11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters Google promised that Chrome would be fast to launch and fast to load web pages, but people predicted it would fail with the arrival of its extensions. Well, the extensions are here (at least for some of us) and surprisingly they do not affect the browser’s performance. And not only that, but playing with Google Chrome Extensions is like child’s play, whether you’ve added a new extension, or deleted one, you won’t need to restart your browser. This is what I basically did. Gmail Compose One useful and lightweight chrome extension is “Gmail Compose.” QuickSearch Perform a search from Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon, Google, and more with the QuickSearch extension. Google Tasks for Chrome If you use Google Task List, or are a fan of to-do lists in general, you should try Google Tasks for Chrome. Chrome IE Tab Some web pages will only work properly when viewed with Internet Explorer (go figure…). Bubble-Translate Chromereader If you use Google Reader, this extension should make your life easier. Fittr
69 Sexy Portfolio Designs To Inspire You - Smashing Magazine Advertisement Today designing a unique, compelling portfolio has become a crucial task for designers, studios, companies and everyone whose business is on the Web. Not only does it help one stand out among the numerous competitors, but it is also a great tool for self-expression and demonstration of skills. Now designers face new challenges in attracting the capricious web audience – a plain web page with a project list on it is out of date and boring, while fancy Flash websites with intricate navigation are annoying. In this post you can see a collection of 69 new, ingenious and beautiful portfolio designs that will hopefully become a decent inspiration source for you. 69 Exquisite Portfolio Website Designs This By Them1 The portfolio of This By Them is done in cool retro style. Nora Rose Travis2 Creative idea, contemporary style, exquisite implementation of clever JavaScript & CSS hooks make the portfolio of Nora Rose Travis look magical. Alt Design5 Sahar Design8 Attack of the Web9 DaZa14
5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year – 2009 | FlowingD It was a huge year for data. There's no denying it. Data is about to explode. Applications sprung up left and right that help you understand your data - your Web traffic, your finances, and your life. There are now online marketplaces that sell data as files or via API. Data.gov launched to provide the public with usable, machine-readable data on a national scale. At the same time, there are now tons of tools that you can use to visualize your data. It's exciting times for data, indeed. Data has been declared sexy, and the rise of the data scientist is here. With all the new projects this year, it was hard to filter down to the best, but here they are: two honorable mentions and the five best data visualization projects of 2009. Honorable Mention: MTV VMA Tweet Tracker The MTV VMA Tweet Tracker, a glorified bubble chart from Stamen Design and Radian6, showed the buzz on Twitter over the MTV VMAs. Honorable Mention: Crisis of Credit Visualized 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. There you have it.
5 Pet Peeves Designers Have With Developers (and How to Avoid Th Cats and dogs. Cain and Abel. Designers and developers. These are just a few of the great historical face-offs. Designers and developers often seem to come from different planets and have completely different brains. Developers want a website to work right, designers want it to look right. While these goals have a lot of overlap (and, of course, I’m stereotyping here a bit), the differences often come down to the designer and developer’s expectations of success. Managing expectations is a matter of communication: making points clearly to the other side, finding common ground, and agreeing on goals. Okay, so maybe it’s not that easy, but it is important for both sides to at least try to understand each other. In an effort to promote goodwill between designers and developers, I will share some pet peeves I have encountered and explore the issues that lead to them and their solutions. Peeve #1: “Why can’t the developer just make it look like the comp?” Peeve #2: “The colors are all wrong!”
Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results Beginning today, Google will now personalize the search results of anyone who uses its search engine, regardless of whether they’ve opted-in to a previously existing personalization feature. Searchers will have the ability to opt-out completely, and there are various protections designed to safeguard privacy. However, being opt-out rather than opt-in will likely raise some concerns. How Search Personalization Works For those unfamiliar with how personalized search works, see my Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History. The short story is this. The results are custom tailored for each individual. Of course, people will be clicking on a variety of sites, in search results. Privacy Issues To personalize results, Google has to record what you’re doing — and that rings privacy alarm bells. You can turn it off. In particular, we now have two “flavors” of personalized search, or “Web History” as is the official Google name for it. Let’s do a chart: Can’t View History Change your mind?
50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets | Graphics When it comes to freebie designs, beautiful icons sets are tops. Designers scour for these free treasures more than anything else. You can use icon sets in Web applications, website designs and on your desktop. When it comes to freebie designs, beautiful quality icon sets are tops. In the overview below, we present 50 beautifully designed, free and professional high quality icon sets for desktop and web design. You can also scan through our other icon-related articles: 50 Beautiful, Free and High-Quality Icon Sets Container Icon Pack Container Icon Pack contains 40 high-quality (256 x 256 pixel) icons in PNG and ICO formats. Baggy Icon Set Contains five high-quality icons in three formats (ICO, ICNS and PNG) and six sizes, ranging from 16 to 512 pixels! Round theme icons A beautiful set of 106 various rounded icons. Fortune 500 Badges Over 200 badges of famous brands, PSDs included. Playground Nine beautiful and original icons (in PNG and ICO), created by the talented Miriam Moshinsky. (al)
Twelve Tips to Master Programming Faster Do you want to become a great coder? Do you have a passion for computers but not a thorough understanding of them? If so, this post is for you. Saying #1: 10,000 Hours There is a saying that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. So, to master programming, it might take you 10,000 hours of being actively coding or thinking about coding. Saying #2: No Speed Limit There is another saying that I just read, which inspired me to write this, that says "there is no speed limit". In that post, Derek Sivers claims that a talented and generous guy named Kimo Williams taught him 2 years worth of music theory in five lessons. I did not have a Kimo Williams. I'll provide the tips first, then if you're curious, a little bit more history about my own process. The 12 Tips 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. That's it, go get started! Actually, I'll give you one bonus tip: 13. My Story, briefly Two years ago, in December 2007, I decided to become a great programmer. Links Notes 1.
10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs | Ho Advertisement Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I use in my own projects. 1. Links (or anchors) are inline elements by default, which means that their clickable area spans only the height and width of the text. Obviously, the larger the clickable area is, the easier it is to click on the link because there is less of a chance of missing it. Make sure to also add a healthy dose of padding to the links, because converting a link into a block only affects its behavior and width; adding padding ensures that the link is high enough and has some room to breathe. 2. Attention to every detail is what separates a great product from a mediocre one. This gives the whole button a more balanced look and feel. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Slaves of the feed – This is not the realtime we’ve been looking Let’s start with what most people probably can agree. Information is accumulating online. The amount of available information is increasing at an exponential rate, some say it doubles every second year. This mean that any illusion of being able to stay up to date with everything that is going on is utopian and has been probably since Guttenberg invented the press. Most people know this, yet that is exactly exactly what we all seem to be doing. There is no shortage of content aggregators and aggregators of aggregators, daily developed to give us a better overview of all the sources of information we have subscribed to and found ourselves now depending on. This has resulted in an endless stream of articles, news, pictures, websites, products, updates, comments of updates and comments to these comments, being delivered to us second by second that each of us have to deal with. The digital space is real but different. Information accumulating is not the only thing that progresses exponentially.
UI Studio Zero Intelligence Agents » Visualizing Data with R and ggplot2 ( This happens to be one of those rare instances where the benefit of hindsight does not make me regret something said flippantly on a panel. I deeply believe that in order to truly change the world we cannot simply "throw analytics at the problem." To that end, the medical and health industries are perhaps the most primed to be disrupted by data and analytics. To be successful, however, a deep respect for both the methodological and clinical contexts of the data are required. It is incredibly exciting to be at an organization that is both working within the current framework of health care and data to create new insight for people, but also pushing the envelope with respect to individuals' relationships with their own health. I feel lucky to have an opportunity to move into the health data space now. Sensor data The past decade of development in "big data" has -- in large part -- been built on top of the need to understand web logs files. Strength of team Here's to the next adventure!