I’ve also introduced a brand new UI site allowing visitors to collapse and *dock various panes directly to their dock on the site. Cookies are automatically set remembering the states of the collapse. There are tons of other new features on the site including the ability of h MAG members to send gifts to one another, post images, and interact with a live activity feed.

What initially conceptualized as a website featuring the very same articles that are to be found in the magazine, quickly grew into a full blown social media network for Hoboken’ites. Free registration for an account featuring profiles, friend features, activity feeds, photo galleries, site-based private messaging system, events, and classifieds are just a few of the features. I’m beyond ecstatic in what I’ve build – starting tomorrow and through the weekend the past 4 months of hard work will be put to the test. http://www.h-mag.com

Our portfolio, office location, even employee directory are all easily accessible within the new site’s UI. I’d like to create additional social media and visitor interaction on this new iPhone mini site in the future and perhaps enable visitors and clients submit content through the site. In addition, I’d like to incorporate some dynamic features within both sites where all content would be pulled from a single database. This would allow a much easier streamflow of content on both versions of the site.

Lastly, Tisha Creative’s main website hosts a script that automatically redirects all iPhone visitors to the iPhone version of the site, all other Mobile visitors are redirected to a generic Mobile Tisha Creative site, and remaining visitors are kept put on the desktop version of the site with all its bells and whistles.

My favorite Twitter application for the iPhone is currently Tweetie from Atebits. There are quite a few of these types of application on Apple’s iTune’s store at the moment, however, Tweetie is not only free, but also allows you to logon with multiple accounts.

Wordpress application from Automattic, Inc. is another great application for maintaining and updating your wordpress blog. It’s so feature rich in fact, that I’ve written this blog entry directly from it. It’s also useful for checking up on spam on your blog; I seem to to be getting quite a bit as of late, however, when I’m on the go, it takes me literally just a few seconds to delete it.

Skype from well… Skype allows you to utilize Skype services to IM chat or speak with anyone in the world. The catch? – They have to be part of the Skype network. Also, iPhone’s carrier ATT recently removed the ability of using Skype on their 3G network. You’ll have to utilize a WiFi connection to make any outgoing calls.

The installation process is a bit difficult, but I’ve managed to get it up and running. My hosting package currently houses 12 domains for various clients and with my installation of RoundCube Webmail my clients and I are able to access webmail on the go . The application works with all of my client’s IMAP accounts which I’ve previously setup. All emails are pushed to and from the mail server providing an efficient workflow along side Outlook and Apple Mail.

I tend to access my email accounts on my iPhone when I’m on the go, however, it’s nice to have a backup option when I don’t have either my laptop or my phone on me. All of the activities in reading, deleting and moving emails are automatically synced with my mail server and thus when I’m back in front of my computer at home, all the tasks I’ve done on webmail are automatically reflected in my Apple Mail application on my laptop. As far as my theme, I decided to design a Peanut-like interface.. as usual.

A Google search for your full name (admit it, you do Google yourself), is the best way for an employer to perform a “social profile background check” on you to see if there’s any additional relevant information about you that might not otherwise be mentioned in your resumé. Majority of employers look for well rounded individuals. After all, the activities we perform out side of our 9-5 is what shapes us. By taking it upon ourselves to own that responsibility, we in turn have a high impact on what a typical Google search on us comes up with. Additionally, If you’re concerned about what’s posted about you on some website, take the time to contact the administrator of that site, and politely ask them if they can remove that content.

Vanity URLs are a big craze right now as they end up placing keywords associated with your full name higher in search engine results. A good place to start would be to open up a LinkedIn account, and create an account associated with your full name, unless it’s already been taken by someone else. A Facebook account would be the next place to start unless you already have one. Again, you can limit what people see about you. A lot of companies have began establishing Facebook pages already and in many cases ask their employees to join them. Don’t be left out in the cold.

If you’re a novice web designer or perhaps you haven’t had the time to brush up on CSS in the past few years and prefer of designing websites directly in a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver, then I’m sure you’re familiar with creating rollovers. I bet you’re also aware of the bulky javascript that ends up generating in your HTML file.

The image at left shows a completely javascript free rollover. It’s accomplished with just a few lines of code, 1 image containing both the normal and the hover state and a single pixel transparent GIF file which will act as place holder for the effect.

Here’s how it’s done:

Lets begin by creating the image that we wish to apply a rollover effect to. In the example at top, I cropped out an image of my dog, Peanut. In order to simplify this tutorial, lets use a simpler, smaller sized image.

I created a prepared image at left, which you can right-click on and save for your own use. Note how the image is actually duplicated and stacked one on top of the other. This is because we will use a CSS trick to mask the top portion of the image as it loads on our page and reveal the other portion of the image as we hover over it.

The hover effect is created by the following CSS:

.check {
	background-image:url(check.png);
	background-position: 0px 0px;
	width: 87px;
	height: 75px;
	}

.check:hover {
	background-image:url(check.png);
	background-position: 0px -75px;
	width: 87px;
	height: 75px;
	}

Our full image measures 87px wide by 150px tall. We’re cropping it at 75px tall, which is exactly half of our image height, thus revealing only the top portion of the image (the grey check). For the hover effect to work properly, we are telling the background image to position itself up with a value of -75px, which creates the illusion of a rollover effect.

The HTML looks like the following:

<div class="check">
<img src="check-dot.gif" width="87" height="75" />
</div>

The image that we’re placing in the HTML “check-dot.gif” is an additional image we need to create measuring 1px tall/wide. It’s important that this image is saved as a transparent file, preferably a GIF file. We wrap that image between the “check” class that we’ve defined in the CSS and we’re done. The final effect is shown at left.

I didn’t know much of the Word Wide Web following it’s initial release in 1989 by the creator Tim Berners-Lee, who’s now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium. My first introduction was in 1993 learning how to take apart my Hyper Card projects at school and turning them into atrocious looking websites. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), much like any other consortium aims at preaching and continuing to develop web standards across the World Wide Web in order to maintain some sort of stability. With the huge variety of websites and companies offering web services, Web 1.0 began. Yet no one considered it Web 1.0 since there was no prior version to compare it to.

Web 2.0 came about in 2004 It wasn’t a technical software patch that propagated down from our internet service providers onto our computers. instead, the term Web 2.0 meant the process in the way we utilize the World Wide Web. To me on the other hand, it was and still is the way websites are built and the purpose they serve to those interacting with them. The idea of an Open Source System is the main characteristic of Web 2.0 in my opinion. Wordpress, Joomla, various Ajax libraries, and many many more are all perfect examples of sets of code built by open communities and distributed freely. These projects aim at growing communities and further help the development of the project wether it be through plugins or visual templates created by designers and developers.

Web 3.0 in my opinion has already began several years ago with the social media concept. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter are all fun and exiting social media platforms but with a completely different business model in comparison to Open Source Systems. Again, I stress that this whole versioning of the World Wide Web is hypothetical; In my opinion there is no set time as to when one starts and the other ends. Social media websites are all about establishing themselves as the living room of your daily networking activities online. The use of  ’some’ of that database is freely available through APIs which developers use to build web applications that manipulate that data through various ways with user interactions.  Yet, the home base stays in tact with very little customization from the visitor. Integration of the data from that database onto personal and company websites is where Web 3.0 is heading in my opinion. What happens next? Well the same way operating systems fight for your loyalty, the same way search engines fought for your “bookmark me in your toolbar as your place to start your day in front of a computer” will be the same way these social media platforms fight for your living room experience online.

Several years ago, I believe it was with the introduction of Mac OS X by Apple, Steve Jobs described the personal computer as the “center of your living room”. Microsoft in turn focused on the television as being the “Hub of your daily activities”. Social Media platforms now are all about being in the know about what’s happening as it happens and before it happens. Will you run home, grab the remote and turn on the TV, grab your laptop out of bag in some trendy coffee house and relax, or will you be the type to wip out your mobile device (iPhone, Palm Pre, Google Android device) and be part of the news or even better, have the power to create it.