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Template Details :

Platform Type	Blogger / Blogspot
Template Name	Dark Brown Blogger Template
Descriptions	Dark Brown Blogger Template is a free blogger template with dark brown background, 2 columns and sidebar on the right. This template is equipped with Flash Slideshow widget, Footer Column widget, and easy-to-install menu navigation with “Link List” widget.
Template Author	http://gamelidz.blogspot.com
Designer	Daniel Linkin

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Template Details :

Platform Type	WP / WordPress
Template Name	VectorMade WordPress Theme
Descriptions	VectorMade WordPress Theme is a well-designed Magazine Style Theme with outstanding features and options you can set in the admin panel. Theme works in all major browsers, uses jQuery slider on Featured Articles, Thumbnails on Posts, Widget Ready, and more.
Template Author	http://wpdesign.in
Designer	WP Design

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Template Details :

Platform Type	WP / WordPress
Template Name	Solidify WordPress Theme
Descriptions	Solidify WordPress Theme is a well-designed Magazine Style Theme with outstanding features and options you can set in the admin panel. Theme works in all major browsers, uses jQuery slider on Featured Articles, Thumbnails on Posts, Widget Ready, and more…
Template Author	http://wpdesign.in
Designer	WP Design

What can you use the application for?


Blogger gives internet users a place to start their own blog. The site provides the user with a large collection of eye-catching blog templates that range from light and elegant to dark and sleek. The user can also review up to the minute statistics for their blog to see visitor activity. Members can explore the blogs created by others in the Blogger community. The user interface is relatively easy to master, allowing users to quickly post updates or make edits as necessary. Users can create a Blogger URL and change it whenever they want or apply their own domain name to the blog. Users can earn income from their blog through Google AdSense, which integrates with Blogger. The follower widget is included so the blogger can give their readers a way to follow their content updates and blog changes. Comment features are also included so users can interact with their readers. Mobile phone updates have recently been added as well as page specific features. Blogger is available in over 40 languages, including English, Arabic, French, German, Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi, Greek, Serbian, Swedish, Spanish, Malay and Hungarian.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Blogger was founded in August of 1999. The original Blogger was named Pyra Labs. In February of 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs and renamed it with its current moniker. Today, many people use Blogger to host their blogs.

What are the differences to other apps?


Blogger offers a number of features, although none are terribly unique. This isn’t necessarily the fault of Blogger. It is primarily because there are many competing applications that do the same thing and offer similar features because they are effective. Blogger stands out for some users because the site offers mobile blog updates to its users.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The Blogger website uses a dark blue and orange color scheme, highlighted by the stylish “B” square logo. The user dashboard presents a list of all of the user’s current blogs as well as links to the user’s account and the help area in the upper, right hand corner. The user can jump right to the post editor, comments area, settings, design, statistics or the monetize features.

How does the registration process work?


A new user can sign in to Blogger using their Google credentials. Those who do not have a Google account will have to create one to create a Blogger account. This can be done by clicking the blue “Get Started” link along the right hand side of the Blogger homepage. The registration form on the following page asks the user for an email address, password, display name, date of birth and word verification.

What does it cost to use the application?


Blogger invites all visitors to sign up and start a blog for free. There are no subscription fees or other charges to create or manage a blog. The user is given access to all the basic features and can edit and post as often as they like.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Blogger is a helpful resource for anyone who is interested in starting a blog. The application allows users to manage multiple blogs on one Blogger account. The user can also select a template from a preset list and monetize their blog through Google’s AdSense.

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What can you use the application for?


BuySimple introduces users to another way to obtain paid content when they want it. Many websites have limited access to visitors, requiring an account and subscription or other fee to access the content. BuySimple has taken this common problem and made it more manageable for the user. The application works by giving the user the option to purchase content with BuySimple rather than with whatever subscription requirement the site requires. The user pays a smaller amount for one-time access. BuySimple allows its users to only pay for the access they really want and need rather than getting wrapped up in a recurring subscription. For example, rather than purchase a $10 subscription, the user may have to pay 25 to 50 cents to access the content one time with BuySimple. The user keeps credit in their BuySimple account and can apply that credit each time they would like to access pay-only content.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


BuySimple was founded in 2011 by Noah Ready Campbell and Calvin Young. The application was intended to work as an online web payment widget for the average internet user. The user would be able to access the BuySimple widget on the website they are browsing, which gives them a one-time content purchase option.

What are the differences to other apps?


BuySimple is a unique application. There are numerous sites that offer a way to store funds and pay for purchases online, however these generally do not supply the user with an alternative to subscriptions. BuySimple allows the user to choose to purchase one time access to content that would otherwise require a subscription fee. This can dramatically reduce how much the user pays over time.

How does the application look and feel to use?


BuySimple.com invites users with a dark blue and black color scheme against a pure white background. The site is clutter free and very neatly organized. After adding the widget, the user can explore their favorite websites and view them exactly as they are intended to appear. BuySimple adds a small button on the payment page that allows the user to purchase content however they like.

How does the registration process work?


A new user can begin by clicking the white “Sign Up!” link in the top, center of the homepage (inside the blue header). The application requires all users to sign up through their existing Facebook account. This can be done by clicking the blue and white “Connect with Facebook” button found on the following page. A pop up box will appear, asking the user to log in to Facebook and allow BuySimple to access their profile. There is no alternative registration option available at this time.

What does it cost to use the application?


BuySimple does not require a subscription fee and it is completely free to sign up. The user is given around $2 in BuySimple credit for free when they register. Users are awarded an additional dollar per person they refer to BuySimple. A buy credit option is also included but is left up to the user. Users are not required to purchase credits or spend any specific amount of credit to maintain an account.

Who would you recommend the application to?


BuySimple is a tool for anyone who frequently encounters subscription only websites. The application makes it possible to access only what the user wants rather than purchase an ongoing subscription the user may not need. It gives website owners an opportunity to charge small payments for their content.

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Learn more about 99ShoutBox.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much 99ShoutBox.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

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The widget will arrive later this summer, the company said.

Sponsor

NFC is an up-and-coming technology that allows for data exchanges over short distances. It forms the basis of mobile wallet solutions like Google Wallet and Visa’s digital wallet, for example, which aim to replace leather-bound bill holders with nothing but a mobile phone. Everyone from Google to the banks to the credit card companies to the carriers themselves, are involved in developing NFC solutions for their customers these days, although very few programs have officially launched as of yet.

It’s no surprise then, that PayPal is joining in with its own implementation of NFC. As a top provider in the payments space, it had no choice but to participate in this emerging trend.

PayPal Does NFC on Android

The application itself looks great. In the demo (see the video here), a PayPal user can either send money or receive money using the widget. After one person initiates the request, both people just tap their phones together until they buzz. That means the data transfer is complete. However, for security purposes, users do have to complete the transaction with the entry of a PIN or password.

It’s a lot like how the contact sharing mobile app Bump works, except that the underlying technology is different. Bump uses sensors on both iPhones and Android, while NFC requires the use of a special chip in the phone itself, something that’s still somewhat a rarity on today’s smartphones. Today’s demo involved Samsung’s Nexus S, but other NFC phones are on their way, including the upcoming BlackBerry Bold (9900/9930) devices, Nokia’s Astound, variants of the Samsung Galaxy S II and others.

Recently, PayPal made another acquisition aimed at bolstering its mobile presence: Zong, a mobile payments company that specialized in carrier billing. Zong enabled end users to pay for digital items like virtual goods and in-app purchases, by having those items charged to their phone bill. NFC, however, is more often associated with paying for physical goods – like store-bought items from a local retailer. By attacking on both fronts – virtual and physical – it’s clear that PayPal is aiming to retain its place among the top payments companies even as the technologies surrounding payments around are revolutionized by the mobile platform.

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New Theme: Preview

I want to open with GMail’s newest addition: the Preview theme. This is a theme that mimic’s Google+ and Google Calendar’s redesign, and I’ve got to say it’s super clean.

Preview (From the GMail Blog)

You can see that the spacing is much better, the buttons are a little bigger and better defined, and each subject line is given more screen real estate. Overall, I think it’s a big improvement over old design. To get the new design, in GMail go to Settings->Themes and enable “Preview”.

There is also “Preview Dense,” which removes some extra padding as it was designed for lower screen resolutions.

The People Widget

GMail’s People widget (enabled by default I believe) is a slick little way to get a quick overview of the contact info for whomever’s email you’re viewing.

People widget (From the GMail Blog)

As you can see from the screenshot, you’ve got the person’s name & email address, avatar, and 4 buttons: Google Chat, Email, Phone, and options, where you can edit the contact, view recent mail, and more. Underneath that there is a “Show details” link that will reveal your most recent conversations with that person.

If you have the extension that puts Google Chat on the right side, you will not see this widget.

Rapportive

Do you like the People widget, but want a little more bang for your buck? If you’re a Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Mailplane, you’re in luck! The Rapportive add-on for these apps adds a right sidebar much like the People widget to each conversation in GMail, but there is a lot more information.

Rapportive

Rapportive will also display contact information (phone, email, Google Chat) and recent conversations. However, it adds in a few features, namely: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and some other social networks. Then there is my favorite feature, which is the inline notes feature; it allows you to add and display notes from within the Rapportive sidebar.

Boomerang

Boomerang is a plugin I feel I could probably do an entire review on. This awesome little app allows you to manage your inbox by scheduling emails you send or want returned to your inbox at a later date.

Boomerang

As someone who’s very meticulous about his inbox, I can truly attest to just how useful this plugin is. It’s first major feature is the ability to archive emails and have them returned to your inbox at a later date. I generally like to keep emails in my inbox until I attend to them, but sometimes I know I won’t be able to for a few days. This is perfect for me.

The second feature is for scheduling emails to send at a specific time. You write up the email or response, save it, and schedule it by pressing the “Send Later” button. This is good if, for example, you like to send your follow up emails at the same time every week. Write the email while you’re thinking about it, and schedule it to be sent.

I’m sure you could think up some other reasons to respond to an email but not send it until later as well

One Inbox for All of Your Email Addresses

(Sidebar: I was going to name this section, “One Inbox to Rule Them All.”)

I have a ton of email addresses. One for each of my important domains, a personal one, one for the university I teach at, and a few more I don’t use. Thanks to GMail, I don’t have to run all over the Internet to check my many mailboxes.

There are two things you can do to make GMail your one-stop shop for all of your email:

First, forward all of your email to one address (you do this from each individual address inbox). Similarly, you can use GMail to check the other inboxes that support POP3. You do that by going to Settings->Accounts and Import and pressing the “Add POP3 email Account” button.

Add POP3 Email

Next, make it so you can send email as your other addresses in GMail. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Under Accounts and Import, find and press the “Send mail from another address” button
2. Put in the email address you want to send from
3. Select if you want to use the SMTP settings for that domain (I usually don’t, though it’s recommended for professional domains).
4. Get and input the verification code

If you’ve already set up forwarding, you won’t have to leave your GMail inbox to get the verification code!

Once you set up a new email address to send from, you can make it the default one for your GMail account. You can also choose to automatically reply using whatever email address that email was sent to.

The "Send mail as" Area

Use the “+” Sign to Create Multiple Addresses

Ever want to sign up for a new service but were hesitant to use your primary address? GMail offers an interesting feature so that you don’t have to worry about that. Just add a + sign and any word after your username, but before the @ and it’s like you have a whole other email address (ex: joec+newsite@gmail.com). Then, set up a filter with that address in the “To” field and filter it however you’d like.

An example is how I use this for newsletter subscriptions. So they aren’t cluttering up my inbox, I sign up for newsletters with jcasabona+subscriptions@gmail.com. I have a filter set up so that anything that goes to that address skips my inbox and goes to a label called “Subscriptions.” Then I can read all the newsletters when I have some time!

Forgot Attachment and Undo Send

We’ve all done it, and we’ve all felt stupid after: prematurely sending an email and forgetting an attachment are two things that happen all the time. Luckily, the fine people at Google know this and have created two lab features to help us prevent these little email faux pas.

The first is Forgot Attachment. I actually just read that this lab feature graduated into a regular GMail features, so you shouldn’t have to do anything to enable it. GMail will scan your email for forms of the word ‘attachment’ and then check to see that you have actually attached something. If you didn’t, a little alert box will pop-up asking you if you forgot to attach something. This has saved me countless follow-up emails.

Forgot Attachement

The second is a lab feature called Undo Send. You can enable it by going to Settings->Labs. This feature will give you a window of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds to undo sending an email (configurable in Settings->General once the feature is enabled). I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used this feature, either because I caught some spelling/grammar error at the last second, or I decide sending the email might be a bad idea.

Undo Send

Default Reply to All and Send & Archive

These two lab features are designed to remove a couple of clicks from your overall inbox experience. The are Default Reply to All and Send & Archive.

As you probably know, if you want to Reply to everyone in an email, you need to specifically click “Reply to All.” Default Reply to All makes it so when you press the “Reply” button, you are automatically replaying to everyone in the ‘To’ and ‘CC’ fields. If you don’t want to Reply to All, simply press the “Reply” button again.

The “Send & Archive” button is one I absolutely love. It used to be the case that I’d reply to an email, let it send, then press the archive button to get it out of my inbox. With the Send & Archive feature, the email is sent and then the conversation is automatically archived. Words cannot describe how much I love this.

Both of these features can be enabled through Settings->Lab.

Bonus: Add any Gadget by URL

This lab feature will allow you to add any Google Gadget right into GMail. All you need to do is grab the URL from the developer. I’ve added Google Calendar and Remember the Milk, but the possibilities are endless.

Conclusion

Obviously there are scores of other additions to GMail you can make between GMail Labs, Google Gadgets, and browser extensions. There are also a ton of little hacks like the + sign one you can do if you can find the right blog post! My suggestion would be to mess around with GMail and check out the Help Section for more tips and tricks. If you have one I didn’t mention here, let us know about it in the comments!

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New Theme: Preview

I want to open with GMail’s newest addition: the Preview theme. This is a theme that mimic’s Google+ and Google Calendar’s redesign, and I’ve got to say it’s super clean.

Preview (From the GMail Blog)

You can see that the spacing is much better, the buttons are a little bigger and better defined, and each subject line is given more screen real estate. Overall, I think it’s a big improvement over old design. To get the new design, in GMail go to Settings->Themes and enable “Preview”.

There is also “Preview Dense,” which removes some extra padding as it was designed for lower screen resolutions.

The People Widget

GMail’s People widget (enabled by default I believe) is a slick little way to get a quick overview of the contact info for whomever’s email you’re viewing.

People widget (From the GMail Blog)

As you can see from the screenshot, you’ve got the person’s name & email address, avatar, and 4 buttons: Google Chat, Email, Phone, and options, where you can edit the contact, view recent mail, and more. Underneath that there is a “Show details” link that will reveal your most recent conversations with that person.

If you have the extension that puts Google Chat on the right side, you will not see this widget.

Rapportive

Do you like the People widget, but want a little more bang for your buck? If you’re a Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Mailplane, you’re in luck! The Rapportive add-on for these apps adds a right sidebar much like the People widget to each conversation in GMail, but there is a lot more information.

Rapportive

Rapportive will also display contact information (phone, email, Google Chat) and recent conversations. However, it adds in a few features, namely: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and some other social networks. Then there is my favorite feature, which is the inline notes feature; it allows you to add and display notes from within the Rapportive sidebar.

Boomerang

Boomerang is a plugin I feel I could probably do an entire review on. This awesome little app allows you to manage your inbox by scheduling emails you send or want returned to your inbox at a later date.

Boomerang

As someone who’s very meticulous about his inbox, I can truly attest to just how useful this plugin is. It’s first major feature is the ability to archive emails and have them returned to your inbox at a later date. I generally like to keep emails in my inbox until I attend to them, but sometimes I know I won’t be able to for a few days. This is perfect for me.

The second feature is for scheduling emails to send at a specific time. You write up the email or response, save it, and schedule it by pressing the “Send Later” button. This is good if, for example, you like to send your follow up emails at the same time every week. Write the email while you’re thinking about it, and schedule it to be sent.

I’m sure you could think up some other reasons to respond to an email but not send it until later as well

One Inbox for All of Your Email Addresses

(Sidebar: I was going to name this section, “One Inbox to Rule Them All.”)

I have a ton of email addresses. One for each of my important domains, a personal one, one for the university I teach at, and a few more I don’t use. Thanks to GMail, I don’t have to run all over the Internet to check my many mailboxes.

There are two things you can do to make GMail your one-stop shop for all of your email:

First, forward all of your email to one address (you do this from each individual address inbox). Similarly, you can use GMail to check the other inboxes that support POP3. You do that by going to Settings->Accounts and Import and pressing the “Add POP3 email Account” button.

Add POP3 Email

Next, make it so you can send email as your other addresses in GMail. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Under Accounts and Import, find and press the “Send mail from another address” button
2. Put in the email address you want to send from
3. Select if you want to use the SMTP settings for that domain (I usually don’t, though it’s recommended for professional domains).
4. Get and input the verification code

If you’ve already set up forwarding, you won’t have to leave your GMail inbox to get the verification code!

Once you set up a new email address to send from, you can make it the default one for your GMail account. You can also choose to automatically reply using whatever email address that email was sent to.

The "Send mail as" Area

Use the “+” Sign to Create Multiple Addresses

Ever want to sign up for a new service but were hesitant to use your primary address? GMail offers an interesting feature so that you don’t have to worry about that. Just add a + sign and any word after your username, but before the @ and it’s like you have a whole other email address (ex: joec+newsite@gmail.com). Then, set up a filter with that address in the “To” field and filter it however you’d like.

An example is how I use this for newsletter subscriptions. So they aren’t cluttering up my inbox, I sign up for newsletters with jcasabona+subscriptions@gmail.com. I have a filter set up so that anything that goes to that address skips my inbox and goes to a label called “Subscriptions.” Then I can read all the newsletters when I have some time!

Forgot Attachment and Undo Send

We’ve all done it, and we’ve all felt stupid after: prematurely sending an email and forgetting an attachment are two things that happen all the time. Luckily, the fine people at Google know this and have created two lab features to help us prevent these little email faux pas.

The first is Forgot Attachment. I actually just read that this lab feature graduated into a regular GMail features, so you shouldn’t have to do anything to enable it. GMail will scan your email for forms of the word ‘attachment’ and then check to see that you have actually attached something. If you didn’t, a little alert box will pop-up asking you if you forgot to attach something. This has saved me countless follow-up emails.

Forgot Attachement

The second is a lab feature called Undo Send. You can enable it by going to Settings->Labs. This feature will give you a window of 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds to undo sending an email (configurable in Settings->General once the feature is enabled). I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used this feature, either because I caught some spelling/grammar error at the last second, or I decide sending the email might be a bad idea.

Undo Send

Default Reply to All and Send & Archive

These two lab features are designed to remove a couple of clicks from your overall inbox experience. The are Default Reply to All and Send & Archive.

As you probably know, if you want to Reply to everyone in an email, you need to specifically click “Reply to All.” Default Reply to All makes it so when you press the “Reply” button, you are automatically replaying to everyone in the ‘To’ and ‘CC’ fields. If you don’t want to Reply to All, simply press the “Reply” button again.

The “Send & Archive” button is one I absolutely love. It used to be the case that I’d reply to an email, let it send, then press the archive button to get it out of my inbox. With the Send & Archive feature, the email is sent and then the conversation is automatically archived. Words cannot describe how much I love this.

Both of these features can be enabled through Settings->Lab.

Bonus: Add any Gadget by URL

This lab feature will allow you to add any Google Gadget right into GMail. All you need to do is grab the URL from the developer. I’ve added Google Calendar and Remember the Milk, but the possibilities are endless.

Conclusion

Obviously there are scores of other additions to GMail you can make between GMail Labs, Google Gadgets, and browser extensions. There are also a ton of little hacks like the + sign one you can do if you can find the right blog post! My suggestion would be to mess around with GMail and check out the Help Section for more tips and tricks. If you have one I didn’t mention here, let us know about it in the comments!

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In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting UserMood. The developer describes UserMood as an easy way to make one click website surveys to learn what your users really need. Get a steady stream of useful insights from your customers or site visitors right from your existing web pages. Learn if your customers would recommend you to others, if they understand your pricing, how they feel about your service, or anything else you’d like to know with no coding needed, just a quick copy and paste.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Your UserMood Widgets

Tweak your slides and widgets

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in UserMood:

1. Embed one click surveys into any web page
2. Simple reports with export to Excel
3. Customize widget colors to match your site
4. Control timing and targeting of widget display
5. Setup once with a simple Javascript copy and paste

Requirements: Any recent web browser
Price: $12/month
Developer: ExtremePlanner Software, Inc

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Enter MobileApps.com, which officially launched today and describes itself as an advertising, discovery and distribution network with three distinct value propositions for end users, developers, and publishers.

For end users, the MobileApps.com serves as a destination that currently lists 500,000 apps (around 2,000 are hosted on the site) for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and other platform in a collected setting (this so-called marketplace works much like GetJar and similar sites).

With every download, developers are pocketing 95% of the price in the case of non-Apple apps (MobileApps.com takes the rest). Developers can import their own apps from other stores to claim and publish them on the site “in 60 seconds”.

Probably the most interesting element of MobileApps.com is that it’s an advertising network for mobile apps: the site is offering “smart widgets” that showcase specific apps to publishers: website owners, for example, can incorporate those widgets into their pages and customize them (based on different countries, keywords, categories etc.).

Example widgets:

The idea here is that these “mini app stores” are targeted to people visiting these websites, making the apps on offer more relevant (and less intrusive) to users – apart from boosting sales. That way a travel site, for example, would offer just travel-related apps within the widget.

Much like Adwords/Adsense, the position on the widget is determined on a bidding basis through a self-service tool. And just as Google, MobileApps.com gets 38% of the amount the advertisers (developers, branded app owners) pay for the position (click here for more information on how the advertising system works).

MobileApps.com is incorporated in Singapore and just received US$400,000 in funding from Tokyo-based mobile company I-FREEK [JP]. The company’s main competitor is US-based AppTap.

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PBX+ is the next generation hosted phone system that offers a fortune 500 business phone system that can be set up in just a few minutes.

A full fledged auto-attendant to greet your callers, unlimited extensions and text to speech greetings are offered.

PBX+ routes calls to Skype and Gtalk making it the preferred choice for businesses to take the phone system global.Calls can also be routed to landlines and mobiles across 40 different countries.

Free shared numbers across from 40 countries are offered to businesses to have a local presence. Customers can simply call a number from any country and enter your extension number to reach your business.

The Push-To-Call widget takes your phone system on to your website, email signatures and social profiles. Readers can simply click the ‘Call Us’ button placed on a webpage and get connected without any cost directly from the browser.

‘Know Your Caller’ widget pops a screen everytime someone calls you and shows your callers information

view more

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The StumbleUpon Widget can be used by publishers to surface content on the site with the best shelf life. The widget will come in three sizes and requires a line of script to be embedded on to a webpage. The widget will surface stories and videos suited to the users’ interest based on what has been rated highly by the StumbleUpon community of 15 million users.

Sponsor

When a user is on a page with a StumbleUpon widget installed they will see links that are tailored to their interests. The company touts the widget as a way to fill unsold ad space on and spark interest in exploring the site, thus increasing page views and time spent consuming content.

StumbleUpon claims to be the largest non-Facebook referrer of social media traffic. The company is not specific, but that would likely include Twitter, Reddit, Digg, XYDO and other similar tools for publishers. As of April 2010, StumbleUpon funneled twice as much traffic to publishers as Twitter. The user base is predominately between 18 and 34 years old and split 54% male to 46% female.

StumbleUpon has a couple of other publisher products as well, including badges (which look like any normal share button) and a URL shortener (su.pr). The company claims that publishers get 20-25% more traffic from StumbleUpon when they institute badges.

There are a few drawbacks for publishers. A lot of publishers choose to self-aggregate content within posts or certain locations within their sites. The StumbleUpon widget would take that control from them and automate through the company’s index. Another drawback is widget/badge/button fatigue. Share buttons and third-party widgets have to be maintained by publishers and the more of them there are, the more of a time-consuming process it becomes. While the StumbleUpon widget takes up space where there would otherwise be nothing (or unsold ad inventory), it is another piece of real estate on the page.

Increasingly, it is hard to justify clutter for the sake of utilizing empty space. Facebook and Twitter both have widgets as well, and those ecosystems have millions more users than StumbleUpon does. Sometimes, simpler is just better.

If you are a publisher, does the StumbleUpon widget seem like a good idea? Do content consumers care about clutter on a page? Let us know in the comments.

Discuss

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The StumbleUpon Widget can be used by publishers to surface content on the site with the best shelf life. The widget will come in three sizes and requires a line of script to be embedded on to a webpage. The widget will surface stories and videos suited to the users’ interest based on what has been rated highly by the StumbleUpon community of 15 million users.

Sponsor

When a user is on a page with a StumbleUpon widget installed they will see links that are tailored to their interests. The company touts the widget as a way to fill unsold ad space on and spark interest in exploring the site, thus increasing page views and time spent consuming content.

StumbleUpon claims to be the largest non-Facebook referrer of social media traffic. The company is not specific, but that would likely include Twitter, Reddit, Digg, XYDO and other similar tools for publishers. As of April 2010, StumbleUpon funneled twice as much traffic to publishers as Twitter. The user base is predominately between 18 and 34 years old and split 54% male to 46% female.

StumbleUpon has a couple of other publisher products as well, including badges (which look like any normal share button) and a URL shortener (su.pr). The company claims that publishers get 20-25% more traffic from StumbleUpon when they institute badges.

There are a few drawbacks for publishers. A lot of publishers choose to self-aggregate content within posts or certain locations within their sites. The StumbleUpon widget would take that control from them and automate through the company’s index. Another drawback is widget/badge/button fatigue. Share buttons and third-party widgets have to be maintained by publishers and the more of them there are, the more of a time-consuming process it becomes. While the StumbleUpon widget takes up space where there would otherwise be nothing (or unsold ad inventory), it is another piece of real estate on the page.

Increasingly, it is hard to justify clutter for the sake of utilizing empty space. Facebook and Twitter both have widgets as well, and those ecosystems have millions more users than StumbleUpon does. Sometimes, simpler is just better.

If you are a publisher, does the StumbleUpon widget seem like a good idea? Do content consumers care about clutter on a page? Let us know in the comments.

Discuss

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They have a pretty simple customization when you generate them, but what many people haven’t noticed is that you can make advanced customization to them with CSS. This is possible because the Twitter team has made it without using any inline CSS rules, and they are such nice people that almost all their CSS is quite simple to overwrite (just with the class of the item itself in most cases).

Then, what you have to do is to turn on your CSS Zen Garden side and let your imagination create awesome widgets in a really simple way.

So, let’s rock!

Our result

Here you can see a preview of our widgets. The first one is our profile widget, and the second is our search widget (searching about tweets related to 1stwebdesigner, of course). You can see our DEMO or DOWNLOAD SOURCE to try your own combinations.

The widget customization

Let’s start with the profile widget, so we can try out some customization.

You can generate your basic profile widget on Twitter’s page.

If you run this code you will see a structure like this:

<div #twtr-widget-N .twtr-widget> <em>- Where N is our widget's ID on page (if you have more than one) and class is the same for all widgets</em>
	<div .twtr-hd> <em>- Widget header, with avatar, screen name and @user</em>
	<div .twtr-bd> <em>- Widget body, with all tweets</em>
		<div .twtr-tweets> <em>- All  tweet's container</em>
			<div #tweet-id-N .twtr-tweet> <em>- Each tweet has his own div with a unique ID</em>
	<div .twtr-ft> <em>- Widget footer, with twitter's link</em>
<em>

With this generic structure in mind we can do all the customizations. But the first thing that we can do to make things easier to customize our widget is to set its background to transparent when you call it’s js, with this:

//this is how we call our widget
new TWTR.Widget({
	  version: 2,
	  type: 'profile',
	  rpp: 4,
	  interval: 6000,
	  width: 300, //we've changed our default width, to make it prettier
	  height: 300,
	  theme: {
		shell: {
		  background: 'transparent', //this is important
		  color: '#333'
		},
		tweets: {
		  background: 'transparent', //this is important
		  color: '#333',
		  links: '#c10000'
		}
	  },
	  features: {
		scrollbar: false,
		loop: false,
		live: false,
		hashtags: true,
		timestamp: true,
		avatars: false,
		behavior: 'all'
	  }
	}).render().setUser('1stwebdesigner').start();

Let’s start our CSS with the widget’s main box:

.twtr-widget {
	float: left;
	width: 300px; /* this is important if you want to make any positioning */
	margin: 50px 0 0 80px;
	padding: 0 0 15px;
	background: #fafafa url(wavecut.png); /* our cute background */

	/*** cross browser box shadow ***/
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;
	-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Glow(color=#ffffff,strength=3)";
	filter:
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=0,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=90,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=180,strength=3)
		progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color=#ffffff,direction=270,strength=3);
	box-shadow: 0 0 2px #fff;

	/*** kind of cross browser rounded corner ***/
	-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
	-khtml-border-radius: 3px;
	-moz-border-radius: 3px;
	border-radius: 3px;
}

The result after this will be a basic widget with a new background, shadow and rounded corners. Well, after that we need to change our widget’s header, so:

.twtr-hd {
	/*** cross browser rgba ***/
	background-color: transparent;
	background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.3);
	filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#30ffffff,endColorstr=#30ffffff);
	-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#30ffffff,endColorstr=#30ffffff)";
}

Now you may notice that the area where your avatar is, username and @userid has a different background. The funny part is that it works even in IE (oh, yeah, rga on IE). You could make your avatar bigger, change your name’s style, or even hide this stuff if you want. You know, from now on it is all up to your imagination!

If you are one of our loyal readers you may notice that [update link with clean url after approved]we’ve talked about curly quotes with :before[/link]. Long story short, you can create this effect with a few lines of CSS and get a really good result in all major browsers. We’ve customized our tweets list also, with a border, but with this element you will have to force priority with CSS because it has two classes in Twitter’s default CSS:

.twtr-widget .twtr-bd .twtr-tweet { /* they have 2 classes in default, do we have to use 3 */
 	margin: 5px 0 0;
	 padding: 0 0 5px;
	 border-bottom: 1px solid #cecece;
}
.twtr-tweet:before {
	display: block;
	float: left;
	margin: -5px 0 0 5px;
	font-size: 50px; /* let's make it a big quote! */
	content: "“";
	color: #bababa;
	text-shadow: 0 1px 1px #909090;
	font-family: "times new roman", serif;
}

And last but not least, we just hide all that Twitter link stuff. As an alternative, you can hide default content and replace it with CSS (as we’ve done with our curly quote) or jQuery (with text()). So our footer will be:

.twtr-ft { display: none; }

Searches and advanced querys

You can create an advanced widget with search widget. You could, for example, get tweets from all your blog’s writers, and what people are saying about them. This kind of thing is possible because we have advanced search operators.

You can set this in your widget’s “search” attribute. Our example’s js would be something like this:

new TWTR.Widget({
	  version: 2,
	  type: 'search',
	  search: 'from:dsgn_pro OR from:1stwebdesigner OR 1stwebdesigner OR 1wd', // here is our query!
	  interval: 6000,
	  title: 'What do they say about 1stWebdesigner',
	  subject: '1WD related tweets',
	  width: 300,
	  height: 300,
	  theme: {
		shell: {
		  background: 'transparent',
		  color: '#333'
		},
		tweets: {
		  background: 'transparent',
		  color: '#333',
		  links: '#c10000'
		}
	  },
	  features: {
		scrollbar: false,
		loop: true,
		live: true,
		hashtags: true,
		timestamp: true,
		avatars: true,
		toptweets: true,
		behavior: 'default'
	  }
	}).render().start();

Now what you have to do is try out some variations until you get something that you find really interesting. Some good operators that can help you in this task are:

• #item - hastag search operator
• from:USERID - search for anything tweeted by @USERID
• filter:links - When you add this to your query, it will return only results with links. Pretty useful to search for resources
• and  and ?- They search for positive / negative / question attitude in the results. Pretty awesome, it should be an international operator in all search engines
• -item (minus) – This is the “not” operator. It excludes all “item” from search.

Are you hungry yet?

There are some alternatives to this widgets that are really worth trying:

TwitStamp

This service generates an image with your last tweet so you can put it anywhere without worrying about js loading cache or anything else. Really useful for mail or forum signatures.

TwitterFans

With this WordPress plugin you can show your followers. It is really close to what you get with Facebook’s likebox.

Twitter feed for WordPress

It does almost the same thing as the Twitter widget, with better WordPress’s integration.

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Custom Dojo Class

dijit.form.ComboBox provides a dropDownClass parameter which allows you to customize which class should handle dropdown duties.  The default class is dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu.  We will extend dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu and for our custom duplicate-preventing class, then change the dropDownClass parameter for any instance of ComboBox where we don’t want duplicates.

The method that handles items before placing them into the dropdown is the createOptions method. createOptions cycles through the results and creates the HTML for them.  What we need to do is “intercept” the results before they can be added to the dropdown.  Let’s create our custom _UniqueComboBoxMenu class with intercept capabilities:

// Provide the class
dojo.provide("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu");

// Get dependencies
dojo.require("dijit.form.ComboBox");

// Declare the class
dojo.declare("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu", dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu, {

	createOptions: function(results, dataObject, labelFunc) {

		// Cycle through to find uniques
		var uniqueKeys = {}, uniqueItems = [];
		dojo.forEach(results,function(result,index) {
			var label = labelFunc(result);
			if(typeof label != "string") {
				label = label.label;
			}
			if(!uniqueKeys[label]) {
				uniqueKeys[label] = result;
				uniqueItems.push(result);
			}
		});

		// Update arguments arr
		arguments[0] = uniqueItems;

		// Call inheritance chain for this method, return result
		return this.inherited(arguments);
	}
});

Our custom createOptions method receives the options, dataObject, and labelFunc, a function which generates the item’s label text/HTML.  Before any other processing, we cycle through each item, create its label, and store the label in an object so that we know when it’s been used.  If the label hasn’t been used yet, we add the option to the uniqueItems array.

Once the uniques have been created, we push them into the original arguments array’s first position, then call this.inherited(arguments) to call the method’s original functionality.  In plain English, all we’re doing is stripping duplicates from the results array and carrying on as usual.  This technique is less evasive than directly editing the existing class and, as you can see, our custom class stays small.

Implementing the Class

Implementing the class is simple.  Since ComboBox provides the dropDownClass option, all you need to do is provide our custom class to each instance that should implement it:

var combo = new dijit.form.ComboBox({
	store: myDataStore
	dropDownClass: "davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu"
},"myNode");

The instance above will only return unique suggestions!

This post should highlight one aspect of Dojo that I love — extreme flexibility and the ability to create tiny classes thanks to the awesome inheritance pattern provided by dojo.declare().  Keep this class handy if you use Dijit forms and web services!

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The people widget showcases content from friends, family and colleagues who are in touch with you constantly, but are buried somewhere in the contact list. Add to it the all new Importance Markers, there is a very good chance your productivity might go up!

Overview

The Gmail People Widget has not been rolled out to everyone yet, but as soon it is made available, next to every email message you can see contextual information about the people in that conversation. In addition to that, a list of recent emails you received from them, relevant Buzz posts (who is using it by the way?), shared documents and calendar events are listed as well.

Gmail People Widget

The feature not only helps you stay on top of the past updates but to connect with them in a bunch of ways too. Quick access to a variety of ways to communicate with individuals – start a group chat or schedule a meeting with groups of people are readily available in the form of icons at the top.

How Useful and Original is it?

Initiating Group Chat

Depending on what type of work your are doing and how many people you interact with, the usefulness of the Gmail People Widget might vary. Right now, the feature looks more like Gtalk on steroids, but is a great start though. Another thing I couldn’t help but notice is the striking similarity with some other apps that provide similar functionality in Gmail.

Rapportive

A couple of plugins/apps offer such people and conversation centric communication widget and the one I have been watching for a while is Rapportive. I could not remember any instances of Google blatantly ripping of User Interface or features from a third party app, but in this case, it looks like they have slipped. Even if I ignore how many features of Gmail People Widget and Rapportive are strikingly similar, its the UI that looks like a digital clone that plays the spoilsport.

Social isn’t Google’s forte but the People Widget is well designed and is extremely user friendly. It isn’t intrusive and seems to only help in locating attached files and conversations. One thing that bodes well for Gmail People Widget is that you don’t have to install a plugin to get all these features unlike the competitors.

Importance Markers

Gmail also got another tiny new addition (it wasn’t even mentioned in the official Gmail blog) named Importance Markers. May be because they don’t do much! The markers works just like the Star feature, just open a mail and tap on the marker to let Gmail know it’s important communication. The same way, you can mark certain mails unimportant too. Later when mails from the marked sources arrive, Gmail automatically moves the ones that are important to the top.

Turning Off Markers

Feel that it sounds just like a stripped down version of the Gmail Priority Inbox? Looks like it is actually meant to be that way. If you want to turn off the feature, you will have to head over to the Priority Inbox tab under Settings to make the changes. Do note that this feature is turned on by default even if you have the Priority Inbox disabled.

Share Your Thoughts!

What’s your take on Gmail People Widget and the importance markers? Are they going to help boost your current productivity levels or going to be an additional source of distraction from work?

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Details : magazine layout, 2 right sidebars, clean design, widget ready, central top quote / announcement section, 4 column footer.

Get the stock images and vectors you need for your designs on Stutterstock

Want to advertise here ? Contact us

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In the comments, Eric Klein says one of them looks like its trying to boost ranking by “making it seem that there are a lot of requests.”

“Could they be trying to game their placement on search pages by hitting the search sites often enough to pretend to be meaningful?” he asks.

Weinberg responds, “Ahh, that’s a very plausible theory.”

“It’s known as ‘referral spam,” adds @TristanPerryIX in the comments. “It spams servers with HTTP referrers for two purposes:

1) Sometimes webmasters will (like you done ) review the logs, and then click on their website. I assume these spammers are (wrongly!) assuming that this is ‘good’ traffic which might result in a sale/advert click.

2) Some websites have an automatic ‘these websites link to us..’ section or widget. Naturally referral spam could be used to game this section, thus getting a backlink (thus gaming the search engines).”

DuckDuckGo doesn’t save IPs, which is one of its selling points. It blocks them at the firewall level, Weinberg says, noting that this is dissociated from query data. “If we didn’t block the most egregious botnet machines and abusers, our machines would almost instantly be under water,” he adds.

“This discussion now makes me wonder if other search engines include this errant traffic in their query counts,” says Weinberg. “We work hard to keep them completely out because they would overwhelm our real direct queries #s and therefore distort our perception of progress. We also separate out API requests for the same reason, which now also makes me wonder whether everyone else is doing that too.”

It’s an interesting factor to consider, when you think about search market share.

Below, you can view a recent interview we conducted with Weinberg:

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Custom Dojo Class

dijit.form.ComboBox provides a dropDownClass parameter which allows you to customize which class should handle dropdown duties.  The default class is dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu.  We will extend dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu and for our custom duplicate-preventing class, then change the dropDownClass parameter for any instance of ComboBox where we don’t want duplicates.

The method that handles items before placing them into the dropdown is the createOptions method. createOptions cycles through the results and creates the HTML for them.  What we need to do is “intercept” the results before they can be added to the dropdown.  Let’s create our custom _UniqueComboBoxMenu class with intercept capabilities:

// Provide the class
dojo.provide("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu");

// Get dependencies
dojo.require("dijit.form.ComboBox");

// Declare the class
dojo.declare("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu", dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu, {

	createOptions: function(results, dataObject, labelFunc) {

		// Cycle through to find uniques
		var uniqueKeys = {}, uniqueItems = [];
		dojo.forEach(results,function(result,index) {
			var label = labelFunc(result);
			if(typeof label != "string") {
				label = label.label;
			}
			if(!uniqueKeys[label]) {
				uniqueKeys[label] = result;
				uniqueItems.push(result);
			}
		});

		// Update arguments arr
		arguments[0] = uniqueItems;

		// Call inheritance chain for this method, return result
		return this.inherited(arguments);
	}
});

Our custom createOptions method receives the options, dataObject, and labelFunc, a function which generates the item’s label text/HTML.  Before any other processing, we cycle through each item, create its label, and store the label in an object so that we know when it’s been used.  If the label hasn’t been used yet, we add the option to the uniqueItems array.

Once the uniques have been created, we push them into the original arguments array’s first position, then call this.inherited(arguments) to call the method’s original functionality.  In plain English, all we’re doing is stripping duplicates from the results array and carrying on as usual.  This technique is less evasive than directly editing the existing class and, as you can see, our custom class stays small.

Implementing the Class

Implementing the class is simple.  Since ComboBox provides the dropDownClass option, all you need to do is provide our custom class to each instance that should implement it:

var combo = new dijit.form.ComboBox({
	store: myDataStore
	dropDownClass: "davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu"
},"myNode");

The instance above will only return unique suggestions!

This post should highlight one aspect of Dojo that I love — extreme flexibility and the ability to create tiny classes thanks to the awesome inheritance pattern provided by dojo.declare().  Keep this class handy if you use Dijit forms and web services!

Go to Source

Custom Dojo Class

dijit.form.ComboBox provides a dropDownClass parameter which allows you to customize which class should handle dropdown duties.  The default class is dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu.  We will extend dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu and for our custom duplicate-preventing class, then change the dropDownClass parameter for any instance of ComboBox where we don’t want duplicates.

The method that handles items before placing them into the dropdown is the createOptions method. createOptions cycles through the results and creates the HTML for them.  What we need to do is “intercept” the results before they can be added to the dropdown.  Let’s create our custom _UniqueComboBoxMenu class with intercept capabilities:

// Provide the class
dojo.provide("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu");

// Get dependencies
dojo.require("dijit.form.ComboBox");

// Declare the class
dojo.declare("davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu", dijit.form._ComboBoxMenu, {

	createOptions: function(results, dataObject, labelFunc) {

		// Cycle through to find uniques
		var uniqueKeys = {}, uniqueItems = [];
		dojo.forEach(results,function(result,index) {
			var label = labelFunc(result);
			if(typeof label != "string") {
				label = label.label;
			}
			if(!uniqueKeys[label]) {
				uniqueKeys[label] = result;
				uniqueItems.push(result);
			}
		});

		// Update arguments arr
		arguments[0] = uniqueItems;

		// Call inheritance chain for this method, return result
		return this.inherited(arguments);
	}
});

Our custom createOptions method receives the options, dataObject, and labelFunc, a function which generates the item’s label text/HTML.  Before any other processing, we cycle through each item, create its label, and store the label in an object so that we know when it’s been used.  If the label hasn’t been used yet, we add the option to the uniqueItems array.

Once the uniques have been created, we push them into the original arguments array’s first position, then call this.inherited(arguments) to call the method’s original functionality.  In plain English, all we’re doing is stripping duplicates from the results array and carrying on as usual.  This technique is less evasive than directly editing the existing class and, as you can see, our custom class stays small.

Implementing the Class

Implementing the class is simple.  Since ComboBox provides the dropDownClass option, all you need to do is provide our custom class to each instance that should implement it:

var combo = new dijit.form.ComboBox({
	store: myDataStore
	dropDownClass: "davidwalsh.form._UniqueComboBoxMenu"
},"myNode");

The instance above will only return unique suggestions!

This post should highlight one aspect of Dojo that I love — extreme flexibility and the ability to create tiny classes thanks to the awesome inheritance pattern provided by dojo.declare().  Keep this class handy if you use Dijit forms and web services!

Display Unique Results within dijit.form.ComboBox is a post from: David Walsh :: Legendary scribbles about JavaScript, HTML5, AJAX, PHP, CSS, and ∞.

Related posts:

1. Make Dijit’s FilteringSelect Widget Display an Empty Option Value Label
2. Troubleshooting CSS Style Assignments within Dojo
3. Better onChange with Dijit’s intermediateChanges
4. Create a Context Menu with Dojo and Dijit
5. Creating Dojo Widgets Programmatically or Declaratively

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&you™ brings new thinking to Johnson & Johnson’s 125-year philanthropic commitment. This unique new tool for good takes volunteer and job opportunities, ways to donate, events and news, and brings them together in one widget for your site, blog, or Facebook page. &you™ is about helping those who put the needs of others first, giving them more ways to let their good work grow.

view more

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Advertise here

When you can refer to yourself as the first author to surpass 10,000 sales on CodeCanyon, you get a day in your honor on Nettuts+ – no questions asked!

In less than two years, Wim Mostmans — better known as Sitebase — created and listed 55 incredible components, and amassed over 10,000 sales.

What does it take to become a massive success on the Envato marketplaces?

• Certainly talent
• Persistance
• Consistency
• Attention to detail
• A focus on cosmetics (often overlooked in the coding world)
• Self promotion
• Branding

Wim has executed each of these items to perfection, and deserves every penny he’s made. Here’s to you, Sitebase!

The Best of Sitebase

1. Advanced Backup System

2. Featured Box Slider

3. Ajax Tables

4. Form Processor

5. WordPress Widget Bundle

6. Statusboard

7. API Framework

8. Mobile Site PRO

9. LogPress

10. Extended Google Analytics for WordPress

11. API Client

Conclusion

So whether you’re a buyer of one of Sitebase’s items, or simply an envious admirer, please join me in congratulating Wim on this incredible achievement! Well done, buddy!

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Advertise here with BSA

jQuery helps us web designers and developers do some amazing things, and plugins make it almost too easy. That’s why it’s an obsession of mine to find new ones. I’ve been on the lookout for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve collected some good ones. Here are 8 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins.

Isotype

Isotype is a jQuery plugin for creating dynamic and intelligent layouts. It also lets you reveal & hide items with filtering, re–order items with sorting – all done with captivating animations.

jQuewy

jQuewy is a simple, efficient, and lightweight loader for javascript functions, with a powerful CDN-ready backend.

Sausage

Sausage is a jQuery UI widget for contextual pagination. It complements long or infinite-scrolling pages by keeping the user informed of her location within the document.

ImageLens

ImageLens is a jQuery plug-in to add lens style zooming effect to an image.

jquery.timepickr.js

This jQuery plugin is an experimental approach to enhancing web time picking.

CodeExplorer

This jQuery plugin produces an online code explorer. It allows for different themes, multiple instances, fullscreen mode, github connections, and much more.

960 Grid on jQuery-Mobile

960 Grid on jQuery-Mobile is a port of 960 grid to jquery mobile. It merge the flexibility of 960.gs, and the ease of jquery mobile. It aims to bring more flexibility to jquery-mobile layout and thus make it easier to use on tablets.

jMenu

jMenu is a jQuery plugin that enables us to create horizontal navigations with unlimited sub-menus.

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Today, we are glad to present a new freebie: a beautiful theme, designed by Vlad and Elena Scanteie which was developed exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers. As usual, the theme is free to use in both private and commercial projects. The theme is based upon the Twenty Ten WordPress theme and requires WordPress 3.0 to run.

Visit the demo or a large view.

The upper area contains a slider where you can place extra emphasis on your most important pages. The main area can include the content of your latest blog posts. On the right side you’ll find an overview of latest blog entries as well as the latest tweets.

The upper area of the sidebar features five latest comments. You can place any widget under it as it is defined as a dynamic sidebar. Also, right above the footer you’ll find a Flickr gallery in case you wish to showcase your latest shots. The footer itself is designed in a pronounced blue, giving it a nice contrast to the rest of the design. There you you can place your˜ widgets such as Pages, Categories, Archives, and others. A soft upper area, a useful middle area, and a strong footer are the essence of this theme.

Download the Theme for Free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

• live demo
• large preview (.png, 0,23 Mb)
• download Splendio (Theme + Plugins) (zip, 0.8 Mb)
• download Splendio (Theme + Plugins + PSD Sources) (zip, 6.4 Mb)
• download mirror (zip, 6.4 Mb)
• release on the developer’s site

Screenshots

The footer area.

Main content area.

The comments area.

Behind the Design

As always, here are some insights from the designer:

“Releasing a theme on Smashing Magazine is always a challenge for us at DesignDisease. A challenge we look forward to. ‘Splendio’ is a theme where we try to solve the empty space that exists around most themes with a joyful rhythm of lines and squares, complimented with a light color palette. The specialized header images complete the package, as it can be used both in a static or randomized manner.”

Thank you, Vlad and Elena! We sincerely appreciate your work and your good intentions.

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011. |

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Google Maps All In One allows you to easily embed and customize Google maps on your WordPress site – in posts, pages or as an easy to use widget.

WPMU DEV SEO is a solution for optimizing your WordPress site to achieve the highest search engine rankings possible.

YouTube White Label Shortcode allows you to white label YouTube videos and comes with a shortcode generator in a metabox on the post screen.

Updated plugins

Floating Menu creates a widget, which adds a floating, sticky, drop down menu from any standard WordPress custom menu using jQuery.

Store Locator empowers you to efficiently display and manage your important stores, locations, or other points of interest on your website in a manner that’s easily searchable by visitors.

OrangeBox is a lightweight, cross-browser, automated jQuery lightbox script. It can display images, quicktime videos, YouTube and Vimeo videos, Flash SWF files, and inline content (along with links in the inline content to open another lightbox).

Simple Top Posts is a super simple top posts widget based on comments. Choose weekly, monthly, or all time.

Updated plugins

AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button helps people share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious, and well over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites.

Exploit Scanner searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames.

What bugs me with every social media sharing widget I have looked at is that they are not very keyboard friendly, i.e. they are difficult or even impossible to use without a mouse. They also tend to use invalid, obtrusive markup.

Read full post

Posted in Accessibility.

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Netdohoa-ThemeV02 Blogger Template

Free Netdohoa-ThemeV02 Blogger Template is a nice and clean blogger template with full width content slideshow. It’s a 2 column blogger template with 3 column footer, featured content, 2 level menu, pagination for blogger ready, social widget ready and more. This template suitable for all type of blogs

Similar Templates : Netdohoa-ThemeV01 Blogger Template & Visoko Blogger Template

Author : Nguồn – http://www.netdohoa.com/

Netdohoa-ThemeV01 Blogger Template

Free Netdohoa-ThemeV01 Blogger Template is a nice and clean blogger template. It’s a 2 column blogger template with featured content, 2 level menu, pagination for blogger ready, social widget ready and more. This template suitable for all type of blogs

Similar Templates : Innovation Blogger Template & Solimex Blogger Template

Author : Nguồn – http://www.netdohoa.com/

It doesnt rely on external services which go on and off, or add latency while loading. It is based on a library which build qrcode in various language. jquery.qrcode.js wraps it to make it easy to include in your own code. You can also try out QR-Code Generator.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jeromeetienne.github.com/jquery-qrcode/
License: MIT License

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Using What Font is you can identify the font you are looking for!

Aactis Shopping Cart: easy, fast and reliable. Check for special offers.

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Nowadays successful blogging definitely depends on effective social media usage. Twitter is one of the most popular social networks and you must consider its benefits if you want to be a successful blogger. Since WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms for its possibility to extend it functions with tons of plugins, I would like to show you some useful plugins related to Twitter. In this post you will find 15 useful Twitter plugins for your WordPress blog.

Tweet Old Post

Tweet Old Posts randomly picks your older post based on the interval specified by you. The primary function of this plugin is to promote older blog posts by tweeting about them and getting more traffic.

TwitPic

Displays your latest pictures from TwitPic in the sidebar of your blog. The plugin is widget ready and comes with many configuration options such as customizable css file.

WP to Twitter

The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress blog using your selected URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter.

TwitterCounter

Integrate TwitterCounter.com badges on your blog to display the number of followers you have on Twitter

TwitterLink Comments

This plugin will add an extra field to your comment form so a user can add their Twitter username. A user configured ‘follow me’ link is then displayed along with their details on all their comments.

Twitter Feed for WordPres

The WordPress Twitter Feed Plugin lets you simply output any user’s tweets into your WordPress page, template or sidebar. You can customise the username, number of tweets, and style of output.

Tweetable

Tweetable is intended to help integrate Twitter into your blog. It can automatically tweet links to your blog posts as they are published. It can display your latest tweet in your sidebar and add a tweetmeme widget after your posts. You can even use it to share a Twitter account among a blog’s author’s if you wish.

Topsy Retweet Button

Provides a Twitter retweet button for your posts that shows all tweets, enables retweeting, and adds tweets as comments.

Twitter Friendly Links

Your very own TinyURL within your own domain. If you do promote your blog posts in Twitter, then you must make your links look cool.

Tweet Blender

Provides several Twitter widgets: show your own tweets, show tweets relevant to post’s tags, show tweets for Twitter lists, show tweets for hashtags and more.

Twitter Fans

Twitter Fans lets you display your twitter followers in the sidebar as a widget just like Facebook’s fan widget in appearance.

Simple Twitter Connect

Simple Twitter Connect is a series of plugins that let you add any sort of Twitter functionality you like to a WordPress blog. This lets you have an integrated site without a lot of coding, and still letting you customize it exactly the way you’d like.

Twitter Comments – Twitoaster

Twitter Comments system. Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies and/or Twitter Retweets to your Blog’s Posts using WP built-in comment system.

TweetMeme Button

Easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter.

Twitter Avatars In Comments WordPress Plugin

Twittar WordPress plugin main objective is to create a plug-in that uses Twitter to show avatars in comments in WordPress blogs.

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A free comment service allowing website owners to instantly add a comment system to any website or blog.
Everything you need to turn your website into a popular community. This professional comment system is built to scale and fit to any website, from small blogs to fortune 500 companies!
Replace your boring WordPress comments with rich, social and powerful comment widget.
Best of all, installation is as easy as copy and paste!

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Simply put, what Talkatone does is to let you use Google Voice to make and receive phone calls to and from your phone contacts. This is done at no cost whatsoever – all you have to do is to tweak with your Gmail account, and make a phone from the Talkatone phone widget in order to upgrade your Google Voice account, and start receiving/making calls.

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Learn more about Talkatone.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much Talkatone.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

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SnackTools is a suite of web applications designed to simplify the way you create and publish rich media widgets. Our goal is to enable you to easily create your own blog and website widgets, in a fun and effortless way.

Our apps work with most blog platforms, CMS and social websites like Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Joomla, Drupal, Webs, Weebly, Jimdo, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, Ning. Technically, anywhere you can post a YouTube video, you can post a SnackTools widget as well.

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The Dojo JavaScript

The intermediateChanges property is set to false by default so you will need to enable it if you want to use it:

// Create a TextBox that fires onChange whenever the input's value truly changes
var textbox = new dijit.form.TextBox({
	// Set intermediateChanges on
	intermediateChanges: true
});

Connection to the onChange event would look like:

// When the value changes...
dojo.connect(textbox,"onChange",function(value) {
	// Now do something with the value...
	console.log("Value is: ",value);
});

// Value is: D
// Value is: Da
// Value is: Dav
// Value is: Davu
// Value is: Dav
// Value is: Davi
// Value is: David
// Value is: David_
// Value is: David_W

The console.log statement will run with each valuable keystroke or if content is dragged into the box.  intermediateChanges is especially helpful when creating or modifying a widget that should act as an autocompleter.  Keep in mind that simple onKeyUp changes can be misleading, as the value may not change (imagine simply pressing the shift key) — that’s why intermediateChanges is helpful.  Even better is that you don’t have to make that keyup connection an logic yourself — it’s baked right into Dijit!

While intermediateChanges property may seem like a very small feature (and in the grand scheme of Dijit, it is), it’s very helpful when you need it!  Having this functionality baked into Dojo allows you to continue developing without the hassle of creating your own onChange logic.

Follow Me! Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | MooTools Forge.

Full David Walsh Blog Post: Better onChange with Dijit’s intermediateChanges

Related posts:

1. Create a Clearable TextBox with the Dojo Toolkit
2. Delay AJAX Searches with JavaScript’s setTimeout
3. Creating Dojo Widgets Programmatically or Declaratively
4. Create a NoScript Compatible Select Form Element with an onChange Event
5. Organized Selector Chaos with dojo.behavior

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Micro-frameworks are definitely the pocketknives of the JavaScript library world: short, sweet, to the point. And at 5k and under, micro-frameworks are very very portable. A micro-framework does one thing and one thing only – and does it well. No cruft, no featuritis, no feature creep, no excess anywhere.

Microjs.com helps you discover the most compact-but-powerful microframeworks, and makes it easy for you to pick one that’ll work for you.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://microjs.com/
License: MIT License

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Using What Font is you can identify the font you are looking for!

Aactis Shopping Cart: easy, fast and reliable. Check for special offers.

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What can you use the application for?


We Heart It (WHI) is an online image gallery- basically a bookmarking site. Users can save images, organize, and categorize them.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


WHI was founded in 2008 by Fabio Giolito as a way to save and tag images from the blogs he follows. He is focusing on bookmarking at present, but claims that he and his team are always looking for improvements to make the site more interesting.

What are the differences to other applications?


User create collections of interesting images from all over the Internet, but cannot upload directly to the application.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Once registered, a user is directed to their “heart page” where they can add a bio, search for images to heart and tag, and create a list of people they are following.

During review, we began with the settings piece. In this area, users may add a short bio, location, link to blog, and (interestingly) a choice about “unsafe content” that you set to hide if you are not comfortable with nudity or show if you are comfortable with nudity. Users may also upload an avatar photo in JPG, PNG, or GIF, 700KB or less. Passwords may be changed and a widget may be generated to display on a website or blog. Users can indicate whether or not they wish to be notified if someone starts following them on the site. The last settings tab offers “find friends”. This allows users to link their WHI account to a Twitter or Facebook account. If you connect your accounts, you will be directed to any of your friends from those sites who maintain WHI accounts.

When the bio is complete, it is time to explore the site. Explore by friends (if you have connected your social networking sites, or simply browse everyone. If you like a photo, click the heart to indicate that you it. Each photo has tags, so you can find more pictures you like by clicking on a tag, or on a user to see their other photos. While exploring, it is noted that if you checked “show” under “unsafe content”, you will likely encounter nudity and vulgar language. In other words, if you are looking at this at work or are uncomfortable with that kind of thing, be aware that it IS out there.

There are literally thousands of entries. There are photos of celebrities, teens making emo faces, half naked people, shoes, fashion, a lot of people covering their faces, and of course, kittens. There is an enormous amount of content to sift through. If you like something, you can also access the link to the original post from tumblr, blogger, or wherever the image originated from.

The bad news is that you cannot upload images directly to WHI. You must had the button to your browser so that when you see an image on a site, you click the button to add it to your heart collection on WHI – this is called a bookmarklet. This means you can add content from ANY site you go to, but you MUST install the bookmarklet.

Using the bookmarklet, users may find an image on a page and click the icon for WHI. By hovering the cursor over the photo, tags may be added. When finished, simply click “save it on my heart. The image will show up alongside any images that have been selected from WHI.

How does the registration process work?


To create an account, users must provide a display name, a username, an email address, and password.

What does it cost to use the application?


We Heart It is completely free to use.

Who would you recommend the application to?


This seems to be attractive to teen users. Making collections of pictures from around the internet or within the application does not seem like something a lot of adults will find interesting/entertaining.

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Google has begun testing an integration of voice search with the Google.com search engine.

Helpful tipster Matt Schlicht first spotted the feature earlier Monday afternoon. Voice search detects your computer’s microphone settings and can open up a “Speak now” widget to detect your words and transcribe them into a search query.

Android phone owners should be familiar with Google Voice Search; it’s available in the Google Search widget. Google Voice Search on Android even translates voice commands into actions. For example, “Directions to Empire State Building New York” will get you instant driving directions to Manhattan’s famous landmark.

Google has been working hard on improving the accuracy of its voice search product. It now recognizes Chinese and learns from your speech patterns. Perhaps now Google believes it’s accurate enough to begin testing with the general populace.

Right now, voice search seems to be in a limited testing period. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.

While searching by voice may be easier than typing in some cases, we don’t think you’re suddenly going to see an uptick in people shouting out their search queries. As our tipster pointed out on Twitter today, Google Voice Search “works surprisingly well but is very awkward to use in the office.”

What do you think of Google Voice Search? Should Google roll it out on its homepage?

Update: Google’s experiment is confirmed. “Google is constantly experimenting with new features,” was the only thing a Google spokesperson would tell us officially, though.

The Google Voice Search Icon

Google.com users with access to the experiment might see this page the next time they visit Google.com

Google Voice Search Widget

Talking into the mic activates the Google Voice Search widget.

Google Voice Search Results

This is the result. Notice the shade of purple that distinguishes a voice search.

Lead image courtesy of iStockphoto, berekin

More About: Google, google search, google voice search, google.com

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Google has begun testing an integration of voice search with the Google.com search engine.

Helpful tipster Matt Schlicht first spotted the feature earlier Monday afternoon. Voice search detects your computer’s microphone settings and can open up a “Speak now” widget to detect your words and transcribe them into a search query.

Android phone owners should be familiar with Google Voice Search; it’s available in the Google Search widget. Google Voice Search on Android even translates voice commands into actions. For example, “Directions to Empire State Building New York” will get you instant driving directions to Manhattan’s famous landmark.

Google has been working hard on improving the accuracy of its voice search product. It now recognizes Chinese and learns from your speech patterns. Perhaps now Google believes it’s accurate enough to begin testing with the general populace.

Right now, voice search seems to be in a limited testing period. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.

While searching by voice may be easier than typing in some cases, we don’t think you’re suddenly going to see an uptick in people shouting out their search queries. As our tipster pointed out on Twitter today, Google Voice Search “works surprisingly well but is very awkward to use in the office.”

What do you think of Google Voice Search? Should Google roll it out on its homepage?

Update: Google’s experiment is confirmed. “Google is constantly experimenting with new features,” was the only thing a Google spokesperson would tell us officially, though.

The Google Voice Search Icon

Google.com users with access to the experiment might see this page the next time they visit Google.com

Google Voice Search Widget

Talking into the mic activates the Google Voice Search widget.

Google Voice Search Results

This is the result. Notice the shade of purple that distinguishes a voice search.

Lead image courtesy of iStockphoto, berekin

More About: Google, google search, google voice search, google.com

For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:

• Follow Mashable Tech & Gadgets on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Tech & Gadgets channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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The Dojo JavaScript

The intermediateChanges property is set to false by default so you will need to enable it if you want to use it:

// Create a TextBox that fires onChange whenever the input's value truly changes
var textbox = new dijit.form.TextBox({
	// Set intermediateChanges on
	intermediateChanges: true
});

Connection to the onChange event would look like:

// When the value changes...
dojo.connect(textbox,"onChange",function(value) {
	// Now do something with the value...
	console.log("Value is: ",value);
});

// Value is: D
// Value is: Da
// Value is: Dav
// Value is: Davu
// Value is: Dav
// Value is: Davi
// Value is: David
// Value is: David_
// Value is: David_W

The console.log statement will run with each valuable keystroke or if content is dragged into the box.  intermediateChanges is especially helpful when creating or modifying a widget that should act as an autocompleter.  Keep in mind that simple onKeyUp changes can be misleading, as the value may not change (imagine simply pressing the shift key) — that’s why intermediateChanges is helpful.  Even better is that you don’t have to make that keyup connection an logic yourself — it’s baked right into Dijit!

While intermediateChanges property may seem like a very small feature (and in the grand scheme of Dijit, it is), it’s very helpful when you need it!  Having this functionality baked into Dojo allows you to continue developing without the hassle of creating your own onChange logic.

Follow Me! Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | MooTools Forge.

Full David Walsh Blog Post: Better onChange with Dijit’s intermediateChanges

Related posts:

1. Create a Clearable TextBox with the Dojo Toolkit
2. Delay AJAX Searches with JavaScript’s setTimeout
3. Creating Dojo Widgets Programmatically or Declaratively
4. Create a NoScript Compatible Select Form Element with an onChange Event
5. Organized Selector Chaos with dojo.behavior

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The best thing to do in these cases is to use one or more classes for your plugin, and to use a namespace for these. So, for instance, a class called “YoastYoutube” instead of “Youtube”. One of the benefits of using a class is that the function names within that class can be short and concise and need not be namespace. So you could have a function get(), within that class, and it would never break anything.

This is also valid for other instances where your chosen names might collide: custom taxonomies and custom post types, widget names and also specific hooks for actions and filters that you add to your plugin or theme.

Using a namespace for your functions and classes is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast – Tweaking Websites.

A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don’t want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

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HelpOnClick is a chat for live person help, support, sales and customer service.

• Real time live chat with your visitors
• Predefined messages for quick live support
• See what the visitor is typing before they submit it
• Get messages by email when you’re offline
• Follow real time traffic with visitor information
• Push chat invitation to your visitors for live help
• Improve your sales conversion rate
• Receive customer feedback to improve support

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A complete test & benchmark suite is coming soon. You may also read through the annotated source code or visit the project page on GitHub. Sausage depends on both jQuery and the jQuery UI widget factory.

Requirements: jQuery, jQuery UI Framework
Demo: http://christophercliff.github.com/sausage/
License: MIT License

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Using What Font is you can identify the font you are looking for!

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If you have a worldwide audience, or your site is hosted in a different country from where your visitors live, it is useful to see how long it takes to load your web pages. With loads.in you simply enter the full URL of the page you want to check, and the page is retreived by a browser at a random location. For each subsequent check you can choose a specific location and browser profile.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://loads.in/
License: License Free

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Esyndicat – A Powerful PHP Web Directory Software

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Anton is a very clean yet bold WordPress theme that is perfect for all sorts of blogs. It comes with a gray and red design and has been enhanced with some good premium-like features.

Europe is clean, simple and stylish.

Minimal is a very simple theme that should be easy to extend with your own styling should you want to. It has 3 widget areas in the footer for extra links and a navigation area in the header.