The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), a consumer advocacy group based in Ottawa, has asked the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to investigate alleged violations of Canadian privacy law by popular teen social networking site, Nexopia.

PIAC’s complaint identified six Nexopia privacy practices it says violate the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. In particular, PIAC alleges that Nexopia fails to obtain proper consent to release its users’ profiles and personal information to the public via the Internet.

"Social networking is massively popular with children and teens," said John Lawford, counsel for PIAC.

"Kids can use social networking positively to socialize with their friends and express themselves in different ways in different communities. But young users often post personal details about themselves online without realizing that these details are available beyond Nexopia to the public Internet."

Lawford notes that Nexopia also provides an advanced search function to search for members. "Nexopia’s member search engine can be used by everyone with an Internet connection and is a worrisome tool: it permits a very fine-grained search of Nexopia members. This tool does not respect youth privacy."

Nexopia has more than 1.4 million registered users, with more joining every day. Nexopia is being used by approximately 70% of teenagers and young adults in western Canada.

"Nexopia’s default settings are set to share information with the whole world. We believe that many Nexopia users, especially young people, don’t appreciate the extent to which their personal information is being shared beyond their circle of friends," said Janet Lo, co-counsel for PIAC on the complaint.
 

Related Articles:

> Google’s Persistence Of Memory

> Mozilla Exec Moves To Bing’s Corner

> Yahoo Lets Users See How They’re Being Tracked for Ads

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Among the journalists surveyed, 89 percent said they turn to blogs for story research, 65 percent to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52 percent to microblogging services such as Twitter. In addition, 61 percent use Wikipedia.

While the results indicate the fast growth of social media as a well-used source of information for mainstream journalists, the survey made it clear reporters and editors are highly aware of the need to verify information they get from social media. Eighty-four percent said social media sources were "slightly less" or "much less" reliable than traditional media, with 49 percent saying social media suffers from "lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards."

"Mainstream media have clearly hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting," said Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision.

"However, it’s also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors’ and reporters’ reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism."

The survey also found, most journalists turn to public relations people for assistance in their primary research.  Editors and reporters said they rely on PR people for "interviews and access to sources and experts" (44%), "answers to questions and targeted information" (23%), and "perspective, information in context, and background information" (17%).

"Social media provides a wealth of new information for journalists, but getting the story right is just as important as ever," said Don Bates, founding director of the GWU Strategic Public Relations program, and writing/media relations instructor.

"As PR professionals increasingly utilize social media as a means of communicating, they have a bigger responsibility than ever to ensure the information they provide journalists is accurate and timely, provide access to the primary sources who can verify the facts, and be knowledgeable enough to provide accurate background and context."
 

  Related Articles:

> Social Media Will Not Replace Search

> People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email

> Consumers Are Looking for Offers on Social Networks

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At GenApple you can buy and sell non-public, personal, private and proprietary information.

GenApple listings are open to anyone who has non-public, personal, private and/or proprietary information or knowledge: celebrity gossip, business ideas, insights into to a particular organization – any special information. The buyer decides if the information being sold is worth the price.

• Information sellers can list non-public, personal, private and proprietary information for free. GenApple provides a safe, economical way for people with proprietary information to profit from that knowledge.
• Information buyers can search through GenApple’s listings for free. GenApple provides a secure, confidential way for people who need special information to gain it. Because of the special nature of buying and selling information, GenApple promotes buyer protection through a number of cutting-edge tools.

http://www.genapple.com/

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You inject helium into your site (e.g. put it in an included footer) and then when you hit the first page you will have a popup asking for the pages you want to test. Helium will find the style sheets that you use and will store that information and the page information inside of localStorage. Then it will XHR around (so your styles need to be on the same host), test each page, and finally give you results.

I put up a trivial example to give it a ride and ended up with:

I ran into a minor issue with regards to relative stylesheets so I did the Github thing and forked, fixed, and pull requested. I love Github

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BusinessWire asks member companies to submit press releases as they normally do via the site’s online order interface, and to follow up with their local newsrooms. Other organizations are given the following phone number to call for further details: 888.381.9473

BusinessWire has consolidated all of its Haiti Earthquake-related press releases into one spot, so the information is easily accessible. That can be found here.

This is just one example of many showing how the web is contributing directly to relief efforts for victims of the disaster. There are a lot of companies and organizations offering varying services, and Business Wire’s own offering provides for a good way to spread the news as well as get a look at different ways one can help.

Participating companies so far include Dollar General, Kohl’s, Walgreens, Discover, GE, Sprint, Comcast, T-Mobile, Target, and many more.

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Websites were still at an early stage in the 90s. Designs were simplistic and websites were not really interactive. Information tended to be positioned in a small space in the centre – with lots of empty space all around. This was because people’s screens were smaller than today and in addition to that, people were not used to scrolling up and down the page. However, considering that websites were still relatively new in the 90s, any company that had developed a site – even if it was a single page was forward thinking and ahead of the game. Here we take a look at a selection (with thanks to WayBackMachine).

The American Broadcasting Company site (Oct 1996).

The Apple site (Apr 1997).

The Bank of Scotland site (Jan 1998).

The Google site (Dec 1998).

The BBC site (Dec 1996).

The Guardian site (Feb 1997).

The ITV site (Jun 1998).

The Yahoo site (Jan 1997).

Disclaimer: We are not attempting to take any credit for the above work – we have had nothing to do with any of the designs shown. If you have any questions regarding this please contact us.

Related posts:

1. Time Machine / Record Cover Designs
2. Time Machine / Fashion Mags from the 50s & 60s
3. Time Machine / Perfume Ads from the 90s

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By Cameron Chapman

Information architecture can be a daunting subject for designers who’ve never tried it before. Also, creating successful infographics and visualizations takes skill and practice, along with some advance planning. But anyone with graphic design skills can learn to create infographics that are effective and get data across in a user-friendly manner.

Below are a collection of resources to get you going down the information architecture and data visualization path. Whether you just want to become more familiar with infographics and data visualizations for occasional use or are thinking of making it a career, the resources below will surely come in handy. There are also some beautiful examples and more roundups to see even more fantastic graphics.

1. Information Architecture Design Sites

Information architecture can be so complex, it’s no wonder there are entire sites dedicated to it. The sites below range from sites of individual information architects who share resources with their colleagues, to professional organizations, to design sites that include extensive information architecture resources.

Info Design Patterns

Info Design Patterns offers up information architecture news (a fairly new section without a lot of content) and a searchable database of info design patterns. The pattern database is particularly useful for those trying to decide how they want to display a set of data to their users or readers. Some of the patterns include:

• Tree Map
• Relation Circle
• Dot Matrix

InfoDesign

InfoDesign is an excellent resource for anyone interested in information architecture. They have hundreds of articles aggregated and broken down into categories including accessibility, content strategy, interaction design, prototyping and more. Articles featured on the site include:

• Why low-fidelity prototyping kicks butt for customer-driven design
• Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data
• Creating Economic Value by Design

Information Design Watch

Information Design Watch from Dynamic Diagrams offers a newsletter and regular articles on information design from around the world. They include tons of great, real-world examples of infographics and information architecture designs, and are a great resource if you’re looking for some inspiration. Some of their posts include:

• Making Your Data Intuitive
• Resume as Infographic
• What’s Wrong with this Chart?

UXBooth – Information Architecture

UXBooth is a community blog about usability, user experience and information architecture. The “Information Architecture” section currently contains only three articles, but the quality of each article is always top notch.

• Complete Beginners Guide To Information Architecture
• How To Approach Categories and Navigation in Blogging
• Usable User Accounts

Design Crux – Information Design

Information Design from Design Crux offers up articles on information architecture and design examples. Both are excellent resources, with the examples being particularly inspiring. Some of their articles include:

• Content Management Strategy, How to Develop The Other CMS
• Information Work Tactics
• Information Applied to Graphic Design: Color Psychology

Cool Infographics

Cool Infographics is a blog that collects interesting infographics from around the web and beyond. It’s definitely a first-rate resource for finding inspiration and examples of great infographics and information architecture designs. Some recent posts include:

• Visual Map of 30 Free Online Promotion Websites
• Probes in the Universe – Cool Interactive Infographic
• The Timeline of Michael Jordan

JJG.net

JJG.net offers up resources for experience design and information architecture written by Jesse James Garrett. There are downloadable PDFs, articles, and interviews and other resources included. Some examples of articles included are:

• A Visual Vocabulary for Describing Information Architecture and Interaction Design
• The Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garret
• Information Architecture (an interview with Jeffrey Veen and Jesse James Garrett)

Information Architecture from A List Apart

A List Apart has an excellent Information Architecture category with more than 20 great articles (dating back as far as 2000). Some articles included are:

• Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients
• The Elements of Social Architecture
• Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information Cartographer

Boxes and Arrows

Boxes and Arrows is an excellent blog that explores why designs work and how to design better based on user experience data. Some example posts include:

• The Information Architect as Change Agent
• Information Architecture: From Craft to Profession
• Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web

Information Design from AIGA

AIGA has an Information Design section on their website with a dozen articles. While it’s not a huge resource, the articles are very high quality and include:

• Designing for Understanding within a Context of Rapidly Changing Information
• Information Design
• About Charts and Graphs

Good Magazine

Good Magazine has an excellent collection of infographics covering a very broad range of topics. This is an excellent resource if you’re looking for inspiration. Some examples include:

• The Most Homicidal Countries
• World Literacy Day
• Who’s Reading The Newspaper

Flowing Data

Flowing Data showcases infographics covering a variety of subjects. They collect graphics from all over the web and explain why the graphic works well. Some example posts include:

• CreditLoan Maps Out Obama’s Economic Stimulus Plan
• Unemployment, 2004 to Present: The Country is Bleeding
• 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe

2. Information Architecture Articles and Resources

The articles and resources listed below appear on sites that don’t focus solely on information architecture. They’re as useful as the resources above, but focus on individual aspects of information design. Some excellent beginners guides and tutorials are also included here.

Organic Information Design

The Organic Information Design PDF is from Ben Fry, and served as his Master’s Thesis at the MIT Media Lab. It introduces a new type of interactive information design using large quanities of data from dynamic sources.

The Information Design Approach to Web Development

This article from Digital Web Magazine offers up a new approach to web development using information design techniques. It’s a great resource for both information architects and web developers.

InfoGraphic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best Practices

This post from instantShift is one of the more comprehensive beginner’s guides to information architecture. It includes advice on how to design around a given set of data and offers some amazing examples of successful information design.

Information Architecture Tutorial

This is a complete tutorial series from Webmonky on how to create successful information graphics. There are five parts, each addressing a different aspect of information architecture in depth.

Complete Beginners Guide to Information Architecture

This is another comprehensive article geared toward those just starting out with information architecture and infographics. It includes some background information, links to notable information architects, resources, and links to common tools used in creating infographics.

3. Excellent Examples of Data Visualization

Below are some beautiful examples of infographics to get your creative juices flowing. They cover everything from pop culture (The Best Beer in America, Kill Bill) to political issues (Presidential First 100 Days in Office) to global environmental issues (No More Fish in the Sea, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch).

LifeMap

Dentro de la cabeza de Bob Dylan

Infografias

The Best Beer in America

Kill Bill Infographic

Suburban Bliss

No More Fish in the Sea

The First 100 Days: Roosevelt to Obama

Vampire Energy

On Driving

Periodic Table of Typefaces

Flickr User Model, v0.3

How Education Spending Affects Graduation Rates

The Most Committed Crimes in the Country

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

4. Other Roundups

Below are a few more roundups of information graphics and data visualizations. They include tons of great examples to inspire you and give you ideas.

• 50 Great Examples of Infographics
  An excellent roundup of beautiful designs from FrancescoMugnai.com
• The Beauty of Infographics and Data Visualization
  A great roundup from Abduzeedo of some fantastic infographics and other visualizations.
• 40 Useful and Creative Infographics
  A roundup of amazing infographics showcasing everything from types of coffee to global warming.
• 27 Visualizations and Infographics to Understand the Financial Crisis
  An excellent roundup of infographics related to the financial crisis.

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Renan Molin is a visual and communication designer from Curitiba, Brazil. He and other three friends had started a design studio 5 years ago, but somehow they decided that the best thing would be to keep up with their freelancer’s career. By checking Renan’s work we can tell you that they had, I mean, still have, a lot of talent.

For more information visit Renan’s site at http://www.dmolin.com/ or his Behance Profile.

if you want to see more works feel free to drop me a line, and i’m available for freelance work. renan@dmolin.com.

identity done with Pedro Lopes.

Lilica Ripilica

A film for Lilica Ripilica, a children’s fashion clothing brand of brazil.

Espelhos from dmolin on Vimeo.

luxúria

meio digital

pepsi

deluxe

Illustration for Deluxe Magazine, done with Ale Tauchmann.

workchopp

Other Works

bb 200 anos from dmolin on Vimeo.

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Back in November we covered the first glimpses of Inbrics’ Android MID along with a very scare spec sheet. “Inbrics has promised that more information will be revealed at the 2010 CES,” was also vaguely written in that report some months ago. CES 2010 has come, and gone, and we did indeed get new information on the Inbrics Android MID. While the device will mostly be the same, it’s going to be much more than a MID.

(…)
Read the rest of Inbrics Releases More Information On MID [Android-based MID to feature camera, media convergence]

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According to PC World, most consumers who are using the iPhone 3GS is its camera.  Here is what we are supposed to expect:

“A better camera with flash, improved battery life, tethering-capability, and a choice of carriers top iPhone users’ “wish list” of features for the next-generation Apple handset, expected later this year. Also on the list: multitasking, a faster processor, and a better desktop application for Windows.”- David Coursey PC Word.  Read more

Aside from the news abouve,  T-Mobile released information about selling the 4G iPhone starting July 4 2010. This info will be public 01/27/10.
4G iPhone : thinner, GPS accurate within 5 feet (currently 50-100 feet),  multitasking,  5 mp flash camera.  Qualcomm to supply chips, which means T-Mobile Service for data.  Watch the video for more details.

Main Image Source

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You are welcome to share more useful reminder web apps that will be helpful and our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

Google Notebook

Google Notebook is a free online application offered by Google that allows users to save and organize clips of information while conducting research online. The browser-based tool permits a user to write notes, clip text and images, and save links from pages during a browser session. The information is saved to an online “notebook” with sharing and collaboration features. Notebooks can be made “public”, or visible to others, and can also be used to collaborate with a list of users (either publicly or privately).

Zoho Notebook

With Zoho Notebook, You can create different types of content like text, image, audio, video, etc. It will allow you to share a whole book, page or just an object on a page by granting read/write permissions. There is an option to keep track of changes not only at the book or page level but also at the object level.

Yahoo! Notepad

Yahoo! Notepad is a place to write down and organize notes. You can access the notes from any computer, anytime—they’re part of your password-protected Yahoo! account.

Notefish

Notefish makes Internet research simple. If you are making a purchase or planning a trip, this is perfect for you. You can save information from the web into a single online Notefish page, then organize and share with anyone you want.

Springnote

Springnote is a great way for you to create notebooks for ideas, interests, multimedia, projects, and documents. It allows you to create pages, to work on them together with your friends, and to share files.

WebAsyst

You can make or keep notes online with WebAsyst. It would be thoughts, instructions, memos, to do lists, recipes, or plan a party or any kind of short text notes. There is an option to share your notes with friend and colleagues and having each with specific access rights.

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After Google’s decision to stop censoring content on the Chinese version of their search engine, and threat to completely halt its operations in China, official China has shown a slightly indifferent face.

They’ve issued a two-pronged response which boils down to these two points: first, if you want to do business in China, you have to abide by China’s laws. Second, China will not give up on censoring the Internet.

According to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, “The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet.” Simply put, Google’s refusal to censor content on their search engine is breaking the law, which probably won’t be tolerated.

Furthermore, director of the State Council Information Office Wang Chen explains China’s rationale for censoring the Internet. “Effective guidance of public opinion on the Internet is an important way of protecting the security of online information,” he said. Well, that really depends on how you define “security of online information”; if you want to keep a piece of information secret from the government, tough luck.

Chen also commented on hacking: “China is a country being harmed by Internet hackers and is firmly opposed to hacking attacks.” But is the Chinese government is allowed to use certain hacking methods in order to “guide the public opinion on the Internet”? Official China doesn’t say.

It’s very unlikely that China will yield on the matter of censorship, and what Google has said in that blog post on Tuesday cannot be unsaid. As it stands now, Google’s days in China might be numbered.

Tags: china, Google

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General search engines are used for informational queries that cover broad topics (e.g. CRM software) and often return thousands of results, whereas a user originally sought of more organized information or specific websites (e.g. a brand, a set of products). An application buyer will typically want to find a limited number of highly relevant results in defined category where the information is well-organised and consistent, with a view to finding, comparing and efficiently selecting applications that meet a specific need. This is where GetApp.com comes in!

http://www.getapp.com/

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Dear oh dear, we have more tablet-related rumors for you. This time everything comes from an Apple insider that obviously has more information available about the upcoming iSlate.
(…)
Read the rest of Apple iSlate Tablet to be an “iPhone on Steroids” [Rumor Suggests Tablet True iPhone-resemblance]

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A new approach to China

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

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Christian Nauck is an illustrator, comic designer, and game designer from Berlin, Germany. We have stumbled upon some of his works through the Daily Inspiration and were completely dazzled by the quality. Therefore nothing better than a full feature post on Christian Nauck’s work.

For more information about Christian Nauck, visit the links below. Tip: be prepared to spend some time.

• Homepage
• Blog
• Behance
• Flickr
• Deviantart

“Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire” Cover

Yep, my first (and hopefully not my last) Marvel-cover.
It’s for the last/#6 issue of the Ghost Riders Miniseries, solicited for January 2010.

Rex Plode

Rex Plode from from the great comic series Invincible!

Grifter

yeah, another fan art. This time Grifter from Wildstorm! Kick Ass Character!

Spidey vs Hulk

Am I completely in marvel fanart mode?! …seems so… This time good ol neighborhood Spidey again and his good pal Hulkyschmalky!

Wolvclops

Started as a little Cyclops sketch …. First time I painted a whole scene I guess!

Deadpool vs. Cap

yep, another fanart. Ever awesome Deadpool vs. Captain America:

Darkstalkers

My contribution to Udon’s Darkstalkers tribute book

Daredevil

Dared Evil …uhm Daredevil portfolio work. I don’t dig that the style looks a bit too similar to Marko Dj.’s stuff, but anyway.

It’s a me! Mario!

I think I did the first scribble of this pic almost a year ago after I’ve had played Mario Galaxy. And finally I managed to finish it. It’s a collab with my girlfriend Steffi aka Miss Matzenbatzen! http://miss-matzenbatzen.blogspot.com/ concept and Mario by me, background by Steffi.

Crimson Viper

This time something new. Only the colors are done by me, the lineart is done by Steven Cummings for Udon. The colors are personal work, though – kind of try-out how my colors would look on a lineart like this/which style I would end with.

Randon Works

Sketches

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Google dropped a bombshell today, declaring that it won’t censor Chinese search results after sophisticated attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human activists. This opens the door not only for China to kick Google out of its country, but for a renewal of the battle over censorship and government oppression in China.

I’m going to divide this analysis of the ramifications of Google’s decision into three sections: what this means for China, the impact of the decision on global politics, and its potential effect on censorship itself.

What It Means for China: Not Much

Google may be taking a stand and threatening to pull out, but we predict that it won’t be enough to sway the Chinese government to let the Google China search engine run unfiltered, even if world governments apply strong pressure.

Let me make it clear: China has a long and disturbing history of censorship. I could link to hundreds of examples, but I think you get the picture.

Google isn’t the U.S. Government; it doesn’t have the political or technological leverage to make the Chinese government to do anything. Even the U.S. Government has limited influence, due to the economic ties between the two nations and our large debt to the Asian nation.

To think that China would change its rules and allow its citizens unfiltered access to what it believes is objectionable content (e.g. porn), as well as information and images on its greatest atrocities, is absurd. China backing off would weaken its iron-grip hold and open it up to more calls for the abolition of censorship inside its borders.

The end result is that Google will likely be gone from China and censorship will continue, at least in the short term. Only if Google agrees to some less-restricted censorship rules will the search engine be allowed to stay.

China’s about to feel some heat from the rest of the world, though.

The Global Censorship Debate Has Been Reignited

Google pulling out of China won’t be the end of the issue. Members of Congress have been very critical of not only China’s censorship and human rights violations, but of Google for complying with Chinese censors.

Now lawmakers and governments worldwide have another reason to speak out if China kicks Google out. The criticism will mount from institutions, organizations, and governments worldwide over China’s decision.

Google’s positioning it so that this is China’s decision, not Google’s, over whether the search engine stays operational within the nation’s borders. This is a smart move on their part and places China in an uncomfortable position.

The world will also begin to focus on the specifics of the attack on Google’s infrastructure. Who was targeted? How deep of a role did China play? What information do they have? What actions can be taken against China?

In the end though, China is a sovereign nation with one of the world’s largest economies. There will be a lot of head-butting over the next few weeks, but we doubt that anything more severe than condemnations will be issued.

The posturing and criticism will, however, return the spotlight on China and its questionable practices. That is a good thing. The debate has been reignited, which will make us question once again what China is doing on the web and beyond.

The State of Censorship

The world’s focus on major issues comes and goes. It was red-hot on Iran during the Iran Election Crisis and has been on and off when it comes to Chinese censorship and their human rights violations.

Today’s move places the spotlight back on China and the state of censorship, at least for the next few weeks. The 24/7 news cycle will analyze all of the angles, especially if China does end up kicking Google out. The more information that comes out, the more pressure that will be placed on China.

Even though Google will likely be a casualty of the censorship war, it will not have been taken down in vain. Activists will be reinvigorated, new information will be revealed, and the fight against oppression will continue.

How the war will turn out or when it will end is anybody’s guess. We haven’t even come close to seeing the full implications of Google’s decision. You can bet though that the effect will be felt for years to come in political, social, and technological circles worldwide.

Tags: censorship, china, Google, politics

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Google notes that the attack was not just on Google infrastructure but also on more than twenty other companies from various industries. Google states that they are working with the authorities in the U.S. and will be notifying the companies of the breaches.

The attack, Google says, appears to be aimed at "accessing the Gmail accounts of Chines human rights activists". Google does not believe the Chinese gained that objective and states that the Chinese hackers were only able to obtain information such as subject lines and dates, not the content of the emails themselves.

Google’s Chief Legal Office David Drummond states that "these attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered– have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China".

Additionally, Google blogs that they "are no longer going to censor search results on Google.cn". 

From the Official Google Blog:

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog andthis presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that "we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China."

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

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Users can find instant, specialized information about illnesses, treatments, medical facilities, etc. when entering health-related queries.

"Bing discovers a relevant document in its library of health resources and presents a smart summary related to the query," explains Bing’s Alain Rappaport. "In addition, Bing uncovers key related topics by analyzing an index of medical sources and extracting meaningful data automatically. In this case, the user receives instant guidance through short lists of other conditions related to the query (for example, “obesity”), medications that are important to know about (for example, “insulin”) and US medical centers that are active in the field. Users may select any of these points of interest to continue their search in a new area."

A user can click on a medical facility and find more information about it, like patient ratings and other nearby facilities.

In addition to the new features Bing Health is simply covering a broader range of health and "better living" subjects. Users can find information for queries like "holiday weight gain", "baby milk allergy", etc.

Related Articles:

> Bing Maps Gets an Upgrade

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

With so many online productivity tools at our disposal, there’s never been a better time to check up on what’s out there to help optimize your work flow. One such class of tools that can help set up a dashboard of critical “at a glance” information is the personalized start page.

There are a number of different choices in this category, but the general gist is that a start page enables you to “stick” bits of the web like news feeds, interactive widgets and other specific blocks of information into a one-stop-shop destination you can use as your first port of call when starting a work session.

Why Use a Start Page?

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Like an RSS reader, a start page can help you stay on top of a large volume of information. What sets a start page apart is the ability to integrate far more than just news feeds, including everything from e-mail, to your calendar, to the weather report, to the current time in other places around the world where you do business.

After taking some time to set up your page with relevant feeds and resources, it can be the optimal place to check first to get a sense of what’s going on in your work and your industry. By aggregating multiple widgets and bits of information into a single interface, a start page can serve as a central hub for the most important information that’s always one click away from your regular browsing habits.

Let’s take a look at how to choose and use a personalized dashboard.

How to Choose a Start Page

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Both Google and Yahoo offer personalized start pages, the former at iGoogle and the latter with My Yahoo. If you or your business already uses web products from either company, the offered integrations with your start page might make either an obvious choice (Google Apps users tend to mesh well with the iGoogle start page, for example).

Another brace of popular options are Netvibes and Pageflakes, both of which offer full-featured start page alternatives to the big companies’ offerings. All four services offer the ability to add widgets to your pages that go beyond presenting mere news feeds (Google calls them “gadgets,” while Pageflakes refers to them as “Flakes”).

The best way to choose which start page fits is to give each one a quick try. Differences in layout, user interface, and style become apparent quickly, and you have the luxury of picking which one looks and “feels” right. Although the widget offerings tend to be fairly comparable between the platforms, you might want to spend some time browsing the available widget and gadget options as well to get a sense of which selections make the most sense for you and your business.

Alltop is a nice, clean interface that provides just that, and you can set up your own customized dashboard of feeds and/or make use of the pre-collected packages which are organized by hundreds of topics, industries and niches for a quick and pre-curated view into a number of sectors.

How to Set Up and Use Your Start Page

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Once you’ve picked your poison, as it were, you’ll want to spend a bit of up-front time setting it up for optimal use. Of course, it’s always easy to change things around on the fly as well, so as new sources become critical and you discover new widgets, it’s a simple matter to incorporate them into your start page work flow.

Each start page offers the ability to create a tabbed interface. Working much like tabbed browsing, it allows you to set up and toggle between multiple pages for different purposes (Netvibes even allows you to create multiple instances, similar to having multiple Gmail accounts versus simply forwarding multiple addresses to one inbox). Depending on your needs, you’ll want to take stock of what realms you might want to have at your fingertips. If you’re a frequent traveler, you might want a Travel tab with weather conditions, time zones, flight statuses, and news in your frequently-visited spots. If you need to monitor what’s happening in several industries, you might create a tab for each of them with appropriate sources and widgets. Multiple tabs means your personal dashboard can even live right beside your work dashboard(s) as well.

Once you have an idea which buckets you’ll want to keep track of, start thinking about what are the most high priority sources and bits of information you’d like to collect for each page. Since you can arrange your pages in any manner you wish, you’ll want to set up the highest priority widgets towards the top of the page and fill in the lower parts of the page with some of the lesser priority items.

Feel free to go nuts hunting down new, interesting, and useful widgets and gadgets and giving them a try on your tabs and pages. It’s always easy to move, re-order, or even remove them if they end up being not as useful over time. Each service offers a directory of widgets, most with suggestions of the most popular or essential tools for your pages. From note-taking to e-mail, from stocks to eBay auctions, from your Netflix queue to integrated online storage, there’s a lot of functionality that can be brought into one at-your-fingertips’ interface.

One other consideration when setting up your start page is choosing a theme — much like you can customize the look and feel of your Gmail account or your WordPress blog, you can “skin” your start page with colors and graphics that appeal to you. You’ll also want to consider whether or not you might want to make use of a public component to your start page. Netvibes gives you a public section by default, and Pageflakes allows you to create “Pagecasts” that can be public to the world or shared privately with a group. Setting up a valuable public page could be a novel way to position yourself as a resource in your niche or industry.

These are just a few ideas to help you get started on the road to personalized start page mastery. With more features and widgets being developed over time, there promises to be no shortage of information and functionality to enhance your start page. Plus, since most widgets and gadgets use existing web markup and standards, you could even build your own widgets if you need customized, business-specific information on your dashboard. Enjoy your one stop information shop!

More small business resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– 9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
– 5 New Year’s Resolutions for SMBs
– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business
– 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
– 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, smartstock

Tags: business, how to, how tos, iGoogle, List, Lists, My Yahoo, Netvibes, organization, Pageflakes, productivity, small business

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claims that if Facebook was starting out now, sharing with everybody would be the starting point, rather than with a small group of friends. Is this more about reflecting social norms or changing them to help Facebook compete with Twitter?

The statement, made during a livestream of the Crunchies awards, hits on a hot button issue for Facebook: it recently notified users of privacy changes via a pop-up notification. While the message claimed that Facebook was displaying the message to give users more privacy controls, blindly clicking “next” was a way to make much of your data public. And in fact, some data like the Friends List has become more public without any settings changes by users.

Zuckerberg: Sharing is the “Social Norm”

Zuckerberg’s statement to interviewer Michael Arrington avoids any major “gotcha” quotes, subtly implying that Facebook’s move is a reaction to societal changes but carefully avoiding any mention of Twitter’s role in those changes. The full quote, picked up in a very well-written post by Marshall Kirkpatrick this weekend, emphasizes “social norms” and “evolution”:

When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built, doing a privacy change – doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.

Change was Inevitable

Critics of Facebook’s move will probably find support: Facebook’s user base is notoriously resistive to change, and yet nearly every major change, with the exception of the failed Beacon project, has seen a huge surge in popularity for the company. Facebook users were certainly opposed to its expansion beyond colleges, but it’s hard to argue that the service has become less useful as a result.

So now Facebook is becoming a catalyst of social change, a transition that’s likely to be somewhat painful for all of us. Twitter dramatically lowered the barriers to content creation, and thus sharing our day-to-day lives became effortless. But it was Facebook that took the trend mainstream, affecting 300 million+ people worldwide.

My take: Zuck is right, the change was inevitable. If Facebook hadn’t pushed this forward, Google would have inevitably made our lives more public in its quest to make all the world’s information accessible (yes, that includes information about individuals). And if not Google, then Twitter … the trend started there and Twitter’s growth would have gradually defined the standard in sharing.

Public sharing as the default was unavoidable, but Facebook has pushed the trend forward faster than any of us might have expected. It’s a concept that will take some getting used to.

Tags: facebook, mark zuckerberg, Zuckerberg

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The wallpaper of this week is an image from the young self taught freelance Illustrator and Art Director Saad Moosajee. We have already featured him in the past but he has some new works that are definitely worth checking them out.

Since Saadart.com was established in September 2008, Saad has had the privilege to work with a multitude of charities, brands, and agencies. Saad’s work has been exhibited in multiple galleries and published in a multitude of magazines and books. He has also served as the Creative Director of slashTHREE.com for over 2 years, and is also a member of The Keystone Design Union.

For more information visit http://saadart.com/

Desktop Version

iPhone Version

Resolutions:

• 1920x1200px
• 1680x1050px
• 1440x900px
• 1280x1024px
• 1280x800px
• 1024x768px
• iPhone

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The one thing that strikes me the most is that we’re really seeing a huge development in user behavior analysis in order to make gadgets and app as simple as possible in order to mix with people of all levels of usage. If it ain’t easy you can be darn sure that the gadget won’t become the next big thing anytime soon.

So, with this in mind we are now seeing augmented reality make a swoop into our everyday lives. The applications are endless and the sheer fun you can have with it is just awesome. Augmented Reality really made a name for itself last year and already we’re seeing the incorporation of it in pretty much everything. And, now it hits the Social Networking as well, even if it just in the beginning of things. You will be able to point your iPhone at a person, the app will go through a facial recognition phase and voila, you instantly get that persons different Social Networking links and information. Just click and add. Simple as that!

It ain’t hard to see the next step really. You’re watching a movie, you point your camera at the screen and there you have it. You get information about the actors or actresses, producer, movie information and statistics…as saif, the applications are endless. So, let’s embrace this new feature. Let’s make it the next big thing and somewhat hurry up the technology development. We are the projected user group, we are the ones making this possible. So go out there and look up everything about it. Maybe we can even help develop it. I am sure we have tons of smart kids watching Bit Rebels eager to get into some cool stuff. As a matter of fact I think you all are. So get going!

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by Edward Khoo

Well, a new year is upon us, it’s also the start of a new decade within the blogosphere. More and more people are building blogs, and that means there are lots of blogs competing for the same eyeballs and your blog is just one of many. Try finding accurate figures on how many blogs there are and you will know it’s impossible to find a verifiable number because bloggers and their blogs come and go. Look around. It’s certainly a disheartened moment when you see blogs with quality articles that have been abandoned by their creators.

With all of these blogs out there, and all those information available at no cost, how do you make your blog stand out? No problem, just follow these tips and your blog will blossom in this new era when you stay ahead of the rest of your competitors.

1. Target your content to a specific readership

Image: via Dat Le

Unless you want to throw all of your marketing budget and precious time on people who could care less about your blog, then you must pay attention to determine the preferred audiences to whom you would like to target. Before posting any piece, determine if it hits the sweet spot of your demographic.

2. Be original, be honest

Don’t follow the herd within your sphere of interest. Followers aren’t innovators and innovation keeps readers reading. So, don’t simply spin the same old post. Take an original slant on a common topic.

Be honest. Verify your facts and provide links to additional verification. Readers trust you to be a good reporter, instructor, mentor or inspiration so keep it honest at all times.

3. Don’t be afraid of a little controversy.

Controversy sells. You and I know that. If it is a part of your business model, be prepared to engage others with differing opinions because, guaranteed, lots of readers will disagree, and you may even encounter a few trolls and haters who frequent blogs for no other purpose than to post inflammatory garbage.

4. Post as a guest blogger

Image: via AjDreams

Don’t post to just any blog within your realm. Submit your best pieces to the prestigious blogs – the ones that already have a substantial following. For example, Hongkiat.com is considered by industry insiders to be one of the best blogs for designers, marketers and freelancers. Getting one of your posts published on a top of the line blog is a great way to drive traffic to your blog where readers can find tons of content – all your archives – just waiting for a bookmark.

Of course, getting published on a well-established blog requires insight and something new to be added to the discussion. A rehash of conventional wisdom, regardless of the field of endeavor, won’t make the cut with top tier blogs within any industry or area of interest.

5. Simplify subscriptions

Don’t hide your RSS button down the page together with your WordPress theme credit links, make them visible & clear for your reader’s eyeballs by taking the following approaches:

• Add an RSS chicklet at the top of your sidebar so visitors can easily load your posts into their RSS readers.
• Offer email subscriptions.
• Provide links to mobi feeds so readers can access new content from their cells or iPhones.
• Provide one click subscriptions using reader links to PageFlakes, Google Reader and other remote site readers. You can build a big following fast if you make it easy to find your blog again. And again, and again.

6. Social Media Marketing

The expansion of social media and the evolution of multi-generational media apps are only going to pick up steam. Social media sites have taken off, providing bloggers with an arsenal of tools based on the guerrilla-marketing axiom: Use the resources of others to your advantage.

A few years back, Twitter didn’t exist. Today, not only is it ubiquitous, it spawned a whole new level of web innovation and interactivity.

Follow the rules & open accounts at Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter. Every time you make a new post to your blog, let your readers know about it by posting to these popular sites. Update your status with interesting & latest news that fascinates your readers.

7. Create different profiles for each social media site

On LinkedIn, you want to be all about business. On Facebook, show a little of your personality – the carbon-based life form behind the blog. On Twitter, shine the spotlight on your blog. Each profile should be designed to show a different facet of you and your expertise.

8. Don’t oversell. Teach, too

If you post to social media sites all day long, flogging your latest blog post, it won’t be long before your Facebook friends hit the hide button next to your name. It can’t be all selling and no sizzle. Instead, post information on a new blog piece, but also post news from other sites that you think will benefit your readers. Know when to stop pushing for a larger readership and when to start giving away information to drive more readers to your blog.

9. Long tail keywords get you found

Image: via Wiki

If you maintain a book review blog, a broad keyword like books will keep you buried in the backwash of Google’s SERPs. Instead, narrow the focus of a search engine search through the use of terms and phrases, broadly referred to as long tail keywords.

So, instead of using “books” as a primary keyword, use a long-tail keyword like “independent book reviews” or “book reviews of current bestsellers.” Sure, not as many people will use these long tails when conducting a search but those who do will discover your blog at the top of page 1. And that’s just where you want to be.

10. Optimize your blog – Both for readers & bots

Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions. Remember, your site should be attractive to human sensibilities.

Indeed, it’s important to look good to readers who follow you. It’s just as important to look good to search engine spiders. Conduct keyword research using tools like Google’s keyword generator that provides keywords used by actual Google users over the past 30 days. Place those keywords in headlines, sub heads and a few of them in your blog posts.

If you don’t know much about SEO, grab yourself a cup of coffee & start reading the comprehensive list of search engine ranking factor provided by Seomoz.

The pace of innovation is only going to increase in this new decade so, if you’re standing still you’re losing ground to competitor bloggers. Stay current, use all the new tools and follow all the new rules.

Your blog space is your real estate. It has value. Make the most of it.

This post is written by Edward Khoo, a tech enthusiast based in Malaysia. He blogs at EdwardKhoo.com & would love to hear from you on Twitter.

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We’re at at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Sony has just revealed a pocket device for surfing the web. It is called Dash.

In a statement, Sony says, “The dash device accesses a wireless home network and continuously updates information designated by the user. That information is then delivered by more than 1,000 selectable free “apps” to give consumers customized Internet content.”

Here are a few other things we’ve learned:

- It is a touchscreen device designed to surf the web

- Dash has a 7″ color touchscreen. It’s meant to be portable.

- The device can either be placed flat or stand upright.

- The device has software to run Twitter, Facebook, and other social network. It also has an audio component, though we can’t tell what exactly it has from the promotional video they played here.

At first glance, this device is nifty but nothing revolutionary. We’ll relay more information as it comes to us. Here’s an image from the event:

Tags: CES, CES2010, Dash, gadgets, internet, sony

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The humor blog People of Walmart may not have a book deal (at least as far as know, if someone has info otherwise, please let us know), but it does have its very own rap song.

The song, penned by Denver rapper JDirty, is basically a musical version of the (rather cruel) website, which features photos of the various odd folk who frequent the chain store. The song is already making its way through the blogosphere, most likely gaining more attention than Dirt’s first disc, A College Degree Well Wasted.

People of Walmart was one of those early success stories — Time gave it a mention soon after its launch — and it has only continued to get more and more viral, landing spots on lists of 2009’s best blogs and even more media mentions on sites such as The Huffington Post.

Now, in true Internet meme style, JDirty has piggybacked on the success of the popular blog, earning both a new injection of attention for the site and his own 15 minutes in the WWW limelight.

As time goes by the term “web” is becoming more and more apt: Every piece of information disseminated via the Internet is attached to yet another fiber, creating an interconnected realm of information and entertainment. We just have to make sure that we have some spiders constantly in the mix, however, to keep spinning new information and content.

Enough pontificating. JDirty is actually pretty talented, so you should probably check out the vid below. I like the part about the Bob Saget truck:

Tags: humor, video, viral video

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The solution? Well, there really isn’t any clearcut solution but the closest you’ll come to one (without hiring your own copyright lawyer) is Myows [mee-o-s]. Myows is probably the easiest and fastest solution as well. It’s a new service but none-the-less promising.

Today we’ll take a look at Myows, their site’s functionality and sexy design.

Presentation Quality

You can generally get a decent idea for how serious a service’s creators are by the quality of their presentation (their website). While this isn’t always the case, it tends to be a good starting point. Right off the bat, I’ll say Myows has taken the time to create an interface that isn’t intimidating — it’s straight forward, simple and looks fantastic.

Myows Home

To add a little weight at proving they aren’t messing around, they add some news clippings from very reliable and trusted sources in the industry. This is some great information to display along with the straight forward home page.

News Clippings

Signup

Generally, I’m heavily critical on the ease of signup at websites like this. Myows doesn’t let me down either. I’m not a big fan of scrolling within a popup window but I do love the fact that the page doesn’t require reloading, and, let’s face it — we’re all used to scrolling so a bit of it won’t hurt.

Signup

Popup JavaScript windows don’t have close buttons. That’s okay, you don’t need one — just click the dark overlay area to close the popup.

Signup is quick and painless, requiring only the necessary information. You’re sent an activation email, which, once activated, takes you straight to logging in. This is how signups should be. Easy.

Login

Your Account

Once you’ve logged in, Myows keeps it straight forward and sharp looking — which is a refreshing start to handling copyright.

Account Home

You may have noticed the sidebar information in the screenshot above. Information like this is available on almost all pages, including additional features like search forms. This is great for situations where you have a basic question, which you will.

OWs

Myows actually stands for “My Original Works” with your uploads called “OWs” (Original Works). In my opinion, this is creative use of branding that ties things together nicely.

Register a new OW (Original Work)

Registering a new OW, is pretty basic. Select the type (file or flat text), select your file(s) to upload and the form uploads your work. You’ll then be asked for some additional information to help further protect your work. You’ll notice the form requires no page reloads and sports lots of great JavaScript implementation for a seamless user experience.

OW Registration

Your OWs

Once you’ve registered a new OW, you’re taken to the OWs page which is where you’ll browse and manage your OWs.

Your OWs

Search, sort, view and edit your OWs here. Hovering over a registered OW will display links to view/edit, file a new case, create a new license or delete the OW. This might be a touch confusing at first but it keeps the design uncluttered of unnecessary information until it’s needed.

OW on Mouse Hover

View/Edit OW

Clicking the view/edit link on an OW gives you a closer look at your OW information with several additional options in the sidebar including licensing your OW and opening a copyright violation case.

OW Details

As you can see in the above screenshot, I’ve added several additional supporting files for my OW including Photoshop designs, documentation, etc. This will further help protect your OWs.

Again, Myows maintains the straight forward user interface and great looking design elements. For many, this may not be important but it does make using the site more of a pleasure. However, I would very much like to have the ability to upload multiple supporting files at once. Clicking the “upload another” link should automatically open the file selection dialog, effectively eliminating an extra click.

Multi-file uploads are on the way (along with other features), see Account Options below.

License Your OW

Attempting to license your OW, will leave you feeling a bit empty handed after the great user experience so far. However, the service is still in beta and while they don’t have any example licenses to offer yet, they’re on the way after being approved by their legal team (a very good sign of legal review).

Licensing

You can rest assured, this area will be quite filled in with licenses and sidebar help before Myows leaves the beta stage.

Creating Licenses

Once you’ve created custom licenses, you’ll be able to view and edit them via the Licenses page.

Custom Licenses

Get a OW Certificate

Getting a certificate simply brings you to a certificate page, unique to your OW, with the option to email the certificate to anyone of your choice. The certificate includes basic information such as OW title, author name, date registered and some legal info. stating Myows attests to the validity of the certificate.

OW Certificate

Each OW certificate is protected by a unique (and long) password, which you (the author) can change if you want.

The certificate includes a download link at the bottom-right of the page (with password), for comparison purposes. This is something you would only give to a court, attorneys, or the support staff for a site like ThemeForest.net to verify copyright information.

While this may not be enough to save you in a serious copyright infringement case, it will go a long ways towards helping you fight your case and will stop most disputes in their tracks.

Your OW’s Banner

Myows generates a banner for your OW with your OW’s ID. Include this in places you show or sell your work as a form of warning or verification that your work is copyright protected by Myows.

OW Banner

This alone will help in deterring some from doing more than thinking about infringing on your copyrighted work.

Copyright Cases

Creating a new copyright case is pretty straight forward. Select the OW in relation to the case you’re opening and enter some basic details to build your case. You’ll also have the option of grabbing a screenshot of the infringing website.

Build Your Case

Then you’ll enter your infringer’s details with the option of running a WHOIS search on their website or attempting to determine who the web host is if you can’t find the website owner.

Infringer’s Details

Next, you’ll be able to view a cease and desist letter to send to the infringing parties.

Cease and Desist

Once you’ve done that, you’ll wait for a response from the infringer and log it. If the case has been solved, you’d simply click the button to mark the case as solved.

Infringer’s Response

Myows maintains a complete (and downloadable) case history for your records or if the case develops into something more serious. Now imagine trying to do this all yourself or paying legal fees to accomplish this!

Once you’ve created a case, you can also go back and add files or additional information to help support your case if necessary.

Account Options

Currently Myows offers 512MB of data storage with no options for more. However, as previously stated, Myows is in beta so some leniency is deserved here. In addition to that, paid accounts are on the way. Paid accounts will be very reasonably priced and will offer additional storage, multi-file uploads, multi-users and more features well worth the price.

Max Guedy, director and designer for Myows, has been kind enough to offer a special treat for Web.AppStorm readers which we’ll be releasing the details of in a competition later this week. So stay tuned!

Final Thoughts

In terms of web applications, Myows does a fantastic job of presenting a straight forward and sexy design that is very easy to use and implements the power of JavaScript where and when it’s needed. The overall user experience is pretty seamless and makes handling copyright actually somewhat pleasurable (which I thought was impossible).

The service is still in beta so you can expect to see many more improvements and new features soon — but for a start, these guys definitely have something great going here.

In terms of the service Myows provides, it’s somewhat of a niche market being an all-online copyright solution — and as far as I can tell, they’re doing their absolute best to make sure they do it right the first time keeping legality first and foremost in mind. There are a few missing features I think could be implemented such as an API and infringement detection, but what they have is a fantastic start.

For U.S. citizens, this isn’t quite a replacement for the U.S. Copyright Office but will go a long ways in aiding you in fighting your copyright battles. For people who don’t proactively take copyright protection seriously, Myows is going to be a lifesaver, not to mention a massive time saver.

Stay tuned later this week for the Myows competition!

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Flávio Demarchi is a phoitographer from São Paulo, Brazil who has been working for big clients such as Getty Images, UOL, Super Interessante and other major Brazilian publications. Checking out his Flickr account, there’s a set called 2 cents of imagination where he shows off some incredibly clever photos.

For more information we highly recommend that you visit Flávio’s portfolio on Flickr. There are great photos and be prepared to spend a couple of hours checking them.

Someone trying to take as many pictures as one possibly can. Intelligent critcs or constructive insults are more than welcome

Hunger

Hard Work

Tu pareces el mundo en tu actitud de entrega

Old and new (kind of…)

Old and new (kind of…) II

Hypochondria

The censor is in your eyes

Rich Soil

Anorexy

OMG…

Transgenic neighbour

Lost in blue

Always on

My world is upside down.

Gluttony (remix)

Harrassment

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school.jpg (2 KB)

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Information graphics are visual representations of data that help to explain complex information quickly. Here is a collection of 16 awesome examples of creative infographic illustrations for your daily inspiration.

Original image hereBank Robbery

Original image hereHigh Velocity Train

Original image hereChina Export

Original image hereThe Fish Farm

Original image here2009 Cycling Statistics

Original image hereCustomer’s Mailstream

Original image hereTrafalgar, The Nelson’s Battle

Original image hereNLMK Company Structure

Original image hereSprint Nextel

Original image hereMartin Luther King Assassination

Original image hereFangio VS Schumacher

Original image hereAIAN Heritage Month

Original image hereDevelopmental Aid Flows Around The Globe

Original image here3 Month Crocheting

Original image hereGrowth Comparison

Original image hereIndian Economy

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I remember someone tweeting the link for this video about six months ago. I can’t remember who it was, but it always stuck with me. I ran across it today when I was on YouTube, and I just had to share it with you.

Although I think it may be a bit far fetched to think that this could actually happen, I’m sure some people would say I’m naive to think that that way. After all, when I think about all the information that Google has on me, which is just about everything except my bra size and diet preferences – oh wait, since I shop at http://www.victoriassecret.com – they probably have that information too; so I suppose this really could happen.

I just hope this doesn’t happen in my lifetime. Talk about Big Brother… I can’t watch this anymore, I’m getting freaked out…

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Remember Seppukoo, that nifty little service that lets you kill your Facebook identity? Well, Facebook doesn’t appreciate the idea.

In fact, Facebook doesn’t want Seppukoo to exist at all, claiming that it violates the statement of rights and responsibilities. Therefore, Facebook has sent a cease and desist letter to Seppukoo, asking the program to stop breaching terms of service.

Facebook is claiming that Seppukoo is violating the following terms of service:

* Soliciting users’ Facebook login information.
* Accessing a Facebook account that belongs to someone else.
* Collecting users’ content or information using automated means.
* Sending commercial communications.
* Using Facebook’s intellectual property.

If Seppukoo continues doing business as usual, Facebook will likely sue them. From the letter:

“(Facebook will take) whatever measures it believes are necessary to enforce its rights, maintain the quality of its site, and protect its users’ privacy and information.”

In most cases, especially when we’re talking about a non-profit, just-for-fun project such as Seppukoo, the owners would simply shut the site down to avoid trouble. But the folks behind Seppukoo — an imaginary Italian art group Les Liens Invisibles — don’t plan to do that. They’ve replied to Facebook’s lawyers, claiming that they don’t plan to shut down the service, since Seppukoo is solely for artistic purposes. It doesn’t have ads, and the service is completely free.

While it’s understandable that Facebook doesn’t want users “ritually killing” their accounts, I don’t really see how what Seppukoo is doing can be considered illegal. Is this another PR disaster in the making? We’ll keep a close eye on this one.

Tags: facebook, seppukoo, social networking

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By Louis Lazaris

Not many of us will have the opportunity to attend or participate in a live web-related event, conference, or presentation. But that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the information exchanged at such events. Many of the sites associated with those events provide supplementary information, summaries, presentation slides, plus audio and video footage from the presentations given.

In this article I’ve assembled a short but diverse list of presentations related to design and development that I think everyone will find both informative and entertaining. I’ve included a brief description of each presentation, along with some notable quotes and related links. The final presentation in this list is a tongue-in-cheek performance that is a must-see for anyone involved in web development for the past 5 or 6 years.

CSS Frameworks: Make the Right Choice

Speaker: Kevin Yank

This presentation was recorded on October 9, 2009, at Web Directions South in Sidney, Australia.

Kevin Yank of SitePoint discusses what CSS frameworks do, how to choose a CSS framework, along with some of the pros and cons of four types of CSS frameworks: CSS resets, grid-based frameworks, “pre-fab” frameworks, and frameworks that use CSS abstraction.

Notable Quote:

“By the end of this session, you might just decide that the right framework for you is no framework at all.”

Further Information:

• Presentation Slides and Session Description

JavaScript: The Good Parts

Speaker: Douglas Crockford

This talk took place on February 27, 2009 as part of the Google Tech Talks Web Exponents series.

The presentation is based on Crockford’s book and reveals the good and bad parts of JavaScript, along with an audience Q&A.

Notable Quote:

“JavaScript is the only language that I’m aware of that people feel they don’t need to learn before they start using it.”

Further Information:

• JavaScript: The Good Parts on Google Code Blog

Search User Interfaces

Speaker: Professor Marti Hearst

This talk took place on November 23, 2009 as part of the Google Tech Talks series, and is based on Professor Hearst’s book Search User Interfaces.

The discussion covers specific chapters in the book and presents “the state of the art of search interface design, based on both academic research and deployment in commercial systems.”

Notable Quote:

“The paradox of web search: Why is designing a search interface difficult? Why is it easy?”

Further Information:

• Read the book Search User Interfaces online

Design Inspiration

Speaker: Fabio Sasso

This presentation by the owner of Abduzeedo, took place at Front End Design Conference on July 31, 2009.

Sasso discusses his personal sources of design inspiration and includes some interesting comments on the challenges facing Brazilian designers in today’s market.

Notable Quote:

“For me, the only way to come up with a good design is to try.”

Further Information:

• Front End Design Conference on Abduzeedo
• Interview with Fabio Sasso of Abduzeedo

Panel Discussion from FOWD Conference

Speakers: Andy Clarke, Josh Williams & Jeffrey Zeldman

An older presentation from Future of Web Design 2007.

A very funny, and thought-provoking panel discussion covering a number of topics including the recent trend of developers working more on personal projects, plus some thoughts on web standards, web design education, dealing with clients, and more.

Notable Quotes:

“If you say you’re going to talk about web design, reporters aren’t interested. It’s web, so it’s kind of bad design, isn’t it? My kid can do it.”

“We have bad clients who say ‘Is that three pixels wide? Shouldn’t it be four pixels wide?’ They’re clients, so ‘Where did you go to art school?’ is not an approriate answer. So you say ‘That’s interesting, four pixels. We hadn’t thought about that.’

Further Information:

• Future of Web Design NYC 2007 Recap

A More Tangled Web

Speaker: Eric Meyer

This presentation by Eric Meyer took place on November 5, 2009 at Build Conference.

Meyer discusses universal uses for HTML and CSS, the death of the browser plugin, and shares an interesting viewpoint on the proposed completion date of 2022 for HTML 5.

Notable Quotes:

“The advancement of CSS is really a lot like a marathon, complete with the staggering dehydrated people at the end of the 26 miles, that you just want the medics to pull them off the course, and they keep waving them off, and it’s really sort of sad and pathetic. This is kind of what CSS development is like now.”

“The really big shift that is happening… is the shift to the web becoming a client-side computing platform.” (Tim Berners-Lee)

Further Information:

• Speakers and Summaries from Build Conference 2009

How to Bluff Your Way in Web 2.0

Speakers: Andy Budd & Jeremy Keith

This presentation took place in March 2007 at SXSW Interactive.

This is an absolutely hilarious and well-prepared presentation by two of the most notable names in web development. A must-see video covering web 2.0 buzzwords, design, fonts, web 2.0 bingo, and more. The hour closes with a serious summary of the impact of web 2.0, what it really means, and what direction it should go in.

Notable Quotes:

“Web 2.0 is a state of mind. It’s a zen thing. The sound of one hand clapping.”

“In this design, what’s important are the reflections; lots and lots of reflections. Everything’s wet in web 2.0 — wet floor, wet ceiling. So this is a great example of the web 2.0 design style.”

“And remember, Ajax is more than sliding, moving, and fading stuff. It’s an acronym, and that acronym stands for Accessibility Just Ain’t Xciting.”

“It’s all about community. Because none of us are as dumb as all of us.”

Further Information:

• Slides from the presentation

Related Resources

• 17 Hours of JavaScript From the Masters
• Voices That Matter Conference Podcasts
• Google Tech Talks YouTube Channel
• Web Conferences Roundup: Events From Around the Globe
• Front-End Design Conference ‘09 Wrap-up

About the Author

Louis Lazaris is a writer and freelance web developer based in Toronto, Canada. He has 9 years of experience in the web development industry and posts articles and tutorials on his blog, Impressive Webs. You can follow Louis on Twitter or contact him through his website.

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We’re doing to cover a few different types of resources below and I’m going to try to keep this article to a reasonable length so let’s begin …

Media

when there’s a breaking story or you want an expert opinion on a subject, a good first place to hit is the media sources in that industry. The SEO industry is no different and there are some amazing albeit often unconventional media sources. Some of my favorite are:

Webmaster Radio

Webmaster Radio is an Internet-based radio station with some great programing ranging from affiliate marketing to PPC to organic optimization and much more. With shows hosted by experts in their fields from Danny Sullivan (Search news) to Dave Szetela (PPC) you’ll solid information that is well-sounded. I’d list my favorite shows however what I like may be different than you and what I need to know may be different than what you need to know so look through their programming and either listen through your work day as I often do or download the podcasts for later listening.

WebProNews

WebProNews offers up-to-the-minute information on virtually every event. They have reporters writing constantly and have other scoring SEO blogs and other news sources, compiling the information in one place for easy access. They also have great articles by third-party writers and a very active readership that is proactive in their commenting. Definitely near the top of my go-to list when I’m looking for news and current feedback.

Addme

This site is difficult to classify as it fits into a couple categories but I decided to include under media as that’s my primary use. They include tools, resources, a directory and much more on their site. My primary use of this site is for the articles and newsletter.

Search Engine Watch

No list of SEO resources would be complete without including Search Engine Watch. This site is the one that started it all. Search Engine Watch provides everything from fantastic articles to breaking news to search engine stats and an awesome forum. A definite bookmark.

Blogs

As with many industries – blogs are a great way to keep informed on the latest goings-on in the SEO realm. The trick, however, is figuring out which blogs are worth reading and which authors are truly knowledgeable. Over the years I’ve read many blogs and to be honest – I still do. Below are some of the key blogs I reference on a regular basis.

SEO Book Blog

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has an excellent blog worth reading on a regular basis. I have yet to visit his blog and not find some tid-bit of information that was worth reading either because of the information itself or because often he’s just entertaining. Another to add to your weekly reading list.

Matt Cutts Blog

It’s nice to get it from the horse’s mouth. For those who don’t know – Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team. He blogs about Google, technology and occasionally his cat. One has to read what he writes knowing that he’s a Google employee and as such can’t really give away the farm BUT he gives tons of great advice, insight and tips. The perk being – this time you don’t have to ask if following his advice will get you banned.

SEO By The Sea

Bill Slawski (the author) focuses his attentions on the more technical side of things with tales of patents, algorithmic possibilities, statistics and functionalities. For many, his would be one of the more dry blogs if not for his gift with words and ability to make even the most bland of subject, palatable. You don’t need to visit his blog daily but adding it to your weekly journey through the web is recommended.

SEOmoz Blog

What blog list would be complete without the inclusion of the SEOmoz blog. Rand Fishkin and crew keep their visitors up-to-date of some great research, news and SEO tips. From opinion pieces to months-long whitepapers you’ll find useful information. Again – not necessary to visit every day but a weekly pass is always worthwhile.

Forums

Forums are a great place to gather information, especially on current events such as ranking updates. That said, reading forums can be a risky thing. Almost anyone can join a forum and post their thoughts. While this format allows us to capture a wide range of information and knowledge – it also results in less qualified people giving advice as well. So while I recommend reading forums – I also recommend taking things with a grain of salt – at least until you figure out who’s who.

SEO Chat Forums

The SEO chat forums are easily one of the largest and most popular of the SEO forums. They cover a HUGE array of issues from Google to social media to Alexa rankings to (hold your hats) Ask Jeeves (that’s right – the forum’s been around for THAT long). Users worth noting are rustybrick, fathom, and randfish.

DigitalPoint Forums

DigitalPoint also is an ancient forum (2000 – ancient by web standards at least). They cover a wide range of topics from SEO to PPC to affiliate programs. Some users worth noting there are shoemoney, daven, and of course digitalpoint. A great place to ask your questions. Heavily visited and they have a ranking system for their users so you can get a decent feel as to whether they’re reliable.

SitePoint Forums

There are a variety of reasons I like SitePoint and I own a number of their books. Their forums focus on design and development (not SEO) but every SEO needs resources on the design and development side.

Newsletters & Other Resources

Of course there are other resources that every SEO or webmaster needs to be able to get their hands on. Here they are:

Google Webmaster Guidelines

These are the guidelines set out by Google telling you what you can and can’t do and what tactics to look out for. Worth a look over periodically as the do change from time-to-time. If you’re heading into the forums for advice you’ll definitely want to gander at the guidelines first to make sure that if you get lead astray – at least you’ll know what can get you banned or penalized first.

Sphinn

A social media site for SEO. Here you’ll find user-submitted stories on a wide array of Internet Marketing topics. Obviously the quality and relevancy of the stories ranges from brilliant to utter crud but the cream usually rises to the top with good stories hitting page one. That said – an occasional peek at specific threads often reveals some hidden gems.

Search Engine Land Newsletter

Perhaps I should have included this in the media section above as it’s a fine site unto itself but it was the newsletter component that I find most helpful and so I have decided to place it here. Sign up for their newsletter and you’ll get daily notification as to when some of the major search engine events happen and some solid advice as to what it means for you.

High Rankings Newsletter

Jill over at High Rankings puts out a solid newsletter where she provides tips and advice including replies to visitor questions. While I may disagree with some of her points from time to time (the same can likely be said for more of the resources noted and I’m sure others can say the same about my writings and opinions) I’ve never seen her provide bad advice – my advice just might be different from time-to-time.

Conclusion

Obviously there are a ton more tools and resources available. In this series of articles I’ve tried to include those that apply to the broadest spectrum of people and that are the most helpful. I highly recommend hunting for your own – especially if you’ve got issues that you can’t find help for here.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The SEO’s Toolkit Part Three of Three: Resources

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Here are some suggestions on how you can get people to notice your service or brand without turning anybody off.

1. Share - Consider sharing valuable information to people on your stream.  A great example of people that gets noticed are the likes of @cheth, @bkmacdaddy @Minervity it may not be their intention to sell, but you won’t help but check out their work and hire them because of the amazing information that they share on the stream everyday.  Sharing great and useful information gives you the credibility in your field.

2.  Create Compelling Content - Our websites should have useful content that can create compelling conversations.  People are more open to seeing for themselves what a service or a brand can do for them.

3.  Engage -  At our office, we always have this motto of enabling people to understand what products can do by engaging them.  Because the more they experience your service or brand, the more they will understand YOU.  Most often than not, if  a customer is happy he or she will definitely share the word and give your brand or service the word of mouth it deserves and if you ask me, that is very powerful.

4.  Give -  For designers, I noticed that they are the ones that really know how to give back and get something more in return.  What do I mean.  Most often than not, they are the ones that give out freebies, giveaways of their works and use tutorials to help.  In return, people who see their work and experience the stuff they create come to them when they need the particular service needed by that customer.

I hope the tips above are helpful in getting you or your brand the much needed awareness and boost without having to “sell” In your face style on Twitter.

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The same could be said of intelligence. What they don’t tell you is that the “smart” people of the world are, in most cases, just better at researching and learning things than everyone else.

But researching is a learned skill, not something you’re born with.

And while some people might be predisposed to learn things more easily than others, it’s generally not enough to make a measurable difference.

By learning how to research, you can quickly and fairly easily become knowledgeable about just about anything. And with the Internet, almost anything you could ever want to know is at your fingertips. You just have to learn how to access it.

It’s all there, online, for free. Here are the techniques I’ve used to find pretty much anything online.

Start with Wikipedia

Whenever you try to learn something new on the Internet, start with Wikipedia. A wealth of information is there, covering practically every subject in an easy-to-use, easy-to-understand format.

The main reason to start with Wikipedia is that it gives a good overview of most topics.

Sure, any given page is bound to have some inaccuracies (as is the case on most user-generated websites), but most of the content is generally reliable. And when the accuracy of certain information is questionable, it’s usually tagged as such.

The key to using Wikipedia as a source, though, is in how you make use of the information. You have to pay attention to a number of things on a Wikipedia page aside from the main content.

First of all, read the introduction to the page. This is where you’ll usually find a quick description of the topic, along with alternate and related terms.

Skim the content to find the parts of the article that you need to know about most. Some articles are short and don’t have a list of contents. Others are several thousand words long. Reading the entire thing is usually unnecessary. Just skip to the sections that are relevant to you.

Next, check the references and related resources. The references is a great place to get in-depth information on your topic. These links often include scholarly journals and articles and other respected sources.

The related sources section includes external links to in-depth information. These websites often include professional associations and organizations devoted to the topic as well as general websites with good topical information.

Move on to Google

Once you’ve built a good foundation through Wikipedia, move on to a Google search (or whatever search engine you prefer).

Having read a bit on Wikipedia, you should know the main terms and keywords associated with the subject you’re researching. Start your general search with these terms.

When researching something, I always open a new window in Firefox. For each link I visit in a Google search, I open a new tab so that I can keep my original search results page open.

And if I click on additional links on pages that I have opened, I don’t have to go back through 10 or more pages to return to my original search.

Go Multimedia

Text isn’t the only educational content on the web. Video, podcasts and slideshows are out there to explain pretty much anything you can imagine.

The advantage of so much multimedia content being available is that it caters to people with different learning styles.

Some people learn well by reading. Others learn better by hearing an explanation or seeing a demonstration. And still others learn by doing (which is where step-by-step tutorials—either video, audio or text—come in handy).

If you learn best by watching demonstrations, then head on over to YouTube, Odeo, Vimeo or any of the many other video websites and start typing the keywords that you found on Wikipedia.

Make sure, though, whenever you deal with user-generated content to verify the information against reputable sources.

One often-overlooked resource for videos is the archive from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences.

TED videos are available for free on the official website and cover (as you might expect) technology, entertainment and design.

While many of the videos focus on broad concepts rather than the nitty-gritty, they’re still a great resource to expand your horizon. And the lectures are given by leaders in their fields, so the information is generally reliable.

Check Out Free Educational Resources

A ton of colleges are now putting their course materials online, accessible for free.

MIT offers its entire catalog as open courseware, with lecture notes, resources and syllabi. Other two- and four-year colleges are following suit.

You’ll also find purely web-based open education initiatives that cover subjects you might not find at a traditional college. These free courses offer a ton of organized information on any given subject.

Some colleges offer their lectures in audio and video format. Princeton, for example, offers some of its lectures through iTunes, as does the University of Virginia, Duke, Emory, Yale and Stanford.

In fact, iTunes has an entire section devoted to educational podcasts called iTunes U. Non-educational organizations are also represented, including the Library of Congress and Wall Street Journal.

The educational podcast market isn’t monopolized by iTunes, though. Odeo has an education category with 466 channels and more than 67,000 episodes. Participating colleges and universities include Oxford University, the University of Melbourne and MIT.

Look for Tutorials

Depending on your topic, you may be able to find tutorials. For pretty much any practical skill (and a whole lot of unpractical ones), you can find an online tutorial that teaches you how to do it.

You can find tutorials through search engines (just add “tutorial” or “instructions” to the end of your keyword search). You can also find them on these websites:

Instructables is a general tutorial website that offers step-by-step instructions on projects in categories such as arts, crafts, food, kids, music, outdoors and pets. Every tutorial has photos and/or diagrams to illustrate the process.

eHow offers categorized instructions and tutorials created by users. They include both text and video tutorials on a variety of topics, including law, health, food and drink, electronics and computers.

WikiHow is a user-editable how-to manual that covers a ton of different topics. Because of its wiki format, tutorials and instructions are constantly being improved.

The Tuts+ Network offers tutorials on a variety of tech topics, including Photoshop, web design, Flash and photography. Its tutorials are split into separate blogs based on topic and are written by experts.

Tutorialized offers tech tutorials for a variety of software programs, including Photoshop, GIMP, Flash, Blender and Illustrator.

Good-Tutorials offers up tech-related tutorials, covering CSS, Flash, HTML, Photoshop, PHP and more. Tutorials are categorized and searchable.

Use Tools Available to You

A ton of tools are out there to make online research a bit (or a lot) easier.

Some help by organizing your sources, others let you save snippets of pages for later reference, and others do pretty much everything you could ask for from a research app. They make tracking your research and organizing it for later reference a much easier process.

Zotero is a Firefox add-on that acts like a research assistant. It lets you collect links and whole pages, organize them into folders and tag them. It even generates a “Works cited” list from them. You can jot down notes on anything you save, which makes it much easier to remember why you included it in the first place or to remind yourself later how you ended up using it.

Zotero has a ton of features. It automatically captures citations; it cites from within MS Word and OpenOffice; it accesses your library from anywhere; it searches PDFs and notes instantly; and it lets you create group libraries.

It’s also compatible with thousands of bibliographic styles, so when it comes time to create a “Works cited” list, you don’t have to spend hours reformatting the whole thing. The best part is that Zotero is free and open source, so you can extend and modify it to meet your needs (or find others who have already done the work).

Wired-Marker is a permanent highlighting tool for Firefox. You can highlight sections of a web page to refer to later on. It’s a great app if you want to be able to easily refer to a specific section of a website that you’ve bookmarked. Wired-Marker is itself also a bookmark organizer.

iCyte is a note-taking and bookmarking app that works with Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 and 8. It saves any pages that you highlight or bookmark, so that even if the page changes or is deleted, you still have the original version. You can save sections of a website or the whole thing. You can also invite others to join your projects, share information and access information that others have shared.

Similar Web is a great Firefox extension for finding websites related to the one you’re on. There’s also a web-based version for people who don’t use Firefox. The add-on is particularly useful if you’re on, say, Odeo and want to see other websites that offer podcasts.

Notefish is an online note-taking app that lets you custom-save content from any pages on the web. You can organize and share pages based on a specific subject. The app has many customizable features, including ones that let you annotate and color your notes. The downloadable Firefox add-on helps you use Notefish more efficiently.

Diigo lets you highlight and share pages all over the web. You can add sticky notes to pages for later reference and can access notes from your computer or iPhone. Saved pages can be organized with tags or lists. You can create groups to share resources for a project, and you can even enforce tagging rules among group members to keep things organized. Free and premium accounts are available (educators get a free premium account).

Concierge is a Safari plug-in that replaces the browser’s bookmark management scheme with an easier-to-use bookmark and information management tool. You can bookmark links and save links from email, Address Book cards, and folder and file links from Finder. It puts all of your relevant information in one place.

Information overload is a common problem when researching a new subject online. Great Summary helps combat the problem by summarizing the content of a web page, document or section of text for you. It identifies key topics on a page and presents relevant information without duplicating content.

EagleFiler is an information management app for Mac OS X that lets you archive and search PDF files, word-processing documents, images, web pages, mail and more. It has a three-pane interface similar to that of most email programs. Files are stored in a universal format, so they’re accessible from any application. Files can be encrypted, and you can add notes, tags, labels and meta data to them.

When you download something in Safari, no record is kept of where it came from. This can be a problem if you need to refer to it in a “Works cited” list or just want to know where to get similar content. DownloadComment adds a note in the file’s Spotlight Comments field with the URL of the original file.

HistoryHound lets you search the content of every web page and RSS feed that you’ve visited recently in Safari, as well as any bookmarked page. It ranks results by relevance. It’s a great way to track down information in resources that you’ve already discovered.

Reference Tracker is an app for Mac OS X that lets you store documents in one place for later reference and citation. It automatically creates a “Works cited” list in Harvard, APA, MLA or Chicago/Turabian format. It has built-in search and one-click referencing of web pages (in Safari or Firefox) and email (from Apple Mail).

Selenium is a research application for Mac OS X that combines a browser, PDF manager, word processor, bibliography manager and outliner in a single window. Research is much simpler because you don’t have to switch back and forth between different applications.

Evernote is an online note-taking application that lets you save just about anything, from notes to images to web pages. And it stores everything online, so you can access your notes from anywhere. There’s even an iPhone app.

Springnote is a free wiki-based online notepad. You can create personal or group notebooks and access them either online or through the iPhone app.

Google Notebook is a free online note-taking app that lets you create an unlimited number of notebooks and save notes, web pages and other information in a single place, accessible from anywhere. You can organize your notes by adding tags to them, as you would with Google Bookmarks.

Specialized Websites

Specialized online libraries exist for a ton of different subjects. Anything from language to science to technology to history has its own dedicated resource library somewhere on the Internet.

These collections can speed up your research, and they sometimes include only reliable websites. Here are some to get you started.

Arts

If you’re looking for information on art, whether museums, individual artists or art movements, Art Cyclopedia is the place to go. It lists 9,200 artists and has 140,000 links from 2,600 different art websites.

IMDb is a database of movies and television programs, dating as far back as film itself. You can search by cast member or title. Individual listings include all previous and upcoming roles. Movie results include cast and production crew, plot synopsis and other production information (often photos).

Medical and Scientific

BioMed Central publishes 200 open-access peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals. And you can search all 200 of them on the website.

History and Humanities

The Internet History Sourcebooks Project collects public domain and copy-permitted historical texts in one place. The collection includes ancient, medieval and modern texts, as well as ones of specific groups, regions and religions.

Digital History offers historical texts and resources from American history. It is run through a partnership with a variety of educational and historical organizations, including the University of Houston, the Chicago Historical Society and the National Park Service. It has resources for researchers and teachers, including multimedia resources.

The Perseus Digital Library is a resource of mostly historical texts from Tufts University. The digital collection includes material from Greek and Roman, Renaissance and 19th-century American history.

Project Gutenberg offers public domain books and written material for free. The collection includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry and is both searchable and browsable. Most of the content dates to the 19th century and earlier.

General and Scholarly

Intute helps individuals find the best websites on which to conduct their research. You can search or browse by category. It even offers free training on using the web for research and education.

Infomine is a search engine for scholarly resources. The categories, which are browsable, include the following: bio, agricultural and medical sciences; business and economics; cultural diversity; e-journals; government info; maps and GIS; physical sciences, engineering, computer science and math; social sciences and humanities; and visual and performing arts. It also includes general reference and advanced search functionality.

The Librarians’ Internet Index is a searchable directory of content from all over the Internet, broken down by category. It includes only reputable websites, making it easier to trust the information you find.

The IPL is another collection of resources from all over the web, broken down by category. The collections are targeted at children, teens, adults and educators. The collection covers art and the humanities, social science, law and government, computers and much more.

Find Articles from BNET lets you search articles from a wide range of consumer and trade magazines and newspapers. The articles are searchable and browsable by category.

The Library of Congress offers a ton of information, including digital collections. Its online collection includes history, performing arts, legislative information and international resources. It’s a particularly good source of government information, because its THOMAS system lets you search the full text of congressional records, bills and more.

You can learn just about anything with the resources and techniques mentioned here. As you research more topics and become accustomed to learning in this manner, learning new things will become easier.

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to gain a working knowledge of practically any subject after just a couple of hours of research.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

How do you find information online? Are there any other great resources that we missed? Please add them below…

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: I9tU8K

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Junaio allows you to create, explore and share information in a completely new way using augmented reality.

Available for android and iPhone.

http://www.junaio.com/

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By Matt Cronin

Being able to organize data and information is a skill not to be overlooked. The way you organize content and text, generally referred to as copy, has a direct effect on how that content is received by users. You must find a way to organize information so that it is scannable and can be quickly absorbed by the reader. One way to organize information in a clean way is to use data tables. Data tables provide a structured way of showing large amounts of information.

Data tables have been in use since the beginning of Web development. The structure of the table hasn’t changed — and will not change, because, well, it’s a table. But even though the structure has stayed the same, styling has come a long way; and recent tables are just as readable as the early ones.

Common Uses Of Data Tables

Tables make organizing information in a clean and readable way very easy. They can be used to store and show large amounts of information, small amounts of information, static data and even data that is constantly changing.

Because of the chart-like layout of tables, they are extremely useful for making comparisons. Many websites use them to compare products, services and, as mentioned, pricing plans.

The table below on Apple’s website compares all of the MacBooks. The chart contains a large amount of information, yet it is still organized and easy to read through. It is an extremely simple table but looks nice because of the good spacing and borders. Also, notice how images of the laptops are included and important information is bolded. This makes the table very scannable.

Data tables are often used to compare pricing plans. They provide space to show the names of plans, prices and the unique features of each plan. Most often, tables showing pricing plans contain a column for each plan and a row for each feature. Then, inside each cell is a marker indicating whether the plan comes with that specific feature.

Finally, tables often appear on TV network websites to shows schedules. These are a little different than typical tables; the cells are of various sizes due to staggered viewing periods. Other than that, schedule tables follow the exact same structure.

Components Of A Useful Data Table

Although almost every user knows how to make sense of a table, you can still do a few things to take yours to the next level of usability.

Titles + Labels + Data = Data Table
Obviously, a data table consists of columns titles, rows labels and the actual data in the cells. A table should be nothing more and nothing less.

When adding color, you should make the cells contrast with labels and titles. Make the background color for labels and titles different than the one you use for core data. This makes the table much easier to read and eliminates confusion.

The table below by Goplan uses a darker color for column titles and row labels. Notice how reading this table is much easier because of the contrast.

Stick to a Simple Grid
All tables are grids, and they work nicely that way, so why do anything different? Grids are efficient because you can fit a large amount of information in a small area and the viewer is still able to read the content easily.

Use Icons
Icons are an excellent way to cut down on boring text on a page. Icons can also help organize data tables.

The table below makes excellent use of icons and looks very clean. Check marks and crosses are used instead of “Yes” and “No.”

Don’t Leave Blank Spaces
Tables often have cells to which data does not apply. Avoid simply leaving these spaces blank; instead, fill them with an marker, such as a cross (X), icon or, as in the table below, dashes.

This clean table uses three dashes to indicate that data does not apply to a cell; this looks much nicer than leaving an empty space.

Highlight Important Columns and Rows
Many data tables highlight columns and rows that provide particularly important or useful information. In pricing charts, you will often see the best plan highlighted. Take a look at the table below. The most important row — the schedule for the day on which the table is being viewed — is highlighted with a thick border and different background color.

Working With Larger And More Complex Data Tables

So far, we have focused mainly on small and simple data tables, but what about large, complex and data-heavy tables? There are many usability considerations that are specific to large data tables.

Make Columns Movable
Data tables figure prominently in many software applications, both Web-based and installed. Generally, developers will create tables so that columns can be moved and organized in any way desired by the user. Also, applications usually allow users to add and remove columns.

Allow for Reordering of Columns
In tables with a lot of data or data that changes frequently, you should give users the ability to reorder content and cells. The most common variables by which you can order data include date, alphabet and importance.

Provide Search for Large Tables
If data is extensive and the table very large, then a search box should be provided. This will improve the overall usability of large tables and make finding data much faster.

Provide Different Views
If your table contains information with thumbnail images or other visual content, another usability feature you can include is the ability to view that information in different ways. Provide options to view all text, both text and thumbnails or only thumbnails.

Take a look at this Flash-based data table. It provides many of the features that work well with large tables, as mentioned, including search, reordering options and different views.

Styling Data Tables

Styling, or lack of styling for that matter, plays a big part in how a user views a table and absorbs the data. Keep in mind, though, that it’s still only a data table and should not be overloaded with styling. Keeping it simple and readable should be your overall goal. Shadows and artistic borders may work with other elements in a layout, but stay away from them with data tables. Here are a few styling elements that work better for data tables.

Alternate Colors
The most important characteristic of any data table is readability. One way to achieve this is by alternating colors for columns and rows. This makes it easier to read and more scannable.

The data table below is very well laid out. The rows of the table alternate colors, providing a clean, flowing, efficient layout. It has a lot of information but is still readable.

Borders
Separating cells with borders is extremely important. Borders make data much more readable and can eliminate confusion. With a lot of information, data in different cells can seem to blend together as one, but you want to keep them separate.

Ample Spacing
Like borders, spacing between data contributes to usability. In each cell, leave sufficient padding between the border and data. Use at least 20 pixels of space.

Simple Background Colors
Good data tables are all about readability, as we keep saying. Color and readability often go hand and hand. Data tables should always be simple, and one way to be simple is to use simple colors. Avoid using bright, obnoxious background colors that reflect poorly on the data being presented.

Showcase Of Data Tables

As promised, here are some websites that get data tables right.

Quantcast
A clean and basic table with nice fonts and a good color palette.

JukeFly
A large Flash-based data table with many usable features and user-friendly styling.

eWedding
A beautifully styled table that is still clean and readable.

Media Temple
A minimalist table with good use of icons, which provide an effective visual alternative to text.

iTunes
Data tables are everywhere, not just on the web. Applications such as iTunes use data tables.

Mosso
A very nice table, with pleasant colors and icons and alternating background colors for rows.

Zibler
A data table made with Flex that has search, movable columns and reordering options.

Cleartrip
Here is a complex table with a lot of information, but it can still be read with ease. Also note that the table has sorting and ordering options for columns.

Realmac Software
Shopping cart areas are also built on a grid system. Here is one example from Realmac Software.

MT Support
This table makes good use of color and contrast.

CBS
Here is the CBS Network’s schedule.

Long Term Clients
A smooth table with excellent styling, a clean layout and alternating colors.

Media Temple
Another nice table from Media Temple, this one combining visual elements and text in a flowing table with readable data.

Fox
A data grid is used for the schedule on Fox.com. Notice again how the schedule for the current day is highlighted.

Quommunication
Many forum home pages are structured as a table. Here is just one example.

Viget
A well-structured and well-organized table.

Joomla! Forum
Another example of a table on a forum landing page.

About the Author

Matt Cronin is a freelance Web and graphic designer as well as developer. He is the author and owner of Spoonfed Design, a design blog with great tips, how-to, inspiration, tutorials and more. Spoonfed Design is part of the VAEOU Creative Network, a new startup in progress with new services coming soon.

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Chris Allison is a social media strategist at NeboWeb, where he helps clients make the most of the social web. You can follow him on Twitter as the voice behind @Neboweb.

You may have seen Twitter’s recently announced most discussed topics of ‘09. The list really highlights the gravity of this important year: A new US President was sworn into office, celebrities died and celebrities were born, there were revolutions, there were pandemics, and technology continued its rapid advance.

2009 has also been a huge year for Twitter itself, as the network has rapidly become the sieve through which all real-time news and culture flows. Here, we break down the most influential topics that passed through Twitter this year, and discuss what they mean for users and the service itself.

Follow Fridays

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On January 16th, Micah Baldwin of Lijit Networks started Follow Fridays. It wasn’t a marketing test or viral experiment — it was just Micah being Micah. By the end of that Friday the hashtag #followfriday had been created (it wasn’t in the original tweet) and used by so many people that most of them didn’t even know who started it anymore — it was just one of those Twitter things.

The most remarkable fact about Follow Friday is that it spread naturally without plan, hypothesis, or agenda. The way Micah’s simple tweet turned into a part of web culture overnight is just one example of Twitter’s unparalleled ability to spread information and ideas organically and rapidly to a large number of people — a trend we will see again and again.

Follow Friday also set the trend for other day-of-the-week hashtags like #musicmonday, which was the most used hashtag of 2009, #winewednesday, and #rtthursday to name a few. Though there are many daily tweet memes, Follow Friday and Music Monday in particular provide great examples of how people intuitively create structure and order in unorganized networks like Twitter — another trend we will see more than once throughout the year as people use Twitter to share, discuss, and rally support.

Hope, Freedom, and Microblogs

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There are few things that will instigate a discussion like politics. But neither the left nor the right dominated the political discussion on Twitter this year. Instead, the discussion revolved around much larger issues like hope and freedom – issues that played out in events like Obama’s inauguration and the Moldovan and Iranian revolutions.

#inaug09

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President Obama is a first of many things, and for this discussion it is particularly notable that he is the first President to truly embrace social media. Fittingly, he is also the first President to have his inauguration covered by the masses on Twitter. The inauguration was a signal of hope and progress to the world, but for Twitter it was bitter-sweet.

On the one hand, Obama’s inauguration is an excellent example of how a service like Twitter can bring the atmosphere of the moment to people around the world. It proved Twitter’s significance as a real-time global tool.

On the other hand, it was one of the first clear signs that Twitter’s search capabilities would not live up to potential. A quick search on #inaug09 or #inauguration targeted on the D.C. area during or after the inauguration resulted in errors, proving that Twitter wasn’t quite able to keep up with the real-time demands of the event.

Twitter’s search, as wonderful as it is, still falls short of its potential. The current search results don’t even go back a month, which makes you wonder why Twitter leaves this enticing option open to the public.

From a technical perspective, it seems highly unlikely that Twitter will be able to store the number of conversations taking place around events like this any time soon. Even if they did manage to bring the potential of time-sensitive queries into full effect, the current system for handling customer service leaves much to be desired.

The most popular topic under the help tab on Twitter is “tweets missing from search.” Further reading reveals that there’s basically nothing that can be done if your tweets aren’t showing up in a search, which could prove problematic for companies trying to use Twitter for hashtag based promotions or events. While these problems are understandable, the lack of human support for these types of issues is still frustrating.

The Obama inauguration isn’t the only event to fall victim to these types of issues, but it serves as a good example of a large event that missed out on full potential. With the news that Twitter was actually profitable this year, we can hope that they’ll be able to spend some money on making search more reliable in the future.

#pman and #iranelection

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A few months after the excitement of the inauguration faded, the political atmosphere of Twitter was set ablaze again by a series of protests in the country of Moldova. Young people in the country began to rally in the country’s capital Chisinau and organized large protests through Twitter with the hashtag #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, the main square in Chisinau.

After news broke that the Communist party had won elections in Moldova, the politically enthusiastic youth took to the streets and to Twitter. The revolution, dubbed by some “The Grape Revolution” and by others “The Twitter Revolution,” failed. However, it still serves as a testament to the power of social networks in mobilizing individuals behind a cause.

Strikingly, a similar revolution took place in Iran just a few months later at the end of June that carried on well into July. After current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the winner of a June 12th election, the country of Iran exploded with protests from people who suspected that the election results had been manipulated to favor Ahmadinejad over the opposing candidate, Mir-Houssein Mosavi.

For several weeks, Twitter was abuzz with #iranelection and #neda – short for Neda Agha-Soltan, a gunfire victim from the protests whose video-captured death spread quickly over the Internet. Twitter users from all over the world changed their profile backgrounds and avatars to the color green – Mosavi’s color – and voiced their support for the Iranian protestors.

Each of these revolutions have become known for the part Twitter played in mobilizing and reporting the events that took place, and the hashtags formed around these revolutions are powerful examples of how individuals will come together through social networks to rally behind a cause.

Furthermore, the rate at which information was distributed through Twitter during these events signaled to many the nail in the coffin for mainstream media, which was consistently outpaced by tweets coming live from location.

CNN’s complete lack of coverage early in the Iranian election crisis also spurred a vicious backlash from Twitter users (who were already well aware of the situation) in the form of a new hashtag: #cnnfail.

At first glance this was a strong indicator that the real-time web was finally beginning to replace traditional news sources. However, while traditional media and news sources have lost significant ground in terms of growth and influence over the past several years, there are still many significant limitations to relying on Twitter, the blogosphere, and citizen journalism for news. One such limitation is the general lack of accountability which often results in the distribution of false information.

On multiple occasions during the Iranian election, tweets were sent out containing false information. Even though the people typically sending these tweets weren’t making an active effort to spread incorrect information, quality fact-checking was rarely paired with the hastily sent out tweets. In addition, once the Iranian government caught on to the Twitter movement, they took active efforts to distribute false information through Twitter accounts, and identifying accurate information once again became difficult and complex.

A Timely and Convenient News Source

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But the Iranian election wasn’t Twitter’s first breakthrough in real-time news this year.

On January 15th, after US Airways flight 1549 flew through a flock of geese, pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. Miraculously, he landed without incurring any fatalities.

The first “reporter” on the scene was Janis Krums, an entrepreneur from Florida whose Twitter bio now describes him as “the Miracle on the Hudson photo guy.” Krums just happened to be passing by on a commuter ferry. As the ferry approached the plane to help evacuate passengers, Janis snapped a photograph with his iPhone and uploaded it to Twitpic — a move that would gain him thousands of followers in several days and add fuel to the fiery debate over the place of old and new media.

This kind of first-to-the-scene reporting is one of the main reasons Twitter is valued as a news source, but speed isn’t the only reason people value hearing about news through Twitter. Convenience also plays a major role. For other major trending topics like #duststorm, where a strange orange dust settled all over eastern Australia (resulting in one of my favorite pictures of the year), and #balloonboy, where a boy was purportedly carried away in his parents’ weather monitoring balloon, Twitter wasn’t quicker to report the news than others. In fact, much of the discussion on Twitter was simply regurgitated from mainstream media, and that’s often the case.

When it comes to convenience though, Twitter is unmatched. Twitter provides a comprehensive stream from numerous news outlets, ensuring that anyone monitoring the activity through Twitter will typically get the most complete coverage of the event by simply monitoring a relevant hashtag like #balloonboy or #duststorm. As long as Twitter remains a link-sharing hub, it will hold its place as one of the most convenient, and therefore valued, news aggregators online.

The Death of Pop

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This brings us to the single biggest news piece of the year: the death of the King of Pop.

It may come as no surprise, but Michael Jackson’s death stopped the Internet.

No, really. At various points in time Google chose not to return results for Michael Jackson queries (under the assumption they were under automated attack), Twitter showed the fail whale, Wikipedia froze the Michael Jackson page from edits, and 4chan crashed. For a very interesting timeline of how Michael Jackson’s death spread across the web, see Danny Dover’s post “A Bad Day for Search Engines”.

Danny points out interestingly that Wikipedia was actually faster than Google or Twitter to pick up on the news – further reinforcing the fact that though speed is the defining factor of “real-time,” it isn’t the end-all-be-all of a service that wants to be a news hub.

Even though Wikipedia beat Twitter to the punch, Twitter is still a more convenient medium for news due to trending topics and the rapid nature of how news spreads on social networks. Twitter brings the news to the person, rather than the person to the news.

Technology and Science

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#wave

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Google Wave came onto the scene a mystery and for many, it still is. Wave stands out for several reasons, but perhaps the most interesting is that Wave was the most discussed piece of technology on Twitter all year.

Wave was discussed more than MacWorld, which Apple fans are notoriously noisy about, and also more than Apple’s new operating system Snow Leopard. This raises the question: are Google fans more devoted than Apple fans, or did Google just plan appropriately to drive hype?

Microsoft is generally regarded as Google’s main competitor, but Apple is undoubtedly on the radar as well. With Google moving into the operating system market and Apple moving towards cloud services, it’s clear that Google and Apple are playing for the same stakes. As these two giants continue to move into each other’s territory, it will be very interesting to see who holds onto the share of voice between what PSFK calls the top two brands of 2009.

#nasatweetup

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NASA loves Twitter. They use Twitter in space.

When your service is used from space, you know you’re doing well. In November, #nasatweetup reached number three on the trending topics on Twitter. This was NASA’s fifth tweetup and the first tweetup to be held at the Kennedy Space Center during a shuttle launch.

NASA’s use of Twitter is a good sign to marketers that Twitter can be used to create valuable connections. On Mike Massimino’s Open Web Awards page, NASA’s web site explains clearly why Twitter is of value to their organization:

Twitter is a social media tool that offers a new vehicle for NASA to interact with non-traditional audiences in a dynamic, viral conversation about space, the merits of exploring the unknown, and its relevance to everyday life here on our home planet. Twitter allows citizens of this planet to converse with and learn from scientists, engineers, policy-makers, and space travelers.

Any organization or company can benefit from using Twitter in similar ways to generate conversations about the topic at hand, answer questions, discuss benefits, and create relevancy.

#swineflu

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A review of the year wouldn’t be complete without mentioning swine flu. Unfortunately, there is little positive to say about Twitter’s role in discussing or propagating news about the pandemic.

Twitter isn’t a cure-all (no pun intended). While it has proven to be extremely useful for a variety purposes, managing public opinion and fear over pandemics is not one of them.

Evgeny Morozov, who also covered the revolution in Moldova and Iran, points out a few of Twitter’s shortcomings in this arena in an article at Foreign Policy. He writes:

“Let’s just do some thinking about what’s possible here. One of the least discussed elements in the cyber-attacks that struck Estonia in 2007 was psychological operations. There was, for example, a whole series of text messages aimed specifically at Estonia’s vast Russian-speaking populations urging them to drive their cars at 5km/h at a specific time of the day; quite predictably, this led to a hold-up in traffic (you can watch a TV report in Estonian about this here). Thus, a buy-in from the most conspiracy-driven 1% of the population may be enough to stall traffic in the entire city. We could easily expect even more devastating consequences from the public scares generated by global pandemics.”

After reading some of the tweets that have gone out under #swineflu, it’s not hard to believe that a hefty number of the conspiracy-driven population resides on Twitter and uses it to distribute their fears.

However, there is hope. While Twitter, or any medium with such a large reach, can be used to spread fear, it can also be used to spread knowledge. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been a bright spot throughout the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and their tweets were both informative and calming.

Just like NASA is an excellent model for organizations looking to use Twitter for their benefit, the CDC is a great example of how government or charitable organizations can use Twitter to inform the population. Thankfully, their emergency account now has over one million followers — we can only hope they get retweets!

Conclusion

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These are by no means anything and everything that hit the trending topics list in 2009. This list doesn’t even cover all of Twitter’s most discussed topics, but it does hit home on the biggest and most influential, hopefully giving you a bit more insight into each. If you have one that you feel is particularly deserving of a mention and would like to break it down for us, drop it in the comments for all to see.

More Twitter resources from Mashable:

- Follow Friday Trends: How Twitter Lists are Changing #FollowFriday
- HOW TO: Use Twitter’s New Retweet Feature
- 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists
- 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets
- TWEET IDEAS: 13 Things to Do on Twitter Besides Tweet
- Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

[img credits: jmtimages, SIR: Poseyal : KNIGHT of the DESPOSYNI, tleonard1, quaelin, Stijn Vogels, The Pug Father]

Tags: follow fridays, Google Wave, hashtags, inaug09, inauguration, iran, micah baldwin, Moldova, NASA, obama, swine flu, trending topics, twitter

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A week and more than 1.5 thousand emails later, we have the winners of our 3rd Anniversary Giveaway. But first I would like to thank you all for the great support and also thank our sponsors for providing such amazing prizes.

Now, without further ado, let’s find out who the lucky winners are!

3 Smashingmagazine books http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

The Smashing Book is a printed book about best practices in modern Web design. The book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates. It also shows how to get the most out of typography, color and branding so that you end up with intuitive and effective Web designs. And lastly, you will also get a peek behind the curtains of Smashing Magazine.

For more information about Smashingmagazine visit http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Winners:

• Diego Machuca
• gwilkes
• Cristiano Valim

3 James White Posters – http://blog.signalnoise.com

James White has been drawing since the age of 4, scribbling down his favorite characters such as Superman, Batman, the Dukes of Hazzard, etc. Being from a military family, he made 3 big moves through childhood but never strayed from his colored-pencils.

Today, James creates personal posters and art prints for sale on his website, Signalnoise.com, while working with select clients looking to add new creative to their campaigns. He has worked with such clients as Toyota, Armada Skis, VH1 Latin America and MTV, and has been featured internationally in Computer Arts andAdvanced Photoshop magazines.

For more information about James White visit: http://blog.signalnoise.com

Winners:

• OktayOe
• nereski
• Igor Matos

3 Billings Copies – http://www.billingsapp.com/

Billings is an excellent example of a highly usable localized application, designed specifically for Mac OS X and small business users. Billings is designed to manage time-tracking and expenses for small business users and produce gorgeous invoices. Billings is built on Cocoa, and integrates with Mail, Google Maps, and iCal. It supports F-Script for invoice design, produces cross-platform PDF invoices using Quartz, and leverages the Address Book framework. Billings is localized in English, French, German, Japanese and Dutch. A companion iPhone app is on the way.

For more information about Billings visit: http://www.billingsapp.com/

Winners:

• thepeachdesign
• crixandstuff
• Kyle S Lambert

3 Copies of Pixelmator – http://www.pixelmator.com/

Pixelmator, the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images.

For more information about Pixelmator visit http://www.pixelmator.com/

Winners:

• tomkoff
• rseoane
• Max Wozniak

3 Premium Accounts at ConceptFeedback – http://www.conceptfeedback.com/

Designed specifically for small and medium business marketers, graphic designers, and web developers, Concept Feedback provides a simple tool to get quality feedback on marketing concepts

For more information about ConceptFeedback visit: http://www.conceptfeedback.com/

Winners:

• indigo
• andrewthong
• George Preoteasa

2 International Year of Astronomy 2009 Posters – http://www.astronomy2009.org/

“I initially designed these as self-promotional works but word gets around and last week I received an email from the IYA 09 that they thought the posters were great and would like to use them for their promotional work – this was awesome and I of course said yes.” Simon Page

For more information about the International Year of Astronomy visit http://www.astronomy2009.org/ and to see the posters check out this post.

Winner:

• tiago.design
• Jefferson da Silva

3 Abduzeedo t-shirts – http://abdutees.bigcartel.com/

“Goddess of Abduction” is the first tee for the Abductees Limited Edition Series designed by Draco. The shirt is printed on American Appeal color black, if you have any doubt about your size please check Guys Size Chart and Girls Size Chart

Winners:

• Ondaweb
• Josh Hemsley
• Vilson Martins Filho

1 PSD to XHTML Conversion by shopHTML

ShopHTML is a team of XHTML/CSS specialists that have provided conversion services and expertise in XHTML/CSS, WordPress, and Joomla for the past 5 years. The services guarantee (or full refund is issued) w3C validated code for XHTML 1.0 strict and CSS validation which is tested across Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3, Safari 3/4, and Opera 9. — and they do all of this in a 24 hour turnaround time without compromising quality.

For more information about shopHTML visit http://shophtml.com

Winner: Carl Topham (Designer023)

1 Apple Macbook – http://www.apple.com/macbook/ *

2.26GHz : 250GB, 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive1, 8x double-layer SuperDrive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, Built-in 7-hour battery2, Polycarbonate unibody enclosure

Winner: jehuty.be

We here at Abduzeedo wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we hope to share and abduct lots of inspiration in 2010! Thank you guys again for an amazing 2009!

*The winner of the Macbook will be responsible for the taxes and other legal fees. The product will be sent from the US.

We will be contacting the winners next week on December 28th.

About the author

My name is Fabio Sasso, I’m a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I’m the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

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Well, this isn’t the case for a couple of newly weds that just got married a week ago. Without their knowledge they have been put to the test with the most hilarious prank ever. As it turns out the best man of the wedding wanted to prolong the bachelor party just a bit and decided to put a device in the couples mattress that automatically connected to Twitter and tweet the way the newly weds have sex. It also tweets how vigorous the act is and some other details. It only responds to the times the couple actually have sex and within a week the Twitter account set up already has over 21,339 followers.

How would you feel when you finally finds out that you’ve been candid Twitterd by the best man of the wedding knowing that pretty much the entire world knows exactly when and how you and your wife have sex? I guess the repercussions will be quite fantastic. We’ll see how the story develops and I can’t wait to see how the couple pays back the favor.

Do you want to follow the couples sex adventures then just add @newlywedsontjob to your twitter stream and wait for the updates.

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