AdMoolah News writes:

A few months ago, many high profile bloggers in the SEO community started using the MyBlogLog Widget on their pages. This included people such as ShoeMoney, Andy Beal, and GrayWolf. People were excited about building their communities and the opportunity to network with other blogger. I also joined up in December and placed the widget on my blog.

Soon, however reports of MyBlogLog spamming started rolling in. People were adding links to their networks via automated scripts, people came up with automated ways of getting their pictures at the top of high profiles blogs. People discovered how to automatically add others as co-authors on their blogs.

One of the highest profile bloggers talking about these issues was ShoeMoney. He was pointing out flaws and also pointed out a way people could surf the web pretending to be any member of MyBlogLog they wanted. This action got him banned from MyBlogLog. This caused many other bloggers, including Andy Beal and GrayWolf to boycott MyBlogLog.

Consider reading full article here.

Desktop wallpapers usually meant one of three things: exotic cars, women in compromising positions, or Bliss. If you were given the job to choose only a handful of images from billions and billions of creatives available today to be part of an operating system’s desktop wallpapers, how would you choose them and which ones would you choose?

That was the daunting task appointed to Microsoft Design’s Jenny Lam, who led the year-long search to find what would become the new set of bundled wallpapers for Windows Vista.

The end result is a stunning set of photographs and art which make up the collections of light auras, textures, paintings and vistas. You might be easily fooled to believe that these are the works of professional photographers who eat camera film for breakfast, lunch and tea, but you’d be wrong. It’s true, some of these photos did come from big stock houses such as Corbis, Getty and National Geographic, but did you also know some came from Flickr and even Microsoft employees?

Photographs by Flickr user Hamad Darwish.

Some interesting statistics on the selection process:

• About 2/3rds of the collection is licensed from stock houses.
• There are a handful from amateur Flickr photographers (which are Jenny’s favorites).

• Not only did Jenny ask the Flickr photographers if they could license their images, she also sent them on a commissioned photoshoot. You can find some here and here.

This new approach to sourcing and licensing creatives is exciting not only because amateur and enthusiast now have the chance to showcase their works to millions and millions of people - something even the most prestigious art gallery cannot offer, but also recognition of community-driven websites such as Flickr for the ability to deliver quality ‘products’ equal to or even better than from traditional content companies.

Hopefully Microsoft might even consider expanding the program to allow for public submissions of photographs and creatives to be included in future editions of Windows. In a way, “Show us your Wow” is already a test-bed for user-submitted content and community feedback with over 20,000 entires submitted. Of course, there will be certain licensing and legal issues to overcome, but I bet some enthusiasts will do anything to get their works displayed on such a scale.

Certainly interesting times ahead for enthusiasts like Hamad and Thomas Hawk.

Original Post : Finding vistas - istartedsomething

cForms is a plugin for Wordpress, offering convenient deployment of multiple contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page. The form submission utilizes AJAX, however, falls back to the standard method in case AJAX/Javascript is not supported.

Visit & Download, via

Gravatar announced the release of the all new gravatar.com 2.0! It’s the same great Gravatar you’ve come to know and love, now with more features and better scalability.

As always, you can sign up for free and get:

• One email address per account
• Two gravatars per account (and an easy way to switch between them)

Or upgrade to Gravatar Premium and get:

• Unlimited emails per account
• Unlimited gravatars per account (makes switching between them easy!)

Gravatar Blog

Feed Styler is a WordPress plugin for WordPress users who are comfortable with CSS and would like to be able to style their feeds. Feed Styler enables you to keep your existing class and ID style declarations in your content, but allows a different style to be applied to the feed of that same content. No longer do feeds have to be stripped of style and color.

Feed Styler is for those that use WordPress, are comfortable with CSS, and would like to be able to use their existing markup to style their feeds. Feed Styler is very effective at styling images, blockquotes, and much more. If you are a hand coder and familiar with CSS, Feed Styler will be very intuitive.

This plugin is not for CSS beginners, and not for those that rely on WordPress’s WYSIWYG for content appearance. This plugin is also not for those who have the opinion that feeds should be void of style.

Proceed to download

The IMM-Glossary plugin was created to give WordPress users an easy way to create and manage an online glossary of terms relevant to their website.  Adding terms and linking to them by hand was a tedious process.  The IMM-Glossary plugin makes keeping your readers educated easy.

MAJOR FEATURES

• Add terms and definitions from within the WordPress admin interface
• Automatic linking of terms in all posts, new and old
• Option to link all instances of a word in a post or page or just the first one (Globally and per post)
• Option to include an icon of your choosing next to glossary terms to distinguish them from normal hyperlink
• Automatically builds master glossary page, complete with navigation links
• Automatically creates single entry pages for linked terms

Download

More feedback on this plugin:

• Wordpress Plugin Lovers Love This
• I heart this glossary plugin

Get this great plugin from here

Once installed, this plugin allows you to insert mp3 audio files into your posts and pages. Use the following syntax:

[audio:name_of_mp3_file.mp3]

This code will insert a flash player and will load the file named name_of_mp3_file.mp3 located in your audio files folder. You can store your audio files anywhere in the web root as long as you update the path in the plugin’s options panel.

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Learn to Design, Develop, and Deploy Interactive Media at Dx3 Conference

February 5, 2007—Ojai, California—lynda.com events premieres a new conference, Dx3: Design/Develop/Deploy taking place in Boston, May 15-18, 2007 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. Dx3 is a four-day conference and expo filled with intensive workshops and sessions, targeting interactive designers and developers who are moving beyond the web browser to deploy rich experiences to the desktop, game consoles, and mobile devices. This will be the first conference to showcase Microsoft Expression and Adobe Apollo, together, along with Ajax, open standards, video, accessibility, inspiration, and community—all under one roof. Diamond Sponsor Microsoft Expression and Gold Sponsor Adobe Systems will each deliver keynotes, alongside top industry experts who will present case studies, how-tos, and inspirational examples of where our industry is headed.

The speaker line up for Dx3 includes Eric Zocher, Microsoft; David Mendels, Adobe; Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path; Kevin Yank, SitePoint; and Jared Spool and Joshua Porter, User Interface Engineering among other notable industry leaders. Speakers will present on a broad range of topics including WPF, WPF/E, Flash, Flex, Apollo, Ajax, user experience, accessibility, open standards, mobile, video, social networking, designer/developer workflow, and much more.

“The demand for knowledgeable, forward-thinking designers and developers has never been greater and the industry is moving at light-speed,” said Lynda Weinman, CEO of lynda.com events. “The interactive design landscape is changing before our eyes, and the tools, issues, and solutions are evolving at an exciting pace. There’s never been a better time to be in this industry, or to attend a conference of this nature.”

Dx3 will include an Expo Hall where new tools and products will be showcased to keep attendees up-to-the-minute on the most current industry offerings. Attendees are certain to benefit from the fresh business and market opportunities offered through new and evolving publishing platforms and partners.

Conference registration for Dx3: Design/Develop/Deploy which takes place in Boston May 15-18, 2007 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place is open now at www.dx3conference.com for a limited number of attendees.

About Dx3

Dx3: Design/Develop/Deploy is a four-day event created for interactive designers and developers to learn new ways to leverage skills, explore new markets, network with other professionals, and master the latest tools and technologies that will drive the industry now and in the future. The conference boasts keynotes from Microsoft and Adobe, over 45 sessions, intensive all-day workshops, networking events and parties, an Expo Hall, job fair, and much more.

For more information www.dx3conference.com

About lynda.com Events

Dx3 is developed and produced by lynda.com events, Inc., in cooperation with lynda.com, the award-winning provider of educational material including Hands-On Training™ instructional books, the Online Training Library™, and CD- and DVD-based video training for creative designers, instructors, students, and hobbyists. For seven years, lynda.com has produced seminars, training programs, events, and conferences—including Flashforward, the world’s first, largest, and most-renowned conference on Adobe Flash®.

For more information: www.lynda.com

CONTACT: Laura Des Enfants, Dx3, +1-917-991-1807 or laura at dx3conference.com

I’m are sorry for not updating this blog within last 2 weeks. But i spent this week on a wonderful beaches of Cuba enjoying a nice vacation. More information will be posted later. Cuba is a wonderful country despite socialism