Web 3.0 Technology.com » Web Design

Social Media’s Role In The 2008 Olympics

Neville Hobson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:28:10 +0000

The opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing gets underway at midday GMT today, an event that will be broadcast live on television across the world.

During the next two weeks, you’ll be hard pressed to avoid seeing and hearing about the Olympic Games whenever you turn on the TV or radio or pick up a newspaper at the newsstand.

I Spy With My Bionic Eye: New Imaging Development

Walaika Haskins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:07:51 +0000

Researchers have announced a technological development they say will improve the functionality of digital cameras and other imaging products. Yonggang Huang, a professor at Northwestern University, and John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a lens they said was inspired by the human eye. In addition to enhancing digital camera technology, the eye-shaped lens could have an impact on many devices, Huang said. “Camera technologies can benefit directly from these advances,” he told TechNewsWorld.

WordPress Plugin Releases for 08/08

Ajay — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:16:32 +0000

Random Redirect

Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion.

My Bookmarks

If you are using delicious or simpy as your bookmarking tool, this plugin is for you. This will help a WordPress user to show his valuable bookmarks on sidebar.

Blogging Tips

Similar to the Hello Dolly format, which puts a line of lyrics in the upper right hand space in the Word Press Administration screen, the blogging tips plugins displays random blogging tips and suggestions. The tips are just some ideas of what you can do to improve the popularity of your blog and improve the content. All of the tips are designed to inspire you to be a better blogger.

WP-Post-Banners

Display banners(resized images) from your posts automatically. You can supply it parameters like banner size, post filters and maximum amount of banners to be shown.

Gravatar Recent Comments

ZdWidgetComments, also named Gravatar recent comments is a plugin providing you with a “Top/last commenters” widget but instead of just displaying names, it also displays gravatars.

Open Picture Window

Opens a new browser window containing the image specified using JavaScript. You have the option to choose the features as well as choose if you want it to be centered.

City-Sized Collider Set for Smashing Debut

JR Raphael — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:08:51 +0000

A machine poised to make science history is now ready to launch. The Large Hadron Collider — a giant machine built 330 feet below the France-Switzerland border — is scheduled to fire up for the first time next month, on Sept. 10. The LHC, as its name suggests, works by smashing tiny particles called “hadrons” together at extremely high energies — higher than has ever been possible before. That, in effect, is what makes it unique and gives it the potential to uncover never-before-found answers.

Mac Web Browser Camino 1.6.3 Released

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:27:04 +0000

Camino is a Gecko based Mac web browser, a pretty good one at that. I used to run it when Firefox was acting up in the 2.X era, but haven’t used it for some time. 1.6.3 is out now, and free to download either in English or a multilingual version.

Possibly Related Posts

Who’s Minding the App Store?

Walaika Haskins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:22:06 +0000

Over the course of its existence — and particularly since the successful launches of the Macbook, the iPod and the iPhone — Apple has developed a reputation for its streamlined design ethos and user-friendly interfaces. A stylish product that’s easy to use is just part of the equation, however. A problem-free launch of a product is perhaps almost as important to a its success as its actual quality. This is why companies spend months planning every detail of a product launch.

Infinity: A Free Wordpress Theme

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:58:49 +0000

If you have been following Smashing Magazine for a while you know that we love high-quality freebies. Over the last years we’ve featured a number of designers and developers who released their work for free — among other things we presented high-quality free fonts, free Wordpress themes, free wallpapers and, of course, free icons. You can find many of them in our section Freebies.

Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.

Today we are glad to release Infinity — a free professional Wordpress-theme. The theme has 3 fixed columns, thumbnails integration and Flickr integration as well as an attractive visual design. The theme was designed by Zhang Yichi, the creative mind behind Vikiworks Studio from Shanghai, China and coded by Milo from Munich, Germany especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Download the theme for free!

You can use the theme for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. However, it’s forbidden to sell or redistribute the theme without both designer’s and Smashing Magazine’s permission — please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish, but if you are planning to release your modification, please ask our permission first.

Preview (0.56 Mb)
Download the theme (.zip-package, 2 Mb)
Download PSD-sources (.zip-package, 7 Mb)

Features of the theme

3 fixed columns design
Thumbnail covers style
Flickr, Twitter and delicious integration
not widget-ready (see the development-kit below)

Development Kit

Currently Yichi is working on an extended version of the theme presented above which will have a style switcher, integration with social networks and a number of JavaScript-based animations. However, at the moment it is quite buggy and he needs your help to get the theme done.

The theme works eventually, but has some strange bugs — for instance, sometimes it freezes for some reason. Please get in touch with him to get the theme done or modify the theme directly:

Infinity development kit
(similar to Infinity, but widget-ready and with a style-switcher)

Motivation behind the design

Here are some insights about the design process and development from the designer himself.

“Thanks to Vitaly for this great opportunity! I have to admit that I’m not very good at telling stories, basically it’s always been hard to explain every detail on how I get it done and why I did this and that… Partly the idea for this theme is based upon my own theme which has a slightly personal touch and uses vibrant and appealing colors. With some rambling designs and fancy head imagery, I’ve tried to put all pieces together to make the theme literally stand out.

Among other things, the start page window of the Infinity theme has thumnails and offers delicious-integration.

I tried to keep it as simple as possible, unlike regular post entries style, with Wordpress custom filed functions. I’ve used them to show off image titles next to the thumbnails. This design decision is intended to catch reader’s attention in a better way, and it could be a huge advantage for portfolios where designers want to present their photos or design works.

I hope you enjoy this theme and I would love to hear any comments you have about my new theme, and for more information please visit my website. Or feel free to ask any questions regarding the theme in comments to this post — I’ll do my best to answer them!”

Posting preview of the Infinity theme

Thank you, Yichi. We appreciate your work and your good intentions.

Special requirements

The theme has no problems in modern browsers and also works fine in Internet Explorer 6.
WordPress 2.5 or higher is required.
Some plug-ins are required for the theme to work (all of them are included in the download-package).

Last but not least…

We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.

If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a Wordpress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please contact us — we would like to support you (both financially and with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine).

The Secret Lives of Supercomputers, Part 2

Walaika Haskins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Despite the declining cost of supercomputing, the technology still remains out of reach for many businesses and universities, some of which have found alternative solutions. Bringing supercomputing to industry is just what the Blue Collar Computing program at the Ohio Supercomputer Center was designed to do. Launched in 2004 with the support of the Ohio Board of Regents, the collaborative program seeks to provide easy and affordable access to advanced computing technology.

Blogging Ampersands

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:19:41 +0000

I agree with Gruber, this is truly a focused blog! The Ampersand blogs about, you guessed it, ampersands. Only ampersands. And you know what? It kind of works, because we’re linking it and so does Kottke and Liquidicity, and probably even more than that. The design twist of it all makes it something anyone remotely interested in typography, logo design, or just ampersands I guess, can at least take a quick peek at. Got to love niche blogging, right?

Possibly Related Posts

Facebook Wanted To Buy German Site Before Suing

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:03:38 +0000

Before Facebook sued the German social networking site StudiVZ last month for copying its "look and feel," it had been in talks to purchase the site.

A former StudiVZ executive says Facebook had been negotiating for months to buy the social network.