Now the biggest travel agency is Internet. We we create our custom trip, filter options like dates, type of travel and get listings of suitable options.

At the same time we can check for reviews of either the website we are using, the hotels they suggest or even the destinations.

The idea of the is post is to give you some of the tools I use and stress the idea that we don’t need to book expensive hotels anymore, that a new bree of websites where you can rent apartments wherever you are planning to, could threaten hotels in the future.

Flights

Kayak will let you search for the cheapest dates to go to your desired destination or suggest you cheap destinations for your selected dates. Kayak has an incredible iPhone app and a pretty good iPad app.

Alternatives to Kayak: airfarewatchdog, yapta, farecompare…

If you are looking for a set of flights around the world, then I have to recommend you the one we used: http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/

Hotels…

Kayak will give suggest you hotels, and it uses the most notable hotel booking sites such as expedia, booking.com, etc…

If you want Cheap Hostels and Bed and Breakfasts, the we use: HostelWorld, it is great for that.

A cool resource for knowing if the hotel you are about to book is OK with tons of reviews, is: tripadvisor (also for iPhone and iPad).

Another cool tool for hotels (specially for the US) is room77 a website where they show you the best rooms for a specific hotel, with the views and so.

but… who want hotels?

Who wants to book a hotel when you can find a great located and flat or a room shared at an incredible spot…

We went to Paris booking an apartment with hometown, luxury apartments for a fraction of what you pay for a hotel, located at the heart of Paris (highly recommended). I also used Isabel’s apartments in a couple of occasions, also great apartments, even if the website is not that nice.

Here is where I want to go:  big websites covering apartments all around the globe.

The most notable:

•  Airbnb (my favorite): this one is the more professional website, the one with more investment in it. It is incredible the choice you can find there, apartments, rooms, everywhere!
• Homelidays: this one is strong in Europe. You can find a nice house in the beach, with swiming pool for a fraction of what you would pay for a hotel…
• Lofty: similar to airbnb but smaller.
• and one focused more in france: abritel

Now if you want to sleep for free, then you have to use couchsurfing: a huge network of people all around the globe that will let you use their couch to sleep for free.

The nature of the web is such that sharing and republishing content is common — and often even encouraged. The problem is, we increasingly store bits of our data on various services scattered across the web. Aggregating that content into one centralized personal hub can be time consuming — requiring user to manually copy text and links or upload files and photos — or fiddling with RSS feeds trying to make content automagically appear.

Twitter released a very cool tool to allow publishers to embed tweets in their blog posts, but the process is overly complex for most users, with plugins needed to streamline the process. Why can’t you just paste a link to a Twitter status in a blog post or webpage? It turns out, you can.

A Quick Introduction to oEmbed

A technology called oEmbed, in existence for a number of years, was built to solve the embeddable content problem. oEmbed is an open format, designed to let web publishers easily embed content such as photos, video, rich content — and automatically display other content by typing in a URL. Providers like YouTube, Hulu, Flickr and Vimeo all support oEmbed, meaning that pasting a URL for one of those services into a system with oEmbed support should allow users to quickly embed rich media.

WordPress, the world’s most popular CMS, has had basic oEmbed support since WordPress 2.9. Plugins for most other popular platforms exist, too. The problem is, keeping an updated list of the providers that support oEmbed and keeping libraries up to date isn’t a streamlined process.

Embedly: Secret Sauce to Web Embed Fun

In March, we wrote about the startup Embedly, which has developed a platform for converting URLs into embeddable content. Embedly is already in use by companies such as Storify, bit.ly and TweetDeck.

Embedly uses the oEmbed spec to add embed functionality to a growing list of services — 218 at the time of this writing — by interfacing just with the Embedly API.

When we first wrote about Embedly, our post focused on how third parties can use Embedly to provide rich-media previews in their own apps or to create their own embed targets. Embedly Pro also lets its users bring rich embeds to mobile users.

Still, the basic free Embedly service is extremely powerful. In fact, when paired with a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla, it makes embedding rich content a snap.

How to Use Embedly

Embedly has libraries available for a host of different client and server-side web languages, including jQuery, Python, Ruby and PHP. For users who don’t want to mess with writing their own tool, Embedly has built its own JavaScript tag and WordPress plugin. Community-developed plugins for Drupal and Joomla also exist.

Since the WordPress plugin was developed by Embedly itself (and we use WordPress at Mashable), here’s a brief overview of how easy it is to use Embedly to bring rich content to your website.

Install the Embedly Plugin

The first step is to download and install the Embedly plugin. Activate the plugin and you can select what services you want to enable from the Embedly menu in the WordPress dashboard.

Embedly frequently updates its service list, and you can run an “update services” command to get access to more libraries.

Paste URLs Into Your Posts

The next step is to simply enter a URL on its own line into your posts or web pages. Each service has slightly different parameters for how URLs should be entered, but in general, the base URL is all that is needed.

To embed a Twitter status update, for instance, you just need to enter in the URL to that update. The Embedly API page has the parameters for each service supported by Embedly.

Enjoy Rich Media Embeds

That’s it. You can now enjoy and share media from 200+ web services across your site.

The Tumblr support is one of my favorite features — simply entering the URL for a post will embed the content of that post. If it’s a photo, the photo is displayed; if it’s a video, you’ll see the video in its player, and so on.

On the Twitter end, Embedly’s Blackbird Pie implementation is a lot easier than any other method we have seen. The company even has basic support for Twitter Photos.

(from mashable)

How could you put 280daily to use? Below are 7 possibilities.

1. Journal. Realistically keep a journal, 280 characters only takes 2 minutes!
2. Travelling. You’re too busy having fun to write down every detail!
3. Business. Keep track of your business life.
4. Sport. Running a marathon? Track your progress.
5. Food Diary. Losing weight or getting fit?
6. Target Progress. Record progress of a large task.
7. Backwards To-Do List. What did you get done today?

280daily: Sum up your day in 280 characters from 280daily on Vimeo.

Room 77 is a site (and iPhone app) that helps you choose the right room in a hotel.

Normally you go online and book a room, and in the same hotel you could have very different room, one facing the sea, one with a building on the site. The idea is to have a database of the best rooms for each hotel… cool isn’t it?

Some newlywed couples work to produce an offspring on their honeymoon. Most don’t labor towards birthing a startup. But that’s exactly what British entrepreneurs Natalie Downe and Simon Willison did on their post-nuptial adventure. After traveling in Europe and Africa, the couple caught ill in Casablanca and extended their stay and booked an apartment to recover.

The pair have a shared love for building projects in their spare time — which is why, with all that extra time in a bedroom, they managed to create and release an early build of Lanyrd. Within two hours of its launch, Downe and Willison saw the site generate more than 14,000 visits.

After finding immediate success with social media denizens, the couple applied to Y Combinator’s accelerator program. Lanyrd was accepted and has since relocated to Mountain View, California to complete it. The site remains a largely bootstrapped effort, though the couple did accept the $150,000 in convertible debt offered up by Start Fund.

Willison calls Lanyrd “the IMDb of conferences” — except that its content is crowdsourced. The site asks its users to do the heavy lifting for them by filling in the blanks on each conference: sessions, speakers and content. The incentive? The same as at any conference: self-aggrandizement. Organizers will go to any lengths to promote their events. Speakers want to flesh out their profiles by adding past, present and future engagements. And everyone wants to see useful conference content.

“Conferences are traditionally insufficient for transferring knowledge,” says Willinson. “Longer term, this is about capturing the value of what’s shared.”

Lanyrd’s tie-in with Twitter is ingenious — and almost spooky. Sign in with your Twitter handle, and you’ll automatically be greeted with a smorgasbord of contacts and upcoming conferences, drawn from your Twitter relationships. You may see that Lanyrd knows you spoke at a trade show last month, or that you’re on a panel this fall. The site already lists 6,000 crowdsourced conferences and 30,000 user profiles.

Downe and Willison opted to use Twitter’s social graph — rather than Facebook’s, say — because they believe the “follow” has more aspirational value than the “friend.” You likely already follow the people you’d like to know, the speakers you’d like to see talk. According to Lanyrd, you’ve already composed a list of the thought leaders you’d like to bump into at an upcoming conference. So Lanyard is well positioned to find the sessions of social relevance to you.

Since users are encouraged to add speakers and their Twitter names to sessions, the speaker need not be a Lanyrd user to have a Lanyrd presence. On signing up, you may notice your conference history has already been charted for you by your Twitter followers, organizers or fellow attendees.

Next up, Lanyrd has its sights set on South by Southwest, held in Austin next month. The startup launched its unofficial guide to the show Tuesday to help users find which sessions their Twitter friends are attending, and stay current on slides, videos and notes.

The SXSW tool marks Lanyrd’s first real test at a major conference. At worst, the event will provide a trove of data and real-world experiences that Downe and Willison can use to better determine how to serve users while they’re attending conferences.

Downe and Willison describe the chain of events following their June 2010 nuptials to their present day found status as an unexpected, whirlwind affair. Their story, and their startup, are still in their nascent stages. The couple will graduate from the Y Combinator program in March, and may be forced to return to the UK when their visas expire. But location may matter little to a startup that has successfully leveraged the power of an international hit like Twitter.

Image courtesy of SimonWillison.net

(from mashable)

Did you close by mistake a tab?
Click Command+Shift +T and there you have it again. (Control+Shift+T for Windows)

Going to the search bar?
Click Command+L and the cursor moves to the search bar selecting everything so you can just start typing

Synchronising Extensions, bookmark on all your computers using Chrome?
Go to Preferences, Personal Stuff and log in with your Google apps or Gmail account. You can sync bookmarks, extensions, forms, etc… across all your computers using Chrome. Neat.

You normally search using Google, but if you often search in other search engines, such as wikipedia, amazon, bing, etc… you can create easy shortcuts without having to go to their websites.
If you right click on the search bar, you have the option of edit search engines. There you can say for instance that the shortcut for wikipedia is wiki, so whenever you start a natural search with wiki in the bar it will fix wikipedia and search the next words in wikipedia. See the screenshots:

I don’t know if this is due to the fact that I have tons of photos in the iPhone and in the iPhoto, or that this is the 4th iPhone synchronizing with iPhoto or that we are synchronizing 2 iPhones…

What I know is that I have duplicates and I could not find an easy way to get rid of them…

I use iPhoto on my macbook to sync my iPhones photos. The iPhone camera has become my main camera.

My nikon d300 I sync with a PC (multimedia) running windows 7 and picasa (more than 250Gb of photos).

iPhoto duplicates: Solution

I found and bought this program: Duplicate Annihilator.

Basically what it does is to identify the duplicate photos and add a comment saying that it is a duplicate. They you can search them and bin them. Pretty straight forward. It has many options but the default worked fine for me.

The problem is that the thumbnails can be duplicated too, and even if they have another program for that, if you start iPhoto holding Command Key+Option, then you have the option of rebuilding thumbnails.

The features of the Duplicate Annihilator are:

• Easily find and annihilate duplicates created internally by iPhoto or during import.
• Compare images using different algorithms to detect and understand differences.
• Detect duplicates using effective algorithms using electronic checksums like MD5 and CRC32.
• Detect duplicates by using file specific meta data such as filename, dimensions, filesize, Exif creation date or date of creation.
• Delete duplicates upon detection or mark them with a keyword to make them easily found using iPhoto features like search or smart folders.
• Makes your iPhoto slimmer and faster.
• Only uses standard Apple features and API’s. No hacking nor tampering with iPhoto system files.
• Free updates.

Á (Aacute) — shift-opt-y (Mac) — alt-0193 (PC) — & Aacute; (html)
À (Agrave) — opt-` + A (Mac) — alt-0192 (PC) — & Agrave; (html)
 (Acircumflex) — shift-opt-m (Mac) — alt-0194 (PC) — & Acirc; (html)
Ä (A-dieresis) — opt-u + A (Mac) — alt-0196 (PC) — & Auml; (html)
à (Atilde) — opt-n + A (Mac) — alt-0195 (PC) — & Atilde; (html)
Å (A-ring) — shift-opt-a (Mac) — alt-0197 (PC) — & Aring; (html)

á (a-acute) — opt-e + a (Mac) — alt-0225 (PC) — & aacute; (html)
à (a-grave) — opt-` + a (Mac) — alt-0224 (PC) — & agrave; (html)
â (a-circumflex) — opt-i + a (Mac) — alt-0226 (PC) — & acirc; (html)
ä (a-dieresis) — opt-u + a (Mac) — alt-0228 (PC) — & auml; (html)
ã (a-tilde) — opt-n + a (Mac) — alt-0227 (PC) — & atilde; (html)
å (a-ring) — opt-a (Mac) — alt-0229 (PC) — & aring; (html)

É (E-acute) — opt-e + E (Mac) — alt-0201 (PC) — & Eacute; (html)
È (Egrave) — opt-` + E (Mac) — alt-0200 (PC) — & Egrave; (html)
Ê (Ecircumflex) — opt-i + E (Mac) — alt-0202 (PC) — & Ecirc; (html)
Ë (Edieresis) — opt-u + E (Mac) — alt-0203 (PC) — & Euml; (html)

é (e-acute) — opt-e + e (Mac) — alt-0233 (PC) — & eacute; (html)
è (e-grave) — opt-` + e (Mac) — alt-0232 (PC) — & egrave; (html)
ê (e-circumflex) — opt-i + e (Mac) — alt-0234 (PC) — & ecirc; (html)
ë (e-dieresis) — opt-u + e (Mac) — alt-0235 (PC) — & euml; (html)

Í (Iacute) — shift-opt-s (Mac) — alt-0205 (PC) — & Iacute; (html)
Ì (Igrave) — opt-` + I (Mac) — alt-0204 (PC) — & Igrave; (html)
Î (Icircumflex) — shift-opt-d (Mac) — alt-0206 (PC) — & Icirc; (html)
Ï (Idieresis) — shift-opt-f (Mac) — alt-0207 (PC) — & Iuml; (html)

í (i-acute) — opt-e + i (Mac) — alt-0237 (PC) — & iacute; (html)
ì (i-grave) — opt-` + i (Mac) — alt-0236 (PC) — & igrave; (html)
î (i-circumflex) — opt-i + i (Mac) — alt-0238 (PC) — & icirc; (html)
ï (i-dieresis) — opt-u + i (Mac) — alt-0239 (PC) — & iuml; (html)

Ó (Oacute) — shift-opt-h (Mac) — alt-0211 (PC) — & Oacute; (html)
Ò (Ograve) — shift-opt-L (Mac) — alt-0210 (PC) — & Ograve; (html)
Ô (Ocircumflex) — shift-opt-j (Mac) — alt-0212 (PC) — & Ocirc; (html)
Ö (O-dieresis) — opt-u + O (Mac) — alt-0214 (PC) — & Ouml; (html)
Õ (Otilde) — opt-n + O (Mac) — alt-0213 (PC) — & Otilde; (html)
Ø (Oslash) — shift-opt-o (Mac) — alt-0216 (PC) — & 216; (html)

ó (o-acute) — opt-e + o (Mac) — alt-0243 (PC) — & oacute; (html)
ò (o-grave) — opt-` + o (Mac) — alt-0242 (PC) — & ograve; (html)
ô (o-circumflex) — opt-i + o (Mac) — alt-0244 (PC) — & ocirc; (html)
ö (o-dieresis) — opt-u + o (Mac) — alt-0246 (PC) — & oulm; (html)
õ (o-tilde) — opt-n + o (Mac) — alt-0245 (PC) — & otilde; (html)
ø (oslash) — opt-o (Mac) — alt-0248 (PC) — & 248; (html)

Ú (Uacute) — shift-opt-; (Mac) — alt-0218 (PC) — & Uacute; (html)
Ù (Ugrave) — opt-` + U (Mac) — alt-0217 (PC) — & Ugrave; (html)
Û (Ucircumflex) — opt-i + U (Mac) — alt-0219 (PC) — & Ucirc; (html)
Ü (U-dieresis) — opt-u + U (Mac) — alt-0220 (PC) — & Uuml; (html)
ú (u-acute) — opt-e + u (Mac) — alt-0250 (PC) — & uacute; (html)
ù (u-grave) — opt-` + u (Mac) — alt-0249 (PC) — & ugrave; (html)
û (u-circumflex) — opt-i + u (Mac) — alt-0251 (PC) — & ucirc; (html)
ü (u-dieresis) — opt-u + u (Mac) — alt-0252 (PC) — & uuml; (html)
Ÿ (Ydieresis) — opt-u + Y (Mac) — alt-0159 (PC) — & #159; (html)
ÿ (ydieresis) — opt-u + y (Mac) — alt-0255 (PC) — & yuml; (html)

ACCENTED CHARACTERS

Ç (C-cedilla) — shift-opt-c (Mac) — alt-0199 (PC) — & Ccedil; (html)
ç (c-cedilla) — opt-c (Mac) — alt-0231 (PC) — & ccedil; (html)
Ð (Eth) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0208 (PC)
ð (eth) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0240 (PC)
Ñ (N-tilde) — opt-n + N (Mac) — alt-0209 (PC) — & Ntilde; (html)
ñ (n-tilde) — opt-n + n (Mac) — alt-0241 (PC) — & ntilde; (html)
Š (Scaron) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0138 (PC)
š (scaron) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0154 (PC)
Ý (Yacute) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0221 (PC)
ý (yacute) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0253 (PC)
Þ (Thorn) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0222 (PC)
þ (thorn) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0254 (PC)

LIGATURES

Þ (fi) — shift-opt-5 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 222; (html)
þ (fl) — shift-opt-6 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 254; (html)
Æ (AE) — shift-opt-’ (Mac) — alt-0198 (PC) — & 198; (html)
æ (ae) — opt-’ (Mac) — alt-0230 (PC) — & 230; (html)
Oe (OE) — shift-opt-q (Mac) — alt-0140 (PC) — & 140; (html)
oe (oe) — opt-q (Mac) — alt-0156 (PC) — & 156; (html)

PUNCTUATION SYMBOLS

§ (section) — opt-6 (Mac) — alt-0167 (PC) — & #167; (html)
€ (bullet) — opt-8 (Mac) — alt-0149 (PC) — & #128; (html)
(paragraph) — opt-7 (Mac) — alt-0182 (PC) — & #182; (html)
¿ (questiondown) — shift-opt-/ (Mac) — alt-0191 (PC) — & 191; (html)
¡ (exclamdown) — opt-1 (Mac) — alt-0161 (PC) — & 161; (html)
« (guillemotleft) — opt-\ (Mac) — alt-0171 (PC) — & 171; (html)
» (guillemotright) — shift-opt-\ (Mac) — alt-0187 (PC) — & 187; (html)
Š (ellipsis) — opt-; (Mac) — alt-0133 (PC) — & 138; (html)
- (endash) — opt-dash (Mac) — alt-0150 (PC) — & 150; (html)
- (emdash) — shift-opt-dash (Mac) — alt-0151 (PC) — & 151; (html)
< (guilsingleleft) — shift-opt-3 (Mac) — alt-0139 (PC) — & 139; (html)
> (guilsingleright) — shift-opt-4 (Mac) — alt-0155 (PC) — & 155; (html)
· (period centered) — shift-opt-9 (Mac) — alt-0183 (PC) — & 183; (html)
, (quote single base) — shift-opt-0 (Mac) — alt-0130 (PC) — & 130; (html)
,, (quote double base) — shift-opt-w (Mac) — alt-0132 (PC) — & 132; (html)

MATHEMATICAL/GREEK SYMBOLS

° (degree) — shift-opt-8 (Mac) — alt-0176 (PC) — & #176; (html)
(not equals) — opt-equals (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
(infinity) — opt-5 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
± (plusminus) — shift-opt-equals (Mac) — alt-0177 (PC) — & 177; (html)
¾ (lessequal) — opt-comma (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 190; (html)
÷ (divide) — opt-/ (Mac) — alt-0247 (PC) — & 247; (html)
Ž (fraction slash) — shift-opt-1 (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 142; (html)
‰ (per thousand) — shift-opt-r (Mac) — alt-0137 (PC) — & 137; (html)
­ (minus) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0173 (PC) — & #173; (html)
× (multiply) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0215 (PC) — & #215; (html)
½ (one half) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0189 (PC)
¼ (one quarter) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0188 (PC)
¾ (three quarters) — inaccessible (Mac) — alt-0190 (PC)
µ (mu) — opt-m (Mac) — alt-0181 (PC) — & 181; (html)
(omega) — opt-z (Mac) — inaccessible (PC)
(logicalnot) — opt-L (Mac) — alt-0172 (PC) — & 172; (html)
 (delta) — opt-j (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & 144; (html)
f (florin) — opt-f (Mac) — alt-0131 (PC) — & 131; (html)
ß (germandbls) — opt-s (Mac) — alt-0223 (PC) — & szlig; (html)

MONETARY SYMBOLS

¢ (cent) — opt-4 (Mac) — alt-0162 (PC) — & #162; (html)
£ (sterling) — opt-3 (Mac) — alt-0163 (PC) — & #163; (html)
¥ (yen) — opt-y (Mac) — alt-0165 (PC) — & 165; (html)
¤ (currency) — shift-opt-2 (Mac) — alt-0164 (PC) — & 164; (html)

COPYRIGHT SYMBOLS

® (registered) — opt-r (Mac) — alt-0174 (PC) — & reg; (html)
© (copyright) — opt-g (Mac) — alt-0169 (PC) — & copy; (html)
 (trademark) — opt-2 (Mac) — alt-0153 (PC) — & 129; (html)

ISOLATED ACCENTS

´ (acute) — shift-opt-e (Mac) — alt-0180 (PC) — & 180; (html)
¨ (dieresis) — shift-opt-u (Mac) — alt-0168 (PC) — & 168; (html)
- (circumflex) — shift-opt-i (Mac) — alt-0136 (PC) — & #150; (html)
~ (tilde) — shift-opt-n (Mac) — alt-0152 (PC) — & #152; (html)
¯ (macron) — shift-opt-comma (Mac) — alt-0175 (PC) — & #175; (html)
š (ring) — opt-k (Mac) — inaccessible (PC) — & #154; (html)
¸ (cedilla) — shift-opt-z (Mac) — alt-0184 (PC) — & #184; (html)

OTHER SYMBOLS

ª (ordfeminine) — opt-9 (Mac) — alt-0170 (PC) — & 170; (html)
º (ordmasculine) — opt-0 (Mac) — alt-0186 (PC) — & 186; (html)
Ý (dagger) — opt-t (Mac) — alt-0134 (PC) — & 221; (html)
ý (double dagger) — shift-opt-7 (Mac) — alt-0135 (PC) — & 253; (html)

A great tool to add creativity to your domains is domai.nr

Domainr helps you explore the entire domain name space beyond the ubiquitous—and crowded—.com, .net and .org. Inspired by jish.nu, burri.toand del.icio.us, apologies to Flickr, and a high-five to Dopplr.

Read more about their features.

Posted from .

Well, here you have a DIY tip:

SNOWPOCALYPSE!

No matter how much we swear we’ve learned our lessons, Seattle always seems to get caught by surprise by the snow. There we were, minding our own business with our feet all toasty in our sandals and socks, when the temperature plummeted and it turned into Juneau in January. While this year the City did a much better job than last year at preventing widespread carnage and destruction, we at Dutch Bike Seattle still didn’t bring in studded tires because it never snows in Seattle. Even if we had stocked them, I’m not sure they’d sell because it never snows in Seattle, right?

We found something else, though. Something else entirely.

You’re not going to believe it at first.

It’s quick, it’s cheap, and yes, it looks completely ludicrous.

BUT. It works. It works beautifully.

I can accelerate, brake, and corner with aplomb, even on the vile snowpack/sheet ice mix the plows leave in the bike lanes. The zip ties dig nicely into the hardest packed surfaces, but they’re thin enough not to bounce the bike around at low speed or on short pavement sections.

I’ve cunningly positioned the tie heads to dig in as soon as the bike goes into a corner while staying up and off the ground in a straight line. This is the place that the ties are most likely to interfere with the fenders, so if you’re installing these yourself be careful to make sure you have or can create the clearance.

It is at this point that I must admit that I didn’t dream up this amazing technique. It pains me to admit this not because my ego suffers, but because the zip-tie-DIY-bicycle-snow-chains idea appears to have originated with my favorite bicycle industry whipping boy: fixed gear hipster culture. Several years ago, I’m sure, some bright child with extremely tight pants and an asymmetrical haircut had a genius-caliber idea, and I hate that it wasn’t me. So here it is: Fixed gear street bike hipster guys, I’m sorry for the things I’ve said over the years. It’s not true that the only drink you like is 4Loko. It’s also not true that you’re not allowed to wear shoes that don’t match your bikes. You can wear whatever you want. And finally, you have come up with a good idea besides brightly colored deep-section rims.

(from dutchbikeco.com)

But that doesn’t mean a year in front of your television. There are still plenty of ways to cut costs. Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year.

1. SHOP “PRIVATE SALES” A growing number of Web sites, including SniqueAway.com, TabletHotels.comand Jetsetter.com have flash sales of 20 to 60 percent off hotel packages to travelers on an invitation-only basis. Jetsetter, for example, recently offered a Friday night in January at the Angler’s, a boutique hotel in Miami, for $255 a night, down from the $359 offered at the hotel’s site. Another site, TripAlertz.com, works like Groupon for travel, meaning that the more people who book a deal, the lower the rate. For example, a four-night, all-inclusive stay at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa was initially offered to members for $1,496, or 15 percent off, last month. After 55 bookings, the price dropped to $1,220. At TripAlertz and LivingSocial.com, which offers last-minute getaways, all you have to do is create an account to access the deals. A Google search for “Snique Away invite” turned up a registration form for SniqueAway.com that got me in.

2. BUY ON TUESDAY Most airlines begin sales on Monday evenings, and by the following day other airlines have usually matched the lowered fares on the same routes, said Anne McDermott, editor at Farecompare.com, which tracks price trends. Last month, for example, Virgin America had a sale on Dec. 13, with one-way fares as low as $79 on some routes, according to Farecompare. The next day, there were sales from AirTran, Southwest and American, with one-way fares from $59. Because sales are hard to predict, travelers looking for the best deal should start their searches three to four months in advance, when airlines begin to look closely at which routes may need a sale to fill seats.

3. SEARCH FOR COUPON CODES Practically every travel site includes a box at checkout for a promotional discount code. Sites like PromotionalCodes.com orCouponWinner.com organize such codes into categories so that you can search specifically for airline, car rental or hotel deals. A recent search turned up codes for deals like $94 flights between New York and New Orleans, 15 percent discounts on Avis weekly car rentals and $75 off of three-night Westin Hotels packages.

4. ASK FOR A REFUND Many airlines will refund the difference in price if the fare drops after you purchase a ticket (minus a change fee). Yapta.com helps get you that refund by tracking the price of your ticket and sending you an e-mail or Tweet when the price drops so that you can call the airline to claim the credit. A new site, Autoslash.com, offers a similar service for car rentals.

5. AVOID ROAMING CHARGES Skype and Truphone offer free apps for making cheap international calls using Wi-Fi, with rates that start at pennies per minute. You can pay as you go or sign up for monthly plans to make unlimited calls in certain countries for a flat fee: $13.99 a month for Skype calls to land lines and mobile phones in more than 40 countries, or $12.95 a month for Tru calls in 38 countries with TruUnlimited. Another option: the Vonage Mobile app for Facebook allows travelers to make free international calls over Wi-Fi to Facebook friends who also download the app.

6. CHANGE YOUR CREDIT CARD Most American banks charge currency conversion fees, typically up to 3 percent when you use your credit or debit card outside the United States. But there are some exceptions. Capital One does not charge foreign transaction fees, and Chase recently began waiving the fees on its British Airways Visa Signature Card, its Hyatt Card and the Priority Club Select Visa.

7. SAVE ON PARKING YOUR CAR Bestparking.com steers drivers toward the cheapest parking at off-airport lots near 79 North American airports. Rates are updated frequently, and sold-out lots are highlighted. A recent search for parking near Newark Liberty International Airport offered a snapshot of rates and locations on a map. The Renaissance Hotel lot was among the cheapest at $12 for 24 hours. There is also a free app for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry users.

8. WAIT A WEEK Avoid the crowds and save by traveling the week after a major holiday. A five-night ski vacation in Breckenridge, Colo., during the last week of December was priced at $1,988 a person, including airfare from Chicago, at Orbitz.com. For the following week, the same trip was listed at $1,037 a person. Similarly, a vacation including airfare from New York and five nights at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort dropped from $821 to $580.

9. NEGOTIATE Though many hotels say that they offer their best rates online, it pays to ask the front desk for a lower rate. My colleague Seth Kugel regularly uses this tactic, as he pointed out in a column last summer: “I arrive with a solid reservation but then check out five or six other hotels and go back and forth between them in an attempt to set off a price war.” The strategy saved him $20 a night in León, Nicaragua. I have had similar successover the phone with reservation agents at New York hotels like the Ritz-Carlton New York and 60 Thompson.

10. TRAVEL LIKE A STUDENT Student travel agencies like STA Travel, StudentCity and StudentUniverse have begun to extend their low prices to nonstudents and older travelers. While some of the deepest discounts are offered only to travelers enrolled in an academic program, recent college graduates can often save 10 to 25 percent with “youth fares.” For example, a recent search for flights in March on STATravel.com, which limits certain deals to nonstudents under the age of 26, turned up seats for $926 round trip on V Australia Airlines. The best rates for the same dates on Kayak.com were $1,187. Though it is not common for older travelers to use student travel agencies, it is possible to do so. There were no age restrictions for a discounted four-day Inca Trail trek with STA Travel for $674 a person, down from $899.

11. DON’T PAY TO CHECK A BAG Checking bags can quickly add up, with airlines charging between $15 and $35 a bag. Delta’s SkyMiles-branded American Express card allows you and up to eight others on the same reservation to each check a bag at no cost. And American Express introduced a travel-rewards card — the Blue Sky Preferred Credit Card — that offers travelers an annual $100 allowance to cover checked baggage, in-flight meals, entertainment or Wi-Fi purchases, and other fees, on any airline.

(by MICHELLE HIGGINS from NYTimes)

I would like to share with you some tips in order to have a great trip diary, using the latest techonologies.

Checklist

Option A

When I travel I pack my nikon d300 with a 10-20mm and a 18-200 lenses. My nikon has a 16Gb memory card. Unfortunately most DSLR do not have GPS unlike the iPhone or other smart phones, but there is a work around. Keep reading.

I also pack my GPS (Garmin Oregon 300), rechargeable batteries and the charger sure. If you don’t have a GPS you should consider getting one, and they are now very cheap. You don’t need a fancy GPS, you just need a GPS logger. No bluetooth even. No screen, just a GPS logger, that when you switch it on it starts recording your trail, and once back home or with your laptop, you just plug it in and extract the .gpx file. I will explain what to do with it. You can but very cheap GPS at Dealextreme a Hong Kong based online shop full of gadgets at ridiculous prices… and shipping anywhere int the world is free. You can have a GPS for $35.

Now if you travel to remote places you can consider a good GPS with SOS function such as the SPOT.

Also if you don’t want to take the gpx file from the gps and use one of the ways I described further down there is a GPS logger (ATP Photo finder) that you sync the time with your camera, insert the SD card, and it tags them automatically. Not for Compact Flash and not for RAW images though…

If it is going to be a long trip, and I plan to blog properly, then I take my old sony vaio t series (10 inch screen) and an external 2.5inches Hard Disk.

Option B

Just your iPhone 3gs or 4. (Has a decent camera and GPS).

Option C

Both. Option A for more elaborated blogging, Option B for quick on the spot.

Which option?

Nowadays with an iPhone 4 you have more than enough to take good quality videos and photos. Take a look at this blog entry for tips on how to take the best photos with the iphone.

In addition to have a 5Mpx camera and shoot HD videos, the new smart phones have GPS so videos and photos are geotagged, and programs such as picasa (for Mac, PC and Linux) or iPhoto (for Mac) plot all your photos in a map which is great.

If you really like photography then you choose to take your DSLR with you, so then you have to take a laptop (and an external HD if it is an old laptop like mine) so you can take the photos out of the camera and put the in your blog, site or community. Or just to empty your camera.

I take both.

iPhone apps and Everytrail

When I first bought my first GPS (Garmin Vista) it was quite a job to be able to do something with the tracks you save. You needed a windows computer, nothing for mac, and the software that came with it was pretty bad.

Then Google Earth would allow you to import the tracks (.gpx files). It was great. It is still great!

Everytrail

Now there is a website that I love and I use as a main stop for GPS logging: Everytrail.

Everytrail is free. You can upload your .gpx file even directly from your gps, and there you can have all your tracks store, that you can tag, put some text, add waypoints with explanations, and edit them!! yes. You can make them public or private. Very very powerful tool.

Everytrail also gives you an embed code that you can put in your blog, where you see the trail you have uploaded, the waypoints you have inserted, stats of time, altitude, speed… and more.

Geotag your photos with Everytrail

Once I have written about my photography workflow. Now when I upload them to flickr, make sure you create a set for those photos in the same GPS track. So if you go out switch on your GPS logger, then all the fotos you take until you switch it off should be in the same set.

With Everytrail, you can select the flickr (or picasa, or uploading manually) set and it will import it. As the camera has a clock it will know when they were take it, and plotted into your trail map. Great.

Now you have to fine tune that. There might be a bit of missmatch between the time in the GPS, the timezone and the camera clock. You take one photo you know exactly where it was taken, drag it to the right place and , then click on “update offset based on this picture” and the rest will follow. Magical!!

Now you have your trail uploaded into Everytrail, you have corrected it, you have added notes as waypoints, and you have uploaded the fotos from flicker that have been geo tagged in Everytrail.

With Everytrail alone you have already a good blog for your trip, because you have a space to write, to give tips and to have the track an dall the photos along it.

In addition to this you can have the embed code and put it into you blog.

Everytrail in your iPhone

Everytrail is available for the iPhone. They have two apps, a free one and a paid one. They are not very good. There is a free app, though, that uses Everytrail as a back end which is absolutly great!

Trailhead iPhone app (from the north face)

Last August the north face released an iphone app (free) that uses everytrail track. This app is just awesome. When you start it you have two main options, start tracking (and it is reasonable on what you use of battery) or see nearby trails. You can track even if you don’t have GPRS or 3G. In this case you don’t see the maps (in the pro app for everytrail you can download offline maps).

Then when tracking, at any given point you can add a photo or a note (not a video yet).

So in summary, with the iphone alone you do what I explained before without the need of a camara, a gps, a computer and a website.

Blogging tools

When traveling often you don’t have internet. Blogging everyday is therefore difficult.

For that reason you should use an offline blogging tool. The best one out there is Windows Live Writer. For the mac you have Ecto or MarsEdit, but Live Writer is much better.

The advantage of using one of this offline tools is that you can write every day, add your photos and so, and when you have internet, then you upload everything.

If you are planning to use GPS info with everytrail, you should do it online though.

This offline tools are good for blogs such as wordpress, blogger etc…

I use wordpress and there is a great plugin called mappress for having a google map where you can easily add a waypoint with html code in it if you wish. It is handy if you want to show your readers where you are sleeping, or what to visit for instance.

Alternatively you can simply go to google maps, log in and under my maps, create a map. It is very easy. Then you can copy the embed code and past it into your blog.

Blogging sites

If you don’t have a blog, and you don’t blog regularly, they you can use one of the dedicated free blogs for travelers. My favorites are:

• Travelpod
• Mapvivo

Travelpod is a great place full of good tips and travelers. You have maps, you can upload photos, … it is a tailored blog for travelers.

Mapvivo is more of a travel diary. It is based on having a map and putting what you do in it.

Geotagging your photos at home

To geo tag the photos using everytrail is OK, but you will probably would love to have your photos in your PC/Mac geotagged as well.

Well there is a way to do it too, even if you camera has no GPS.  As I mentioned with a GPS logger, and a normal camera you can.

Select the photos you took within the period of geotagging. Then use one of these programs:

The best one is GeoSetter (just for PC unfortunately)

GeoSetter (free) allows you to take your photos, the log file of the GPS and geo tag the photos automatically. You can easily take one that you know exactly where it was taken, position it and the rest will follow. GeoSetter will write in the EXIF header of the file, so if you now import them to Picasa, iPhoto, Flickr, etc… they will have GPS information.

For Mac there is a paid program which does pretty much the same: Geophoto. It is even nicer, but not as complete as the Geosetter.

Also GPS photo linker. (tags Raw and it is free). Take a look at the demo, for me is the winner.

With this I modify my photography workflow. The first thing to do is to geotagg the raw photos, then apply DxO for corrections and to create JPEGs.

Here an example of the embed code from a trip with photos in everytrail in Puerto Rico. If you mouse over the bottom you can see a link to the stats and to the slideshow. Also mousing over the spots of the photos.
San Juan de Puerto Rico

While mobile phones have become a lot more capable in the past few years, the connection between the printer and your phone is still very weak.

For instance, if you are using a BlackBerry or an iPhone, how do you print any of the presentations or spreadsheets that you have as email attachments? Or if you are viewing driving directions on Google Maps using an iPad, how do you send that map to the printer?

Your phone’s app store will have a few printing apps to let you wirelessly print files but if you want to save a few bucks, you can simply use Dropbox to print documents from your phone to any printer without requiring any additional software.

Some upcoming printers will have built-in support for mobile printing via email but with Dropbox, you get the same feature without requiring any new hardware.

Before we get into the details, watch the video above as it shows how printing from a mobile phone actually works through Dropbox (apologies for the bad audio quality).

Print Files from any Mobile Phone through Dropbox

The workflow is like this. You download a small utility on your computer that runs in the background and constantly monitors one of your Dropbox folders for any new printing jobs.

You can send files for printing from your mobile phone through email or using any of the Dropbox mobile apps. As soon as Dropbox downloads the file locally, the utility will send it to the default printer. Once the file is printed, it gets archived to the logs folder.

To get this thing running on your computer, please follow these easy steps:

Step 1: Make sure that you have Dropbox on the computer that is connected to the printer.

Step 2: To send print jobs from your mobile device to the printer, you have two options.

• You can download a Dropbox app on your mobile phone — they have apps for BlackBerry,iPhone, iPad, Nokia, webOS (Palm), and Android based phones.
• Alternatively, you can send files from your mobile phone to Dropbox using email. Just connect your Dropbox account with Habilis and they’ll give you a unique email address – any files or attachments sent to this address will automatically appear in your Dropbox folder.

Step 3: Download this zip file* and double-click the eprint.vbs file (see the source code). The script will create a sub-folder inside your main Dropbox folder called PrintQueue where all the mobile print jobs will queue up and another sub-folder called logs where all the completed jobs will be archived.

[*] VBS scripts are Windows-only but there are workarounds for Mac OS X and Linux as well.

Step 4: You are now all set to print files from our mobile phone. Just send a test file from your mobile phone to that secret email address, or upload it through the Dropbox mobile app, and your printer will turn it into a hard copy almost instantly.

The utility can also handle multiple files in one go and it should print almost all file formats for which you have an associated application on the computer. If you would like to shut down the eprint utility, launch Windows task manager and end the “wscript.exe” process from the list.

If you have trouble running the above script on your computer, there’s a chance that you may have associated the file with Notepad or some other text editor. Press shift and right click the file in Windows Explore and choose “Windows Based Script Host” under Open With. Alternatively, open the command prompt, type “cscript eprint.vbs” and hit enter.

(extracted from Digital Inspiration)

This is a tip by Aaron Ladage on how to do it in a Mac:

There’s a simple method for Mac that doesn’t require the VBS script:

1. Create a folder in Dropbox (mine’s called “Printing”), and within that folder make two more folders: “todo” and “completed.”

2. Fire up Automator. In 10.6, a box pops up asking you what type of template you want to use for your workflow. Choose “Folder Actions.”

3. At the top, where it says “Folder Action receives files and folders added to…” choose the “todo” folder from Step 1.

4. In Automator’s search box, type “print” and you’ll see an item called “Print Finder Items.” Drag that into your workflow and select your printer (I left mine default).

5. In Automator’s search box, type “move” and you’ll see an item called “Move Finder items.” Add it to your workflow and choose the “completed” folder you created in step 1.

6. Choose “Save as…” and give your workflow a name.

That’s it! Anything you drop in the “todo” folder will now automatically open its respective app, print it and file it for you.

Well, Google is rolling out this week the possibility to switch this off. Go to settings, and in General you will find the option to switch of conversation threads. I would love to see a switch in each email though, if in case I want to bring the whole conversation…

How to be fast in windows 7 by using the keyboard shortcuts. Keep reading…

You can also create new keyboard shortcuts to open programs. For more information, see Create keyboard shortcuts to open programs.

Well take a look at world taxi meter website. It is not for everywhere but might be of help:

For project managers looking for a Web-based alternative to the industry standard Microsoft Project for creating Gantt charts, one option might be Gantto, a Y Combinator-funded startup that recently went into private beta.

Gantto offers an intuitive UI for building out and editing Gantt charts, from the most basic to the rather complex. To make things easy for those who have historically used Microsoft Project, Gantto allows you to import project files in XML format.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, Gannt charts are bar-based charts that break down a project’s timeline. They’ve been around for about a century, but it was only with the invention of the personal computer that it became easy to rapidly produce complex Gantt charts. Today, they’re an indispensable part of any project.

Project managers looking to take Gantto for a spin can sign up here.

This is a small tip that can be helpful for those buying stuff via internet.

When you are done with the transaction and you have the receipt on the screen, what do you normally do? Well in most cases you print it out, then you don’t know if the printer is on, if there is paper… then you don’t know where did you put it once it is printed… or in some cases you just ignore the scree because they will probably send you an email confirmation with the receipt or bill, so you can always go to

your email and look for it… and if you are lucky you find it.

Well, if you are on a mac when you are in the receipt page, you just click command+P, like when printing, and in the PDF button on the bottom left corner you will find an option called: Save PDF to Web Receipt Folder.

If you do click that a PDF will be created with the current screen (not just what you see, all of it!) with the title of the page. This in a Web Receipt folder in your Documents folder. Very very handy.

It is not something I use. I choose Save PDF to Evernote, where it is saved into my Evernote, where it is OCR so it becomes searcheble and it is also stored on the web, but if you don’t use evernote the Save to Web Receipt foder is a very good option.

Ohlife is a free online diary, compleatly private. They even log you off from the site often, which is good.

So, what is what makes ohlife special?

It is simple, neat, beautiful. Every day, at the time you wish, it send you an email saying: What have you done today?

You just answer the email and voila, it goes into your diary. It couldn’t be easier. Just responding to an email. Even with photos if you wish.

Downside? Well, I have tested it for a couple of days only, but there is no calendar so you can navigate easily to other years or months. You have to scroll…

Also nice that in the web you can edit your entries.

Give it a try. It is free.

I try to keep keep all my inboxes to zero. Whatever I have in my inbox requires action. Once the action is taken, and action could be just answer quickly, then I archive them.

I have unified inbox, meaning that my inbox has emails from 5 different accounts.

I have the following folders on all my accounts: inbox (sure…), Waiting For, Read Review, and the rest of achieves. I don’t have them by people but rather by location. I go up to 2 levels of depth, so something like this:

• inbox (aiming to zero, only things that should have some action)
• read review (things want to read but are not urgent so I don’t want them in my inbox)
• waiting for (air ticket for tomorrow, a delivery yet to arrive, etc…)
• friends
  • local (I don’t live where my family is)
  • home (my friends in my home country, school, university…)
  • abroad
• family
  • wife
  • mum
  • kids
  • other
• work
  • waiting for (sometimes I mix private email with work stuff… bad bad)
  • job 1 (if you do have more than one job, then here)
  • job 2
• personal
  • key stuff (sort of starred items, email with driving license, passport, tax, passwords)
  • statements
    • bank (if you receive a lot of e-statments then create a folder with statements, then bank, telephone, electricity, etc…)
  • jokes
  • travel
  • shopping
  • newsletters
  • other

Then some tips to manage large amount of email:

You can keep your responses short and add a signature following the http://three.sentenc.es/ tips.

“Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.

three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.”

Example signature:
——————————————–
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es
——————————————–

Alternatively you can add “Sent from iPhone” under your short responses.  People don’t expect long responses when you’re on your phone.

Sure, count on me!!
Sent from iPhone.

If you do really have an email problem you can create a ‘VIP’ filter.  Add your boss, close friends and family. Flag them red and throw them in a separate folder. This is the first place I check every morning.

If you are using Gmail or Google apps and you are giving away your email address to a lot of sites you try or places that potentially can spam you, they you can give your regular email +name of site or group or whatever, example: yourname+namesite@gmail.com. You can then filter those emails into a specific spammy folder you check periodically.

If you are using apple Mail or similar program and you really can’t cope with the inflow of emails, you can create a filter that auto-responds to all unopened emails > 14 days old w/the following message:

Your email (below) is now 14 days old and has not been opened.  To minimize email buildup your email has now been placed in the archive.  Should you still require a response simply respond back and you’ll automatically be added to the priority queue.  Thank you.

Good luck

Adobe Illustrator, the industry-standard vector graphics application, is the tool you use when you need flexible, scalable vector graphics such as logos and artwork that will be printed in various formats, mediums and sizes.

Illustrator’s huge array of digital drawing features makes it a favorite amongst illustrators and print designers, but for those just starting out, the application can be intimidating. To help set you on your path to Illustrator mastery, here are some great beginner-level Illustrator tutorials that cover the fundamental tools and techniques.

If you have tips for aspiring Illustrator pros, share them in the comments below.

1. Getting Started in Illustrator

First thing’s first: You need to familiarize yourself with Illustrator’s graphical user interface. This quick and easy-to-read tutorial talks about Illustrator’s workspace, pointing to areas such as the Tools panel, the Status bar, the Artboard where you craft your vectors, and so on. It also touches upon how to create your first Illustrator document, as well as the different items you can find within the Tools panel.

2. Illustrator’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

The primary drawing feature of Illustrator is the Pen tool. If you have aspirations of becoming an Illustrator ninja, you’ll need to have a strong command of this tool. This Illustrator tutorial from Vectortuts+ (a leading vector graphics tutorial site) covers all the things you need to know about this powerful, but oftentimes daunting, tool.

The tutorial covers the concept of Bezier curves, which are used to draw shapes with smooth curves, the need-to-know keyboard shortcuts, and even provides a practice sheet that you can download and import into Illustrator to help you practice your vector-drawing skills.

3. Fun with Illustrator’s Blend Tool

The Blend command is deceptively simple in function. It takes two or more shapes or colors, and then blends them together smoothly. But as this Illustrator tutorial will show you, the Blend command is a very effective feature for crafting stunning graphics effects quickly and easily.

4. Adobe Illustrator Tips: Live Trace

Live Trace, which appeared in Adobe Illustrator CS2, is a game-changer. Before Live Trace, an artist sketching an art piece using pen/pencil and paper would have to scan their work into Illustrator, then spend hours manually tracing it with the Pen tool and other Illustrator functions.

When Live Trace was introduced, this process was made simpler through automation, saving you precious hours. From sketch drawings to photographs that need to be converted to vector graphics — Live Trace is an excellent option to try. This tutorial goes over the process of using Live Trace by using a stock headshot photo, discussing how to execute Live Trace, the various options, as well as showing off a handful of examples of where Live Trace has been used in existing artworks.

5. Illustrator’s Type Tool: A Comprehensive Introduction

Illustrator is also a popular graphics application for print designers. From logos, business cards, and brochures, all the way up to posters and large billboards, Illustrator can help you make flexible and scalable designs.

A big part of print design is quite obviously text. This Illustrator tutorial will help you begin to explore the Type tool. It covers ways you can set text on vector paths for unconventional text flows, talks about the associated panels such as the Character and Paragraph panel, and provides useful keyboard shortcuts.

6. The Power (and Ease) of Patterns in Illustrator

Using patterns allows you to make repeating graphics. Experimenting with patterns can lead to excellent artwork that looks like it took days to complete.

Creating custom pattern brushes and applying them to vector shapes is covered in this Illustrator tutorial.

7. Mastering Illustrator Effects

Effects in Illustrator allow you to add all sorts of wonderful graphic treatments to your artwork. From applying 3D effects to creating faux colored pencil looks, this set of Illustrator features will let you rapidly enhance your work with a few clicks of the mouse.

If you’d like to discover the abilities of Illustrator effects, check out the above tutorial, which discusses various processes — such as Roughen and Scribble — as well as the Appearance panel, which allows you to modify applied effects, among other helpful tips.

8. Everything about Gradients

The Gradient panel in Illustrator is a wonderful feature for applying color and pattern gradients to your work. Gradients allow you to stylize your graphics such that they have smoothly blended fills or strokes.

Learn everything you need to know to get started with gradients from this tutorial, which discusses topics like applying gradients, modifying the angle and direction of the gradients, saving gradient swatches, and more.

9. The Stroke Panel

In Photoshop, a sibling of Illustrator, strokes (creating an outline around the edge of an object) seem like an afterthought. But in Illustrator, where your vector paths take center stage, the stroke feature is very important to master.

This Adobe Illustrator tutorial covers the use of the Stroke panel in creating vector objects.

10. Pathfinder: Explained

The Pathfinder panel is a popular time saving feature for working with shapes and paths. This panel is a collection of commands that allow you to unite, divide, and subtract two or more shapes, among other functions. Utilizing these commands gives you the ability to draw complex vector graphics using basic shape tools.

Learn how to use the Pathfinder panel with this excellent Illustrator tutorial.

11. The Power of Smart Guides in Illustrator

Don’t have a steady hand? Having trouble drawing shapes that align with one another? Smart guides give you snapping features that will enable you to draw objects more accurately.

Explore the fundamentals of Illustrator’s smart guides through this beginner-friendly tutorial.

12. How to Make a Custom Illustrator Brush

Brushes in Illustrator are a quick way to save objects that you will reuse later in your projects. Art brushes, for example, take a vector object that you’ve drawn and allow you to then apply those objects later as strokes or fills of other vectors.

In this step-by-step guide, you will discover the awesomeness of custom brushes in Illustrator.

These 12 tutorials will set you on your path to Illustrator mastery. If you’ve had success with other tutorials not on this list, let us know about them in the comments below.

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

(from mashable)

Give it a try, it is free.

Going out on a trip? Would you like to have a web with all the prepaid phone plans around the word, which, by the way, you can contribute to?

It is there, in a wikimedia way: Pay as you Go

The best:

Folders: I used to have 7 or 8 screens, now I have only 1.
All inboxes in 1: I keep my inboxes to zero messages. I love to see all the incoming email in a single place, from any of my email accounts. Now you have subtile improvements such as highlighting stuff like telephone numbers, addresses, dates, so you can take action.
Bed mode: When you double click there is now an icon to block the screen so it doesn’t rotate. Great for reading in bed.
Tap to focus in videos: Great. The Zoom for photos not that great, but handy. Camera seems to be faster when shooting.

The disappointments:

Multitasking: is it a joke? True that there are not many apps making use of multitasking but the fact of having all the apps down in the dock when double clicking home and when you click on any of them is just like opening like before, makes it a joke. Where is skype? IMs? I guess it will improve in the future, but today, it just sucks. The only app I use regularly that uses multitasking is Evernote, and it is not that great the implementation they did. I read you can record a note and do other stuff but…

It is fine…

ibooks: ibooks app rocks. Far sexier and better than kindle. Bookmarks sync with iPad and books look great, but… who read books in an iPhone? I prefer a trillion times to listen to books, put the iPhone in my pocket and listen.
Tip for ibooks: they use .epub extension, so if you have any .epub books, just drag them to your iTunes and you’ll have them in your iPhone. Just great.

Now that I have iOS4 in my 3GS, do I really need to buy an iPhone 4???

I am sure a lot of people is going to be asking this question. What else do you get? A better display? A better camera? Maybe the killer feature for the switch is facetime, but I still don’t know how it works. Do you have to start a regular call before starting? If so, it is now worth it for me. The other end cannot be a computer and I don’t know anybody with an iPhone 4.

Now if you have to make a call, lets suppose my mum in Spain buys an iPhone 4, then I have to spend a lot of money to call her first to Spain from a Swiss phone. If you can start the call over wifi (no need to make a call) then it is a different story. It might be a good thing.

By the way, is Fring or Skype going to support the front camera? if that is the case, then yes…

First make sure that:

• If you have a Jailbroken iPhone 3GS with the OLD BOOTROM and you DID NOT use Spirit to jailbreak then you can create the ipsw with PwnageTool 4.0 and restore with your jailbroken recovery mode.
• If you have an iPhone 3GS with the NEW BOOTROM this is NOT supported by PwnageTool 4.01

This is what you have to do:

1. Download Official iPhone iOS 4 for iPhone 3GS here (official from Apple).
2. Download Pwnage Tool 4.01 from any of this locations:
   • http://www.iphone-storage.de/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://dl.finalgaming.de/dev-team/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
   • http://www.stimp.nl/mirrorfiles/PwnageTool_4.01.dmg
3. Download iTunes 9.2 (you can do that but opening iTunes and look for upgrades)
4. Now run the PwnageTool. If it is in the same directory of the image ipsw image you downloaded in the step 1, then it will see that it the image to use. Just use Simple Mode and this image. This will create a new image that by default will be placed on your desktop. You can then close the PwnageTool.
5. Now before you upgrade your iphone, you could consider installing from Cydia AptBackup (from BigBoss). That will know which Cydia apps you have installed and in a later stage restore them.
6. Now, back up your phone, by connecting it to iTunes
7. Switch off your phone by holding on the top button and sliding to switch it off.
8. Make sure that it is connected it to the mac with the image you created and iTunes is open. Now hold the top and home button to enter into recovery mode.
9. iTuenes will tell you it is in recovery mode. Now you have to hold the Option key and click on restore. That will allow you to select the image on your desktop.
10. That’s it. The restore upgrade will not take a lot of time. What takes time is once you have iOS4 to restore you latest config.

If you have gone to the 10 steps you should have an iPhone 3GS with iOS4 and after more than an hour (in my cases) the same you had before.

Now you go to Cydia and install AptBackup, click on restore and voila, all your Cydia apps.

I had a problem though. My iPhone had a safe mode due to a problem with an app in Cydia. The app in question was MyFi. I had to remove it and now everything is OK.

To fix Growl

Download a pre-patched GrowlMail.bundle and drop it in your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory. If you want it available to multiple users on your system, use /Library/Mail/Bundles/

Download: GrowlMail.mailbundle

To fix Letter Opener

Close the mail application. In finder go to Macintosh HD /Library/Mail/Bundles (Disabled)

Copy OMiC.mailbundle to Bundles

Replace the old info.plist (located inside contents folder) for this one: Info.plist

Before we use to have cabinets where we stored our papers, now we have bookmarks, and other internet services. We have moved to have an Internet Explorer browser with favorites that are duplicated and useless as we used to just click favorite and forget about it, then 5 years later realize that we have hundreds of bookmarks in the office computer, different bookmarks at home, in our laptop… basically a useless mess.

The idea of this blog entry is to show a set of tools that can help you be organized in this chaotic Internet so you can be more productive.

If you are a bookmark type of guy, then what you need is synchronization. Be aware that syncronization of bookmarks is different depending on the browser you use.

Google Chrome

In the cases of Google Chrome browser if you have a google account, then all your google chrome browsers bookmarks can be synchronized.

So if you have Google Chome in the office and at home, if you add a new bookmark both will be synchronized. The way it is done is via Google Docs. There is a document there with all your bookmarks.

Firefox

If you are a firefox type of guy then you have several plugins that will allow you to sync your bookmarks between firefoxes and the web. The most notable I would say is xmarks (previously known as foxmarks).

Safari

If you use safari then the best way to sync not just between safaris but also with your iPhone, iPad and so, it is using mobileme.

Browser Independent

Delicious in Safari

Now, if you are not married to a specific browser, then I would recommend Delicious. Delicious is a socialbookmarking but you have plugins for all browsers, so if you see a site you like or want to remember you just click on a button and the beauty is that you can access via web o via another button in your browser (no matter which one), plus it is very powerfull because it let you apply tags to your bookmarks (much better than folders) and decide if you want them public or private.

Delicious in Chrome

Delicious in Firefox

Other tools

Bookmarking is OK but not enough. We have been bookmarking for 20 years now. True that now we have synchronization and tagging, which makes life easier, but there are other tools that allow you to:

1. Highlight parts of text of a website or PDF, add notes and share them. You can comment on a specific website or add some notes.
2. Get a copy of the website offline and make it searchable
3. If you don’t have the time to read something, with the click of a button you can add it to a cue of thing you have to read in your computer, iPhone or wherever when you have time.

This things have different tools.

1.- To annotate on websites and PDFs (which is very usefull) you can use:

a.nnotate, just for PDF. It is the pionner (I think). It is free if you don’t use it a look but it looks great. You upload a pdf and you can highlight stuff and add notes. Share, and so.

Lets annotate I discovered lately. It is also for PDF only and it is not as nice as a.nnote but it is free. In a.nnotate you can select text to be highlighted. In letsannotate you create a box with the mouse. It is good to provide comments on PDFs

Webnotes is by far my favorite, and the one I use. When you see a website click on the bookmark you have to add it to your webnotes and voila, you have the website with a top bar that allows you to highlight text, add post it’s, share it… and then you have an organizer where you can organise your websites and PDFs on folders and see the annotations.

2.- If you would like to have a copy offline of your website, Evernote does a great job. Its competitor Springpad might also do it (I have never tested as I am a devoted Evernote user).

With Evernote, if you see a site you want to remember then you click on the Evernote button in your browers (no matter which one you are using) and then you can access your evernote online or in your desktop sofware. If you want the site as you see it click on SHIFT+ the Evernote button (tip). It will be indexed and you can change the name and tag it as you wish.

3.- If you use twitter in your phone or you see a long article you can not read now, then there are a couple of tools that are great for this:

Instapaper (the one I use) has a bookmark you can have in your browser so you basically add the website you are reading or want to read to the cue of sites to read. The nice thing is that it has an iPhone (I don’t know about Android) app where the sites are transformed in text if you wish.

Readitlater is similiar.

Most of all services I mentioned here are free, and if you want more features, space, etc… then you have a pro payed plan.

Which ones I use?

1. Webnotes. Specially to highlight parts of a website I find interesting.
2. Evernote: not a lot for websites but I take photos of all the incoming mail, books, wine, receipts, etc… so they are indexed.
3. Instapaper: if there is something I want to blog about, or I’m in the iPhone and theres is a link in a tweet that I would like to read later. Very handy.

Remember The Milk

If you are one of these guys living in the cloud, using google docs, or zoho, online calendars… then you probably also use online task management tools. Maybe you are happy to use your outlooks todo lists, or you do it in the cloud using Google tasks or remember the milk.

BaseCampHQ

If you work with clients then you are probably looking for a way to manage your tasks, sort of ticketing system but not necessarily for IT projects, a way to organise your work and the work of your team: a project management tool in the cloud. The king up to new has been  37 signal’s star product basecamphq (click here to see the tour).

Now you have other players in the market that do it equaly or better than bascamp and that you should consider:

Assembla

This is the one I use. It is free and I can create a space for each of my clients. They can also create a free account and add tickets or tasks to it, that I can customize in terms of organising the fields, milestones, etc.. (content, newsletter, technic) etc…

I like assemble because I can track the time I spend on a ticket, so at the end of the month I can bill by hours of work if I wish. You can have a wiki, upload files, etc…

Producteev

They just launched version 2. Very very nice. I just opened an account. It is the more social oriented ticketing system. You can add tickets or tasks via IM, email, they have a nice iPhone app… very nice. Simple though. You cannot indent task or add projects but you can have different workspaces add tags and link it to your calendar. It is nice to be able to feed it via IM, email or iPhone.

Screencast Producteev Two from Producteev.com on Vimeo.

Trac

Open source. The king tool for managing your files in a team. Try the demo.

Redmine

This one is an open source solution. Never tried. Demo here.

Teamwork Project Manger

This is a good alternative to bascamp. It is cheaper and here you can see how they say it is better.

Unfuddle

This is good tool to ticketing. This is the one I used when I was working at Shelter Centre and developing the new Drupal site. You can also track time (money) manage your code, etc… They support trac and check ins for code. Assembla does too.

Others:

• http://achievo.org/
• http://www.projectpier.org/
• http://www.springloops.com/
• http://fogcreek.com/FogBugz/
• http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/employee-community
• http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/?lang=en
• http://www.hyperoffice.com/task-manager/
• http://www.myintervals.com/
• http://www.deskaway.com/

Google Alerts are emails sent to you when Google finds new results — such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs — that match your search term. You can use Google Alerts to monitor anything on the Web. For example, people use Google Alerts to:

• find out what is being said about their company or product.
• monitor a developing news story.
• keep up to date on a competitor or industry.
• get the latest news on a celebrity or sports team.
• find out what’s being said about themselves.

Here’s how it works:

1. You enter a query that you’re interested in.
2. Google Alerts checks regularly to see if there are new results for your query.
3. If there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email.

For general queries like [ football ], you can get a summary of the new results every day. For specific topics, like [ cardiovascular atherosclerosis ], you might not get an email every day, but you’ll find out when something new and relevant is published. See more examples of how Google Alerts are used

How It’s Done

It’s surprisingly easy. Now that Google makes it simple to embed a Wave in any blog post, starting a Wave-based live blog is as easy as copying and pasting a URL into a Web form.

Step 1: Start a Public Wave

To create a public Wave, simply head over to Google Wave and start a new Wave. By default, Wave’s are not public. To make this live-blogging wave public – so that your readers can later see it on your blog – you have to add public@a.gwave.com to the new Wave. This account is probably not in your contacts yet, so just copy and paste the address and add this account to the Wave.

Now you have two options: 1) you can give your readers full access to your Wave, which means anybody can comment as you live blog, or 2) make the Wave read-only and don’t allow others to edit it. To change these settings (even after you start), simply click on the globe icon that represents the public@a.gwave.com account and change the access settings. By default, all public waves are set to “full access.”

Step 2: Get the Embed Code and Embed Your Wave

Now you need to get the embed code. Just copy the URL of the wave from your browser’s address bar and head to the Wave Elements tool. Paste the URL into the form, hit Return so that the tool recognizes the new URL, set the desired size of the embed, and then head to the bottom of the page where you can find the updated embed code.

After this, all you have to do is head over to your favorite blogging tool and paste the embed code into your new post.

Step 4: Start Blogging

Head back to Wave after you finish setting up your post and start blogging. Your readers will see every letter you type in real time.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few things we learned today:

• Wave worked like a charm. We did not experience any hiccups and our readers were very happy about seeing us type the updates in real time – live blogging really doesn’t get more “live” than this. Having Google’s infrastructure as the basis for your live blog definitely helps when you have lots of people hitting your blog at the same time.
• Adding a few extra people to Wave allows you to share the workload. If possible, have at least one extra person around to create and upload screenshots. We used a Skype backchannel during the event to coordinate in the background, but you could also use a second Wave for this.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

• The default font size in the Wave embed is too small, and changing it for every new wavelet takes too long. Hopefully Wave will soon allow us to set a slightly larger font size as the default.
• Wave didn’t work well for Safari users and is obviously also still an issue for Internet Explorer.
• Uploading screenshots to Wave is easy, just click on the attachments icon, pick the desired image and hit submit. Sadly, you can’t just drag and drop images from your desktop onto your browser (yet), so having a second person to manage that is helpful.
• Spell checking in Wave is still a bit difficult even when you have a second person edit your posts.

One thing to remember when you use Wave to live blog is that your readers aren’t likely to reload your page often, so your page views will likely be lower than if you just posted regular updates into a static blog post. We think this is a worthwhile trade-off, given that the experience for our readers is superior to using a static post, but that’s a decision every publisher has to make individually.

(from readwriteweb)

• Append a plus (“+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.
• Insert one or several dots (“.”) anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn’t recognize periods as characters in addresses — we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com. (We understand that there has been some confusion about this in the past, but to settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)

For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and think they might share your information. For example, I added “+donation” when I gave money to a political organization once, and now when I see emails from other groups to that address, I know how they got it. Solution: filtered to auto-delete.

(from google)

Gadgets:

Macbook pro
iPhone 3GS (as soon as the 4G is out… then … ;-) )
Nikon d300 with nikkor 18-200 and  sigma 10-20 (I wish it was a nikon d3s though…)
Fonera2.0n (great concept and community. I have two an convincing friends to join)
IP Camera (pan tilt) wifi
I hesitate about the iPad. I might wait for the second gen (with hopefully a camera for video chats)

Services:

Google apps
Google sync
Zoneedit (to manage dns)
Evernote (my brain basically)
Delicious (and a plugin for chrome)
Dropbox

For the mac (I have tons…):

Google Chrome
BusyCal
AppCleaner
Audiobook builder (to create audiobooks and put them in iTunes)
Backuplist + (to rsync my docs to my webdav)
Copypaste Pro
Mikogo (free app to share desktop with anybody, browsing together and granting control over your machine)
Paparazzi! (to create a snapshot of a website)
ScreenFlick (to make screencasts)
Skype (I use it via Adium)
Adium (all Instant Messengers into one: Skype, Gtalk, yahoo, msn, facebook, aol, etc…)
Proxifier (to put all the apps into a box, then you can tunnel them via ssh into a machine with squid)
1Password (to manage logins and passwords. Syncs with iPhone)

For the iPhone:

Tweetie (in fact for iPhone and mac)
Brightkite (like twitter on steroids: with images, location, notes, checkins)
Facebook
Foursquare, Gowala, Tellmewhere (location based apps. You can use http://check.in to check in at the same time in some of them)
GeeTasks pro
AutoStich (to create panoramas with several photos)
Pixelpipe
1Password
MyWi (use your 3g connection to become a wifi hot spot)
ezShare (remote desktop, VPN and access to network drives like webdav)
IP Vision Pro (to access you Ip cameras)

I don’t have but I wish I have (I am not in the US… that is why):

Google Voice
Mint

One of my favourite authors for this is David Allen and his “Getting Things Done” book and now philosophy. It does not fit my needs 100% but you can get a lot of good ideas. It is a read I recommend to anybody who would like to take a step back and see how to improve his/her workflow on executing stuff, not just at work but in your personal life.

I will write one day on which are my workflows but in the post I just wanted to briefly explain how I organise my todos.

First to clarify that I am heavy user of my iPhone and I could not live without Evernote. I take photos of everything, and I classify it all in evernote: from photos of all (yeap, all) incoming mail, to receipts (yeap…) to all my books, visiting cards, wines, etc… even when browsing it I constantly click shift and the evernote button to get a pdf of what I want to save.

For tasks and priorities I used to use things (a mac and iPhone program) but since I migrated my email to google apps, I use google tasks (as I mentioned in my previous post).

I have the following “lists” that I rather call “projects”.

@action (the @ is to bring it to the top) where I put most of the stuff I have to do and does not fall under a more complex task. Before I used to have an @inbox with the idea to drop everything there in a previous step and then put it in the right list in a second step, but I found out I could be disciplined enough to classify staff as it was arriving. In my Evernote and at home for my paper stuff, I do use an @inbox though.

Then I have a @wating for list. Here I put stuff like, waiting for an ebay thing I bought, or if someone is supposed to take some action on something that should come back to me, if you delegate a job for instance.

lent and borrowed lists. Don’t you hate when you lend a book to someone and it never comes back? Then you don’t remember who was it or which book. Well I keep track of everything I lend and I borrow, of course.

someday list. Here stuff that I have to do eventually but does not fall into the action list. Stuff like make a copy of the keys for the neighbours, upload latest holiday photos, etc…

scheduled list. Even if some of the stuff above can have a deadline or a day they should move to the action or you should execute them, the scheduled list is more for stuff that can be recurrent or that is far in time to be in the action folder but not as vage as someday. Examples: date that the subscription to a paper expires, an annual summer jazz concert…

wish list. Here I put all that I want to do, but that I am not necessarily do: buy a nikon d3s, go to x restaurant, buy x wine, visit japan, etc…

The specific project lists. One that it is always there is shopping where I write all the stuff I have to buy in the short term (salt, shoes, pasta, pesto…), you could add all this in the @action list but the idea of clustering similar stuff into projects is very convenient.  You could have lists such as: job hunting (and all the places you want to apply for), house works (and all the stuff you want to fix at home), etc…

This is in a nutshell how I organise my ToDo’s.

Another day I will explain how I organise my email, and Evernote.

This is how I manage mine:

I use google apps (you could use gmail tasks) and I use the tasks there. You can create a calendar with the tasks with due date.

In my iPhone I syncronize it with Geetasks pro which is a great app that syncs your tasks in google with your iphones… and works offline!!

Then, in my mac I use fluid. Fluid (which is free) what it does is it creates a program in your applications folder with a custom browser unique for that app (Site Specific Browser (SSB)), so when I launch norai tasks it opens a window with the tasks alone. Like a program. You can even choose the icon you want for the program.

For the URL you have to use something like (what I use):

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/ig

or if you want a list on the left and the tasks on the right (nice if you are a heavy user)

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/canvas

or if you want to see it like in a phone (you can use iPhone at the end instead of android but works better with android):

https://mail.google.com:443/tasks/a/yourdomain/android

Take a look at this site to know more about how to do it, but pretty straight forward.

The pros is that in my iPhone (main tool for tasks) I have them offline also. When in the office you can use google site or the second lint (canvas) to manage your tasks and projects.

The cons is that in my mac I have to be online (with fluid). It would be nice to have gears for that…

I am running my time machine backing up in a Samba server (linux machine).

This new update is deletes your old time machine in order to create a new one probably in a newer and more stable format. I decided to go ahead.

The first part deletes the time machine partition on my samba, then it tries to start a new one but obviously, it can’t. So here some tips to create a new time machine in your samba server:

You will need to do this with the terminal ( Finder>Applications>Utilities.Terminal)

First you need to have the ethernet mac address of the machine that you want to backup:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

This will give you a number like:  00:23:32:d2:f7:a0  keep it.

Now you create a new file with the sparsebundle that you will have to move to your samba machine:

hdiutil create -size 500g -fs HFS+J -volname “TimeMachine  tokao” tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle

Where in red what you have to change. In my case tokao will be the name of my machine and the mac address (en0 even if using wifi) 00:23:32:d2:f7:a0 will be 002332d2f7a0 (this is in my case, sure)

Once you have done this in your Users/you you will see this sparsebundle file. You have to move this file to the Samba where you want to back up.

You can copy it by draging it using the finder or by copying it

cp -R tokao_002332d2f7a0.sparsebundle /Volumes/YourSamba/

Then from the time machine preference you select the samba machine and that’s it!

But the sophisticated image editor has a daunting learning curve. With so many tools, features, and concepts to get a hold of, new users can be discouraged by dry help files and blind fumbling.

But fear not, gentle reader, for the collective wisdom of YouTubeYouTube is at your disposal. Photoshop tutorials abound on the video network. Some are superb, while others may not be worth your precious clickthrough. For help, check out the resourceful selections below. Whether you’re brand new to Photoshop or a seasoned veteran, there’s always something to learn from the screencasting community.

For Beginners

If you’re looking for a visual way to wrap your head around the basic functions of Photoshop, check out these “101″ resources that take it nice and slow, and don’t assume any prior experience.

1. Workspace Overview

If you’ve never taken up the virtual paintbrush before, get the lay of the land with this overview of the workspace. It will give you a good sense of where the most useful tools and menus live in Photoshop.

2. Tools and Layers

This two-part tutorial breaks down most of the basic tools you’ll need to start your graphic hacking adventures.

If you come away with only one concept from a Photoshop lesson, it should be about layers. Layers are key to everything in Photoshop, but jumping in head-first can often leave new users confused. In addition to rummaging through the toolbox, this video offers a concise, visual explanation of how layers work using a simple drawing exercise.

For Intermediate Users

If you’ve gotten a feel for the software and done your share of image touch-up and manipulation, you may want to kick the program into second gear and start exploring some of the more powerful and creative features. These tutorials will get you going.

3. Blending Modes

Blending modes are connected to layers and are integral for toning photographs and many other graphic manipulations. This screencast will take you through Photoshop’s many blending flavors and hopefully spark some creative ideas for your next epic FacebookFacebook photo.

4. Patching and Healing

So you’ve got your new Facebook photo perfectly toned for maximum epicness — except for that tiny blemish and your annoying little brother who insists on jumping into every frame. That’s where the healing tools come in. With these, you can remove unwanted elements and (with a bit of practice) smooth those adjustments right into the background.

5. Text Effects

Let’s face it: The black and white arial text your rendered in MS Paint simply won’t cut it as your blog’s logo anymore. It’s time to snazz it up with some creative texturing. Check out this two-part tutorial that showcases some of the powerful text manipulation tools at your disposal in Photoshop.

6. Creating Actions

As you start using the software more regularly, you may find you’re repeating the same processes (sizing, filtering, blending, etc.) over and over again. The “Actions” feature lets you record the steps you use frequently and execute them with a single time-saving click or hotkey combination.

For Advanced Users

If you’ve spent any time on the Internet, you surely know what some Photoshop wizards are capable of. While the truly amazing feats require actual artistic talent (for which there is not yet a software substitute), some advanced Photoshop knowhow can go a long way to impressing your social media pals. Even if you’re not up to speed on all the advanced tools, just following along with these example-based lessons will provide a lot of insight into how the pros work their magic.

7. Changing Eye and Hair Color

If you’re due for a new look, but don’t want to drop a pretty penny at the salon, check out this tutorial on how to change eye and hair color for some dramatic portrait results.

8. Photo Combination and Manipulation

And now for some of the cool stuff. Through some clever erasing, blending, smoothing, and layering, this tutorial grafts a roaring lion’s face onto an apple to make for some frightening fruit that even Adam and Eve would have stayed away from.

9. Environmental Effects: Beams of Light

If landscapes are your passion, you can add even more drama to your sweeping vistas with some Photoshop tricks. Here, the designer adds some cloud-bursting light to make for an awe-inspiring desktop wallpaper, or perhaps even a snazzy TwitterTwitter background.

10. Environmental Effects: Fog and Mist

If you’re looking to add a bit of mystery to your recent snapshot, check out this tutorial on adding some rolling fog.

Have you found any other useful Photoshop tutorials on YouTube? Be sure to post the links in the comments below.
(from mashable)

It looks like iTunes, and you can buy music directly from amazon. If you have a nexus one, give it a try.

There’s an answer, thanks to the Keyboard & Mouse pane in System Preferences. If you click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, you can assign “Paste Without Formatting” and/or “Paste and Match Style” to Command + V for all applications. Just click the  button under the list, type in the name of the appropriate menu items, and press ⌘-V in the Keyboard Shortcut box.

One note: Panic designer Neven Mrgan found that using this tip means you won’t be able to paste images into iChat using Command + V. Dragging and dropping (or choosing Paste from the Edit menu) still works, though. Update: If you explicitly add ⌘-V in as a shortcut for Paste that’s specific to iChat, you can restore the image paste capability without breaking the global shortcut.

Apps that don’t have either of those menu items will still default to regular old “Paste” for the same key command. Paste away!

(tip from tuaw)

• Prezi
• xmind
• bubbl.us

This is what I posted in the forums:

1.- Save your settings: Settings/System then the big settings button will donwload a file called luci. Save it.

2.- Download the latest DEV version of your 2.0n: http://download.fonosfera.org/LATEST/fo … .0_DEV.tgz (remember that from the web you can only instal tgz files)

3.- In my case I tried upgrading to dev from my mac (safari) in the wan and it did not work. I tried from a lan computer and it did work. It takes 5 min. Then I went setting/system/settings update and then I could not see any difference between the DEV and the normal firmware. I could not access via ssh, so I thought it might have been because in my setting I have the fonera running on 192.168.1.1 instead of the default 192.168.10.1. I then reseted to factory default.

4.- Once in factory default you are asked to follow a wizard. You had a password of 8 char with numbers and then I tried ssh and worked.

5.- Now how to send the 2.3.5.0 to the fonera? I tried put and get and did not work. Filezilla over sftp did not work either. Only wget. So I had to dowload from here (http://flash.fonera.be/FON2303/20091210 … EV-RC2.tgz) but from ssh you cannot install tgz, so I had to extract the .img and upload it to a server: http://yourserver/20091210_FON2303_2.3.5.0_DEV-RC2.img

6.- You go to ssh root@192.168.10.1 and then your 8 char password, go to the #cd /tmp folder and

7.- Then #wget http://yourserver/20091210_FON2303_2.3.5.0_DEV-RC2.img

8.- Now you have to install the image make sure you are in the #cd /tmp then #mtd -r write 20091210_FON2303_2.3.5.0_DEV-RC2.img image

9.- DONE!!

10.- Now you can upload your luci settings again.

Acknowledgment iPhone SMS

* Launch Cydia
* Once in Cydia -> Manage -> Source, add and install the source http://iphonedelivery.advinux.com/cydia
* In Search -> find the application iPhoneDelivery
* Install the application
* Your system restarts, wait
* In Settings -> Messages, select Acknowledgment and Flash AR (this is the info bubble that gives you the details)

After several tests, everything works perfect, no problem!

In addition it does not make you an SMS acknowledgment but just a warning.

(extracted from nightgamer)

And best of all, it’s completely free! Give it a try!

If you do not want to monitor multiple bank sites and maintain painful spreadsheets anymore, then moneyStrands automatically pulls together data from your bank, credit card and investment accounts to provide an accurate, up-to-date picture of your financial life broken down by meaningful automatically identified categories along with flexible user defined transaction types. Best of all, moneyStrands is 100% FREE.

Where does your money go?

Get a clear view of how much you spend eating out, gassing up the car and those guilty pleasures. Then look at your spending trends or drill down into individual categories to see just where all the money you earn goes. Easily define budgets, see projectionsalerts to help you follow your plan.

Your data wherever you go

Thanks to our easy to use mobile widget you’ll have immediate access to all your financial data anytime, anywhere on your smart phone. Check balances and receive text alerts on-the-go. moneyStrands keeps working for you where ever life happens to take you. All you need is a web browser to enjoy moneyStrands on the go.

How do you mesure up?

Find and connect with like-minded members who share your goals and your traits. See how you compare, share your thoughts on best bargains or just exchange financial tips and money missteps. Your experience is as valuable as any others and there is no better insider track than following to the word of mouth.

Savings and recommendations

moneyStrands intelligent recommendation engine constantly searches through numerous offers from a multitude of service providers to find the best deals on everything from credit cards to complementary products that fit your financial condition. We know recommendations are only as good as the value they add to your bottom line. moneyStrands recommendations are bias free and are uniquely tailored to your needs based on your spending, saving and investing patterns.

Turn your handwritten notes into editable text*!

Simply write your text using the provided ink pen. Your handwritten notes will be instantly converted into editable text!
Use your pen as a mouse

You can set the pen to mouse mode. In this mode, tapping the pen in the writing area or pressing the button on the side of the pen will act like a single mouse click.

Easy-to-use wireless connection*

Write your notes anytime, anywhere! When you are back to your computer, simply connect the USB receiver. Your notes will be instantly converted!
Works on any paper with normal ink refill

You can write your notes on any kind of paper! Simply place the receiver on the top or the corner of your document and you are ready to write!

*Only on Windows

I tried everything, from going to the settings of mobileme in my mac and reseting it, to delete everything on my mac in order to have mobileme overwritting…. nothing worked. I got a message saying that there was an inconsistency.

Finally I came up with a solution.

I do keep backups of the contacts of my macbook. The problem was that the ones in the iPhone/mobileme were updated and those in the mac were not.

The solution was:

1.- Export vcards from the mobileme site.
2.- Import them into the mac (here I lost all the profile photos and groups…)
3.- At this stage mac and mobile me and iphone was syncronizing again. Good.
4.- Import the latest backup to my address book in the mac. That overwrites the  everything. No big deal, in the back up, even if it was not updated I had all the photos and groups.
5.- Import the vcards but, do not merge them though. You will be prompted with what to do and you have to select to duplicate contacts, so you will end up with two different entries for each person (plus those unique sure).
6.- Now you go to the address book and click on find duplicates, then merge them.

There you are. Now you have all your contacts, plus the new ones, and you have recover the groups and photos.

Diga “llamar” o “marcar” y, a continuación, el nombre de la persona. Si una persona tiene más de un número de teléfono, puede añadir “fijo” o “móvil”, por ejemplo.

Marcar un número

Diga “llamar” o “marcar” y, a continuación, el número.

Realizar una corrección

Diga “error”, “ese no” o “no”.

Controlar la reproducción de música

Diga “reproducir” o “reproducir música”. Para poner en pausa la reproducción, diga “pausa” o “poner música en pausa”. También puede decir “siguiente canción” o “canción anterior”.

Reproducir un álbum, artista o lista de reproducción

Diga “reproducir” y, a continuación, “álbum” “artista” o “lista” y el nombre.

Reorganizar aleatoriamente la lista de reproducción actual

Diga “aleatorio”.

Obtener más información sobre la canción que se está reproduciendo en estos momentos

Diga “qué suena”, “qué canción es esta”, “quién canta esta canción” o “de quién es esta canción”.

Usar Genius para reproducir canciones similares

Diga “Genius”, “reproducir más canciones así” o “reproducir más canciones como esta”.

Cancelar “Control por voz”

Diga “cancelar”.

If you were working in Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS X, you could easily tell the operating system not to replace the duplicate file and to apply that action to all the other duplicates. Windows XP however, doesn’t give you a “No to All” or “Apply to All” option, just a “Yes to All”, which would replace all the duplicate files and isn’t the action we want.

Shift + No button

Luckily, there is a hidden solution. Hold down the Shift key when you click the No button. This will produce a “No to All” effect. Why Microsoft didn’t include a “No to All” or “Apply to All” option in Windows XP is beyond me, but at least this simple trick works.

As Internet connections get faster and storage becomes less expensive, online backup services like Backblaze, Mozy and Carbonite have stepped-in to help consumers back up their data.

Not only are these services useful, they are also very inexpensive. Most of the services offer unlimited (truly) storage for your online backups for around $5 a month. Now, granted, storage prices are constantly decreasing, but how can companies make those sorts of claims?

Online backup service Backblaze has decided to shed some light on how it manages to offer unlimited backup storage to its customers, while also easily expanding its own cloud-based storage platform. Today, Backblaze posted an entry in its company blog that explains what tools and hardware it uses to maintain cheap, efficient storage for its customers. Backblaze hopes that other businesses who are looking at building cloud-based storage solutions can use this information as inspiration or as a blueprint for themselves.

Yes, this is not a joke, the no fuss solution to getting all your data backed up securely. Online backup for only $5/month per computer for unlimited storage: backblaze

(from mashable)

Take a look at the video for a demo of how it works.

• Sync files of any size or type
• Share large files and photos easily
• Automatic online backup
• Track and undo changes to file

Take a look at the pricing plans: Free for 2GB online storage, $9.99 a month for 50Gb and $19.99 for 100Gb.

Looking for a free internet site that will help you achieve your objectives towards your ideal weight and lifestyle?

FatSecret is a new online diet, nutrition and weight loss community that harnesses the collective contributions of the members to generate practical and motivating information so that you can make better decisions to achieve your goals.

Fatsecret is for everyone:

• Create your own personalized diet
• Share your diet with friends (and the world)
• Find information about all the popular diets you’ve heard about
• Discover what works – how people are doing on various diets
• Record your progress and track your performance against your buddies
• Record the food you eat and exercise you do in your diet calendar
• Find ingredients and recipes that are right for your diet
• Search for diets that fit your lifestyle and needs
• Discuss your personal diet or any popular diet
• And so much more…

FatSecret is free. What you see is what you get.

FatSecret is not affiliated or associated with any of the diets or diet companies that are referenced on our site. They provide their general opinion on some aspects of these ‘popular’ diets but in no way endorse or support them or their programs.

It will cost you 99 cents for the US, $1.25 for the UK and $1.50 for Western Europe. This is what you would pay to buy and send it, but it is much cooler ;)

My first step on the road to fixing the problem was to open the bundle with “Disk Utility” and see if repair disk would work. To do this you need to drag the back image (the .sparsebundle) and drop it on disk utility. Then you can select the image and press “Repair Disk”. Usually if if you have some disk corruption this would fix it, but not for me.

After working for a couple minutes Disk Util would fail at repairing the disk since it found an “Invalid Sibling Link”. It seems the disk was corrupted and the disk repair utility decided it wasn’t going to repair it. Worried that my backups were gone for good I did some Googling and found that this problem isn’t totally uncommon. It seems that Disk Utility is just fairly bad at repairing disks and that using the “real” disk repair utility fsck_hfs might actually fix the problem.

Of course there’s one problem fsck_hfs has to be used directly on a block device not a “sparsebundle” disk image. Not only that but the volume you run the util on cannot be mounted and OS X always tries to mount the image when you click on it. The solution? Use the command line tool hdiutil to “attach” but not “mount” the image. This makes OS X create a /dev/ device for the sparse bundle but doesn’t actually mount the filesystem.

So combining hdiutil and fsck_hfs we might have a way to fix the disk image. Note: Make sure you turn off Time Machine in the System Preferences panel. We don’t want Time Machine trying to mount our image and back up to it until we’re done making all the repairs.

First I ran hdiutil:

hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite Bhaal_0011247e3338.sparsebundle

After a minute or two of thinking we had success:

/dev/disk1              Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk1s1            Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk1s2            Apple_HFSX

The next step was run fsck_hfs on the main volume.

fsck_hfs -rf /dev/disk1s2

-f is required to force a check since this is a journaled file system. I also used -r to have it rebuild the filesystem catalog for the “invalid sibling link” this is required (thanks Dan). At this point I went out for breakfast since I was running a disk repair utility over my wireless internet to my Linux SAMBA server. After coming back from breakfast we had success!

** /dev/rdisk1s2
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
   Incorrect number of thread records
(4, 13716)
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
   Invalid directory item count
   (It should be 0 instead of 1)
   Invalid directory item count
   (It should be 3 instead of 4)
   Incorrect folder count in a directory (id = 3795486)
   (It should be 0 instead of 1)
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
   Invalid volume free block count
   (It should be 37267681 instead of 37310834)
   Volume Header needs minor repair
(2, 0)
** Repairing volume.
** Rechecking volume.
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Detected a case-sensitive catalog.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking multi-linked directories.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Backup of Bhaal was repaired successfully

(extracted from jthon.com blog)

Despite how widespread this mode of coordinating work has become, there are those still wondering just what tools are absolutely crucial to making a distributed team work. Here’s a list of the four types of applications you’ll need, and some examples of the popular places to get them.

One: IM & Chat

Instant messaging and chat are one item, practically speaking, but they tend to serve different, equally-important social functions in the enterprise.

One-to-one IM is the best way to ping your virtual coworkers, and is really the only app that comes close to the easy access you’d get from collocation. Cross-platform apps like Adium and Pidginare extremely popular, in addition to utilities packaged with whatever OS you work from. Enterprise instant messaging services like Microsoft Office Communications Server and Lotus Sametime have been around since the late 90s.

Group chat is slightly less common a need than IM, and is less useful for informal access in your daily workflows. But for certain use cases, only group chat will do. Skype and Campfire from 37Signals can’t be beat from our perspective, though there are enterprise-specific options out there. If you’re looking for a network that’s dead reliable, you could go old school and opt for an IRC channel.

Two: Wiki

We pointedly chose not to mention the generalized notion of a “knowledge base” or document repository. A fully-collaborative space for documents is a necessity, not an experimental accessory to your tool set. What’s more, wikis are by-and-large either free or relatively cheap.

In terms of getting one, wikis offer some of the most diverse (and confusing) options out there. You can get free software like MediaWiki or DokuWiki. You could also go with a hosted provider such as PBworks, Wikispaces, Zoho Wiki or EditMe. Options for the enterprise often do a lot more than just wiki besides, and the leaders in that sense include Confluence, Mindtouch, Socialtext, and XWiki.

Three: Task Tracking

By task tracking, we mean any tool that exists to keep track of the group’s work. These can be issue trackers like JIRA, Trac, or Redmine. For those less-development oriented, it might be something tailored only to project management, like Basecamp, LiquidPlanner, or the offerings from Microsoft and Oracle. 

Four: Web Conferencing

Web conferencing is the most formal of these four applications. It might seem like a fairly dull use of the Web to be conducting meetings over it, but often as not it’s the only application to come close to replacing face-to-face meetings.

If you’re looking for full video and audio capabilities, conferencing is the most resource-heavy of the quartet, which is why there are more options available from big vendors. The most popular these days include: WebEx from Cisco, GoToMeeting, and Adobe Connect.

The ideology of Prezi is based our natural knowledge on how to coordinate ourselves in space; traditionally all information we have had to process and store used to be linked to physical space. That is where our minds have developed good skills in orienting ourselves. Despite all this digital information today is mostly presented to us as a moniker of printed matter. Of course printing has served us well to store (and shape) information for the the last six centuries, however, with the wide appearance of computing we saw the same old pattern: old forms got translated to new media without exploring its full potential. Most of the computer systems which present us with information today use the old paradigm of prints and slides: arranging information on a framed 2d static space. We could argue that these (at least their forms) are merely the side effect of Gutenberg’s galaxy.

I just added the iPhone 3GS app and configured pipes to this blog, youtube (for videos), facebook (videos, photos and posts) and twitter.

This the THE tool.

And more video tutorials here.

Findlist is a add-on for firefox that will add a drop down list in your find bar with the latest searches. It could be very handy.

The solution is flippling typical, as website that will allow you to type your text and see how it looks like with different fonts.

Well, every time more, more websites are IP based, so if your IP does not fall under a specific country, you cannot access the content.

You could solve this by going to the preferences of your browser and using a proxy in the country where you want to access the specific content. You can find proxy IP googleing it as “open proxy”. The problem is that in the case of hulu the flash script used in the browser does not tunnel to the proxy that you specify. They are more clever ;-) but less clever than us.

How to fix it?

Not that easy I have to tell. Regular users won’t be able to do it, but if you are a technofreak then keep reading:

In the case of hulu and other tv’s you will have to tunnel everything through ssh to a server in the country where the content is, in this case the US, and use socks5.

Because of the use of flash we will have to put all in a box to listen to all the connections and then rute them with socks5 via ssh2 to the server in the US. You will need to have a server in the US, a VPS (Virtual Private Server). The cheapest that I found is http://swvps.com/, it costs around $10 per month, but there are many others, like slicehost, etc….

If you are a webmaster or somebody who creates websites for you clientes I bet you can have access to a VPS in the US.

Fist you contract the service, then you install an OS, I recommend Ubuntu server, and then you will have to install openssh with apt-get install. Socks5 comes with it. Of course if you buy a slice or a VPS you will have to secure it, then you can install whatever you need to be running in this VPS (apache, php, mysql, etc) but for the purpose of watching Hulu and similars, ssh is enaugh.

Once you have the server running, then you connect to it with putty (from windows) or a terminal in linux or mac with

ssh -D proxyport name@machine -p port

For example “sudo ssh -D 8989 user@machine -p 1234″

-p port is in case you are not using standard port for your ssh (that I recommend)

To put all the connections in a box you will need to install proxifier in mac (or PC), which is not free, or if you have a ubuntu then (free, sure)

sudo apt-get install tsocks

Then you will have to configure your tsocks or proxifier to use socks5 in port 8989 for example, while having your ssh connection open with your VPS.

Then just open your browser and enjoy the shows. Proxifier will catch up all and tunnel it to your VPS in the US so you will be able to watch the shows ;-)

• keyXL
• Shortcut World

Check out the W3C Link Checker to see if all your links are OK.

Here you have a list of the most common shortcuts for your Mac.

MENU COMMANDS

• Shift+Apple+Q
• Log out

• Shift+Option Apple+Q
• Log out immediately

• Shift+Apple+Delete
• Empty Trash

• Apple+H
• Hide Active Application Doesn’t Work With Adobe Applications

• Option+Apple+H
• Hide All But The Active Application

• Control+Eject
• Shut Down, Sleep, or Restart Options

• Apple+Control+Eject
• Quit all applications and Restart

• Apple+ . (period)
• Stop a process

• Apple+ , (comma)
• Open Preferences for Active Application

• Option+Apple+D
• Show/Hide Dock

• Control+Up Arrow
• Move up one page

• Control+Down Arrow
• Move down one page

• Option+Apple+Esc
• Force Quit

FILE MANAGEMENT

• Apple+N
• New Finder window or New Blank Page in Some Applications

• Shift+Apple+N
• New Folder Must Be In Finder Window For It to Work

• Apple+O
• Open Another Existing Document

• Apple+S
• Save

• Shift+Apple+S
• Save as

• Apple+P
• Print

• Apple+W
• Close Window

• Apple+Option+W
• Close all Windows

• Apple+I
• Get Info

• Option+Apple+I
• Show Attributes Inspector Limited use – varies by application.

• Apple+D
• Duplicate

• Apple+Q
• Close Application

• Apple+L
• Make Alias

• Apple+R
• Show Original

• Apple+T
• Add to Favorites Deprecated

• Apple+Delete
• Move Highlighted Items to Trash

• Apple+E
• Eject

• Apple+F
• Find

EDITING

• Apple+Z
• Undo

• Apple+X
• Cut

• Apple+C
• Copy

• Apple+V
• Paste

• Apple+A
• Select All

• Apple+ {
• Align Left Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ }
• Align Right Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ | (pipe)
• Align Center Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+ ; (semicolon)
• Check Spelling Only Works in Some Applications

• Shift+Apple+C
• Show Colors palette in application Only Works in Some Applications

• Apple+T
• Show Font palette in application Only Works in Some Applications

VIEW MENU

• Apple+1
• View as Icons

• Apple+2
• View as List

• Apple+3
• View as Columns

• Option+Apple+T
• Hide Toolbar

• Apple+J
• Show View Options

MOVING AROUND

• Apple+ [
• Back Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+ ]
• Forward Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+A
• Applications Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+F
• Favorites Must be in Finder Window

• Shift+Apple+G
• Goto Folder Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+K
• Connect to Server Must be in Finder Window

• Apple+Tab
• Switch to next Application Hold Apple key to enter App. switcher mode

CONTROLLING WINDOWS

• Apple+N
• New Window

• Apple+T
• New Tab If the Application supports Tabs

• Apple+M
• Minimize Window

• Option+Apple+M
• Minimize All Windows

GETTING HELP

• Apple+ ?
• Open Mac Help

UNIVERSAL ACCESS

• Option+Apple+ * (asterisk)
• Turn on Zoom

• Option+Apple+ =
• Zoom in

• Option+Apple+ -
• Zoom out

• Control+Option+Apple+ *
• Switch to White on Black

COMBINE KEYBOARD WITH MOUSE

• Option+Drag
• Copy to new location

• Option+Apple+Drag
• Make alias in new location

• Apple+Drag
• Move to new location without copying

SCREEN SHOTS

• Apple+Shift+3
• Take a picture of the screen will leave a .png file on desktop

• Apple+Shift+4
• Take a picture of the selection will leave a .png file on desktop

• Apple+Shift+4, Control
• Take a picture of the selection, place in clipboard

• Apple+Shift+4, Spacebar
• Take a picture of the selected window will leave a .png file on desktop

Now you can. Use Letter Opener. Less than $20.

yoono

Do you have a different notebook? Check this table to see the limitations when installing macos

http://stackoverflow.com/

Belarc Advisor

Go to the Finder, select Go > Go To Folder and type in ~/.Trash to bring up a Finder window showing the contents of your Trash, but this time around, Mac OS X recognizes it as a searchable window.

Type your search criteria, and then be sure to select .Trash as the location you’re searching (if you choose This Mac, the results you’re looking for won’t be found).

/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/New Mail.aiff

To

/Library/Sounds/

Then switched off the alert for new email in email preferences and went to growl and selected “new mail” for the new emails as alert.

It works