For those who get a lot of use their Time Capsule, some wonderful rumors have been floating around the Apple blogosphere. The original reports of the rumor seem to have originated from 9to5mac.com.

It seems that Apple is working on a device, or perhaps upgrading Time Capsule that will allow access of local files over the internet. Steve Jobs has mentioned something along this line before, when talking about what functions could be added to Time Capsule in the future.

Here are some of the features that have been rumored that will be available with Apple’s media server device:

- User’s MobileMe accounts will be directly tied in with the media server, which will be used in accessing the files on the server.

- iTunes database would be shared, not just for music but video.

- Media would be available for access on the iPod Touch, and iPhone.

Some other bits of the rumor were that Apple might offer these services on ‘the cloud’. I really don’t see how it could be done, as storing that much information would take a hefty amount of server space. I do like the idea of adding the function to Time Capsule. It would be a nice addition if they are able to allow the function for existing Time Capsule owners.

So first save this image

Next size the image down to where its about 560px wide and create a new canvas that has that same width and a height of double what it is. My canvas size is 565X848px.

Next duplicate your image

Move your newly duplicated image to the bottom of the canvas and rotate it 180 degrees.

Then flip it horizontally

Create a new layer below that one

Hold down control on your keyboard and click on the little icon beside your duplicated layer so it creates a selection around it.

Fill the new layer with light to mid blue color

Click on your screen to get rid of the selection and choose your copied layer. Then grab your gradient tool from your tools palette. Make sure its linear and pick black to transparent

Add a layer mask to that layer by either clicking the little picture icon at the bottom of your layers palette or go to layer>>layer mask>>reveal all

Take your gradient tool and drag from the bottom up to reveal the bluish background we made.

Next we will make the water so create another new layer above the one we just used the gradient tool on

Use the control and clicking technique on the blue background to highlight around
the area.

Now in the new layer add clouds by going to filter>>render>>clouds

Now go to filter>>artistic>>plastic wrap

Use these settings

Now go to filter>>sketch>>chrome

Use these settings:

After that set the layer to overlay

Next select all the 3 layers of our water

Use control+t to transform the layers then right click on the canvas and click perspective

Grab the bottom right of that and drag to your right so change its perspective until you get your desired result.

Now to add a couple fish in the water. Grab this picture of a fish I got from
http://www.sxc.hu/index.phtml

Cut your fish out and place your fish in the water and size it down how you want

Create a new layer, grab your brush tool and set it to scatter. Use some white and blue colors to make the fish look like its coming out of the water.

Add some more fish and you should be done

You all know Cyber Monday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, invented at the peak of the .com era as an industry alternative to the traditional Black Friday. Well, in the spirit of the holiday and much like the sales on Black Friday, it now seems that Web Hosting Search is offering its own
gift to all future hosting customers to be.

Together with hosting provider Web Hosting Buzz, visitors can pick any deal offered by WHS and get a generous discount by dropping the hosting coupon cybermonday ($6.99 off all plans) This works with shared hosting plans or business hosting plans  (not reseller, sorry!)

What better time to start your new website project then with Thanksgiving left over still in the fridge and all relatives finally out of the house?

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"
language="javascript"></script>
<script language="javascript">
google.load("prototype", "1.6");
google.load("scriptaculous", "1.8.2");
</script>

You can see a full list of supported API’s here.

Their JavaScript API now gives you access to your visitor’s location, it sets a variable google.loader.ClientLocation, and populates it with City, Region/State, Country, Latitude, Longitude.

Here’s an example:

<script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"
language="javascript"></script>
<script language="javascript">
if (google.loader.ClientLocation != null) {
document.write("Your Location Is: " +
google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city + ", "
+ google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region);
} else {
document.write("Your Location Was
Not Detected By Google Loader");
}
</script>

The avaliable properties of the google.loader.ClientLocation object are:

• google.loader.ClientLocation.latitude
• google.loader.ClientLocation.longitude
• google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city
• google.loader.ClientLocation.address.country
• google.loader.ClientLocation.address.country_code
• google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region

If a location cannot be determined from the visitors IP address, the google.loader.ClientLocation variable will be null.

Comments

They basically spell out a whole list of problems (they call it Examples of Friction) that websites have. The “Examples of Friction” can clearly cause issues wiht you converting your visitors. Lets list them from the post:

Home Page Friction

1. Slow loading pages
2. Difficult to find search boxes

3. Showing too many products on a single page / cluttered design

Friction in Navigation

1. Navigation in sidebars
2. Tombstone navigation

Friction in Site Search

1. Inability to handle synonyms and mispellings
2. Inability to locate non-product information

Category Page Friction

1. Too many products, not enough filter options

2. Tiny Thumbnails

Friction on Product Pages

1. Can’t find buy button (or can’t read its text)
2. Hey, did I just add to cart?
3. Irrelevant cross-sells

Friction on the Cart Summary Page

1. Continue shopping means what?

Sign Up Forms / Registration Resistance

1. Too much required information

2. Form design
3. Vague email sign-up calls-to-action

Checkout Process Friction

The number one cause of cart abandonment is “sticker shock” or the addition of unexpected taxes and fees in the checkout process. One way to avoid this is to show pre-checkout tax and shipping based on a zipcode lookup

Email Marketing Friction

1. Spammy sender name
2. When scent wears off

Your landing pages should pick up where your emails, PPC ads and banner ads leave off, using consistant imagery, messaging and pricing:

404 Not Found!

404 pages without links back to the site need no explanation.

I only outlined what was covered in the post above. In the Get Elastic post they have descriptions of each and example images/video. it is must see for sure. They also have a humorous and insightful You Tube video page describing some fo the issues we all face with websites everyday.

Comments

Part of what makes the web so interesting is that there are so many different kinds of content out there. Do you use videos on your website? If so, send us a Video Sitemap file so that we can send you visitors to those videos! Do you host source-code samples? Submit a Code Search Sitemap! Here are the various kinds of Sitemap files that Google supports at the moment:

• XML Sitemap files for web pages – Use these files to submit all of your web pages (this is the preferred format for web pages). While not all search engines may support the Sitemap types listed below, the XML Sitemap for web pages is supported by all search engines of sitemaps.org.
• RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds for web pages – Many blogs create these automatically.
• Text files with web page URLs – If you can’t automatically create one of the above formats, you can create a text file with your URLs in it.
• XML Sitemap files for Video Search – Videos on your website can be indexed and made available for Google Video Search.
• Media-RSS feeds for Video Search – mRSS feeds are used by various other systems, we can use these for Google Video Search as well.
• XML Sitemap files for Google Code Search – If you make programming samples or code available to your users, you can submit these for Google Code Search.
• XML Sitemap files for mobile web pages – Using this kind of format allows us to recognize content that has been optimized for mobile devices (please note that there was recently a small change in the format).
• XML Sitemap files for geo-data – If you have geographic data on your website in the form of KML or GeoRSS files, please let us know about these files.
• XML Sitemap files for News – News websites can submit their news content in this special Sitemap format (please note that you must first register with Google News before these files are processed).

Comments