Demonz Media Web Design Blog

Spelling checking for blog posts is something which often gets overlooked. Some reasons  for this are:

-  it is common for people to edit content directly in the editor as it is very convenient, however most editors don’t have a spell checking option

- many people like to compose their content in a software like Microsoft Word. However, copying and pasting from Word can result in garbage, proprietary markup showing up in online posts, so often this step is skipped

However, there are a number of ways around this, and we have compiled 5 easy workarounds for spell-checking blog and CMS posts:

1) Use the Google Chrome browser (http://www.google.com/chrome/) when editing content. Chrome has built in spell-checking, and will highlight errors as you type.

2) Install the Xstandard editor for your blog or CMS. Xstandard can be configured to use the server operating system’s spell-checking libraries. See here for more details http://www.xstandard.com/en/documentation/xstandard-dev-guide/web-services/spellchecker/

3) Install the Google Toolbar. The Google Toolbar has a spell-checking widget which looks like this (highlighted in yellow) - . Remember to ‘right click’  > ’stop checking’ when you are finished though - otherwise you will end up with spell checker markup in your posts.

4) If you are using FireFox 2.0 +, you can enable the built in spell check by:

- Open FireFox and visit the URL about:config

- Go to the filter box and enter layout.spellcheckDefault

- Make sure the value is set to 2

5) If you are a developer, install the jQuery javascript framework on your blog or CMS and use the ‘Spell As You Type’ plug-in. This is a client-side spell-checker which underlines misspelled words as you type into a textbox or textarea. You can try it out here - http://plugins.jquery.com/project/spellayt

It is difficult to say which option is the best, although I am quite impressed with the Google Toolbar and Google Chrome options. The Google Toolbar is also available for many different browsers including FireFox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Happy spelling.

There are two flavours of article you will find on the Demonz Media blog:

1) Articles about web design

2) Articles about giant robots

The latter is an occasional piece, but today is one of those happy days. Check out this real, 59 story robot which was constructed in North Shiokaze park (Tokyo).

Just awesome…

According to ‘Japan Today’, the robot was created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ‘Gundam’ Anime series, and to raise funds for new landscaping in Tokyo for the “Tokyo Big Change” project leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games.

Source: Gundam promotes Tokyo 2016’s Olympic bid.

There has been a lot of buzz about the new online service ”Dropico” this week.

Dropico is designed to allow online users to quickly and conveniently ‘drop-and-drag’ media uploaded to one social media network and embed it in another, including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Twitpic, Myspace, Photobucket, and Bebo. To date there are plugins for popular CMSs (Content Management Systems) including Joomla, Drupal and  Elgg, making integration with sites built on these platforms simple. Check out the video below:

Dropico also offers a JavaScript based API for developers to write their own scripts and plugins.

For more info see the Dropico website.

Twitter search and social media search are hot topics right now. Social Search is a new tool in Google’s arsenal to corner this market. Below is a video from Google featuring Matt Cutts (Google search quality team leader and Google evangelist) explaining how this tool works:

Google uses available APIs to allow you to connect the tools to your Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. The tool then scans for public content from your friend’s profiles, and shows them as “Results from people in your social circle for <your location>”.For those of you trying to get started with social search, check out the Google Experimental page (this was a bit of a pain to find). You will also need a free Google Account if you don’t already have one.

It seems like Google is playing cat and mouse with Bing (Microsoft) to dominate Twitter-based results in their search engines.

Here is a post I wrote last week about Bing indexing Twitter results. It seems like mere days later that Google is announcing the release of their own Twitter based search service. Google has quite a way to go if they wish to compete with Bing for the ‘real-time’ social search market considering Bing have already made agreements with Facebook to start including user content in search.

I have already discussed this technology with a few of our colleagues, and the main feedback seems to be ‘how will this be useful’? This is a very valid question as Twitter tends to be one of those technologies which gets hyped as a blanket solution to online marketing and online news. However, there does seem to be some merit to this type of search and here’s what Google have to say about it:

“Tweets and other real-time data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And its hard to beat millions of people Tweeting out their thoughts”the pulse of the planet, if you will”for real-time information about every subject imaginable.”

We can see at least 3 benefits of this:

1) Twitter will become more relevant to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

2) Social posting may have even more influence than it does currently by reaching a wider audience of non-Twitter users

3) The speed of news in search engines will increase dramatically

A possible con is that there is now even less editorial process between user contributed news and search engine results, and more possibility for Google bombing via Twitter posts and ‘piggy-backing’ trending-topics in order to spam. Google is very good at filtering out this type of information, so it will be interesting to see if this is how they corner the market.

The new Microsoft Bing search engine  is now indexing social media networks Facebook and Twitter.

Quoting PC World magazine:

“Microsoft drew first blood by announcing deals with both Facebook and Twitter to index status updates from the social networking sites and provide them within Bing search results. Microsoft has already rolled out a beta edition of a dedicated Twitter search within Bing.”

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174131/realtime_search_google_and_bing_rivalry_intensifies_on_facebook_and_twitter.html

Unfortunately the service isn’t available in Australia yet. Fortunately hitting the ‘change locale’ button fixes this. Here is a screenshot:

The search shows trending topics in Twitter, and links it back to relevant posts.

Google apparently has its own Twitter search deal, and will most likely roll out Twitter news results as part of ‘Google Social Search’ the next few months. Google Social Search will incorporate a user’s contributions (and contributions of friends) directly into search results.

Will Bing-a-hoo (Bing and Yahoo) corner the social media market before Google gets a chance to?

I was in a bind today when I couldn’t remember the URL of a colour scheme I’d picked out from Adobe Kuler - kuler.adobe.com. Kuler is an Adobe design community with a directory and search engine for picking appealing colour schemes. It has a complex set of tools which let you find, create, classify and store colour schemes for your own use and for the use of others.

Fortunately, Kuler has some Kule features which can help you if you have a screenshot of your colour scheme, you can either:

- Get the colour hex value using Photoshop and find matching schemes using the Kuler search field, e.g. ‘ff9050′

- If you don’t have access to Photoshop, you can use the Kuler image matching form in Kuler http://kuler.adobe.com/#create/fromanimage to find the hex values (you’ll need to move the markers around). You can then use this, or use the hex values to search for the original colour scheme

I hope this saves someone some time.

Demonz currently need a PHP developer experienced in the CakePHP framework.

• Should have  completed several complex web applications in PHP and CakePHP
• Must understand Ecommerce technologies and concepts
• Immediate start
• Estimated 2 weeks project timeline
• Experience with PHP IDEs (e.g. Eclipse PDT), code control / subversion would be a plus

You will be the lead developer responsible for completing an in progress integrated Ecommerce platform. You must be able to debug existing code and prepared to take on a challenge. Your rate will be negotiable based on your portfolio and level of experience.

 NO RECRUITERS PLEASE.

Please send your resume and examples of your work (portfolio) to careers@demonzmedia.com

For more information about Demonz Media, please visit www.demonzmedia.com

I was suprised earlier today when I found that Firefox was coming up with some rather strong warning messages about Microsoft plugins (see the screenshot below):

According to LifeHacker Microsoft issued “a high-priority security” patch for its .Net Framework Assistant and Windows Presentation Foundation extensions for Internet Explorer, and the extensions were also added to Mozilla’s block-list to make sure FireFox users were protected from harm. As a result, users this morning received the error message above when they started up FireFox.

The security threat used XAML Browser Applications on malicious websites to exploit a weakness in WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) plug-ins. This type of attack is known as a “browse and get owned” or “browse once and own” attack. This type of security compromise is especially frustrating for victims as it requires no further action from the victim after the website has been accessed for the attack to occur. According to LifeHacker the plug-ins may have been removed from Mozilla’s blacklist after it was determined that a “browse once and own” threat didn’t exist.

For full removal instructions for these plugins, please see the Microsoft Technet website:

http://blogs.technet.com/srd/archive/2009/10/12/ms09-054.aspx

Sometimes we find something on the Internet which simply deserves kudos. Today was one of those days.

Check out ‘The 20 Geekiest Halloween Costumes of all time’ (with captions for the non-geek).

Firefox Halloween costume

Apple 2 Halloween Costume

Death Star Halloween Costume

Firefox Halloween costume

Mac Beach-Ball of Death Halloween Costume

iPhone Dog Halloween Costume

iPhone Halloween Costume

There are more photos at the link below.

Source: http://blog.graphicriver.net/web-roundups/20-of-the-geekiest-halloween-costumes-ever/