Ever wondered how many websites are there in the world right now? According to Pingdom, it’s a whooping 255 million as of December 2010! A total of 21.4 million websites were created last year alone. Logically speaking, our search for websites should get exponentially tedious and difficult along with the years, especially at a time when access to information is more valuable than ever.
Surprisingly, we are still able to find the information we need most of the time, thanks to the effective and reliable search engine, Google. Nevertheless, with that much wealth of information out there online, it’s easy to lose ourselves and not get the optimal results we could have.
There are fortunately methods of searching to ensure that we are digging in the right holes, and below we will cover 5 essential steps that include tips & tricks to help you refine your search. Learn them all and get what you really want from the Google while not wasting your time flipping the result page!
More: You may also interested in – Gmail Advanced Search – Ultimate Guide
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I seriously love the month of December every year. It means the end of the year but also the start of another year. You can see the people and shopkeepers are busy decorating their places. You can see the people are smiling and discussing different ways to celebrate the Christmas and the New Year. The entire town is fulfilled with the festival mood. It just feels good.
(Image Source: Plenet)
Besides decorating the house, you can probably do more to inject the festival mood into yourself, especially if you’re like me who sits in front of the computer all day. Here in Hongkiat we collected 40 fabulous Christmas and New Year wallpapers for you to cheer up even while you’re working in front of your boring PC display, put them up and enjoy the very moment of celebration!
And all of us from Hongkiat want to say to you: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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If you’re a webmaster then you should also have a keen interest in tracking site statistics. Likely you’ve heard about or even used Google Analytics for certain time. It really got some serious awesomeness for webmasters, and for most users the general tracking data is enough to pull sound conclusions. However, like Google pointed out, real Analytics Ninjas use goals.
With Google Analytics, you can create artificial goals and apply them to your web traffic to determine the success or failure rate of visitor’s actions. Goals can even put your mind at ease by tracking the completion of tasks by your visitors. They are abundant in Analytics and provide exceptional data to look over.
The process sounds a lot more confusing than it seems, but I’ll be going into much greater detail in this guide with comprehensive explanation. So if you’re interested to track and analyze data better in order to make your site more awesome, this is the guide for you!
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Tell me, when was the last time you actually wrote using pen and paper? It’s not surprising to know that you seldom use them, as we’re entering the digital age when technologies like laptop and tablet blossom all over the world. However, the crucial fact here is that using pen and paper are definitely more efficient than using computer when it comes to sketching, writing, designing, any activity that involves brainstorming!
(Image Source: Mike Rohde)
It’s safe to say that with pen and paper, your creativity will truly be unleashed in a very fast manner, making your work more efficient than ever. What’s really greater is that they save tons of your energy and time, with the chance to decrease your head-scratching moment!
Read on to know what are the reasons behind the claims, then dig out your papers and start doodling on them today!
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Talk to any successful freelancer about whether he or she frequents online forums and the answer is going to be a resounding “Yes”. Even if they don’t use them as often any more, many freelancers admit to using forums to establish their business and form long-lasting connections. Clearly the reason online forums have managed to survive the blogging evolution is because of the benefits they provide.
Below we will explain to you 8 awesome benefits you will get by joining forums and actually interacting with their members. The post also comes with tips and forum suggestions, so don’t miss out on this chance to know about them. Enough said, enjoy the post and sign up a forum today!
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In contention with online music stores like Apple iTunes and Amazon MP3, Google has finally and officially launched its very own Google Music last Wednesday. At first glance, this cloud-based service seems pretty similar to what Apple and Amazon has to offer with their online music storage. However, there are a few subtle differences between Google Music and the rest that might eventually place the former on top of the competition.
Google Music is free to all users and can be accessed through the web, desktop and mobile devices. As a starter, the service is currently only available in U.S. It is also supported by major labels such as Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and EMI, amounting to a total of 13 million tracks in the music store. To sweeten the deal, Google Music allows the automatic backing up of iTunes and most other music files such as MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG and FLAC extensions.
Got you excited about it yet? If you’re still not, here are a couple of its key features that will bound to make you so:
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By working out the sample codes from the previous post, you might got the feeling of what is the actual benefit of using Node.js. In today’s post, we throw in a practical script that clearly demonstrates the use of Node.js in event-based programming.
(Image Source: node.js)
We’ll be creating a simple script that outputs the number of "Facebook likes" of a particular Facebook page. And on top of that, we’ll throw in an additional feature that will update the number of "Facebook likes" every 2 seconds.
The output will be simple and plain, probably looks something like this: "Number of Likes: 2630405" and it is up to you to style it using the CSS, let’s get started then!
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One of the most human-friendly features for Operating System like Windows is probably its ability to change the displaying image on the desktop screen, a.k.a Desktop Wallpaper. It can be your girl friend’s photo, or a professional typography illustration, but if you’re like me who prefers a more relaxing computing environment, cartoonic wallpapers are probably for you!
(Image Source: Momkai x Desktops)
Not, they are not wallpapers from any Disney’s cartoon series, but 38 unique wallpapers which possess cartoonic feature and they are all fun, relaxing and even amusing! Make some of them your desktop wallpaper today so your tightened nerve can get relaxed every time you fall back from your work application!
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The fifth generation of the iPhone, named iPhone 4S, has already been released with its exclusive feature: an awesome voice assistant named “Siri”. If you have not ‘converted’ by now, you’ve probably decided a long time ago that you love your Android phone too much to cross over.
Well, the fact is that if Siri is the edge that the iPhone 4S can give to its fans, Apple will probably need to work harder for the iPhone 5, as there are just too many Siri alternatives for Android, and we’re gonna feature 10 of them in this particular post.
The assistants featured here will be able to voice dial, send text and emails, search information on web, update social media status, manage contacts and reminders, check in with Foursquare, find local shops, etc. Oh, one more thing: 9 of them are even free! So choose your favorite today to make your Android become your best assistant!
More: In case you want your Android to be a more powerful assistant for your design work, check out our collection of 65 useful Android apps for designers!
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You can find well-designed lists all around the Internet. Designers have been using them for decades to coordinate page information and layouts, and in today’s web you can see the great creativity in how web designers are using lists. These include navigation menus, profile links, archives, tasks/checklists, and tons of other uses!
In this post I will be introducing different kinds of HTML lists, with tips on designing them, particularly on how to add an unique edge to your list. Also I’ll be taking you through a few examples of websites with fantastic list designs, and eventually you’ll get a list of websites with nicely designed HTML lists. There’s no more doubt on how to make your plain looking lists look unique, and let’s start to make the most from them today!
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Node.js – in simple words – is server-side JavaScript. It has been getting a lot of buzz these days. If you’ve heard of it or you’re interested in learning and getting some hands on it – this post is for you.
(Image Source: node.js)
So what exactly is the need of using JavaScript in the server? To make the concept of Node.js clear I would like to compare it with the ordinary server-side languages such as PHP. Node.js uses an event-based server execution procedure rather than the multithreaded execution in PHP.
To explain it further, we’ll be talking about the idea of what Node.js is along with some hosting provider suggestions and installation tips. Intermediate level knowledge of JavaScript, jQuery and Ajax are required, but we’ll also provide examples for you to understand the entire thing easier and even work on it, so let’s get to know more about Node.js!
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Typography, being the art of type in a design, is undoubtedly one of the most essential elements of good web design. It’s the visual art that helps us to create a beautiful and neat design that just works. However, the fact that it can be on the headline is that being one of the most important elements, it is still overlooked by many.
Good typography makes a design more appealing, leading a reader across the whole web page according to the importance of different text, but it is not just about the style, size and family of the font. It’s about realizing the high level of visual hierarchy that can be reached with the use of typography.
Since a screenshot worth thousand words, in this post we are willing to deliver you tips on improving typography in your web design and eventually 16 website screenshots with great typography applied, and the resources that will guide your typography skill to a higher level.
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In today’s tutorial we are going to re-create text effect used in the comic (also an upcoming movie)- The Avengers, to make ourselves feel like we are actually also a hero, at least a Illustrator/Photoshop hero :)
We will make the text manually in Adobe Illustrator, then import its path to Adobe Photoshop and apply some effects and texture. Instead of “Avengers”, we will use “Hongkiat” as the text, or you can use any text you please.
Let’s get started.
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Navigation menus and links are possibly the most important interface elements to a web layout. These are the only outlets for users to travel between pages and interact with all the content you’ve created. Breadcrumb offers similar functionality with the added benefit of tracking your current position. You’ll be able to display all the previous link paths as the user traverses your site hierarchy.
In this tutorial we’ll be creating a brilliant breadcrumb navigation menu with some CSS3 effects. This has been tested to work in all major CSS3-compliant browsers, even older browsers which don’t support CSS3 will still render it properly in most cases.
Before we dive into code we’ll talk a bit about the functionality of our breadcrumb, full tutorial at a jump!
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