History of Art crash course for geeks

This will take 15 secs

Now you can impress everyone at parties with your wide knowledge of art :)

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Easy SEO for your YouTube videos in 3 steps

This post contains photos of sexy aliens

1) Find out what's popular in the last 24-72 hours
2) Choose a maximum of 3 terms
3) Put them on your video title no matter what kind of content you have

Done! Just sit back and watch that counter go up! :D

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How not to do an auto-responder campaign

Think before you press the auto button

A few days ago +SitePoint send me a new offer for their new CSS Anthology book. I happily access their site and request a sample chapter which arrives promptly. A few minutes later I am the proud owner of the book (I even posted about it here http://bit.ly/GGb2h6).

The next day, I receive a mail from SitePoint titled "Did you receive your Sample Chapters okay?", a nudge to remind me about the book and possibly purchase it. Wait, I already did!

Then another few days pass and I get another mail titled "Some more CSS Info for you." and starting with this text:
A week or so ago you downloaded the sample chapters from "The CSS Anthology, 4th Edition - Take Your Sites To New Heights," And you also heard Rachel Andrew (the author) sharing her insights on writing the book." Yes, I did. It's amazing.

At this point I feel like a fool :) I shouldn't have bought the book right way since there are so many other offers SitePoint has for me! Of course I have now clicked the unsubscribe link which I'm not sure if I have unsubscribed from getting more of this auto-responders or just all promotional mails for new books, but it's not like I mind much.

Bottom line, if you're going to automate a series of mails to people, it would be good to put some thought to it and revaluate if the people still meet the criteria you set for them to be included in the first place. E.g. your bots should be a bit smarter than A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. ;)

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It's not you, it's the user

Software as social hacking

Finding out how you site/app/whatever is being used and percieved by the users is as important (or more) as your original specifications for it. This is what Grupper (a social service that sets up up drinks between 3 men and 3 women) discovered when they realized that cancellation rate for their events was extremely high.

On paper, they had done everything right. They had made cancelling an event very easy in order to provide a great customer service. What that meant though was the their system was allowing people to cancel for insignificant reasons. While this is was convenience for the person who was cancelling, it was quite the opposite for the other five persons who had their plans cancelled on them. So, if you could "sum the experiences", for each one good experience Grupper was creating, it was also creating five bad ones. And that terrible for the entire service, which could easily be end up being characterized as "site filled with %#%%!" ;) In the end, Grupper made the cancellation process personal, by forcing people to call up and announce themselves their change. That dropped cancellation rates 90%

One might argue that this is just the case of a social site, and it can't be applied elsewhere. But the point is understanding how your users are actually using your software (application, site, anything), what they expected to do and what they thought they got from the result. For example, consider a search form in a database with 40 category choices. Presenting all 40 options to the user sounds like the way to go. But if 60% your data is in 5 of the options, this means that user will start clicking on options and mostly get few results. This instantly is a bad experience, blamed on the system ("I tried it but I got no results. The system is broken"). Obviously, there should be a better way for the interface to allow the user to get the data he was looking for.

In the end, it's good to remember that it's not you that is using the software, it's the user. ;)

Read Grupper's article here http://bit.ly/GEPjuv (found via +Guy Kawasaki)
Somewhat related video: George Constanza on "It's Not You, It's Me" :) http://bit.ly/GCBZTs

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3, 2, 1, Launch!

Just click play

Outstanding video from NASA...
(via +michael interbartolo)

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What the Plus! Free for 6 5 hours!

+Guy Kawasaki teamed up with +Samsung USA to offer his new book on #Google + What the Plus! as a free PDF download. What the Plus! is a collection of articles on making the best out of G+

Get it here http://yousend.it/whYuAr (the link will expire in about 5 hours, after that you can find it on Guy's page http://bit.ly/FQQPqU )
(Found via +ScienceSunday)

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Page flip effect with jQuery

Burn Flash, burn

Here's another use of Flash that can be converted to #HTML5 / #CSS3 : turn.js provides an easy to setup page-flip effect with just a few lines of codes.

Get it here http://bit.ly/FOHmkX and also check out this tutorial of an Instragram-powered "magazine" using turn,js http://bit.ly/ym1cDo

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How to fit a large table of data in a small screen?

You don't ;)

So you decided to join the mobile world and create a unicorn/droid-ready version of your site. If you happen to use big tables of data on one of your pages you find out they don't really fit in a small screen.

The good guys of the filament group have come up with a #jQuery / #CSS3 / #responsivedesign solution that comes down to this:
- select what is important for a small screen
- show it and hide the rest
- adjust the presentation according to the device so that you don't have to have 3 versions of the same thing
- give the user the option in any case.

Read on how to do it: A Responsive Design Approach for Complex, Multicolumn Data Tables at http://bit.ly/xtiPo0

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Responsive design strategies

Through fluid grids and media query adjustments, responsive design enables Web page layouts to adapt to a variety of screen sizes. As more designers embrace this technique, we're not only seeing a lot of innovation but the emergence of clear patterns as well. I cataloged what seem to be the most popular of these patterns for adaptable multi-device layouts.

Full read: +Luke Wroblewski's article "Multi-Device Layout Patterns" at http://bit.ly/xo77F7

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Content worth sharing

What marketers can learn from cartoons

Here's an excellent (and huge!) article by +Tom Fishburne on creating content in the age of #social media

As a cartoonist and marketer, I learned that there is a lot to learn from the simple cartoon. Cartoons are “content worth sharing”. Today I want to talk about 5 lessons marketers can learn from cartoons, and I’m going to use cartoons to do it. These lessons are relevant no matter how you communicate with your audience. I’ll use case studies along the way too.

Tom explains why marketing content needs to be relevant ("worth sharing"), targeted, relevant to the audience, and much much more. Well worth the click (pun intended :)), read on at http://bit.ly/xOasC4

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The CSS3 Anthology, 4th Ed.

Just got Sitepoint's CSS3 Anthology book by +Rachel Andrew which has been updated to a fourth edition. It's a good over-400-pages reference book with basic and not so basic practical examples of using #CSS3 .

Hot topics covered:
* Responsive design: Smart layouts for all devices
* Stylish layouts: With tabular data, text styling, and CSS positioning
* Seamless navigation: Pretty rollovers and menus without JavaScript
* Cross-browser technologies: Compatibility troubleshooting and fixes
* Usable forms: Design forms that work, and look good too

Check this link http://bit.ly/xYiQBW for the table of contents.
It is currently offered as en e-book at $19 down from $29 http://bit.ly/yVFyf7

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The Singing Paper

Sounds like magic but new advances in printing using special inks can create electrical circuits, converting a piece of paper to something interactive. Uniform has some ideas... http://bit.ly/zrO13R

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Glyphs, Icons, Pictograms, Free!

I've been a long time user of the famfamfam.com icon library but recently I've been looking for something fresh. Here are some very nice choices for your icon greed :)

Entypo by +Daniel Bruce
Over 100 icons in EPS or as OpenType font. Free with attribution (you can donate, 50% goes to wikipedia)
http://bit.ly/wEuNiE

+GLYPHICONS by +Jan Kovařík
350 icons in 16x16 PNG. Free with attribution (royalty free options available with additional AI, PSD files)
http://bit.ly/xKQ1Dw

Fugue by +Yusuke Kamiyamane
A very large icon (16x16 PNG) collection with a total of 3.346 variations! Source files provided as well. Free with attribution (royalty free option available)
http://bit.ly/w5AWz3

Enjoy! :)

In album 2012-03-12 (3 photos)

Entypo

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Advanced text-around-image wrapping

Not magic, JavaScript

Here's a small gem of #jQuery coding: jQSlickWrap is a #plugin which allows for easily wrapping your text around images, respecting the image's content, as you would do in a DTP program.

The specs:
- Client-side, Sliced and Diced Sandbags using HTML 5's new <canvas /> element
- CSS-based padding
- Sandbag "resolution" is configurable
- Written with Progressive Enhancement in mind
- Optional "bloom" mode provides ultra-precise padding

Works in Firefox 3.5+, Chrome, Safari 4+, Opera 11+, but not in Internet Explorer (degrades to "regular" wrapping). See the image below for a demonstration and get it here http://bit.ly/wSG1ou

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Google+Blog for WordPress v.1.1.2

I had previously wrote http://bit.ly/yNwPxo about +Daniel Treadwell's Google+Blog plugin which imports your #GooglePlus posts into #WordPress . I've been a happy user ever since so I'm jumping to the opportunity to post about it again as it has recently been updated.

These are changes of v.1.1.0 although it has been silently been updated to 1.1.2 (bug fixes I guess):
- Support for importing from multiple Profiles/Pages
- New option to exclude posts containing a given hashtag
- Posts shared via Google Reader will now be imported
- Hashtag character set expanded and related bugfixes
- Updating your settings no longer forces import (unless specified)

More details and download link here http://bit.ly/yTIeAQ

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It's an upside down world

I know you like maps on signs so I put a QR code on your sign to open up a map...

Someone please explain the rationale for placing a huge QR code on a sign on the space where you would normally put a map, and then having the QR code be a link to the map (if you happen to have a proper device to handle it). And of course placing driving directions aligned centered :)

This distorted view that everything is better done digitally doesn't end there. Yesterday, finally the big the news came: there is now an app so that you can knock on people's door with an SMS http://bit.ly/AmVWe8

At some point we need to see that some things can also be done physically ;)

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This is a psychology experiment

Also, proof that cats are smarter than dogs

I'm interested in the human nature and would like to measure the effect animals have on people's psychology. So, I'm posting the sample video below to test emotional response to human-like actions of animals. Please post in the comments how that video made you feel.

That said, every day is caturday, there's no need for lame excuses. Enjoy ;)

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Want Apple-styled maps on your site?

In the new version of iPhoto announced two days ago, #Apple has dropped using #GoogleMaps in favor of +OpenStreetMap, an open-source initiative for map data.

Given that Apple was kind enough to NOT give credit to #OpenStreetMap (see more http://bit.ly/xM3YGt) I'd say it's ok to use Apple's map tiles on your website. And you can do just that if you check the source code here http://bit.ly/xCguI9
More information on OSM can be found at www.openstreetmap.org

Apple tiles

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The Inverse Thumbnail Malfunction

Web development fail of the day: when the full-sized image is (much much) smaller than the thumbnail :)

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Apple: the ultimate troll, the first error

One hour and a half of presentation and they still haven't announced the name! :D

In the initial version of this post, i thought #Apple was trolling the internet. Minutes before the end of the iPad event and after the endless rumours on the name - #iPad3 , iPad HD, iPad RD? - and there was no mention of the name of the new iPad, except the descriptive "the new iPad".

And then, the event was over. And the name of the new #iPad is "the new iPad". Or "new iPad". Or something like that. Or maybe not.

In the first major product launch of the post-Jobs era it seems like Apple is doing it's first big #marketing error. It doesn't take much thought to see that calling a product "new" is problematic. For starters, you can't call it "new" forever, especially when we are talking about an electronic device where everything changes every six months. And of course, there is the issue of how are you going to call the next version. "Super new" sounds... strange.

Someone can argue that the "new" part will eventually be dropped and Apple will refer to as just "iPad". This doesn't make sense either as it would mean that for Apple there is not much difference between the original iPad (1) and the (new) iPad. Which would be disappointing for people getting a second-hand iPad1 and realizing that it can't do what the latest "iPad" ad shows...

Count me in the "confused" column.... :)

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Develop for mobile faster with Adobe Shadow

At least that's the promise of #Adobe 's newest lab experiment: Adobe Shadow

The official description: Adobe® Shadow is a new inspection and preview tool that allows front-end web developers and designers to work faster and more efficiently by streamlining the preview process, making it easier to customize websites for mobile devices.

In essence, Adobe Shadow adds an extension on Google Chrome on your Mac/PC and you additionally download an iOS or Android app on your mobile device(s). The #mobile and desktop devices are linked over wifi and whatever you browse on your desktop is shown on your mobile device(s).

You can get Adobe Shadow here http://adobe.ly/yATd0E
or watch the demo here http://adobe.ly/zoujVb

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Portrait of a LinkedIn user

Power Formula blog contacted a survey among #LinkedIn users. If you are into social media #marketing, check out the results:

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Gantt charts with Javascript

I've been using an old #jQuery plugin called "jquery.gantt" with limited features and it was time for an upgrade. My search ended with JSGantt, an open source #javascript solution that covers everything you would want:
- Task, (collapsible) task groups & milestones
- Multiple dependencies
- Multiple formats (day, week, month, etc)
- Data loading through XML

Get JSGantt here http://bit.ly/wxeDbO
For an alternative, see dhtmlxGantt http://bit.ly/AEvOr8 (doesn't do multiple periods though, it's only on an daily format)

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MySQL ordering alphabetically with empty strings last

Here is a small #MySQL tip: Say you want to order your query results alphabetically, but keep the empty fields last, what do you do? If you do
SELECT string FROM table ORDER BY string;
You will get ‘ ‘, ‘ ‘, ’1′, ’2′, ’3′, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’

But if you do
SELECT string FROM table ORDER BY ! ASCII(string), string;
You will get ’1′, ’2′, ’3′, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘ ‘, ‘ ‘.

Tip found at www.wonkabar.org

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Social Media tracking with ThinkUp

There are various solutions (with varying paying options) if you want to monitor your #social network efforts but there is also an open-source solution. +ThinkUp, led by +Gina Trapani, is a web application that can provide you statistics on your #Facebook , #Twitter and #Google + accounts and pages. Included are likes, reshares and responses per posts, followers and page like per day, etc.

It is also a self-hosted solution, which means that you get to avoid giving access to your data to another corporation, or be subject to ads and marketing efforts. Plus it is a great way to give your clients an additional tool for their marketing efforts.

You can see an example of the output here http://bit.ly/wiWH4j , it is my Google+ profile (this is optional, you can keep your statistics private). See also Gina's twitter stats page http://bit.ly/xgVHzv If you want to test it out, I have also opened the registrations on my personal installation for the next few days http://bit.ly/yCaxcH

To install it yourself, you just need a web hosting account with PHP/mySQL (a quick Amazon EC2 solution is also supported although I didn't try it). Setup and installation is rather easy with quite clear instructions.

You can learn more about ThinkUp and download the code at the official site http://bit.ly/xMOw1e

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