Get your colours right via Pictaculous

Whenever I get asked to do a website, the first thing I always ask first is their logo. The reason I do this is because the logo can give me an idea of the color scheme for the site, and sometimes even the layout. You need to match the website with the overall branding, for which the logo (and the typeface used) encompasses this.

Getting the colour right can sometimes be a major hurdle though.  I have been using colour wheels before, but I have just recently found this online service which makes choosing the right colours even easier.

Welcome to Jo-Lo's Hangout!

My son Jo-Lo has just launched his own YouTube Channel.  It's called Jo-Lo's Hangout.  Here is his first video:

Coursera: online learning made accessible and engaging

There is another online learning course that is keeping me preoccupied, and this one is courtesy of Coursera.

From their website: Coursera is "an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. Our technology enables our partners to teach millions of students rather than hundreds."

Codeacademy - making coding fun and interactive

I have been studying CSS for quite some time now, although 80% of the time is devoted to reading and understanding the code by reading books.  That said, I am gaining a better appreciation of CSS coding, thanks to Codeacademy.  Simply put, the site is a place where you can learn about coding in an interactive manner.  You will be given an explanation about what a particular command is, then the syntax, and then it asks you to try it out yourself.  It's very effective.

Free Fonts at the Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is by far one of the better free fonts service out there.  The selection of fonts are elegant and carefully selected.

Find broken links in your website

The end of the year is a good time to check your website and see if there are anything that needs fixing. One tool that I found really useful is this online service called Online Broken Link Checker. The name of the site says exactly what it does: look for broken links in your website!

Subtle Patterns for your background needs

Thought I'd search for some backgrounds which I can use whenever I receive requests to update the banners of some websites I manage but the photo they send is too small to fill up the allocated space.

I stumbled across this wonderful site.  Subtle Patterns is the work of Atle Mo, who created this site as a way of giving back to the web and design community.  As such, the patterns are free to use.  Yay!

Head on to Subtle Patterns.  You just might find that nice background you were looking for.

The missing Lego manual - found!

I brought out the Indiana Jones Lego planes this morning so that my son and his friend can play with it.  But when I arrived, I did not expect these to be disassembled.  Apparently, the friend tried to make the plane fly and of course it resulted with disaster.

Well, not a total disaster, of course, as Lego is meant to be assembled and disassembled!  But as a display item, we needed to reconstruct the planes and the problem is we no longer have the Lego manual.

Google Drive

Yes! This is a service that I have been anticipating for Google to come up with.  It is a natural addition to the other products that Google already has on offer.  Take GMail, for example.  While the 10MB file limit is great - and more than sufficient - for a number of attachments, some specialised applications tend to generate file sizes greater than this, so moving it around can be a problem (unless you currently have Dropbox; don't have iCloud so can't comment on that).

Dropbox: convenient storage in the Cloud

Do you have a Dropbox account? You should, especially if you regularly share files or you need access to these wherever you are across a number of internet-aware gadgets.

But even if you do not need really need your own space in the Cloud, a place where you can store scanned important documents is a great idea.

Would you donate your desktop to charity?

New Zealand computer users are being asked to donate their desktops to raise money for charities including Oxfam and the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation.

Launching officially just after Easter, Donate Your Desktop asks users to download and install a desktop application that will update their desktop background with a new advertisement on a daily basis.

There’s no need to hand over credit card details, no-one else has access to the computer, and the ads are promised to be attractive, full-sized images, not ugly promotions.

75% of the revenue collected will go to Oxfam, the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation, the Starship Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund. The rest of the money will go towards taking Donate Your Desktop global.

Users can register multiple desktops, for example both a home and a work desktop.

For advertisers, the service offers a long exposure per unit, as well as social media extension, with users able to tweet the images or ‘like’ them on Facebook.

Go here for more info.

news source: Techday

Pinterest

Pinterest is essentially a virtual pinboard, where you can organize stuff you find in the internet in pin it on virtual boards.  Looking at the core functionality, it is an information gathering tool and if you are like me you would most likely have an account with such a service.  But while others whisk your information away into your personal storage, this one gives you a graphical display which you can also share with others.

To learn more about Pinterest, visit their website.  I have just registered a couple of days ago and was accepted only a few minutes ago.  I am excited to try this out, as I do prefer having a graphical view of things I collect from the net.

What's that font?

I was helping out with a website project of some friends and wanted to re-do the logo.  Unfortunately nobody has a PSD or AI file to work with and I was not sure what font was used.  A friend suggested using the What the Font service of the website myfonts.com.  All you need to do is basically upload an image of the font in question and the system will try to identify it for you.

Was it able to identify the font I needed?

YouTube for Schools

In retrospect, the Philippines did have a TV program that can be shown in the classroom in the mornings. It was called Sineskwela which is a contraction of two Filipino words: Sine (movie) and Eskwela (school). An internet-hosted equivalent makes sense because it can be viewed on demand and there are more avenues for interaction. The hardware and internet connection requirement might be a hindrance to some areas though...

A Personalized Video from Santa, courtesy of Google

Spread holiday cheer to friends and loved ones with a personalized video or phone call from Santa. Create your own at http://sendacallfromsanta.com.


I just made a video for my son. I thought this will feature a text recognition system which can read any name. Unfortunately it is not so. You have to choose from a limited number of names that closely matches yours. So my name (Nick) became Nicholas and my son Jo-Lo became Joel! It a nice feature nonetheless. Hope you can get a better name match.

Learn a new language for free

With Duolingo you learn a language for free, and simultaneously translate the Web. 

This is in connection with the video in my previous post regarding Captcha.

This site has not yet been launched though, but it's good to have a headstart.  Register for Spanish or German, with French, Italian, and Chinese in the works.  Sign up at the Duolingo website.

There's more to Captcha than meets the eye

Online Chromatic Tuner

I've just bought a ukulele last week because I got this sudden urge to learn to play an instrument. I thought guitars were to complicated for me because there's too many strings, and pianos have too many keys. But that's just me. So I opted for a ukulele because it is associated with 'fun' and Hawaii, which I think is a really nice place (even though I've never been there) and it has 4 strings!

Download video from Dropbox

I recently attended a social media webinar and requested for a link to the recorded video for further reference. I was given a url (referenced to dropbox) that loaded the video onto the browser (I use Chrome) for playing.  Unfortunately the video would not start after a couple of attempts.  I believe it's because of the slow download speed.

So I decided to download the video instead.  How to do this?  Simply append ?dl right after the url and the download should start automatically.

The Breathing Earth - view the world in a new light

In essence, the Breathing Earth site displays a real-time simulation of C02 emissions of every country in the world, as well as the birth and death rates. We often find it difficult to imagine how such global statistics can be pictured. These numbers do not really stand out if they are merely displayed as tabulated numbers on a page. This site helps us come to terms, so to speak, of the world's human population and our carbon emissions.