17 Sites for Web Design Inspiration. Now that anyone can learn to code, and probably should, web design and development are becoming more and more personal in both approach and learning curves. There's a plethora of ways to tackle web dev and code, and professional designers and developers are no different. We asked several developers from various online publications what their favorite sources are for design and code inspiration, and the results are as varied as the projects these professionals make themselves. In addition to following various makers on Twitter, these developers cited everything from Reddit to social web apps to coding blogs and general inspiration sites. Check out their responses below, and let us know what your favorites are in the comments. 1. The Great Discontent Image: The Great Discontent Tim Wong, senior designer at The Washington Post, pointed to The Great Discontent, a site that features interviews of people in creative fields and presents them with a focus on engaging visuals. 2.
Image: Polygon 3. 4. Google Reader is dying, but we have five worthy alternatives | iPhone Atlas. Editors' note: This post has been updated with new and better alternatives to fit your news-reading style. Hear that? That's the sound of millions of news junkies on the Web scrambling to find an alternative to Google Reader. As you may have heard, Google Reader will be no more starting July 1. Unfortunately for many of us, the search giant has announced that it will shutter its much-maligned -- though still widely used -- RSS reader, which will no doubt leave many users in a tizzy, searching for other ways to subscribe to their favorite feeds.
Sure, Google Reader may not have been the most beautifully designed product to come out of Mountain View, Calif., but it sure was convenient. With that in mind, we've put together a list of what we think are the best replacements for the soon-to-be-late Google Reader. An ideal RSS reader should be available on desktop computers and as native mobile apps for both iOS and Android. Your best bet The prettiest of the bunch The Google Reader replica. LED LCD backlights explained | TV and Home Theater. All so-called LED TVs are really just LCD TVs that use LEDs for their backlight. This backlight creates the light that allows the LCD to create an image. However, there are multiple ways these LED backlights can be arranged, and that arrangement can have a dramatic effect on picture quality. So here's your guide to all the different versions, with some funky illustrations, too. C-ya CCFL, hellllo LED Traditional LCDs use CCFLs, or cold-cathode florescent lamps, as their backlight.
While cheap, they're not as energy efficient as LEDs. Most LED LCDs on the market today are edge-lit, which means the LEDs are in the sides of the TV, facing in toward the screen. There are a few models that are have their LEDs arrayed on the back of the TV, facing you. Edge-lit LEDs have a light guide that helps reflect the light from the edges of the TV somewhat uniformly across the screen. Because the light is brightest nearest the LEDs, it's common for edge-lit LED LCDs to have poor uniformity. Google Glass and the Golden Age of Creepshots. TV buying guide. Shopping for a new television can be an overwhelming experience. Confusion plagues even the most careful shoppers, and TV manufacturers, retailers, salespeople and numerous Internet sources can create more uncertainty as they push extra features, new technologies, and add-ons in the incessant pursuit of profit. I hope that this guide, which I created in 2002 and have updated many times since, will help you cut through the confusion with unbiased information so that you can select a new television.
It won't answer every question, and when you read it, it won't tell you "the perfect TV for you" at the end. But I hope it can provide you with the basic tools you need to feel confident when you buy that new set. And if you just want to skip all the details and just buy a great television, my overall recommendation for 2013 is the . For more choices, check out our constantly updated lists of the best TVs for more choices. Three rules for buying a TV 1. 2. 3. Picture quality Ps and Qs. What is the 'Soap Opera Effect'? | TV and Home Theater. Do movies look weird on your new TV? Does everything have a hyper-real, ultra-smooth motion to it? Are you sure something is happening with the TV's image you don't like, but you can't figure out what? Chances are, what you're seeing is called the "Soap Opera Effect," as descriptive a moniker as we get in tech, in that this feature makes everything on your TV look like a cheap soap opera.
Here's what it is, what it does, and how to turn it off. The Soap Opera Effect, or SOE, is actually a feature of many modern televisions. It's called "motion smoothing," "motion interpolation," or "ME/MC" for motion estimation/motion compensation. This motion "whatever" was ostensibly developed to help decrease apparent motion blur on LCDs. Thanks to speedy processors, TVs can "guess" what's happening between the frames captured by the camera originally. Film However, with 24fps content (namely Hollywood movies and most nonreality, prime-time TV shows like sitcoms and dramas), there's a problem. Compare Samsung's Galaxy S 4 With Other Smartphones -- Interactive. IBM CEO Predicts Three Ways Technology Will Transform The Future Of Business. How to pick the right subwoofer. The real audio power comes from the low end, the bass.
When you feel the rumble in your chest, that's bass. Most of us want this at home, but with myriad subwoofers out there -- and even more specs and sizes -- what's the best choice? Though the simple "the biggest, most powerful you can afford" is easy to say, the correct answer is little more complex. First, let's go over what we're talking about. A subwoofer is a square(ish) box that supplies all the low-end bass notes in an audio system. Most soundbars and HTIB systems come with subwoofers, but they're often low-powered items. Can you upgrade? If you have a wired subwoofer, with a single RCA-style cable running to it, chances are you can upgrade your sub.
If you have something like the Bose cube speakers, where the speakers connect to the sub, there's likely other processing going on inside the sub, and I would do additional research to make sure you can switch it out without issue. Watts The other way is with lots and lots of power. 10 Browser Extensions to Streamline Your Workflow. In today's tech-inundated society, downloading a bunch of apps and tools to help make your life easier can actually take a lot of time and even disrupt your productivity. However, we at Mashable are all about utilizing technology to its fullest — to make our day-to-day more efficient, and to keep us on track. We've rounded up 10 browser extensions that are quick and easy to install — everything from an extension that will remember all of your passwords for you, to a bookmark management tool that will keep you organized at work.
Did we miss one of your favorite time-saving extensions? Let us know in the comments. 1. Jumpcut If you frequently copy and paste information, Jumpcut is a tool that will save you a lot of time. Jumpcut saves all of the text that you have copied and adds it to a "stack" of clippings, and you can then paste them by holding down Control+Option+V. 2. 3. Adblock Plus is a quick and free download compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Android and Opera. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Where Should I Buy Parts When I Build a PC? Robot master behind 'Men in Black' and 'Hellboy' shows us how movie magic is made.
You probably don't know who Mark Setrakian is. But you know his work: The well-meaning demon and his amphibian counterpart Abe Sapien from Guillermo del Toro's 2004 film HellboyThe tiny Arquilian alien Gentle Rosenberg, who maneuvers his human-shaped body from inside its head in 1997's Men in BlackThe titular gorilla in 1998's Mighty Joe YoungThe star of George Lucas's infamous 1986 flop, Howard the Duck All of these diverse characters came from the workshop of one person: robotics and creature-effects guru Mark Setrakian. Setrakian currently is the mastermind and designer behind Robot Combat League, Syfy’s new weekly fighting-robot show that features a dozen 8-foot-tall robotic monstrosities clobbering one another. Setrakian had made a name for himself in the robot-combat circuit in the 1990s and early 2000s, sending his creations into battle in the original Robot Wars competitions and the BattleBots TV series.
Inside the workshop, engineers and artists work among their creations. Samsung Galaxy S4 vs. iPhone 5, HTC One, and BlackBerry Z10 | Smartphones. It's been nearly 10 months since the highly successful Samsung Galaxy S3 was first released in the U.S., and in a few more days , the Galaxy S4 will be sold online and in several retail stores across the U.S. With a 5-inch HD screen, a 13-megapixel camera, and either a quad- or octa-core processor (the U.S. will get the former), the GS4 is dressed to the nines with hardware goods. So how does it stack up against its current competition?
Based purely on a spec-by-spec showdown, we compare the handset with three other popular flagships, all on different OS platforms: Apple's iPhone 5, the HTC One, and the BlackBerry Z10. Judge for yourselves (as we're sure you will) whether Samsung's newest device has what it takes to bring down its rivals. Editors' note: This piece was originally published on March 14, and has been updated with additional information. Credit: Lynn La/CNET *At time of introduction.