Get Ready for Web 3.0 http://bit.ly/97HL9D @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, once said, âThe web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.â Itâs only a matter of time before web 3.0 — better known as the âsemantic webâ– rolls around, making web 2.0 — the web as we know it today — a thing of the past. Though there is a debate among experts as to when exactly web 3.0 will arrive, most predict itâs sooner rather than later.
In the beginningâŚ
Web 1.0 was all about basics. With this first iteration, social networking was merely a dim glimmer in the minds of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and MySpace founders Tom Andersen and Chris DeWolfe. Back then, websites provided information with little opportunity for user interaction and feedback — a one-way process dubbed âread-onlyâ. The most interactive user activities involved chat and instant messaging.
Then web 2.0 came along and introduced the world to blogs, social-networking sites, and a host of self-publishing tools. Articles are now accompanied with âcommentsâ tools, and any hack with a computer can create a blog. Content exploded on the web, and a considerable portion of it is created by average users.
Booming web audience
The first decade also saw a tremendous leap in the growing number of online users. Mobile devices have also made 24-hour access to the web — anywhere, anytime — readily available: Simply sit at Starbucks and read email, check the news, and browse the web while sipping a Frappucino.
What Web 3.0 holds in store
What industry analysts foresee for the next version is a more personalized and easy-to-use web, eliminating several steps from your online searches to make them quicker. Hence, your computer is ‘smarterâ and can better understand what you are searching for. According to PC Magazine, âthe Semantic Web is a place where machines can read web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we’re looking for.â
For example, if you are planning a weekend getaway to a mountain lodge and you want to make sure that there are convenience stores nearby, you wouldnât have to conduct separate searches for lodges and stores. The web would simply deliver search results for both and categorize it in such a way that you would know which places are more convenient. What web 3.0 then promises is a more personalized, faster method of search that is tailored to your needs. And experts predict that this could also simplify the current problem of sifting through pages and pages of irrelevant web search results.
Virtual world: Others also speculate whether web 3.0 will eventually develop into a virtual world. Writing in About.com, Daniel Nations explains that itâs a possibility that Web users would eventually be able to walk into virtual buildings and stores online.
What this means for your computer
With every technological advance, older gadgets are eventually replaced by new ones. While web 3.0 doesnât necessarily mean you’ll need a more powerful computer, the average lifespan for most computers is still 4 to 5 years and that isnât expected to change. You can have your computer in top-notch shape as web 3.0 approaches by doing preventive maintenance to keep it healthy with help from programs like Computer Checkup Premium or System Mechanic.
Clean registries, remove clutter by clearing out temporary or unwanted files, and help your hard drive run more quickly by rearranging data to remove fragments. Also, speed up your computer and ensure your PCâs hard drive is operating at its maximum potential.
WWW and information overload
One drawback, some say, to these web technologies is that they could make it easier to rely on the web to do the bulk of your work for you. Once upon a time, the fear was that television would dull creativity and mental stimulation, and now the worry is that the Internet has replaced TV in this regard.
As Chris Christensen, a computer executive and host of the Amateur Traveler podcast, says: âSo we will hear stories about people for whom the web becomes an obsession. But that is no different from the couch potatoes who did not make good decisions about their TV habits.â
As the New York Times explains, âTheir goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion.â
Does The Future Of The Internet Have Room For Web Designers? http://bit.ly/abqeUj #RecoveryRelief
Does The Future Of The Internet Have Room For Web Designers?
It seems that new posts about what the Internet has in store for us down the road pop up every week or two. Some propose that the Internet will deliver more of the same, but different somehow (itâs usually ambiguous just how), while others propose such radical changes that itâs hard to believe they could ever happen. And the truth is, none of us really know what will happen with the Internet in 10 or 15 years.
After all, it was only a little more than 15 years ago that Clifford Stoll wrote the now-infamous âThe Internet? Bah!â post (subtitled: âHype Alert, Why Cyberspace Isnât, and Will Never Be, Nirvanaâ). In that post he detailed why a lot of things just wouldnât happen online but most of which are now commonplace.
As web designers and developers, what the future holds for the Internet is imperative for our livelihoods. If the Internet has radical changes in store for us, we need to understand how they might effect what we do to earn a living and what weâll need to do to adapt and keep pace â if thatâs even possible.
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that we are publishing a Smashing eBook Series? The brand new eBook #3 is Mastering Photoshop For Web Design, written by our Photoshop-expert Thomas Giannattasio.]
The Future is Content and Data
Look at your mobile phone. If youâre like most tech-savvy consumers, youâve likely got a smartphone of the Apple or Android variety (or maybe a Blackberry, especially if youâre working in the corporate world). Most of us use our smartphones on a near-constant basis doing everything from checking email to working on projects to entertaining ourselves. How much of all that do you do in your phoneâs browser?
The answer is probably ânot muchâ.
We use an app to check email. We use the Facebook app for status updates. We use Twidroid or TweetDeck or the official Twitter app for tweeting. We use a YouTube app to watch videos. We use the Pandora or Last.fm apps for streaming music.
Mozilla Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. Is this the future of mobile applications?
Itâs likely a similar scenario on our desktop or laptop computer. We use apps for a lot of our common Internet-based activities. We even have options to create our own apps with single-site browsers (likeFluid or Prism). And Googleâs Chrome OS is just around the corner with devices already planned to use the web-based OS.
Content is king and design is becoming less relevant â weâre already seeing this with mobile themes
Look at how many WordPress sites use one of less than a handful of standard mobile themes. It doesnât matter what the site looks like in a standard browser; open it up in your mobile browser and youâre often greeted with a page that looks exactly like the last 10 sites you visited.
This is because for most web users, design is irrelevant<. That’s not to say they don’t appreciate good design. Many of them do (and many of them don’t). But they’re on a website because of the content. As long as the design doesn’t give them a headache or interfere with their ability to find what they want, they don’t really care what it looks like. The most widely-used mobile themes offer the content in an optimized format for mobile viewing. That makes users happy.
It is not just apps that reduce the need to visit a website
Itâs not just apps that will pull data directly, without the need for an actual website. Devices are making real headway in this manner. We have cars now that can pull information from the Internet for you. Soon devices for Google TV will be out in the marketplace, pulling video content from the Internet without the need to visit a website.
Soon devices for Google TV will be out in the marketplace, pulling video content from the Internet without the need to visit a website.
Itâs likely that more devices will add Internet integration in the near future. At some point weâll probably have refrigerators that automatically generate shopping lists for us (including any available coupons and where the best prices can be found that week): based on previous shopping habits; what we currently have; and our average usage rates for different foods. This is just one example of how online data and content will become infinitely more important than the designs surrounding that content.
Content Will Be Funneled Through a Handful of Sources
Itâs impractical to have apps for every website we visit. Most of us visit hundreds or thousands of websites every year. Whatâs more likely to happen is that most of our content will be delivered through aggregators.
Who will these aggregators be?
Currently, there are three big players on the Internet that are likely to continue to be the primary content delivery platforms. Who are they? Twitter, Facebook and Google. Think about where you spend most of your time online and youâre likely going to find that those are the sites you visit most often. This market share is only going to increase.
Facebook is already trying to be the Internet
Look at how much content is now aggregated through Facebook. They have pages for virtually every topic under the sun (most of which have canned content taken directly from Wikipedia). Post a YouTube video to Facebook and your friends can watch it right there, without ever leaving Facebook. Even third-party applications like Networked Blogs stick pretty closely to the Facebook environment.
Post a YouTube video to Facebook and your friends can watch it right there, without ever leaving Facebook. Even third-party applications like Networked Blogs stick pretty closely to the Facebook environment.
Besides that, look at the gaming environment thatâs cropped up on Facebook. Iâve lost track of how many updates in my news feed are directly related to games like Farmville or Mafia Wars. Facebook has grown into such a complete online ecosystem that many users might never find a reason to leave. Facebook shows no signs of slowing down either. Theyâre expanding their business and their reach â a trend thatâs likely to continue for as long as they can sustain it.
Google wants everything to go through them
Google already has its hands in virtually everything online. It has two operating systems (Chrome OS and Android), its own browser, web applications that allow you to do a lot of things that used to be limited to desktop applications and the most-used search engine in the world put it in a pretty solid position to continue to be a major stakeholder in the future Internet.
Google is also one of the more forward thinking and active participants in Internet policy and technology. It has a vested interest in how the Internet shapes up in coming years and will push to shape that Internet in a way that benefits its business model. I can see a future where Google doesnât just offer a list of search engine results, but actually shows you the content youâre looking for without ever leaving their sites.
If you look at Googleâs complete product offering, itâs easy to see that it wants to be the primary online destination for most people (or maybe even all people). Google is firmly positioned in blogging, video, search, business applications, webmaster tools, ecommerce and even phone services â expect its reach to expand even more.
Is there room for other services?
There are always going to be innovative startups online. Most will fall by the wayside soon after theyâre started or are absorbed into other established companies. A select few will go on to become major influencers online. Itâs unclear at the moment where thereâs room for new companies and services online. The idea of more location-based services (going beyond FourSquare, et al) is probably the most promising as well as services that go beyond normal Internet activities and integrate into daily life more.
Function Will Prevail over Form
If everyone is accessing web content through an app rather than a browser, then no one will care what a website looks like. The way it functions and the content it delivers will become the paramount concerns to users. There will be no more balancing of form and function on a website; function will override form.
Form will retain a place in the design of apps. In all likelihood, content will be open to the extent that APIs will be developed that anyone can then use in application development â so the form in which an app displays that data will become what separates the good from the bad, the great from the mediocre.
There are AdvantagesâŚ
There are some big advantages to this kind of model where apps and a small number of content aggregators deliver and control most of the content online. One issue is bandwidth. If thereâs no design being transferred to a device (because the application on the device already includes all the design elements), that saves bandwidth. As more and more activities are done online, weâre going to have to consider infrastructure costs. Lower bandwidth use per site will result in more bandwidth available.
Another advantage is that thereâs more potential for user control. Users can define their preferences on their device and see content in the way they want. This especially has positive implications when it comes to accessibility. Those who need special settings because of a disability will no longer have issues with unviewable content.
Technical advantages
Letâs face it: the technologies upon which the Internet is built arenât the most efficient ones available. Part of this has to do with building upon infrastructure that isnât as good as it could be. The Internet has to be backwards-compatible over very long periods of time. We canât just suddenly change things, even if it is to make things work better in the future, if it causes half the sites out there to no longer function.
With a content-based Internet that uses device-side applications for displaying data and performing tasks, we can create more efficient applications. We wonât need to make sure each application can handle a huge variety of content and processes (as browsers currently have to do), because weâll know exactly the kinds of data that application will need to process.
What Does It Mean for Users?
Practically, users will have a more integrated experience with the content they view and the services they use online. The Internet will become even more a part of everyday life, incorporated to such an extent that itâs seamless. Itâs already happening in bits and pieces.
Again, look at your phone. You probably use apps or widgets for things like checking the weather or generating a shopping list. These apps will become more integrated and will work better with the data available online. For example, you could use that shopping list to automatically find the best prices on products, either online or at your local stores. In all likelihood, that data would be aggregated through a service like Google Base.
One profile fits all
An online profile will become even more important for users. Rather than setting up every device or service you have, youâll simply authorize the device to grab your profile and preference information from the web. Security and privacy experts will have a field day with this, but most consumers will opt to use it anyway if it means the difference between going through a two-hour manual setup process or clicking a button and authorizing it to set everything up automatically.
What Does It Mean for the Web Design Industry?
So what does this all boil down to? If the web becomes app-based and content-based, where do web designers fit in â if at all? The bad news is that if the Internet starts relying much more heavily on access via app rather than browser, thereâs going to be a lot less demand for web designers. Companies wonât see the point in hiring someone to create an entirely bespoke website when they can just use a template and then feed all their content to Google and Facebook and Twitter.
Developers, on the other hand, will likely see a boom in business. A lot of money will be exchanging hands for apps that work better than current offerings and apps that might be able to undermine the big players. Of course, all these apps also need design work, but it will be a lot less demand than there is now for website design. Itâs likely a lot of designers will need to expand their offerings to cater to content creation rather than just web design.
Websites arenât going to go away any time soon. Itâs likely that there will be a bigger market for templates and themes as companies stop paying for custom designs. And there will be certain kinds of sites (like portfolios or art projects) that will always want to be designed.
Multimedia content will also still have a strong market. Those who can produce high-quality videos and even web-based apps (for things like Chrome OS) will have a strong business for years to come.
Who Wins in All This?
If thereâs a definite winner in this possible future Internet, it is the content creators. If the only thing that sets one company or organization apart from their competition, then those who can create high-quality content will be in high demand. The thousands of dollars that a company used to be spent on website design will be funneled into website content instead.
Users will also benefit as theyâll have a more integrated, customized experience. Their version of the Internet will be tailored specifically to them, based on their own wants and needs. Theyâll get content in the manner they prefer and find most usable.
Application developers will also likely win in all this. While the APIs and the data available will be pretty standardized, the manner in which itâs displayed will become a battleground of creativity. Innovation here will be key, doing something different and better than what everyone else is doing is the only way an app will stand out.
(afb)
Kno – the digital textbook system http://bit.ly/9fSwVw #RecoveryRelief
Kno – the digital textbook system
I have just been sent this link to Kno by someone in my professional network. The information on the home page drew me in straightaway ..
“While no one was looking, someone revolutionized the textbook, higher education, and learning itself in one crazy, bold move.”Yes, it’s a digital textbook. Yes, it’s a whole new ecosystem. Two
spacious panels. Touch-screen interaction. A fully-stocked store. Video.
Note-taking. Sharing and community.Kno is everything a textbook was. And will be.
Take a look! What do you think?
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c887753ef0133f4735906970bListed below are links to weblogs that reference Kno – the digital textbook system:
This is why you should use Internet Explorer 9 http://bit.ly/chghu8 @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief
This is why you should use Internet Explorer 9
by Sebastian Anthony Sep 23rd 2010 at 12:00PM
It’s hard to describe just what makes Internet Explorer 9 such joy to use. It would be easy to say ‘it just works’, but that would be a cop-out. IE9 is like a simple, beautifully elegant dress — sleek lines, no frills, but masterfully designed with a singular purpose in mind: Web browsing.
There are little things, like the perfection of the address bar (the ‘One Box’): notice how it ‘greys out’ when your mouse isn’t near it; how the stop and refresh buttons are also there (and movable, if you prefer them on the left); how you can turn search-as-you-type on and off. It’s so perfect, and such a glorious amalgam of Firefox and Chrome that it hurts.
Moving on (I’ve calmed down now), the unified tab-and-address bar area, which has received a lot of flak for being too small for power-users, is resizable! You can simply make the address bar narrower, leaving more space for tabs. More space is also dedicated to tabs on wider displays: screen widths over 1280 pixels (i.e. every power-user) have two thirds of that space reserved for tabs — it’s only on smaller screens that the address bar occupies half the width (and it’s still resizable!)
Putting the One Box (Omnibox, eat your heart out) on the same line as the tabs also puts IE9 into first place as far as vertical space is concerned. It’s about 20 pixels more compact than Chrome, but almost half the size of Firefox 4’s bulky address-and-tabs-and-huge-orange-button set-up.
Then there’s the Windows 7 taskbar, or ‘Superbar’, integration. When I first saw it in action during the keynote speech I was dubious, but I needn’t have worried: it’s awesome. You almost don’t need tabs— simply pin your top five most-visited sites and use the Superbar instead! If you haven’t seen it in action yet, visit Twitter (in IE9 of course) and drag the tab down to the Superbar. Open another tab — your ‘mentions’ pane, for example. Now hover over the Twitter icon on the Superbar: you have quick access to every open tab!
The pinned app icon also has a jumplist that can be added with a few META tags in a site’s HTML. Right click your Twitter icon and you can jump straight to ‘New Tweet’. A site can also notify you of changes to a page through the Superbar — if you pin Facebook to your superbar, you’ll see a red star appear when there’s activity on your news stream.
IE9 blurs the difference between the Web and your operating system — and that’s intentional. The average user now spends so much time surfing the Web that the underlying operating system, and downloaded, locally-run apps, have become all but redundant. Remember, too, that Google is working on a browser that is an operating system.
After talking to Microsoft, Google and Mozilla in San Francisco and Mountain View, I sure that this is just the opening salvo in the browser-as-a-platform crusade. All three major browsers have now assembled their forces — HTML5, standards compliance, fast JavaScript execution and hardware accelerated rendering — and it makes me wonder whether Windows 7 might be the last local software-oriented operating system that we’ll see. It certainly makes sense for Google to push Chrome OS — they have nothing to lose! — but it leaves a huge question mark hanging ominously over the fate of Windows 8.
We’re now moving at such a speed that in the next couple of years, Web apps will become so tightly integrated to the parent OS that they will simply become apps. You’ll be able to write one app in JavaScript and CSS that looks the same across every browser — and thus every platform: mobile, desktop and television. Both end-users and developers should be salivating.
#Twitter for Android: Robots like to share! :) http://bit.ly/aGJj6u @RecoveryRelief #RecoveryRelief #mobile
Twitter for Android: Robots like to share too
When we tweet what’s happening around us, we share not only our thoughts, but also web pages, photos, videos, location…anything. Mobile phones are increasingly part of our lives, and we seem to be doing everything but making phone calls. Reading the news, watching a YouTube video, and taking photos at events like the World Cup are things we expect to do on mobile phones – sharing our experiences on these little screens should be just as easy and fast as on big ones.
When apps work well with each other, sharing becomes as second nature on machines as it does in person. The Android platform is really good at that, and we’ve worked with the Android team to make it super easy to share what’s happening. Today we are excited to announce that Twitter for Android is available in Android Market!
Twitter for Android is a fantastic application to use, and sharing any link or photo is super simple too – just look for the share button in your favorite application and choose Twitter.
Reading tweets is easy in a bunch of places on your phone. Quickly access your timeline with the home screen widget, view a tweet location on a map, and see your friend’s latest tweet in your phonebook, GoogleTalk list or any application that uses Android’s QuickContact bar.
How Segregated Is Your City? [INFOGRAPHIC] /via @fastcompany #Amplify #RecoveryRelief
by Cliff Kuang on Sep 20, 2010 10:56 PM
Infographic of the Day: How Segregated is Your City?Infographic of the Day: How Segregated is Your City? - Fast CompanyRecently, cartographer Bill Rankin produced an astounding map of Chicago, which ma…
Recently, cartographer Bill Rankin produced an astounding map of Chicago, which managed to show the city’s areas of racial integration.
Eric Fischer saw those maps, and took it upon himself to create
similar ones for the top 40 cities in the United States. Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.
The results for various cities are fascinating: Just like every city is different, every city is integrated (or segregated) in different ways.
Washington,
D.C., for example, has a stark east/west divide between white and black:
Detroit,
meanwhile, is marked by the infamous Eight Mile beltway, which serves a precise boundary for the city’s black and white populations. Integration is almost non existent:
However, other cities present better pictures of racial integration. The San Francisco Bay, for example. While San Francisco proper is very, very white, the outlying bay communities such as Oakland are quite integrated — perhaps partly because no one minority totally dominates a single area:
That’s not the case with New York, however: There are vast areas of extreme racial concentration. But the sheer size of those areas means that the boundary areas because intensely rich areas of cross-cultural ferment:
L.A., meanwhile, is sort of the opposite. Because no part of the city is
particularly dense, you get blended neighborhoods which are at times
larger than the racially homogeneous ones:
Meanwhile, here’s what San Antonio looks like — a city which
demographics often point to as the future of the post-race Southwest, where whites and Hispanics live together without boundaries. While you can see there’s a predominance of Hispanics near the city center, you can also see that Hispanics are completely evenly integrated throughout the rest of the city — there’s really no such thing as a rich, whites-only enclave (the large
version in particular bears this out):
Fascinating, right? Originally, Rankin created the mapping
methodology because he was frustrated with the way racial boundaries
continue to be mapped. Usually, ethnic neighborhoods are shown as homogeneous, sharply bounded swathes of color. But obviously, living in a city tells a much different story — and the nature of the boundary areas are at least as important to the identity of any city.
[H/T: Datapointed
via Flowing
Data]
Top Twitter Users In The USA @RecoveryRelief #amplify #sm #influence
Top users by Location
Examples: Cambridge, MA OR Rome OR California
The following are some of the Twitter Elite in: [United States]
Funniest Source Code Comments @DebraUlrich #Amplify #RecoveryRelief
Top funny source code comments
by Vinícius Krolow on setembro 14th, 2010
/* * OK; before you read the following code know what I am trying to do. * I needed to get the list of child catagories from the root node so that * the root node didn't appear in the selection box. But for some stupid * fucking reason the stupid fucking DBA wont let me access the items using * indices and I instead have to use their stupid fucking Iterator * implementation. So there. */ $firstList = $this->getRootNode()->getChildren(); foreach ($firstList as $node) { $nodes = $node->getChildren(); break; // wtf? }
// if i ever see this again i’m going to start bringing guns to work
//hack for ie browser (assuming that ie is a browser)
/** * For the brave souls who get this far: You are the chosen ones, * the valiant knights of programming who toil away, without rest, * fixing our most awful code. To you, true saviors, kings of men, * I say this: never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, * never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, * never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you. */
// // Dear maintainer: // // Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine, // and have realized what a terrible mistake that was, // please increment the following counter as a warning // to the next guy: // // total_hours_wasted_here = 16 //
// TODO: Fix this. Fix what?
// no comments for you // it was hard to write // so it should be hard to read
// I will give you two of my seventy-two virgins if you can fix this.
options.BatchSize = 300; //Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!
// I am not responsible of this code. // They made me write it, against my will.
//Dear future me. Please forgive me. //I can't even begin to express how sorry I am.
double penetration; // ouch
# To understand recursion, see the bottom of this file.
At the bottom file:
# To understand recursion, see the top of this file.
//I am not sure why this works but it fixes the problem.
//somedev1 - 6/7/02 Adding temporary tracking of Logic screen //somedev2 - 5/22/07 Temporary my ass
/*
* You may think you know what the following code does.
* But you dont. Trust me
* Fiddle with me, and youll spend many a sleppless
* night cursing the moment you thought you be clever
* enough to “optimize” the code below.
* Now close this file and go play with something else.
// drunk, fix later
// Magic. Do not touch.
// I dedicate all this code, all my work, to my wife, Darlene, who will // have to support me and our three children and the dog once it gets // released into the public
Exception up = new Exception("Something is really wrong."); throw up; //ha ha
//When I wrote this, only God and I understood that I was doing //Now, God only knows
Some more here
40 Beautiful & Inspiring .Org Websites ~ @RecoveryRelief #recoveryrelief
The .org domain, being short for âorganizationâ, was originally intended for non-profit groups or organizations of a non-commercial character. Since non-profits and big design budgets arenât normally associated with one another, itâs refreshing to see such great design in these types of websites. So for this post, weâve put together a list of .org websites that are beautiful and guaranteed to inspire you.
Spring: Supporting Local Biodiversity
Spring is a funding program of The Sprout Fund. Program support is generously provided by The Pittsburgh Foundation. Complementing Pittsburghâs status as North American Host City for the United Nations World Environment Day, as well as the International Year of Biodiversity, Spring offers local opportunities for the citizens of Southwestern Pennsylvania to join these global efforts.
1Love
A global cause backed by Bob Marleyâs vision of hope and unity.
Participatory Politics Foundation
The Participatory Politics Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to increase civic engagement. PPF develops websites that create new opportunities for engagement with government. Voting is important, but we have a chance to go further and create a political process that is meritocratic, creative, and participatory.
Spring: Supporting Local Biodiversity
Music can change the world.
Kill the Spill
Brithish Petroleumâs well has been poring thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a month, killing thousands of animals and obliterating any sea life in its path. To make matters worse, thereâs no end in sight.
Williamson County Casa
Williamson County CASA helps children every day. Speaking on their behalf in courtrooms, identifying safe homes for them to live in, and listening to their stories. And while we consider this our mission as a non-profit organization, we are dependent upon people like you for monetary and volunteer support. Helping the helpless is a responsibility we all share.
Encompass Denver
The mission of Encompass is to uplift orphans, single moms, and widows in downtown Denver who are in need with consistency, veracity, reciprocity, dignity and mercy.
Fedena
Project Fedena is the open source school management system based on Ruby on Rails. It was initially developed by a team of developers at Foradian Technologies. The project was made open source by Foradian, and is now maintained by the open source community.
WorkLifeBalanceCentre
The Work Life Balance Centre was founded in 1991 to help people whose lives are feeling out of control or out of balance.
Ywam Ozarks
We are a live-learn community, discipling young people for missions and life-calling, working with the local Church, and mobilizing young people to obey Jesusâ call to share the Good News locally and cross-culturally to unreached people of the world.
plain green
Plain Green is a conference and marketplace for green design, business and ideas. Weâre advancing sustainability in the northern plains.
IxDA
We are a global network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design. With the help of more than 15,000 members since 2004, the IxDA network provides an online forum for the discussion of interaction design issues and other opportunities and platforms for people who are passionate about interaction design to gather and advance the discipline.
thinkingforaliving.org
Thinking for a Living.
Walk to Washington
We are The Walk. We have created The Walk To Washington, a national pep rally to raise awareness of depression by calling for national change in mental health legislation.
Watermelon Ministries
Watermelon Ministries is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization using creative media to build relationships, make disciples and serve communities around the world. Our mission is to equip thousands to reach millions.
eastpoint
At Eastpoint, our passion is to love God, love others and change the worldâŚ
Mission First
Mission First, transformation in motion. A community ministry center.
Mi Esperanza â The Women of my Hope
Mi Esperanza means âMy Hopeâ and began in 2002 with a vision to provide assistance for women in the villages surrounding Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Providing micro-business loans and skills training to women living in extreme poverty does this.
Help Your Habitat
A habitat restoration.
Chapeltown Development Trust
Chapeltown Development Trust is a new community-led enterprise whose objective is to help with the regeneration and improvement of the Chapeltown area of Leeds, (area as defined by the attached boundary map).
The Chapel
Rediscovering God changes everything.
Ligonier Ministries
On this site you have access to more than 5000 resources to help you pursue religious knowledge. Most of our resources are offered on popular media such as DVD, CD, and MP3.
Becoming Human
Becoming Human brings together interactive multimedia, research and scholarship to promote greater understanding of the course of human evolution.
Urban Roots
Urban Roots Community Garden Center is a consumer cooperative business whose mission is to provide quality products for gardening in the City of Buffalo and be an active and enriching member of the community.
Last Letter
We are followers of Jesus. Sacrificially taking action to do justice and share Jesus among the impoverished, lost, downtrodden and oppressed.
Chattanooga Zoo
The mission of the Chattanooga Zoo is to provide an educational and recreational opportunity for all citizens of the community. The educational mission stresses an understanding of, and respect for, all living things.
R.U.4. Children
The purpose of R.U.4 Children is to equip the orphaned with the necessary faith, education, and life skills to be productive citizens and make positive contributions in their communities.
Hope Unlimited
Transforming the lives of children at mortal risk, providing them and their future generations a productive future and eternal hope.
Sower of Seeds
Sower of Seeds International Ministries, Inc. is a registered Section 501(c)(3) Not-for-Profit Organization. S.O.S. International facilitates and operates compassion outreaches to India, with a focus on social development.
common good radio
he Childrenâs Center for the Common Good, seeks to bring music to the ears of children that will support faithful listening, singing, playing and giving. We support the goodness that music can relate and we seek to share it with you and your children.
Glocal Ventures
Glocal Ventures focuses its overseas efforts on serving the people of Vietnam. Whenever possible, volunteers are encouraged to use their vocations, skills, and passions to make a difference in Vietnam.
All Saints Church
All Saints Church is an Anglican-Methodist co-operating parish in the heart of Hataitai, in the Eastern Suburbs of Wellington. We are a bunch of ordinary people seeking to follow an extraordinary God as we encourage, learn, worship and journey through life together.
Housing Works
Housing Works is committed to ending the twin crises of AIDS and homelessness. We believe that all people have the right to a rich and empowering life.
Carbonica
Our mission is to combat global warming. We do this by planting trees.
Kanchi
Kanchi is a not-for-profit organisation that works to change thinking on disability. Kanchi positively promotes the ability and value of every person with a disability and challenges traditional stereotypes through innovative initiatives aimed at a wide range of stakeholders.
Fourth Avenue Church
We exist to glorify God by making disciples for the sake of the world.
North Shore Fellowship
We are a church longing to enjoy and embody Jesus Christ to the North Shore area, Chattanooga, and the world.
Global Oneness Project
The Global Oneness Project is exploring how the radically simple notion of interconnectedness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.
Valley Creek Church
Why does Valley Creek Church exist? We are here to create disciples of Jesus who strengthen families and impact nations. We are a community where you can truly experience life.
Church on the Rock
Our prayer is that you will be blessed and strengthened by the Holy Spirit today.
Sources:
KeywordTrak’s Top 10 Lists for SEO/Pay Per Click campaigns. Tracking 120 Million #Keywords! #RecoveryRelief
Top 10 Lists
More at:Â http://www.keywordtrak.com/Top/Top#ixzz1027FJvZe
Why ‘GoodFellas’ Still Kills, 20 Years Later. http://bit.ly/aIPyUo @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #AnalogTweet
Check out photos from around the world & guess where they were taken! http://bit.ly/cjSqtm #RecoveryRelief
New Design For The Dollar Bill (PHOTOS) #Amplify #RecoveryRelief
Though submissions are no longer being accepted for this particular competition, people can vote still for their favorite design by visiting the Dollar ReDe$ign Project at http://richardsmith.posterous.com/. However, voting does end on September 30th, 2010.
As of right now, a British duo, âDowling Duncan,â is in the lead for their brightly colored and original vertical designs (see main picture).
UNITED STATES—According to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project’s official website, their US currency design contest was created with “hopes to bring about change for everyone.”
“We want to rebrand the US Dollar, rebuild financial confidence and revive our failing economy.”
Masterminded by a creative strategy consultant named Richard Smith, The Dollar ReDe$ign Project has received a myriad of unique and original design submission from all over the world, which have ranged widely in content, subject, and overall form.
According to a statement Smith gave on Fox News, the submission-styled project was created as a way to “find a catalyst to restart our economy.”
Smith added that, “This has touched people’s hearts…people feel the dollar touches their lives.”
Luke Short
iSurf News
Information provided by the Huffington Post and the Dollar ReDe$ign Project
Oseh Shalom http://bit.ly/bTdg6g #nowplaying @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #Amplify #Posterous #AnalogTweet
On 24th November 1984 one of the most famous music recordings in history, “Band Aid”, took place at a studio in North London. On 30th April 2008, this arrangment of Oseh Shalom was recorded in the very same studio.
Featuring the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Sir Jonathan Sacks, this song if the finala to the Home of Hope double CD featuring music and words to celebrate Israel’s 60th Anniversary.
For more info and music visit:
http://www.homeofhope.co.uk or email info@homeofhope.co.uk
Understanding Contrast In Design. @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief
Usually the subject of contrast is reserved for beginners. Books will say “black and white have contrast, red and orange do not” – but there’s so much more to it.
Beginners books usually only touch on color contrast, but what about size and shape contrast? Often the easiest way to tell an amateur designer from a professional one is to look at their use of contrast.
Creating a structure of importance using size, shape and color is what gives a page impact and legibility to the reader.
Contrast can be defined as “the difference in visual properties that makes an object (or its representation in an image) distinguishable from other objects and the background.” In plain English that could be described at its most basic level as “things which look different from one another.”
For designers in all walks of the practice, but particularly web designers, contrast is at the root of pretty much everything. We are constantly trying to establish hierarchies of importance, draw people to certain areas of a page and communicate a clear and concise message at the very heart of our work. Creating relationships between different elements of a design is just about the most important thing that you can do. You’ve probably been doing it a great deal already, consciously or not.
Obvious examples of contrast are black and white, big and small, fast and slow, thick and thin. Opposites are the easiest way to grasp what contrast is, but when applying contrast to design work it’s never quite as black and white. If you were wondering, that’s where the saying about a situation being “black and white” comes from, which also leads to the saying of something being a “gray area”. In design we are often comparing things which are different but not opposite, for example an H1 and an h1, or an “add to cart” button and a “check out” button. This is where greater levels of contrast come into play.
Let’s take a look at the different types of contrast and some examples of how they’re used in web design.
Contrast Conclusion
There is so much more to contrast than just “light and dark” – it’s one of the most important principles in design and you can almost never have too much of it, provided that you use it properly.
Taking your designs to the next level isn’t about finding the next band-wagon to hop on using rounded corners and drop shadows for everything, it’s about finding better and more efficient ways of communicating the message behind the design.
Exploring contrast in detail and using it to its full potential is one of the best ways to do this.
There’s A Pretty Girl Looking At YOU! http://bit.ly/c35LBc @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #AnalogTweet
Don’t You Wish McDonalds Had Pick Up & Delivery? http://bit.ly/cpEmBH @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #AnalogTweet
Serving The Information Needs Of The Humanitarian Relief Community @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #AnalogTweet
See all Countries, Emergencies &
Natural Disasters:
Mauritania: Floods – Aug 2010 Hurricane Earl – Aug 2010 Indonesia: Sinabung Volcano – Aug 2010 Typhoon Mindulle – Aug 2010
BIG Messages Deserve MORE SPACE! http://twitpic.com/2p2iq8 @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief #AnologTweet
New Twitter Features: 11 Things You NEED To Know! #recoveryrelief! (SCREENSHOTS)
And The Ultimate Game Changer Is Going To Be…? @DebraUlruch @RecoveryRelief
I am delighted to announce HuffPost’s 2010 Game Changers — 100 innovators, mavericks, visionaries, and leaders who are changing the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. Innovation has always been part of HuffPost’s DNA. So we’re pleased to recognize those who are pushing the envelope. Our Game Changers operate in multiple worlds but, whatever the arena, they share a common trait: a willingness to look at things and take the risk of saying, “I think I have a better way.” To salute these Game Changers, we’ve put together slideshows giving you the lowdown on who we picked, why we picked them, and how they are changing the game. But that’s just the beginning: now it’s up to you to vote for the Ultimate Game Changer in each category. Click here to find out more about who we picked and how to cast your vote.
Top 100 Self-Help Tools On The Web /via @DebraUlrich #RecoveryRelief
We all need a little help now and then becoming the people we truly want to be, and there are few people more able to help us than ourselves. If you’re looking for some tools to help you nurse yourself back to health, break bad habits or just generally be a better person, check out this collection of resources. In it, you’ll find tools and information that can help you help yourself no matter what you want to change about your life.
Check out these resources to learn about yourself and make a change for the better.
You must be logged in to post a comment.