Website Building Blog

Brushes – http://www.brushesapp.com/

Brushes is a painting application designed from scratch for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Featuring an advanced color picker, several realistic brushes, multiple layers, extreme zooming, and a simple yet deep interface, it is a powerful tool for creating original artwork on your mobile device.

Brushes allows you to choose any color (including transparency) using the hue/saturation color wheel. With a generous level of undo and redo you never need to worry about making a mistake or backing up too far.

Layers can be rearranged, deleted, merged, and copied between paintings. You can also adjust the opacity of each layer.

Brushes records all of your actions when painting. These actions are stored in a .brushes file which you can download directly via Brushes’ built-in web server.

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The MIT Technology Review published an interesting short article: “Redesigning the Web for Touch Screens  A new crop of touch-based devices is changing the way users interact with Web pages”  By Erica Naone

Excerpts:

• the advent of touch-based devices “is almost asking the entire Web to change its behavior from what’s been built up over 20 years,”

• Individual problems are often small, but they add up to something more significant, Vegesna says. For example, roll-over interactions are common on many websites, but these don’t work on touch devices. Other common tricks, such as hovering over a link to see the connected URL in the status bar, have to be adjusted before a user can perform the same function.

Read the whole article at http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25236/?nlid=2950&a=f

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Click the following link to read “Ten Accounting & Finance Secrets for Start-Ups”on the CFOwise blog: http://www.cfowise.com/part-time-cfo/ten-accounting-finance-secrets-for-start-ups/

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MIT Technology Review published this article “How to Make the Internet a Lot Faster” advising that very-high-speed broadband can’t just be about big pipes.

Excerpts:

• Existing applications for very-high-speed Internet include the transfer of very large files, streaming high-definition (and possibly 3-D) video, video conferencing, and gaming. Some experts speculate that accessing large data files and applications through the cloud may also require better broadband.”Just big pipes alone to an end user does not necessarily guarantee that you can deliver high-end applications,” says Gary Bachula, vice president of external relations for Internet2. There are many factors beyond raw bandwidth, Bachula says. For example, an improperly configured router or a university firewall can affect performance and end up acting as a network bottleneck. “You need to have open networks, you need to publish your performance data, you need to have people troubleshoot your network remotely,” says Bachula.

• It’s also not enough to build a fast hardware infrastructure, says Steven Low, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Caltech, and cofounder of the network optimization technology company FastSoft, based in Pasadena, CA. Low believes the protocols that move traffic through the network will also need to be updated to make effective use of very-high-speed capabilities.

Click the following link to read the whole article: http://www.technologyreview.com/web/24605/?nlid=2772&a=f

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According to an article from MIT Technology Review:

“Researchers at SRI International and Georgia Tech are preparing to release a free tool to stop “drive-by” downloads: Internet attacks in which the mere act of visiting a Web site results in the surreptitious installation of malicious software. The new tool, called BLADE (Block All Drive-By Download Exploits), stops downloads that are initiated without the user’s consent.

“When your browser is presented with an [executable file] for download, it’s supposed to prompt you for what to do,” said Phil Porras, SRI’s program director. But software can also be pushed onto an unsuspecting user’s computer without ever asking for permission.”

Click the following link to read the whole article: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24632/page1/

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Here is a helpful video by Scott Skibell  of MacScreencasting.com about adding green screen to video screencasts: http://www.macscreencasting.com/green-screen-video-in-screencasts.html

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s page on “chromakey” which says: “Chroma keying is a technique for mixing two images or frames together in which a color (or a small color range) from one image is removed (or made transparent), revealing another image behind it. This technique is also referred to as color keying, colour-separation overlay (CSO; primarily by the BBC^[1]), greenscreen, and bluescreen.”

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Here is a great Wall Street Journal article by Richard Greenwald that is well worth reading with practical advice for success:

Excerpt:

“(Very successful consultants often) teach—whether at a regional business college, through university continuing-education programs or through workshops given by professional associations.

At first, it sounds counterintuitive to train others to do what you do. After all, you’re creating more competition for yourself in the very community in which you work. But teaching offers four big positives for consultants.

First, it provides some income, though admittedly not much. Second, it’s a way to network, because sometimes students can become clients or lead to clients. Third, the teaching looks good on a résumé, giving consultants credibility in the marketplace and a way to stand out from the crowd. And fourth, if you’re going to teach somebody the latest skills, you better have those skills yourself. So teaching forces consultants to stay current and sharp themselves.”

Read the whole article: “How to Succeed in the Age of Going Solo – Anybody can become a consultant. But not everybody does it well. Here’s what you need to know to thrive”

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