The Great Location Land Rush Of 2010
Back in November, at our Realtime CrunchUp event, I sat on the geolocation panel with members of Twitter, Foursquare, SimpleGeo, GeoAPI, Hot Potato, and Google. At one point, I raised the question if location was going to be the next battleground between startups large and small, much like social identity plays (Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect) and status updates (Twitter vs. Facebook). All of the panelists indicated that it wouldn’t be, because they could all get along. How sweet. Sadly, I don’t believe them. I believe they might think that right now, because it’s still very early in the game. But it’s still a game, and people are going to play to win.
I’m sure some of them would counter that because location data is fairly standard right now, and moving easily between services, all of them will win. But that’s not true either. While location, as a whole, will win, there will be individual companies that end up ahead of others in the space. More to the point, there will be one or two services that people will go to for their social location data. That’s what we’re moving towards. And the bigger companies are starting to realize it. That’s why today we saw what may be the first maneuver in an upcoming rush to secure the location landscape, with Twitter snatching up Mixer Labs, the team behind GeoAPI. Read the rest of this entry »
Top 10 Photoshop Tutorial Websites
There is certainly no shortage of Photoshop tutorial websites floating around in cyber space. As I’m sure many of you know, most of them are pure crap. They are filled with recycled and out dated tutorials, many of which look like they were written by a 6th grader. Instead of wasting your time scouring the web looking for good Photoshop tutorials, stick with this list of the 10 best. You will actually learn something on these!
So, if you are looking to up your game some, or just learn the basics, check out these sites.
In no particular order, the top 10 Photoshop tutorials are:
Everything you need to know about WordPress 2.9’s post image feature
You may have heard a bit of news about a new thumbnail feature for themes coming to WordPress 2.9. Yes, you’ll be able to easily upload a post thumbnail. However, it’s not just thumbnails. The image will have various sizes. So, I’m going to refer to this feature as the post image feature.
In this tutorial, I’ll be covering the various things you can do with the post image feature. Some things will be specific to end users while others will be useful for theme and plugin developers.
One important thing to note is that this new feature is an image-based representation of a post. The image itself is directly tied to your post. You shouldn’t think of it as something different than that.
How does an end user make use of this feature?
First, your theme must add support for it. Otherwise, you won’t be able to use it. At this point, let’s assume that your theme does support it. I’ll go over instructions for theme authors later.
To use this feature, you must be within the post editing screen of your WordPress admin. On this screen, you’ll see a new meta box labeled “Post thumbnail” (or “Page thumbnail” for pages). There’ll be a link to “Set thumbnail,” which will allow you to use the media uploader to load a new image.
It’s not just for thumbnails
Even though it is called “post thumbnails,” we can technically use the feature for all sorts of things (e.g., feature images, medium-sized images for the front page, etc.).
By default, WordPress gives you several image sizes each time you upload an image. These image sizes are:
- Thumbnail
- Medium
- Large
- Full (the image you uploaded)
Some plugins even extend this by allowing more intermediate sizes. The important thing is that you understand that more than thumbnails can be used here. Read the rest of this entry »
10 new WordPress plugins you might want to test
The wonderful community of WordPress developers constantly provides us with interesting new themes and plugins. I have scanned the most recent WordPress plugin releases and came up with a list of 10 plugins definitely worth taking a look at.
Keep in might that these are new releases and so, their stability and status should be considered as BETA. You might want to test them on a backup server before going live. The descriptions listed here are those submitted by the plugins’ authors and do not necessarily express my views. Read the rest of this entry »
A Look Into the WordPress Themes’ Options Pages
For a long while the option panels where something that people could only find in premium (commercial) themes, and for a good reason. The pricing of their licenses allowed the premium theme developers to invest more time in giving theme users the ways to do through these panels what they could not do through coding.
With the buzz created around these themes, regular users became aware of what could really be achieved, and thus, those that could not afford the license of a premium theme, became more selective with the free ones. A good-looking theme was not enough anymore, and WordPress developers realized it.
A good premium theme would bring its developer not only a good amount of money, but also recognition in the community, and this is where the free theme developers scored their biggest points. Now that their “turf” was endangered they had to react, and they did. For premium themes like Thesis or WP Unlimited, users have now alternatives like Thematic, Hybrid, Carrington, WP Framework or my own (even if not a framework) Simple Balance.
Why should free theme developers consider adding an options page?
jQuery 1.4 Released: The 15 New Features you Must Know
jQuery 1.4 was recently released. This wasn’t simply a maintenance release as some had speculated; there are many new features, enhancements and performance improvements included in 1.4! This post covers the new features and enhancements that you may find beneficial.
You can download jQuery 1.4 right now, here: http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.js
Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010
It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the floodgates for others to follow.
Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter). I conducted an informal survey of some top VCs and angel investors. These are the names whispered about the most in the Valley and other tech circles. The hope is that the economy will swing back and the public markets will become receptive to IPOs, especially towards the second half of the year. The stock market in general is finding its legs already. The S&P 500 is up 24 percent this year. If the bull market continues, that will be good for the prospects of seeing these potential IPOs. And if it doesn’t, there’s always M&A.
1. Facebook. Total raised: $716 million.
If there is one company which everyone is looking towards for a new Netscape moment, it is Facebook. The company can pretty much go public any time it wants. It is already the fourth largest site in the U.S. and the world. Its last private common stock sale valued the company at $11 billion, which may or may not be rational. The key to a large public valuation will be whether Facebook can figure out how to turn all of that attention into advertising dollars. So far it is said to be on track to beat its $550 million revenue projections from earlier this year. A Facebook IPO would certainly create a halo effect for other tech offerings. Even if it doesn’t go out in 2010, the prospect that it might could still help other companies go public as hungry investors grab what they can get. Read the rest of this entry »
Staying Productive During the Holiday Break
One of the most frustrating things to me is when I’m trying to get work done over the holidays and get nothing but away messages. It seems like everyone in the world takes a few weeks off, even when they are in the office. And if you rely on others to help you work by way of getting information to complete the job, it can be really challenging.
So if you can’t get to the things you want to do right now, you can still stay productive while the rest of the world seems to be at a standstill. Here are some tips to help you stay productive during the holiday lull.
30+ Plugins for Wordpress Comments
When working on a WordPress (
) blog, posts often take center stage. However, the comments are often just as important – they create valuable discussion. And yet the default WordPress comment box is simplistic and uninspiring – here are Mashable’s (
) favorite comment-focused WordPress plugins that can eliminate spam, improve the appearance of comments, and add more value to your posts.
Fight Spam
Akismet – Antispam plugin from the creators of Wordpress that uses a central database of spam comments to flag spam. Requires a free API key from Wordpress.com (
)
Spam Karma – Analyzes comments for spam based on a karma system.
Bad Behavior – Prevents spambots from even accessing your site by analyzing their HTTP requests.
Did You Pass Math? – Asks commenters a simple math question before their comments are posted.
Comment Timeout – Closes comments on old posts. Read the rest of this entry »