-moz-border-radius: 4px; -webkit-border-radius: 4px; border-radius: 4px; /* future proofing */ -khtml-border-radius: 4px; /* for old Konqueror browsers */

Now the cool part is creating a circle with this. Set the width and height to double the value of the border-radius. In this case, the width and height would be 8. That would create a circle like the one displayed below;

Want it bigger? No problem!

If you want text in there, ust remember to set your alignment properly for your text and you’re on your way to designing some basic graphics in CSS3!

But that’s not why you came. Here’s the picture:

Best shot I've taken of the Salt Lake Temple

And here’s how I did it:

Normally, you would have to go to the 10th floor observation deck of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to get this view. Well, this time I went up and it was being mobbed my families and little kids. The glass was streaked with hand prints (not all of them were kids!) and it would be a nightmare just to get tot the window. Well, thanks to some ingenuity to another photographer (I’ll post a link once I find her site!) we were able to go down one floor – which people don’t normally do – to take pictures. And this is what we got!!

This is actually an HDR. It has only two images, shot without a tri pod. They were both shot at ISO 1600. The first was shot at 1/200th and the second at 1/5oth of a second. I combined them in Photomatix Pro and then took them into Lightroom. I bumped up the contrast and clarity, tweaked the exposure a little bit and that’s it!

What do you think?

Camera hardware: Canon T1i with the 18-55MM @15MM.

How it works now:

You create your HTML file and then your CSS file. You link the two together through the <link> tag in the header. Start coding your guts out, switching between the two to add classes and ID’s to the stylesheet as you go. Then, at the end, switch to CSS to style it. This may be a little bit different according to your workflow, but that’s how I get things done.

NOW imagine something like this. Go to File>New and create your HTML document. Easy Peasy. At the very start, link to your stylesheet. What’s that? You don’t have one created yet? Well, DreamWeaver can – and does – already tell you that. What if you want to take it to a new level? Have it automatically create the file for you in the directory you specified in the href of the link? Is this blowing your mind yet?

Hang on, cuz I’m not done yet…

They’ve already got the really cool feature – and I LOVE it – of having attached files be right there in the header section for you to click on. Super cool.

Let’s take the auto-creation to the next level.

So you’re coding away and you have your CSS file attached and everything. What if when you create  a new class or ID, it put it into the stylesheet for you? Or when you used a new HTML tag? So, for example, when I create a class="content", it goes into the stylesheet and writes:

.content {

}

Now there would be a couple of logistical issues with this. First of all, you may not want to style every single HTML tag that you use. Second, I know that with my stylesheets, I like to keep them minimal and grouped together so that it makes it easy to find information later. And lots of comments. Of course, we could take this to the next level and do the same thing for JavaScript, PHP and even more pages.

What are some other issues, though, that would have to be overcome to get this feature? And what are some solutions to those problems. All in all, it seems like a pretty simple upgrade…

PERSONAS

• Be sure to design your site with your clients in mind. Not only demographics, but psycographics as well. What are their buying habits? what are they looking for?
• Also be sure to design around their needs and goals. What are they looking to do? Does your website perform this task? How effective is it?

How are needs defined?

• By programmers? Users are going to need to be experts
• By marketers? Site will be focused on beginners, since they are the easiest people to please
• Should be based on intermediate users.
• Logic says that to satisfy a broad audience, you should make applications as broad in functionality as possible to please the most people. THIS LOGIC IS FLAWED!!
• Personas are PRECISE DESCRIPTIVE MODELS of users based on the goals, behaviors and motivations of real people and represent them throughout the design process.

Why Personas?

• determine what a product should do and how it should behave
• communicate with stakeholders, developers, and other designers
• build consensus and commitment to the design
• they resolve user-centered design issues (three in particular) 1. the elastic user (your user keeps changing, and so does your design) 2. Self referential design (you are NOT your target audience) and 3. design edge cases

But Twitter? How is Twitter possibly Google’s number one competitor? Well, if we look at it, people are wanting more results, and they want them to be more relevant. This is Google’s strength, hands down. So what does Twitter do? It’s a lot more than what this video says:

Twitter has a MASSIVE amount of data. And the best part is it’s updated LIVE. And I don’t mean live like a news reporter is out there reporting on the scene. It’s much more than that. It’s not a reporter giving his or her two cents on the issue. It’s live as in other people are out there putting the information out as it happens. Just for example, the first news that broke about the killing of bin Laden came from Twitter.

That’s HUGE! That’s taking live reporting to a completely new and different level. Yes, people want more results and they want those results to be relevant. Again, by far, this is Google’s strong suit. But, where Twitter comes in is their speed. It’s happening now. People don’t have to wair for CNN, BCC, Fox or anyone else to hear about it, send a reporter out, interview and then give us their two cents. People log on and tweet. That’s it’s power.

AJ Kohn posted that Google is not competing with Twitter (this was in 09). I disagree with that. If Twitter can solve the relevance problem, it will be a big huge competitor with Google. Hands down. Now it’s just a waiting game to see if when they’ll do it…

Yeah, I loved it, too…

In marketing, there are good ideas and bad ideas. Good idea: outsource work to a good, quality company. This saves time and money and it can greatly expand what you’re able to do with a project. If you are going to outsource, make sure to talk with the people that will be doing the work. If they are going to be writing articles for you, don’t have them publish it – that’s just asking for waaaay too much trouble. I had a client who recently had someone write and then publish them. Problem is, he doesn’t know where they are, what they say or if they even link to anything that is his. He doesn’t know how the quality of the article was, either, as he never saw it.

Be sure to have them write it and then you can submit it. If you really don’t want to publish it, that’s fine; have them write it and then send it to your 8th grade kid you to spell check it. This will make sure it doesn’t sound spammy, correct grammar and spelling is (are??) used and the content is what you want. Once that’s been OK’d publish it or have them publish it. If they publish it, make sure you know where it’s at… If you don’t know where it’s at you have hardly a clue if it was useful or not.

Bad idea is to do what my client did: hire someone with limited English skills to write an article on love seats and sofas and have that same person submit it to different article websites.

1. Interact with the people. Every person is different, but you want their personality to show through in the pictures. My photo idol, Scott Jarvie, is huge on this. And he’s really good at it.
2. You don’t need to have a ton of flashes, reflectors and shades to get decent looking portraits. Hopefully you agree with me… But I learned to use what I had and to stretch it a little further.
3. Keep the kids entertained. If they aren’t, it’s really hard for them to smile at you. I got the pictures done with the entire family so that my niece could go play.
4. Keep the husband entertained. Just as important as the kid.

Say you want to see what phrases you are ranked for. Even if you are logged out of your Google account, you might get some skewed results, especially if you have been Googling at the same computer for a while. The reason: cookies. Google is remembering things you are searching for and clicking on, trying to guess what you are looking for. If it thinks that a site is going to help you more, it will put that one near the top for you.

Well, I just want to see where my site sits among the billions of others. There’s a very simple way to do this.

Check out the differences between these pages:

http://www.google.com/search?q=google+blog&pws=0

http://www.google.com/search?q=google+blog

Little different right? Well, which one is wich? The &pws=0 is the key. That is what tells Google to leave your online social life out of the SERPs. While this is a temporary thing (meaning you have to type it in each time you do a search), it’s fast, simple and effective.