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133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)
77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
55% – percentage of the blogosphere that drinks more than 2 cups of coffee per day (source)
81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere
59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years source

Let us first answer the question,  what is a blog?

A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.  Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

So many have considered writing or putting up a blog.  Majority have succeeded in maintaining and have grown their readers and subscribers.  If you are one of those considering it, I feel it would be great to consider the following questions:

1.  Do I have time to write at least 1 or 2 posts a week?- Writing posts and updating it at least once or twice a week is important, specially if you already have people following and eagerly awaiting what you write.  Making time is important, don’t start now until you can commit to it.

2.  Am I doing this to share what I know and in turn help others?  Or am I just going to do it to earn money? – Most people think that by just starting your blog now you will end up with tons of money.  If you have that as an intention at the beginning then you are in for a big let down.  If you share great content, information about your field, you help people understand what you are about, then and only then will you be able to have the chance of earning.  The readers of your site can either hire you or they can be advertisers for your site.  Most of the successful bloggers I have met did not have profit as the main focus of their existence.

3.  What format will I use? Can I sustain that format? What content should I share? Plan your blog.  There are so many resources on the web to let you see which type of format you can use.  WordPress, Blogger, etc.  As to the format, it should be something you know you can sustain for a long period of time.  What do I mean here?  Is it drawings, Is it mostly gadget reviews?  Planning will help you make sure you stay on track.

4,  Who will be interested in reading my blog? The topics and the format will come easy once you have also determined who or which audience you want to reach.

To blog or not to blog? I have given my answer a year ago and I am happy I did.  I hope the statistics and the questions can guide you in your decision.

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Traditional yard sales in a virtual format, enabling people who don’t have a front yard or garage to create a virtual sale. Sell your items, or list your events for FREE!

Sellers are able to:

• Create virtual tag sales for a small listing fee and post up to 200 items with pictures and prices without paying commissions
• Manage their sales by deleting sold items and adding new ones through the duration of their sale
• Remain anonymous in deciding which potential buyers to communicate with

Buyers are able to:

• Search by location to trade locally if desired
• Search for items using a sophisticated keyword and tag search
• Contact sellers to barter item prices and shipping as needed

http://www.tagsellit.com/

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Find the ebook you want – in the format you need – at the price you’ll like.

Search for your next ebook with one click; we search the major ebook sites for you and give you all the prices to compare.

And if it’s the classics you’re after, we search the free ebook sites.

Oh, and we search for paperbacks, hardbacks, textbooks and audio books too!

http://ebookprice.info

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This series is supported by Times Reader 2.0. Learn more about The New York Times’ latest innovation in newspaper delivery here.

We’re big fans of eBooks. You can read them on multiple computers or devices, add annotations, and search for specific words and phrases. Plus, an eBook doesn’t take up tons of room like physical books, which is great for the road warrior.

In the last few years, publishers have finally started to embrace digital publishing and now lots of books on lots of different topics are available for various eBook platforms. If you’re into social media (and who isn’t?) check out these ten can’t-miss eBooks!

1. Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

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Most people are familiar with the sanitized history of Facebook: Harvard kid starts a web site in his dorm room, ends up changing the world. Although that’s part of the truth, and is certainly compelling in its own right, Mezrich’s take on Facebook’s founding and its behind-the-scenes legal battles is like something out of Hollywood. In fact, Accidental Billionaires is the basis for the film, The Social Network, which is due to arrive in theaters in October 2010. If you use Facebook and are curious about its history‚ or if you just love a good, gripping soap opera ‚ don’t miss this book!

Format: Kindle, Nook, others

2. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon

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Bacon is the Community Manager for Ubuntu, one of the largest open source software projects on the planet. In this book he talks about the ins and outs of building, cultivating and managing a community from the ground up. This is a must-read for anyone interested in community development. In a truly community-friendly effort, you can download the entire book for free and share and modify it under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Non-Commercial license.

Format: Free PDF, Kindle, Nook, others

3. The World According to Twitter by David Pogue

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New York Times columnist David Pogue got into Twitter in late 2008 and decided to use the service as the basis for this book. Every day, Pogue asked his followers questions and compiled the best, most interesting and funniest responses. This is a great example of just how much can be shared in 140 characters.

Format: Kindle, others

4. Content by Cory Doctorow

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Cory Doctorow, one of the voices behind the uber-blog Boing-Boing, is well-known for his opinions on technology, DRM and the future of content. Content is a collection of some of his best work and is an insightful read. Truly a man that practices what he preaches, the book is available for free in multiple formats.

Format: Free download

5. Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

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Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those people that absolutely bursts with energy. Whether he’s talking about wine, talking about marketing or just talking about people, Gary is passionate. Gary has built his business on the back of that passion and is a shining example of what can be accomplished when you push yourself and dedicate your life to what you love.

Format: Kindle, others

6. Free by Chris Anderson

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The author of The Long Tail released his follow-up earlier this year, called Free. In it, Anderson argues that the best price is often no price, instead offering freemium models or incentives and services to make money, rather than charging for the “product” itself. It’s an interesting idea, and even if you don’t buy all of Anderson’s assertions, it is still worth a read. Ironically, Free is no longer available for free.

Format: Kindle, others

7. The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg

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Mashable’s own Tamar Weinberg wrote this fantastic book about how to use, understand and leverage social media to market your product, your service or yourself. By focusing on the importance of community and joining the conversation, Tamar does a great job getting to the heart of why social media is so interesting and game-changing.

Format: Kindle, others

8. Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki

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Guy Kawasaki is a legend. At Apple, he helped spread the word about the Macintosh and keep the community engaged (even when the community and the company were fading), almost single-handedly creating the job category of “brand evangelist” and as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he’s seen what works and what doesn’t. In his latest book, Guy does what Guy does best: he lays out the facts and ideas that seem like common sense (until you realize how often they are ignored) about building community and the power of networking.

Format: Kindle, others

9. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

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Chris Brogan is one of those guys who really walks the walk. He doesn’t just talk about how to build influence and the power of the conversation, he’s always part of the conversation. No matter how successful he gets, Chris is still Chris, and he’s still there to talk and listen. His book on building reputation and earning trust on the web is genuine, just like he is.

Format: Kindle, others

10. What Matters Now by Seth Godin and others

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Seth Godin’s latest book, which features essays by himself and a host of other brilliant minds is available for free. In What Matters Now, each essayist focuses on something that matters to them. Think of this as your New Year’s Resolution in an eBook.

Format: Free download

This series is supported by Times Reader 2.0. Learn more about The New York Times’ latest innovation in newspaper delivery here.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tiridifilm, alexsl

Tags: books, ebooks, Kindle, List, Lists, nook, social media, times reader series

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The demand for development icons is huge, and thankfully this year has been a fairly productive year with new icon sets being freely released every other week. As you will see from the list below, they are all of high quality, some do have more flexibility than the others, and some do have limited numbers and options, but all are beautifully designed.
Anyway, all of the icons I have listed below have been designed specifically for web design, web development, web applications and blogging. And I am sure you will agree, they are amazing.

108 Mono Icons: Huge Set of Minimal Icons

This icon pack comes packaged with 108 gray icons that can be easily customized within Photoshop and Fireworks. This Icon Pack ican be used in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution.

Onebit Free Icon Set

There are 30 icon in this .png icon set, and you are free to use these icons for any project as many times as you like.

Shiny Icon Set

This free set includes 20 icons that you can use for both personal and commercial projects. Resell and distribution is not allowed. The icons are available in three different sizes: 16px, 32px, and 64px in 32-bits transparent .png format.

Cute Blogging Icon Set

This set contains 10 high quality blogging icons in .png format, you can use them on any personal or commercial projects and they come in the following sizes: 128px, 64px, 48px and 32px.

Monofactor – Free Vector Icon Set

There are 25 scalable .ai format icons in this set, which can be opened with any version above Illustrator 8.0. With earlier versions, you may loose some of the effects.
This set is licenced under Creative Commons License.

Webdesigner Sketchup Icons

This icon set has been designed as a starting point to get your design phase off the ground, allowing you to create quick mock ups for your clients and flesh pot ideas.

Android Icons

The package includes 30 .png menu icons plus the additional source files for further customization.
All icons are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license, so feel free to use them in any form in you projects or even remix them.

WP WooThemes Ultimate Icon Set

This free download contains a total of 79 icons, all sized at 256×256 pixels and available in both .png and .gif formats.

MinIcons

There are a total of 30 icons in this set, all sized at 48×48px and are packaged with both .png and .ico formats.

Must Have Icons Set

The icons are free for personal and commercial use, but the designers do require linking to there web site. The package contains 59 icons, available in four different sizes and are available in Windows, MAC and .png format.

30 Free Vector Icons

Weby Icon Set

The icons are available in .png, .icon and .icns format. They are free to use for both personal and commercial projects, including websites, templates and software. In total there are 100 icons at 64×64px.

Siena – Free Icon Set

This huge set of icons (200 in total) come in 6 different raster sizes and the vector source files are also included. These icons are completely free for both personal and commercial use.

Css Globe Icon Set

Quartz Icon Set

The Quartz icon set contains 90 semi-transparent .png-icons in the resolution 64×64px. You can use this set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions.

Pictoico

There are over 100 fully scalable pictograms/icons in this set. No watermarks, no limitations: available in all major, industry standard scalable vector formats.

austerity Icon Set

Farm-Fresh Web Icons

With over 1000 icons, this set is by far the biggest icon set in this article. It includes both 16 and 32 pixel versions of the icons , and the images are all in .png format on transparent backgrounds.

WooFunction: 178 Icons

The WooFunction Icon Set includes 178 amazing web-related icons in a sophisticated and glossy design style. All 178 icons are available as 32×32px .png files.

LED Icon Set

There are a massive 500 icons in this mini icon (16×16px) set. You can do whatever you want with these icons, as long as you don’t pass them off as your own.

Basic Set

There are 42 high quality icons in this set, available in the following sizes: 64х64, 48×48, 32х32 & 16х16.

Token

There are 128 unique icons for apps, folders, settings, and the desktop. Each icon has two color variants, dark and light and each icon is available as a 128×128 .png or as a Windows .icon. There is also a .psd file included in the set for easy customization.

Glyphish – iPhone UI Icons

These iPhone UI icons are 24-bit .png images used as a mask to generate selected and unselected button states. Dimensions should be about 30×30 pixels for tab bar icons and about 20×20 pixels for toolbar and navigation icons.

SEM Labs Web Blog Icon Pack

In this huge icon set there are just under 200 icons and all available 48×48px. This sset has been released for free under the Creative Commons licence.

Milky – A Free Stock Vector Iconset

<a href="http://www.iconneden.com/icon/milky-a-free-vector-iconset.html”>The Milky set contains more than 131 icons primarily colored in green, available in .png format with the following sizes: 64×64px 128×128px.

File Status Icons

There are 16 icons in this 24×24px icon set. This icon pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Webdesigner Toolkit

BrightMix

Web Standard Icons

There are 28 icons in this .png set, available in the following sizes: 16×16px 32×32px.

Bright!

This 148-icon set contains all crisp-shaped icons that are designed for wide use in web applications, multimedia and software.

Open Source Icons (37signals)

11 Developer Icons

This small, but beautiful, icon set has only 11 icons sized at 32×32px.

Diagram

All icons are completely free for both personal and commercial use. The icons are available in 4 different sizes (32×32 pixels, 48×48 pixels, 64×64 pixel, and 96×96 pixels) and come as 32-bit transparent .png files. The icons are also available in vector format.

Web Injection

The set includes 26 .png stylish icons at 48×48px. This Free Icon Pack is for use in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution.

Free Web Design Icon Set

There are 310 icons in this package. They are all 16 by 16 pixels, in .png format and free to use in print and web projects.

Flavour Extended

There are over 450 icons in this amazing set. The files are transparent .pngs, and the source files (.psd) are also available for download. The set is completely free and may be used for any private or commercial project without any restrictions whatsoever.

Standard Iconset

There are 28 .png icons in this set, available in 16×16px and 32×32px.

Coquette Icon Set

This is the fifth part of the Coquette free icon series. The icon set contains 50 high quality, free icons in these sizes: 16×16px, 32×32px, 48×48px, 64×64px and 128×128px and 32-bit transparency .png file format.

20 Free Blockie Icons

The icons are available in 5 different sizes (16×16px, 24×24px, 32×32px, 48×48px and 128×128px) and come as Windows ICO and 32-bit transparent .png files. The icons are also available in vector format (Adobe Illustrator AI format).

30 Pretty Office Icons

30 free office icons which render at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 pixels and with the formats .png, ico and icns.

Free iPhone Toolbar Icons

Hand Pointer Icons

This free icon set includes 36 hand pointer icons of 6 diferent types with 6 color variants. The download package also includes the .psd source file.

Language Flag Icons

The icon set includes 16 flags in two differenct style, normal style and rotated style. The raster icons come in three different sizes (32 pixels, 64 pixels and 128 pixels) and in 32-bit transparent .png format. Also the vector source file is included in the free set (Adobe Illustrator CS4 .ai format). The set is completely free for both personal and commercial use.

172 Final Flag Icons

There are 172 flag icons which render at 256×256, 128×128, 64×64, 48×48, 32×32, 24×24, 16×16 pixels and come in .png, .icon and .icns formats.

Social Media Icons

In this simple social media set there are over 60 icons, in four sizes and cover every possible social media service you could think of.

Social Media Network Icons

The Social Network Icon Pack consists of forty 16×16px icons and forty 32×32px icons all in 32-bit .png format. They are free to use for non-commercial projects.

Social Media Mini Icon Pack

This icon set consists of 30 (16×16) finely crafted social media icons. They are free to use non-commercially.

Payment Option Icons

This set contains 20 icons for popular payment methods such as MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, American Express, Diner’s Club and much more… All icons are in .png format and come in three different sizes: big (130×80), small (80×49) and tiny (50×31).

.png Credit Card, Debit Card and Payment Icons

Each icon in this set are in .png format and are supplied in 128px, 64px and 32px heights. There are two versions of each icon, one with curved edges (on a transparent background) and one with straight edges.

RRZE Icon Set

The RRZE (Regional Computing Centre Erlangen) has created a new icon set based on the Tango Desktop Project, which consists of an extensive and very uniformly created icon set. It focuses on Identity Management Systems, especially on user administration.
The RRZE Icon Set is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

You might also like…

8 Free Pictogram Icon Libraries and Collections »
40 Fresh and Free Icon Sets for Web Designers and Bloggers »
35 Original and Creative Free Twitter Icon Sets »
50 High Quality Free Icon Sets in PSD Format »
50 Social Service and Bookmarking Icon Sets for Bloggers »
50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets »
42 Amazing Photoshop and Illustrator Icon Design Tutorials »
96 of the Best Ever Free Icon Sets – For Web Designers, Developers and Bloggers »
35 Free Icon Sets for your iPhone – Pimp it Up! »
30 Amazing Free Vector Icons, Buttons, Stickers, Banners, Labels and Speech Bubbles »

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In addition to remaining Twitter’s most popular user, Ashton Kutcher is also the co-founder of Kayalyst Films.

Thanks in-part to the entertainer’s reach on social media platforms, the company says that one of its productions – Katalyst HQ – is receiving “cable-like viewer numbers” for 3 minute webisodes.

On Wednesday, they’re planning to try a new format for Katalyst HQ: 30-minute, live, unscripted programming featuring Kutcher and some of his to-be-named celebrity friends (though we hear “one of the Kardashians” and the cast of “Jersey Shore” will make an appearance).

Considering the built-in audience for Kutcher and Katalyst HQ, the experiment should be another interesting test for the live video format, which has been seeing huge viewership numbers recently for other celebrity themed events.

While unscripted, Katalyst tells us that the show will follow a talk show-like format, with an opening monologue delivered by Kutcher as well as “celebrity interviews, a musical guest, hilarious pre-taped segments and cut-aways to exotic animals.” If successful, you can bet we’ll see this format used again by Kutcher and other celebs in short order.

The show will be broadcast live on Wednesday at 8pm ET with Ustream serving as the live video provider. As such, you’ll likely see a whole lot of tweets and Facebook status updates as users tune in and start chatting using the service’s built-in social stream features.

As with most live Web events, the bigger the antics and the celeb guests, the bigger the audience will likely grow. Here’s a clip from the “Jersey Shore” cast interview that will air in-full with the show:

Tags: ashton kutcher, katalyst films, live video, ustream, video

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Real fonts on the web: House Industries supports WOFF format.

…a font format for the Web that satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries. …WOFF, offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType).

WOFF has the support of a wide spectrum of the type community; from peers such as Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, etc and larger foundries such as Linotype and Monotype. Today it has also gained the support of Mozilla in the their release of Firefox 3.6 (Mozilla has a full list of designers and foundries that support WOFF on that page). We hope and expect that WOFF will quickly gain support in other major browsers as we support, endorse and expect to license our library for use on the Web in the WOFF format in the future.

Read more

• The Problem: We have the fonts, we have the CSS and the workaround for IE. What we don’t have is beautiful, reliable, consistent cross-platform rendering of real fonts like Gotham, Franklin, Garamond, etc. — 29 October 2009
• Web Fonts and Standards: How real fonts work on the web via standard CSS. Making it work in IE. The licensing hurdle. Rise of the middlemen and their effect on the adoption of font embedding standards. — 17 August
• Web Fonts Now, for Real: David Berlow of The Font Bureau publishes a proposal for a permissions table enabling real fonts to be used on the web without binding or other DRM. — 16 July 2009
• Web Fonts Now (How We’re Doing With That): Commercial foundries that allow @font-face embedding; browser support; Cufón and SIFR, oh, my; Adobe, web fonts, and EOT; Typekit debuts; — 23 May 2009

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Mozilla announced Tuesday that version 3.6 of Firefox, due by the end of the year, will support the new Web Open Font Format, or WOFF. Web authors will be able to include WOFF fonts in their page designs by linking to the font files in their code the same way they link to images and other downloadable files.

WOFF becomes the third downloadable font format supported by Firefox — version 3.5 included support for TrueType and OpenType font downloads.

But WOFF has two key advantages over TrueType and OpenType: WOFF fonts are compressed, so they download faster, and they include support for tags and other unencrypted metadata.

This is a significant step forward not only for the emerging open format, but also for type on the web in general, which is still stuck in a state of mild turmoil.

For years, designers have been limited to using only a set of five or six common fonts on the web. But thanks to new font rendering tools within the emerging HTML5 and CSS3 standards, web designers now have the ability to use newer, more visually interesting typefaces — and make that type appear more consistently across browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.

Even with these new abilities, intervening forces like DRM, licensing restrictions and varying levels of support from the browser makers have stalled progress, forcing the modern designer to resort to a variety of workarounds and hacks if they want to use these new fonts. Some possible solutions have shown up, including the OpenType standard and a “middleman” licensing model proposed by the start-up Typekit, but haven’t yet gained traction. Earlier this month, popular website Boing Boing launched a redesign using CSS3’s @font-face rule, but ran into problems when things didn’t render correctly on older machines.

WOFF doesn’t promise to totally solve the problem of browser compatibility — it still uses the same paradigm within CSS3’s @font-face rule where users are served a preferred font choice first, but are then offered backup choices if their browser doesn’t support the first one. And there are still special considerations for IE 8 users, as Microsoft’s browser supports @font-face, but only if you use the .eot font format.

What it does do is improve workflows for those using downloadable fonts in their designs.

Mozilla contributor John Dagget outlines the compression and tagging advantages on the Mozilla Hacks blog:

First, compression is part of the WOFF format so web authors can optimize the size of fonts used on their pages. The compression format is lossless, the uncompressed font data will match that of the original OpenType or TrueType font, so the way the font renders will be the same as the original. Similar compression can be achieved using general HTTP compression but because compression is part of the WOFF format, it’s simpler for authors to use, especially in situations where access to server configuration is not possible.

Second, the format includes optional metadata so that a font vendor can tag their fonts with information related to font usage. This metadata doesn’t affect how fonts are loaded but tools can use this information to identify the source of a given font, so that those interested in the design of a given page can track down the fonts used on that page.

Dagget also notes that WOFF fonts aren’t “secure,” so the format shouldn’t be used by foundries wanting to regulate the use of their work. However, over 30 major type foundries — including House Industries, Hoefler & Frere-Jones and ITC — are already endorsing the format, and Mozilla’s support should help foster its popularity.

You can read more about how WOFF is used, plus see examples on the Mozilla Hacks blog. You can also check out WOFF support yourself by downloading the latest nightly builds of Firefox and giving it a whirl.

See Also:

• Boing Boing’s Redesign Uncovers the Dark Side of Web Fonts
• Typekit Hopes to Become the YouTube of Fonts
• Use @font-face Today With Free, Legal Fonts

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Steve says it best, and it started as his baby, so I will let him announce it:

What’s needed is an industry standard for archiving HTTP information. The first step in establishing that industry standard took place today with the announcement of HttpWatch and Firebug joint support of the HTTP Archive format.

HttpWatch has long supported exporting HTTP information. That’s one of the many reasons why it’s the packet sniffer I use almost exclusively. Earlier this year, as part of the Firebug Working Group, I heard that Firebug wanted to add an export capability for Net Panel. I suggested that, rather than create yet another proprietary format, Firebug team up with HttpWatch to develop a common format, and drive that forward as a proposal for an industry standard. I introduced Simon Perkins (HttpWatch) and Jan “Honza” Odvarko (main Net Panel developer), then stepped back as they worked together to produce today’s announcement.

The HTTP Archive format (HAR for short – that was my contribution is in JSON format. You can see it in action in HttpWatch 6.2, released today. HAR has been available in Firebug for a month or so. You need Firebug 1.5 alpha v26 or later and Honza’s NetExport add-on (v0.7b5 or later).

Here’s what the end-to-end workflow looks like. After installing NetExport, the “Export” button is added to Firebug Net Panel. Selecting this, I can save the HTTP information for my Google flowers search to a file called “google-flowers.har”.

After saving the file, it’s automatically displayed in Honza’s HTTP Archive Viewer web page:

I can then open the file in HttpWatch:

I’m incredibly excited to see this milestone reached, thanks to the work of Honza and Simon. I encourage other vendors and projects to add support for HAR files. The benefits aren’t limited to performance analysis. Having a format for sharing HTTP data across tools and browsers is powerful for debugging and testing, as well. One more block added to the web performance foundation. Thank you HttpWatch and Firebug!

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Recently, we highlighted social news site Digg’s accelerating growth, a result of a number of new traffic enhancing features. The company has also been working to improve its monetization, after bringing in somewhere south of $10 million in 2008.

Part of that process has been trying to include users in ads – for example, the ability to digg (or bury) sponsored stories. Now, the company is launching another format that doesn’t break far from the traditions of the site: Digg Content ads.

The format matches stories that have already proved popular on the site (i.e. – made the homepage) with a relevant advertiser. Digg’s example: “Adobe is testing the model with banners that pull in popular government-technology stories from the Digg archive.”

It’s hard to find too much fault with that concept – it’s about as non-invasive as advertising as you can get and incorporates content that Digg users have already demonstrated they like. Digg says the format is currently in limited release though, so most users probably won’t see the ads yet.

Tags: digg

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There are tons of web applications out there for designers and we’d like to know what your favorite one is.

England-based printer ink specialist, Cartridge SAVE, and Six Revisions have teamed up to give one lucky voter an Epson R2880 Large Format Photo Printer that retails for up to $799.00. This professional-level photo printer is capable of printing at sizes of up to 13 x 9 inches with stunning clarity and rich colors.

How to Vote

To vote for your favorite web application, leave a comment below using the following format:

VOTE: [Name of Web Application]

Please use this format so that we may be able to easily tally the votes. Note that your vote may not be counted if you don’t use the above format.

Giveaway Details

Voting will end on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 after which commenting on this post will be disabled and you will no longer be able to participate. The winner will be selected at random using the same process as previous Six Revisions giveaways.

About Cartridge SAVE

Cartridge SAVE is a specialist in ink cartridges for printers based in not-so-sunny Manchester, England. They offer a broad choice of ink cartridges, laser toners, solid ink and paper, all shipped for free. You can follow them on Twitter or for cool posts about print design and art, check out their blog, CreativeCloud.

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Depending on the file, punypng will automatically convert your GIF into a PNG format and then further compress that. For JPEGs, sometimes it’s better to make it a PNG, and other times it’s better to keep it as JPEG and use jpeg-tran to optimize it. punypng makes all those decisions for you and ensures the best possible results.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.gracepointafterfive.com/punypng/
License: License Free

Sponsors

Dreamhost: Get $50 Off with Coupon Code: WEBAPPERS

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FontForge

First up is FontForge. FontForge is an open source font editing and conversion application. There’s a command line version but I highly recommend getting the full-blown desktop app—if only because that’s what I did! There are pre-built packages already done for the Mac. You may need to install X11 in advance of installing FontForge but it’s been awhile since I installed it and I honestly can’t remember if or how I did.

From within FontForge, you can open up an OTF or TTF file, make any changes and then generate a font in the format of your choice. In this case, it’ll be a TrueType font. Now, you might think you can go ahead and take that TTF and run it through a program like WEFT, Microsoft’s ancient Windows-only TTF to EOT conversion application. Except I couldn’t get it to work. It locked up every single time. You may think that a TTF2EOT conversion should work and it may. It didn’t with any of the fonts I was trying to work with, though.

After finding an article that discussed some additional properties that need to be defined, I realized that FontForge can be used to define those settings. Go to the Element menu and select Font Info. From there, choose TTF Names from the left side. The first step is to delete any of the existing properties on this screen. They’ll be in black. The red ones can’t be deleted. Then, create a new item. You’ll need to create 3 new items, in fact. Make sure to always select "English (US)" as the language. Then choose the first, second and fourth items from the list. The first item is your font name, the second item is your font style and finally, the fourth item is the font name and font style separated by a hyphen.

TTF2EOT

Once you have completed the conversion, you need to convert the TrueType font into an Embedded OpenType format. That’s a file with an EOT extension and the format that Internet Explorer needs. You can use the TTF2EOT command line tool or use an online tool (or an alternative) that can do the conversion for you (I use the online tool).

CSS

You should now have two files: an EOT and an OFT or TTF. I highly recommend you check out Paul Irish’s Bulletproof @font-face implementation for more details but here it is in a nutshell.

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Graublau Web';
  src: url(GraublauWeb.eot);
  src: local('Graublau Web Regular'), local('Graublau Web'),
         url(GraublauWeb.otf) format('opentype');
}

The font-family name is a unique name that will be used when defining a font-family elsewhere in your CSS. Then, just specify the EOT format for IE; the local format, in case users might already have the font installed (and to prevent IE from trying to download the OTF/TTF); and then specify the path to the OTF or TTF file.

The Future

Font embedding is still early days but, given the right font with the right licensing, you can create a fantastic experience for your visitors.

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Une direction artistique de Wu Hao. Bande son : Supreme Music.

Previously on Fubiz

• Egor Bashakov
• Follow the Ball
• Plasticbionic

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