mr-mojo-risin

Star Wars Flickr Set

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:03:30 +0000

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 Princess Leia 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…

Even more Star Wars material!

Thanks jason kottke, that made my day!

The Force may be with you!

CSS Mouse Over Opacity Effect

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:15:23 +0000

Generally this is no rocket science, using the CSS3 attribute “opacity”, unfortunately CSS3 is not supported by many browsers. As an alternative one could use JavaScript, which also might not work everywhere (if disabled due to security measures). So the easy way only works in the latest versions of Firefox and Opera.

(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.

[Integrating the images via "style" might be avoided by assigning "id" and referencingthe 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:



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  tags of your html file:

Steampunk vehicles gallery

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:17:08 +0000

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

Win Ad Space on 10 Blogs!

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:41:48 +0000

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?

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!

Unlocked iPhone 3G available at the apple Store in Hongkong

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:53:17 +0000

Officially unlocked iPhone at the Apple Store HK
The Hongkong Apple Store has the legally, officially, hakkx-free unlocked iPhone 3G! The unlocked iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation. About $700 will get you an unlocked 8GB version, and the 16GB is just $800.

Wanna have! A gadget round up

mr-mojo-risin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:19:40 +0000

Even James Bond would be desperately lost, if Q would not provide him with his genious masterpieces of technikal gadgets. Same as Double-O, those amoung you who have to cut their own path through the street jungle without a license to kill will inestimably value to be able to conjure up the right tool at the right time.

So here’re some neat stuff, that might represent the the slight difference between hero and zero, pimp your individual style or could simply work as a life-saver:

Porsche challenges Tesla Motors
Alternative drives get hip, so Porsche tuning specialist Ruf constructs an electric version of the Porsche Cayman claiming to have more torque than the Tesla Roadster
T-Mobile G1 running Google Android
For the early adopters. Google’s attempt to set foot on the mobile OS market

Table Football - style edition
This one should not be hidden in a dark, shady corner of a bar, here come a real eye-catcher!
Classic retro telephone handsets
Still remember the time, when teleohones had dial plates and huuuge handsets? Here’s your ticket into the past!
Super Mario Brothers metallic graphic Belt Buckle
Video games geeks behold! This shows you’re a seriously gaming addict
Solar powered iPhone case
Ok, it ain’t a real beauty, but definitely might come in handy sometimes.

Social Media Study

mr-mojo-risin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:54:08 +0000

Interesting study about the usage and the behaviour of social media platform users from over 29 countries from webguild.org:

A new study by Universal McCann called When did we start trusting strangers? found that rather than being passive, consumers have taken not only active, but also creative roles in consumerism. In fact, consumers have become true “consum’actors.” The study was base on 17,000 Internet users from 29 countries.

The study describes a “new influencer landscape” which is characterized by three significant trends: the rise in social media, the importance of digital friends, and the proliferation of influencer channels. The study also mentions the impact of this phenomenon: an influence economy, the democratization of influence, and the new“super influencer.”

Download the whole study as .pdf file here

Arrr! Friendfeed switched their beta version live!

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:37:31 +0000

Pretty cool! The new features, like application filters, contact categories and und subscription management of the “secret” test version one could try out via beta.friendfeed.com now are implemented on the main stage.

Just see: friendfeed.com/mrmojorisin

This is really neat and definitely will make friendfeed even more informative and addictive!

Nice job!

Social media sites

mr-mojo-risin — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:22:05 +0000

News aggregators:

friendfeed.com
Friendfeed works as a feed of your social community activities, one adds services like flickr, picasa, twitter, google reader, digg, stumbleupon, del.icio.us, youtube, fast.fm and of course own blogs sharing the own post/messages/links with other people and commenting the interesting stuff from others. Seriously good source of hot news right from the streets!

toluu.com
A service to share and tag rss feeds and to find people of the same interest.
Quite new, one still needs an invite code - if you need one drop me a message.

delicious.com
Social bookmarking site, which recently launched a new, fresh layout, for sharing, tagging links, creating networks with friends/users of the same interest.

digg.com
Vote for news links, pictures or videos of your interest and help creating the famous digg effect, a self-made DOS attack on your website, if you’re lucky, you (or your server) must be prepared. Lately rumors said that alpha user take money for pushing news to the frontpage, other users claim to banned from Google Adsense due to the unexpected and sudden traffic created by the digg community.

Create your own community:

Ning.com
This is a platform where one can set up his very own community about any interest, offering video and photo uploads, discussion rooms, messaging, comments, fully editible profiles…
All a fully grown up community needs, so if one already gather a larger group of the same interest, this is a fine service to establish a exchange of thoughts and opinions.

Blog Communities:

Blogcatalog.com
Create groups for your own blogs and gather followers to promote events or interesting posts. Start or join groups for gaining from the strenght of the community. Interact via private messages and so called broadcasts you might send to your follwers. It’s got the social activity componet, too so one is able to see what fellow other bloggers are interested. Providing a widget showing the fans of your blog. A good, thus active and helpful member, might derive traffic from here.

mybloglog.com
Yahoo’s mybloglog is pretty similar to blogcatalog, but offering much more service to integrate, plus detailed statistics for your blog for one week or more is one chooses the paid version.

fuelmyblog.com
Voting site, if a blog gathers enough votes to reach the home page, one should better be prepared for a shitload of traffic.

blogflux.com
Blog Directory offering several paid services, like featured listing in a toplist and stuff.

Photo Communities:

flickr.com
Very large photo community with free restricted accounts and Premium accounts for 25$ a year. Yahoo.com scared off some users by forcing them to quit or to get a Yahoo ID and after that enabling videos for upload. But the community is still alive and kickin! Lately they set up a deal with Getty Images so in the future users might be able to sell their flickr pics via Getty Images, which could be interesting.

Related:
picasa.com
devianart.com

Google Browser “Chrome”

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:07:20 +0000

Google is passing the next logical milestone towards complete internet domination in a determined way, they are releasing their very own browser. Denied since years the gauntlet shall be slapped on Microsoft today at 20:00 GMT and Chrome should be available for download in over 100 countries.

The own browser closes an important gap in the Google web portfolio, offering already email and office applications, online advertisement, analysis tools, a feed reader, an instant messenger, blog software, online photo albums, translators and not to forget the different websearches.

So it’ll be interesting, what exactly they will deliver…

But as Michael Arrington from Techchrunch said, one should think about whether we really want Google to know everything we do online.

(Btw, Techchrunch.com seems to be offline, any coincidence with their critic…?)

Modding your Firefox

mr-mojo-risin — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:05:02 +0000

For customizing Firefox to your personal needs and for maximum performance by using the options menue, close limits are set. But there is more:
By typing “about:config” into the address bar and hitting “Enter” you will access a vast list of parameters handling the behavior of your Fox. Using Firefox. 2.x you will access this list without a explanation about the risks, Firefox 3.x demands you to confirm, that you will be careful, once you done that, the fun may begin…

Do not show the “Close Tab” Button on all open Tabs
FF3 shows the “Close Tab” by default on every tab, if you do not want it to do so, change the config here:

Parameter: browser.tabs.closeButtons
Default value: 1
Possible modifikations:
- 0 [only shows the close button the active tab]
- 1 [show it on all tabs]
- 2 [do not show any close buttons on the tabs]
- 3 [show only one closing button at the end of the tabs row]
Adjusting the width of the tabs
Firefox displays open tabs with a minimum width of 100 pixels, with many opened tabs the user will have to scroll the tab bar. To avoid scrolling or reduce it you can lower that minimal width.

Parameter: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
Default value: 100
Possible modifikations:
0 [disables scrolling completely, any other values will determine a new minimal tab width]
Turn off the session restore function
Personally I do not like this feature very much, I cannot remember having used it willingly (sometimes I clicked the wrong button). So here’s how to turn it off:

Parameter: browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default value: true
Possible modifikations: false [by setting the value to "false", the restore dialog won't appear anymore]
Countdown timer before installing an Addon
You’ve just found the Addon you were hoping for aeons of time, downloaded it, but then there are always these horrible two seconds of waiting till the installation begins…
Get rid of them!

Parameter: security.dialog_enable_delay
Default value: 2000 [in milli seconds, which makes in this case 2 seconds]
Possible modifikations: 0 [by setting the value to "0", the installation starts immediately, all other values, specify a delay in milli seconds]
Turn off the Anitivrus Scan
Only in Firefox 3: Downloaded files will have to pass an antivirus scan, which might take a while, if you are leeching a larger file.

Parameter: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Default value: true
Possible modifikations: false
[by setting the value to "false", the scan is disabled, so watch out what you're downloading from which site]

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 released

mr-mojo-risin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:17:40 +0000

Micro$oft presents the next generation of their browser compensatory Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, claiming as usual, having made is faster, better, easier and more secure…

One of the problably most discussed features is “InPrivate”, sarcastically baptised the “porn mode” due to is most striking operation field. But this function is simply an automatism for a standart procedure, which are already offered by several other competitors on the browser market, i.e. “Clear private data” function in Firefox.
By concealing the browsing behavior and thus avoiding the data mining by webpages, this function cuts off targeted advertising, which will not be appreciated by the marketing companies.

So this measure will be welcomed by the data privacy protectors, but certainly not by the greatest online advertiser, namely Google, who has by the lately swallowed DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, who are specialised in targeted marketing.

Hopefully the MS software engineers had been sticking a little bit closer to the standarts defined by the W3 consortium.

On the download page itself M$ only gives common talk:

Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar web browser you are most comfortable using, helping you get everything you want from the web faster, easier, more privately and securely than ever before.

Faster Internet Explorer 8 is more responsive with new pages and tabs, opening up fast and reliably. You can now get to the information you care about most, in fewer steps; one click access to your webmail, favorite news sites or other online services.
Easier Reduce the steps to accomplish many common tasks, and automate your access to real time information updates. You can keep track of your favorite sports team, news, weather with a single click.
More Private Helps protect your privacy and confidential information where ever you go on the web.
More Secure Helps protect and stop malicious software from reaching your PC, and makes it easier to detect when a website is an imposter.

Back from Sziget Festival 2008

mr-mojo-risin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:45:03 +0000

The Sziget Festival is not only a pure music festival, it also involves art of any kind like dance performances, very impressive Kiton B, acrobats, theater and amazing installations like the Luminarium (Photos). Thus the festival really engages all the senses - and it is a hell-of-a-party for five days!!! Taking place on a lovely island in the Danube in Budapest, the location itself is a fine reason to go for it!

And the music! Here’s a small excerpt from the line-up - there are over 100 bands and DJs: Iron Maiden, REM, Alanis Morissette, Maceo Parker, Sex Pistols, Babyshambles, Mercedes Peón, Leningrad, Harcsa Veronika Quartet, Transglobal Underground, Roisin Murphy, Jamiroquai …

The visitor count is mind blowing, too, the organizers claim having broken the last year’s record of 385 000 people. Then the festival went over seven days, not only five like this year.

Ok, now one should be able to figure out why there has been no blogging for me in August and why there won’t be any in August next year!
So just join the madness in 2009, they also got free Internet, but there’s so much else to discover!

Have fun!

cuil.com - a new threat for the google empire?

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:02:40 +0000

There is someone new in the search engine shark pool: cuil.com.

They do not start silently, they know who is the enemy and the attack is declared:

cuil.com [Cuil means knowledge in Irish] claims to search 121,617,892,992 web pages, which is “three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft”.

About their search method cuil.com unveils the following concept, which is not really that innovative as it sounds:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

According personal data protection, cuil wants to inncocent and says not to intend to collect data from it’s users. A noble plan. indeed, but google wanted to do no evil, too and now is bowing to China’s censorship restrictions. We’ll see…

Cuil.com is offering several new features, like quick link icon in the search term suggestions, roll over descriptions, suggestions to clarify your search that come in tabs and categorized terms related to your search.

The staff from cuil might still hold some aces in behind, with some of them haveing worked at google themselves.
All in all cuil.com comes lean, fast and a nice look featuring some good and promising ideas.
On the other hand lacking some evident features like a country/language restricted search.
Let’s see how they get started and manage to conquer the hearts and the approvement of the internet usership.

Good luck cuil.com!

Social Media - get some tailwind out of communities

mr-mojo-risin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:52:51 +0000

Viral Marketing, Social Marketing and digg-effect these buzz words symbolize the wet fantasy of many marketeers, making a product, brand or website the latest hype without spending a multi zillion Dollar budget on advertisement, sponsoring and PR.
The good news: Yes, it’s possible, no doubt. The bad one: It’s hard work combined with sensitiveness, knowledge and a certain dose of luck.
Simply dropping posts in forums, flooding social bookmarking sites with links and lean back, is like waiting for a good fairy granting three wishes, it might probably never happen.

There will never be a manual for the buckshot, but it’s no rocket-science either:

Examine several services and communities for their relevance according your product or the compatibility of their users.
Learn as much as possible about the offered features and tools and how to use them to your advantage, i.e the shout function on digg.com or broadcasts on blogcatalog.com .
Create rooms, groups and further communities dealing with your topics and invite people who could be interested in your affairs. Share your knowledge and consider giving informations about your competitors (in a objective manner) and point out why your service/product is a better choice.
Be honest, avoid vast exaggerations or desperately trying to hide weak points of your product. They be unvealed and this will be a backlash for and won’t increase your credibility.
Use the feedback of the community, like emails, comments or blog reviews, learn from them and improve your product. Don’t forget to give credits back, so the critics might be teased and report in a positive manner about you.
A community is a give and take - or at least it should be - so take part and comment, vote and pay attention to other users postings, they will reward it. Plus you will collect valuable information about your target audience.
Keep your account up to date and fresh, nobody will interact with a nominal member.
Do not act too aggressive, less is more sometimes. If you bother other users too much they will block you, mark you as spammer, kick you out of the community. Be sensitive, treat others like you would like to be treated. Messing it up, your good reputation and credibility will be annihilated and barely can be reestablished. So handle with care!
Additional helping and useful informations that enrich the community related to your topic should be shared, too. This will integrate you as an active and worthy member and draw attention on your concerns. Only repeating marketing slogans like mantras is scaring and boring to people.
Engage your friends, family, coworkers to join, vote for you or recommend your product and giving you an initial aid to start. Mostly a certain critical mass has to be reached after that the community gets aware of you and the rest is surfing the wave !

Good luck on your mission!

Concept spaceships - an art blog

mr-mojo-risin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:35:40 +0000

Here you find an amazing collection of conceptual art illustrations of space ships, experimental flying devices and fighting drones. Real ones and fictional futuristic design concepts. Plus featuring several cool illustrations from Ralph McQuarries STAR WARS Portfolio, can’t tell how I like such stuff!

Take a look at the concept spaceships!

CSS - some basic hints

mr-mojo-risin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:20:30 +0000

CSS (cascading style sheets) is the ultimate tool to create lean, fast, functional, SEO friendly and, though, sexy layouts. Storing style attributes in one file provides several advantages as faster loading times, the source code takes a radical diet, if all the attributes do not appear on the pages itself.

You are web designer and have to work full contact with the customer? Then you will know this situation, the customer wants that headline bold and purple - no, make it green or is blue a better choice? This goes back and forth, which would make you go crazy if you had to do the changes on thousands of subpages. Using CSS you do changes faster than the customer decides between green and yellow.

Ok, enough chit chat here are some tricks to get more effective:

Assign multiple classes on one element
This is a real saver, one simply creates a “virtual” class by combing several ones, which is highly flexible and lowers the amount classes you will have to use.

Example:

The text should be black, underlined and bold, now instead of using a single one containing all three attributes, you setup three with each single value (black, underlined, bold)
```
the text
```
On the first hand this looks intricate, one could do this with a single class, but remember if you combine the three classes, you’ll get six “virtual” ones.
Using multiple stylesheets
Splitting up the a single stylesheet first of all makes it easier to maintain for the web programmer.
It’ also possible to embed further .css files into a specific .css file by integrating “@import url(”additional.css”); right at the top of the .css document.
Abbreviations

As there are always many roads to reach your destination, CSS is no exception. One can shorten the CSS code to increase the clearness of the structure.
Example:
Instead of:
```
.classname{
margin-top: 10px;
margin-right: 15px;
margin-bottom: 20px;
margin-left: 25px;
}
```
the abbreviated version should be used:

.classname{margin-top: 10px 15px 20px 25px;}

The order of the values is important, they are arranged clock wise:
top (12 o’clock), right (3 o’clock), bottom (6 o’clock), left (9 o’clock),
That also works with the attributes padding and border.

Compressing attribute values

Several attributes can be concentrated in a single one.

Example:
Instead of:
```
.classname{
border-width: 10px;
border-style: solid;
border-color: #000;
}
```
Use:
```
.classname{border: 10px solid #000;}
```
This also works on “font” and “background”, i.e. .