Domain name Slamming.. NameJuice.com AKA Domain Registry of America

// July 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Abuse, Blogging, Domain Names, Facebook, Featured, For Geeks, Headline, Hosting, News, Social Network, Twitter, WTF, Web Hosting, webmaster

Use social networking to fight back against these types of companies..!!! BE A SNIPER!

I’m bringing this up because it irritates me personally to no end to see innocent people taken for a ride.. so I just wanted to make sure that everyone who reads my blog knows that Domain Registry of America (DROA) is pulling off their domain name scam under a “nifty” new domain name, “NameJuice.com” (a.k.a. Domain Registry of Canada, droc.ca)

So, if you’ve never heard of the scam known as “Domain name slamming”. Then….…please read on..

The scam is this… DROA sends you what appears to be an invoice for a domain name renewal, making it appear as if they’re your current domain name registrar and that it’s absolutely URGENT that you renew your domain name or risk losing it forever. They also email out “Transfer confirmation” emails to domain name owners and how people don’t question those I have no idea but people continue to fall for them.. in these emails people are asked to confirm their transfer request. It seems everyone would know wether they requested a transfer or not but I guess not.

Anyway, some people are completely clueless when it comes to who their domain name registrar is, and will unwittingly pay the invoice, not realizing they are actually transferring their domain to someone other than their original provider. In many cases this is just the beginning of much bigger problems and MUCH higher renewal fees AND..In most all cases the domain name wasn’t even up for renewal!! AND It’s not cheap!! They charge $75 bucks a year from what I’ve heard which as most of us know is ridiculous to say the least..Sad thing is none of this is illegal! Because somewhere in the letter in small print.. it says “this is not a domain name renewal this is a transfer” and as we all know… most people don’t even know the difference between the two anyway.

Well, DROA.com also knew this and that’s why they’ve continued to get away with this scam for the past 6 years. If you do a Wikipedia lookup on the definition of “Domain name Slamming” it actually mentions DROA.com in the freaking definition!!

My point? Try to warn people. Tell your friends who own domain names to watch out for this company and to ignore those letter in the mail. Write about it on your blog, share this post on your facebook, twitter etc.. you can use social networking to make it harder for them to scam people out of their hard earned money. You might really save someone a lot of heartache if you do. Think how messed up it would be if your company domain name was hijacked by these clowns. Some people depend on their websites to survive.

Read This.. Court bars Canadian domain slammer (however they continue to do it, just in a more legal way)

Domain slamming (from wikipedia)

Domain slamming is a form of scam in which an internet service provider (ISP) or domain name registrar attempts to trick customers of different companies into switching from their existing ISP/registrar to the scamming ISP/registrar, under the pretense that the customer is simply renewing their subscription to their old ISP/registrar.[3]

VeriSignwas sued in 2002 for their actions in sending ambiguous emails informing people, often incorrectly, that their domain was about to expire and inviting them to click on a link to renew it. Renewing the domain resulted in the registration company being transferred to VeriSign from the previous registrar.[4]In 2003, VeriSign was found not to have broken the law but were barred from suggesting that a domain was about to expire or that a transfer was actually a renewal.[5]

Also in 2003, the Domain Registry of America were ordered by the Federal Trade Commission not to make misrepresentations after telling consumers that their domain registrations were expiring, leading many consumers to switch their domain name registrar^.

Fabric Textures

// July 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Design, Design Resources, For Geeks, Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, Photoshop, Textures, Useful, free

Here are some really nifty Fabric textures that you can use.. I personally love these textures!

I love textures that you see in your everyday life but not so much online.. for example cardboard, wood and Fabric! I’d love to make a web site with a cardboard texture someday. Right now www.Divegeekdesigns.com is using one of these Fabric textures for the background. Do you like? and personally I think it turned out sweet.

If you recently design something using a nifty texture, please feel free to post a comment with a link to it. I’d love to check it out.
Plus consider it free marketing for your new project!
My site may not be www.Mashable.com but it’s far from slacking either.

Design it and Post it up!

View Full Album

17 Twitter Tracking Tools & 6 for Stat Analysis…who’s watching you?

// June 21st, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Admin Tools, Blogging, Cool Links, For Geeks, Geeks, I recommend, Social Network, Twitter, Useful, free, web tools, webmaster

17 Twitter Tools for Tweet Tracking

• Tweet Effect : Find out which of your Twitter updates made people follow or leave you. I think this is the best tool in the entire list according to me to track and analyse yourself which tweets attracts and hurts your follows.
• Tweet Beep : It is a Google Alerts for Twitter. It enables anyone to receive alerts by email whenever a specific word or phrase is tweeted on Twitter. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Twitter Charts : You can view the number of tweets by the user according to the time of the day and day of the week.
• Retweetist : It displays most Re-tweeted tweets on its home page. The Most Re-tweeted users will also be displayed. You can track most popular Re-Tweets. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Twitter Analyzer : Twitter Analyzer, as the name suggests, provides with various statistics for your Twitter account. It is The Most Advanced Twitter Analytic System In The World. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• TWADL : A suite of free Twitter tools, to let you Tweet photos or music and lets you count how many people click on your links. You can follow them on Twitter here.

• Tweet Burner : TweetBurner tracks the links you share on Twitter and Friendfeed. It keeps track of web links used in Twitter status updates.
• Twitter Vision : Twitter Vision is a real time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Twellow : A search directory of people by area of expertise, profession or other attribute listed in personal profiles on Twitter. It is simply the twitter yellow pages. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Happy Tweets : Happytweets is a measuring stick for how positive, or happy, a particular Tweep is. Enter the Twitter username for you or one of your buddies, click the “get happy” button, and you’ll find out how happy your Tweets are.
• Retweetradar : Retweetradar finds trends in the mountains of information ‘retweet’ed on Twitter.
• Tweader : It is a new way that enables us to view the twitter conversations. It is one of the few twitter tools that is proved to be useful.

• Twit Clicks : Twitclicks shortens the URLs and then tracks those links. It does a lot of innovative tracking like clicks, who clicked the link, etc.
• Twistory : Adds your Twitter backlog feed to your favorite calendar application and browse through your personal Twitter diary, making your Twitter history both fun and useful. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Curse Bird : Cursebird is a real-time feed of people swearing on Twitter. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Twitturls : Popular Links on Twitter. What’s Hot. We Spy on Everyone’s Twitter! Updated Every Minute. It is also providing the WP plugin. You can follow them on Twitter here.
• Mr.Tweet : Mr.Tweet is your Personal Twitter Assistant, suggesting great people and news to you regularly. You can follow them on twitter here.

6 Analysis Tools for Twitter

• Twitter Grader : Its a free tool to measure you power and reach on twitter. This tools also allows you to compare with millions of users in the worlds using twitter who were also graded. The only thing that you need to do here is, just enter your twitter username it will give the instant report of your power and grade. You can follow the Twitter Grader on twitter too.
• Tweet Stats : If you love to check stats and graphs of your tweets in the twitter, this is the tool that is going to make its impact.
  This tool generates the stats and graphs that which can generate the report based on number of tweets per hour, number of tweets per month, tweet timeline, reply stats. Its been used by over 1,00,000 twitter users. You can follow Tweet Stats on Twitter too.
• Mr.Milestone : Mr.Milestone will send you a tweet if you have reaches 100 followers, 200 followers, 300 followers, (every 100 followers). It sends you the tweet for every 100 followers. When you his a milestone you will receive a tweet “@username Congrats! You just reached 200 followers!! You can follow Mr.Milestone on Twitter too.
• Tweet Rank : It displays the graphical information about how many people follow you. If you want to know where your followers come from, this the tool that you are searching for. This provides you the relevance to each tweet by checking how much followers you won or lost with each tweet. You can follow Tweet Rank on Twitter too.
• Tweet Wasters : This is a useless website that helps you to find how much time you and other users waste on twitter.
•  Retweet Rank : This gives us the whole database of how many retweets you or your friends have. Based on the number of retweets it gives you the rank. You can follow Retweet Rank on Twitter too.

PC Deal of the Day! Dell 3.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 Desktop PC $304.99

20 Twitter Plugins For WordPress

// June 21st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Blogging, Featured, For Geeks, Freeware, Geeks, I recommend, Social Network, The Best of.., Twitter, Useful, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins, blog, free, web tools, webmaster

20 Twitter Plugins For WordPress

Twitter is all a twitter and if your using WordPress, then you need to check out the following collectio of the best Twitter WordPress plugins..If you think your using something better please make sure to leave it in the comment section!

• Tweet This, a WordPress plugin for Twitter: Adds a “Tweet This Post” link to every post and page on your blog. This plugin can automatically tweet new blog posts.
• TweetSuite: Another useful plugin for WordPress that includes server-side tweetbacks, ReTweet-this buttons, a digg-like Tweet-This button, automatic tweeting of new posts and other useful widgets.
• TweetMeme Button: This plugin allows your blog posts to be re-tweeted. The TweetMeme button provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been re-tweeted. It gives you the ability to control the length of the tweets and, supports hashtags.
• Twitter Tools: This WordPress plugin integrates your WordPress blog with your Twitter account. It enables you to pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
• WP to Twitter: This plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress based blog using a couple of URL shortening services to provide a backlink to your post from Twitter.
• Twitter for WordPress: Displays yours latest tweets in your WordPress blog. This plugin detects URLs, e-mail address and @username replies. It’s simple for use and is customizable.
• WP FollowMe: Enables you to add a twitter “Follow me” badge on your WordPress based blog.
• Tweetbox: The tweetbox plugin allows you to display your latest tweets in the sidebar of your WordPress based blog.
• WordTwit: When you publish a new post on your blog, WordTwit will automatically tweet your post and converts any links to tiny URLs.

Twitter Widget Pro

Twitter Widget Pro is all about displaying a twitter feed on your sidebar. This is a well-written plugin, and the author, Aaron Campbell, has some great support information on his site. In addition, TWP is designed to allow you to change the CSS, which will let you seamlessly integrate your twitter feed into your site.

Digg Digg

We use the Digg Digg Plugin to show the Digg and Twitter (or TweetMeme) buttons on each post. You can also show Reddit dzone, and Yahoo Buzz buttons as well. The plugin provides a nice administration features, and for twitter, you can configure it to post replies with any @ name you choose.

Twitter Counter

Need social proof? Twitter counter is one of the best sites out there for tracking how many followers you have, and the Twitter Counter plugin lets you display your follower count proudly.

TwitMe

We’ve used Johnny Mast’s TwitMe for a while, and really like it. It lets you tweet whenever you publish a new blog post, and you can also tweet about earlier posts as well. The admin page also adds some value, since you can use it as a twitter client – right in your WordPress Dashboard. Be aware that TwitMe requires that your PHP distribution has Curl installed.

Tweet Blender

Tweet Blender provides a plugin and widget that blends Twitter tweets from multiple sources. The widget appears in your sidebar and can be configured to “blend” tweets from an author, several authors, as well as for one or more hashtags. The plugin also automatically adds a tweet archive page.

Commentwitter

Commentwitter gives your readers the option to post their comments to Twitter. Tweeting comments makes them available to be followed on Twitter clients as well as on your blog.

Twitter Publisher

Twitter Publisher also allows you to automatically tweet when you post a new blog entry. Unlike some others, this will use bit.ly or Awe.sm url shortening services. It also can embed Google campaign variables in your links, giving you better visibility of your Twitter clickthroughs in your Google analytics console.

Tweet

There’s something refreshing about a simple name like this. Along with the simple name comes a simple idea. The tweet plugin isn’t a Swiss-Army knife, it’s a laser scalpel. It’s got one purpose, automatically linking @ names and hashtags to Twitter. See, wasn’t that easy? Check out @lantrix for more info.

My Twitpics

Twitpic.com is the de-facto standard for linking tweets to images. The My Twitpics plugin creates a sidebar widget that displays a thumbnail gallery of your twitpic creations. We think this one is very slick.

Pointfire – Capture The Conversation

The developers over at Pointfire have … um … a point. For any post on your blog, there is likely to be much more social reaction and conversation occurring on twitter than there is in the blog comments. The Capture the Conversation plugin lets you bring that conversation back into your blog posts – maybe not so much where it belongs – but certainly where its easy to see some of the context that you lose in a Twitter stream.

16 Social networking Clients for Blackberry

// June 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // Blackberry, Blogging, Facebook, Featured, For Geeks, Freeware, Geeks, I recommend, Smartphone, Social Network, Twitter, Useful, free, web tools

I just recently switched from my brick of a phone..also referred to as the HTC Fuse (hated it) to the new Blackberry Bold (kinda loving it) and so I’ve been searching for the latest and greatest apps for my phone. Here is a few lists I put together for social networking..

7 Twitter Clients for Blackberry:

1. OpenBeak – is mobile client for posting updates to Twitter. It works over the data network, so you don’t need to use SMS. OpenBeak is the evolution of TwitterBerry, and gives a name that allows the app to grow beyond both the Twitter platform and BlackBerry smartphones. Download OpenBeak from your BlackBerry® smartphone. Visit http://m.openbeak.com on your BlackBerry smartphone.
2. jtwitter – jTwitter is a Java application for Blackberry. It allows you to enter twitter updates using your phone without having to send SMS’s. It also allows you to view your timeline and your friends timeline..
3. UberTwitter: one of the better BlackBerry Twitter apps. I like it better than TwitterBerry, though since I use my iPhone for tweeting, I haven’t been using it a lot. http://www.ubertwitter.com/bb/download.php
4. Tiny Twitter: a simple app for tweeting on your mobile device.
5. Blackbird – Probably the simplest Twitter application, Blackbird is a text only client that is really an unknown. Overshadowed by the bigger apps, Blackbird hasn’t seen an update since mid 2008. It’s text-only interface makes it easy to use however it also lacks features.  I used BlackBird at CES as a secondary client and it did get the job done. If you aren’t much for fancy looks, seeing your friends avatars and just want the basics, maybe give BlackBird a shot. You can learn more about BlackBird at http://dossy.org/twitter/blackbird/ or visit http://dossy.org/twitter/blackbird/0.4/Blackbird.jad from your mobile browser to download to your device.
6. YATCA: Twitter client application for BlackBerry (OS 4.6+)  Very simple interface and lets you update on the go. Doesn’t have too many features though.
7. Snap2Twitter Snap2Twitter is automatically added to your BlackBerry photo options. When you take a picture, you can upload it to your Twitter profile and add text. Your followers will see the text and a link to the photo. It works relatively well, but on a few occasions, I had some trouble uploading the picture to Twitter.

9 more Social Networking Apps for Blackberry

1. Facebook The BlackBerry’s Facebook app is the best social-networking app in the App World. It lets you update your status from your phone, upload pictures to your profile, and send messages to friends. One of my favorite features is the option to use a Facebook friend’s profile photo as their image for your BlackBerry contact list. It’s really well put together.
2. ITookThisOnMyPhone ITookThisOnMyPhone lets you snap pictures on your BlackBerry and upload them to your ITookThisOnMyPhone profile. You can also upload all those pictures to your favorite social network, like Facebook or MySpace. It didn’t do it as quickly as uploads in the Facebook app, but it still worked as advertised. ITookThisOnMyPhone is useful for those who want to send pictures to their social-network friends. But if you already have the Facebook app, stick with that.
3. Loopt As long as friends have Loopt installed on their BlackBerry or iPhone, you can find them through the app’s location-based positioning, and you can send messages. You can also share photos and comment on their images. Messaging friends is easy and sharing photos works relatively well. But finding those friends is made difficult at times, since the location-based service isn’t perfect. I like Loopt, but it needs improvement.
4. MySpace The MySpace app on the BlackBerry App World is outstanding. You can send and receive MySpace mail and update your status. Like the Facebook app, you can also upload pictures to your profile from your BlackBerry. That feature works well. That said, I found that sifting through friend profiles is more difficult than it should be. But it’s still worth downloading if you’re a MySpace user.
5. Qik Livestreaming The Qik LiveStreaming app lets you stream video from your BlackBerry. It boasts an extremely simple (and slick) interface that gets you streaming video in seconds. And the quality of that video is quite impressive. I streamed a few times over the past couple days. There was little lag. I enjoyed using the app.
6. SnapMyLife If you want to share even more photos, SnapMyLife, which also operates Snap2Twitter, will help you do it. It doesn’t let you upload snapped photos directly to a social network. Instead, you can add them to your SnapMyLife page. They can then be edited and shared with friends and family. You can also view friends’ photos and comment on them.
7. Visible Vote Mobile Visible Vote Mobile isn’t your typical social-networking app, since it doesn’t let you share photos and videos or tell the world about yourself. But it does let you track legislators, bills being pushed through Congress, and how your representatives are voting. You can then vote on those same bills with other Visible Vote users. The app lets you view friends’ votes, find people of like-minded political views, and contact your representatives when you fell it’s necessary. It’s a highly informative app that’s worth checking out.
8. Where Where uses your BlackBerry’s GPS to help you find places in your area. You can search Yelp to find local hot spots or Eventful to find events. You can also find a car through ZipCar, if it operates in your area. Where is an extremely useful app. I highly recommend it.
9. Xenozu Xenozu is simple: it brings YouTube to your BlackBerry. You can search YouTube, see featured videos, and save some of your favorite clips. The video and audio quality are outstanding. That said, I was displeased with the app’s design–it looks like the company ported its iPhone app design to the BlackBerry. That made it difficult to use. But if you want YouTube on your BlackBerry, you need Xenozu.

Free Photoshop styles, brushes, patters.. etc..

// June 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Websites, Design, Design Resources, For Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, Useful, free, webdesign

Check out these Free Photoshop styles, brushes, patters.. etc..

Download Free Glossy Space Glass Text Effect and Layer Styles (4.4 MiB)

Download Pink and Black Paint Splatter Text Effect and Layer Styles (8.9 MiB)

Download Free Brushed Metal Pewter Text Effect & Layer Styles (3.2 MiB)

inFocus – Powerful Professional WordPress Theme by Webtreats


Exotic Polkadots Patterns
Author: Webtreats
Web site: webtreats.mysitemyway.com
Photoshop patterns: 8 in set

Forget me not
PS Patterns
Web site: pehaa.com
Photoshop patterns: 2 in set
Download

Mellow Mess
Web site: Designfruit.com
Photoshop brushes: 26 in set
Download

Floral Ornaments
Author: Pehaa
Web site: pehaa.com
Photoshop brushes: 7 in set
Download

How to install patterns?
How to install brushes?

Too Cute! Twitter Icons

// June 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogging, Design, Design Resources, For Geeks, Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, Icons, Ipod, Social Network, Social Network Icons, Twitter, Useful, blog, free, iPod Themes, icon sets, web tools, webdesign, webmaster

Square Twitter icons

A gorgeous new free icon set designed by Dirceu Veiga. The square Twitter icons resemble iphone app buttons and would be good on websites, blogs or even your iphone.

Twitter Square Icons: Free Icon Set

Twitter Tweets and Twitter Whales?

Here is a new block style set of Twitter icons designed by Dirceu Veiga, including two of that cool whale.

Twitter Block Icons

3 of the Coolest Social Bookmarking Plugins

// June 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Admin Tools, Blogging, Cool Links, Cool Websites, Design, Design Resources, Facebook, Featured, For Geeks, Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, Icons, Social Network, Social Network Icons, The Best of.., Twitter, Useful, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugins, blog, free, icon sets, web tools, webdesign, webmaster

 3 of the Coolest Social Bookmarking Plugins…

HERE ARE 3 OF THE COOLEST SOCIAL BOOKMARKING PLUGINS I PERSONALLY KNOW OF AND HAVE USED. I’M CURRENTLY USING SEXY BOOKMARKS AND I LOVE IT!

SexyBookmarks is a WordPress plugin that inserts a (X)HTML compliant list-based menu of social bookmarking site icons in each post to allow users to easily submit your posts to some of the most popular social bookmarking networks automatically. The plugin allows for you to choose several different options like:

• Where to display the menu
• Whether or not to add rel=”nofollow” to the links
• The target attribute (_blank or _self)
• Which site icons should be displayed in the menu
• Custom CSS for the DIV that contains the menu

 See the bottom of this post for an example of how sexy bookmarks looks and acts.

Download WordPress Plugin | Sexy Bookmarks Joomla Plugin |

ShareThis

Description: ShareThis makes a WordPress plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to post your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend.
Download: ShareThis WP Plugin Download.

SocioFluid

Description: Icons for major Social Bookmarking websites: Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, dzone, stumbleupon, blinklist, blogmarks, furl, newsvine, technorati, magnolia, google, myspace, facebook, yahoo buzz. More to be added in the next versions. -”mac effect” – when the mouse is over the icons they grow. -Administration Panel to select only the desired Social Bookmarking sites.
Download: SocioFluid WP Plugin Download.

30+ Web Applications, Apps and Tools for Designers

// May 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Admin Tools, Blogging, Cool Links, Cool Websites, Design, Design Resources, For Geeks, Graphic Design, I recommend, Ibdreamy, Useful, blog, free, web tools, webdesign, webmaster

Free Online Resources for Designers and Developers – All Tested and 100% Diva/Geek approved! Here is a list of some useful and fun websites that will help you work and live life online… ENJOY!

1. iPlotz – Wireframe your Ideas

iPlotz allows you to rapidly create clickable, navigable mockups and wireframes for prototyping websites and software applications. You can create 5 wireframe pages for free.

2. Create Flash Websites For Free

Using Wix you can create a free flash website or make free MySpace and Flash MySpace layouts.

3. SnapPages

SnapPages takes online website creation to a whole new level. Now anyone can create and manage a professional quality website with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can create 5 custom pages and have 1 GB of storage space for free.

4. FormatPixel – Your Online Publishing Tool

Create your own online magazines, fanzines, brochures, catalogues, portfolios and more.

5. Mikons – Create your Visual Identity

A Mikon is a symbol about you.

6. Rsizr – Image Resizing Application

Rsizr is a Flash application that lets you resize JPG, PNG, and GIF images on your computer.

7. Designer Pages

Designer Pages is an online community to help designers search, save, and share product information.

8. Fresh Badge Generator

Quickly freshen your site/blog, sales page, or scrapbook with your own uniquely designed, and very web 2.0 “fresh badge”!

9. JukePix

JukePix is an excellent tool that will allow you to upload your photos and edit them into our templates.

10. Mygetgo – Custom Home & Start Page

Mygetgo’s are FREE internet start pages that you create. Your personal gateway packed full of your chosen content, links, and useful tools.

11. WUFOO – Making Forms

Wufoo is an application that helps you build amazing online forms.

12. Pixenate – Photo Made Easy

A quick and easy way to design and edit your image online.

13. ThemeRoller

Design custom jQuery UI theme.

14. Meez

Create your own 3D experience.

15. COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers gives the people who use color – whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification.

16. Face Your Manga

Create your Avatar with Face Your Manga!

17. Yola

You’ll find all the tools you need to build a website just the way you want.

18. Aviary

Edit images, create mind-blowing effects, design logos, find colors, collaborate, and more.

19. vFlyer

Easily create attractive virtual flyers.

20. FunPhotoBox

You can create funny pictures using this tool.

21. favicon.cc

Favicon generator.

Colour Matching and Sampling

23. ColorJack

ColorJack is an amazing online application providing users with the ability to match colours that work well together. Perfect for those developers who struggle to get a good colour scheme together.

Read more on ColorJack

24. Kuler

Kuler is a very nice application allowing you match colours that will “work well” together. Also allows you to see other people colour pallets. A good starting place and very cool.

Read more on Kuler

25. Color Cop

A very handy tool for capturing colours anywhere on your screen. Color Cop makes it quick and easy in those situations where you need to know what colour is being used.
Read more on Color Cop

I LOVE ColorCop! I could not live with out this little program.

Office Suites:

26. Zoho Suite

Zoho is another online service which provides users with a multitude of services including Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show for creating and managing documents.

Zoho also provides user with a way to access their documents offline and later synchronize it with your online account.

• Zoho Suite

27. KOffice

If you are a Linux user, we won’t leave you behind, KOffice is a free, integrated office suite for KDE, the K Desktop Environment for Linux.
It consists of all the required applications like KWord, KSpread and KPresenter, for making working with office documents a breeze on KDE.

• Download KOffice

28. Sticky Notes Apps

• PinNotes is the software I am currently using. It is a real simple way to created and store sticky notes on your desktop with options to customize each note window separately and support to add pictures, numbers, time/date etc. Overall a simple and easy solution to make those sticky notes less cluttering.
• StickyPad is a easy-to-use tool that lets you place sticky notes on your desktop. You can type notes to yourself, set meeting and appointment reminders, keep track of a to-do list, and anything else you would do with paper notes.

CEO World has also posted a list of alternatives for Google Notebook, the list is pretty extensive and covers a large amount of replacements.

There are few other places where you can find information about Google Notebook alternatives/replacements.

• Stepchase Lifehack have a list of 8 Replacements for Google Notebook.
• CNET have put up a list of 7 worthy Google Notebook Replacements.

Coolest “Web Based” Image Editors

// March 10th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cool Links, Cool Websites, Design, Design Resources, Featured, For Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, The Best of.., Useful, art, free, web tools, webdesign

Here is a list of web-based image editors that I found to be the coolest.
Web based editors allow you to make changes to an image from anywhere without having to install applications for example when you are not at home or on your laptop. Or for support techs like me — I work with Financial Advisors helping them develop their own websites and most of them have no use for photoshop and asking them to download a program like Infranview just to crop or resize one picture for their website would be illogical -  so I’m always looking for easy to use web based image editors to link them to…which brings me to why I researched this topic and wrote this post. I hope some of you also find it useful.

SumoPaint

which can be used as a paint program and photo editing program, and which was recently upgraded with a claimed 100-plus improvements, and a totally renovated web site to make it easier, faster, and more attractive, and several new tools. Layer FX, Change Layers With Blending Modes, change layer alpha, Shapes Tool, Brushes, Ink Brush Tool, Gradient Tool, Shape Trails, Zooming, Symmetry Tool , Color Picker, Swatches, Smudge Tool, and Custom Shape Tool. Sumo Paint’s user interface is Mac-like in a Photoshop-ish sort of way. Check out the Sumo Paint user manual here. Sumo Paint works with any browser but you must have the version 9 Flash player plugin installed, which you probably already do.  http://Sumopaint.com

Fotoflexer

Another free online image editor I liked a lot was Fotoflexer, which is impressively fast and slick, with no registration or login necessary. Fotoflexer doesn’t have as many tools as Sumo Paint or some of the other online image editors I tried, and they’re laid out in a non-orthodox configuration, but it’s pretty intuitive, fast and responsive, and the adjustments refresh in real time so you can finely tune your enhancements visually as you move the sliders. Fotoflexer is also integrated with social networking sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Facebook, MySpace and more. It comes in handy when you’re looking for some quick common photo-editing needs such as cropping, resizing, and rotating. http://fotoflexer.com/

Picnik

Picnik is an image editor that was recently purchased by Google. Picnik lets you quickly edit all your photos online. Picnik has a fast startup and no login hassle, but I didn’t find the free version of this one up to par with the others. You would want to upgrade to the premium version, which costs $2.08 to $24.95 a month. Picnik is directly connected with many photo sharing sites like Myspace, Flickr and Facebook which is cool. http://www.picnik.com/

MyPictr

MyPictr is basically just a picture resizing service, which allows you to create a custom profile avatar for your favorite social network. You don’t need to install any programs: just upload your picture, resize it online and download it. MyPictr gives you enough time (approximately 10 minutes) to download your picture, then your file is automatically removed. MyPictr is free to use. http://mypictr.com/

Pixer.us

If you’re looking for an application to meet your simple photo-editing needs, check out pixer.us – a free, web-based photo editor. It has an intuitively simple interface which I really liked plus your basic yet useful photo-editing features like cropping, resizing, and rotating. It also has some color adjustment options such as Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast adjustments. You can save your work as one of the four popular digital image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, or BMP). PIXER.US requires no sign-up or account to use. Simply access the site, upload an image from a local computer, and start editing. When the editing is done, download the finished product. There are however, a couple of features missing. For example, I couldn’t find a way to import images from online photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or Photo-bucket. The program itself has all the basic features and functions usually found in this sort of app. These include features such as “rotate”, “flip”, “resize” and “crop”. The “resize” feature is nice, with a slider to make a picture bigger or smaller which I like because my clients don’t usually know what pixel sizes to choose but the slider would help make resizing more logical for them. http://pixer.us/

OnlinePhotoTool

OnlinePhotoTool is a service that uses Java to edit and save your images, screenshots and photos online. You can use photos and images from your hard drive as well as pictures on the Internet. If you want to save your images online you need to register. You can download photos from the internet using their Onlinephototool.com import bookmarklet. The editing tools seem typical — you can resize, crop, rotate, flip, paint as well as use other advanced tools. The site is simple, direct and functional.  http://www.onlinephototool.com/

pic2color

pic2color is a tool that helps you extract colors from any images. It helps you creates sophisticated color schemes from images effortlessly and offers seamless integration with GenoPal Online for individual color exploration. Users can also integrate it into their website by posting some HTML code. Free to use. http://www.pic2color.com/

picmagick

PicMagick – Simple yet Powerful Online Photo Editor http://www.picmagick.com/

Flauntr.com

a unique online imaging service that combines photo editing, printing, sharing and storage in a single seamless service. FlauntR by Fotodesk, is a digital effects website more then just an online image editor. Flauntr allows you to upload images from your computer or Flickr account and then add fun special effects. Create avatars, MySpace comments, or digital scrapbooks. http://www.flauntr.com/

Cellsea

Cellsea is a site that lets you rotate, resize, and crop photos to get the exact composition and size you need. There are over 15 ways to correct color, exposure, and lighting problems. You just need to click and drag your mouse to ripple, circle, sphere and curl the photo. It is also possible to add professional-looking blur effects to your photos. You can load from your PC or from an URL. Free to use. http://www.cellsea.com/java-cellsea/media/index.htm

makeagif.com

Use a form to upload several pictures at a time that you want to animate together.  Makeagif takes the images and creates an animated GIF out of them, then your redirected to a download link so you can save it or share it. Very unique and very cool. I highly recommend you at least check it out. I was curious why I’ve never seen something like this before.  http://www.makeagif.com

myImager

myImager is a web-based image editor. You can upload images from your computer and from anywhere on the web and edit them freely with the dozens of tools and filters that this tool offers. Uploaded files can not be larger than 500 KB. myImager is completely free to use. http://www.myimager.com/

Aviary Phoenix

Phoenix is a powerful web-based image editor by Aviary. This online image editing suite, has a range of functions from basic image retouching to complex effects, providing the key features of a desktop image editor, with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. Its suite of creation and editing tools includes undo and redo, brushes, magic wand, and blend modes. Phoenix also supports layers, groups, and layer masks, and has an intuitive drag and drop interface. To fully appreciate the potential of this excellent image editor Check out this list of tutorials. Aviary delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. It allows you to import images from popular photo sharing websites.  http://aviary.com/home

Pixlr

Another online image editor is Pixlr from Sweden. It’s free, it starts up very quickly with no login required, and has a good selection of tools, adjustments and filters that work quite similarly to functions in Photoshop, including tools such as layers, image adjustments, and the magic wand, and which I found generally work well, although one thing I didn’t like is that the adjustments don’t refresh in real time as you move the sliders. Pixlr plugin for Firefox turns your browser into an image editor. Once the plugin is installed, you’ll notice a little icon in the Firefox status bar that you can click to automatically import any web page you’re on to Pixlr for editing. http://www.pixlr.com/editor/

Splashup

Online & Downloadable Image Editing Program. Splashup is integrated with popular photo sharing services like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook.  One of the coolest features Splashup offers is that you can access your photos remotely, Key features include Capture images from webcam, Layers with blending modes, filters and brushes. It’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. http://www.splashup.com/

72Photos

I was really impressed with 72photos.com! 72photos is an image host kind of like Fotki.com,  where you can also edit your photos. They offer the basic editing options- like rotate, crop, enhance, plus some special effects.  Once you’ve uploaded your photos you can tag them and edit them if you wish. You can organize them into categories, tag them , label them, and add them to different galleries. Sharing your photos is another plus to the site. Post your photos on; websites, forums, blogs, or send them to friends. There are many great photos on the site so take advantage and browse through them. You can view photos by the day they were uploaded to the site by clicking on the days of the calendar. Go to the popular galleries and popular profiles to take a look at the photos.. 72photos.com is a great place to host your photos and appreciate other people’s skills. http://www.72photos.com

Diva Geek Thinks:

Based on what I found.. Sumo Paint, Pixer.us, Fotoflexer or Pixlr would be my choices to recommend to my clients.  I personally use Photoshop to do most of my photo editing and if I need to do a quick crop or resize I use a small program called Infranview* which I’ve been using for many moons! and I still love it.

FYI..Many Moons = 6-7 years.

*IrfanView: is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer.. but you can also use to resize, crop, rotate, flip, paint as well as use other advanced tools like create a gallery, a slideshow, batch conversions etc.. it’s a very handy and useful tool that I think all web developers should at least try it.

Click here to visit Sales @ Digging Into WordPress.

Meta Tags in Plain English

// March 5th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Code, For Geeks, SEO, Useful, Wordpress, web tools, webdesign, webmaster

Meta-tags are used by search engines to correctly index and rank web sites. The most important meta tags are the keywords meta tags and the description meta tags and both are essential for any well-built site.

When you create a website and you submit it to the search engines, the search engines “spiders” are sent out to “crawl” the site and attempt to correctly index it based on the information it provides. They do this based on several things including the keywords in the content and in the meta tags. Each search engine indexes web sites according to their own algorithms. Some place emphasis on the description tag, such as AltaVista. Other search engines, like Exactseek, are meta tag purists, as stated in their user policy: “Your site will not be added if it does not have Title and Meta description tags.”

Recently, some search engines have downplayed the importance of meta tags due to spam. Some SEO “specialists” were keyword stuffing their tags with irrelevant information, just to get traffic. To penalize this abuse, some search engines don’t assign too much weight to the keywords in meta tags, but they still check to make sure they are relevant.

Fact: All major search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Scrub The Web, MSN Bing and others utilize Meta Tags!

If you’re visiting or worse paying search engine optimization sites that claim Meta Tags including the Meta Description are not used by the major search engines and the meta tag isn’t important anymore.. Run away, don’t walk but you don’t have to take my word for it, just visit Google™ or Yahoo!® and see what they have to say about Meta Tag optimization.

Bottom line.. either way, if you don’t have meta tags, or your meta tags are stuffed with irrelevant keywords, you won’t rank well in the search engines.

Avoid using capitalization in your code, as well as any repetition within the keyword tag.  The meta tag description is displayed by most search engines along with the page title. It is important to keep the meta description short, concise and relevant to your site content. I suggest under 30-40 words. (up to a maximum of 250 characters).

Recommendations for the Meta Keywords tag: Make sure to only use keywords that are relevant to your site. Search engines are known to penalize or blacklist your site for abuse.

MOST IMPORTANT: Put the same keywords that you put your meta tag in your website content! If the keywords aren’t already included within the body text in sufficient density, and in a coherent and relevant context then it won’t matter what keyword tags you use or where you put them. You won’t rank well and you may be penalized for keyword stuffing.

Without a doubt, content is still king and still the biggest contributor to search engine page ranking, so if you want to raise your rankings, make sure you have quality content.

I recommed using a Meta Tag generator like Scrub the Web or Addme.com to create the Meta Tag. If you need help learning how to insert the Meta tag into your WordPress  hosted website click here.

For more information read How To Dial In Your Keywords and Making Friends With The Spider.

In the default installation, WordPress does not include meta tags such as description and keywords. So you must insert this yourself.

Using Meta Tag Plugins allow you to customize meta tags, and to choose the ones you want to add, or not, on a per-post basis. This allows your meta information to better describe each page.

DIVA GEEK BARBIE!

// February 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // For Geeks, Geeks, Ibdreamy, Personal Posts, Pictures

So, they finally came out with a Diva Geek Barbie.. ok so maybe that’s not her REAL title but it should be!

According to a release from Mattel, the unveiling of Computer Engineer Barbie–she’ll hit stores this fall–coincides with “a year-long, global brand initiative to inspire girls of all ages

Earlier on Friday, toymaker Mattel announced the results of an online contest to name the profession that the latest edition of Barbie dolls would have, and ultimately two were named: alongside “News Anchor” was the popular-vote winner, “Computer Engineer Barbie.” Yes, she has a Bluetooth headset, a pink laptop, a smartphone, and hot-pink glasses. Oh, and she wears sparkly black leggings and a neon green shirt patterned with binary code, the sort of outfit that was probably only acceptable among Burning Man attendees in the late 1990s who liked to talk about “cyberspace.”   Read the rest of the article on cnet.com

Can you freaking believe that it took til to the year 2010!!!for Mattel to come up with a Barbie in the technical industry? Meanwhile in the “real” world computers effect the daily life of almost every human in every generations and has had a HUGE socioeconomic effect on our country and our earth in general. But Barbie is just now considering a career in computer engineering?? LOL Hilarious.
How many Ballerina Barbie’s have you seen? Too many! Bride Barbie? Are you kidding me? That’s what they came up with?
By the way..I don’t know any computer engineers that look like this or would wear that but to be honest I’ve only personally met a very small handful of women in the industry but they’ve all been hip dressers and very cool but far from blonde bombshells. We usually the only girl in the room so it’s not in our best interest to play up the sex pot thing.
I really wish there were more women in our industry.  Hmmm.. maybe I’ll start blaming Mattel for that? Maybe there wasn’t enough geeky Barbie’s for my generation of women? Maybe this new Barbie will change all that!! Haha! Yeh right. Women from my generation (from my experiance) either don’t get why I’d be interested in technology or they think I do stuff straight of the Matrix and it’s all just way to complicated for them.

I don’t have the answer or care to much “about the meaning of it all”.. I just think it’s kinda cool – a Diva Geek Barbie!

My real name is Barbara, I’m a geek and I’m a Diva! so Wow she tickles me pink. Regardless of her lame fashion sense.

WP Remix: Making WordPress a CMS, One Step at a Time

// February 3rd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Blogging, Design, Design Resources, Featured, For Geeks, Geeks, I recommend, Magazine Theme, Premium Wordpress Themes, Website Templates, Wordpress, Wordpress Themes, Wp Themes, webdesign, webmaster, wordpress tutorials

WP Remix pushes WordPress to the max with a little bit of everything!

You may have never heard of the theme, but WP Remix just might be the most innovative and unique toolkit for WordPress you’ve ever seen. Unlike your other premium “buy and install” themes, WP Remix comes in a single package filled with 50 amazing and unique layouts for WordPress — some of which you never thought possible…truly making it the closest thing to a CMS (content management system) WordPress has ever seen.

Features Unique Only to WP Remix

Theme specific features that you won’t see elsewhere!
There’s no doubt that a lot of loving care was put into the creation of WP Remix. It actually has its own visual editor: once you install WP Remix, you’ll be able to visit a special control panel within your WordPress administration area, in which you can fine tune individual pages of your WP Remix driven website. Here’s a feature list for WP Remix:

• WYSIWYG editor: WP Remix has an expanded code editor. Drop in code that would otherwise have to be manually typed out!
• Smart drop-down menus: WordPress dropdowns usually suck - it’s true. To remedy this, WP Remix’s design team created dynamic drop-down menus that go multiple levels deep. The menus will remember what page you came from, and what page you’re currently on!

How to Video: Creating and Editing Pages with the WP Remix Theme

If your not sure this is the theme for you watch the video below to get a better understanding of how the themes admin interface works.

Check out WP Remix if you need a kick-ass and comprehensive theme for your blog or company website! You won’t regret it. Click here to visit WordPress Remix.

Final Fantasy XIII Has a Final Release Date – March 9, 2010

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Featured, For Geeks, Gaming, Geeks, I recommend, PS3, Videos, Xbox

Final Fantasy XIII International Trailer
Check out this awesome new English voice trailer, featuring the sultry sounds of Leona Lewis!

See More Final Fantasy XIII Media at IGN.com

Pixlr.com – Cool New online image editing program – ALOT like a Free Photoshop!

// January 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Applications, Browsers, Design, Design Resources, Featured, For Geeks, Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, free, webdesign, webmaster

 Pixlr is a free online photo editor. Fix, adjust and filter your images. Manage your images in your browser, no registration jump right in!
Pixlr is a flash based web app that combines image design and paint tools with photo editing and adjustment features more convincingly than any other online image editing program. Whether creating an logo, layering one image over another or using a variety of filters, effects and level adjustments to transform photographs, Pixlr is equally capable of producing results on par with many of its software-based counterparts.
Yet, despite its deep feature-set, Pixlr remains facile, intuitive and, most importantly, user-friendly. Did I mention FREE?

Standout Features:

• A fully customizable user interface with movable and scalable windows
• Navigation-free drop-down menus featuring all filters, adjustment and layering options
• Intuitive design and paint features with a dedicated history window for reference and quick undo/redo
• A “Photo Express” portal for quick, simple changes to images and photographs
• dozens of filters and effects to give photos a stylish effect.

Oh and it’s FREE and Online!

I totally Dig It!! I’ve never been impressed with online image editors but this one actually got it. So, if you like Photoshop and you need to create some basic simple logos, banners, image cropping etc.. Check it out.

• Follow Pixlr.com on Twitter!
• Pixlr Grabber 2.0.0 – FireFox Addon