CSS3 Generator by @Randy Jensen.

CSS generator can generate about a dozen CSS3 rules, including border radius, and Columns. It’s generally awesome.

Gradient Editor by @colorzilla.

Gradient Generator is a truely amazing and time saving tool, as with a few clicks you can generator CSS3 gradients (As well as filter gradients for IE), that support transparent gradients, rgb and rgba, hex,hsl and hsla formats, and can even import gradients from images, so you can import your mock ups and get exactly the same gradient.

Ceaser by @Matthew Lein

One of the most complicated CSS3 specs is the transitions. While CSS3 generator has some support for it, Ceaser provided very detailed in depth, configurable transitions quickly and easily.

FontSquirrel Generator by @FontSquirrel

When a font isn’t in their gallery or Google webfonts, the first place I head is the font squirrel generator. Just upload a font from your computer, select the formats and a few other options, and it will provide you with a zip file download of your webfont. Its pretty amazing for those free fonts you find online and want to use, but know your readers will not have installed on their computers.

CSS3 Ribbon Generator by @CSS3D

Need a fancy ribbon, look no further than CSS3 ribbon Generator. It will let you pick the angles ad all sorta of fun stuff. For even more fun, use it in combination with the gradient generator for slick gradients on ribbons.

Most of these tips apply to students who have their own kitchen, be that in an apartment of apartment style dorm, or even a friend with kitchen who will let you use it in exchange for food. Like instead of buying a full set of pots, find a medium sized pot that will cook everything you need it to. If you like to eat corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and spaghetti and meatballs, one would find it wise to get a pot wide enough for corn, but still short and well sized for mashed potatoes and pasta. I found a pot that fit all my needs for $14 vs. the $65 kitchen set I was eyeing previously. That money saved might buy you a week’s worth of food if you shop right.

Another great tip, not only to save money, but to not waste extra food, is to make meals that go well with each other. Common sense really, but when you consider you alone may not be able to eat a full 3 course meal, it’s smart to find a friend to help make sure nothing goes to waste. For instance, if your making pasta, get a loaf of artisan bread to go with it. It’s cheap and you can dip the bread in the sauce , or in the case of breakfast, French toast is a great meal alone, but there’s always some left over egg,  so make an omelet or scrambled eggs, out of it and maybe share a nice breakfast with a roommate or friend.

It may seem like it’s a bad idea to buy in bulk with a small dorm fridge, but it can save you money and make sure you never run out of food or are reduced to eating ramen noodles for three meal a day.  One way to squeeze more into a small fridge or freezer is to remove stuff from its packaging. If you have 6 boxes of frozen pizzas, remove them from their boxes and they’ll take up less space, and keep one on top of the fridge for the instruction panel.  For something like meatballs, work a deal with some friends to buy a large bag at a Sam’s club of BJ’s and split them between you in zip lock bags. As for Soda, buy cans or packages of small bottles. Chances are any given week one of the major retailers will offer $2 12 packs of Coke or Pepsi (Most retailers alternate, Pepsi one week, Coke the next, so get a two week supply), but usually you have to buy 4 or 5 cases to get the deal. Put one fridge pack at most into the fridge, and refill it at night from the remaining packs which you can hide just about anywhere. This will keep you well stocked in cold soda for you and a few friends, and leave enough space in the fridge for a few beers, healthy snacks from your mom. And by the way, a package of 12 sodas for $2 comes down to 17 cents a can. And you can almost always find a retailer giving you a deal like that.

Another smart tip can be to buy a Sunday (or Saturday, depending on your local paper) newspaper. You don’t care about the news, you get that on twitter, but the coupons and sales fliers inside can save you more than the cost of the paper. This week I bought a copy of the local Sunday paper, it was $1.50. I found at least 10 coupons I used right away, saving me about $15. It would’ve been much more except I had bought many of the things there the week before at full price. Still like shaving cream, razors and alike are always in the coupons as well and many sugar treats. You might not think the savings in huge, but when you add up a few coupons it can save you enough for a meal or two out. And when you’re done clipping the coupons you want, give the rest to a friend.

If you’re craving junk food, a batch of brownies can be a good snack and cost very little. On sale you can usually get a box of brownie mix for under $1 with icing for about the same. For a single person, a tray of brownies is probably snacks for most of a week, for about $2. It’s a nice deal until your roommate starts stealing them.

We mentioned eating healthier earlier on, and many of you don’t care about that, but many do. If it’s not for you, or you do buy only whole grain nontoxic high fructose corn syrup free cardboard, you may still enjoy these tips for a different kind of snack. One would be find cheaper healthier snacks. I’m big on potatoes chips and pretzels, I could eat them all day if you let me, but they’re not good for you.  One solution I found is to replace a lot of them with cheap stuff that is still fun to snack on, like artisan breads. They may not be the greatest for you, but they about half the price of a bag of chips and taste just as good while being actually quite filling. The local Wal-Mart makes some really good loaves, but in many places its Sam’s club, or a local bakery. If you’re lucky enough to have a Shoprite, they have an amazing bakery section and with their club card, the prices are very reasonable. Some people also like carrot sticks or vegetable crackers, which can be slightly better for you, at no more than the salt heavy chips. Another problem with chips and Doritos and a like are they don’t keep very long. After a long night of partying you wake up and begin to snack drunkenly on your bowl of chips and surprise….they’re stale. Disgustingly stale. Half of bag of chips wasted and you’re out another buck fifty. But there are snacks like Synder’s of Hanover’s pretzel pieces (I prefer the cheddar cheese variety), which really don’t go stale. Would I advise eating them after they sat out on your roof for a week, no, but if you fall asleep with the bag in your hand, you’ll be able to wake up and snack again without the bitterness of being stale. Oreos with their new resalable packing also keep quite well, up to about four days. There may be some decline in taste, but it’s nowhere near as bad as what happens to a bag of potato chips overnight.

Another money saving tip, is freeze what you aren’t currently eating and plan ahead.  I live alone in an off campus apartment, so I don’t eat very much in a day. When I don’t have class, I won’t be up early in the morning, so I don’t plan on breakfast food, but jump straight into lunch. But as for school days, I plan to be up early and have a nice real breakfast. If I feel like having French toast, I’m going to buy a loaf of bread, and freeze most of it, leaving out just enough for a meal in a zip lock bag until the next morning. This makes sure the rest of the loaf doesn’t go bad before I can eat if and even if something changes, you wake up late or go to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, and the bread goes do bad, it’s only a couple of slices and much less money down the drain than the entire loaf.

I hope these tips becomes useful to you during your time away, and would encourage you to pass them onto friends, even if they weren’t useful to you, as personal taste varies.

A few other quick money saving tips outside of the kitchen are:

See if your state recycles Cans and Bottles for money. It may not be worth it to many people, but if you’re a chronic soda drinker and your state gives 5 cents a can, that 12 pack of soda that cost you $2, is going to earn you 60 cents back. Not worth a trip alone, but after a month or two, it can be a free meal or a little extra ‘study material’.

Use points on mycokerewards and pepsi rewards to keep ypu supplied in soda, it’s not much, but it’s still a little bit of return on investment.

Gmail has a trick where many “ghost” email addresses go to the same place. It’s useful in gmail, but when coupled with the power of a @Edu email address, it can save students a fancy penny or two.

How it works is simple. If your email is

john.doe@myschool.edu

than you can simply add a short string between a set of plus signs, to create a “ghost” email, which will end up in your inbox, but to most companies, appears to be a new separate email, and a new user to give free stuff too. For example, a good one to use might be

john.doe+freestuff+@myschool.edu

if you’re going to use it for free stuff (Which We all know you will!)

I found this out a while back, while reading lifehacker.com. At the time, they listed its use as a spam deterrent, but I tried it out on my gmail, and it worked beautifully. Fast forward a few months, and I’m trying to buy a Windows 7 upgrade. After using my Edu email, a family member saw how wonderful it was and wanted to upgrade as well, but for $120 it’s a stiff price to pay. My mind flipped back like a rolodex to the lifehacker tip, and I plugged in a ghost email to the Ultimate Steal site, and was promptly send a second key, conveniently to my inbox.

My old school, a community college, uses Google apps for education. They keep the email accounts active for three years after the last class you attend. My new school doesn’t use Google apps, but thanks to this long lasting Google account, I’ll be able to continue using this nice bonus long past my graduation.

They still offer Windows 7 deals cheap for students, and you can pick up extra keys for your friends, parents or spare computers on the cheap, or other goods like many free months of Hulu+. (Hulu+ would require a new account each time, but still lightens your load rather than your wallet.)

If you lack a Google apps for Education email, there are other possibilities. Some schools (I know Drexel does this) offer the ability to create secondary emails, or will do it for you. If your username is

johnd453@myschool.edu

sometimes in settings they create, or allow you to create masks, like

john.doe@myschool.edu or
johndoe453@myschool.ed

to give you similar abilities, even without having the amazing google apps accounts.

Another quick tip, if your school is any kind of decent, they’ve also given you Google Calendar, which you can use to mark the dates to cancel the services, such as Hulu+, before they charge your credit cards.

[This part isn’t restricted to students; feel free to remove it, lifehacker Also explains it a bit here: http://lifehacker.com/399812/philipp-lenssens-top-google-apps-tips ]

It also works nicely as an anti-spam device. If your suspicious of a site or don’t want to give them your email, use a + hack, like this,

john.doe+possiblybadsite.com+@gmail.com

If emails that are not from that site start coming in your inbox, they’ve sold your email. But alas! Not only will it tell you, which site sold your email, but allows you to very easily filter them into your spam folder, by sending anything that comes to

john.doe+possiblybadsite.com+@gmail.com

to spam once and for all, no more attention required.

Why Would I use this?

So First I’d like to list some situations, I’ve actually had and my service of choice, dropbox, has saved me from. I don’t have many stories about Wuala or SugarSync As I’m fairly new to them.

• Forgot to print out a paper for school. Open dropbox.com and download and printed it in a computer lab.
• Used the previous version feature to grab a copy of a paper from several days before. Before printing it on the due date, I had removed the bibliography, and closed Word, so It could not be recovered on my computer. However dropbox had the finalized version, from several days before, so I downloaded the older copy, and pasted the bibliography into the final version.
• Synced files between my several linux computers, and my tablet PC after setting up a fresh install. It quickly syncs files like my WEP key over the lan, without requiring me to actually find my USB drive.
• Share photos from a recent hiking trip to several friends without publishing them to the web for all to see.
• Added music to my android phone/PMP without connecting it to the computer, with those forever disappearing microUSB cables.
• long term storage of important files, where I can easily find them on any computer, or even my phone.
• Easy transfer of files from my laptop to school computer with print ability, for classwork.
• Multiple remote backups (Both on my many computers, and their servers)
• Realtime backup to OneNote Notebooks used for notes for school. Because onenote saved as you write, it doesn’t require ever hitting save, and dropbox uploads the newest versions immediately.
• Saved me from buying many flash drives.
• Future use for one service, updating my server without the need for SSH or FTP.

EDIT 6/19/2011: I had to use the restore previous version today, as I deleted a page of statistics homework while rearranging my notes. Logged into dropbox, went to the file, and it showed about 60 versions from the last 20 minutes of editing. It has a restore feature, which replaced the current file with the old version, or a preview, which I used to open the old file side by side with the current, copy and last the notes, into the new file.

Compatibility.

Deciding which one to use may very well depend on what service works with your OS and phone or tablet. Well, here’s that info.

Windows:
Dropbox, Wuala (Needs JAVA), SugarSync.

Linux:
Dropbox (Needs client and Nautilus, or client and Kdropbox).
Wuala (Needs JAVA,  Fuse and several libs.)
SugarSync (3rd party, very alpha, little support for features)

Mac:
Dropbox
Wuala (Needs JAVA)
SuagarSync

Android (All Available In Market):
Dropbox
Wuala
SugarSync

iOS:
Dropbox
Wuala
SugarSync

Windows Phone:
Dropbox (Third Party Only)
SugarSync

Blackberry:
Dropbox
SugarSync

Symbian:
SugarSync

Security and Pricing

To most of us, these should be the next most important things, beyond, does it work with my OS. Dropbox uses HTTPS, but admits they can decypt your files if required to by the government. Their files are stores on amazon’s S3′s servers, while Wuala’s files are encrypted client side, and cannot be viewed by their staff for any reason. I am not sure where they store data, but it may be stored on other people’s computers, since they have a trade storage option. Read up on that if your curious how it works. Wuala has no web interface, as it needs java to run and decrypt files. It can be launched from the website, as long as the computer has java installed.Sugarsync does not seem to say where the files are actually stored either, but they are transported over HTTPS. Files seem to be encrypted on their servers, but not locally, with the exception of the TLS transporting. They could possibly see your data.

You should use one! (Shameless Plug time)

If you haven’t signed up for one of these services already, I can only suggest that you do, it may very well save you butt someday.

Dropbox 2 gig of space + 250 Megabytes to You and Me when using this link. You should then head over to their free page and get started page to learn how to get more free space.

Wuala 1GB + 250MB with this link. Look for codes online to get up to 2GB free with signup.

SugarSync 5GB + 500MB with this link. If you join a paid plan from this link, we both get 10GB! extra.

Posted from WordPress for Android

So if your ready to learn, click read more!

Materials needed:

• Computer with internet access.
• Firefox 4 is going to be the browser of choice, but webkit browsers should work just as well. Also, install Web Developer Addon.
• For Windows user’s notepad++ Is the recommend choice.
• Mac User’s I don’t know what is best, but a basic text editor, with auto completion is advised.
• Linux Users: KDE users should use Kate/Kwrite. Gnome user’s usually prefer Gedit, but Installing Kwrite or Kate is a good idea.
• Patience.

Now the first thing I can advise to do, is to use the Web Developer Addon to inspect websites and see the Ids classes and tags used in them. Done easily by Going to the Information button and clicking “Display Element Information”. Also look over at W3 school’s list of HTML5 tags. We won’t use all of them, but you should know their names. Once you’ve taken a look at them, we’ll start setting up your basic page, and work out way into CSS.

You must first understand how HTML is written. It consists of tags, which are instructions to the browser as to what they contain. Each Tag starts with a “<” and ends with a “>”. Most tags require a start tag, and an end tag, like the head tag.

<head> is the beginging of the head.

</head> is the end of the head tag. The / designates the end of the tag.

The most commonly used tag is <div>, a generic divider. ID’s and classes are used to name them.

The basic HTML5 page consists of a few parts.

• First is the doctype, or document type. This tells the browser the style of code it will be looking at and gives it a basic idea on how to render it. For HTML4 and below there were many versions, for HTML5, they have made it nice and easy, one short sweet choice.
• <!DOCTYPE html> is the HTML5 doctype. It should always be the first line on a HTML5 page.
• The next thing should always be the HTML tag. A simple <html> will do, with the end tag, </html> placed at the every end of the page.
• Inside the <html> and </html> tags, should go your Head and Body.
• Your head is mostly information about the website, not visible to the viewer, with the exception of the title tag.
• Your Body is then the container for all visible content on your page.
• Both the body and head tags must be closed. The head tag should be closed before the body begins.
• So now create a page with this layout. Add a start and end title tag, and between them add the text “This is my page title”.
• Next add text between the start and ending body tags. I will use “Hello, This is my first webpage, enjoy”

At this point, you should have a basic page layout in your text editor. Take a minute to save it into a folder, and name the file “index.html”. If your not sure, It should contain this code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>This is my page title</title>
</head>
<body>
Hello, this is my first webpage, enjoy.
</body>
</html>

Correct your file if needed, save as index.html, and then open it inside Firefox.

You’ll notice the titlebar will say “This is my page title”, and the actually browser window will display the text “Hello, this is my first webpage, enjoy.” near the upper left hand corner.

If you’re doing good so far, go onto the next lesson.

If you want a challenge, make the word “first” bold, using an HTML tag. (Bold uses <b> as its tag, Italics uses <i>, although there are other ways to achieve both effects.

Problem: I can’t find the css rule that is making an ID a certain color/There’s a huge gap and i can’t figure out what ID has the css applied to it that is causing the problem.

Solution: Fire up gimp. Take a screenshot.
For finding a color, use the color chooser tool to pick the color of the object. Open your CSS sheet and search for the hex code of it. If you need to help narrow it down between a few elements that could be causing trouble, Web Developer toolbar for Firefox has a Display element information button that is very useful and lists all ancestors of an element as well as its class and ID.

For a gap/extra space. use GIMP to measure how many pixels the space is. Search your CSS for that amount of space and try to correct the problem. If you can’t find it, narrow down the area by using Web developer again and seeing what elements affect that region. IE, if 2 divs, one inside the other, have 15px padding each on the left side, the left side may appear to have 30px padding but no where in the css will it say, 30px.

Both are a little guess and check work, but They’ve saved by butt a few times.

Private browsing/Private tab/Incognito Mode:

While these are usually used for sinister reasons, they have plenty of good use in web design, mostly to kill Cache, allow multiple uses to log in (If you can’t open enough browsers for them all)

Ad block plus:

Can be used to block ga.js and stop google analytics from reporting in browsers like firefox 4, where there is no addon working, to disable ga.js. Simple go to any page that you know has ga.js on it (Well technically linked to it from google’s servers) open blockable items, search for it, and block thw whole url, http://google.com/…./…/ga.js. That should stop your hits from being counted on pages your working on.

It also works for say wordpress stats or any other JS or image based tracked. Just find what is loaded to add the count, and block it.

Computers do not make users dumb. Computers help smart users becomes smarter and dumb users get dumber.

I use tablet PC in school. 3 years now. It’s helped my grades, because I have everything in one place (properly backed up of course)
My notes, books, projects, powerpoints, all of it with my in just a 3lbs laptop, vs 30 pounds of books. I got more work done after switching to a laptop, because i’d be willing to lug that home, with all my work, rather than leaving some work at school because it didn’t all fit in a backpack.

Students who have the willpower to learn and grow, will use the machines to their advantage, which may including checking email or facebook in class, but as long as they allow themselves only a momentary diversion, it can be better, than doodling in a notebook, as their brief break is productive in other means.

Students who slack off, don’t do their homework, and chat all day, will use the laptops are an portal to do that with, and will do worse than they would’ve without the distraction.

Worse off than the computer is actually the cell phone. Not only are they easier to hide, more mobile and allow for more concentration breaking distractions, but as they’re more social, you don’t get their attention back after you’ve lost it, while a quick glance into your personal email can be a relief from an hour long class, and then go back to learning.

Cell phones also cannot be controlled or filtered, which makes them harder to fight in a school situation. You can’t take them from students these days, the poor kid might die without it.

So I say give the kids the laptop, just train them on how to use it, FORCE them, and the teachers to use technology, and just try to hold their attention long enough to be productive. Do that and you’ll create a smart, tech savvy workforce.

background: #C98D62; /* old browsers */
background: url('images/menubar_brown.png'); /* Old browsers like FF < 3.5 */
background: url('images/operagradientlight.svg'); /* Opera */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #C98D62 0%, #821A00 100%); /* firefox */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#C98D62), color-stop(100%,#821A00)); /* webkit */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#C98D62', endColorstr='#821A00',GradientType=0 ); /* ie */

The top line is a safety, should images not load and gradients not work. Pick a color that works well with your text.

Next should be an image. Build your gradient, take a screenshot of it, trim it down to the height you want by 1px wide and save it. This has to be after the SVG or Firefox 3.6 will try to read the svg, and show up nothing.

Then you have a  SVG gradient, mostly, if not only, for Opera. I’ll show you how to make that later.

Now for the good stuff.  -moz- and -webkit-. If you know anything about CSS gradients, you know how awesome these are. You can make them yourself or use the Ultimate CSS gradient generator.

Lastly is filter, a MS only gradient solution, but it works all the way down to IE6.  This too is available from the ultimate CSS gradient Generator.

Ok, the css is easy right? We’ll there’s one more thing you need to do. Make the SVG file for Opera.

Its actually pretty simple, just copy my code here, into your favorite text editor (Mine is notepad++ on windows, or kwrite on linux)

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.0">
 <defs>
 <linearGradient id="gradient" x1="0" y1="0" x2="0" y2="100%">
 <stop offset="0%" style="stop-color: #2e88c4;"/>
 <stop offset="100%" style="stop-color: #075698;"/>
 </linearGradient>
 </defs>
 <rect x="0" y="0" fill="url(#gradient)" width="100%" height="100%" />
</svg>

Of course you'll adjust your stop offsets and stop colors accordingly based off of the mozilla and webkit CSS. Other than those 2 lines, you really don't have to touch anything else. Just save it as an svg (make sure its not .svg.txt) and upload to your webserver and opera will start working.

Early versions included the phone tree, where when a school or workplace closed due to bad weather, the boss called off work, and called the managers, who then called all employees in their departments to tell them work is closed. What could’ve taken 2 hours to call all the employees, can be cut down to maybe half an hour by crowdsourcing the work.

Slightly more recent versions include, Facebook, where people can share, verify and add details to stories and posts.  While there was no common goal, things were accomplished through the resources of many people. Then theres also radio and TV news tiplines. Using the power of helpful people on the streets, TV and radio stations report the traffic problems and keep other drivers away from the troubled areas. This is a great example of crowdsourcing, because it involved a small group who volunteer small accounts of their time, for the greater good.

In todays world, Crowdsourcing is often programming, or other social networking areas of interest, like the Chrome for a Cause. Users doing nothing other than opening links in Google Chrome’s browser, over 6 days, persuaded google to donate one million dollars to several charities, based on the preferences of the user.

But my favorite example is Twitter. Movie Reviews, breaking news, school closing, deaths of celebrities, even bad weather and new released.  I love it for that reason. Breaking local and national news I find out on twitter usually before the local news even gets the story, let alone gets it on air. Even writing the story and getting it online can take an hour or so after hearing the facts, but twitter, writing only 140 characters, can get small bits of news out very fast, and in large numbers, it becomes very reliable.

The death of Michael Jackson, I first heard about on twitter, then confirmed it on a 24/7 cable news network.

More recently, I found out my class was canceled on twitter. The college, nor my teacher emailed me or anyone else to tell us that, but it was posted on facebook. I am not on facebook, but when I tweeted about almost having an accident and turning around, skipping class, I was told by a friend who saw it on facebook, that my class was canceled. While that isn’t really crowdsourcing, the idea behind it is, information is passed out by all those who know it, in an attempt to inform those who do not.

And then there’s alway the everyone’s doing it bandwagon. Buy a book for a small child in Africa while your a Barnes and Noble? There’s a stack of books all listed as being donated there already, a pretty cashier staring at you awaiting your answer, and a line of people growing less charitable by the second, waiting on you to give an answer so you can hurry up with your order.

Crowdsourcing works because people are greedy. No one wants to give away their life fortunes, but for people to give a few bucks to help someone out, when everyone else is doing it, is easy. People are unwilling to devote themselves to something for a long time but to give a small amount of time or money is something anyone can give. Church fundraising, salvation army collections, all crowdsouring. Even Christmas is a crowdsourcing phenomenon. People donating money to charities, many people all giving each other only one or 2 presents, adds up. And thats the whole idea. Everyone can do a little, together, we can do a lot.