Ernie Davis - Online

You don’t always have to work hard to be productive.  Productivity can simply be the side effect of doing the right things.

So here’s a list of 29 semi-productive things I do online when my mind is set on avoiding ‘real work.’

1. Check delicious popular tags like ‘useful,’ ‘tutorials,’ ‘tips,’ ‘howto,’ ‘advice,’ ‘entrepreneurship,’ etc. for interesting, educational articles to read.
2. Watch one of the thousands of educational videos streaming at TED.com, Academic Earth and Teacher Tube.
3. Read an online book list and find a new book to grab next time I’m at the library.  Here’s another list.  And another.  And another.
4. Read a classic book online for free at Project Gutenberg, Planet eBook, or the E-books Directory.
5. Research a new Do It Yourself project at DIY Network, Instructables, eHow, or WikiHow.
6. Add to, delete from, or just generally sort my ongoing to-do list at Remember The Milk.
7. Create a cool graphical mind map of some of my recent ideas at bubbl.us.
8. Email a close friend or family member I haven’t spoken to in awhile.
9. Backup my recent photos, documents, and other important files online using Microsoft’s free 25 gig SkyDrive.
10. Use Wikipedia’s random article function to pick a random article to read.
11. Touch up on my math and science skills over a the Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, or LearningScience.org.
12. Send a paper greeting card directly to a friend or relative at enGreet.
13. Start learning a new language online for free at BBC Languages or Livemocha.
14. Watch one of the insightful 6 minute and 40 second presentations at Ignite Show.
15. Use Memorize Now to memorize a cool joke, or poem, or whatever.
16. Use Media Convert to convert video files I have on my computer into a format I can view on my iPhone or iPod later on.
17. Listen to an educational podcast over at Odeo or via iTunes on iTunes U.
18. Read one of the academic journals at the Directory of Open Access Journals.
19. Share my favorite mp3s, photos, videos, etc. with friends and family using drop.io.
20. Get a free college education online using this guide from Lifehacker (or read one of the other useful articles on Lifehacker).
21. Inspire and spark my creative mind by looking at a rolling slideshow of the highest rated photos on Flickr for the last 7 days.
22. Catch up on a short history lesson at HyperHistory or The Internet History Sourcebooks Project.  Or find out what happened today in history.
23. Take a fun, educational online quiz at Quizlet.
24. Play an educational online game at Lumosity, Sporcle, Games for the Brain, or Math Run.
25. Add a little gentle rain to my environment using RainyMood.com and then simply meditate and relax in my computer chair for 10 minutes.
26. Sell old stuff I no longer need on eBay and make a little extra cash.
27. Find a new musical artist to listen to based on music I like at Grooveshark, Pandora, last.fm, or Deezer.
28. Find out what’s happening in our world from quality international news sources like BBC News and Reuters.
29. Write a blog post like this one.

What kind of semi-productive things do you do online in your off-time?  Please share them with us in the comments section below.

Photo by: Colorblind Picaso

If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to our RSS feed.

Or subscribe via email.

Possibly Related Posts:

• A Misconception of Productivity
• Productive Simplicity = (Life + Goals) - Distraction
• Google Owns My Identity: 16 Things They Know About Me
• The ABC’s of Productive Living: 26 Tips from A to Z
• 30 Articles that Will Help You Simplify Your Life

1 Comment

Filed under Hacks, Life, Productivity, Tech

15 Fantastic Finds on the Google Code Repository

Curated by Joshua Johnson, On 6th February 2010.
Filed in Community.

“I found a number of interesting scripts and other goodies that would be an asset in any website owner/website builder’s arsenal.”

View Post

Last year, our product development team set an ambitious goal: to make LiveBall the very best software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for deploying SEO-friendly landing pages, conversion paths, and microsites.

As the disciplines of SEO and conversion optimization continue to intertwine, we feel there are two key capabilities that conversion optimization solutions such as ours should deliver:

1. Organic boosting. When testing landing pages for paid media campaigns — which is what most conversion optimization tools emphasize — marketers should be able to enjoy additional organic traffic as a “bonus.”

Why not double-dip? If you’re placing a great ad and associated landing page on a particular keyword, by all means, enable it to rank organically as well! At the very least, any SEO link juice acquired by experimental and campaign-specific pages should be transferrable as much as possible to your core site.

2. Organic building. For most marketers in SEO, you have two choices for testing new ideas: (a) add a page to your web site; or (b) make a post on your blog. The former can get mired in information architecture and IT issues that drag it down. The latter is fast — but you’re constrained by the blog format.

LiveBall offers a third option (c): quickly deploy satellite landing pages, conversion paths, and microsites that are optimized for SEO keywords that you either want to test — or strive to own. It’s a hybrid: the format flexibility of a web site with the speed and independence of a blog.

To enable both organic boosting and organic building, we turned to four of the leading experts in SEO — Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola — and their authoritative book The Art of SEO.

Starting on page 263 of their book, they describe 27 features that they would want in a super SEO-friendly content management system (CMS) — in our case, a landing page and microsite optimized CMS.

Taking their advice to heart, we made sure that our new release supported all of their wish list that applied to landing pages — 22 of the 27 features they describe. (The other 5 only apply to blogs and catalogs, or we would have supported them too!)

• Title tag customization and rules: YES
• Static, keyword-rich URLs: YES
• Meta tag customization: YES
• Enabling custom HTML tags: YES
• Internal anchor text flexibility: YES
• Intelligent categorization structure: YES
• Pagination controls: N/A
• 301-redirect functionality: YES
• XML/RSS pinging: YES
• Image-handling and alt attributes: YES
• CSS exceptions: YES
• Static caching options: YES
• URLs free of tracking parameters and session IDs: YES
• Customizable URL structure: YES
• 301 redirects to a canonical URL: YES
• Static-looking URLs: YES
• Keywords in URLs: YES
• RSS feeds: N/A
• Tagging and tag clouds: N/A
• Multilevel categorization structure: YES
• Paraphrasable excerpts: N/A
• Breadcrumb navigation: YES
• Meta NoIndex tags for low-value pages: YES
• Keyword-rich intro copy on category-level pages: YES
• NoFollow links in comments: N/A
• Customizable anchor text on navigational links: YES
• XML sitemap generator: YES
• XHTML validation: YES
• Pingbacks, trackbacks, comments, and antispam mechanisms: N/A

Thanks to Eric, Stephan, Rand, and Jessie for giving us such a clear target to hit.

If you’re interested in more details, click through to the SEO landing pages feature page for LiveBall.

The Grass Textured Social Icon Set has been created by Richie Thimmaiah, from RichWorks exclusively for Speckyboy Design Magazine readers and are free to use for both your personal and commercial projects but may not be modified, sold or redistributed.
The icons are packaged with 3 different sizes to suit your needs: 256px, 128px and 64px.

When creating these icons, he used a grass brush tool from the default brush set in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and created an outer boundary, he then pasted the individual logos of social networking sites and then carefully used the same strokes on each icon to achieve the unique result you can see below.
The base image that has been used to create this effect can be found here:

.

Grass Textured Social Icon Set Preview and Download

• Download The Grass Textured Social Icon Set

About the designer

This icon set has been created by Richie Thimmaiah. You can visit his personal design blog RichWorks, which is brimming with Photoshop tutorials, daily inspirations and all round great resources. You can also follow him on Twitter here: @richbugger.

You might also like…

The Top 50 Web Development Icon Sets from 2009 »
8 Free Pictogram Icon Libraries and Collections »
40 Fresh and Free Icon Sets for Web Designers and Bloggers »
35 Original and Creative Free Twitter Icon Sets »
50 High Quality Free Icon Sets in PSD Format »
50 Social Service and Bookmarking Icon Sets for Bloggers »
50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets »
42 Amazing Photoshop and Illustrator Icon Design Tutorials »
96 of the Best Ever Free Icon Sets – For Web Designers, Developers and Bloggers »
35 Free Icon Sets for your iPhone – Pimp it Up! »
30 Amazing Free Vector Icons, Buttons, Stickers, Banners, Labels and Speech Bubbles »

Feb 03

Tagged in: Coding, CSS Comments:Add

47 Amazing CSS3 Animation Demos

Here is a compilation of 47 jaw-dropping CSS3 animation demos. They demonstrate the possibilities of the CSS3 transform and transition property. Some are very useful and can be used as Javascript alternatives. Most of them are simply to look cool. In order to veiw these effects, you need a webkit browser such as Safari and Chrome (sorry to the Internet Explorer users). Enjoy!

CSS3 Clock With jQuery

Analogue Clock

3D Cube That Rotates Using Arrow Keys

Multiple 3D Cubes (Slide In/Out)

CSS3 Accordion

Auto-Scrolling Parallax

Isocube

Image Gallery

Matrix

7 Javascript-effect Alternatives Using CSS3

Image Hover Effects

Turning Coke Can (Control With Scrollbar)

3D Meninas

Polaroid Gallery

Space

Note: this one is graphic intense and takes a while to load, but the result is crazy!

Mac Dock

Drop-In Modals

Sliding Vinyl

Zooming Polaroids

Animated Rocket

Poster Circle

Morphing Cubes

Falling Leaves

Animated Polaroid Gallery

Spotlight Cast Shadow

Colorful Clock

Lightbox Gallery (Draggable)

Elastic Thumbnail Menu

Coverflow

Snowflakes

jQuery DJ Hero

Dynamic Stacking Cards

Another Image Gallery

Snow Stack (Control With Arrow Keys)

Animated Pricing Column

Slick jQuery Menu

CSS3

CSS Tabs Without Javascript

Tab Menus Without Javascript

SVG Fisheye Menu

Dynamic Presentation Without Flash

Rotating Gallery

Dropdown Menu

Another Fisheye

Frame-by-Frame Animation (Hover to Play)

Another Accordion

AT-AT Walker (No Flash or Javascript)

Delicious Stumbleupon Digg

What to Expect in 2010: UX/UI Design Simplicity

Comments

Pages: 3 2 1 » Show All

There are 30 comments (+Add)

• 30 Veera http://veerasundar.com/blog
  February 4th, 2010 at 8:23 am

  wooooow.. this is amazing. I liked the spotlight shadow demo. its simply superb!

• 29 Mr G
  February 4th, 2010 at 7:30 am

  safari and chrome have the best css3 compatibility at the moment

• 28 Fernando http://www.fdcalzada.com.ar
  February 4th, 2010 at 6:57 am

  Great post. Thanks!

• 27 Jeremy
  February 4th, 2010 at 6:02 am

  Great CSS3!

  Stupid IE…

• 26 Tanzanian designer http://www.selengiadesigns.com
  February 4th, 2010 at 5:35 am

  Im loving CSS3. If only everyone boycotted IE

• 25 cchana http://charanj.it
  February 4th, 2010 at 5:00 am

  can’t wait until the day you don’t need to worry about using CSS3. The potential, as shown here, is huge!

• 24 Fresh http://www.lemoustachiste.com
  February 4th, 2010 at 4:37 am

  Hey,

  I don’t know what’s wrong but it’s very disappointing, Most of the effects don’t seem to work with FF3.6??? Is it just me and I’m missing something or does it happen to more people?

• 23 BigM75 http://www.sgdoeschwitz.de
  February 4th, 2010 at 3:03 am

  das ist so cool, nur ist schade das der IE immer noch etwa 40% der Browser einnimmt und der uns so einen strich durch die rechnung macht.

• 22 insic http://insicdesigns.com
  February 4th, 2010 at 2:16 am

  cool! this a nice collection

• 21 thinkmad http://hi.baidu.com/thinkmad
  February 3rd, 2010 at 11:01 pm

  Great collection! I hope we can create more cool things with CSS3,but I really don’t want to see more CSS and JavaScript code along with them.I agree with the catchword of jQuery:Write less, Do more.

Pages: 3 2 1 » Show All

Post Your Comments

Category

• Tutorials
• Trends
• General

Tag Cloud

Coding CSS design design process Design Trends event Flash freebies Illustrator inspiration Javascript jobs photoshop Photoshop tutorials review SEO software talented people updates WordPress writing

Ads

Design Jobs on the Wall

• Web Developer
  at Refina (Anywhere)
• Hands-on Art Director/Producer
  at FIDM / Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (Downtown, Los Angeles at Grand Hope Park)
• Award Winning Co. seeking Web Designer
  at CPO Commerce (Pasadena, CA)
• Front End Web Developer
  at POD1 Inc. (New York, NY)
• Killer Developer/Programmer Needed
  at Petflow (new york city)

See all Design Jobs

Follow @nickla

• RT @smashingmag: 10 Techniques for a Fantastic Footer - http://bit.ly/7w2TcF 56 mins ago
• Bestwebgallery's pick: http://mercyonline.co.uk by @mercyuk (comment at http://bit.ly/aDFKpk) 1 hour ago
• RT @smashingmag: WordPress Tip: Remove nofollow Attributes from Post Content - http://bit.ly/9lX1e3 1 hour ago
• RT @danmilward: another #wordpress e-commerce plugin theme is born http://bit.ly/ca4a03 thanks to our friends over at @icreativelabs #wp ... 13 hours ago

Polls

 Loading ...

Poll Archives

Back to top

At first glance the Google Map API may seem scary, I mean, were do you possibly start? You probably only want to display a simple map that displays directions to your clients address, you don’t really want an all singing and dancing interactive map with more options than necessary. There has to be a simpler way.
Of course there is, and as with almost all web site interactivity, jQuery does offer some simple and easy to use plugins.

The plugins below offer not only an easier method to install a map, they also offer the option to add extra functionality, should you choose to need them. They also all come with a varied degree of docs, some are extensive and some non-existent, so choose your plugin wisely.

I have also listed a couple of beginner jQuery and Google Map tutorials at the the bottom of the post. If you are taking your first steps within Google Maps, I suggest you start there.

Before you install any of these plugins you may want to firstly download the latest version of jQuery, and secondly you had better grab your Google Map API Key here: Sign Up for the Google Maps API.

gMap – Google Maps Plugin

gMap is a very flexible, highly customizable and lightweight (only 2KB) jQuery plugin that helps you embed Google Maps into your website. It can be customized in many different ways, all you need to do is to pass a JSON object to the GMap() function, click here for a complete list of properties that can be passed.

• gMap Demos »

• Download gMap »

• gMap Documentation »

Google Maps jQuery Plugin

The Google Maps jQuery Plugin takes away a lot of the pain from working with the Google Map Api (which can be pretty indepth for all developer levels). It allows you to embed Google Maps on your web site with ease and there are also certains portions of the Map that can be controlled via CSS (div container, info window), so that the map will sit perfectly within your web design.

• Google Maps Demo »

• Download Google Maps jQuery Plugin »

Mapbox – the jQuery Map

The jQuery mapbox() plugin is for creating relatively small scale, zoomable, draggable maps with multiple layers of content. This framework could be applied to games, development plans, or any layout that could benefit from pan and zoom functions.
Mapbox likes to think of its self as a basic plugin, yes it is easy to use, but with a wide array of advanced options, here are a list of all the settings and their defaults:

• Mapbox Demo »

• Download Mapbox »

jQuery GPS

jQuery GPS is a jQuery plugin for people that want to add Google maps to their website, but don't want their website to be bogged down with the features they don't require.
All you have to do is add inputs for addresses by simply adding default or custom ID's. You can even use any element to trigger the event, so it doesn't need to be embedded inside a form.
With jQuery GPS you have the option to select the position/place on the map upon first load, and to open a toolip or image on that starting location.

• jQuery GPS Demo »

• Download jQuery GPS »

• jQuery GPS Documentation »

jMapping – for creating Google Maps from semantic markup

This plugin is designed for quick Google Map implemention with a list of the locations that are specified within the HTML It allows for as much graceful degradation as possible by having as much semantic HTML as it allows.
The plugin expects the HTML for the locations to be grouped under a common element and expects the necessary metadata to be on the location element. This way the HTML semantically reflects all of those parts and information are associated with the specific location or place.

• jMapping Demo »

• jMapping Download »

• jMapping Documentation »

Googlemap jQuery Plugin by Dylan Verheul

This plugins makes it easy to put a Google Map on your page. Look at the source code of this page if you want to know how to use the plugin. Markers can be provided by a jQuery object (containing elements in the geo microformat) or an array of objects that provide lat, lng and txt for the popup (txt being optional).

• Googlemap jQuery Plugin Source Plugin and Demo »

imGoogleMaps – Multiple Addresses

This is a much simpler plugin than all the rest on this page, it has been developed to create a simpler implementation with minimal and basic options. When you think about it, in most situations all you will want from a map is for an end-user to be able to view the owner’s address and be able to map directions to that address, this plugin fits that bill.
This plugins map interface is similar to what you would see on Google Maps (auto mode), while also giving the developer the ability to style their own interface (manual mode).

• imGoogleMaps Demos »

• Download imGoogleMaps »

• imGoogleMaps Documentation »

jMaps Framework

The JMaps Framework provides a simple yet powerful API for Google's mapping services, that offers simple jQuery methods to do functions such as: Geocode and reverse any valid address in the world via Google's geocoding API; Search for directions to and from any location; Add and remove Markers; Add and remove polygons and polylines; Add and remove graphic layers on the map; Add and remove Google adsense layers; Add and remove Traffic layers; Get information back such as map center, map size, map type, etc.

• jMaps Framework Demo »

• Download jMaps Framework »

jQuery-PlacePicker

jQuery-PlacePicker is a geocoding jQuery UI widget with support for Google Maps API v3 (and framework ready for others) that allow users to search for and select locations.

• jQuery-PlacePicker Demo »

• Download jQuery-PlacePicker »

jQmaps

jQmaps is a very easy to use and popular plugin for Google Maps, that can add custom points, expandible ballons and hotspots links.
It does not offer any docs nor does it have any working demos. If you feel comfortable using it, go for it, if not try one of the plugins above.

• Download jQmaps »

jQuery and Google Maps Tutorial: The Basics

If you have never worked with the Google Map API before it can all seem daunting. What you need is a step-by-step guide that will cover the basics and give you a better understanding of everything that is going on, and that is what this tutorial covers.

• Demo »

• View the Tutorial »

AJAX Storing and Retrieving Points – Tutorial

Taking things a step further from the previous article, in this tutorial you will learn how to store and retrieve points with using AJAX and a server-side language. This tutorial will use PHP/MySQL on the server, but it is basic enough that re-writing in another language should not be difficult.

• Demo »

• View the Tutorial »

You might also like…

25 Tutorials and Resources for Learning jQuery UI »
Creating a Web Development Environment using Google Chrome Extensions »
CSS References, Tutorials, Cheat Sheets, Conversion Tables and Short Codes »
The Blueprint CSS Framework – Tutorials, How-to Guides and Tools »
50 Essential Web Typography Tutorials, Tips, Guides and Best Practices »
50 Useful Tools and Generators for Easy CSS Development »
20+ Resources and Tutorials for Creative Forms using CSS »
24 CSS (in some cases with jQuery) Navigation and Menu Tutorials »
22 CSS Button Styling Tutorials and Techniques »
15 Amazing jQuery Image Gallery/Slideshow Plugins and Tutorials »

With some basic knowledge in HTML and CSS, anyone can stylize the regular dull links (blue and underlined) to match the look and feel of a design. CSS provides some powerful ways to style your hyperlinks but if you want to go one step further and add some smooth animation to your hyperlinks, than I believe you will find this list useful.

1. Make Your Links (Hyperlinks) Even More Sexier

Use this technique developed by Nitin, to make your links even more sexier.

2. Scrollovers – A New Way of Linking

Scrollovers are a way to quickly and easily add flair to your web pages, giving your users an experience they weren’t expecting.

3. Rollover Links

A plugin for MooTools which does pretty much the same thing as the effect above mentioned.

4. Mootools Link Animation

This is a short MooTools code, that uses the native :hover element and overrides it’s functionality.

5. Fading color effect for inline text links using jQuery

Here’s a simple UX trick that can be easily implemented into your web sites. With a few lines of jQuery it will make your text links fade to another color on rollover.

7. jQuery Link Nudging

This is a classy, subtle link animation achieved by adding left padding on mouseover and removing it on mouseout.

10. Playing with jQuery Color Plugin and Color Animation

In this post you will see how to create some cool menus with jQuery and jQuery Color Plugin.

Share and Enjoy:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

World Map | 14,7 MB | 1 PSD | 1125 x 559

 

 

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?enmur2mqlqj