The Developer Obsession with Code Names – Pingdom

Website feeling overweight? Slim it down with Smush.it – Diary of a Ninja

Really Useful Tutorials You Should Have Read in May 2010 – W3 Avenue

Beautiful and Useful 404 Error Pages for Inspiration – 6 Revisions

15 Great Content Management Systems for Designers – Design Tutorials 4 U

10 Easy Solutions for PHP String Manipulation – PHP Builder

12 Cross-Browser Compatibility Tools for Designers – Web Hosting Help Guy

How to Design a Clean and Minimal Business Website :: Voosh Themes

10+1 Things they Never Teach In College About Programming :: Making Good Software

10 Free Web Hosting Control Panels to Manage Servers Easier :: Web Resources Depot

How to Fix PHP Vulnerabilities (So Your Site Won’t Get Hacked) :: Code Diesel

How to manage a PHP application’s users and passwords :: PHP Security

How to Create a Captcha System with PHP :: Webdesign Spot

Best Practices for Coding HTML Emails :: Cats Who Code

BlogSell

BlogSell is the next generation of managing blog income.  There are dozens of services out there that assist with buying and selling ads, but this one actually helps you keep track of all your banners and affiliate links, as well as various sources of blog income such as paid reviews, banners, and text links. Definitely a must-have for bloggers needing a more flexible platform for keeping track of their income sources, who want to do it all in one place.

Yola

Yola is offering something that most other web hosts and template services do not – free site hosting AND design for basic usage. The templates offered are actually very nice, but you can also purchase a series of upgrades based on what you actually need.  The price of custom design may be a bit steep for some people, but is still a lot less than hiring a freelancer.

FitClick

Move aside, Sparkpeople. No one really needs you anymore. FitClick is a free online weight loss service offering free weight loss programs, diet tips, and fitness/calorie trackers, with reportedly a much better user interface than Sparkpeople.  I’m not trying to call you fat, but umm…maybe you should take a look at this site.

MyPunchBowl

Party planning has never been sexier. MyPunchBowl is a free online party planner that lets you plan an event by recommending vendors, helping you to prepare lists, send out invitations, and shop for party favors and supplies. It even has a link to Facebook to help you promote your event.

ProjenyPM

This one was developed by a customer of IMH and introduced to me a couple months ago. It’s an online project management tool that goes above and beyond most other project management solutions out there, including the ability to manage employee timesheets, performance, and scheduling. This service is free for personal use, and moderately priced for business use.

To all you sexy programmers out there…

I got a tip from my contact form the other day about a “Super Sexy Mortgage Calculator Contest” going on at the Virginia Mortgage Research Center.  They’re holding a contest for the sexiest mortgage calculator, and shoveling out $10,000 to the winner.  You can get complete details here:

http://www.mortgageloanplace.com/mortgage-calculator.php

I’m too busy nowadays so I’m not going to be participating in this one, but the referring party does get $1000…that for me would buy a lot of alcohol and porn school books.  So if you feel like participating and want to win an additional $1k for me so that you can own me for the rest of my life, make sure you mention v-nessa.net as your referrer.

To check this out to make sure it’s not a scam, you can check them out at the BBB site:

http://www.bbb.org/stlouis/business-reviews/mortgages/va-mortgage-centercom-in-columbia-mo-310024839

I was looking around for some web data scraping software and came across Mozenda.com, which is a [paid] Web Scraper and web data mining software that parses web data in a variety of formats, like CSV, RSS, and XML.  I signed up for the trial and the software really did do what it claimed to, and was really easy to use.  The guy that heads the service offers a cool demo here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKrdFiilqXM

Only real downside is the pricing…most code gurus can probably come up with a more basic yet less costly way of doing the same thing.  Pricing starts at $49.95/mo and goes up to $1995/mo, but also has an option to pay as you go.  For  a business this would probably be petty cash and worth the expense, but for the average blogger like me, it’s a little out of the price range.  However, I probably could never code an application or service as feature-rich as the product that Mozenda provides which is why I was considering them.

For those of you wondering WTF I’m talking about, data mining is simply the process of collecting and organizing data, in my case, from other websites.  When you have a handful of 100+ sites, it’s more efficient to have a bot do it for you, kind of like what search engines use to index millions of sites on the Internet.

This is definately something I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to blog about.  This site that one of my coworkers came across (that we also happen to host) allows you to virtually give yourself a boob job:

Heavy Load movie download http://tryonanewbody.com

If you go to the demo section you’ll have a little picture of a petite blonde and a choice of your cup size ( A – D ).  Of course we’ll leave it to Brad to take is a step further:

So people at work have been nagging me to get a Twitter

account — why?  So they know everything I’m doing all the time?  Finally I just decided to go with the flow and so far it hasn’t been that bad — as soon as I joined and started “watching” my boss, I had like 6 co-workers join as watchers.  I think the idea of Twitter is great, but it kind of seems like a stalking tool.  I mean, anyone can “watch” you and know exactly what you’re doing.  Good thing they at least have a block tool to keep the creeps out, eh?

Anywho, you can see my status at any time on my side bar.  And if you’re not a creepy pervert, feel free to watch me as well =)

One of my blog sponsors gave me the opportunity to write an unbiased review about DreamTemplate.com. You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of ‘reviewing’ experience, because I don’t do these very often.

Overview:

DreamTemplate.com is a service that offers thousands of “exclusive premium web content solutions” for webmasters that are created by professional artists and design experts, with a focus of delivering top-quality website templates without the hefty pricing of hiring a programmer/designer.

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First Impression:

The layout of the site itself is very clean and organized, and the extensive template category list shows in detail what kinds of templates are offered, unlike other template services that make you guess and use a nasty search box only to not find what you’re looking for. The design of the site, however, could be a little more creative considering the impressive level of design and artisic-ness shown in the templates they produce.

The Templates:

A lot of design sites resell templates from other services, so you tend to see the same templates on dozens of distributor sites all taking credit for them. I’ve seen a lot of template sites, but so far how not seen any repeats on DreamTemplate.com…this leads me to the impression that their templates are truly original, which in my opinion makes their service more reliable. What I also found interesting is that while there are a few similarities between the different templates, they are all unique in their design and no two look entirely alike.

The service:

At the time of my writing, they offer over 300 FREE templates and well over a few thousand paid website templates starting at under $60. Considering what you’d normally expect from free or cheap templates, I’m surprised they aren’t charging more for them. Their info page claims that the designers spend up to 15 hours (or more) on the design, so you’re definitely getting a deal. Subscriptions are also available for users to have access to thousands of templates without paying for each individually.

Negatives:

I don’t really see many pitfalls, but one thing I didn’t see is an emphases on support. You assume responsibility for downloading pre-made website templates, but one thing I would like to see is a maintenance or customization service for inexperienced users to be able to pay to have the template customized to their website, including the addition of content, graphics, etc. They may already offer this service but I didn’t see it mentioned on the site, so if it’s available it needs to be made a little more obvious.

I came across nomao.com today and I must say that it’s probably the best non-social networking site I’ve see so far. It’s basically a website where you sign up and add your favorite hot spots and important locations so your friends can look at your profile and get directions to wherever. It’s kind of like a social map, and it lets you add pictures and video to your locations, schedule events, and recommend your spots to friends. It also has a nice export feature for you to post your map to various blogging platforms.

Not everyone has the talent or patience required to design a good site. I’ve been referring people to template services for years, but I recently came across this site that caught my eye. What sucks about most design services is that their sites are not caught up enough with the modern Web 2.0 style, but Stylish Web Design (Or is it Stilysh?) is by far one of the better web design companies I’ve seen in a long time. Their services include customized programming, logo design, SEO, and continues website maintenance. Not to mention the sexy design of their site, but their portfolio is pretty impressive as well.

So if you’re getting frustrated with your site hop on over to Stylish Web Design and get a free job quote.

Click here for Custom design

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