Shiver Me Timbers!
For the fans of Captain Jack!...
A SpringWidgets Pirates of the Caribbean countdown clock to put on your profile or blog!
Those of you who have seen my MySpace profile and noticed the skull and crossbones that I use as my profile picture, you have probably figured out that I'm a big fan of pirates.
So much so that I figured that we just had to create a countdown to what will probably be, in my opinion, the biggest movie of the year . . . Pirates of the Caribbean!
Being somewhat piratical ourselves, the team can really relate to the need for blue ocean waters, treasure and wearing silly three cornered pointy hats.
By the way . . . take a look at the bottom of the widget...
Fans of our widgets will notice that the "pop" button has moved from the upper right to the lower left of the widget and it now has a couple of friends, an "options" button and a SpringWidgets logo.
Don't worry, the Pop button will still give you one click downloading of the widget to your desktop if you have the SpringWidgets application installed . . . we just moved it so that it would look better on some of the odd shaped widgets that we are seeing in the gallery.
If you take a moment and click on the options button, you can see that we have added in a few, well... "Options" to the widget. You can now copy the code directly in the widget, download the widget from the menu, jump to the customize/share it page and learn more about the widget you are looking at.
I hope that you like the changes and find that the added functionality enhances your widget experience. If you like the widget and have a moment, stop by our community page and send a note to the team letting them know.
I'm going to go dress up like a pirate now and try and find some buried treasure.
-Don
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Download - The best way to get your band's blog on Myspace.
While I was looking through the widget analytics data the other day, I noticed just how many bands are using our RSS reader to deliver news to their fans into social networks like Myspace and Facebook and start pages like iGoogle, Netvibes and Pageflakes.
Grab this Led Zeppelin widget now.
Of course, I'm going to show my age here, but I had to ask who Timbaland, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Rich Boy were, and I had no clue about The Wreckers, Robin Thicke or Faith Hill but when I found out that the official Beastie Boys, Led Zeppelin and Michael Jackson's Thriller profiles were using our widgets I had to spread the word.
Admittedly, Timbaland may get a bit more play these days, but I spent so much time listening to my Zeppelin albums and tapes that I wore them out. And the Beastie boys Licensed to Ill was awesome and played non-stop while cruising in my 66 Mustang in the 80's. (I really am old)
If you have a band, take a look at how some of the other artists I mentioned above implemented the widgets on their Myspace pages and feel free to use our widgets or our platform to promote your own news or events to your fans.
We don't charge for bands to use our RSS reaader, so it's probably the lowest cost investment that you'll make in your popularity. If you are feeling generous, we'll take concert tickets, CD's and backstage passes if you have any to spare ;-)
If you are a band and add a SpringWidgets express RSS reader to your page to promote your website or blog, please add a comment below and let us know where to find it.
Rock on and build your own RSS express widget today. Read More
Grab this Led Zeppelin widget now.
Admittedly, Timbaland may get a bit more play these days, but I spent so much time listening to my Zeppelin albums and tapes that I wore them out. And the Beastie boys Licensed to Ill was awesome and played non-stop while cruising in my 66 Mustang in the 80's. (I really am old)
If you have a band, take a look at how some of the other artists I mentioned above implemented the widgets on their Myspace pages and feel free to use our widgets or our platform to promote your own news or events to your fans.
We don't charge for bands to use our RSS reaader, so it's probably the lowest cost investment that you'll make in your popularity. If you are feeling generous, we'll take concert tickets, CD's and backstage passes if you have any to spare ;-)
If you are a band and add a SpringWidgets express RSS reader to your page to promote your website or blog, please add a comment below and let us know where to find it.
Rock on and build your own RSS express widget today. Read More
Dashboard - RSS Hugger
Collin LaHay has come up with an idea called RSSHugger, it's a site that allows webmasters to promote their RSS feeds by adding them to the site. You can add your own page but it will cost you 20US dollars (10 is you blog about RSSHugger).
RSS Hugger seems to be a cross between an RSS directory and a wiki. Collin wants the directory to grow to 50,000 blogs which he claims is 0.00045 percent of the blogosphere.
The idea behind the new site is to create buzz and generate new RSS subscribers for RSS feeds that are added to the site. When you buy a page you basically get your feed headlines displayed on your own page within RSSHugger. Whether or not enough buzz is created to generate any new subscribers to members feeds remains to be seen.
This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.
Read MoreDashboard - Thesaurus 1.0
Retrieve the synonym for every word.
Read More
 | About Thesaurus Retrieve the synonym for every word. If available you will get antonyms, related terms, similar word and user suggestions too. Click one of the results to start a quick new search for that term. As well it keeps a history list of your search terms. Thesaurus service provided by words.bighugelabs.com. |
Widgets - Designing WordPress Themes For the Slowing Web
Jonathan Bailey of the Blog Herald wrote about Surfing the Slow Web, a summary of his recent experience trying to connect to the Internet as an evacuee from Hurricane Gustav. While most web designers are pushing the limits of heavy handed design towards high bandwidth, the world still doesn’t work that fast or wide. According to [...]
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According to statistics, if you are reading this, you are probably on a broadband connection. Whether you are surfing at work on a LAN or at home on a DSL or cable modem, you are probably not on dial up at this moment.
However, there was a time not that long ago in which Webmasters were optimizing every element of their page feverishly to squeeze every ounce of speed from it. Broadband simply was not that common and, even over dial up connections, visitors had twitchy fingers on the “back” button at all times.
But in the age of YouTube, Flash ads and embeddable content, those lessons have been all but forgotten. However, not everyone has access to high-speed connection, especially in rural locations, and after spending just a few days limited to dial up, the lessons come flooding back.
Let us not forget that the virtual world is moving off desktops and land line and cable connections to the wired world of mobile computing. For years, our bandwidth speeds have been increasing, but now that we are moving to Internet access via cell phones and handheld computers, bandwidths are slowing down and narrowing again. Wired’s recent iPhone 3G survey reported that the average speed in the USA is 990 kbps - a typical average where only a few high scores can bring up the lowest to a well-meaning number, but a number not really indicative of what most are experiencing.
Living on the road in the early years, we started jumping up and down when we got a dial-up connection past 1200 baud (that’s without the kilobyte) in 1996, it was a thrill to get the first “fast” connection and actually move into the kilobytes. When WIFI was released and we could reach into the megabytes, and speeds have been increasing, but life on the road means taking what you can find, and what you often find is pretty darn slow.
Designing for a Slowing Web
As you design your blog, WordPress Themes, Widgets, and even WordPress Plugins, you have a lot of options about how you code the code and include the graphic elements. You can design for the high speed broadband market, of which you might be one, or take into consideration the drop in bandwidth many are taking when they move from dedicated to mobile connections.
In addition to Jonathan’s tips for designing your blogs with slower bandwidth in mind, here are mine:
- Use CSS: CSS was created to speed up page loading by putting all the design elements within the stylesheet. Many are putting them back into the architecture, including redundant images. Move all redundant design images and references back into the stylesheet and increase page generation times significantly.
- Style for Accessibility: If your blog design meets the Section 508 Accessibility Standards and the WebAIM Section 508 Checklist, the odds are that it will load faster because it’s designed with accessibility features in mind like page readers and text only browsers.
- Put Content First: The general order of a web page’s content in loading should be 1) header, 2) content, 3) additional content (comments), 5) sidebar(s), 6) footer, and the last should be ads and other heavy graphic elements. If a visitor has to wait for a heavy graphic element like ads, sidebars, and big images to load before they get to the content, they are very likely to lose patience and leave. Design the underlying architecture to load the content first and the pretty later.
- Use a Mobile/Handheld Stylesheet: Include the option for a mobile or handheld stylesheet for your blog design or WordPress Theme. Restrict the visible design elements to the MOST critical information such as content rather than heavy graphics, sidebars, and ads. There are WordPress Plugins to help create a mobile version of your blog such as the new WordPress iPhone Plugin, Mowser WordPress Mobile, WordPress Mobile Edition, Mobilize by Mippin WordPress Plugin, WP-Wap, WordPress PDA & iPhone, WPhone, and iPhone / Mobile Admin.
- Reduce, Resize, and Lower the Resolution of Graphics and Images: Do you really need to upload and display an image that can be viewed on IMAX? No! Keep images, even linked images, down to 800 to 1200 pixels wide. Keep file sizes down. Use JPG and PNG files with optimization to further reduce file sizes. Don’t preload images unless absolutely necessary. And don’t hotlink images as that adds more bandwidth to the bandwidth to pull them into the page from multiple cross-server locations.
- Avoid Embedding Videos: As Jonathan mentioned in his article, why embed or host video players on your site when a link to download and play the video on whatever player the user has installed on their computer or browser will work just as well. Consider replacing embedding with a thumbnail image wrapped in a link or with a link to download the file in order to play it.
- Limit JavaScripts and AJAX: While most of the web today can’t function without JavaScripts and the new AJAX, these scripts are often found in the
headof the HTML architecture file, loading before the rest of the page. This can slow down the generation of a page. Consider optimizing all scripts and updating them for fast loading, and add them to thefooterwhen possible to make it the last thing that loads on the page.
There are many other things you can do to speed up the loading of your blog’s design and content. As Jonathan noted, in the early days of web design, we wouldn’t even release a web design or WordPress Theme without running it through a battery of tests for code checks, accessibility standards, and bandwidth optimization. Maybe it’s time to bring that back for all WordPress Themes and blog designs, as well as for design enhancing and impacting WordPress Plugins.
The whole world doesn’t run at top bandwidth speeds. While we’re waiting for everyone to catch up, let’s design nice.
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Site Search Tags: blog design, wordpress themes, web design, optimization, speed, bandwidth, dial-up, mobile, css, testing, design tests, accessibility, accessibility standards
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
Dashboard - 3 things you really want to know about RSS
I have been doing some digging into the statistics for Newsniche to try and discover what you are really interested in when it comes to RSS. So I have come up with the imaginatively titled 3 things you really want to know about RSS. So here are the most wanted to know things about RSS in reverse order.
RSS publishing tools
The third most popular topic is on RSS publishing tools. Rather than an article this is a section of the site dedicated to letting you know how you can publish RSS on your site. Being able to publish RSS on your site means that you have a constant stream of updating content for your readers.
Which is the best RSS feed reader
The second most popular item on the site is an article on Which is the best RSS feed reader. You certainly want to know which is the best way to read your feeds. This is not surprising as RSS is all about being able to have information from your favourite sites available to you without having to visit every you like frequently. Why not subscribe to their feed and have the content come to you.
Using Javascript to display RSS
I guess deep down everyone wants to display RSS using Javascript as the number one most read article is Using Javascript to display RSS. This is an article I wrote ages ago showing you how you could easily place content from an RSS feed on your site using a snippet of Javascript. That is so 2006.
This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.
Read MoreDashboard - HP Exploring Shift to Linux in Order to Bypass Vista, Compete With Apple [Hp]
HP Exploring Shift to Linux in Order to Bypass Vista, Compete With Apple [Hp]
According to Businesweek, HP has been quietly working on two projects aimed at bypassing unpopular features in Vista and possibly competing with Apple down the line. The first involves developing...
According to Businesweek, HP has been quietly working on two projects aimed at bypassing unpopular features in Vista and possibly competing with Apple down the line. The first involves developing...
Dashboard - SimplyHired "job search" widget launched Monday
SimplyHired "job search" widget launched Monday
SimplyHired released a widget on SpringWidgets this Monday (2/5/07) - a SimplyHired "job search" widget!!!!! More will be announced "officially", but wanted everyone that might drop by the blog to know they should go grab the widget and put it on their page or pop it into the desktop launchpad.
http://springwidgets.com/simplyhired
SimplyHired released a widget on SpringWidgets this Monday (2/5/07) - a SimplyHired "job search" widget!!!!! More will be announced "officially", but wanted everyone that might drop by the blog to know they should go grab the widget and put it on their page or pop it into the desktop launchpad.
http://springwidgets.com/simplyhired
Widgets - Porn Browser Wars Heat Up, Firefox Goes Incognito, Too [Browsers]
Porn Browser Wars Heat Up, Firefox Goes Incognito, Too [Browsers]
In a response to Google Chrome's Incognito mode and IE8's InPrivate(s), Firefox beta 3.1 (hitting next month) will have a privacy mode of its own that will "ensure that users can't be tracked when...
In a response to Google Chrome's Incognito mode and IE8's InPrivate(s), Firefox beta 3.1 (hitting next month) will have a privacy mode of its own that will "ensure that users can't be tracked when...
Widgets - Tinysoar Zune Video Converter 1.6.1
Widgets - Facebook Climbing to 3rd Spot
The October data are in! Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September [...]
The October data are in!
Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September and October.
Top Bookmarking/Sharing - October 2007
Top Feed Readers - October 2007
Widgets - Month Calendar
Month Calendar
Month Calendar is a resizable calendar showing a month at a time. The month is displayed in weeks, each starting on a Monday or on a Sunday. A week-number is displayed at the start of each week. A memo can be attached to any date. The first three lines of the memo are displayed in the date's tooltip. Memos are saved as files. Calendar files (iCal files) can be imported and managed. When enabled and selected, calendar events appear in the dates' tooltips. Files, texts and URLs may be dragged onto a memo window or onto a calendar date. The dragged text is appended to the text already in the memo window. The Widget can speak the selected date when a memo is opened and can speak the contents of memos. Various types of single or repeating alarm events can be associated with calendar dates.
Month Calendar is a resizable calendar showing a month at a time. The month is displayed in weeks, each starting on a Monday or on a Sunday. A week-number is displayed at the start of each week. A memo can be attached to any date. The first three lines of the memo are displayed in the date's tooltip. Memos are saved as files. Calendar files (iCal files) can be imported and managed. When enabled and selected, calendar events appear in the dates' tooltips. Files, texts and URLs may be dragged onto a memo window or onto a calendar date. The dragged text is appended to the text already in the memo window. The Widget can speak the selected date when a memo is opened and can speak the contents of memos. Various types of single or repeating alarm events can be associated with calendar dates.
Download - Philippe Stark Crystal Clear Watch: Cherry-Colored Wrist Candy [Watches]
Philippe Stark Crystal Clear Watch: Cherry-Colored Wrist Candy [Watches]
If you haven't ditched the good old fashioned wristwatch for the cellphone clock yet, Philippe Stark would like to reward your loyalty with this beautiful Crystal Clear Watch. While it may not be...
If you haven't ditched the good old fashioned wristwatch for the cellphone clock yet, Philippe Stark would like to reward your loyalty with this beautiful Crystal Clear Watch. While it may not be...
Dashboard - MedINRIA 1.8.0
MedINRIA 1.8.0
State-of-the-art algorithms dedicated to medical image processing and visualization State-of-the-art algorithms dedicated to medical image processing and visualization (read more)
State-of-the-art algorithms dedicated to medical image processing and visualization State-of-the-art algorithms dedicated to medical image processing and visualization (read more)
Dashboard - Check out our Christmas Tree widget!!
We thought everyone could use a Christmas Tree widget that counts down the days (like you need more reminding of how fast it is approaching)!
Go to the Christmas Tree page on the site http://springwidgets.com/widgets/view/46 to get your own tree for your page or to pop to your desktop. It can be configured to your liking. We're working on a Menorah and Kwanzaa also . . . keep checking back!
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Go to the Christmas Tree page on the site http://springwidgets.com/widgets/view/46 to get your own tree for your page or to pop to your desktop. It can be configured to your liking. We're working on a Menorah and Kwanzaa also . . . keep checking back!
Read More
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