creating photo galleries, to displaying data, viewing video or just opening an external page, Lightbox has changed the way your visitors view your website. ModalBox is in a whole new “box” of its own.

Negative Momentum: Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Speed (Even Online Is Declining)

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:36:52 -0700

Can it get any worse for the newspaper industry? The steep decline in print advertising just keeps getting steeper and, for the first time, even online ad sales have gone down. Total print ads in the U.S. were down 16 percent in the second quarter to $8.8 billion. That makes nine consecutive quarters in which “print revenues have declined at an almost continuously accelerating rate,” notes Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur. He put together the chart at left, which starkly illustrates the newspaper industry’s death dive.

The newspaper industry took in $1.7 billion less in print ads during the second quarter than the year before For the first half of the year, the industry is down $3.1 billion. At this rate, there won’t be an industry left by the end of next year. Of course, revenues have to stabilize at a lower level before that happens. Don’t they? Rght now, we’re at 1995 revenue levels.

Don’t look to online ad sales to save the industry. Online ads came to only $777 million in the second quarter, which was down 2.4 percent from the year before. That’s marks the first decline ever in digital revenues. The practice if bundling print and online ad sales isn’t helping in this case, either. Advertisers trained to buy bundled ads are more likely to drop the entire bundle when making budget cuts.

The advertising recession is in full swing, and no segment is safe any longer.

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Web Framework Cappiccino

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 23:57:58 -0700

Компонент AutoBB REV 2.0 - Joomla! CMS по-русски

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:54:15 -0700

Developers should skip Google's Chrome, and jump straight to WebKit

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:59:17 -0700

According to Tom Yager @ infoworld: For Web applications, the framework's the thing, and the browser framework that will win the day is WebKit

Is google chrome under / partially reporting RAM usage ?

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:59:17 -0700

Memory utilisation as showed in google chrome task manager seems to be consistently lesser than that shown by the windows task manager.

TraceMonkey Update

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:59:58 -0700

Brendan Eich just posted some new metrics for TraceMonkey (Firefox's new Javascript JIT compiler) and it looks like it could be faster than V8.

The Great Online Advertising Divide Widens

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:54:40 -0700

As online advertising spending continues its meteoric rise — the Wall Street Journal is reporting a healthy gain of 20 percent in the second quarter alone — not every form of advertising is enjoying such success. In fact, as economic troubles continue, more and more advertisers are only willing to spend money on search ads and are increasingly ignoring other forms of advertising.

According to eMarketer, search ad spending will reach $10.4 billion this year, more than twice as much as advertisers will spend on display ads. More importantly for Google, search ads will represent 42 percent of all advertising spending, while display ads will account for just 21 percent of all online advertising.

With an economic downturn running amok, Google is quickly becoming one of the few companies that can actually withstand its onslaught. Because search results currently provide the best place for advertisers to spend money and realize a positive ROI, Google’s control of over 60 percent of the search market becomes even more important.

“We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we’ll be well positioned,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a recent earnings call.

Generally speaking, search ads are better targeted than display ads. And in an environment where companies have less money to go around, they need to find the best ways to utilize that cash and speak to the target audience. For now, display advertising will not be the best place to spend ad dollars and although Microsoft and others will do their best to compete, Google is still in the cat bird’s seat.

Just don’t mention DoubleClick.

CrunchBase Information

Google

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Zoho Releases Zoho Docs For Central Location File Browsing

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:55:08 -0700

Zoho on Thursday announced the availability of Zoho Docs, which will help Zoho users manage their documents centrally so they won’t need to skip from Writer, Sheet, and Show to get work done.

Zoho Docs is a bit overdue, but it’s good to see the company finally moving towards improving an offering that’s still a bit all over the place.

According to Zoho, its new Docs application will allow users to upload any file type they wish with a ZIP upload process. The new software will also give users the ability to view documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in a tab within the application via view mode. If they want to edit the document, they can open it with a particular Zoho app in a separate window.

Taking a page out of the Google Docs playbook, Zoho Docs now also offers group sharing, which, as you might expect, will let specific groups have access to, and edit, documents. And while working in Zoho Docs, the company has added a chat function, which will let you correspond with people in those groups as you work.

The new and improved Zoho Docs seems like a logical next step for the company. Finally, Zoho will offer many of the functions already found in Google Docs and won’t frustrate its users by requiring them to move back and forth between applications without a central location to work out from.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

socialmedian Launches First Major Upgrade

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:55:08 -0700

socialmedian, which has come under fire as of late for trying to use Twitter as means of raising $500,000 in venture funding, announced Thursday that it has launched its first major upgrade since the company started and its improvements will finally address some of the concerns its users have had since its inception.

First off, the new socialmedian will make it easier for users to get content onto the site and enable bloggers to better promote their content. Dubbed “News-Streaming,” socialmedian’s latest foray into bringing only certain content to its users is quite complex.

News-Streaming lets users filter out all the junk from the social media that they broadcast through the site. According to the company, if users want to share their Twitter feed with the community, but only want their tweets that are actually newsworthy to be collected by socialmedian, they can first input their Twitter feed and next to that, place certain keywords into the field to help the service filter out the tweets that the user doesn’t want posted. In other words, if you want to only post your political tweets to socialmedian, add your Twitter feed to the service and select keywords that may have some relevance to politics. From there, socialmedian will grab all tweets containing those keywords and post it to the site. The same goes for Google Reader feeds, Digg submissions, and Delicious bookmarks, to name a few.

To make sure all that information isn’t annoying other users, socialmedian is adding a filter feature that will let other users “turn the volume up or down” on the amount of tweets and stories making their way across the pages. Those users can choose to see all updates or only those “relevant updates” that they preset.

Part two of socialmedian’s new initiative will make it easier for bloggers to promote their material. In order to do that, socialmedian will launch a “reverse-blog widget,” which after users place their blog feed into their updates, will be featured in the clips section to the right of the socialmedian page and display the latest stories from the blog.

Taking a page out of the Digg handbook, socialmedian is also offering a page displaying the most popular stories of the day, week, and month. Instead of calling newer stories “Upcoming,” like Digg, socialmedian has two new entries called “Rising Fast” and “Hot Discussions.” Genius.

Finally, socialmedian opened up its site to make almost every page available to search engines and users won’t need to register any longer to view different pages on the site.

All in all, socialmedian’s updates seem rather logical and don’t really break the mold in any way. The site was in desperate need of improvement and it looks like it has finally happened. Now we’ll need to wait and see if its users embrace it.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

JavaScript, the language for them all!! (Jquery with gridview in asp.net 2.0)

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:01:01 -0700

Once a long time ago (in 80s) I think Assembly was considered the savior In 90s the days of C++, Visual Basic 6.0, JAVA, PHP,… etc I think the savior was the C language These days (WEB 2.0 days) all of the applications are moving to web using PHP J2EE, .NET 2005/2008, R on R and others. The common factor between them is they all need JavaScript

Per me deve mancare

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:01:42 -0700

Tutto il web ne parla, addirittura i TG ne parlavano contemporaneamente al web…Google Chrome è la prima delle novità di questo 09/08 (Vedremo Apple e Microsoft cosa risponderanno sui loro rispettivi territori).

Ve ne parlo illustrando la mia umile opinione in merito, ma vi dico già da ora che non l’ho provato e non lo proverò (per ora). La vespa che mi ronza in testa è ovviamente la domanda del millennio: perché Google ha realizzato un suo browser? Sponsorizza Firefox, finanzia Firefox ed ora gli fa uno sgambetto del genere?

Penso di capire il perché, dopo aver analizzato il fumetto che lo riguarda; dal fumetto si evince che i punti chiave del browser sono stabilità, velocità e sicurezza. Tra le novità c’è inoltre la virtual machine in grado di far girare codice virtuale a partire da JavaScript. Nella mia mente, lo scenario che ho intravisto è quello che Google non ha intenzione di dominare il settore del web browsing nella sua totalità ma, soprattutto, quello delle (chiamiamole così) Desktop Web Application (meglio note come RIA, fino ad ora). Per la navigazione sul web a Chrome mancano tutti i gingilli a cui il Panda Rosso ci ha abituato inoltre, la scusa di rendere più sicure le web application attraverso la suddivisione in processi del browser, non mi ha convinto più di tanto. Ma se la suddivisione in processi la vediamo come feature necessaria a portare le web applications sul Desktop, ed eseguirle in tutta stabilità, tutto sembra più chiaro e coerente. Ed in effetti nei video si vede che è possibile salvare un link di una pagina web per riaprirlo successivamente come se fosse un’applicazione classica.

Questo gioverà non solo a Google, che delle RIA ha fatto uno dei suoi cavalli di battaglia, ma porterà molti sviluppatori a consigliare Chrome per eseguire le loro Web Application in funzione di una maggiore velocità di esecuzione del codice. In breve tutte le RIA potrebbero girare su un browser marchiato Google a tutto vantaggio della consolidazione di un marchio leader nel web.

Ed ora passiamo a V8. Inserire una VM nel browser aprirà la strada ad altri linguaggi all’interno del browser. Per ora abbiamo solo JavaScript ma in futuro nulla vieterà a Google di inserire altri linguaggi (Python su tutti) e di aggiungere altre librerie a supporto degli sviluppatori (sulla scia di Google Gears). Se Google facesse una mossa del genere, ovviamente si attirerebbe le ire del W3C e degli altri produttori di browser visto che, utilizzare un linguaggio di scripting diverso da JS, renderebbe il sito compatibile solo con Chrome; ma visto che il codice di Chrome è open source, Google potrebbe tranquillamente rispondere di prenderlo così com’è ed utilizzarlo.
Tenuto conto delle ultime tendenze in fatto di framework (flex ed air, java e javafx, internet explorer e silverlight) non stupirebbe se Google proponesse la sua G-Way di fare applicazioni web.

Come al solito, attendiamo ulteriori sviluppi.

Zac

Javascript Image Crop Tool - Easy, Powerful

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:58:26 -0700

So simple to use, yet highly configurable. This plugin is pure javascript, so you can add image cropping and even general image boundary selection features to your site without requiring your users to have Flash functionality. Works very well on just about all browsers and platforms.

Django 1.0 Released!!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:59:32 -0700

" No, you’re not hallucinating, it’s really here. Around three years ago, Adrian, Simon, Wilson and I released some code to the world. Our plan was to hack quietly on it for a bit, release a solid 1.0 release, and then really get the ball rolling. Well[...]"

XML Serialization in .NET Framework 2.0 : Part II

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:59:01 -0700

Google Chrome - the question people SHOULD ask...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:58:36 -0700

Google Chrome has literally spangled the web the last 36 hours, and I have seen most questions being answered, again and again and again. Though the one question people SHOULD ask is yet to be both asked and answered, at least in my view...

Stylesight Raises $16 Million In Series A Funding

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:55:04 -0700

Stylesight, a company that specializes in trend forecasting and product development tools for professionals in the fashion and style industries, announced Wednesday that it has completed its series A round of funding with $16 million from Fidelity Ventures.

According to Fidelity Ventures, Stylesight “addresses a huge need in the fashion market and could shift the way apparel manufacturers, brands, and retailers do business.” With the help of Stylesight, designers, manufacturers, and retailers will have access to the latest fashion data and images, which can then be used in advertising campaigns, design plans, and merchandise displays.

Stylesight will use the financing to expand its research and development efforts and provide more content for its users.

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Google Chrome A New Web Needs A New Browser

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:00:15 -0700

The web is changing, I believe we can all agree on that. And as the web is changing so is the way people are interacting with it and as a result demand different things from the tools they use to access these services and applications. Google probably knows this better then most, I mean how many of us use Google Docs, Gmail, iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Reader etc. etc. With this the engineers over at Google looked at this scenario and asked the question, why not start from scratch and create a browser that fits the needs of current users on the web.

10 Keys to a Successful Portal Project

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:58:44 -0700

The numbers on success vary widely depending on what factors are considered to define success. Was the project within budget? Were the stakeholders satisfied? Did the project complete on time? Oddly, the one criterion not found was user satisfaction. Does this mean that if it was within budget, on time, and stakeholders (rarely users) were satisfied, but no one used the software, it was still a success?

Web Browser Recommendation: Flock

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:57:36 -0700

Flock is a relatively new web browser that is creating a lot of buzz in the web 2.0 world. Flock specializes in providing social networking and other Web 2.0 features built into its user interface. The browser is built on the Mozilla Firefox Code base. On June 16th 2008 Flock 2 based on Mozilla's Firefox 3 went into open beta.

Mozilla Fights Back With New Firefox Benchmarks

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:55:15 -0700

The dust hasn’t even settled on Chrome’s release and already Mozilla is feeling the pressure. The company today released a series of benchmarks showing Firefox 3.1 will be faster than anything Google can muster with Chrome.

Chrome is running V8, an open source Javascript engine, which Google claims, is faster than anything currently offered on the Web. And based on our tests of Chrome, we tend to agree.

But in the upcoming release of Firefox 3.1, which should be available by the end of the year, Mozilla will employ TraceMonkey, a new engine that according to one of its coders, Brendan Eich, will easily eclipse even the fastest instance of Chrome.

To prove it, Mozilla tested Firefox running on TraceMonkey and compared it to Google’s Chrome beta using its own benchmarking solution called SunSpider. According to the company, Chrome was 28 percent slower on Windows XP and 16 percent slower on Windows Vista.

Mozilla is quick to point out that TraceMonkey has only been in development for a few months and will only get better before it’s rolled out later this year, but the company has a vested interest in seeing Firefox come out on top in its benchmark testing, so all figures should probably be questioned, to say the least. And the same goes for Google’s five benchmarks.

For now, Chrome is the fastest browser in the market and anyone using both Firefox and Chrome will find that out quickly. But once Firefox 3.1 hits the Web, we’ll find out if Chrome has what it takes to stay on top after TraceMonkey becomes Mozilla’s engine of choice.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Google's browser Chrome. Article roundup!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:00:40 -0700

links to various posts covering interesting information about Google's browser Chrome. Will be updated hourly

Warning: Google Chrome Browser Has Serious Memory & CPU Issues

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:59:34 -0700

There are critical memory & cpu issues, Google Chrome consumes over 600MB to just load the PHP manual (16.5 MB) on Windows XP.

Six Degrees of Separation Is Now Three

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:54:19 -0700

Is it time to revise the old saw that everyone in the world is connected by just six degrees of separation? A study from French mobile carrier O2 has found that strangers are more connected to each other than they ever have been.

According to the study, the average person is now connected by just three degrees within a shared “interest” or social group instead of six. In fact, it found that people are usually a part of three main networks: family, friendship, and work.

O2 asked adults across three different age groups — 18-25, 35-45, 55+ — to make contact with random strangers from areas all across the globe using only personal connections. By linking their shared interests, the participants were able to connect to that person in three person-to-person links.

Stanley Milgram originally coined the term “six degrees of separation” in 1967 to show that everyone in the modern world was capable of connecting to another by linking people and interests. But in today’s world of social networking, links between strangers are closer than in Milgram’s day.

According to Jeff Rodrigues, a social networking specialist that carried out the study, 97 percent of the participants said they felt more connected to people today than they ever have in the past and for older respondents, email and mobile phones were the key factors in reducing the degrees of separation. But for those in the younger generation, Facebook was the main factor. Text messaging was also mentioned as an important component in reducing degrees of separation.

“What the study has brought to light is that the way we now interact means it’s never been easier to make connections and build networks of contacts,” Rodrigues said in an interview.

It should be noted that the research is not the epitome of a real scientific study—O2 paid for it, after all. And anyone who has a LinkedIn account knows that it is still easy to find plenty of people who are more than three degrees away from you. But the study does underscore something we all know:more so than ever before, everyone is connected (even if it is only tangentially).

Maybe it is time to revisit Milgram’s study in a more robust way. It could help silence the critics who believe Facebook and the rest are nothing more than places for kids to waste their time. Let’s face it – how often will you find one service or industry that can totally transform the way people are connected?

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Flashphone

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:56:00 -0700

Change APN / Disable 3G data for Official (unjailbreak) iPhone 3G

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:02:51 -0700

URL-based session is insecure and so is JavaBlogs.com

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:59:22 -0700

For all I know this issue could be a very old and well-known one, but I never heard of it and apparently neither have JavaBlogs owners. If you’re making a public site make sure to keep this in mind.

Flexible Rails Application - Beginnings of a Flex/Flash Social Networking Site

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:00:47 -0700

Using Ruboss, the new Flex on Rails web framework, you can now build an Enterprise Flex Application that connects to any database using Ruby on Rails. T-1000 has enhanced the Ruboss plugin with by adding authentication and file upload options to/from Flex to Rails! With about 10 lines in the Terminal, you'll be instantly off creating amazingly beautiful database-backed Flex applications. Imagine the possibilities...