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There is an ever increasing demand for more and more hard disk drive storage space and general performance and the Hitachi company has just released a product that should address the high-end need of storage solutions with the competing Samsung and Seagate offerings soon to follow.

Since the competing products from Samsung and Seagate will only be available from the late August and
September, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 has a few months to steal the limelight. The Hitachi desktop hard disk drive is what is called a second-generation of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) hard drive.

Coming with four platters with ten heads, the Hitachi hard disk drive has fewer in-motion parts than its yet to be released competitors, so the risk of a mechanical defect is lower. But there is the argument that the more platters there are inside a drive, the less high density surfaces are needed, so less chance of a read or write error, which would lead to increased performance. As always with the hardware components, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The Deskstar 7K1000 is of a 3.5-inch form factor, 7200 RPM, 32MB Buffer, S-ATA based 3.0 Gb/s (also known as SATA 2) since the ATA standard is pretty much an obsolete one these days.

According to its documentation cited by the Web based news site The Inquirer, the Deskstar hard disk drive is capable of some impressive feats like reduced seek times to 8.5 ms read and 9.2 ms write, while the patented Silent-seek time is just 14 ms read and 15 ms write. The disk heads come with a special “ramp load/unload” design, that in the idle states shift the heads outside the disk to conserve energy and protect the data surface. This design should save as much as 50 percent more energy as opposed to classical disk power saving technologies. Another power saving technology implemented into the Deskstar drive is the use of three low power modes that are designed to extend the drive life by using non-operational modes.

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As it seems Fox News left their image directory open… means, publicly indexed… and most of the images are no better than your common image macro. This is something a webmaster never should do. But, I think their webmaster just took out on holidays. ;) Yep, end of July… But…. But…. maybe this is another political trick.. Remember; Presidential Campaign? Who knows. This is just my oppinion. Those days I can really think of anything. There are a lot of images there; personally didn’t had the time to check them all, but, be sure that someone welse will do that for us all.

So, again:

What is one of your bookmarks?

http://www…………………………………………….. (fill in)

Mine?

Sure: http://www.foxnews.com/images/root_images/

Update: It is not only the root image directory… a lot of other directories;
Check by yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site%3Afoxnews%2Ecom+intitle%3A%22index+of%22

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Ok, so you’ve created a Myspace page from the Myspace login page and now you have the task of designing your Myspace layout to best express yourself, your personality, your business or your band. How do you do this? How can you create a cool Myspace layout that will attract thousands of users? Adding interesting colors, graphics, fonts, videos and photos is one way to go about it. When you create a Myspace layout that rivals the best Myspace pages out there, you will soon see that your number of friends can quickly jump into the thousands, creating a network of over ten million people.

That’s a lot of eyes! The more people you get to view and add to your friends, the larger your network of contacts becomes. Using an easy-to-use Myspace layout is the way to create a more interesting Myspace page. When you visit your friend’s pages, which pages are the most interesting and hold your attention? Do some research and search around Myspace to find out what kind of Myspace layouts and Myspace backgrounds attract you the most. Copy the style of these Myspace pages and make your Myspace page the hottest Myspace layout in town!

It’s no secret that Myspace music is a key element to your cool Myspace page. Finding music on Myspace is no problem, search around on band pages to hear some new music and find a song that you want to include on your profile page. This song will automatically start (unless you edit the Myspace code) and your users will have a soundtrack to your page while they view it! Your musical selection will give your viewers an idea of your sense of style and personality.

Whether you prefer hip-hop, rap. Rock and roll, country western, Christian religious, heavy metal, R&B, easy listening, jazz, emo, alternative or hard core punk rock, you will find a song that suits your mood on Myspace music. Once you find the song you want to add, simply add the Myspace music code into your profile and you ‘ll have your users jamming along with you. Change it three times a day, if you like! The limit is really only your imagination when you are creating your Myspace layout.

Yesterday, you wanted a cute Myspace layout, but today, you’re feeling a little more like finding a free hot Myspace layout to suit your mood. Did your boyfriend break up with you and now you are feeling a little less like glittery, pink stars and a little more like black and red skulls and crossbones? No problem. You can update your Myspace layout any time. Find some Myspace graphics or Myspace icons for your Myspace layout and add a little fun to your profile page with moving animations. You can even change the Myspace cursor from the regular cursor to an animated turquoise glitter guitar if you want to! Everybody who is anybody wants to have a pimped out Myspace layout and you can have it, too. It’s easy to update your profile page layout with user-friendly Myspace generators such as the ones found at getonmyspace.com.

By:

Whether you prefer hip-hop, rap. Rock and roll, country western, Christian religious, heavy metal, R&B, easy listening, jazz, emo, alternative or hard core punk rock, you will find a song that suits your mood on Myspace music. Once you find the song you want to add, simply add the Myspace music code into your profile and you ‘ll have your users jamming along with you. Change it three times a day, if you like! The limit is really only your imagination when you are creating your Myspace layout.

Yesterday, you wanted a cute Myspace layout, but today, you’re feeling a little more like finding a free hot Myspace layout to suit your mood. Did your boyfriend break up with you and now you are feeling a little less like glittery, pink stars and a little more like black and red skulls and crossbones? No problem. You can update your Myspace layout any time. Find some Myspace graphics or Myspace icons for your Myspace layout and add a little fun to your profile page with moving animations. You can even change the Myspace cursor from the regular cursor to an animated turquoise glitter guitar if you want to! Everybody who is anybody wants to have a pimped out Myspace layout and you can have it, too. It’s easy to update your profile page layout with user-friendly Myspace generators such as the ones found at getonmyspace.com. Including the new Harry Potter Comments to elebrate the release of the new movie by sending your friends a great Harry Potter Comment using those free Harry Potter Myspace comment codes.

By: broniac

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Even before the web, advertising pioneer David Ogilvy found that advertisements in at least four colors are 100% more memorable than ads in black and white. He also notes that white (or light) background colors with black (or dark) text color improved conversion by 100% as opposed to the reverse. Colors capture visitors’ attention, trigger emotions and when used correctly they help you keep viewers around long enough to make you money.

When visitors first load your website you have approximately 30 seconds to catch their attention. Your web design better be appealing, easy to view, and instantly captivate your visitor or you can say hello to Mr. Back Button…

So which color has a calming effect? Which one increases heart rate? Do certain colors make a customer more comfortable with buying from your site?

The colors of the layout can largely affect a users perception of how easy to use, or professional you web site looks.

The Colors Are Meaningful; The First Impression of Your Web Site

Different colors have different meanings and associations. They engage your visitors emotions, silently and powerfully… Than, What Colors Mean…

WHITE – Cleanliness, and refinement. Brides wear white as a sign of purity as do doctors. Impressions: refreshing, clarity, and truthfulness.

BLACK – Power, sophisticated, seriousness. Creates drama and strong emotions but too much is overwhelming. A bad background choice. Impressions: mystery, exclusive, or evil.

BLUE – The most popular color worldwide. Promotes business dependability; a good choice for building customer loyalty. Impressions: cooling, serene, can also be cold.

RED – Excitement, danger, passion, energetic. Red draws attention, increases heart rate and stimulates appetite. Use it to focus attention with boldness and accents, and promote excitement. Impressions: Enthusiasm, encourages confidence, action.

GREEN – Natural, healthy, peaceful. Green promotes tranquility, and financial stability. The second favorite color, green is easy on the eye. Impressions: renewal, harmony,relaxing.

PURPLE – Wisdom, royalty, spirituality or sophistication, celebration or mournfulness. Purple is made of blue (calming) and red (stimulating) and the dominant undertone will define perception. Frequently a favorite of adolescent girls and creative people; purple can promote a premium service or create a romantic, feminine appeal. Impressions: encourages creativity, uplifting, spiritual, and calming.

ORANGE – Warmth, energy, play, excitement. It can add fun to your site, or be a highlight on charts and graphs. Impressions: stimulates activity and appetite, and encourages socialization.

BROWN – Effectiveness, stability, and richness. It’s associated with natural, organic things. Impressions: a connection to the earth, wholesome feelings, and orderliness.

Now that You know your colors will have an immediate effect on visitors, what are your winning Color Schemes…?

Some Effective Color Schemes

So what’s the right color scheme for a positive effect? First, carefully consider colors to promote your image. Use a background color and text color that contrast but work in harmony. Variations of one color don’t provide enough contrast.

A light background color (instead of white) maintains contrast, but is easier to read since it softens the screen’s brightness. Gray’s a favorite background choice, although, green is gaining favor as the “new gray.” Choose a text color that stands out and is easy to read against your background. Use bold, primary colors to draw attention to important page elements. But be careful: Too many colors can distract and reduce readability. In addition, colors should enhance site usability. Establishing a color for headings and a color for links allows visitors to navigate quickly and easily.

Accommodating the Color Blind Online

Web sites with good balance and color schemes have the usability and appearance. Similarities in hues and brightness harmonize colors and create attractive color schemes. However, they’re not “user-friendly” for the visually impaired. Nearly one in 12 visitors to your site will have some form of color-blindness. Most commonly, the inability to distinguish between red and green. So a red-green combination is a bad choice for usability. If links are a different color, but aren’t identifiable as links, color-blind visitors may not realize that they are links. Blue is recognizable by everyone, and the standard usage of blue, underlined lettering for links gives all visitors the same usability.

With all colors, it’s best to keep them bright and distinct to clearly separate headings, links, and text, and increase functionality.

Use the following links to help choose your winning color schemes.

• For browser safe colors organized by hue:
  http://websitetips.com/colorcharts/weinman/hue/
• For color harmonies to create combinations and themes:
  http://www.easyrgb.com/harmonies.php

Give thought to what emotions your colors will trigger, and how the colors enhance your site’s usability. When you consider your viewer’s needs, select a color scheme that is appealing, and is easy for them to use, you’ll have the winning edge to convert visitors into customers.

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Just installed the new Google Gears (BETA). Anyone tried this? I would try it before and let you know, so dont forget to check back later. But;

What is Google Gears?

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

• A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
• A database, to store and access data from within the browser
• A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Google Gears is currently an early-access developers’ release. It is not yet intended for use by real users in production applications at this time.
If you’re a developer interested in using Google Gears with your application, visit the Google Gears Developer Page.

If you wish to install Google Gears on your computer, visit the Google Gears Home Page. Please note, however, that Google Gears is not yet intended for general use.

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Most of the stuff on the web is no different than the stuff on your computer - it’s just a whole load of files sorted into a whole load of directories.

HTML files are nothing more than simple text files, so to start writing in HTML, you need nothing more than a simple text editor.

Notepad is a common text editor (on Windows this is usually found under the Programs > Accessories menu).

Type this in to your text editor:

This is my first web page

Now create a folder called ‘html’ in your C drive (or anywhere else you fancy) and save the file as “myfirstpage.html”. It is important that the extension “.html” is specified - some text editors, such as Notepad, will automatically save it as “.txt” otherwise.

To look at HTML files, they don’t even need to be on the web. Open a web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer and in the address bar, where you usually type web addresses, type in the location of the file you just saved (for example, “c:\html\myfirstpage.html”) and hit return. Alternatively, go to the File menu of the browser, select Open, and browse for the file.

Pow. There it is. Your first web page. How exciting. And all it took was a few typed words.

We’ve said here to use a basic text-editor, such as Notepad, but you may be tempted to use a dedicated software program such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage.

You should be very careful when using these programs, especially if you are a beginner, because they often throw in unnecessary or non-standard code to “help” you.

If you’re serious about learning HTML, you should read through a tutorial such as this first, so that you at least have a basic understanding of what is going on.

Software programs such as these will never give you the same control over a web page as coding by hand.

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Although the basics of HTML are plain text, we need a bit more to make it a valid HTML document.

Tags

The basic structure of an HTML document includes tags, which surround content and apply meaning to it.

Change your document so that it looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>
<html>
<body>
	This is my first web page
</body>
</html> 

Now save the document again, go back to the web browser and select “refresh” (which will reload the page).

The appearance of the page will not have changed at all, but the purpose of HTML is to apply meaning, not presentation, and this example has now defined some fundamental elements of a web page.

The first line on the top that starts <!DOCTYPE… is to let the browser know that you know what the hell you’re doing. You may think that you don’t actually know what you’re doing yet, but it’s important to stick this in. If you don’t, browsers will switch into “quirks mode” and act in a very peculiar way. Don’t worry about this just yet, you can learn more about “document types” in the HTML Advanced Tutorial if you really want to. For the moment, just remember to shove this line at the top of your web pages and you’re laughin’.

To get back to the point, <html> is the opening tag that kicks things off and tells the browser that everything between that and the </html> closing tag is an HTML document. The stuff between <body> and </body> is the main content of the document that will appear in the browser window.

Closing tags

The </body> and </html> close their respective tags. ALL HTML tags should be closed. Although older versions of HTML lazily allowed some tags not to be closed, latest standards require all tags to be closed. This is a good habit to get into anyway.

Not all tags have closing tags like this (<html></html>) some tags, which do not wrap around content will close themselves. The line-break tag for example, looks like this : <br />. We will come across these examples later. All you need to remember is that all tags must be closed and most (those with content between them) are in the format of opening tag ? content ? closing tag.

Attributes

Tags can also have attributes, which are extra bits of information. Attributes appear inside the opening tag and their value is always inside quotation marks. They look something like <tag attribute=”value”>Margarine</tag>. We will come across tags with attributes later.

Elements

Tags tend not to do much more than mark the beginning and end of an element. Elements are the bits that make up web pages. You would say, for example, that everything that is in-between and includes the <body> and </body> tags is the body element. As another example, whereas ‘<title>‘ and ‘</title>‘ are tags, ‘<title>Rumple Stiltskin</title>‘ is a title element.

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All HTML pages should have a page title.

To add a title to your page, change your code so that it looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	This is my first web page
</body>

</html>

We have added two new elements here, that start with the head tag and the title tag (and see how both of these close).

The head element (that which starts with the <head> opening tag and ends with the </head> tag) appears before the body element (starting with <body> and ending with </body>) and contains information about the page. The information in the head element does not appear in the browser window.

We will see later on that other elements can appear inside the head element, but the most important of them is the title element.

If you look at this document in the browser (save and refresh as before), you will see that “My first web page” will appear on the title bar of the window (not the actual canvas area). The text that you put in between the title tags has become the title of the document (surprise!). If you were to add this page to your ‘favourites’ (or ‘bookmarks’, depending on your browser), you would see that the title is also used there.

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Now that you have the basic structure of an HTML document, you can mess about with the content a bit.

Go back to your text editor and add another line to your page:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	This is my first web page
	How exciting
</body>

</html>

Look at the document in your browser.

You might have expected your document to appear as you typed it, on two lines, but instead you should see something like:

This is my first web page How exciting.

This is because web browsers don’t usually take any notice of what line your code is on. It also doesn’t take any notice of spaces (you would get the same result if you typed “This is my first web page How exciting”).

If you want text to appear on different lines, you need to explicitly state that.

Change your two lines of content so that they look like this:

<p>This is my first web page</p>
<p>How exciting</p> 

The p tag is for paragraph.

Look at the results of this. The two lines will now appear on two lines.

Think of the HTML content as if it were a book - with paragraphs where appropriate.

Emphasis

You can emphasise text in a paragraph using em (emphasis) and strong (strong emphasis). These are two ways of doing pretty much the same thing, although traditionally, browsers display em in italics and strong in bold.

<p>Yes, that <em>is</em> what I said. How <strong>very</strong> exciting.</p>

Line breaks

The line-break tag can also be used to separate lines like this:

This is my first web page<br />
How exciting

However, this method is over-used and shouldn’t be used if two blocks of text are intended to be separate from one another (because if that’s what you want to do you probably want the p tag).

Note that because there’s no content involved with the line-break tag, there is no closing tag and it closes itself with a “/” after the “br”.

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The p tag is just the start of text formatting.

If you have documents with genuine headings, then there are HTML tags specifically designed just for them.

They are h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6, h1 being the almighty emperor of headings and h6 being the lowest pleb.

Change your code to the following:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	<h1>My first web page</h1>

	<h2>What this is</h2>
	<p>A simple page put together using HTML</p>

	<h2>Why this is</h2>
	<p>To learn HTML</p>
</body>

</html>

Note that the h1 tag is only used once - it is supposed to be the main heading of the page and shouldn’t be used multiple times.

h2 to h6 however, can be used as often as you desire, but they should always be used in order, as they were intended. For example, an h4 should be a sub-heading of an h3, which should be a sub-heading of an h2.

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