Conceptual Artist Alexey: http://karanak.deviantart.com:

Thang Le, designer and conceptual artist: thangle.com:

Christopher Rabenhorst: his blog:

via conceptships.blogspot.com

As I had been occupied most of my time by this great open source CMS lately, I would to share my experiences withyou. If you use, you will learned to value drupal at least for its vast amount of extremly useful modules, flexible user management and easy-to-handle content editors.

As basic requirements one needs a hosting account which has php (version 5.2 or higher) and mysql installed. Download the latest versions here, I’d recommend to choose version 6.x as most of the modules and themes are not available for 7.x, which is still in development status, but will come up with neat features.

On first hand you will have to set up a mysql database, no worries you will just have to specify just the database name, a username and a password! Now you upload the drupal core file into a folder in your webspace. After doing so you reach your drupal installation via www.yourdomain.com/[drupal installation folder]/install.php .

The setup is really easy, you will just have to complete these steps:

1. After uploading you have to copy ./sites/default/default.settings.php file to ./sites/default/settings.php (read/write attributes have to set to 766, you must change that right after the installation, due to security reasons) and create a new folder called “files” in ./sites/default/ this folder and its future subfolders must have to be writable (write attributes have to set to 766).
2. Start the Installation, here you have the the chance get a check whether there is a drupal version translated into your language. If you’d like another language, you will have download the translated version and upload it to your server. Anyway you might wish to have a multilanguage site, then the english version will be fine you can install different languages via the i18n module.
3. Indicate database name, username and password of the database you created before.
4. Create your Administrator login access data by providing a username, password and emailadress. This very first user will have administrative rights, so you should use a secure password.
5. That’s it!

Now it’s time to tune up your brandnew drupal site a little bit… This will be done by installing modules!

Here’s a list of modules I’d recommend to install up front, no matter what kind of site you are intending to create:

Pathauto

This one creates nice URLs derived from the titles of your content pages. As you know this good for SEO purposes and you do torture your user with cryptic page titles. Requires the token module to be installed and activated in advance!

CKEditor – WYSIWYG HTML editor

A big helper! Especially if you’re building a site, whose content has to created or edites by not so web experienced fellas, I think you know whom I’m talking about. As an addition you should install the ckfinder filemanager, so you are able to offer no-brainer file integration and upload to your site. Before your content editors have the pleasure of the easy working with This fine editor, you have to pain to install and configure it. Now I will not offer a step by step manual, I try to deliver it later on. You will have download the drupal module files and copy the core files of the editor into the “” folder in the drupal module itself. The essential editing software files you can download at ckeditor.com. If there are serious problems just post a comment and I try to help you out!

Backup and Migrate

This should be self explaining, just to put you on the save side. You can schedule backups and store them on your or you can download them. Saved my sorry ass several times ;-)

Google Analytics

You could also paste the google into the template files, but this modules makes this procedure needless.

Internationalisation

If you like the setup your site and backend in several language, this module will do the trick. You will have to lookout for language packs afterwards and you get them here, including an overview far the translations are finished. Addiditonally I’d check out the Language Icons Module, providing you nice litte flags for every installed language pack.

Sitemap

Using the sitemap module you can add an automatically generated sitemap, including all your subpages, categories or menues.

So, that should fine as a starter, soon I’lltry to give an outlook about more sophisticated modules like views or content construction kit and how add and modify themes. Have fun creating sites with drupal!

Nevertheless these troubles are just a sign of the incredible success twitter.com is facing at the moment. Establishing as an important news source, marketing tool or social play ground the service it self has to evolve…

Now they have taken the first step, aplusk beeing the first tweeter to break the 1,000,000 followers barrier, now having 2,530,98, the twitter coders finally smoothed up the user management. You can choose between a list view and a expanded view showing the last Tweet, additionally there is a option menue offering the following activities: mention the twitter user, send a direct message, unfollow and block user.

But it still ain’t a big hit, but think it looks (a little bit) sexier now. There still are no batch operations, which would be an evident feature for the the most people…

There is still a lot to do in the twitland backend – execpt locking up the fail whale securely…

Here’s an attempt to build up a little list of the most important social media sites.

As it is far from being complete, it will be expanded from time to time…

Blogging

• WordPress  |  WordPress Factsheet
• Blogger  |  Blogger Factsheet
• Tumblr  |  Tumblr Factsheet
• LiveJournal  |  LiveJournal Factsheet
• Skyrock  |  Skyrock Factsheet
• Blogcatalog  |  Blogcatalog Factsheet
• MyBlogLog  |  MyBlogLog Factsheet
• Entrecard  |  Entrecard Factsheet
• Ameba  |  ameba Factsheet

Photo Communities

• Flickr  |  Flickr Factsheet
• Fotolog  |  Fotolog Factsheet
• Photobucket  |  Photobucket Factsheet
• Picasa Web Albums  |  Picasa Factsheet
• SmugMug  |  SmugMug Factsheet
• deviantart  |  deviantart Factsheet
• Zooomr  |  Zooomr Factsheet
• JPG Magazine  |  JPG Magazine Factsheet
• vi.sualize.us

Bookmarks

• delicious  |  delicious Factsheet
• StumbleUpon  |  StumbleUpon Factsheet
• faves  |  faves Factsheet
• Diigo  |  Diigo Factsheet
• Furl  |  Furl Factsheet
• Ma.gnolia  |  Ma.gnolia Factsheet
• Mister Wong  |  Mister Wong Factsheet
• cluztr
• Twine  |  Twine Factsheet

News Aggregators

• friendfeed  |  friendfeed Factsheet
• Digg  |  Digg Factsheet
• Google Reader  |  Google Reader Factsheet
• toluu  |  toluu Factsheet
• menéame  |  menéame Factsheet
• Mixx  |  Mixx Factsheet
• Reddit  |  Reddit Factsheet
• Yahoo! Buzz  |  Yahoo! Buzz Factsheet
• NowPublic  |  NowPublic Factsheet

Status

• Twitter  |  Twitter Factsheet
• brightkite  |  brightkite Factsheet
• Facebook  |  Facebook Factsheet
• Gmail/Google Talk  |  Google Talk Factsheet
• identi.ca  |  identi.ca Factsheet
• Plurk  |  Plurk Factsheet

Music

• iLike  |  iLike Factsheet
• Last.fm  |  Last.fm Factsheet
• Pandora  |  Pandora Factsheet

Comments

• Backtype  |  Backtype Factsheet
• Disqus  |  Disqus Factsheet
• Intense Debate  |  Intense Debate Factsheet

Video

• 12seconds  |  12seconds Factsheet
• Dailymotion  |  Dailymotion Factsheet
• Joost  |  Joost Factsheet
• Seesmic  |  Seesmic Factsheet
• Hulu  |  Hulu Factsheet
• Vimeo  |  Vimeo Factsheet
• YouTube  |  YouTube Factsheet

Books

• Goodreads  |  Goodreads Factsheet
• LibraryThing  |  LibraryThing Factsheet
• Shelfari  |  Shelfari Factsheet

Friendship

• myspace  |  myspace Factsheet
• Windows Live  |  Windows Live Factsheet
• Bebo  |  Bebo Factsheet
• hi5  |  hi5 Factsheet
• Orkut  |  Orkut Factsheet
• Goggle Friend Connect  |  Goggle Friend Connect Factsheet

Miscellaneous

• Amazon.com  |  Amazon Factsheet
• Netvibes  |  Netvibes Factsheet
• Netflix  |  Netflix Factsheet
• Polyvore  |  Polyvore Factsheet
• SlideShare  |   Factsheet
• tipjoy  |  tipjoy Factsheet
• Upcoming  |  Upcoming Factsheet
• kongregate  |  kongregate Factsheet
• Wakoopa  |  Wakoopa Factsheet
• Yelp  |  Yelp Factsheet
• Plinky  |  Plinky Factsheet
• care2  |  care2 Factsheet

Career

• LinkedIn  |  LinkedIn Factsheet
• xing  |  xing Factsheet
• meetup  |  meetup Factsheet

Search

• lijit  |  lijit Factsheet

Looking for informations, advices, strategies or hints guiding you on your paths through the social media djungle?
Here you’ll find a composition of free ebooks that might be helpful on your efforts to successfully use social marketing mechanisms for building a brand, attract traffic or gain significance on a certain topic.

So these Links will keep you busy for a while…

Instructions and sum ups

The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
Brian Solis about new tools and philosophies, how to effectively listen and engage with customers and in turn, cultivate a more significant community, enhance your brand and build relationships.

Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points
Social Media expert Chris Brogan gives you starting points how to inroduce your organization into social media and social networking

What is Social Media?
“a short, sweet summary of the phenomenon called social media”

The Essential Guide to Social Media
A sum up of some essential guidelines, written by Brian Solis

The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
Interesting example of a company entering the realm of social media communities

Social Media Marketing Kit
Tips and tricks for the survival in the social mediasphere, plus a video Webinar

The Zen of Blogging
Really amusing story about a guys efforts to dive into the higher spheres of blogging – with a slight wink of an eye

Learning Web 2.0
Examples of ways in which associations are using new web 2.0 technologies and what possibilities they
may represent for your organization’s professional development

A Primer in Social Media
Advices for approaching social media with their new paradigms and, rules and philosophies

Studies

Blogs & Social Media
This article reports on a three-year-long international survey of public relations
practitioners examining the impact blogs and other social media are having on public
relations practice.

Social Web Analytics
This ebook gives a brief overview of the characteristics of the Social
Web, also known as Social Media.

Research-Based Webdesign & Usabilty Guidelines

Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media
Attempt to propose a new way of calculating an individuals online influence beyond the “traditional” method of analysing a blog’s inbound links to incorporate other social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO for WordPress blogs
How to use WordPress to ensure success for your weblog in the Organic Search Engine Results.

Google Adwords Secrets
Tips for keyword research, choosing a domain name, placing keywords, link building, effectively using SEO tools

We Have a Website. Now What?
This ebook provides straightforward advice for entrepreneurs new to search engine optimization.

Marketing

Get Viral Get Visitors
Trying to give and understanding of what viral marketing is about and how methods of successful campaigns can be adopted

The New Rules of Viral Marketing
Whatever you call it—viral, buzz, word-of-mouse, or word-of-blog marketing—having other people tell your story drives action. An example how it’s done…

Marketing With Case Studies
How to Sell Your Products or Services Using Story-Telling Techniques

Twitter for Business
A compact and dense round up how to use twitter.com to promote your company successfully

Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter
If you use the site properly you can build up another stream of traffic to your website or blog, not to mention developing a brand for yourself as well.

New_Rules_Of_Business_Blogs
How business owners and managers should act in blogosphere if they want to explore this new communication channel.

Masters of Marketing
Cleaning up some hypes and myths of internet marketing and giveing ideas for using social media mechanisms

Podcast Marketing eBook
This guide is intended only to give you a broad overview of some of the basics of podcast marketing.

Effective Internet Presence
How to build up a significant and productive internet identity

How to Write a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan guides a company step-by-step how to market its product or service to a specific target market and it helps a company remain focused on its marketing objectives.

I searched for free to use web 2.0 icons of social media sites, but I did not find anything nice except some stock icons.

So I’ve made my own ones and I like to share them with you!

Feel free to use, modify and integrate them on your blog or website.
There is no need to link back, if you’d like to do so anyway, it is appreciated.

Here’s the download for the .psd containing templates for 256×256 pixel buttons and a 40×40 pixels iconset:

Social Media Icon Set

Social Media Icons (PSD)

Have fun folks!

• Create a Mac style CSS Dock Menu
  

  Really nice tutorial for creating a cool and fancy navigation using CSS and a Jquery Javascript library. Comes as complete Download, including a icon set.

• How to: CSS large Background
  

  Here you’ll find instructions how to integrate a large image as webpage background properly.

• Blurry Background Effect
  

  A very nice and eye teasing visual effect, unfortunately not working for Internet Explorer 6.

• 12 Useful Web Tools for Designers
  

  Several neat tools making a webdesigners daily work less miserable, a color schemer, tools for creating templates, favicons, background patterns or fonts.

• Creating scalable Layouts
  

  As the design of a site is confronted with a huge range of completly different screen resolutions, it should be pretty flexible. Should. Here’s ecplain how to achieve that.

• Massive collection of CSS hints
  

  Ok, this might be quite an old post, but it’s still very useful and just through it’s coverage and useful tricks, all the techniques are great helpers.

Afraid of evil extra terrestrian parasites? Time to get equipped with the same awesome alien species extinction device like Ripley (Sigurney Weaver) in Aliens:
The M41-A

With is fully functional hero models that fired 45 cal. blanks, and blank 12 guage shot gun rounds, to the ultra-slick O.D. green shrounds, this prop is the rare weapon that seemed it could actually do what it appeared to do in the movie! Shoot! This ain’t no ray gun, baby!

Here you’ll find a really neat how-to, so you soon might call yourself a proud owner of this instant classic!

Made from three real world weapons, the M41-A even has a cool sounding name. The World War II vintage M1A1 Thompson makes up the bulk of the weapon, and the Remington 870 shotgun is the guts for the “grenade launcher”. Carefully hidden inside a SPAS-12 heat shield cage and pump handle. The filming hero prop was made with a metal shroud, and is truly a work of art.

In case you are a wanna-be Imperial Stormtrooper, this make-your-own-blaster-how-to definitely will make you happy.

Via TechEBlog.com

View a plain demo here.

So here we go:

First of all design two (or three, if the focus state should be used, too) buttons, then cut the left part of the two states and paste them into a single graphic above each other. Add a little space so the text won’t stick too close on the edge, which should, depend on the design somewhat like this:

Then repeat these steps for the right end of the button:

That’s it for the graphical issue, the HTML is just a div container and an unordered list in the inside:


<div class="mouseover">
<ul>
<li><a href="#"><span>Item 01</span></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><span>Item 02</span></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><span>long Item name 03</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>


The only things to pay attention is the class assigned to this div tag as it hands down all the attributes to its tags within and that the linktexts are embedded in span tags.

Now as all the action is done via CSS, we have to get into details:


.mouseover ul {list-style: none;}
.mouseover ul li {
display: inline;
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
}

For the unordered list the list-style value “none” is mandatory as any other value like “square” or “circle” etc. would avoid a proper alignment of the navigation elements.
The list elements must be displayed “inline” otherwise they show up vertically ordered. If you wish them to do so, just drop “display: inline;”.
Besides that the apperance of the textlinks of the buttons can be edited here individually by additonal CSS attributes.

.mouseover ul li a {
padding: 0 0 0 9px;
background: url(button-left.gif) no-repeat;
float: left;
}

The padding values have to be set individually, as they depend on the measurements of the left graphic.
The “float: left” attribute is mandatory to assure both graphics are displayed besides each other.


.mouseover ul li a span {
padding: 9px 9px 9px 0;
background: url(button-right.gif) no-repeat right top;
display: block;
float: right;
color: #666;
}


As before please adjust the padding values as they fit the button layout.
The background attribute contains values as the image path and “right” and “top”. The last two are important as the grant that the alignment of the background is not influenced by the padding values. Setting the background alignment value “right” is the reason why the button lenght fits for a different number of characters of the textlink.
(If a textlink is to long, though and gap appears, simply expand the lenght of the background on the left side.)


.mouseover ul li a:hover {
background-position: 0 -36px;
}

The attribute “background-position” for the element “a:hover” is defined by the two values “0″, which aligns the graphic to position 0 of the x-axis and to -36 pixels on y-axis. The y-axis value derives from the half of the overall height of the background graphic and has to be adjusted, if the height of the graphic is not equal to 72 pixels.


.mouseover ul li a:hover span {
background-position: 100% -36px;
color:#fff;
}

The value of the y-axis of the attribute “background-position” must be set to “100%” so the graphis is aligned to the right.
Additional font settings of the mouse over state might be defined here, too.

…and that’s it!
Happy coding!

• Steampunked version of Noah’s Ark
• Flickr set “Alternative Histories” containing lovely, but armed steampunk ladies
• Lego steampunk yacht Radiant Kestrel and flyer Cantankerous Prospector
• Cool 3D steampunked Star Wars characters
• Rebel Attack! Star Wars diorama on flickr

Enjoy!

Hope you like it.

[Update]

Unfortuanately this great collection of Star Wars Pics is no longer available, cause Lucasfilm accused Mr. Heilemann of copyright infringement and had flickr.com delete the albums. Read the whole story here
This is a very sad and according to me not very clever move, though eexecuted technically correct, due there really was a infringement. But is this behaviour reasonable? The collection was loved by the fans, there was no commercial use and it was easier to watch as the legal source of SW pictures (No, I do not want to link, even mention it).
So does it make sense to anger the fans and delete their fanworks just cause you can do it and got the right to?

Shame on Lucasfilm!

Sheer awesomeness! A set of 304 Star Wars photos from the film set of the actors, George Lucas and the space ship models, of course! Featureing taking a nap, script drawings, Darth Vader on Hoth and laser sword fights!

Pure SW eye candy!

I cannot spot the “We brake for nobody” sticker on this Imperial star destroyer? Wait, maybe I’m confusing something here…

Thanks jason kottke, that made my day!

The Force may be with you!

(Take a look at a live demo here)

In order to get this working in all the browsers (Ok, using IE6 we’ll have to trick a little bit, but we’ll discuss this later) we have to approach this in a sneaky way.
Here is a simple, fast, lean, cross browser functional and JavaScript free method, only using plain HTML, CSS and graphical elements:

First of all we need graphical elements, for this example only four are needed, five if including the IE6 hack:

• 2 images of your choice to be linked
• one graphic with transparency and color of your choice in the same size as the linked images
• one 1px x 1px full transparent GIF

You might want to download the whole demo here, there the graphics are included.

First create the div containers including the picture links in the html document, assign a class called “image” and determine the background image, which shall be linked, by using the “style” attribute.

<div class="image"
style="background-image: url(product_01.jpg);" > </div>

<div class="image"
style="background-image: url(product_02.jpg);" > </div>

[Integrating the images via "style" might be avoided by assigning "id" and referencing the image url in the css, but I needed the image to referenced in the html code for dynamic site and did not want to use the "img" tag for reasons]

After that add the links, define them using “class=”picture”, linkpath and further attributes like “title”. it should look somewhat like this:

<div class="image"
style="background-image: url(product_01.jpg);" >
<a href="[path]" class="picture" title="linktitle" > </a>
</div>

<div class="image"
style="background-image: url(product_02.jpg);" >
<a href="[path]" class="picture" title="linktitle" > </a>
 </div>

Now the css, only two classes (+ one pseudo class) are needed:

.image:
It must at least contain “background-repeat: no-repeat; border: none;” or modifications if wanted.

a.picture
The size of the linked picture and the attribute “display:block;” must be indicated. The image-url for the non-active link is indicated as “background-image”, too

a.picture:hover
Here the image-url for the active link is defined.

Now the .css file should contain the following:

a.picture {
background: url(opacity_01.png) no-repeat;
width:183px;
height:146px;
display:block;}

a.picture:hover {
background: url(blank_01.gif) repeat;}

.image{
background-repeat: no-repeat;
border: none;}

Now you just need to align the two div containers properly as you like them to be.
In this example they are floating with a margin of 10 pixels, which is done by two additional classes “l” and “m”. Why it is separated from the “image” class is explained here.

Attention!

This works properly in every browser, but in not IE6, because here only full transparency is supported.
So here’s the IE6 hack:

First create a new .css file named “ie6.css”, then add the following lines between the <head> tags of your html file:

<!--[if IE 6]>
<style type="text/css">@import url(ie6.css);</style>
<![endif]-->

After that you refer to an image using only full transparency in the “a.picture” class in the “ie6.css” file, somewhat like that:

a.picture {background: url(opacity_ie6_01.gif) no-repeat;}

…and you are done!

The San Francisco LucasArts office announces the next sequel of the StarWars KOTOR series will be a MMORPG. All availaible information still is quite vague, but some statements can be found on kotaku.com:

Art Director Jeff Dobson says that Old Republic will not have a totally realistic art style; but neither will it be too cartoon-y. The idea here, he says, is that they want a distinct look for the MMO that sets it apart from all others – one that will run on as many machines as possible without sacrificing the quality of the graphics.

They really, really, really mean it when they say that there is story in this game and it is what sets Old Republic apart from every MMO out there.

Eurogamer.net features several screenshots.

Electronic Arts exec Frank Gibeau has confirmed that console versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic and Warhammer Online are “under consideration”.

A release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic has yet to be announced.

Mozilla.org offers an early developer release of the mobile version of their web browser Firefox called Fennec. A fennec (Vulpes zerda) is a fox subspecie, which can be found in North-African Sahara and the Sinai. It features huge ears and a extra large tail, making that little night active critter look extremly cute. Thus, so far for the donator of the name, let’s go technical.

The features are:

• Bookmarks, including tags
• Smart URL bar (“awesome bar”)
• Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images
• Integrated Web search – built into the URL bar
• Easy access to multiple search engines
• Maximize content by auto-hiding controls and URL bar
• Zoom in and out
• Instant Web site ID (“Larry“)
• Password manager
• Popup blocker
• Clear private data
• Click on a phone number to initiate a call
• JavaScript API to get device location
• Popup blocker
• Clear private data
• Searchable download manager
• Preferences pane

The mobile desert fox now only runs on OS2008 (“chinook” or “diablo”), like the Nokia Internet-Handheld N810, but there are versions for Windows and Mac OS X available, too.
Mozilla now wants to gather feedback and plans “further alpha releases which focus on performance, including projects like TraceMonkey, speculative parsing, and many Fennec and Gecko optimizations.”

Keith Thompson offers a great portfolio in general, but the vehicles section is really mindblowing. His pieces of art range from futuristic spaceships via dark and creepy carriages over to steam punk assault devices.

Strange and frightening the Zero atomic blossom.

The whole collection is to be found on keiththompsonart.com

Here is an interesting opportunity to get your advertisement displayed on ten differents blogs for free:The AdSpace Contest

The idea is simple: Get as many entries as you can (very easy to do) before October 15th. The more entries you get, the better chance you have of winning! Shortly after the 15th, they’ll announce the winner.

The prize?

A 125×125 pixel ad spot (above the fold) on at least TEN DIFFERENT BLOGS that will run for one month. That’s at least a $100 value! Last month’s prize grew to be ad spots on 45 blogs!

Who else is co-hosting?

• Jamaipanese
• Best of Stupid
• AxioBlog
• The Big Bald Blog
• Jason Boom
• Unconventional Marketing Blog
• GorillaSushi
• Geek Mom Mashup
• It Might Be Love
• Mr. Javo

How do you enter to win?

• 1 Entry – Subscribe to any one of the blogs above via email (if you subscribed last month, you’re already entered again!).
• 5 Entries – Twitter about the contest with a link to one of the hosts’ contest posts (new!)
• 10 Entries – Write a post about the contest (must include links to all 10 hosts OR use our suggested text)
• 25 Entries – Offer up an ad spot on your own blog for one month as part of the prize package (links will be listed above)

Simply put, you could subscribe to all 10 blogs, write a post, twitter about it and offer up your own ad spot for a grand total of 50 entries! Fill out the form on any of the host blogs to report your entries.

Contest ends October 15th. Good Luck!