Posts made in May, 2010

It gives us an enthralling experience when we travel around the world to see some magnificent tourists attractions. Go and behold these tourist spots are indeed enchanting and before we knew it our camera is rolling already and shots after shots are taken to capture the breathtaking scenery that is unfolding before your very eyes. If you’ve been to the Great Barrier Reef, which is in Australia, and you are on a diving spree, you might ask yourself, how to take pictures of the great panorama of fishes, corals and other sea creatures that comes in different shapes, colors and sizes underneath the azure and crystal water of the reef? Taking pictures can give you a one of a kind experience but there are some ways to do get the job done with zest and gusto.

The first and foremost, is to obtain a waterproofing housing for the camera, that is, the inexpensive small point and shoot camera. Why? Because under water SLR camera maybe more expensive than the camera with housing. Underwater cameras can fetch to around $150 and comes along with it some risks for you to take, hmmm, just like taking the bullets by your teeth. If you don’t want to be a risk taker why not settle for cheaper camera like the reliable Sony Powershot which is equipped with high end point and shoot and an underwater case to shield it.

Photo by by W J (Bill) Harrison

Indeed, this is a very practical yet efficient way whilst you save some of your precious and hard-earned money. Thus the good first step is to buy a camera that you can use housing for it and drop the idea of buying DSLR while you intend to take pictures under the sea, unless you have ample amount of money to shell out for the expensive underwater camera.

Taking pictures underwater may give you some challenges to hurdle and conquer:

First thing is avoid things under the water can pose any harm on you, like avoiding diving into the waters that is infested with sharks or deadly jellyfishes. Problems with lighting or even the lack of it also poses a major problem to you. To take pictures under water you are in dire need of light from the cameras flash or better perhaps from other source, to enable you to shoot for great photos

Whilst shooting near the surface you need to adjust your camera setting to a small ISO speed, as you get deeper at around 30 to 40 feet, keep an eye with the shutter speed. At this depth the bottom light will be low, and if you begin with shutter speeds of 1 / 30, 1 / 15, or lower, the pictures taken are blurred, which can be unfortunate since you can only know the outcome once you already have printed copies of your pictures. For this reason it is wise to purchase a point and shoot underwater camera that is equipped with a low-noise at high ISO, which must be low.

Photo by jayhem

If you encounter some problems with the color, blurriness or mist in your photos. No problem, since there is the Adobe Photoshop that permits you to make some corrections to the flaws in your taken photos right away to make them look really good. This is a great method as it is, but nothing beats the photos that is not unedited, you can do this by simply taking the best pictures to the best of your abilities at all times which is far more rewarding.

Twitter’s growing more and more intensely lately, have you noticed? It was only a little over a month from when we told you about the new tooltips and now we have plenty of new featured to introduce you to. During this time, developers of the popular microblogging service added a lot of new “stuff” to the popular and functional Twitter. First of all, the new home, new business features, improved search and launch an advertising platform. Just recently I became aware that Twitter is going to swallow Atebits.

That’s what will  gave us soon a new twitter. In order not to become entangled in the news, we’ll talk about innovations in the order they appear in the official blog of the service.

Business Functions

In the end of March, the developers have activated the service under the name of Contributors. With the help of several users can write tweets on behalf of a single account. The work of this innovation could be a long time seen in the official account of service. Now this feature is enabled for all users and is free, at least for the time being.

Why “for the time being”? This function is the first in a set of similar corporate additions and it is possible that when their number is much larger pool of developers in charge package, as the result, we note that this innovation will be most interesting for various corporations, as well as for users who intend to lead a group microblogging.
Updated home page Announcement of the updated home page was a further 30 March, but the “full” power innovation has earned only a few days ago.

Page completely changed their usual appearance and became, in our opinion, more informative. Current trends show now in the form of scrolling text and near the top of the page. Added unit, which shows the accounts of celebrities, and slightly to the right is a dynamic block that displays the last tweets casual users.

The new design is perfectly suited for today’s Twitter, the meaning of which is reduced to a steady stream of news, opinions, thoughts, tips, and other, sometimes urgent, information.

Advanced Search

Many users find this innovation has been hidden, because As it SERPs. Now, thanks to new algorithm, the results of issuance, the user will see the 3 most popular tweets (their popularity is calculated quantity of re-tweets, so getting re-tweets is essential than ever). Other results, as before, sorted by date of their writing – from new to old.

The purpose of innovation, according to developers, to make searches more meaningful and relevant. As it is necessary to note the operational integration of the algorithm in the API service, enabling developers to third-party applications to include a new search feature in their programs.
Start advertising platform

This is probably the most important news, after updating the home page. Twitter has officially launched a way to monetize its service. And this, apparently, only the first step taken in this direction.

The first advertising feature called Promoted Tweets and, in terms of perception of information within the service is very simple and most convenient one available to date, types of advertising, and it’s going to make a decent competition to the Sponsored Tweets platform.. The result of the platform is to display advertisements tweets in the first lines of the SERP for certain search queries. This type of advertising is the best fit to the structure of Twitter and should not cause a specific criticism from users of service. Now a list of companies that cooperate with tweets is not too large, but there’s already a lot of major brands such as Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America. Undoubtedly, in future, will expand more than one dozen companies.

Also, in the official blog reports that Promoted Tweets will be actively explored and analyzed with a view to its further development. Depending on the effectiveness of this type of advertising, and reaction of users, the advertising function can be further disseminated. As an option – it is putting Twitter with advertising in the feed posts as in the web interface, and a twitter client.

Most interesting, in our view point, an innovation – an updated home page and the  start advertising platform. What do you think about these changes?

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WordPress themes are considered premium, regardless being free or so-to-speak “paid” themes. 2 years ago, we all could only dream about having a wordpress theme for our blog with Ajax and JavaScript features, where featured posts slide, portfolio items fade in and out, and, of course — the comments are posted without refreshing the page. All these things were sought after and cost a lot of money, requiring plenty of custom development. Could we guess back then that cu3er will be offered on free wordpress themes? Well, today I made a selection of best wordpress theme that make the neatest yet most powerful use of the javascript integration… enjoy!

Since late 2007 however an increasing number of WordPress theme developers have been offering premium WordPress themes – themes which are offered for a fixed price. These premium WordPress themes are usually sold for between $50 to $250. Originally only a small number of talented and well-known WordPress theme designers created paid premium WordPress themes which were well designed, highly functional, top-quality themes that transformed a WordPress installation from a simple blog into a powerful content management system. However as the premium WordPress theme business concept spread, more and more WordPress theme designers have hopped on the bandwagon trying to cash on the new trend filling up their portfolio with premium (paid) wordpress themes. However with greater variety and numbers of paid premium WordPress themes also comes varying levels of quality. So what specifically makes a premium WordPress theme premium? Some characteristics that should set a premium wordpress theme apart from a free theme are listed below:

Quality and Unique Design
Premium WordPress themes should be just that – Premium. They should look better and be of a much higher quality and unique design than compared to those available for free.

Features
While all themes are different, in general premium WordPress themes should have more “Features” than their free counterparts. What that means depends on the theme in question. However some features may include: “Featured Posts” areas, Multiple layout options for the home page, drop down menus, multiple customs templates for pages, custom field options, print style sheets etc.

Customization Options and Flexibility
People want options, so Premium WordPress themes should be customizable. Buying a premium theme will set you apart from the crowd significantly, but since other people will still be using the same theme, premium themes should be able to be easily customized further, whether it be for the layout, colours, images, or all of the above.

Live Preview or Demo
There should be a live demo or preview of the theme so you can test it and check it out before buying. If there is no live preview or demo that should be a warning sign. You should ask why don’t they want you to test the theme first? All reputable premium theme sellers will have a live demo full of content for you to test. Explore the live demo thoroughly, testing all pages to see that the theme works properly and there are no errors or mistakes.

Full Support
If you’re buying a premium WordPress theme it should also come with a certain degree of support from the designer. The level of support can vary however and will range from personalized individual support from the designer, to the provision of forums or blog comment sections for asking questions and obtaining support from the designer and other people who have purchased the theme.

Supporting Documentation
Premium WordPress themes should come with an instruction manual or document. This should explain how to upload and install the theme and how to manage any of the options that are built into the theme.

Free Updates
Wordpress is continually being updated and improved and a premium WordPress theme developer should be offering you free updates of the theme when required.

Well Coded
There should be no coding errors, misspellings, X images, etc in a premium WordPress theme. The theme has cross browser compatible and been tested to work properly on all the major browsers, plus the theme should have clean and valid code and adhere to strict XHTML and CSS standards.

Guest post by Preecha Saisaard from www.free-templates-design.com and Kathleen Mulder from http://webhostingstar.us