Free Windows Phone 8 Development Course from Microsoft

Are you a web developer who is looking to further your skills?  Microsoft, through their Microsoft Virtual Academy, offers several free on-line courses which will present you with the skills necessary to complete their on-line certification tests.  Here we are focusing on the "Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners" course.

These are self-paced courses which allow you to train on your schedule. Additional courses are available by visiting the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

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Earn You Money With Your Smartphone

Smartphone applications have the power to make our lives easier and often more enjoyable. Many also facilitate you earning money directly through your smartphone. Here are five free apps that can lend a hand to your bank account:

iBotta. Using iBotta, You pick the products you are going to buy on your next shopping trip and earn money by completing small tasks associated with those products. Tasks include earning $0.50 for answering one question about the product, or earn $0.25 for reading one fact about the product. Also, you can often score $1.25 for posting the product to your Facebook page. Next, you’ll go do your shopping at one of the 35 participating national retailers, and verify your purchase by snapping a photo of your items, along with the corresponding barcode. iBotta then adds money to your account which you can withdraw via PayPal or donate to any school in the United States. (Available on iPhone and Android)

Receipt Hog. The Receipt Hog app is similar to the iBotta app but simpler to use. Essentially, it rewards you for snapping pictures of your grocery store receipts from your smartphone, as well as taking surveys on your shopping experience. You earn “coins,” which you can redeem for cash or donate to the charity of your choice. Does it sound too good to be true? It’s not, as the folks behind Receipt Hog make money by sharing gathered information with consumer brands. Your personal information stays anonymous and is not sold to third parties. (Available on iPhone and Android)

Saving Star. The Saving Star app lets you link your grocery store loyalty cards and collect your savings automatically. Once you have downloaded the app, select the eCoupons you want to take advantage of. When shopping, you’ll use your loyalty card like you normally would, then the savings you collect is added to your Saving Star account. Once your account reaches the $5 minimum threshold, you can choose your payout option, which includes PayPal, bank deposit, or Amazon.com gift card. (Available on iPhone and Android)

iPinion. The iPinion app lets you earn points for participating in surveys on your mobile device. Survey topics include things such as movies, technology, and specific research panels. A hundred points earned translates into $1. Some surveys are good for up to 450 points. Points can be redeemed for cash or specific store gift cards. (Available on iPhone and Android)

GigWalk. Created by three former Yahoo! employees, the GigWalk app pays you to walk (or drive) around your local town and complete small “gigs” to earn cash. Gigs include things like taking a picture of a restaurant street menu, mystery shopping trips, or completing a small survey about a local business. Expect to earn $2 to $15 per gig; generally the longer the gig takes, the more money you will make. You get paid via PayPal and those who get high ratings from clients gain access to higher-paying gigs.  GigWalk uses your smartphone’s GPS location info to help you find nearby gigs, so if you are out shopping anyways, why not make some extra cash? The app is currently available in eight major markets: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle. (Available on iPhone and Android)

These five apps will take some time to set up and get familiar with. However, once you get past the introductory stage, they have the potential to put a little extra cash in your wallet each month. At the very least, they can help offset your monthly cell phone bill. Who wouldn’t want that?

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Last.fm for Windows Touch

Use Last.fm on your Windows Touch tablet to discover new music wherever you are. Access your listening history, watch full-length videos and explore Last.fm's catalog of more than 463 million tracks.

Let your friends on Twitter or Facebook know what you're into right now by publishing custom charts through the app. They're based on the music you've recently played or loved via Last.fm.

You can also listen to Last.fm's radio stations via your Windows Touch, based on the artists and genres you want to hear.

If you've got a Last.fm profile then you can play stations featuring artists recommended for you based on the music you play.

Download now
 

What's in the app?

• Search your library for music by artists you've listened to
• Quickly add new artists to your library
• Watch music videos
• Search the Last.fm music catalog for information about artists, albums and tracks
• Share custom charts on Facebook and Twitter
• Listen to personalised radio stations*

Currently available in:

• United Kingdom
• United States

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Last.fm for Windows Phone 7

Need new music?

Get music and events recommendations, and quickly look up artist biogs and more with Last.fm on your Windows Phone 7.

Last.fm lets you effortlessly keep a record of what you listen to (from almost any music player, including Last.fm Radio on your Windows Phone 7) and adds it to your Last.fm profile.

Based on what you like, Last.fm recommends you more music, concerts and people.

Not only that, but Last.fm Radio is free to all Windows Phone 7 users in the UK and US, meaning you don't have to be a Last.fm subscriber to enjoy personalised radio wherever you are.

Find out more »
 
 
Currently available in:

• United Kingdom
• United States
• Germany

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The Official Last.fm Android App

Got an Android device? With the Last.fm app you can:

• Scrobble from any Android music player
• View your friends' profiles
• Check out upcoming events
• Play Last.fm radio in the background

Enjoy streaming radio (only available to subscribers in US, UK & DE). Choose an artist or tag, listen to a playlist (taken from millions of available tracks) or play one of our personalised stations for music based on the tracks you already like.

Get the Last.fm App

Download from Android Market
 

Currently available: Worldwide *

* subscriber-only radio available in US, UK, DE.

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Have an iPhone or iPad Touch? Get Last.fm Everywhere You Go

Use Last.fm on your iPhone and iPod Touch to track the music you and your friends have been playing. Get music recommendations wherever you are based on your taste.

From new releases to events near you, Last.fm does more with the music you listen to than anyone else. Not only that, but you can search for information about music and concerts at the tap of a button.

Last.fm subscribers can also use the app to listen to music recommendations with Last.fm radio, offering personalised stations based on the music they play.

What's in the latest version?

• Check your Last.fm profile (now with top charts, recent tracks and friends) on the go
• Get Last.fm music recommendations for artists and new album releases
• See what upcoming concerts are in your area; and what events your friends are going to
• Search the Last.fm music catalog for information about artists, albums, tracks and tags
• Listen to two new radio stations, plus "edit" stations on the go to fine-tune them to a tag
• Updated interface, now with retina display support

Currently available in:

• United Kingdom
• United States
• Germany

   Get the Last.fm App

 

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Speed Up Your Android Device

Android smartphones and tablets can become slow and sluggish over time. These easy-to-follow tips will help make your device run like new.

You may have noticed over the past few months that your once-speedy Android device has slowed down considerably. Simple tasks such as switching between apps or returning home are proving more troublesome than before, and you are now experiencing lag in all the wrong places. Things don't have to be this way, however.

These simple tips and tricks can help speed up your device and make it perform like new.  More here >>

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45 Free Online Courses from Leading Universities

Below is a list of  45 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by leading universities free of charge. Most of these courses offer “certificates” or “statements of completion,” though typically not university credit.

These courses are "evergreen" or open, meaning you can start and complete them whenever you like.  They are perfect for persons who want to prepare for college or just want to educate their mind.

(See the key below to understand the credentials offered by each course, and see our MOOC FAQ if you have general questions.)


Free Courses Credential Key:

CC = Certificate of Completion
SA  = Statement of Accomplishment
CM = Certificate of Mastery
C-VA = Certificate, with Varied Levels of Accomplishment
$SJSU = San Jose State Credit for a fee
NI – No Information About Certificate Available
NC = No Certificate

The Courses.  No Fixed Start Date – Begin On The Date Of Your Choice

• The Eurozone Crisis (CC) – MRUniversity
• Economics of the Media (CC) - MRUniversity
• The American Housing Finance System (CC) - MRUniversity
• Marketing the Hospitality Brand through New Media - Cornell
• Locating, Creating, Licensing and Utilizing OERs - SUNY
• AP Computer Science – Amplify
• Introduction to Computer Science (C-VA) – Udacity
• Introduction to Physics  (C-VA) – Udacity
• Introductory Algebra Review (NI) – Udacity
• Visualizing Algebra (SJSU Credit) – Udacity
• College Algebra  (SJSU Credit) – Udacity
• Statistics  (SJSU Credit) – Udacity
• Interactive 3D Graphics - (C-VA) – Udacity
• Introduction to Programming in Java (NI) – San Jose State on Udacity
• Introduction to Psychology (NI) – San Jose State on Udacity
• Introduction to Statistics: Making Decisions Based on Data  (C-VA) – Udacity
• Algorithms: Crunching Social Networks  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Differential Equations in Action: Making Math Matter  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Web Development: How to Build a Blog  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Software Testing: How to Make Software Fail  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Programming Languages: Building a Web Browser  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science: Dealing with Challenging Problems  (C-VA) - Udacity
• How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Design of Computer Programs: Programming Principles  (C-VA) - Udacity
• Artificial Intelligence: Programming A Robotic Car   (C-VA) - Udacity
• Applied Cryptography: Science of Secrets  (C-VA) - Udacity
• HTML5 Game Development (C-VA) - Udacity
• Introduction to Parallel Programming (C-VA) - Udacity
• Interactive Rendering (C-VA) - Udacity
• Functional Hardware Verification (C-VA) - Udacity
• American English Speech (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Anatomy and Physiology (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Argument Diagramming (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Biochemistry (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Elementary French 1 (NC) - Carnegie Mellon
• Elementary French 2 (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Engineering Statics (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Introduction to Biology (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Introduction to Chemistry (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Introduction to Psychology (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Logic and Proofs (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Media Programming (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Modern Biology (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Probability and Statistics (NC) – Carnegie Mellon
• Statistical Reasoning (NC) – Carnegie Mellon

You will be required to create a log-in if you want your courses lessons tracked and progress stored.

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UPDATED: Bluehost vs Hostgator Review 2013 – Who wins?

We (in partnership with Hostgator.com) are pleased to offer any new partners seeking a web host service provider a 25% discount on sign-up. Please use Coupon Code: sublimemaxxus. As I have stated previously. Hostgator has the best service and support at a reasonable rate and I assure you your experience will be to your satisfaction.

Original post below:

So you have finally decided to start that blog or perhaps you are in the market to host your business domain somewhere. You can only imagine that you must be extremely confused as to where you should host your site.

Finding a reliable host can save you a lot of headaches down the track.

We hear often the debate between friends regarding who is more superior Bluehost vs Hostgator, Hostgator vs Bluehost and so on.

In this review we are going to focus on both hosting companies considering that we currently use both for hosting different sites. Let the battle begin!

Bluehost vs Hostgator 

Credibility:

Who has been around longer?

Bluehost has been serving customers since 1996 and has been voted as one of the 20 largest web hosting companies in the world hosting just under 2 million domains.

Hostgator has embraced competition gradually and their efforts have paid off.  Hostgator is now number 10 largest hosting provider. As of 2013 they now host over 9,000,000 websites according to Inc. Magazine.

Winner??

It’s a TIE. Both hosting providers share EQUAL credibility in this category

Interface: 

Bluehost and Hostgator both provide cPanel. This is an important aspect of web hosting especially if you are already used to using a cPanel.

Both providers regularly keep their cPanel and WHM panel up to date keeping your files safely tucked away from intruders.

The billing area for both providers is decent and easy enough to navigate.

Hostgator harness the power of their mascot ‘gator’ beautifully. They use this little guy as the creative outlet throughout their site from the billing area to waiting for live support. Hostgator make the online experience fun and whimsical as you navigate through their inner pages.

Winner??

Hostgator. Their user experience is creative fun. Bluehost feels clinical.

Features and Pricing: Hostgator and Bluehost both provide similar features and we could spend the next 20 paragraphs or so rambling on about each feature, so instead, we will simply provide the links so you can check this out yourself. While Bluehost provide one flat plan, Hostgator offers a variety of options depending on what is required. While an all you can eat plan sounds enticing, you don’t always need it. More does not always mean better.

Hostgator Features              Bluehost Features 
 
Winner?? 

Bluehost. One plan. One price.

Customer support: 

I am fairly competent technically so I don’t have to call on the services of customer support very often. I wasn’t always as competent though. When I first started out I used live chat and support frequently.

There have been situations where I required urgent answers and my live-chat experience with Hostgator has been fantastic.

Hostgator even make the waiting experience fun by introducing their mascot in a series of humorous animations as you wait for to be called to the ‘next counter’ as you hear a bell sign.

Bluehost is equally as good, however, I must admit from time to time I have received mediocre live chat support that I suspect was probably outsourced to a foreign country on some occasions. In any case I was able to eventually get the answer I needed.

Both companies provide different avenues for support including 24/7 live chat, telephone and email.

Winner??

Hostgator. 100% success with their live support.

Performance and reliability: 

I have to say I am thoroughly impressed with the performance and reliability of both hosting providers. This is where they both annihilate the rest of the market due to their superior server and data centre facilities that outshine the competition.

Both offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee and I have to be honest that I am yet to experience one outage with either of them.

I have never seen the load of the servers spike above 0.03 on the hostgator servers and that has me blown away to be honest. They are reliable as hell and clearly maintained by experienced engineers. It might be timely to also mention that Hostgator actually employee 850 staff for this task alone.

Winner??

Hostgator. Performance is rock solid.

Transfers: 

If you are currently with an existing host fear not as most of the time your transfer from host to host is seamless. Bluehost charges $99 to move your hosting from one domain to the next. Hostgator will do it for free quickly and seamlessly.

Winner??

Hostgator. It is provided for free as part of their service.

Final thoughts on the Bluehost vs Hostgator battle off: 

I was initially going to do a Bluehost review and a Hostgator review separately. I decided that its probably overkill and a comparison review would do the job. Needless to say it hasn’t been an easy article to write considering how fantastic both companies are.

When it comes to reliability I have had a fantastic experience with both providers.

Based on customer experience, performance and reliability my experiences with Hostgator have been amazing so Hostgator wins hands down for me.

I have been hosting with Hostgator for many years and I have not had any downtime at all. If reliability is what you are after then Hostgator is the right choice for you.

Remember to visit both provider sites to carefully make a decision on which services are best for you, I recommend Hostgator for a smooth and hassle-free experience.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO HOSTGATOR NOW

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UPDATED - FREE Black Leather Desktop Background

Here's an interesting leather image to use as a wallpaper or background. Very sophisticated!

Download it here!!!

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Top 12 Free Content Management Systems (CMS)

Building websites by hand with all html/css pages was fine a couple years ago, but these days there are a ton of awesome Content Management System options out there that make our jobs as developers and website publishers SO much easier!

So, What Exactly Is A Content Management System?

According to Wikipedia, they describe a CMS as follows:

A web content management system (WCMS or Web CMS) is a content management system (CMS) software, usually implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material (HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and many essential Web maintenance functions.

So take a moment and look over the list below of the 12 best free cms options available. Some might seem really familiar (I love Wordpress) and some others might be new to you. They all deserve your attention for a few minutes.

WordPress ↓

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. WordPress is also what Kalspeedflix (a site I created for my love of motorsports) runs on.

Joomla ↓

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

Drupal ↓

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.

SilverStripe ↓

The SilverStripe CMS is a flexible open source Content Management System that gives everyone involved in a web project the tools they need to do their jobs.

Cushy CMS ↓

CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It’s free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.

Frog CMS ↓

Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management. Born as phpRadiant in January 2007, Frog CMS is a PHP version of Radiant CMS, a well known Ruby on Rails application. Although the two applications still share a family resemblance, Frog is charting its own development path.

MODx ↓

MODx helps you take control of your online content. An Open Source PHP application framework, it frees you to build sites exactly how you want and make them 100% yours. Zero restrictions and fast to build. Super-simple templates in regular HTML/CSS/JS (any lib you want). Registered user systems and a killer community. Welcome to web-building nirvana.

TYPOlight ↓

TYPOlight CMS is a web CMS that Uses Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies, has a live update feature for those of us who have multiple blogs, gives multi-language support and hosts a ton of other great features.

dotCMS ↓

The fully functional GPL version of dotCMS continues to forge ahead – providing bleed–edge features and the latest code to a thriving community of developers and users.

Expression Engine ↓

ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website. If you’re tired of the limitations of your current CMS then take ExpressionEngine for a spin.

Radiant CMS ↓

Radiant is a no-fluff, open source content management system designed for small teams that was built on Ruby on Rails. It gives an endless list of awesome features and is definitely worth checking out.

concrete5 ↓

A CMS made for Marketing, but strong enough for Geeks! Concrete5 is an open source content management system. It’s revolutionary – and it’s free.

Learn to build your own CMS with PHP ↓

If you’d like to build your own CMS, Jason Lengstorf has an amazing tutorial posted on CSS-Tricks that will show you step by step how to build a simple CMS for your own website using PHP. It’s definitely worth checking out .

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Shared Hosting versus Dedicated Server

Are you at a crossroads now, deciding which type of web hosting best suits your needs? This is definitely an important decision as it will affect how your business will run on the web-space in the future. So, before you start submitting a ticket to the support department or calling the sales department of any hosting provider to ask regarding your confusion, take a look at the guidelines and tips which I'm about to introduce to you.

First of all, ask yourself, which type of web businesses are you planning to get involved in? Next, I'll show you the advantages, disadvantages and features offered to you by both shared hosting and dedicated server hosting. Before I proceed further, let's refresh your mind with the definition of both types of hosting. Shared hosting, as most of you should be well-versed, is hosting where a lot of websites share the same resources in one server. Resources here simply mean the total web-space, the memory, the processor speed, as well as the bandwidth. Dedicated server on the other hand, give you the freedom of being alone. Alone means you are the sole owner of the server. You can do whatever you want and no other sites share the resources with you. It sure comes with a price as dedicated server is way more expensive than shared hosting. However, if you believe that the advantages which I shall be listing in a short while are the advantages you long to have, then it's wise to conclude that these advantages can outweigh the expensive price (but still affordable) of dedicated server. An excellent web host is Hostgator.  They offer both types of servers at affordable prices, based on your needs.  Also, you can receive 25% off your purchase using Coupon Code: sublimemaxxus.

Facing the challenges in the world of sharing!
 
Here's a simple analogy; renting a room on your own or finding a roommate to share the room with you. Simply, that's the problem or risks you might be facing when you opt for shared hosting. Shared hosting is just like you rent a room with a few other roommates. Won't it be congested to share in a small room? However, there is a reason why people choose to find roommates. Price is the main concern. Same goes to hosting industry. Shared hosting is cheaper and more affordable compared to dedicated hosting. Nowadays, you can find shared hosting with the price of USD$4 to USDS15 per month. Therefore, if you think that price is an issue and you are still green in hosting world and your online business has yet to achieve heavy traffic, the best solution is to go for shared hosting first. Consequently, you have to bear the drawbacks of shared hosting but if you choose a reliable and experienced hosting provider (probably in a hosting industry for around 3-4 years), the provider will ensure the most minimal drawbacks for its clients. In shared hosting environment, you will encounter certain disadvantages as follows:

Sharing Same IP
 
Having the same IP address in shared hosting is the main concern when other sites in the server is actually being blacklisted for unethical activities such as spamming or generating illegal script. Since, you share the same server, it's obvious you will share the same IP address. So, when other sites are blacklisted, those sharing the same IP with them will also unfortunately share the same fate - being banned altogether by search engine. You will be the victim of crime which you don't commit. However, there are times where you can buy yourself a dedicated IP but this usually is not needed unless you are getting yourself an SSL certificate. In cases such as this one, it depends on your hosting provider on how they deal with clients who do illegal and unapproved activities. Usually, a reliable and responsible host will suspend those sites which perform spamming in order to rescue other sites who are innocent. In short, to get yourself a shared hosting, get to know how your provider deal with those sites which are hosted in the same server as you.

Slow Server Response Time
 
Using the same analogy as above, if you and your roommates want to use the bathroom, you have to queue up, correct? Hence, it will slow down your daily work. Same goes to shared hosting. If one of your neighbors have heavy daily traffic, it will consume most of the bandwidth and when things get tighten up, you will feel the slow response time such as difficulty accessing your website. This is because server will respond to the requested file in order of the queue. If one of the visitor happens to request it later and is on a long queue, that visitor will experience slow response time and might eventually end up leaving your website.

Server Crashes Regularly
 
The factor to server crashes more often than usual, is the fact that certain scripts are generated and it can overload a server's resources. If web-hosting provider does not monitor the server's activity, those poorly-written CGI script can give you more headache than relief. Hence, it's vital for host provider to monitor the server regularly to prevent server from crashes and to protect your site from being affected. You as a client, please do take the initiative to question your providers on how they take precautions for cases like this one. A well-knowledgeable and reliable host provider will be able to answer your question to your satisfaction.

Despite aforementioned bad points, a lot of websites also use this shared hosting solution and if a proper provider is chosen, you can be assured that such incidents will barely happen.

Dedicated Hosting - A world of your own
 
What makes people opt for dedicated hosting instead of shared hosting? Again, the most important criterion is money. If you can afford a costly solution like this, go ahead. However, don't just simply go ahead without weighing the pros and cons of dedicated hosting. Even if you have money, and you are just a small medium enterprise, think twice for investing in dedicated hosting. Reason is because dedicated hosting is mainly for large and busy sites such as portal, search engine, online content provider, heavy traffic forums and etc. In addition, dedicated hosting usually requires more technical-savvy specialist to monitor it. Listed below are some of the advantages why dedicated hosting is a popular option:

You are the boss!
 
Here, it means you have more control of everything. You can install whatever applications and scripts you want. You can do script testing and if anything were to happen, no one else to blame but yourself. You will have the ability to customize the hardware and software installed on your server, which you cannot find this privilege if you are under shared hosting.

No more limitation in bandwidth usage
 
Compare to shared hosting, you might get yourself a "warning letter" from your hosting provider if you exceed the maximum bandwidth allocated to you. With dedicated hosting, you have the amount of bandwidth of a server. Hence, downloading and uploading any materials from your site will not be a problem if you have a lot of daily visitors performing such activity.

More Secured
 
Having a dedicated server is in fact more secured compared to shared hosting. This is because dedicated server will be provided its own firewall. Therefore, the information stored in dedicated server is less vulnerable to attacks by hackers or any malicious codes. In addition, hosting provider will usually provide backup for you with added fee, but, in terms of security, it's actually worth it.

Better Performance
 
Since dedicated hosting means only you alone are hosted in that server, the response time of the server to requested files will be so much faster compared to shared hosting. Visitors who browse your website will feel happy because your pages will appear on their browser fast enough to satisfy them. Fast loading time will always brighten anyone's day!

Generally, choosing which type of hosting solely depends on your needs. So, to make a wise decision, do more researches and evaluations as well as consult those highly technical savvy people. Remember that a good and smart decision will determine your online storefronts' success.

I recommend Hostgator.......check them out.... affordable and ZERO downtime or issues since I have been using that service.

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UPDATE: Cool Web Effects - Lightbox Image Viewer 2.03a

As you may well have observed by now, the effect is not working any longer on my blogger as Google has adapted a similar approach to view images.

I had, in that particular post, included the script in my heading and body, but these are conflicting with Google's implementation.

However, you can still follow the directions and apply to Wordpress or your own web-site.

Below is the original post:

The Lightbox Image Viewer 2.0 expands upon the original Lightbox Image Viewer with a few new features. While the original version is great for viewing images individually on the page, Lightbox 2.0 supports a new "grouping" feature that lets you group related images on the page for easy browsing amongst them. The transitional effect for bringing up an image also differs from the original. And like before, this script supports optional caption display, plus incremental preloading of the next image when images are grouped. Very nice!

Demo 1: (individual images):

(Note: caption for "Evi" is hyperlinked, v2.03a feature)

Demo 2: (grouped images set. After an image has enlarged, you can move between images by clicking on the right/left edges of the enlarged image):

---

Directions:

Simply download Lightbox V2.03a, and refer to the index file inside for installation instructions. If you're merely upgrading from v2.03 to v2.03a, simply refresh the following file:

lightbox.js (v2.03a)
EDIT: you have to ensure all the Javascript is uploaded to your domain server in appropriate named folder (js and css), i.e. in the below code you would have to add http://www.yourdomain.com AFTER src=" for it to work properly ..example

<script type="text/javascript" src=">http://www.yourdomain.com/js/prototype.js"></script> although you have it pointed anyways on your header. 

Same with href="http://www.yourdomain.com/css/lightbox.css 

Alternatively I offer my server location:   

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.kalspeedflix.com/js/prototype.js"></script> 
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.kalspeedflix.com/js/scriptaculous.js? load=effects"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src=">http://www.kalspeedflix.com/

js/lightbox.js"> </script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.kalspeedflix.com/css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen"/>

 Installation instructions

Just for your reference, the installation instructions are repeated below.

Step 1: Insert the below code in the HEAD section of your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/prototype.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/scriptaculous.js? load=effects"> </script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/lightbox.js"> </script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen"/>

Lightbox v2.0 uses the Prototype Framework and ScriptaculousEffects Library.

Step 2: Create your "thumbnail" image links,
for example:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox" title="my caption">
image #1</a>

EDIT:  as above with the Javascript and CSS file, you must have your images stored on a server somewhere.

i.e. <a href="http://www.yourdomain/images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox" title="my caption" rev="http://www.yourdomain.com/">image #1</a>

The rel attribute is mandatory in order to activate the effect for this particular image. The "title" attribute is optional, and when defined, adds a caption beneath the enlarged image. The "href" attribute obviously should contain the path to the enlarged image. If you wish a particular caption ("title") to be hyperlinked to a specific URL, throw in a "rev" attribute pointing to the desired URL. For example:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox" title="my caption"
rev="http://sublimemaxxus.blogspot.com/">image #1</a>

LightBox version 2 also adds the ability to group multiple image links together, so an image gallery is created out of the enlarged images:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #1
</a>
<a href="images/image-2.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #2
</a>
<a href="images/image-3.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #3
</a>

As you can see, to group image links together, simply modify the "rel" attribute to be "lightbox[roadtrip]" instead, where "roadtrip" is an arbitrary but unique name for that group. You can have multiple groups of images on the same page- just use a unique group name in each case. Grouped images can be cycled through by clicking on the right/left edges of each
enlarged image.

That's it! Enjoy this superb script. Remember, there's also LightBox V1 if you don't need the grouping feature and just want an elegant transition effect to bring up each image.

Notes

For your information, inside lightbox.js, there are a few configurable variables:

// Configuration
//
var fileLoadingImage = "images/loading.gif";
var fileBottomNavCloseImage = "images/closelabel.gif";
var resizeSpeed = 7; // controls the speed of the image resizing
(1=slowest and 10=fastest)
var borderSize = 10; //if you adjust the padding in the CSS, you
will need to update this variable

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Optimize And Clean Your Computer With a Free Program Download

CCleaner -Optimization and Cleaning for your computer..absolutely free!

CCleaner (aka CrapCleaner) is the #1 tool for cleaning your Windows PC free. It protects your privacy online and makes your computer faster and more secure. Easy to use and a small, fast download, I have been using this program from Piriform for years.  This program is also available for the Mac platform.

Download now for Windows here, FREE

More information:

• Download for PC
• Download for Mac
• Features
• FAQ
• Screenshots
• Reviews
• Help

Cleans all areas of your Computer:

Internet Explorer
Temporary files, history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat.

Firefox
Temporary files, history, cookies, download history, form history.

Google Chrome
Temporary files, history, cookies, download history, form history.

Opera
Temporary files, history, cookies.

Safari
Temporary files, history, cookies, form history.

Windows
Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.

Registry Cleaner
Advanced features to remove unused and old registry entries.

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Search & Content Optimization – 20 SEO Best Practices

Unscrupulous SEO companies offer quick fix solutions to getting your website ranked high on Google searches, and in the process they are quick to disregard the most commonly accepted (and smartest) SEO best practices.

Like all quick fixes, they don’t stick – and worse, they are likely to crash and burn.

If you want to improve your organic search traffic on Google and other engines, then forget about search engine optimization tricks and shortcuts. Focus instead on creating high quality content, and on increasing your website’s online visibility and reputation through blogging and social media. In other words, emphasize people and not machines.

SEO Best Practices

1. Write for users, not search engines. User profiles and personas help content strategists and writers understand who will be reading the content.
2. SEO is not about gaming the system. Search engines penalize websites that use old-school SEO tricks and shortcuts such as keyword-stuffing, link-swapping and article-spinning.
3. Create useful, relevant, interesting and topical content that users want to read and share. Think about what users want to know, not what you want to tell them – aim for a good user experience and be honest about what you are offering. Use story-telling techniques to engage users if appropriate.
4. Keywords help focus your message. Proper keyword research using reliable tools helps you discover what users are interested in, and how they talk about it. Treat keywords as a way to ensure your message on each page is clear, not as magic phrases which you simply inject into the text.
5. Blog about current events. Both users and search engines favor topical content: news, upcoming events, current affairs. Regularly updated blogs are a vital part of a strategy to increase a website’s visibility, and should be integrated into the main site if possible.
6. Get social, get reviews. Social media and review sites (such as Tripadvisor) help drive traffic to a website, establish the site’s reputation, increase online visibility and links, and improve user engagement. Large brands should have a presence on the main social media platforms: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and/or country-specific platforms. Smaller brands should not bite off more than they can chew.
7. Use social sharing buttons (“Share this article on Facebook/Google+/Twitter/Email” etc) and social connect buttons (“Follow us on Facebook/Twitter etc”). This helps create a community and amplifies the effect of blogs on search rankings and visibility.
8. Encourage inbound links and citations from relevant, respectable websites and blogs – preferably with whom you have a relationship. This will lead to increased direct traffic to the site and also improve search rankings. (Inbound links from disreputable websites and link farms will harm search rankings and should be disavowed.)
9. Aim content at a specific market or niche. Search is increasingly personalized: users see different search results depending on their browsing history and social profile. So make sure you understand your demographic.
10. Aim local. Location-specific search results will be enhanced by proper listings on Google Places and other online map services. Keywords, if used, should have a location element.
11. Ensure your website design and structure is clear and accessible. This is vital for both users and search engines.
12. Be relevant. The home page is no longer the automatic landing page for searchers. Different topics should be dealt with on different pages and linked coherently.
13. Write for mobile. Many users now access the web on mobile devices – small screens, limited attention span, no room for complex navigation or data-intensive content or Flash. The website should be mobile-friendly if there is not a mobile-specific site. Content must be concise, short and clear, with the most important information at the top.
14. Recycle, don’t duplicate. Search engines penalize duplicate content, but you can re-use chunks of good content in various ways: a white paper or interview split into blogs, a “top tips” blog split into tweets…
15. Write meta data for users not search engines. Meta data are not an opportunity to stuff keywords onto a web page.
    • Meta keywords are deprecated by most search engines and should not be incorporated into the code.
    • The title appears in the browser tab and in some search engine results pages, and should tell users what the page is about at a glance. The first 11 or 12 characters are the most important.
    • The meta description shows up in the list of search results in most browsers. The aim is to give users a concise, informative and accurate description of what’s on the page, and to encourage them to click through. If you have a main keyword, use it once here. Include a call to action and keep it around 150 characters.
16. Optimize images and videos for search by adding appropriate titles, alt text and captions.
17. Take a 3-pronged approach to content. Good search positioning requires:
    • relevancy (non-spammy keywords, separate topics on separate pages)
    • usefulness (information-rich content, new ideas, outbound hyperlinks)
    • reputation (inbound hyperlinks from reputable sites, high standing on review sites).
18. Set clear Key Performance Indicators for measuring a site’s performance over time, and have analytics programs in place to track them. They should include organic traffic and conversion rates as a minimum. Inbound links, search terms, referring sites and bounce rates are also useful data to track. Whatever analytics you look at, ask yourself how you can learn from the data.
19. Iterate. Learn from your mistakes and those of competitors, and be quick to react if content (your own or on social media/a review site) has a negative effect on your reputation.
20. Consider multilingual content. Targeted localization can greatly increase a website’s global reach, as well as the engagement and conversion rates of foreign users.

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How do I manually install Flash Player on my Android device?

Flash Player for Android is no longer available for download from the Google Play app store, but Android users can still download and install Flash Player from the Archived Flash Player Versions page on the Adobe website.  To do so, please watch this instructional video or follow the steps below:

1. Make sure your Android device is connected to the Internet.
2. Open the Settings menu.
3. Select Security (or Applications, on older Android OSs).
4. Place a checkmark next to the "Unknown sources" check box.
5. Tap OK to confirm your selection.
6. Close Settings.
7. Launch the browser.
8. Search for "flash player archive page" or navigate directly to http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions. html
9. On the Archive page, scroll down to "Flash Player for Android archives"
10. Select a version of Flash Player that is compatible with your Android operating system.
11. Tap the link to download the Flash Player installer. Download begins automatically.
12. When download completes, close the browser.
13. Open Notifications.
14. Tap "install_flash_player.apk"
15. When prompted, tap Install.
16. When installation is finished, tap Done.

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TiltViewer

TiltViewer is a free, customizable 3D Flash image viewing application.

Controls

Mouse

* Click images to zoom-in, click again to zoom-out.

* Click the background to zoom-out.

* Click the 'reload' button (below the image grid) to load a new set of images.

* Click the 'flip' button (bottom-right of a zoomed-in image) to see image
details.

Keyboard

* Cursor keys to navigate between images.

* Space-bar to zoom in/out.

* 'F' key to flip an image (when zoomed in).

Right-Click Menu

* Go Fullscreen. Opens TiltViewer in fullscreen mode. Right-click and select
'Exit Fullscreen' to revert to regular mode. Note keyboard navigation does not
work in full-screen mode.

Download:

Download TiltViewer v1.3 to use on your site.

Using TiltViewer:
Creating your own TiltViewer gallery is easy. See instructions here.
TiltViewer-Pro
TiltViewer-Pro is now available for purchase. TiltViewer-Pro has increased customization options and does not include the TiltViewer logo.
Learn more about TiltViewer-Pro.

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30 best new SEO tools

Richard Baxter of netmagazine.com on building the perfect toolkit for SEO and digital marketing

You’ve heard the saying, 'A poor craftsman blames his tools'. In our world, it’s more like 'really awesome tools make me look good to my clients', or similar. Making sure you use the best tools is critical to being thorough, competitive and exceptional at your craft, but staying up-to-date is pretty difficult.

I’ve been working in the trenches of the SEO industry for 10 years, watching different tools come and go, all gaining in complexity and usefulness as time goes on. Our industry evolves extremely rapidly, and so does your need to keep an eye on what’s out there to help you be more effective and agile, especially when it comes to carrying out essential, but often mundane, digital marketing tasks.

Let’s take a look at what are new, useful or downright awesome tools in inbound marketing, focusing on some of the key stages of the SEO process: research, technical, link building and content marketing outreach.

To write this post, I enlisted the input of some good friends in my industry, and of course, my team of over 20 SEOs at SEOgadget who work with these tools all day, every day.

Keyword research and audience profiling

Among the classic keyword research tools has always been the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Unfortunately, the Google Keyword Tool is due to close very soon. In its place, Google announced the Keyword Planner, which has most of the data available from the original keyword tool and more to come.

If you’re looking for even more keyword ideas, try tools based on the Google Suggest API like Ubersuggest. You'll get far by simply creating a list of keywords and prioritising them by search volume. A really nice tip (first heard via Wil Reynolds, CEO at Seer Interactive) is simply don’t click search in Google. Type in your keywords and see what appears in the autocomplete box to get an idea of how people are searching around those words.

If you’re building a serious data set, the smart money is in combining different data points for extra validation. Finding low competition, high volume keywords is every search marketers’ Holy Grail. For that quest, Moz.com’s Keyword Difficulty Tool can help estimate search volumes and combines data aggregated from Bing, rankings for that particular keyword by location and Moz’s own link data source, Mozscape.
Bing Webmaster Tools has a nifty keyword tool, showing your average ranking position, the number of clicks you received, and the number of impressions for that particular keyword.

If you’re lucky enough to have an Adwords API key, you could consider extracting keyword search volumes via its API by working with your development team (or using an Excel Tool like our Adwords API Extension for Excel).

SEMrush have a powerful API and present search volumes as reported by Google. This excellent article by Russ Jones of Virante found that SEMrush’s data had the lowest error rate (compared to its own index) and a high level of coverage.

What about the new stuff? Keyword research as a subset of our industry can move slowly at times. Because there’s no direct return for your efforts (just because you’ve done some keyword research hardly means your traffic will grow), I suspect lower levels of investment find their way into this corner of the SEM universe.

With that said, we’re excited about Grepwords (currently in beta) as a newcomer to the keyword research tool space, as well as Searchmetrics, which calculates a search volume based on its own traffic algorithms.

Search engine visibility monitoring

When it comes to your organic rankings, there are lots of interesting tools that are handy for a quick health check or larger scale monitoring challenges. If you’re working in multiple locations, and you’d just like a little data, small web apps like Search Latte help you check rankings in different countries quickly and easily.

With that said, some of us want to see all of the data! We use a few tools for rank checking on a day-to-day basis. Getstat is an excellent, enterprise-level keyword tracking platform, with detailed reports, clear data presentation and useful alerts service. It’s able to collect ranking data at the regional level, which is useful for tracking rankings by US state, for example.

Advanced Web Ranking is a powerful solution for scheduled, localised ranking, link monitoring, keyword research. It’s also a powerful, site-crawl-based search engine accessibility monitoring platform. Combined with proxy services like Trusted Proxies, it’s fast and scalable enough for most in-house SME SEO teams and agencies. Usefully, it can be configured to run on a server, with AWR clients connecting to a single data source across your network.

Technical SEO and search engine accessibility

I’ve always thought Bing SEO Analyzer in Bing Webmaster Tools is a really good tool for quickly identifying on page issues, like malformed containers, missing H1 elements and the like. Its real power comes from a simple to interpret user interface, often lacking in so many 'technical' SEO tools. The tool visibly renders the web page you’re analysing, and highlights any issues it finds during the analysis process.

Moz.com’s PRO toolset comes with a deep site crawler (lovingly referred to by its team as Roger Mozbot). Approximately once a week, you receive an update to your crawl data, with a user interface that updates you on crawler discovered errors, warnings and notices. Moz have a very simple to use, visual interface that's ideal for newcomers to SEO. Its data export, API services, link analysis and social monitoring make for a well-rounded advanced SEO campaign solution. Export data from its tools includes advanced, technical SEO features like the contents of your X-Robots filed in your server header response. Hardcore!


Lately, Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider has become the 'go to' site crawler. Able to highlight SEO accessibility issues, it comes with powerful filtering to weed out specific issues, like missing Google Analytics tracking code. It also has a nifty sitemap generator.

I’m very excited about the premium service, DeepCrawl. It’s a great deal more pricey than annual subscription tools like Screaming Frog, and free tools like IIS SEO Toolkit (which is excellent, by the way. Follow these handy installation guidelines), but has the capacity to crawl industrial-size websites with millions of pages. This is something the others simply can’t do.

Log analysis has taught me more about SEO than any other single activity in the last decade. You learn so much about SEO simply by looking at the resources Googlebot requests on your website. On that note, we recommend you try the free edition of Splunk with a recent log file export, to see what you can find.

Link analysis, monitoring and reporting

Link analysis has always been a rapidly-evolving area of our industry. In light of Google’s very recent Penguin algorithm updates, that evolutionary rate of change has increased exponentially. Every day, Chrome extensions like Check My Links are extremely useful for broken link building and general on page link checking. The rather wonderful Scraper makes light work of fetching URLs in batches from web pages.
Web Developer for Chrome and Firefox have been a long time staple of any SEO interested in technical health.

Redirect Path from Ayima cleverly logs each redirect step taken when a URL is requested by the browser, frequently highlighting when SEO-unfriendly, multiple hops are mad, or worse, where 302 redirects are lurking in the chain.


There are some well-known players in the link data industry. Majestic SEO and Moz.com’s Mozscape both have a vast reach into the link graph (our agency uses the API services offered by both companies for our in-house tools). Probably the most frequently used tool in-house for fast link appraisal at SEOgadget would be Open Site Explorer. For really deep dive stuff we consolidate data from all sources, including Google’s Webmaster Tools.


If you’re an Excel junkie, managing all of these data sources gets a lot easier with SEOgadget’s own Links API Extension for Excel. The Excel plug-in talks to API services from Majestic, Moz, SEOgadget’s own Links Contact API and soon, the Ahrefs API.

If you’re into deep SEO auditing with Excel, and you’d like a few new tools (like a regex parser) in Excel, install Niels Bosma’s SEO Tools for Excel and check out all of the incredible new features your otherwise standard Excel installation now has.

New to the link data scene are Ahrefs. The link data monitoring is extremely fast (new and lost link discovery seems to be a real strength for these guys). We rate the toolset in the 'hardcore' category for link data mining. It has a very powerful API, too.

For the Python-minded, Benjamin Estes’s Pyscape is for you. It solves the problem of getting data from the Mozscape API in bulk. Anyone who can run a Python script in Google App Engine should be up and running with this in minutes.

For those times when you think you may have been working with the wrong SEO agency, and your links could be to blame for a recent drop in your organic rankings, we’re excited about LinkRisk as a fast and powerful link audit tool. It identifies suspect links that may need removal, and it’s a useful tool to base some of your outreach for link building on, too.

Social monitoring and metrics

Social Crawlytics is a site-crawl-based competitive social analytics tool that (among other useful reports) provides page-by-page social metrics, author popularity and a breakdown of page level shares by social network via a solid UI or API interface. It’s free, which is nice!

On the subject of social, my favourite tool on the web is Topsy. Topsy’s a powerful real-time social search engine, allowing you to search by URL or search term, delivering mentions by social profiles on Twitter and Google+. Here’s an example search result for 'SEOgadget.com. Note the ability to filter for 'influential only' results.

The new darling of the real-time mentions monitoring scene is Fresh Web Explorer. You can compare mentions of your favourite terms found on the internet up to four weeks ago, export the data and combine it with other information from your tools. My favourite feature is the ability to find mentions of your site that don’t currently link. Very useful.

Hopefully, you’ve found this list as useful as I’ve had fun have compiling it! I’d like to thank my friends and contributors to this article: Tom Bennet (@TomBennet88), Chris Yee (@eeYsirhc), Dan Butler (@DBseo), Ally Biring (@timeallytravels), Ian Lurie (@portentint), Aleyda Solis (@aleyda), Sam Crocker (@samuelcrocker), Gianluca Fiorelli (@gfiorelli1) and Geoff Kenyon (@geoffkenyon). All great people in the industry and well worth a follow on Twitter to keep on top of great new SEO tools and tips.
Richard Baxter writes for .net. He’s a regular contributor to the SEO and inbound marketing industry while running a busy, technology-based SEO and inbound marketing agency, SEOgadget.com. Connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.

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