This is a guest post by Alex Mathers, founder of Red Lemon Club, a self-taught illustrator and writer who believes that any freelancer passionate about work they are good at deserves to create a successful and thriving career from it. Alex recently released an extremely useful online course titled The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery

Google’s latest addition to the ‘social’ world, in the form of social networking platform Google+, appears to have divided people on how useful and how valuable it actually is. What it has so far shown, is a huge amount of promise and value through its use as a professional networking tool that can be used to expand business and bring professionals together.

Here are 6 ways Google+ can help you attract more and better clients:

1. You can engage with targeted prospects

Thanks to Google+ incorporating the much needed ‘circles’ element to the platform, you are not only able to very clearly define the feeds you see on your home screen depending on what circles you have defined and chosen to be revealed, but you can send out content to specific groups or individuals.

What this does is allow you to target your content so that it is seen by the right people.

On a web platform that could allow anyone and everyone to see all manner of content you post, this is really valuable, and to a professional like yourself, even more so.

2. Sharing more in-depth content

Google+ is brilliant for sharing expanded and varied content. Posts can be essentially any length you like, you can include animations, films, the ability to tag people in posts. Google+ displays pictures really nicely and picture editing is great, giving you plenty of control.

You could even treat Google+ as your own blog, like Kevin Rose, who has swapped his blog for his G+ feed.

3. Gives you the ability to more easily reach out to anyone, including ideal clients

Reaching out and interacting with people is a key element gathering support, exposure, fans, connections, and ultimately paid work for freelancers. Doing this online to complement your engagement in the ‘real world’ can be very powerful if done in the right way.

Google+ lets users connect with potential clients, key influencers and others who support your freelancing business in better and more effective ways.

Firstly, because the platform allows you to follow the updates of people without them requiring to accept a friend request ,as on Facebook, you are in a better position to attract connections by actually interacting with their content and mentioning their name appropriately through ‘+ tagging’  and so on.

Secondly, circles allows you to share specific information with the relevant people, which allows for the sharing of content in a much more focused way. This is very valuable when we are talking about relationship- building.

Thirdly, the highly superior search function within Google+ makes finding people, as well as content to share and engage with, much more easy. The extended circles feature will allow you to share your updates with people you follow who haven’t followed you back yet, bringing further connection-making ability to the system.

4. It provides a more professional, business-like environment

A more professional crowd appears to be being drawn to Google+, mainly for its features and benefits for businesses.

This is where freelancers need to be in order to make the most of being in close proximity to other professionals who can work with them and provide work for them. For the time being, Google+’s user-base is comparatively small (though still huge and growing!), which means being able to stand out more too.

5. Google+ showcases your work and business in greater depth

You have the capability to really turn your profile on Google+ into a place to showcase what you do, be that a visual portfolio, or something in written format, like your CV. You can utilise the great picture display and sharing options, such as albums, and images next to your profile picture on your profile page, as well as the ‘About’ area which can contain a great range of material, as well as links, details about where you’ve lived and contact details.

6. You are better able to get found in search

Being linked with Google+ means that everything that is associated with you, including your profile, and brand page, will attract preference from Google’s powerful search engine, so that you, your shared content, and your brand will be found more easily.

The value this presents for self-promotion is very clear. Google is very interested in material that is being shared socially, like it is on Google+, and will make sure that socially-shared content gains priority through their search engine.

Google’s introduction of the +1 button means that anything that receives a +1 (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) will gain more preference through Google search.

Because everything shared in Google+, as well as images now, has a +1 button linked to it, there is a lot of scope for gaining a large amount exposure through this. As Google+ is still in its early stages of development, expect to see a lot of further improvement and added features that will benefit you as a freelancer or small business over time. I’d love to hear what you think of Google+ and what it could offer you as a freelancer in the comments section below.

This is a guest article from Alex Mathers, who has written a well-received e-course designed specifically for freelancers who want to use Google+ to win great projects and clients, called: ‘The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery’. You can read a free sample chapter from the course here, instantly downloadable.

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6 Ways Google+ Can Win you More Clients

It seems these days that many designers automatically settle on the main color in their website’s palette automatically: white. Every other color is just an accent to that. Today, we look at 40 websites that used a bolder color to base their design on — in this case, blue.

It’s harder to pull off a web design that is based on a bold color — the relative safety of a plain old white background is easy to work with. These designers have made it work, though, and this means they can design sites that deliver greater branding benefits using the psychology of color. Check out how they did it.

Critical Zero

Obama 2012

Resume Baking

Foundation Six

Souljade

Yodaa

Carbonmade

The Pixel

Morphix

Vegas Uncork’d

Skype

Twitter Basics

Owltastic

Postbox

Campaign Monitor

Quiip

Elbow Park

Orion Advisor

Bartelme Design

Icebrrg

Birdie

Alex Swanson

Marie Catrib’s

Omaha Barcamp

Kyan

LeaderBe Consulting

Yowza

Ready Made Designs

Knight

Nude Designs

Delibar

Elemodo

Onavo

Jar Design

PSD2HTML

DesignCrowd

nclud

Shelly Cooper

Vimeo

Los Colores Olvidados

Why blue? It’s a bold color but one that’s psychologically fairly neutral and uncontroversial for a business to use — a safe choice. That’s not to say it doesn’t mean anything. Blue is considered a calming color that represents focus, attention, and is both uplifting and motivating. These are all traits that most businesses don’t mind being associated with. While not many businesses will simply say “I need a blue web design” they’ll often request it in their brief or have it as part of their logo. Color psychology does suggest that overuse of blue can come off as sterile and detached, so don’t forget to mix it up a little with other colors that are friendly and pair well.

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40 Websites That Look Great in Blue

As you may know by now, Inspired Magazine is a sucker for data visualization. That’s why we invited Tony Shin – a social media ninja and creative design samurai – to curate the weekly dose of infographics. If you like them as much as we do check out some of the older editions and follow Tony on Twitter and Facebook as well!

1. Where is Your Brand in the Social Media Lifecycle?

Inspired by the White Paper, Ubervu put together this infographic that highlights a complete package of how to track your social media success. As social media continues to evolve, many businesses are paying more attention to the usefulness of social media. Tracking your success through analytics will be the way to really find your ROI in social media. Take a look at the graphic for more.

2. The Great Digital Divide

As social media continues to advance itself, so is the Internet – or is it? It seems the Internet revolution is leaving many behind, and that’s scary. With the power of the Internet and all its resources, it’s a shame it’s not being used by everyone. As much as it’s accessible to everyone, it’s really accessible to those who have the Internet. Online IT Degree shows us the reasons and issues that rise from this divide.

3. HTML5 vs. Flash Games

Speaking of the IT industry, HTML5 has revolutionized design and technology. Plus, who doesn’t love Angry Birds? One More Level gives us the comparison between HTML5 vs. Flash Games. This infographic really stood out to me; aesthetics, design and the easy flow of the graphic really laid out the comparison well. Will Flash games ever get old? Can they keep up? Only time will tell. Until then, check out the infographic to really understand the truths behind your Angry Birds app.

4. Fatal Attraction

Speaking of aesthetics, this infographic is just too darn cute – but sends a different message. Cosmetology School lays out the chemicals in cosmetics and shows us that the products we’ve grown to love and use meticulously – just might have a draw back. One of the more shocking facts on the graphic lies toward the bottom: “80% of the products designed for newborns, contain flame-retardants that are considered toxic.” Wait, this for babies?! Take a look at the graphic for some more shocking statistics.

5. The Day the Internet Stood Still

It seems that Frugal Dad continues to amaze me with their design. As the story is surely to pop up again soon, SOPA became the Internet’s and the U.S’ largest protest in history. Could it be that the issue of a digital divide become worthless if resources like Wikipedia cease to exit? The thought is scary. So STOP SOPA.

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Infographics of the Week #22

Joe Childress & Jonathan Combs have been creating visual projects together since 2008. They have collaborated on commercials, animated shorts, viral videos and several other forms of visual stimulation. They both currently reside in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and find anytime they can to create.

Step 1. Find a previous American Idol contestant who made the top 24 and wants a music video.

After the music video Joe Childress & Jonathan Combs (that’s us!)  directed for Tim Halperin’s “She Runs” climbed to 100,00 views in July 2010, we were hungry to make another video. Tim spent the rest of the year touring, promoting his EP “Make or Break” and eventually landing on “American Idol” by flirting with Jennifer Lopez. He ended up making it into the Top 24 and performed his soon-to-be single “The Last Song” on national television.

After his experience on “American Idol” Tim came back to Texas ready to turn “The Last Song” into a hit music video & continue to develop his fan base. He asked us to come up with a crazy cool concept for a killer music video.

Step 2. Come up with a crazy cool concept

As with any creative endeavor, beers are an essential part of the process. We (Joe & Jonathan) met up to listen to the song, drink a few drinks and brainstorm on ideas. After deciding on the overall theme of Tim crawling through his own head searching for inspiration to write a final song for a lost love, we began working on ways to represent this visually. With a low-budget, DIY video under our belts we wanted to create a larger, more cinematic video this time around. But one thing was instantly obvious: we were going to need funding.

Step 3. Raise money through Kickstarter

Raising money for music videos (and really any artistic project) used to be quite a pain. With “She Runs” we had absolutely no budget and had to build the idea and concept around that fact. Knowing that kickstarter.com had created a way for fans, friends and complete strangers to support your vision, we let our imaginations run wild. With kickstarter, though, there is one catch: you have to reach your goal within 30 days or your project doesn’t get funded, and supporters get their money back.

We pitched the idea to Tim (who’s head exploded after hearing it) and we knew the best way to get people on board for helping us was to give them stuff. So we created a promo video specifically for the kickstarter campaign and provided incentives for people to give.

Step 4. Put together a team of fiendish creative types

Through the 100% volunteer crew from the “She Runs” shoot we knew we had plenty of people we could count on. It was important for us, after seeing everyone’s dedication on that shoot, that we find ways to compensate them for their hard work and creativity. Although we couldn’t pay them what they were worth we knew with funding we would have the means to at least pay them something. The producers, directors and several others involved went without a paycheck in order to put as much money into the video as possible. The next four weeks were spent solidifying the script, storyboarding, securing locations, collecting props, building sets, finding food donors for the shoot days, reserving equipment, finding actors, all the while worrying if raising $8,000 was an attainable goal.

Step 5. Spend 4 grueling days shooting

With everything in place and the money raised it was time to take our vision from paper to screen. The next four days involved Tim flipping out when he realized what he thought was a water reservoir was actually a fish-infested, slimy cow trough, shooting in public places without permits as cops drove by, gale force winds blowing over railroad ties, destroying equipment and demolishing lights, and an actress’ hair being accidentally set on fire. After the dust settled we knew (hoped) that our creation was in the can. Now it was time to edit.

Step 6. Lock yourself in a room with the footage

After months of pouring over storyboards, putting together the rough cut came easily and allowed us to spend more time tightening the edit and adding in visual effects.

The video was set to premiere on “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” in a few weeks. In order to meet this hard dead line the final editing and visual effects came from two back-to-back sleepless nights and finished mere minutes before the video was to premier.

Step 7. Have a world premier live streaming event on a syndicated radio morning show

“Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” is a syndicated radio talk show that reaches over 2 million listeners. Tim had been performing weekly on the show doing a segment called “Idol Got it Wrong”. With the success of the segment Kidd offered to premier Tim’s new video. “The Last Song” music video went live over Kidd Kraddick’s Ustream channel to an audience of over 2,000 fans.

Step 8. Plan your next video

An artist’s thirst for creativity is never satisfied. You can continue to nit pick your past projects but new content is created by moving forward. Did your last video suck? Who cares, make a better one. Did your last video rock? Who cares, make a better one.

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HOW TO: Create a Killer Music Video

Erin Emocling, aka basterda, is the editor-in-chief of the Lomography Magazine. She also writes Analogue Lifestyle pieces which are often inclined to classic, noir, and vintage memorabilia. Apart from spreading analogue love, Erin is also a marveller of cinematic films and non-sequitur literature. Check out more on the Best of the Best or any of her other series.

“I never wanted to be famous. I wasn’t as steady as a tripod.” – Brian Duffy

Features by Brian Duffy © via www.duffyphotographer.com

In 1979, Duffy left his photographic career of fame and fortune for a life of obscurity and restored Gregorian furniture instead. He abruptly burned the greater part of his collection of negatives and slides, quit his profession forever, and didn’t shoot another picture for nearly 3 decades. In 2009, however, his son, Chris, revived his legacy and curated the first exhibition of his father’s work. After less than a year, Duffy passed away due to a lung disease.

Here’s an intimate and touching documentary film as a tribute to Brian Duffy’s legacy to the world of photography, directed by Linda Brusasco and produced by Brian’s son, Chris Duffy.

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE SIXTIES from CHRIS DUFFY on Vimeo.

Which of these elegantly explosive Brian Duffy photographs strike your liking the most? What other fashion photographers from the ’60s and ’70s would you like to be written about?

Post brought to you by the Lomographic Society International: a globally active organization dedicated to experimental and creative snapshot photography. Boasting over a half-million members across the world, the concept of Lomography encompasses an interactive, vivid, blurred and crazy way of life.

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Best of the Best: Brian Duffy

For our latest iteration of the iNoobs series we’ll be discussing marketing. Specifically paid search marketing, aka “pay per click marketing” (PPC) aka AdWords.

First, let’s take a step back and take a look at the market. I recently wrote about how Yahoo and Bing are dead.

If you can believe it, Google has captured the ENTIRE search engine market. The searches that Yahoo and Bing (and the other minor contributors are sending) are so insignificant that, from a search engine marketing perspective, they can safely be ignored. For now…

(Google has come under fire recently, being called to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights for some alleged minor anti-trust violations. Nothing major. Just the closest thing to controlling the world’s information that mankind has ever witnessed.)

But, I digress.

So, there are essentially two ways to get your website and IMPORTANT CONTENT in front of your readers, clients, and customers (and we’ll get back to social media in a minute – but I don’t generally count it as a 3^rd).

The first is what is referred to as being “organically” ranked in Google’s Search Engine (and even this is split between normal, local, shopping, and now social results). In this scenario, Google has indexed billions (if not more) of pages and content on the Internet. You do a search, and, using its algorithms Google returns to you (1-10) the results it feels best match your search.

The second way to get your site in front of visitors’ is with AdWords (aka Pay Per Click). In this scenario you become an advertiser and say “screw you google, I know what you think… that searcher is STILL valuable, and my site SHOULD be up there… I’m willing to pay to be seen!”

(Maybe that was a little violent.)

Anyway, in the pay per click scenario – you use Google’s AdWords interface/product to purchase ad space for given keywords.   The kicker is you (the advertiser) ONLY PAY when someone clicks through to your website (hence the name “pay per click”).

Here’s a scenario. Let’s look at the screen shot below:

I did a search for “paper mate inkjoy pens” and received a bunch of stuff. It’s a mixture of organic web pages, google shopping content, and finally the pay per click ads (at the very top of the screen).

More on Organic Ranking

To organically rank means that your original content can be found when Google “crawls” your website. Your site is scanned by one of the million plus (estimate) servers. The site results are returned and Google categorizes the features of your site with a top-secret algorithm.

A bit of advice here: BE ORIGINAL! Do not steal; do not reuse the same phrase; do not use crappy content.

Google knows, oh yes, IT KNOWS!

If you want to drive traffic to your site by optimizing key words, use the keyword tool in AdWords (you can use it even if you don’t have adwords!) and wrap your thoughts around the keywords that make the most sense for the kind of traffic you want delivered to your site…

Back to AdWords & Pay Per Click Marketing

AdWords is one of my primary tools for advertising sites. And it should be yours too!

Much like Google’s organic algorithm, AdWords too has a way for advertisers to compete – and it’s not simply price.

Google looks at you as an advertiser in many different ways – it looks at your keywords, your ads, your website, and your bid amount and assembles all of this into a “Quality Score”.

All things being equal if you have a good score you can pay a fraction of what a competitor does to have your ad for the same keyword – so it definitely pays to be knowledgeable.

Remember it’s important to:

1. Become proficient in AdWords advertising, should you use it personally; or,
2. Hire a firm that has the experience (and good reputation) for finding the sweet spot where the cost and the advertisement result in the biggest bang for your buck.

The result of an effective AdWords advertisement campaign is more money. And, who wouldn’t want their business to make more of that!?

This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we're publishing. Also, it's highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!

iNoobs: Google AdWords – What it Takes and What it Means

On February 4th, Facebook will celebrate its 8th anniversary, and we can already consider it a major force in our modern day lifestyle. As many would say, Facebook IS the Internet. I can’t completely agree with that, but, nevertheless, the truth is that over 800 million people use Facebook, and that’s pretty much enough to awe anyone.

The next logical step is the IPO, with all the experts predicting it to be perhaps the biggest EVER. So, with all that, what’s left to say about Facebook?

You’re right, not much. Let’s just have a look at some of the hundreds of infographics made about the social network – actually, we have over 700 (!) on Visual Loop -, its features, and its impact in many different dimensions of our society.

First, a little bit of history:

Facebook 2011 Yearbook | Via

A Brief History of Facebook | Via

Facts about Mark Zuckerberg | Via

The Making of Mark Zuckerberg – A Timeline | Via

The Evolution of Facebook Features | Via

Facebook attacks in 2011 | Via

The Rise Of Facebook’s Valuation From 2004-2011 | Via

Cyber Criminals Target Facebook | Via

From Founding To IPO, Facebook’s Success Story | Via

Facebook IPO | Via

The Road to a Facebook IPO | Via

The History of Advertising on Facebook | Via

And some interesting factoides and numbers:

If You Printed Facebook | Via

A World Without Facebook | Via

What If Facebook Was a City? | Via

The value of Facebook | Via

Facebook Profile Photos By The Numbers | Via

Why Do People Unfriend Each Other on Facebook? | Via

Facebook Statuses | Via

Does Facebook Hurt Relationships? | Via

The Last of the Facebook Myths| Via

Facebook Advertising Opportunities Across The Globe | Via

The Truth About Facebook Depression | Via

Facebook & Education: Is Facebook Bad for Students? | Via

A Look Into the Obsession with Facebook | Via

Men vs Women on Facebook | Via

Social Games Popularity on Facebook and Google | Via

How To Define Shared Media On Facebook | Via

A Graphic Guide to Facebook Portraits | Via

It’s not hard to predict that we’ll be seeing a lot more infographics about Facebook. Is there any other that you find especially interesting to add to this list? Just share it in the comments below.

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Facebook: The path to World Domination in 30 infographics

Just a quick note: the folks at Rackspace created a pretty neat infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them. Check it out and let us know what you think:

Infographic by Rackspace Hosting

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New Infographic: Hosting Decisions, From the Chalkboard

This is a guest post by Jan Rajtoral AKA Gonzo the Great, founder of gonzodesign, who provides design services across the full spectrum of Brand Identity, Graphic Design, Print and Advertising Design & Website Design.

In this new series of posts we’re going to take a look at what has been published last month in the Blogosphere. We hand-picked the best stuff including resources, tutorials, scripts/snippets, WordPress related posts and a lot more. All these design-related links have been mentioned on Twitter in the last month, and collated in this single article. So, I hope you’ll enjoy this roundup cause we think that having resources and staying up-to-date is important in your personal growth and development as a (web) designer or developer.

HTML, CSS, PhP, Coding & Resources

HTML5 Please - Look up HTML5, CSS3, etc features, know if they are ready for use, and if so find out how you should use them – with polyfills, fallbacks or as they are. Use the new and shiny responsibly.

When can I use… Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc - Compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more in desktop and mobile browsers.

PHP script to find malicious code on a hacked server - When hackers get into a server, they often modify files to inject malicious code, install PHP backdoor scripts, or modify .htaccess to redirect requests to another site.

Filament Group’s Open Source Code Repositories - This page will serve as a centralized list of all projects, which we’ll keep updated as we develop new widgets and techniques. Look below for links to downloadable code, live demos, and articles explaining our thought process

Javascript Best Practices - a list of best practices and preferred ways of developing javascript code, based on opinions and experience from many developers in the javascript community. Since this is a list of recommendations rather than a list of absolute rules.

The State Of HTML5 Video - HTML5 has entered the online video market, which is both exciting and challenging for developers in the industry. Our State of HTML5 Video Report is a place for us to share with other developers/users in the industry just what HTML5 can and cannot support.

The Lowdown on :Before and :After in CSS - What is a pseudo-element and how does it differ from a pseud-class? Why do pseudo-elements sometimes have one colon and sometimes have two? How are :before and :after implemented in CSS?

Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website - In this article I am not gonna talk about the greatness of webfonts in general—the opportunity to pick any type style we want for our website—or the possibility to use sets of vector pictograms instead of bitmap images.

Responsive Data Table Roundup - The idea of the original was to abandon the grid layout of the table and make each cell it’s own line. Each of those lines is labeled with a pseudo element. This creates a much taller table, requiring more vertical scrolling, but does not require horizontal scrolling.

Design • Curate - Design Curate is a collection of free and commercial resources for designers. All our free resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Tutorials

Filter Functionality with CSS3 - Using the general sibling combinator and the :checked pseudo-class, we can toggle states of other elements by checking a checkbox or a radio button. In this tutorial we will be exploring those CSS3 properties by creating a experimental portfolio filter that will toggle the states of items of a specific type.

(Better) Tabs with Round Out Borders - A good-looking tab control usually has one feature that I’ve always found impossible to reproduce without images: borders that bend to the outside at the bottom of each tab. In this article I would like to show how you can use the CSS :before and:after pseudo elements to create this effect without using images.

Textarea Auto Resize - On a current project, I was trying to find a way to auto-resize a textarea according to some content that would be loaded in dynamically via Ajax. I didn’t know the height of the content and the textarea element doesn’t resize naturally like other HTML elements, so I needed to update the height of the element with JavaScript each time the content changed.

CSS Buttons with Pseudo-Elements – I’ve been experimenting with the power of CSS pseudo-elements, specially when it comes to mixing them with buttons and that way recreating some great effects that were only possible to do with sprites, in the past. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create buttons with a twist, using just one anchor tag per button and the great power of CSS.

git – the simple guide - just a simple guide for getting started with git. no deep shit ;)

Tools (web applications, bookmarklets, frameworks etc.)

3×4 Grid Builder - Drag and drop. View the code. Grid Builder enables you to easily build an HTML grid with a simple drag and drop interface.

deCSS3 - A bookmarklet for testing your graceful degradation. Use this bookmarklet to get a whiff of what your site will look like on older browsers that don’t support CSS3 (Currently supports: Chrome, Safari).

Initializr - With Great Templates Comes Great Responsivity! (Responsive Template, boilerplate code of a responsive layout)

Fbootstrapp - Fbootstrapp is a toolkit designed to kickstart development of facebook iframe apps in both relevant sizes. It includes base CSS and HTML for typography, forms, buttons, tables, grids, navigation, and more, styled in the typical facebook look and feel.

dabblet- an interactive playground for quickly testing snippets of CSS and HTML code. It uses -prefix-free, so that you won’t have to add any prefixes in your CSS code. You can save your work in Github gists, embed it on websites and share it with others.

CSSrefresh - CSSrefresh is a small, unobstructive javascript file that monitors the CSS-files included in your webpage. As soon as you save a CSS-file, the changes are directly implemented, without having to refresh your browser.

w3clove - Site-wide markup validation. There’s no need to manually submit all your URLs. Just give us the URL of your home page and we’ll scrape it to get its internal links.

WebINK’s free plugin – Server based Font management, use real web fonts in Photoshop for your web designs. Design with Google and WebINK web fonts.

Bootstrap Generator - Kick-start your Twitter Bootstrap project the way you want. Simply alter some options and click “Generate” to get your compiled Bootstrap CSS file.

Gridpak - an interactive web application for generating responsive grid layouts very quickly. Once you have setup the layout, a custom download is ready which includes a CSS, LESS, SCSS file, etc.

hextone – A great tool to convert HEX color codes to RGB

jQuery Plugins, Javascript, etc.

impress.js - It’s a presentation tool inspired by the idea behind prezi.com and based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers.

Scrollorama - The jQuery plugin for doing cool scrolly stuff (any numeric CSS property). Design and build your site, dividing your content into blocks. Embed scrollorama.js after jQuery and initialize the plugin, passing the blocks class selector as a parameter.

Sugar - Sugar is a Javascript library that extends native objects with helpful methods. It is designed to be intuitive, unobtrusive, and let you do more with less code.

Lightbox_me - Lightbox_me is an essential tool for the jQuery developer’s toolbox. Feed it a DOM element wrapped in a jQuery object and it will lightbox it for you, no muss no fuss.

slabText – a jQuery plugin for producing big, bold & responsive headlines. Put simply, the script splits headlines into rows before resizing each row to fill the available horizontal space.

PxLoader - A Javascript library that helps you download images, sound files or anything else you need before you take a specific action on your site (like showing a user interface or starting a game). You can use it to create a preloader for HTML5 games and websites.

ResponsiveSlides.js - ResponsiveSlides.js is a tiny jQuery plugin that creates a responsive slideshow using images inside a single container. It work with wide range of browsers including all IE versions from IE6 and up.

CraftMap - jQuery plugin that converts a simple image into a functional map. Like Google Maps, you can place your own marker icons and add location information to specific markers with a draggable image interface.

Popcorn.js – An HTML5 media framework written in JavaScript for filmmakers, web developers, and anyone who wants to create time-based interactive media on the web. Popcorn.js is part of Mozilla’s Popcorn project.

TextExt Plugin for jQuery - TextExt’s modular design allows you easily turn a standard HTML text input into a wide range of modern, tailored to your needs input field without bloating your source code and slowing down your site with the code that you aren’t using.

Arctext.js – The main idea behind the Arctext plugin is to rotate letters with CSS3 transforms in order to place them along a curved path. The curve is always a segment of a circle (hence arc) for which the radius can be specified.

Sharrre (Social Sharing jQuery Plugin) - All sharing buttons are different, with Sharrre you can create uniform buttons to integrate with your designs. With Sharrre, the API buttons are called on demand and once, regardless of how many buttons you have.

Font.js: A Powerful Font Toolkit for JavaScript - a little font toolkit for your JavaScript that is kind of akin to the built-in Image object but for Fonts.  It gives you font loading events using a technique perfected in Mozilla’s pdf.js project, metrics information, and a better version of the canvas element’s measureText method with additional information such as height, bounding box, and leading.

WordPress Related

Weever app for WordPress - a free new HTML5 tool to build a mobile app for your WordPress site.

slYder – Lightweight WordPress Slider - slYder is an extremely lightweight wordpress slider, it allows you to add an extremely lightweight wordpress content slider anywhere in your theme via template tag or wordpress shortcode.

How to Customize the WordPress 3.3 Toolbar - You can make the WordPress interface easier for clients by removing unnecessary menus, widgets and meta boxes. However, in WordPress 3.3, the admin and header bars have been merged to create a single toolbar.

Yoast’s WordPress SEO vs All in One SEO Pack - There are currently two very popular WordPress plugins to help you strengthen your site’s search engine friendliness. Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin and the Grand old Daddy of SEO plugins, All in One SEO Pack.

How To Create Custom Taxonomies In WordPress - The following release of 3.1 included many features to enhance support of custom taxonomies. Better import and export handling, advanced queries with tax_query, hierarchical support, body classes and a bunch of wonderful functions to play with were all part of the package.

The WordPress Gallery Shortcode: A Comprehensive Overview - If you haven’t had the chance to use the WordPress Gallery Shortcode in the past, this is going to be a great starting out point for you. For others who have used it, we are going to be covering some features of the shortcode that you might not have considered yet.

The Ultimate WordPress Theme Development Glossary - This post is an attempt to provide a glossary for the common terms used in WordPress Themes. This glossary will help new WordPress users understand the features offered by a theme and they can make informed ..

Prevent Password Reset WordPress Plugin - It adds a checkbox to the “Personal Options” section of each user’s profile page in the WordPress admin, once this option is selected for a user, their password cannot be reset via the “lost password” form.

The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site - In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

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Tweet Heat – The hottest Tweets of the Month [January 2012]

I have very mixed feelings about social media. And that’s why it’s almost taken until now to really start to work with these tools in a business capacity.

For all the benefits that it provides, I have had some serious hang-ups when joining, and participating in, social media.

And, I’ll tell you why.

Loss of Content Ownership

In the fine print, Facebook lets you know that when you post things on their site, that content no longer belongs to you, it belongs to them. By virtue of using their service, that picture of you and your sweetheart overlooking the Grand Canyon on that vacation you’ll always remember no longer belongs to you. It belongs to Zuckerberg. And, why would he want that picture of you and your girlfriend anyway…

The Perfect Audience… for Paid Advertisers.

What has been created is something that doesn’t resemble the web at all, at least not what it was intended to be. The web used to be a place where anonymity and free exchange of ideas was the point of the “inter-net”. It connected people when and how they wanted to be connected. Since you didn’t have to share your personal information with a cadre of highly-trained software analysts/behavior manipulators, you were free to be honest. The problem with social networking sites is that there are levels of honesty, and different ways you can interact. But, Facebook tracks it all. Then serves you up advertisements that they think you’ll like. Rat in a cage?

It goes even deeper in that Facebook’s news feed, learns from your behavior and sends you items that you are more likely to like, and interact with – not necessarily what’s actually going on around you – a filtered version of what’s going on – to keep you addicted to facebook. The problem lies in “filter bubbles” as Eli Pariser calls them. Take a look at this amazing Ted Talk for more information:

Man Power

Who’s going to run it? Everytime I have a client ask about social media – this is my question to them. The truth is – like any medium – you get out of it what you put in – and Social Media may in fact be even more man power intense in this regard. You can/should be on networks constantly (and there are whole companies that ONLY do this!) in order to maximize the effectiveness of your social media campaigns (and catch any positive or negative situations to properly guide them).

Avoiding the Unavoidable

Everyone is on some kind of network these days. You (and I’m really telling myself this) must be where your clients are.

So, forgive me for my hesitation, though I feel that I was (am) thoughtful about my reasoning, but I’m now at the table. We’re “social” and it’s really cool. So, drop me a line if you think that I was being a bit neurotic. Drop me a line if you think I wasn’t. Or just hit me up with your Twitter links in the comments, and I’ll chase after your tweets!

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On Social Media