Tech News

Apple is reportedly planning to expand use of its iPhone operating system to new devices following the creation of the iPad. This could include a more intuitive system for Apple TV.

The news comes from a job posting by Apple for a rather cutely name position of “Engineering Manager (Platform Bring-Up)”, with the mention: “focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms.”

That strategy certainly seems to make sense if, as looks likely, the iPad works well. (That’s in terms of how easy and reliable it is to use, not whether it has any real purpose or market.) If that’s the case, it would back Apple’s belief that it makes more sense to scale up the iPhone system than to scale down the desktop and notebook friendly OS X.

The success of the iPhone system is based on its appeal to both consumers and Apple itself. To the user, there’s no denying it generally runs very smoothly and intuitively, giving a feeling of control. To Apple it has the major advantage that the firm itself can control the process by which new applications are added to devices.

Speculation following the job posting is largely centered on bringing the iPhone system to Apple TV, the firm’s media streaming device which links in with iTunes. Running the iPhone system would mean it was much easier for developers to produce applications designed for running on a big screen, particularly those which rely on an internet connection. (Come on, we’ve got to have a Twitter feed sidebar running over live television.)

It’s also reported that Apple is planning to use the A4 chip system from the iPad in other devices. That would be particularly useful in Apple TV where it should be able to cope with streaming high-definition footage.

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My last post here, How to do 500 Times Better than AdSense, got a lot of buzz and a lot of Tweets and generated my first real dose of reader hate.

That’s cool; if you’re not stirring the pot a little bit, chances are you’re not making an impact.

Despite some blowback, I enjoyed reading all of the ensuing discussion in the comments. Good pros and cons were made, several exceptions and clarifications and caveats were given. But what fascinated me in particular — and what inspired this post — was that the responses all fell neatly into three basic categories:

1. A lot of respondents said essentially, “Right on, Johnny! AdSense makes me mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
2. A smaller but notable number of readers had built profitable businesses using AdSense (or else were romantically involved with Google’s Sergey Brin) and responded angrily that I was not being fair, or that I was an idiot, or both.
3. A few people responded in one of the two ways above, but then also chided me for not supplying the formula I had promised — namely, how to do 500 times better than AdSense.

And that’s when it hit me.

I had never intended to spell out a literal step-by-step formula to take your AdSense earnings and multiply them by 500. I had thought that fact would be obvious, that everyone would get that the title reflected my results, and that they would all understand the basic premise of my post: For many (maybe most) beginners, the surest way to begin building a good income online is to focus on networking and business principles, not push-button systems and arbitrage.

I didn’t think anyone would take me literally, but some did. And they did because they were looking for a formula.

I don’t have a formula

My advice boils down to “stop looking for schemes and build a business,” but I can’t encapsulate what it takes to build a guaranteed-successful online business in one post. If I could do that, I’d be driving a solid gold rocket car to my diamond-studded mansion, where supermodels would line the halls like a hairspray-and-silicone gauntlet.

Folks, there is no magic formula that will work every time. And unless this line gets edited out, the folks that run Copyblogger agree with me.

I’ll be blunt: If you believe you can buy some “guru’s” product — or a Copyblogger product, or my consulting, or any one thing — and be assured of success, you’re in for a rude awakening. The internet is filled with promises of, “Do what I do and say (and pay my price) and you’re guaranteed riches.”

But it’s a lie. It’s all a big lie.

There is one — and only one — true formula for success that actually works. Get your pen ready, because here it comes:

The one and only one true formula for success

1. Try.
2. Repeat step 1 until the desired result is achieved.

I’ve said here and elsewhere that within nine months of starting this business, I was racking up five-figure months. So when clients come to me, they want to know how to do the same.

They see “nine months to five figures monthly” and stop analyzing there. But the truth is, there’s plenty more to the equation.

What may not be obvious is that I stayed on step one above for a long time. True, this business only took a few months to build up steam, but what you didn’t see was the traditional HTML website development company that preceded it, and then died when my two big clients went out of business.

You didn’t see my years writing magazine articles about human resources, which was soul-draining and which fizzled when the magazine’s advertising revenue dried up.

You didn’t see my year in a genetics lab, working toward a PhD, which I gave up when the work started giving me panic attacks.

You didn’t see my abysmal attempt to build wealth through real estate, which is the reason that although I am making a good income now, I didn’t get to keep any of it until very recently.

And if the Johnny B. Truant online business hadn’t taken off, it would be one more “You didn’t see this” item in the list I’d be reading to the audience of whatever business did succeed down the road.

Look: I can’t tell you, literally and without fail, as a series of numbered steps, how exactly to do 500 times better than AdSense. I can’t tell you how to do anything in a way that guarantees your success.

I make one thing clear to everyone who hires me: My job is to help you optimize the hell out of your current “try.”

The thing you’re currently trying may fail. And if it does, I will help you to get back up, dust yourself off, and try again.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant drives a golden rocket car and sleeps on a fluffy pile of supermodels in his diamond mansion, which is located within a supervillain lair in the crater of a Pacific island volcano. He’s a specialist in Third Tribe personality branding who can help you optimize the hell out of your current “try” at making your own millions. You can also follow him on Twitter to watch him tweet about zombies.

Comic illustrator Ethan Nicolle went home for the Christmas holidays and listened to his five-year-old brother Malachai tell stories. Now, if you’ve ever been around a five-year-old boy, you know what kind of stories they tell, full of things little boys love like dinosaurs, space travel, weapons, aliens, super heroes, explosions, robots, and cops. And they intersperse those fantastical things with more familiar themes, like food, family, and playmates. Story arc, logical transitions, and cliche avoidance matter not a whit when the action gets going. And who’s to say these things really matter in the long run, when the result is as entertaining as Axe Cop?

Yes, it’s a webcomic collaboration between the five-year-old storyteller and his adult brother the artist. Axe Cop was born when a cop found the perfect fireman’s axe. He immediately took on a partner who had a flute, therefore he was Flute Cop! This crime fighting duo takes on multiple nefarious adversaries. Although Flute Cop undergoes constant magical transitions into ever-weirder forms, he always remains a loyal sidekick. After a few adventures, Malachai filled in the backstory of Axe Cop and his buddy as youngsters, so you might want to slip “episode zero” in between episodes four and five, as that was the order in which they were written.

There are eleven episodes of Axe Cop online now. You can see how Ethan and Malachai work together in this interview. The result is wonderful! Anyone who’s ever had, or ever been, a five-year-old storyteller will get a real kick out of this. Who knows? Maybe someday they’ll make a movie of Axe Cop!

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This is perhaps the greatest marketing strategy struggle of our time:

Should your product or service be very good, meet spec and be beyond reproach or…

    should it be a remarkable, memorable, over the top, a tell-your-friends event?

The answer isn’t obvious, and many organizations are really conflicted about this.

Delta Airlines isn’t trying to make your day. They’re trying to get you from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, close to on time, less expensive the other guy and hopefully without hassle. That’s a win for them.

On the other hand, when I was growing up, we used to stop in a diner in Deposit, New York to break up the long drive from Buffalo to New York City. This diner had a really engaged staff and always one practical joke or another subtly present. (I still remember the little notice on the bulletin board once, “Henway for sale, $45. Ask cashier.”) It was enough reason to drive three miles out of our way, a few times a year. My guess is that a busy traveler wouldn’t be happy with the extra six minutes it took to eat there.

Most of the consumer businesses (restaurants, services, etc.) and virtually all of the business to business ventures I encounter shoot for the first (meeting spec). They define spec and they work to achieve it. A few, from event organizers to investment advisors, work every single day to create over-the-top remarkable experiences. It’s a lot of work, and it requires passion.

If you ran a spa at a ski resort, which would you shoot for?

Most of the people who come aren’t regulars, and most of them just want a massage, a good one, one that makes the trip a little special. I don’t think most people coming by expect anything more than that.

On the other hand, you could invest in staff and training and services that would be so connected to each other and the guests, so willing to engage and to change people that it might become the sort of transcendent experience that people talk about for months.

But you can’t do both at the same time. That customer who came for the on-spec service isn’t going to be happy with the over the top hoopla. And so you try to compromise and do both, to please everyone. Sorry, but you can’t.

By Andrea Little
Guest Blogger

As we all know; EVERYTHING tastes better with bacon. As a purveyor of food porn (aka the Food network) I came across a show featuring chocolate covered bacon. So, when stumped for a recipe to take to recipe club; thoughts of bacon dancing in a chocolate shower came to mind. A quick trip to the grocer and an hour later Bacon Fudge Brownies emerged from the oven. Simple and easy to make even a geek like me cannot mess up this yummy combination.

Ingredients:

• A baker by no means, I chose a boxed brownie mix, but you can use your own recipe
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup veggie oil
• 2 tablespoons of high quality H2O
• 1 lb of bacon, diced in ½ inch squares
• Cooking spray

In a pan brown the bacon until the fat renders out and the bacon is crisp and golden brown. (You will want to keep the bacon drippings for other tasty dishes). Lay out the bacon on a paper towel to absorb any remaining grease. This will allow the bacon pieces to cool as well, you do not want to add hot bacon to the brownie batter.

Follow the preheating instructions on the brownie box for your particular baking dish, altitude, and oven. This is now the time to prepare the brownie batter. Use the cooking spray to grease your baking dish and set aside. Combine the wet ingredients; eggs, oil, and water. Once combined, slowly add the dry brownie mix. After the batter is mixed fold in ¾ of the bacon, saving ¼ for topping the brownies. DO NOT USE YOUR MIXER as it will break apart the bacon! Fold in the bacon with a spatula until combined then transfer to the greased baking dish. Sprinkle the remaining bacon on top and place on the center rack of your already pre-heated oven. Check your brownies 5-10 minutes before the timer sounds. Take a toothpick or fork and poke the middle, when it comes out clean, your brownies are done. Allow to cool and cut. These are very fudgy brownies so clean your knife after each cut, because it is going to get ooey-gooey.

Suggestions for brownies: You can eat them all (not recommended) or take them to your local con and share. The latter is highly recommended for the single geek gal out there. The geek to girl ratio at con is generally 5 to 1. Also, when giving these out I received one marriage proposal, a profession of love and devotion, several “You are a genius!”, innumerable “WOW!”s, and many tweets. If you don’t believe me ask the guys from MechCorps (@MechCorps – twitter). According to them: the internet wants my brownies!

Andrea Little is a graphic designer from Houston, TX. Visit her website at: www.willworkforfonts.com Also, she can be found on facebook: Plus Size Glamour Girl and twitter: @divadrea75

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PHP RSS Reader is an application which can crawl an unlimited number of feeds & presents them with an easy-to-use interface.

For an organized navigation, It is possible to create categories & place feeds inside them.

A handy feature is "keyword-based" categories which can auto-move items with the keywords mentioned into the related categories which is great for anyone who follows multiple feeds but hunts for specific keywords.

PHP RSS Reader comes with a complete admin panel where every setting can be controlled.

The application creates SEO-friendly URLs for every category & article which is important for anyone who will use PHP RSS Reader for creating a feed-based website rather than using it as a personal feed-reader.

It is possible to change the look & feel of the interface by simply playing with the CSS files.

There is a web-based installer that help making the application online in a few minutes.

PHP RSS Reader comes with 2 versions:

• free version (has some limitations like no keyword-categorization & unlimited sub-categories)
• complete, paid version which includes all the features.

The application is a must-check for anyone looking for an advanced RSS reader, planning to create a feed-based website or integrate feeds into an application (where PHP RSS Reader can be used only as the backend engine).

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

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Tags: Mysql, Php

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SVG-edit is an open source & web-based vector graphics editor application that is built with JavaScript.

Every image drawn generates a SVG output which makes integrating SVG-edit into any application & displaying the results easier.

It comes with a lot of features like:

• free-hand drawing
• lines, polyline, rects/squares, ellipses/circle, polygons/curved paths
• stylable text, align
• raster images
• select/move/resize/rotate
• undo/redo
• color/gradient picker
• layers
• draggable dialogs

The application is very handy for anyone who is looking for a customizable solution to enable users draw online where the output can be saved.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

Advertisements:
SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)
Follow WebResourcesDepot At Twitter And Get More Resources!

Tags: Javascript, SVG

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The transition for advertisers from online to mobile search is still in its infancy, so there are massive benefits for early adopters. Get ahead of other marketers, understand the space, and drive your brand as a leader. …

After years of probing humans, an alien starts questioning the point to his work.

Warning: Slightly NSFW.

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