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“Porn” Among Top Search Terms for Kids

starMashable!
December 19, 2009 12:47 PM
by Pete Cashmore

“Porn” Among Top Search Terms for Kids

In a somewhat worrying piece of news, security firm Symantec has released the top search terms by kids in 2009. Topping the lists: “YouTube”, “Google”, “Facebook”, “sex” and “porn”.

While that result set might not be surprising in the teen search rankings, it’s interesting to note that “porn” ranks 4th in the “7 and under” category, receiving more searches than “Club Penguin” and “Webkinz”. Meanwhile, “sex” is fourth for teens and tweens alike. Facebook, YouTube and Google take the other top spots.

The data was compiled from 14.6 million searches made using Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton, which lets parents track their kids’ online activity. And while Symantec is almost certainly hoping to sell more software as a result, it’s also a timely reminder that kids are growing up fast these days.


Top Searches: Teens, Tweens and Under 7s


[via CNET and Symantec]

Tags: 2009, Search, Symantec

mashable 2009 Search Symantec

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Googlers Score A Quick $2 Billion On Option Repricing (GOOG)

starThe Business Insider
December 19, 2009 3:05 PM
by Henry Blodget

Googlers Score A Quick $2 Billion On Option Repricing (GOOG)

High Five

Thanks to an extremely fortuitously timed stock-option repricing (exchange), Googlers have made a killing in the past eight months at shareholder expense.

Option repricing is usually a colossal rip-off, a way of taking something that is supposed to be incentive-based compensation and transforming it into a heads-employees-win, tails-shareholders-lose guarantee. And so it was here. 

Google's stock is now nearing its peak again, a mere two years after tumbling with the rest of the market.  Given that options are supposed to be a long-term compensation incentive, and given that Googlers have perks most workers can only dream of (starting with a robustly healthy and profitable employer), shareholders might have hoped that the company would at least wait a few years before transferring so much shareholder wealth directly to its employees.

Of course, one mitigating factor here is that those shareholders include Larry and Sergey.  So they're taking the hit as well.

AP, SJ Merc: A day before stocks bottomed in March, Google let almost 16,000 of its workers exchange their stock options. It turned out to be the deal of a lifetime.

The average exercise price for the options held by non-executives was around $521 a share at that time. But Google's shares were trading closer to $308 each, making the options all but worthless. So, Google repriced the options to where its stock closed on March 6.

Then something surprising happened. Like the broader market, Google's shares began to soar. Now, the stock is around $590, and each option has a profit of roughly $280. That amounts to a potential windfall for employees at the Internet search company of more than $2 billion.

Keep reading at the Merc >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

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How to Get Free Inflight Wi-Fi This Holiday Season [Dealzmodo]

starGizmodo
December 19, 2009 5:00 PM
by Chris Jacob

How to Get Free Inflight Wi-Fi This Holiday Season [Dealzmodo]

Holiday travel can be a tiresome experience. If you want to relax with a little Wi-Fi on the plane, MyMoneyBlog.com has compiled a list of the codes you can use to get free internet access during your holiday excursions.

Yesterday we showed you the inflight Wi-Fi cheat sheet, and according to the chart there are really only four airlines where you even have a chance of finding the internet: Delta, AirTran, American Airlines and Virgin America. The first three require a code to get free Wi-Fi, but Virgin America doesn't.

According to FlyerTalk and MyMoneyBlog.com, these are the codes you'll need to use on Delta, AirTran or AA. All expire on December 31:
Delta: DELTATRYGOGO
AirTran: AIRTRANTRYGOGO
American Airlines: AATRYGOGO

Edit: Reader Fo just reminded me that these codes are for new users only, and work once per email address. The same likely applies for the codes below. (But if you have a Gmail account, you can insert random periods in the username to create "unique" addresses that all go to your account.)

If those don't work for whatever reason, FlyerTalk and MyMoneyBlog.com also reference these three codes. They should be valid until January 7:

• 2287548427snk
• 2472564126dvu
• 2285632980tlk

If you're flying Virgin America, you don't have to do anything. Google partnered up with the airline to provide free Wi-Fi throughout the holidays until January 15.

Those are your best bets. Hopefully free Wi-Fi will make your holiday travels a little more tolerable. [My Money Blog, Virgin America]

Dealzmodo Free in-flight wifi Holidays in-flight wifi Travel WiFi

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Napa

Napa Valley, truly such an amazing place.

(download)

Lightroom: Controlling the Before and After


Lightroom: Controlling the Before and After

One of the nice things about Lightroom is that it lets you view before and after versions of your image. Lightroom can do this so easily because it does not make permanent changes to your image as you work on it. Instead, Lightroom keeps a log of the edits that you have made and only applies them to the image when you export the image.


before_after.jpg


Use the Before/After options in Lightroom to check that the changes you have made to your image to make sure that you’re headed in the right direction.


Here are some ways to harness the comparative Before/After power of Lightroom:


Step 1


If you are in the Develop module you’ll need to make sure that View Modes are enabled so that you can see the necessary icons. To do this, click the small triangle under the image to the right in the Develop module and choose View Modes.


step1.jpg


Step 2


You will now see a button which has Y|Y on it. Click this to see the before and after views of your image.


step2.jpg



Step 3


From the dropdown list you can choose from multiple ways to see the before and after views. Before/After Left/Right shows the before and after views side by side – this works well for portrait orientation images.


step3.jpg


Step 4


The Before/After Left/Right Split shows a single version of the image split so that the left side of the image is the before view and the right side is the after view.


step4.jpg


Step 5


The Before/After Top/Bottom option shows the before image at the top and the after image at the bottom – this works well for landscape orientation images.


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Nokia vs. Apple: the in-depth analysis


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Nokia vs. Apple: the in-depth analysis


There's just something about Apple that makes people go crazy whenever the company's lawyers do even the simplest things -- whether it's filing routine trademark oppositions, getting patents granted, or, uh, defending allegations that the company is in league with the Mafia, Steve and friends just seem to inspire some strong reactions whenever they end up in the courtroom. So of course things got a little wild last Thursday when Nokia announced it was suing Apple over ten patents related to GSM, UMTS (what you know as 3G) and WiFi -- the pundit class immediately set upon the idea that the lawsuit was some sort of reaction to Nokia's diminishing cellphone marketshare and the perceived dominance of the iPhone, perhaps best exemplified by John Gruber's flippant "If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em." Nokia can't compete against Apple, so obviously it's abusing the hopelessly-broken patent system get a little payback, Espoo-style -- right?

Well, wrong. As usual, the race to hype this dispute as a bitter standoff between two tech giants desperate to destroy one another has all but ignored the reality of how patents -- especially wireless patents -- are licensed, what Nokia's actually asking for, and how it might go about getting it. And as you know, we just don't do things that way, so we've asked our old friend Mathew Gavronski, a patent attorney in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich, to help us sort things out and figure out wha...

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Thought Of The Night

The concept of "Falling in Love" is not a good phrase since it suggests that people can fall out of love. People also equate love with a feeling. This is simply not true. Love is an action. Another truth about love is that the opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness. When people stop loving eachother it is usually for selfish reasons. All that in mind loving someone is having the desire to seek to do what is best for your loved one selflessly. I would imagine that falling love with someone is the process by which you gain that desire. Only in a more romantic sense.

Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

starPSDFan
October 24, 2009 10:33 AM
by Narendra Keshkar

Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

As Halloween approaches we bring you a hell-like burning text effect! Enjoy the tutorial!

Final Image

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

burn34 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

If you want access to the downloadable .PSD file for this, and every other tutorial at PSDFAN, then join our members area for just $4.95 per month.

Step 1

So let’s start with a new document of 3300 px width and 2336 px height at 300 resolutions. I created large document because I wanted to print it on A4 size.

burn1 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 2

Press U and select rectangle tool and create a rectangle of document size and apply gradient overlay with colors 890000 & ffb400. Now select transform tool and increase rectangle size from document size to 4515 px width and 3196px height.

burn2 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn3 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Duplicate the rectangle and apply 10% transparency with normal mode. Your gradient will automatically transform and results will be like this.

Step 3

Now select type tool and write letter “H”. Font is your choice but I used here font Akashi of 180 pt weight. Go to the layer style option and reduce the Fill Opacity to zero in Advanced Blending. Now apply these layer styles.

Gradient overlay: color c00000 & ec7272

Inner glow: color fba8a8, opacity 76%, blending mode screen.

Inner shadow: color ffc7c7, 65% opacity and size 13px.

burn4 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn5 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn6 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn7 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 4

Now duplicate the letter H and name it emboss. Remove all layer style and fill opacity to 100%. Shift it slightly right and down to give it emboss look. Now ctrl + click on text layer “H” and press delete to remove unwanted area.

burn8 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Ctrl + click emboss layer, right click and click on “Make Work Path”. Now select direct selection tool by pressing A and select anchor points. Adjust them and fill it with color d90000 to give it a real 3d look.

burn9 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 5

Now isolate all the faces of emboss layer like right face, bottom faces, and apply these layer style.

burn10 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn11 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn12 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn13 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 6

Apply layer style same as in step 5 here.

burn14 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 7

Now select the bottom of letter H and apply gradient overlay same as in step 5 with 90 degree angle.

burn15 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 8

Repeat step 3,4,5,6 & 7 in letter O and T. The result will look like this.

burn16 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 9

Merge all layers of text HOT and name it hot. Change its blending mode to overlay. Duplicate the HOT layer and change blending mode to darken name it HOT 1. Duplicate this HOT1 layer.

burn17 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 10

Ctrl + click HOT1 layer, select a soft brush of color black and size 100 px and paint the shadow of text considering the source of light on top left. Change its opacity to 10% and blending mode to multiply.

burn18 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 11

Now ctrl + click letter H, O, and T and save this selection to HOT and apply layer mask. Create new layer & name it shadow, load selection HOT and fill it with black color. Apply motion blur of -36 degree and decrease its opacity to 25% with multiply mode.

burn19 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 12

Copy HOT layer and change its blending mode to dissolve. Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with setting; Hue 6, Saturation 3, Lightness 0. Create clip mask by pressing alt + click on between the adjustment layer & HOT layer.

burn20 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 13

Duplicate HOT layer again and keep it on top go to Filter gallery choose Reticulation filter with these settings:

Density: 3
Foreground Level: 40
Background Level: 5

Change its blending mode to soft light. Name it R filter.

burn21 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 14

Looks good! Now select brush of 15 px size and 100% hardness, press F5 to access brush option and increase size jitter to 100% on Shape Dynamics. On the scattering option keep scatter 90%. Now click layer mask button bottom to layer pallet. Click on the layer mask, choose black color and hide the area where we’ll burn it.

burn22 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 15

Create a level adjustment layer below R filter layer with these settings.

burn23 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Click on layer mask, press ctrl + I. It will mask everything; now select a soft brush of size 20, color white, and opacity 70% and paint around hidden areas of R filter layer. Now ctrl + click on R filter layer and hide selected area. The result will look like this.

burn24 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 16

Add layer mask to HOT layer and hide the area outside burned texture. This will give a warmer feel to the text inside burning texture.

burn25 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 17

It’s time to add some fire on it. I used images from sxc.hu Drag images into document and change color mode to screen and duplicate image twice to get desired result.

burn26 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn27 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 18

We’re near to complete. Now it’s time to add some finishing. Create a new layer select gradient tool and use colors cb0b0b, f89d9d and f2acac. Add noise of 3px, monochromatic, distribution Gaussian. Keep color mode to multiply. Add layer mask and mask areas around text HOT by a smooth brush.

burn28 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn29 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Step 19

Create a level adjustment layer with these settings. Now we are facing a problem that is letter H & O is darker then T. To fix this problem add layer mask and hide area of H & O by painting soft 70% opacity brush.

burn30 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Create curve adjustment layer with input 84 and output 100.

burn31 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Now create another level adjustment layer with these settings and name it level 2.

burn32 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

burn33 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

The result will look like this.

Step 20

Nearly finished the whole effect but not looking very impressive right? Ok, apply layer mask to “level 2” adjustment layer, select large soft brush with color black and hide the area around fire. This will add life to the scene because we added fire’s light refracted on text and texture.

burn34 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

That’s all friends!

And We’re Done!

That’s the tutorial finished! I hope you’ve enjoyed it and learnt something useful. Click on the image below if you would like to view the full sized final image:

burn34 Create a Unique Burning Text Effect

Don’t forget! If you want access to the downloadable .PSD file for this, and every other tutorial at PSDFAN, then join our members area for just $4.95 per month.

Text Effects

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10 Must-Read Roundups You Might Have Missed Last Week

starInspired Magazine
October 25, 2009 7:24 AM
by Catalin Zorzini

10 Must-Read Roundups You Might Have Missed Last Week

Our sister website Inspired News delivers around 50 killer articles per day for the design / develop / freelance community so you must be very careful to not miss the best one. That’s why we’re starting to feature the best articles of the week in a small but cool roundup. Feel free to leave a comment with other suggestions & stuff.

51 Web Apps for Web Designers and Developers

51

Web design and development has significantly changed over the years, as have the tools and technologies involved. With these advancements come tools to make our lives easier, provide higher quality work and better services for our clients

13 Informative and Enjoyable Web Design Podcasts

podcasts

As marvelous as it is browsing the net seeking new resources, keeping up to date with fresh web trends, new web app start-ups and learning new techniques, it can be very time consuming and not very productive

10 Outstanding Corporate Wordpress Themes for Freelancers and Small Business Owners

wordpress

We know there are quite a few freelancers and small business owners out there and this one is for you 100%. We selected the most customizable, good looking, sexy, sleek, affordable, and fresh themes on the market

15 Vector Character Mascots Used In Websites

15

Many website today use a vector character mascot. This can give their website or web service a face. When I think of ZenDesk I think of the buddah, and mailchimp the chimp mailman

Showcase Of Professional Looking Website Designs

showcase

Throughout history, great designers always found new ways to show their creativity to express themselves and create new trends and techniques to remark their work apart from the rest of the crowd

Big Header – The Power of beautiful web design – Showcase of the best 20

headers

The first look of web design, of course, is the header. Your website header is the most important part in your design. You can see around the web, most of designers always spend more time to make up their header

30 Mac Screensavers to Inspire & Inform

screensavers

Today we’re looking at 30 different screensavers that will inspire and inform you. Whether that’s keeping you up-to-date with news, showing information about incoming messages, recent tweets, or even helping you learn a new language!

27+ Beautiful Examples of Infographics

27

These graphics are used where complex information needs to be explained quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education

20 great web designs with a dark background

dark

While I’m not a great fan of dark backgrounds for websites with a lot of text, it can look great from time to time, especially for portfolios. This collection shows some great looking websites with dark backgrounds

7 Key Principles That Make A Web Design Look Good

7key

Everyone and their grandfather (and dog) seems to have a website these days. The Web is getting more crowded by the day, with literally dozens of websites being added as you read this article

PS: For a daily selection of design, development and freelancing related articels head on to Inspired News and feel free to Submit cool posts for the community.

Articles Web Design

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NYTimes: No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

From The New York Times:

No Einstein in Your Crib? Get a Refund

The Walt Disney Company is offering refunds for its “Baby Einstein” videos, a tacit admission that they did not increase intellect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/education/24baby.html

Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://itunes.com/apps/nytimes


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