Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 04, 2011 by CyberNet.

When doing web development work I frequently find myself needing placeholder images that have specific dimensions. The last thing you want to do is sit there taking the time cropping a bunch of images to the size you need, and that’s where placeholder generators come into play. All of the online generators I’m going to show you use a custom URL scheme to make it hassle-free to get an image of any size.

Now you’d think that you’d only need one of these sites, but there are a handful I keep handy because they are able to serve up different kinds of images. Here are my favorites:

• PlaceKitten.com – Here you’ll find pictures of cute and cuddly kittens. Who can say no to a kitten?
  • Color photo example: http://placekitten.com/200/300
  • Grayscale photo example: http://placekitten.com/g/200/300
• PlaceHold.It -This site creates a bit more basic placeholders using just a solid (customizable) background color. Maybe not as exciting as some of the others, but it may be a little more professional depending on your audience.
  • Example: http://placehold.it/350×150
• LoremPixum.com – If you’re not fond of messing around with URLs this will probably be the site you’ll want to use. It has a nice selection interface for choosing the dimensions and category of your placeholder image, but images can also be retrieved through the basic URL scheme.
  • Color photo example: http://lorempixum.com/400/200
  • Grayscale photo example: http://lorempixum.com/g/400/200
  • Category example: http://lorempixum.com/400/200/sports
• Flickholdr.com – This site harnesses the vast library of photos over on Flickr. You can can even get a bit more detailed by specifying a Flickr tag you want the images restricted to.
  • Color photo example: http://flickholdr.com/200/300
  • Grayscale photo example: http://flickholdr.com/200/300/bw
  • Tag name example: http://flickholdr.com/200/300/sea

The next time you need an image it might be a huge time saver to turn to one of these sites to get something that is perfectly cropped to the dimensions you need.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 08, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

Last week we gave you some fun flash games to play around with for the weekend.  This week, we have a few more games for you to test out.  We came across these games from a comment Darshan made last week… so thanks Darshan!The only minor complication– the games and instructions are in French! But.. it’s not too difficult to figure out the object of the game.  The only words you really need to know are:

• Jouer = play
• Recommencer = restart

When you’re viewing the list of games, look for the English version.  It’s hit or miss, and most games don’t have an English version available. So.. on to the games. They come from www.zanorg.com, and are good challenges for your brain! First on the list…

Double Pong

This game simply requires the “e”, “d”, “o”, and “k” keys.  Your job is to keep both balls in play! It might appear easy at first, but once the balls get some speed to them, it’s hard for your brain to keep up with both sides of the screen!

Play Double Pong!

Jeu pour les secretaires

If my translation is correct, this translates into a game for secretaries.  With this game you have one minute to press the correct key on the keyboard.  The twist is that the letters are in random places.  Natural instinct is to press the key that they show in the picture. For example, in the picture below, they light up the letter Q which is in the “A” spot on a standard keyboard.  In instinctively want to press the A instead of where the Q is actually located. If you’re not familiar with the standard keyboard, this could be pretty difficult! My record was 84 keys in the minute.

Play Jeu pour les secretaires

La souris est invisible

I don’t know what the translation is, but I’ll just call it “invisible mouse” because that’s what happens! You start out by clicking the button.  After you’ve clicked the button, your mouse disappears, and a butterfly appears.  You have to blindly lead yourself to the butterfly. When it lights up, you click it, and then you move on to the next round! It consistently gets trickier with new road blocks set up in the way. You have to have good control over your mouse to be good at this one!

Play “invisible mouse” / La souris est invisible 

Bouli Boula (like miniature golf)

The next game reminds me of miniature golf.  The object of the game is to get the ball into the hole.  There’s an arrow attached to the ball which allows you to point it in any direction that you’d like.  Click to release the ball.  The longer you hold down the click, the more powerful the ball will move. Just like a miniature golf course, this game gets trickier as you go along. You’re give a certain amount of turns to get the ball into the hole!

Play Bouli Boula

Labryinthe 3D

The last game on the list is a 3D course which simply requires you to get the ball from the top down to the bottom of the course without falling off the edge.  You use arrows to control the ball! You have to be quick with your fingers to keep the ball from going overboard!

Play Labrinthe 3D

Hope you enjoy the games for today, they definitely give your brain a good workout!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

The creator of the Million Dollar Homepage is at it again with a whole new venture. Previously Alex Tew sold 1 pixel for $1 and in the end he sold all 1 million pixels on his site. In fact, the last 1,000 pixels were sold on eBay for a cost of $38,000! Why would people buy so many of these tiny ad spots? I’m not sure but this animated GIF image shows the progression of the Million Dollar Homepage over time and I am still astonished.

The newest idea from Alex Tew is called Pixelotto and will be opening the doors on December 5th. I was looking through some of the comments on TechCrunch’s article and there was a lot of good information including a link to the screenshot that I have on the right. Yep, your eyes aren’t lying to you…he is already selling ad space before he makes the site publicly available. Why is this site going to be any different? Because each of the 1 million pixels will cost $2 and eventually $1 million will be given out to someone via a lottery drawing that involves the people who have clicked on the ads. Here is some more information that I managed to scrounge up reading through the comments from TechCrunch:

• Every REGISTERED user gets 10 chances per day to enter the lottery. The more entries you make the more you get the chance to win the lottery when the draw takes place. So bots won’t work.

Here is the email that is being sent out to sell the ad space before December 5:

Hi

I have some very exciting news I’d like to share with you.

Next week, on 5th December, I am launching a new venture called ‘Pixelotto’. It’s similar to The Million Dollar Homepage only this time I will be giving away $1,000,000!

It’s all based around pixel advertising and generating big traffic for advertisers. Visitors play for free – all they have to do is click on the ads for chances to win the jackpot. The more they click, the more chances they have – and the more traffic you receive.

As a valued customer of The Million Dollar Homepage, I’d like to give you an exclusive opportunity to purchase advertising space on Pixelotto before the site goes public. The world will be watching next week and this is your chance to get on-board before everyone else.

The following link will give you exclusive access to Pixelotto, where you can buy ad space right now:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to e-mail me and my team at info@pixelotto.com

I look forward to welcoming you on-board for this new pixel adventure!

Cheers,

Alex Tew

Pixelotto
Pixelotto

Pixelotto Limited is registered in England & Wales. Company no. 05972757

Isn’t this insane! The creativity of Alex Tew is amazing and there are many people saying that he won’t succeed in doing this. Honestly, I hope he does because so many people try to copy off of his marketing ideas that I think he deserves to be successful. Not only that but he has found a way to make people want to click on the ads…and who wouldn’t want to be a millionaire? What a genius!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on February 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yahoo!  recently launched a new services called Pipes, and in short, it’s an “interactive feed aggregator and manipulator.” By using it, you can “create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant” Sounded interesting enough to me, so I thought I’d go check it out. Unfortunately when I went to go give it a try and create a new pipe, I got this message:

That didn’t take long!  Apparently Yahoo has some more work to do before it’s ready for the masses. So, after my disappointment, I set out to find someone who has gotten to play with this, who had a first hand experience with it and could give a good explanation. I came across O’Reilly Radar where Tim O’Reilly explains it well:

Using the Pipes editor, you can fetch any data source via its RSS, Atom or other XML feed, extract the data you want, combine it with data from another source, apply various built-in filters (sort, unique (with the “ue” this time:-), count, truncate, union, join, as well as user-defined filters), and apply simple programming tools like for loops. In short, it’s a good start on the Unix shell for mashups. It can extract dates and locations and what it considers to be “text entities.” You can solicit user input and build URL lines to submit to sites. The drag and drop editor lets you view and construct your pipeline, inspecting the data at each step in the process. And of course, you can view and copy any existing pipes, just like you could with shell scripts and later, web pages.

Pipes can simply be used as a kind of “power browser.”For example, you can build a custom mashup to search for traffic along your own routes every morning, or a news aggregator that searches multiple sites for subjects you care about. All you have to do is start with one of the existing modules. (And presumably, once pipes is opened to the public tonight, there will be many more, as anyone can publish their own modules.)

After reading O’Reilly’s explanation, it appears that Pipes makes it easy for people to play and interact with their feeds in a really simplified way. It also adds the social element allowing you to share the pipes you create. Hopefully it’ll be back up soon so that you can give it a try!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on November 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

From the sounds of it, Amazon is hoping that consumers will trade their loyalty with discount warehouses like Sam’s Club and Costco for the opportunity to have household items delivered to their door.A fairly new service called ‘Subscribe & Save” from Amazon will allow consumers to subscribe to an item and have it automatically delivered every 1, 2, 3, or 6 months. By doing this, they will  save 15% on their purchase which could bring the price of some items down to what they’d be at a discount warehouse, or lower.This could be especially useful for the household items that you always need like paper towels, diapers, laundry detergent, or even certain non-refrigerated foods like coffee.

Amazon has a page setup for Subscribe & Save where you can get an overview of some of the categories and products that they offer the subscription for. What’s great is that they offer free shipping on all of your orders and it says that you can cancel at any time. I haven’t tried it myself, but from the sounds of it, you could try it and see if it’s something that would work out for you, and if not, you could cancel if need be without getting any further orders for a particular subscription. You only pay for orders that have shipped, and you won’t be charged shipping until they actually ship your order.

Just about everything is offered in bulk which is probably why they’re able to offer lower prices.  So just pay attention to what it is that you’re actually getting before you buy.  The first item I looked at was  Scott Paper Towels which seemed pricey at $26.90 for a package of 12 rolls.  It took a minute before I realized you actually get two packages of twelve rolls for that price which is actually a good deal. If you have plenty of storage in your house for stuff like this, you really could save quite a bit of money.

As a side note, while I was looking at the Subscribe and Save program, I finally took the time to checkout the Amazon Prime program. Some of you have probably seen it advertised before, and it’s actually an awesome way to save money if you purchase a lot from Amazon.  You pay $79 a year to join but then you get unlimited free two-day shipping on most of the items that they sell.  If you wanted overnight shipping, you’d only have to pay $3.99 which isn’t bad at all!

Source: Download Squad

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