The new iPad, ships March 16!

Posted on by

The only bit of news that mattered this week (or all of March), the unveiling of the new iPad! Or the iPad Formerly known as the iPad HD / iPad 3 / iPad 2S. Here’s the highlights of what to expect from it:

  • New 5 MegaPixel Auto Focus camera.
  • 1080p video capture
  • Quad Core A5x CPU
  • Retina Display  2048 x 1536 resolution
  • $499 WiFi 16GB
  • There is a 4G LTE version! (take that iPhone 4S)

via engadget 

Now what to do with an old iPad? Sell it! From wired.com:

65 percent of the group who intend to buy an iPad 3 would consider buying an iPad or iPad 2 at a reduced price instead.

 

Demand is there, time to sell!

Operation: Boot to Gecko – Open Mobile App Store by Mozilla

Posted on by

Mozilla, the non profit organization who dominated Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser with its Firefox browser is now seeking to enter the fray with the mobile development competition with its very own project code name, Boot to Gecko. This project hopes to create a browser based platform similar to an operating system but will be made cross platform between Google’s Android OS, Apple’s iOS, and Microsoft’s Windows.

The long term goal will be a browser based platform coded with java script and HTML5, the latest in web programming standard, which will suffice without relying on any operating system. Mozilla will also have it’s own app store for this platform as well as it’s own social network system named, BrowserID, that would allow users to register and login to a website without sharing large amounts of their personal data. Mozilla will be realizing this plan later on this year and hope to take mobile technology to web powered platforms.

See the current status here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Roadmap

Social Marketing – Menus on foursquare provided by SinglePlatform, smart.

Posted on by

With the latest foursquare app on your iPhone or Android device, you’ll find that most of the large chain eateries and possibly some of the smaller mom and pop shops have a new menu option shown below the Tip guide. foursquare is trying to keep all it’s users at one spot and I must say, I like it. It gives you the opportunity to check out the menu while you wait in line now. It’s simple and easy to use and integrates well since you’re already on the app, might as well browse the menu. The social network is attempting to rebrand itself as a one-stop-shop for location-based checkins (ie: Yelp, GoWalla).

For this example, we’ll use one of Southern California’s most beloved burger chains, In-N-Out. While In-N-Out has a simple menu as is, you don’t know what exactly is put in each burger. Well now you do – and much more.

foursquare innout menufoursquare innout menufoursquare innout menu

With this menu addition, you can see their infamous and no so secret, secret menu. Smart!

In regards to SinglePlatform’s website, you can’t really find much information the service they seem to provide. No pricing structure but many forms. I suppose it’s smart for them to make it so you have to call or they have to call you to make a better judgement before we can decide to make a purchase. Whatever happened to openness of the web?

What do you think? Will you be checking in more often now that you’re already on the foursquare app page? Good idea or what’s the point?

2012 Valentine’s Day CSS3 Heart and Google Doodle

Posted on by

Ready Artwork would like to wish everyone a very Happy Valentine’s Day!

via css-tricks.com

Have you seen this year’s Valentine’s Day Doodle from Google? If you haven’t, watch the embedded video below!

Google teaches a lesson about “love”. Know what your partner likes and not just give a random gift.

How to edit your hosts file (Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux)

Posted on by

Here at Ready Artwork there are times when we need you to edit your hosts file in order to view your website in development.

What is the hosts file? That is a topic I’ll save for a Wednesday’s Web Word. But just think of it as a phone book for unlisted websites, and your computer needs to be programmed to show your unlisted website. Just remember to undo any changes after you are done viewing the website.

 

Windows

  1. The location of the hosts file is different for different versions of Windows. Please Find out which version you are running. If you recently bought your windows computer in this decade you should be running Windows 7 or later.
    Windows XP/Vista/7 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
    Windows NT/2000/XP Pro C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
    Windows 95/98/Me C:\Windows\hosts
  2. Now that you know the location of the hosts file, Open up Notepad as administrator, by going through the start menu and locating “Notepad” and right clicking on it and click “Run as Administrator“.
  3. Next Click on File open and paste in the above location for the hosts file and open the hosts file using Notepad.
  4. You should see something like “127.0.0.1 localhost”
  5. On a new line type in the IP Address and the domain address of your site. Ex 74.125.224.52 www.google.com
  6. Save your file and then clear your browsers cache and restart your computer.
  7. After restarting, open up your internet browser and type in your domain, you should now be at the new site! If you can’t see your site, disable your antivirus and restart and you should be able to see it.

Mac OS X

  1. Open a terminal via going to the spotlight and typing in “terminal“
  2. In terminal, type “sudo open /etc/hosts”, enter your password and TextEdit should open your hosts file.
  3. You should see something like ”127.0.0.1 localhost”
  4. On a new line type in the IP Address and the domain address of your site. Ex 74.125.224.52 www.google.com
  5. Save your file and then clear your browsers cache
  6. Open up your internet browser and type in your domain, you should now be at the new site!

GNU/Linux

sudo emacs /etc/hosts in most distributions…

Facebook Sells You More Ads With Its Photo Gallery Change

Posted on by

Making room for ads. A resounding number of people have noticed a change early afternoon today on Facebook. As of 2/7/2012, this is how the new photo gallery looks like (shown below). Sure it may add to the user experience as you don’t have to scroll down to see the comments for the picture you’re viewing, but now you get a nice section of ads too. Will Facebook now display ads on the type of pictures you view (based on the description)?

Facebook's New Photo Viewer with Ads

One could assume that with the recent IPO (Initial Public Offering) of Facebook, this photo gallery change will help ramp up ad revenue.

What’s your thought? Do you like the new change with the ad box? Surely it would look better without it. To mask a good change for user experience with ads seems kind of wrong.

Updated: 5:45PM PST – 2/7/2012

Social Media Explained via Homer Simpson Style

Posted on by

The boys at Three Ships Media have done it. They have (over) simplified Social Media in a fun and viral way that we pretty much have no choice but to agree, laugh, and share as well. It seems the original credit goes to https://twitter.com/#!/memmikane/status/26962188518293505 where the man loves to pee.

Three Ships Social Media Explained

Ready Artwork adds more to the list!
Vimeo: Here I am eating donuts with style
StumbledUpon: My donut is of your interest
Reddit: 4chan told me to eat donuts

The Future of Flash – Flash vs HTML5 Gaming

Posted on by

What is the importance of Flash now that it has abandoned the mobile browser market? We turn to the significance of Flash for computer browsers for the answer.

More and more developers are developing browser games with other alternatives such as HTML5 and CSS3 technologies. However, does this mean we can completely phase out flash? Flash is still the best tool for creating interactive videos, animations and 3D online which is more geared towards entertainment sites such as browser gaming. Flash still has an advantage over HTML5 in terms of compatibility and features. There are more browsers supporting Flash than HTML5 and more developers developing with Flash. Flash is also more compact and secure than HTML5. HTML5 consist of multiple files and people can just view source and hack the code. On the contrary, Flash consists only one swf file and is harder to hack because it is encrypted and obfuscated. However, HTML5 is more efficient on the CPU than Flash but not by a landslide.

HTML5 is a growing technology and is constantly improving and developers are slowly re writing their games from Flash to HTML5. Maybe in the near future HTML5 will be able to replace Flash in browser gaming, but as of now Flash is still preferred. What’s your pick?

via

 

Google’s Page Layout Algorithm and How it Affects You

Posted on by

Cliff notes: Do what you’re suppose to do and you’ll be fine. Produce rich original content and rise to glory, fill your pages with spam (ads) and copy/paste material and it will fall from existence.

Google makes hundreds of algorithm changes every year to its search engine and this one seems to be big enough for them to blog about, although it says it only affects 1% of global search. With this change, Google improves user experience and at the same time, assists in wiping away some Black Hat SEO tactics.

What it’s suppose to do:
From the official blog post, “If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

If you’re more of a visual person, this is what the algorithm change does:

google-page-layout-no-ads

Who it will affect:
This update mainly targets websites whose ads above the fold far outweigh the desired content. Unfortunately for many people that relied on using Adsense and having a unique domain name that matches typical customer searches in order for higher click through rate (CTR); this is no more. Now people who rely on Adsense revenue must search for alternative means.

If you believe it will affect you and you’ve made adjustments, how long will it take Google to recrawl my website:
Typically this process can take several weeks. The amount of time it takes varies depending on how friendly your site is to the Googlebot and many other factors.