I went through a phase of scrutinizing a few entries from a contest for designing a “contents page” for a tech magazine. Some of the worst entries had a pathetic color scheme. With hot pink texts on dirty green and black background made my mind shutdown for a while. I then decided to post something that would help inexperienced color pickers. Be it good typography or design, its always underpinned with the proper use of colors. Color combinations like these are pleasing to the eye:
Getting such a great sense of color demands great experience. Still some places on the web help us generating new colored ideas. Some of the tools which help finding a perfect color sceme are:
http://www.colorcombos.com/ Personally my favorite place for finding a color scheme for any occasion. This website has a huge gallery of pre-made color arrays. You just have to scan them and pick the best one that suits. There isn’t any hassle of turning knobs or pushing buttons to generate a scheme. On finding a box that is the best for your project, click on it for a full page display with the hex codes. Though the hex codes are within the box in the library itself. But having a look at the colors on a full page helps you decide.
The summer heat and the holidays make life boring. The WWW has some fun places buried deep that feature the popular culture and other interesting stuff. It makes passing time much easier. Here I’ve compiled a list of the world’s most engrossing places on the web that can help to while away time like there was none.
The most popular social bookmarking website with loads of stuff to discover. Digg introducing some new social features, a sneak peek in the following video:
Funny starts here. These people know what’s funny and what’s not. The most experienced humor website on the planet. Must see the funny lists and videos.
No one other than the author of this website knows what the name means. But, its pretty funny to just read it. You’ll wonder where these people get som much LMAO stuff to post daily. Just click the randomizer button on the right pane and have fun.
Another Cracked.com styled website. It features loads of original funny videos. Famous for parodies of literally anything in this damned world. Updated daily.
Play higly addictive multiplayer games here. Even if your despise online flash gaming, its a must chek out (Apparently you are searching for something to pass your time with so no other go. Go to OMGPOP now). Must play Missile command now.
Addictive multiplayers, fast load times, slick OS kind of interface, real players, Facebook integration.
A place where you find the cream of flash games from around the world. You’ll end up spending hours on this website. Some of the games you must try for sure are indestruc2tank, continuity, tower defense games, robot wants puppy, red remover, stacker series, filler and many more. Sign up and level up.
Addictive flash multiplayers, best flash games around, leveling up system, neat design. Nothing more you could ask of a flash games website.
That was the first part. I don’t keep drafting stuff and adding more and more to it before publishing. One sitting should convert at least to one post for me. We’ll see another such list pretty soon before you are done with this one.
I used to hate those millions of Farmville and Mafia war’s feed on my Facebook feed. I blocked them, they got added to the blocked app list. But trust me when you actually start playing these you have hard time surviving without those feeds. Now when I want to enable them i find no option to do it. Facebook changed its interface recently just after the “birthday”. Everytime Facebook changes its look, its like “you better devote some time to find all those misplaced areas”. I did that. I found where the applications can be added to the feed again.
The trick is to move to “Top news” first. The most used “most recent” page doesn’t let you do it.
Go to Top News link on the top of your feeds.
Now navigate to the end of the page and find “Edit Options”
Go to the “applications” tab in the floating box.
Click on the “add to news feed” button. You are done.
The catch here is that you’d kill yourself from frustration after not finding any such options under the “Most Recent” page. True that you never go to the “Top News” page. But for this you’ll have to go. There is no other way on the present Facebook interface to unhide applications from your news feed.
Start pages are always a mess in web browsers. Firefox put up a design contest for users to design a perfect start page recently. Be it Chrome’s most used pages or Firefox’s default Google search page. Well, Chome does the work to a pretty good extent not to mention opera’s and safari’s speed dial pages. But it is totally a different experience when you have the start page on the cloud that is perfectly customized according to your needs. All those web services on your home page for you to access at a click. Doesn’t that seem perfect. Symbaloo - Start simple, is a simple interface that basically focuses to refine your first contact with the internet everyday. The symbaloo pages houses draggable boxes that link to your favorite web services like feeds, mail, radio, search, translate and what not. If even that doesn’t make you scream enough. You have free places where you can add your own boxes that link to a service specified by you. Now that’s too much YOU.
To set it as a start page. Just click the button at the bottom of the page that says “Set as startpage“. The following light box a the center of the screen gives you the instructions. OR simply drag the link http://www.symbaloo.com to the home in firefox.
Well I heard of Unite very recently….and actually got to use it only after installing Opera two days back. It was a long time since I’d used Opera…the last time I think when 9.6 was around…maybe it’s just a mindset but I (and many others I know) never saw Opera as a default browsing option, but more like a standby to Firefox, or sometimes Chrome. But the new Opera 10.10 looks very much set to change all of that…it feels light and zippy, and the interface is soothing and soft…for me, it’s a welcome change to the sharp lines of Chrome.
The major improvement is in speed…Opera says it uses some compression algorithm or something….whatever it is, it’s new Presto rendering engine seems to be more than able to rival Chrome’s Webkit, Safari’s Nitro and definitely Firefox’ Gecko (and I should think it’s customary by now to leave IE out of the discussion when browser speeds are being talked about )
But more than speed, what’s creating waves about this new Opera launch is something called Opera Unite…a new concept that might just change the way people normally share files online. What we generally use to share files is a system called the ‘client-server’ architecture. What Unite does is turn your PC into a client, as well as a server; allowing you to share data across several computers without the requirement of a third-party server.
Let me try to explain in more simple terms. Suppose you want to share a few photos with your friend. What you’d normally do, is upload your photos to a photo sharing website like Flickr, Photobucket or PicasaWeb; and then send them the link with the password. You could also e-mail the photos as attachments. But what if the photos you want to share are high-resolution, and large in number? Then e-mail sharing is out of question, as there are file size limits to attachments. Also, in the case of photo-sharing websites, you have limits to the total upload (unless you are a paid member, but even if that is the case, it is cumbersome and time-consuming to upload hundreds of megabytes of photos and especially so if you happen to have a low bandwidth connection). Or similarly if you wish to share a big file (a PSD file, RAW image, a HD video, etc), it can be quite taxing to upload it someplace and then share it. Moreover, from an Indian perspective, where ISP’s impose download/upload limits in most internet plans, it can be impossible for someone to share a considerably sized file.
It is here where Unite comes in and makes the sharing process a breeze. And it’s so simple, anybody without any prior file-sharing experience could easily do it. In the client-server architecture, the files you upload are stored on a server, which is usually a high-capacity mainframe or other powerful computer with high file storage and processing capabilities. Then, the person who you want to share the file(s) with, downloads the file from the server. But what Unite does, is that it hosts the files from your computer itself, i.e, your PC is sort of a mini-server now! So now whoever you want to share data with can download the requisite files directly from you, instead of using any via-media. This simplifies things a lot, and is very very advantageous in the following ways…
You no longer need to upload the file from your computer, so if you have any limits on your uploads, you no longer need to worry…
You can share huge files in a jiffy…in fact if you wish, you can share all the contents of your computer and/or any external media; and also the contents of your local network which you have access to.
This way of sharing is more secure, as there is no third-party involved; the transaction takes place only between the people concerned.
But this form of file-sharing also comes with its downsides…the most significant being the need to have your computer online whenever you want to share any file(s). Also, a disruption in your internet connection would mean disruption in file transfer, so people with shaky internet connections should stay away.
But on the whole, it’s a fantastic way to share data with people, and should become very widely utilized very soon.
And by the way, owing to its nature, Unite also allows you to host your own website from your very computer. This is an exciting idea at first glance, and the idea of being able to float your website without paying the bucks to a third party for hosting seems tempting. Too good to be true? It is, to a certain degree. But the prospect of keeping yourself online all the time isn’t very appealing or plausible. Anyhow, it could be a great starting platform for budding web designers without the cash to splurge on a web domain.
Do download and try out the new Opera; and give Unite a spin too!
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