Webware

Apple's MobileMe service set to debut

Update at 10:08 a.m. PDT, with clarification on how users' e-mail will be handled.

Apple's MobileMe service is primed to be relaunched this week, ahead of the Friday launch of the iPhone 3G. That means subscribers to .Mac will find the service taken offline for a six-hour stretch as Apple makes the transition, according to a post in MacRumors.com.

The www.mac.com site will go down on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m. PDT, leaving .Mac subscribers unable to access the site or use .Mac services, except for .MacMail via their desktop … Read more

Tiltviewer turns your photos into eye candy

Got a photo gallery you want to spice up? Check out TiltViewer. Like CoolIris' PicLens, it takes your photos and places them on a dynamic 3D wall that can be zoomed around with your mouse. Clicking any thumbnail will scale it up as big as your browser window is, and you can flip any shot to view the metadata--complete with customizable links that go towards that photo's sale page, or to download links.

The big difference between the PicLens and TiltViewer is that the latter doesn't require the viewer to have any sort of browser plug-in installed to … Read more

Adobe unveils Reader 9 with Flash

Adobe released on Tuesday the first Reader application to bake movies and animation into the Portable Document Format.

With Adobe Reader 9, users can play Flash movies, Shockwave animation, and other rich media content without needing to open a third-party player.

PDFs are reaching new levels of interactivity with this release. Past versions of the nearly ubiquitous and free application, by contrast, have enabled dynamic forms but served largely to open print-ready PDFs.

The update is supposed to load more quickly than version 8, addressing the gripes of many users who felt that Reader slowed down Web surfing.

Adobe has … Read more

Add (useful) pop-up links to your blog with Apture

Apture is a new tool for bloggers to add a little more context to their posts. Like Yahoo's Shortcuts it will go over what you've written and add little pop-ups in places where you link to other sites or media items from around the Web. The big difference is that Apture can either do all this automatically or let you to do the legwork.

It's set up to work with popular sites like Flickr, Amazon, Wikipedia, and Scribd. Any link to one of those sites will simply enable whoever clicks on it to see the entire entry … Read more

Something useful: A WYSIWYG WordPress theme editor

Here's an oldie but a goodie. Confounded by trying to track down fancy-looking WordPress themes? Check out this Web-based theme editor that lets you tweak every nook and cranny of a theme then spit it back to your server to go live. You can add columns, change fonts and backgrounds, even throw in a customizable tag cloud--all with no coding experience required. All you need is a little creativity and some working knowledge of drop-down menus.

While some WordPress themes have excellent built-in support for doing this right from the WordPress dashboard, many more don't, and trying to … Read more

See paper versions of your favorite sites

We've seen what Gmail, Twitter, and Delicious look like in paper, but what about Flickr, YouTube, and others? Sean Flannagan over at Deeplinking has put together a gallery of site prototypes that have been constructed out of paper. While tools like Adobe's Thermo and the freshly launched Balsamiq are making this less of a necessity, some of the best ideas are scribbled out on wet cocktail napkins right?

One of my favorites from the collection of Flickr places (coverage), which I've put side by side with its final result below. Be sure to check out the original version on Flickr … Read more

Poll Authority gives Poll Daddy a run for less money

Like polls? Check out Poll Authority, a new poll host that lets you create some really clean looking polls with relative simplicity. It offers many of the features the popular Poll Daddy does but at a lower cost for its pro service which runs at $8 a month. Stripped out are surveys, meaning you're limited to just polls, but it's set up to let you create one in less than a minute which is impressive.

Also included in the pro accounts is vote analysis, which lets you drill down and see where your voters are coming from as … Read more

Stunning site maker Wix now open to all

Web site maker Wix opened up to everyone earlier today. What the site offers over some traditional tools is SEO optimization that somehow works despite the very flashy pages you end up with. All of these pages are created with an editor that gives you some really gorgeous results as long as you're willing to work within the constraints of the templates, or dig into the tools provided. One of them being a MySpace editor that will let you create very dynamic page elements with no coding knowledge required.

Wix's core product goes far beyond MySpace though, and is a surprisingly advanced site creator. There are templates for artists and musicians or simple start pages for people to put up their resumes---the kind of things you find on competing sites like Jimdo, SynthaSite, and Weebly. The idea is that anyone can build a page and push it live with just a click if they're proficient with something like Microsoft PowerPoint.

However, one thing I found to be missing is an undo button, meaning if you accidentally delete a page element (or an entire page) you have to go re-create it from scratch. This can be a total show stopper if you're working on something important, and should really be in every workflow-based Web application these days.

Like Blogger in its old days Wix has an explore section that's worth checking out. Here you can see what others have created with the tool then copy over the code to place it wherever you want. Missing however is the edit option, so hopefully you like what you see.

You can see a demo of the site creator after the break.

… Read more

10 awesome Internet Easter eggs

Adding hidden items in Web sites is what separates good developers from great ones. Below I've compiled a list of 10 of my personal favorites from the past few years. If you have any of your own feel free to share them in the comments.

1. The Konami code. The infamous code sequence that appears in many video games old and new (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A) has a place on the Internet too. Two sites that we know of take advantage of this to yield humorous results. The first, and most recent, is Google Reader. Inputting the code graces your feed source menu with one of the ninjas found in the newly skinnable sharing pages. This trick also works on GameSpot.com. Entering in the code and hitting enter at the end will take you to the cheats section for Contra, the game for the Nintendo Entertainment System for which it's best known.

2. Yahoo's singing yokel. If you remember the 1990s you'll remember this wonderful yell--the sound of the Yahoo yodeler. To hear it any time just click on the ! at the end of the Yahoo logo on Yahoo.com.

3. JetBlue wants a sandwich. The infamous peanut butter jelly time dancing banana (background) was briefly a part of JetBlue's travel search site. Typing in "PBJ" into the search box while holding shift and clicking the search button would pull up a clip from Fox's Family Guy with the dog Brian doing the dance. It was removed shortly after it was discovered. You can still see a shot of what it looked like here.

4. Google Easter eggs (3 parts)

Google bombs come and go. Their very nature depends on search relevancy, so no one Google bomb will stick around forever. Two of the more prominent ones had to deal with the George W. Bush presidency, including the infamous faux 404 page for " Weapons of mass destruction" and the search for "miserable failure" which would link up to Bush's profile at the White House Web site. A more humorous iteration exists using Google's built-in calculator in relation to Douglas Adams' masterpiece The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Searching for " the answer to life, the universe, and everything" yields 42, which you'd understand if you had read the book.

Google Moon. Google's mapping services are chock full of secrets. For a while Google Moon had a really great one. When zooming too far into the surface of the moon it became cheese, something that was later removed probably at NASA's request or improved topography. Here's a video someone captured of it by KoolAidGrenade at Metacafe.

Is The Moon Made Of Cheese?!? ACCORDING TO GOOGLE.COM - video powered by Metacafe

Ridiculous languages in Google Search. Remember the Swedish Chef from The Muppets? Why not make him your liaison to the world of search? Amidst the myriad of language options in Google you'll find "bork, bork, bork" which serves up your results in the gibberish language of the fictional Swedish Chef. Believe it or not Google gets over a million page views a day in Swedish Chef according to Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience.

If Swedish ain't your thing, there's also Elmer Fudd from Loony Toons and Esperanto, the language that belongs to no nation or people. However the best of all is Google for h4x0rs (hackers), which you can get to by going to 600673.com (Google spelled out in leet speak).

Continue reading for 5-10.… Read more