Two Mad Geeks

Pick A Browser, Pick An OS, Test Website

mcgee — Mon, 12 May 2008 09:20:29 +0000

CrossBrowserTesting.com is a new service designed to let website designers see what their website looks like in different browsers and in different operating systems. It is based on virtual server technology which allows us to keep costs low and pass the savings on to you.

In these days of Web 2.0 and AJAX applications, a picture just isn’t enough. You put a lot of hard work into those javascript driven features and you need to actually use your website to get the feel of how it works across multiple browsers & operating systems. CrossBrowserTesting.com offers you this opportunity!

Link: Cross Browser Testing

Free 3-D Textures

mcgee — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:20:46 +0000

Free Textures Grunge, Lichen, wood, sky, clouds, rocks, fire, walls, bricks, stones and lots more

Link: Free Textures

Seven Tips For Making The Most Of Your RSS Reader

mcgee — Sun, 11 May 2008 09:20:14 +0000

RSS is a big deal, as anyone who’s subscribed to even a few feeds probably knows. Once you get past just a few feeds, though, it can quickly get overwhelming. RSS can leave you feeling inadequate, brain-dead and uninspired.

Link: ReadWriteWeb

10 Green Social Networks

mcgee — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:20:50 +0000

What’s going to be the viral element that gets us to cut down on our collective carbon emissions? Who’s going to deliver us the iPod of cleantech? If we knew for sure, we’d be off building it, but these 10 web sites think they have the key ingredients to motivate their users to fight global warming and cut carbon. Do you think they have what it takes? Here’s our thoughts and our list of 10 green social networks you should know:

Link: Earth2Tech

Space Debris Pictures

mcgee — Sat, 10 May 2008 09:20:24 +0000

Between the launch of Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and 1 January 2008, approximately 4600 launches have placed some 6000 satellites into orbit, of which about 400 are travelling beyond geostationary orbit or on interplanetary trajectories.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational - roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).

Link: ESA

Collection Of Web Developer Tools, Per Browser

mcgee — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:20:10 +0000

With so many browser out there in the wild, working as a Web Developer certainly is not an easy job these days. Thankfully, over the last years, decent tools have been developed by bright people that make developing and debugging of code easier for the developer. But sometimes, it is not easy to keep track which tools are at a Developer’s disposal (and which are actually usable). The following article seeks to list the best tools available and quickly describing how to activate/install/use them.

Link: Klaus Komenda

Rounded Corner & Gradient Generator

mcgee — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:20:30 +0000

This generates a basic box with rounded corners. It will create four image files and the necessary HTML and CSS code for you to put rounded corners around your content.

Link: RoundedCornr

14 CSS Tools To Save You Time

mcgee — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:20:09 +0000

As a web designer/developer you must continue to find ways to reduce the time it takes to design/develop websites. This is very important to improve your productivity and to maximize your profits. The CSS Tools below, which are categorized by function, are here to save you time designing websites.

Link: WebTecker

Top 10 Ways To Trick Out Your Desktop

mcgee — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:20:47 +0000

For something that you look at every day of your working life, your computer desktop doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. That’s too bad, considering that the desktop can do a lot more than display wallpaper and hold shortcut icons. From widgets to workflows, from calendars to computer stats and beyond, you can do a whole lot on your desktop without manually starting up a single program. Hit the jump for our top 10 list of applications and tweaks that make your desktop a truly useful place to land.

Link: Lifehacker

8 Powerful CSS Techniques

mcgee — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:20:30 +0000

With all the hype over new and upcoming browser support for advanced CSS features, developers can be confused about the CSS they can include in web projects today. Many of the more advanced features aren’t widely supported by the dominant browsers, but some very useful ones are — including newer features from CSS3.

Link: SitePoint

Ways Your Web Site Is Discouraging Conversions

mcgee — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:20:13 +0000

If your Web site gets great traffic but no sales or sign-ups to back it up, it’s time to take a good, hard look at it. Chances are, your site is scaring off customers. Follow these tips to make your Web site more friendly to customers and encourage better conversion rates

Link: Inside CRM

Where To Find Open Data On The Web

mcgee — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:20:57 +0000

This article discusses the difficulty of finding open data sets on the internet, something which could spur innovation, allowing programmers to build new applications the likes of which have never been seen before. It then goes on to list several sites to find open source data.

Link: ReadWriteWeb

Rescue Lost Or Damaged Photos

mcgee — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:20:40 +0000

Assumption Recovery is a simple tool that can be a serious lifesaver, especially if you’ve just accidentally formatted a memory card or came home from vacation to a supposedly empty camera. The free download does what many professional (and costly) image recovery programs do, running through memory blocks and piecing together scattered pictures, then dumping them in a folder of your choosing. ZAR supports most major image formats, including JPEG and RAW. Zero Assumption Recovery is a free download for Windows systems only; portions of the program are paid-to-unlock, but image recovery is free.

Link: Lifehacker

Monitoring Internet Reachability In Real-Time

mcgee — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:20:12 +0000

Having trouble accessing a favorite Web site? Perhaps the site was taken offline, or the computer hosting it is down for maintenance. However, the cause could be something more mysterious. At any given moment, a portion of Internet traffic ends up being routed into information “black holes.” These are situations where advertised paths exist to the destination, but messages - a request to visit a Web site, an outgoing e-mail - get lost along the way.

Hubble is a system that operates continuously to find persistent Internet black holes as they occur.

Link: University of Washington