How to Display Facebook Fan Count in Text

Adding a Facebook Like Button on your website or blog is perhaps one of the easiest and most effective way to get more fans and earn more likes. If you have hundreds, thousand or perhaps tens of thousand of fans, it might be a good idea to publish a fan count. Fan count displays in numeric text total fans your Facebook page has, or rather, how many have liked your page.

preview How to Display Facebook Fan Count in Text

The technique is simple and very similar to displaying Google feedcount in text. The only difference is – we will be using Facebook’s API. In this post, we want to show you how it can be done so you can add them into your WordPress blog or PHP powered website. Load up your favorite code editor, here we go.

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32 Creative and Interesting Bento Boxes

For most Japanese mothers, lunch is not just simple food preparation and packing meals for their love ones, they spend their time arranging the meal in aesthetically pleasing way. These lunch boxes are known as “Bento.” Bento is a Japanese word for a meal served in a box. In history, bento is a packed Japanese lunch box, same idea to, the Korean dosirak, Filipino baon, or the Indian tiffin lunch. Today, they are a vibrant art form admired around the world.

preview 32 Creative and Interesting Bento Boxes

If you’re interested on creating one for yourself or for your love ones, there are plenty of garnishes and interesting side dishes for your bento. A basic Bento is only divided into 2 parts: half of the lunch box is filled with rice, the other half is filled with a range of complementary foods, such as eggs, vegetables, meat or fish. Below you’ll see some of well-designed Bento that goes beyond the basic Bento preparation.

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9 Essential Tips To Speed Up Windows 7

The Microsoft Windows 7 operating system has been designed for delivering better speeds than its predecessors. However, as time passes by, the laptop/PC might tend to get slower. This is not exactly the fault of the OS. As the matter of fact, it is a common problem faced by many operating systems.

windows 7 9 Essential Tips To Speed Up Windows 7

The major reasons for this are accumulation of junk in the system or a highly stuffed hard drive or running of too many unnecessary services and programs. Here we shared a few essential tips that can help speed up Windows 7 performance on laptops or computers. Hope it helps!

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Top Social Media Sites & How You Can Benefit From Them

For many, social media sites could be just a virtual place to express your voice or have some fun. For the enterprising ones, social media sites could mean serious business.

preview Top Social Media Sites & How You Can Benefit From Them

You probably do not have to move your mouth to talk to the right people but the good news is, they will still "hear" you. You would be amazed at the powerful connections that social media sites have. All it takes is a click and you could probably be publishing a very valuable piece of information for your prospective clients or bosses.

Here we have analyzed 5 popular social media sites based on the following criteria: Communication, Brand exposure and Traffic to your sites. You could find out which social media site best suits your purpose and which social media sites could bring your message to the right people better. A snapshot of our take on the 5 social media sites is shown through star ratings that would give you a gist of our recommendations and a quick estimation of their effectiveness.

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40 Beautiful Examples of Car Photography

If diamonds are womens’ best friends, cars and supercars are certainly men’s. These mean machines are attractive in many ways; the styles (interior and exterior), the speed and even engine sound make them hard to resist. Just because not all of us can own one of our dream cars, that doesn’t stop us from taking the best shot out of them.

preview 40 Beautiful Examples of Car Photography

Car photography is no easy task. Different techniques are used depending on whether they are prowling on the streets or stay put right before your lens. For amateur photographers, it takes great patience and a lot of practice before you can truly bring out the action and elegance in car photography. Panning shots is one of the most challenging things I’ve encountered while doing car photography. Choosing the background is important; the correct background can either gives your car a clear contrast or it can create significant dramatic effect. You don’t want to have a photo of your car blending into the complex city background or a sports car that looks stationary.

In today’s post, I’ve collected a total of 40 great looking shots of cars and I hope you’ll be inspired. Lastly I’d like to borrow this proverb from Curt Scott:

"A picture may indeed be worth 1,000 words, but one good photograph of your car is worth 10,000 crappy snapshots."

That’s what I thought about car photography. Full list after jump.

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HTML5 Website Showcase: 48 Potential Flash-Killing Demos

So you’ve heard all rumors about HTML5 would take over Adobe Flash. While most web community argues that it’s possible or not, you must be wandering what makes HTML5 so powerful that even giant company Apple wants to use it to replace Flash.

preview HTML5 Website Showcase: 48 Potential Flash Killing Demos

That’s why this post exists, we’re not going to talk about what HTML5 can do, but show live demos of magical things that HTML5 can achieve with other language like JavaScript, so get ready to be inspired.

Note: As HTML5 is not fully supported by certain web browser like Internet Explorer, you’re strongly recommended to use Firefox browser to view all HTML5 demos below.

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Handling the Business Side of Design

One aspect of The American Dream is owning one’s own business. People fantasize about becoming their own boss rather than working for The Man while making their own hours and doing something they love. But just because you love design doesn’t mean you’d be a good business owner. On the flip side, just because you have an MFA and not an MBA doesn’t mean you can’t open up your own design company.

business Handling the Business Side of Design

Here are elements to consider when weighing the possibility of starting your own small business. Full article after jump.

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35 Lego Mega Constructions You (Probably) Haven’t Seen Before

It’s pretty amazing how piles of colorful plastic bricks can build wonders when they are attached together. Lego was first introduced by Lego Group in 1949 and have been everyone’s favorite ever since.

preview 35 Lego Mega Constructions You (Probably) Havent Seen Before

What we are going to show you today are some Lego models you don’t get to see often, not available for purchase in the neighborhood stores for sure. They are complex, massive and definitely jaw-dropping. If you are a Lego fan, this is something you would not want to miss.

Here’s a collection of 35 incredible Lego Mega Construction, large in scale but built to its finest details. Full list after jump.

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Complete Guide to Cross-Browser Compatibility Check

Internet users have wider choice of browsers when it comes to surfing the net. It is our responsibility as designers and developers to ensure that websites we’ve created are compatible for most of the commonly used browsers these days.

preview Complete Guide to Cross Browser Compatibility Check

That leads to a simple yet critical question – what browsers are our visitors using? According to w3school, commonly used browsers are Internet Explorer 7 & 8 and Firefox with Safari and Google Chrome gradually picking up. But the figures might vary from site to site, depending on its niche. It’s best to get the demographics from your site metrics, Google Analytics for instance.

Once you’ve identified common browsers your visitors use, then it’s time to make sure website displays the same in these browsers. It’s almost impossible to install all different browsers in one machine. But thanks to some tools and web services out there, finding out how your website looks like in other browsers is possible.

In this article, we want to bring to your attention some of the solutions you can depend on to do cross-browser compatibility testing. Full list after jump.

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50 Informative and Well-Designed Infographics

It’s impossible to comprehend complex data or analyze large amounts of information, if we only use words or texts. Information graphics or better known as infographics are visual explanation of data, information or knowledge. These graphics are excellent visual tools for explaining huge amounts of information where complex data needs to be explained immediately and clearly. Let me show you how Rick Mans explain how infographics ease the process of communicating conceptual information

preview 50 Informative and Well Designed Infographics
Image credit.

Infographic is one of the most challenging types of graphic design because the creation process alone is pretty intensive. Researching data is a very lengthy procedure of getting information that takes both your time and dedication for obtaining resourceful and correct data. After that, the designer must be able to create a strong visual impact that precisely displays the information in way that is rational and blend with the overall design.

We are truly delighted to show you these brilliant and informative infographics created by various talented individuals. Here’s a collection of 50 infographics that are creatively designed, colorful, lively, shocking and educational. Let’s have some visual feast!

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Beautiful Google Doodles (1998 – 2010)

We’re all familiar with Google Doodles – the customized logos that appear on the search engine’s home page to commemorate special dates or events. For 12 years now Google has been creating these logos, honoring everything from global holidays like Earth Day to the birthdays of historically significant people (like Albert Einstein) and even to the birthdays of fictional characters like Paddington Bear.

preview Beautiful Google Doodles (1998   2010)

In the first ten years of Google Doodles (from 1998-2007), there were usually only a handful or maybe a dozen Doodles each year, usually for major events or holidays (like New Year’s Day or the Olympics). But starting in 2008, Google has been using more and more Doodles, often with cryptic meanings that take a bit of research to unearth meaning behind. Below are some of the best hand-picked Google Doodles from the past 12+ years we loved!

Have a favorite that isn’t on this list? Share it in the comments!

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Simple "Call To Action" Button With CSS & jQuery

Call to action in web design is a term used for elements in a web page that solicit an action from the user (clicking, hovering, etc). Today we’re going to create an effective and awesome call to action button with some CSS and jQuery that grab the user’s attention and entice him to click .

preview Simple "Call To Action" Button With CSS & jQuery

Throughout this tutorial we’ll explain every line of used code with details and hope it will be useful for you. The following tutorial uses HTML, CSS and jQuery with difficulty level Beginner and an estimated completion time of 45 minutes.

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Stunning Black Wallpapers For Your Desktop

One of the most debated issues about color is whether black is truly a color or not. To an artist (or a child) black is a color and white is not. But for a scientist, white is a color, black is not. The real meaning of the word black means the absence of colors. Try to mix all the colors in the rainbow, you’ll get black. Black has many associations. Black goes beyond a simple or mixed color; It can be seen as the color of solitude and misery, but it can also express a sense of creativity, power, elegance, strength, nobility, and beauty.
preview Stunning Black Wallpapers For Your Desktop

In digital arts, black is usually the preferred color because of its effectiveness in producing contrast. Black and yellow or red on black creates a powerful color combination. Almost all colors appears more luminous against a black background. Below I put together a collection of beautiful black wallpapers that truly illustrate the beauty of black-inspired design. Go ahead, try some black wallpapers on your desktop or laptop. Take your pick and enjoy!

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Complete Guide to Live Blogging

If you’re attending a conference or other event related to your blog’s niche, you might want to consider live blogging from the event. Live blogging is basically just posting regular updates to your blog as the event is taking place, rather than blogging about it after the fact.

guide to live blogging Complete Guide to Live Blogging

Live blogging can be a very valuable resource to your readers if done right. If you take the time and keep focused throughout an event to provide useful information to your readers, they’ll often consider your blog the go-to place for event coverage in your industry. If it’s done poorly, though, all those blog posts will likely just be looked at as filler or fluff by your readers, and may even annoy some to the point they unsubscribe from your RSS feed.

Use the information below to guide you through the live blogging process.

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