Recently I’ve been seeing the “12 year old McDonalds Hamburger” that doesn’t age, decay, mold… going viral on Facebook. I wasn’t sure what to believe. So I decided to test the theory out for myself.

12 year old McDonlads Hamburger

To test [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

Recently I’ve been seeing the “12 year old McDonalds Hamburger” that doesn’t age, decay, mold… going viral on Facebook. I wasn’t sure what to believe. So I decided to test the theory out for myself.

12 year old McDonlads Hamburger

To test the theory, today (January 24, 2012 @ around 3pm) I purchased three McDonlds Hamburgers. One regular (L), one plain – no condiments (R), and the other I ate. [pictures below]

What do you think will happen? Please comment when/if you think the hamburger will mold (rot). If you are the betting type, please include a time and date that you think mold will occur. If you win, you get a free hamburger and bragging rights.

The Hamburgers will be placed in the closet of my office, no direct sunlight, at 18-19 degrees celsius (64-66 F), high enough that my dog, Newton, won’t eat it.

Disclaimer: In no way am I trying to say McDonalds food is healthy or good for you. I’m just trying to prove a point that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Two useful and valuable techniques for proofing your work.

Read from the bottom of the page up going backwards

Photography & Design: Turn the image upside down.

This allows you to view the images clarity, colour

Click on image to see upright view

Click [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

Two useful and valuable techniques for proofing your work.

Copy writing:

Read from the bottom of the page up going backwards

Photo editing:

Photography & Design: Turn the image upside down.

This allows you to view the images clarity, colour

Click on image to see upright view

Design:

Click to see upright verisons 

Here are some quick tips on how to impress people with some fancy night photography.

Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia. Sony a900, 24mm, 20s @ f/8, ISO 100

1. Any Camera that can be set to Manual Mode [M]
[...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

Here are some quick tips on how to impress people with some fancy night photography.

Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia. Sony a900, 24mm, 20s @ f/8, ISO 100

What you will need (Gear):

1. Any Camera that can be set to Manual Mode [M]
2. Tripod (or anything steady to lean the camera against/on: stone fence, tree, deck…)
3. Wired/Wireless remote control (or use the 10-second timer mode to eliminate camera shake)

Camera Settings

In Manual Mode [M]: 

Set the camera to these settings

Aperture  

Urban areas : f/8.0   [making your images sharp and clear, reducing light halos.]

Rural areas : lenses lowest f-stop / largest aperture. e.g. f/1.4, f/2.8, f/3.5 …  [with a larger aperture, the camera will let in more light (like a dilated pupil)]

*It is best to stick to these f stops until you grasp the fundamentals of Aperture

Shutter Speed 

5 seconds to 30 seconds (or “Bulb” if you are feeling adventureous)

The longer the exposure, the more light it will allow in.

ISO

100

This is to eliminate image noise.

Unless you are looking for a dark grungy / rockband look, it is best to never go above 800 ISO.

Focus 

∞ [Infinity]

If you camera has a difficult time focusing in the dark, set the lens to infinity “ ∞ “

Have fun!

Coolah, Australian Outback. Sony a900, 24mm, 30s @ f/2.8, ISO 100.

Coolah, Australian Outback. Sony a900, 24mm, 11s @ f/2.8, ISO 100.

Coolah, Australian Outback. Sony a900, 24mm, 15s @ f/2.8, ISO 100.

Freshwater Beach, NSW, Australia. Sony a900, 24mm, 30s @ f/2.8, ISO 100

Sydney Harbour Bridge, Australia. Sony a900, 24mm, 30s @ f/8, ISO 100

For those unfamiliar with memes. It is a technique used by artists to create images that are funny, artistic and/or thought provoking. Which are then shared on the internet, usually through social media, message boards, and social bookmarking sites for images (like FFFFOUND!).

One popular technique is to animate the meme. [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

For those unfamiliar with memes. It is a technique used by artists to create images that are funny, artistic and/or thought provoking. Which are then shared on the internet, usually through social media, message boards, and social bookmarking sites for images (like FFFFOUND!).

One popular technique is to animate the meme. The most common process is by creating an animated GIF. This is because GIF’s are light, portable, and accessible on any mobile device.

The easiest non-technical explanation of an animated GIF is by referencing old hand-made flip books. It uses the same method, but using computer animation:

What you will need

1. Photoshop
2. Time
3. Patience
4. Several images

Exercise files: Feel free to work along, using a ZIP folder of the images used, or with a completed PSD of the tutorial (if you learn better that way).

Steps in creating an animated GIF:

1. Open Photoshop and make sure “Animation” is enabled

Menu bar >> Photoshop >> Window >> Animation

2. Consolidate your images

A. Open the images you wish you use for the animated GIF
B. Create a New Image (⌘+N)
C. Add / Drag all of the images in order to the new image

3. Align Images

Select the image layers and background, then use the vertical and horizontal alignment tool

4. Create Animation Layers

Deselect all image layers, then using the duplicate frames button  Create the appropriate number of animation frames.

If you don’t deselect the image layers before creating new frames, you will need to manually deselect individual images for every frame set.

5. Correlate the related Frames to Images

To make the animation run smoothly, you need to correlate the related frames to images.

(e.g. Image Layer #9 must be visible on Animation Frame #9)

6. GIF Settings

The Loop count should be “Forever” and set the Frame rate to correlate with your animation (i.e. 0.1 seconds)

7. Save the finished product for Web

Photoshop >> File >> Save for Web & Devices…

Settings: GIF >> 256 Colors (click to enlarge)

8. The Finished Product

Creative Examples:

Bluehost is an excellent hosting service, it offers .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .us domains. If you want to use a domain like .ca, [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

Bluehost is an excellent hosting service, it offers .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .us domains. If you want to use a domain like .ca, .com.au, .io, or anything more exotic on your Bluehost hosting plan, you will need to buy it from another domain registrar like GoDaddy.com and forward it.

You could buy hosting from the domain registrar, but if you don’t like GoDaddy‘s interface, Netfirms price (and service), Network Solutions responsiveness, or having several hosting plans throughout several registrars ($$$), forwarding domains to Bluehost is perfect for you.

Here is how to buy a domain name from a registrar like GoDaddy and host it on BlueHost:

1. Buy a domain name and access your account:

Access Account - Click to enlarge

2. Locate the URL that you just purchased

Select Your URL - Click to enlarge

3. Change the Nameservers.

For example. In GoDaddy, change the Nameserversto NS1.BLUEHOST.COM and NS2.BLUEHOST.COM to direct your URL to Bluehost.

GoDaddy Nameserver - Click to enlarge

Change Nameserver - Click to enlarge

4. In Bluehost (or your hosting provider)

Login >> Domain Manager >> Assign a domain to your cPanel account.

Assign Domain - Click to enlarge

5. Add the domain

example: yourdomainname.ca

Enter info - Click to enlarge

6. Wait for the changes to take effect

Normally its takes only a few minutes for the changes to propagate. But in some cases it can take up to 2-4 hrs to change over. In rare cases it can take up to 48 hrs for the changes to take effect.

The new iOS 5 update is now available over the air, without using iTunes. Here are detailed instructions how to update.

The update is in response to fix the 4S battery life issue, adding multitasking gestures for the original iPad  (already possible on the iPad 2), better synching with documents in iCloud, and [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

The new iOS 5 update is now available over the air, without using iTunes. Here are detailed instructions how to update.

The update is in response to fix the 4S battery life issue, adding multitasking gestures for the original iPad  (already possible on the iPad 2), better synching with documents in iCloud, and Australians can more accurately dictate text using voice recognition.

Step #1

Select >> General

Step #2

In General select >> Software Update

Step #3

After accepting the Terms and Conditions, the update will proceed

Step #4

If your battery life is under 50%, plug the iPhone in. It won’t upgrade unless your device is 50% charged.

Step #5

Click >> Install

Step #6

The iPhone then verifies and restarts

Step #7

The installation takes around 5 minutes. When it restarts, you finished and good to use your iPhone normally.

Google has finally given the official go-ahead for businesses to create profiles on the Google+ social network.

Here are the steps to create your own Google+ page.

Go to http://www.google.com/+/business/

*Remember you should be signed into your Google+ personal account to make things easier.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search,video search, news…

SEO in webpages:

Title Tag – This tag comes first in every web page. It is this tag which tells a website visitor about the contents of a web page. It is like the subject of an email.

* Most search engines use a maximum of 60 characters for the title.

<title>This is page title</title>

Meta Keywords – Meta is one of the most important tag in Search engine optimization. Keywords is the value of name attribute of Meta tag. Many search engines in the world work on Meta tag’s keywords attribute. These keywords are the important terms that define a web page. The more the keywords match the title & content, the higher it is ranked in search results.

*Most search engines use a maximum of 6-10 keywords.

<meta name="keywords" content="meta, keyword, seo, google, html, tags" />

Meta Description – Description is again a value of name attribute of Meta HTML Tag. With description attribute you specify a summary of your web page. It is like a brief phrase that defines the content of your web page in short.

*Most search engines use a maximum of 160 characters for the description.

<meta name="description" content="general information about your website" />

Meta Robots – This tag consist of name attribute with Robots value. It allows you to hide content from search engines. If you have implemented this tag on some of your web pages than those pages won’t get any Page Rank from Google (Bing, Yahoo!). This tag has 4 different values – index, noindex, follow and nofollow.

• index – This value mean that search engine spiders can index the webpage in there search results.
• noindex – Crawlers (aka. spiders, bots) are blocked to index this web page.
• follow – Any authority or page rank may be distributed to all the links that exists on a web page. Crawlers can go ahead and see what is behind the links.
• nofollow – Crawlers are restricted to go beyond that web page and PageRank is not passed across the links that reside on that page.

<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />

Link Canonical – If multiple versions of a same web page exist on your website, then you must use Link tag with rel attribute and Canonical value in order to decide which web page is original and which is duplicate. This helps in avoiding low ranking of website in Search Engines because a website may be penalized by because of duplicate content.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com/best-page.html" >

Header tags

Header tags are an effective way to communicate to the search engines and readers what a page is about. They convey the importance of the text.

<h1>Header</h1> — Article Title
<h2>Header</h2> — Main Sub Sections of the article title
<h3>Header Text</h3> — Sub Sections Of the <h2> tags

Image search optimization

Image search optimization is the process of making images accessible to search engines and providing some description about images through image names, titles, and alt tags.

<a href="http://isaacadams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ip-camera-tool.jpg" title="IP Camera Tool"><img title="IP Camera Tool" src="http://isaacadams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ip-camera-tool-small.jpg" alt="IP Camera Tool" width="584" height="96" /></a>

SiteMap

The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. XML Sitemap file can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren’t discoverable by automatically following links.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled. Additionally, search engines sometimes have problems with crawling sites with certain kinds of graphic content, flash files, portable document format files, and dynamic content.

Geotagging and HTML

A block of text of piece of HTML code can also be geotagged by using specific standards in communicating the exact location to be attached to the HTML. The format for geotagging HTML is as follows:

<meta name="geo.placename" content="Ottawa, ON, Canada" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="45.421530;-75.697193" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="CA-ON" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="45.421530, -75.697193" />

Geotagging and Blogging

Some blogging and microblogging sites such as Twitter also support geotagging. This is especially popular with blogging and social networking sites that cater to a mostly mobile audience.

By geotagging blog posts and updates on your social network, you can easily alert your friends to your location. You can also track yourself through your own linefeed.

No industry standards exist, however there are a variety of techniques for adding geographical identification metadata to an information resource. One convention, established by the website Geobloggers and used by more and more sites, e.g. photo sharing sites Panoramio and Flickr, and the social bookmarking site del.icio.us, enables content to be found via a location search. All sites allow users to add metadata to an information resource via a set of so-called machine tags.

geotagged
geo:lat=45.421530
geo:lon=-75.697193

Find out what you might have been missing in the latest online services for Blogs, Music, Portflio, Social Networking, URL shortening, and Website building.

Contents:

By Isaac Adams-Hands

Blog Hosting

Blogetery

Blogetery lets you start your own WordPress blog for free which makes it the perfect service for starting out with the world’s most popular open-source blogging software. Unlike WordPress.com, Blogetery offers custom domain functionality at no extra cost.

You can upgrade to a Pro version if needed or buy the Photoblog package to showcase your artwork. Plans with 5GB disk space, premium themes and ad-free hosting start at an affordable $3.50 USD/month.

Blogger

Blogger is a free blog service where you can post articles, thoughts, photos or videos on your own domain. It offers a simple-to-use interface to write and manage posts and has many customisation features to personalise your blog with themes, gadgets, and more.

Blogger is already available in more than 40 languages and growing including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian speakers can even benefit from Right-to-Left display and formatting.

Page.ly

Page.ly offers secure and reliable WordPress hosting for all kinds of blogs — from personal bloggers to large universities. The fully managed service takes care of your blog setup, automatic upgrades and backups and lets you use any plugin or theme.

Plans for Page.ly start at affordable $US 19.95 / month which includes 5GB diskspace, backup services and advanced security features. They also offer special plans for businesses with a 100% uptime SLA.

Posterous

Posterous lets you publish stuff online ultra-fast using simple email. Just send a message to their free service and they’ll automatically turn it into a blog post. You can attach all sorts of file types which will be posted along with the text of your mail.

And here’s the best part: Photos are put in a nice little photo gallery, MP3s can be played directly with an embedded media player and videos are directly converted to play on the web. All automagically! Posterous also offers import from other blog services such as Blogger and is highly customisable with themes.

Soup.io

Soup is a free tumblelog service and lets you share links, quotes, video, audio, files, reviews and events. New content can be easily added via their dashboard or a little bookmarklet. Soup is also perfect for your lifestream and offers import features to aggregate all the cool stuff you create online.

Other features are: Follow friends, customisable skins or CSS & group blogging.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a hosted solution for all kinds of businesses as well as bloggers and designers that gives full control over your content. A neat iPhone app, aggregation features for Twitter, Youtube & Flickr, and a powerful analytics tool are further highlights of the system.

Squarespace also offers import / export features for popular services like WordPress.com, Typepad or Blogger and makes it easy to move from / to another platform.

Tumblr

Post anything with Tumblr. The free blog hosting service makes it easy-peasy to share text, photos, quotes, links, mp3s, and videos, from your browser, mobile phone (iPhone & Android), desktop clients or by email.

Tumblr also offers many ways to customize your tumblelog such as different color options, hundreds of professional themes and of course with a custom domain name. It’s the easiest way to blog so transfer your Tumblr URL to your own web address today.

TypePad

Do you want to concentrate on your content instead of messing around with your blog software? TypePad offers an easy, professional blog service for companies, journalists and writers based on the proven back end system from Six Apart. Their technology is suited for small niche blogs as well as for an audience of millions of readers.

TypePad blogs can be tested free of charge for a 14-day trial period. They also offer professional customer support 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

WP Engine

WP Engine is a premium WordPress hosting service for professional bloggers. They help you to keep WordPress fast using free CDN (Content Delivery Network) access, various caching technologies and built-in scalability for traffic spikes.

The service also focuses on security, backups your site regularly and updates your WordPress blog to the latest version automatically. Pricing starts at $US 49.00 / month with a 15-day free trial which gives you 50GB of bandwith, 50,000 pageviews and 10 GB storage.

Music Hosting

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a platform for artists who want an easy and powerful hosting solution to sell their work to fans online. Features include name-your-price downloads in different formats (MP3, FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC, Ogg Vorbis), real-time analytics and search engine optimized pages.

The basic service is free to use, you only pay a 15% revenue share on sales. Bandcamp supports different currencies for music downloads and merchandise and also allows you to customize the look and feel of your site.

SoundFolder

SoundFolder is a music website builder with integrated e-commerce functionality for bands, artists or DJs. The service lets musicians create a professional site including audio file hosting, streaming and an option to sell merchandise to fans.

It is 100% ad-free, allows design customization and you have full control over your copyright as well. All you need to create a website is an internet connection and your music. There is no special software required!

Portfolio Websites

4ormat

4ormat is a powerful and easy-to-use website builder for showcasing your artwork on the web. All portfolio websites are hosted and managed by the 4ormat service generating beautiful pages without requiring any technical knowledge or running your own server.

The service allows simple page editing, drag & drop features and lets you change layouts with a single click. Smartphone or tablet visitors will automatically get a site optimized for their device. Portfolio websites have never looked more beautiful.

500px

500px is an online community offering portfolio hosting for your photos with unlimited bandwith, custom domain support and Google Analytics integration. Create your ad-free photography website or blog with exclusive designs (iPhone and iPad ready), customize the logo and off you go.

The service also supports full image RSS and an option to completely remove their branding. Purchase your own web address and transfer your 500px URL to your domain now!

Behance ProSite

Behance ProSite allows you to create a portfolio site showcasing all your Behance projects. Your profile website also connects to other services such as Twitter or LinkedIn and displays your current Tweets and status updates. It’s the perfect personal branding tool for designers, students and other creative types.

If you register a custom domain for your Behance ProSite, you can also set up your own email addresses in the form me@yourname.com making your personal brand stand out. It only takes 5 minutes to set up so don’t wait and purchase your own web address today!

Carbonmade

Carbonmade is an easy portfolio hosting service to show all your artwork online. Just start with a clean canvas and simply add and manage projects without any HTML skills necessary. Their easy-to-use interface with drag and drop functionality supports photos, movies and even flash projects. You can also build a personal profile to tell people more about yourself. The possibility to add Google Analytics for monitoring your portfolio website traffic completes the offering.

Carbonmade portfolios are completely web-based, so you don’t need to install any additional software. The pro plan includes 50 projects with up to 500 hi-res images and 10 high quality videos.

Cargo

The Cargo content management system (CMS) allows you to easily publish a website with all your creative content. You can add image slideshows, embed video and audio files and have full control over the look and feel of your site.

Cargo is an invitation only service. Upgraded memberships are $9/month or $66/year offering unlimited projects and pages (up to 6GB), advanced editing and the possibility to use your own personal domain.

deviantART

With deviantART portfolio (the awesome version) you can showcase your artwork in a professional and simple way without needing any HTML or coding skills. Just upload images or import them from your existing deviantART gallery. Your hosted design portfolio is compatible with all major browsers and mobile phones.

The premium version offers unlimited portfolios and image hosting and the possibility to fully customize your site with your logo. You can even change the URL to your own domain name.

Parade

Parade offers an easy way to host your online portfolio. You don’t need any knowledge of HTML or programming languages so you can focus on the actual content of your website. Lots of beautifully designed templates, stunning galleries and the option of using your own domain name create endless customization possibilities for your portfolio.

The service also takes care of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and offers an optimized version for mobile phones such as the iPhone. Plans for Parade start at an affordable $9 USD/month.

SmugMug

Host your photos with SmugMug, a complete solution for online photo portfolio management. You can create a beautiful photo websites using your branding, share pictures with others and even sell them online.

Additional SmugMug services are HD video hosting, mobile apps for iPhone / iPad and advanced security features to protect your photos from theft or loss. They also offer a 14-day trial period so there is no risk in trying their offering.

Viewbook

Viewbook offers everything for creating beautiful online portfolios and full webpages. You can add unlimited albums, organize your photos and easily embed them into any other website.

Powerful import tools, professional management functions and iPhone / iPad versions of your portfolio help you to show your artwork to the world.

Social Network Hosting

Assistly

Assistly offers a powerful and beautifully designed helpdesk solution for delivering outstanding customer support. The service integrates with all your email accounts, monitors social media such as Twitter or Facebook and offers a hosted helpdesk which lets customers help themselves.

Your first full-time support agent is always free and you can add more people from your company or organization as demand grows. It is also possible to use part-time agents who are charged on a per-hour basis.

Get Satisfaction

Get Satisfaction lets you grow a customer community for your business, product or organization. People can ask questions, share ideas or report problems which can be answered by moderators and employees.

The hosted service offers a social knowledgebase / FAQ and is completely customizable to match your corporate design. Get Satisfaction also integrates with many other services and CRM systems with full data export.

GROU.PS

Build your own online community with GROU.PS ”Social Operating System”. The platform consists of different modules (Profiles, Blogs, Photos, Video, Calendar, Wiki, Chat, Maps) and is extensible with 3rd party widgets.

GROU.PS has an open source background which means you can also create your own modules. And last but not least, it’s totally free!

KickApps

The KickApps hosted software solution offers brands, companies and website owners the possibility to grow and engage their audiences with social media. Already 70,000 websites and brands are powered with the KickApps technology which includes social networking, photo & video sharing, a widget builder and customisable media players.

A developer platform with API access lets you fully integrate all applications into your existing infrastructure. Pricing for KickApps starts at $US 39.95 / month.

Meetup

Meetup lets you manage a group or community in your area or city. Simply create a group for your favorite hobby or topic which allows you to host Meetups, i.e. face to face meetings that happen in real life between members and organizers. Every member gets a profile so people in your group can easily communicate with each other.

If you register a domain name for your group, people can visit your site at YourGroupName.com and you can use email addresses in the form hello@mygroupname.com.

Ning

Ning lets anyone create a social network: businesses, organisations, schools, sports clubs, etc. Members have their own profile pages, can add photos and videos, chat with each other and can even have a personal blog. All brandable with your own name, over 50 themes and the possibility to add custom CSS.

The Ning platform is translated into 18 languages. Domain mapping is available as a premium service for $US 4.95 a month.

URL Shorteners

awe.sm

awe.sm is a hosted URL shortening service that creates tiny links for easier sharing on Twitter, in emails or via Instant Messenger. It provides detailed statistics for your shared links, integrates with Google Analytics and allows multiple users. The service also offers an API to integrate with other applications.

You are allowed to create 10k URLs / month with an unlimited number of redirections. Pricing for awe.sm is $US 99 / year.

bit.ly

bit.ly offers URL shortening and link tracking services. The customized bit.ly version allows you to use your own domain name for branded short links which can be easily shared on Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites. You are also able to use the same tools such as bookmarklets and third-party apps using their API with your custom domain name. A real-time dashboard with traffic analytics and referrer data shows how many people shared and clicked your links.

bit.ly is a free service. An Enterprise edition supports multiple domains, advanced dashboard features and a customer service support plan. Purchase your own tiny URL shortener domain now.

CloudApp

CloudApp lets you share links, images, videos, audio and more from the convenience of your Mac menubar. Simply drag and drop a URL or file to the application icon and get a link which can be easily shared with co-workers or your Twitter friends.

The service offers a Pro version with unlimited files, more disk space and also allows you to use your own domain name. Plans are starting at $5/month.

Droplr

Droplr makes sharing stuff on the internet simple. It’s a little Mac app that patiently sits in your menu bar and waits for you to throw files, images, notes or screenshots at it. You can also use it as your personal URL shortener.

The service is completely free with 1GB hosting space available. We love Droplr!

Shortswitch

Shortswitch is a hosted URL shortening service that allows you to use your own custom domain for sharing links. It includes full API access for custom integration, brandable interstitial pages and additional features such as QR codes and link analytics.

Plans start at $4 USD/month for 1 user with unlimited links and custom homepage redirect.

Website Builders

App.net

App.net is a hosted service to set up a professional website for your iPhone, iPad or Android applications in just a few minutes. It offers additional features such as SMS install links, smart download buttons to promote your app and a real-time analytics dashboard.

Plans with custom domain support start at $12/month with 3 managed apps included. Creating a stunning online presence for your app has never been easier!

Central.ly

Central.ly lets you easily create a website from all your social media profiles around the web. It’s the perfect choice for small businesses, e.g. cafes, lawyers or real estate agents. Simply connect all your accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Yelp, LinkedIn and get found online.

The service does all the hosting for you and you don’t need any design skills or other technical knowledge. Get started with your own online presence today!

DropPages

DropPages makes it easy to host your site harnessing the full power of DropBox. Simply edit source files on your computer and they’re published to the web immediately. You can also share data and collaborate with others, all with full version control and auto-backup to your DropBox folder.

The service creates friendly URLs and lets you choose from different themes. By upgrading your DropPages site you’ll get custom domain functionality and up to 1 GB of space.

Drupal Gardens

Drupal Gardens lets you build beautiful websites for your business, product or community based on the popular Drupal Open Source content management system (CMS). The fully hosted service offers stunning photo galleries, integrated publishing to Facebook or Twitter and point & click design for non-technical users.

By using the Drupal Gardens cloud hosting platform you never have to worry about servers, software or bandwith. You can also export your data at any time should you wish to do so. If you need reliable Drupal hosting for your personal, business or enterprise website, sign up for Drupal Gardens today.

Flavors.me

Flavors.me is an online profile builder that automatically creates your website from content all over the web. It is perfect for a personal profile homepage or lifestream but can also be used by companies for marketing promotions or microsites. Just enter your profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, last.fm or a custom RSS feed and Flavors.me does the rest.

Lots of customization options with different layouts, backgrounds, fonts and colors complete their service offering. It has never been easier to create a beautiful personal homepage with style!

Harmony

Harmony takes the pain out of creating and managing websites with an intuitive interface that helps connecting developers, designers and content creators. The hosted solution offers fully customizable templates, automatic updates and complete data flexibility.

You can use their service free of charge while developing your first site. All hosting plans come with unlimited pages, blogs, and users.

KickoffLabs

KickoffLabs gets your business its first web site and mailing list in 60 seconds without spending thousands of dollars. Perfect for coming soon sites or small businesses.

Create your first web site yourself with all of the fundamental information customers would expect to see when they are found online. Then start collecting customer email addresses and receive easy to understand reports about new customer sign-ups, and demographic data.

After a customer list has been collected it can be used to create simple email campaigns that promote your own daily deals, new products, or other announcements.

LaunchRock

LaunchRock lets you create a simple landing page for your website or product launch. It handles email signups and makes it easy to share invite URLs on Twitter or Facebook.

Easily add more services to your domain, e.g. your blog with Tumblr or Posterous, email using Google Apps and your coming soon website is ready to go.

LightCMS

LightCMS offers complete design flexibility with control over HTML, CSS and JavaScript when building websites or ecommerce storefronts. The service lets you add blogs, calendars, forms, photo galleries, file management, media, and much more.

Designers can use LightCMS to create sites or shops for clients with automated billing, custom-branded interface and your own pricing.

Moonfruit

The Moonfruit SiteMaker tool powers over 2 million websites already. Its true drag & drop features, social network integration with Twitter & Facebook and included promotion tools make it an ideal service for users who do not have experience with programming websites.

Adding your own content such as images, videos or MP3s works as well as embedding 3rd party content from Youtube, Myspace or Google Maps. Moonfruit does not display any advertising and is available as a free and paid service with additional features.

Onepager

Onepager helps you to easily create a website for your company with their easy sitebuilder tools. You don’t need any technical knowledge to set up your own business site with a professional look and feel.

Simply add your logo, content and links to other online business profiles on Facebook or Twitter and your own home on the web is ready to go. Useful analytics features to see how visitors found your site and mobile-friendly layouts for iPhone / Android smartphones make Onepager an easy choice for small businesses.

Pagebuild

Pagebuild allows non technical users to build websites very quickly and easily. It provides an editing interface that is so simple, even an adult could use it. Most low budget web solutions are pretty ordinary and this was the main motivation for building Pagebuild — we wanted to let small business get a great website at a inexpensive price but still retain a high standard of product.

PregoApp

PregoApp lets you build and launch nice-looking splash pages for new web projects. Simply add your logo, some text (including TypeKit support) and other dynamic content such as Wufoo forms, Campaign Monitor or MailChimp signup forms, Twitter and Facebook links or YouTube videos.

The service also offers integration with Google Analytics and custom meta tags so search engines can index your site immediately. Choose from the built-in themes, add your own domain and your coming soon website is ready to go.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a hosted solution for all kinds of businesses as well as bloggers and designers that gives full control over your content. A neat iPhone app, aggregation features for Twitter, Youtube & Flickr, and a powerful analytics tool are further highlights of the system.

Squarespace also offers import / export features for popular services like WordPress.com, Typepad or Blogger and makes it easy to move from / to another platform.

VidCaster

With VidCaster, you can create a branded video website on your own domain name, choose from designer templates or customize your own, automatically distribute your videos to video-sharing and social-networking sites, and track performance of your videos across all sites and devices.

The service also allows you to turn your video site into a mobile app and offers a custom XML and RSS based API for specific integrations.

Virb

Virb is a simple website creation tool that allows you to build your own page in a few easy steps. You do not need to purchase any additional hosting, everything can be done online.

Choose from different themes, add videos or photos from external sources or use the build-in blogging engine for writing articles. There are many ways in which you can build an online presence on top of the platform, e.g. for your portfolio, band website or personal profile.

Weebly

Simply add new content to your website with Weebly‘s drag and drop feature, no matter if it’s a video, picture, map, or text. You can also choose themes from a design library and customise the content just with a double-click.

The additional blogging features with a clean interface make Weebly a perfect tool for beginners.

Wix

Wix offers easy to build Flash websites that can be created without any programming knowledge. Choose from dozens of free Flash website templates and work on your site with an easy to use drag and drop editor. Adding photos, videos and other media works as well.

All Wix websites allow unlimited pages, are fully indexed by search engines and easy to promote with banners, newsletter or widgets. Plans start at $4.95 USD / month.

YikeSite

YikeSite is a brandable website builder service that freelancers, developers and producers can simply add to their current offering and market it as their own. A flexible architecture allows you to create stunning designs that are standards-compliant, optimized for SEO and can be modified using an easy online WYSIWYG editor.

Plans are starting at $24/mo with a free 30-day trial period. Sign up now and you will instantly get a starter promotional website for your customers.

Yola

Yola is for everyone. Small businesses, groups, non-profits, or personal sites. You can add text, videos, forms and widgets or add Google AdSense to earn money with your site through their intuitive online editor.

They even offer the possibility to turn your website into an online shop. All you need is a Paypal account and you can start selling products.

1. Find your Foscam’s IP address. (If you haven’t already set up your Foscam, here is how.)

If you have your cameras set up locally, (or if you are unsure,)

Open >> IP Camera Tool (Write down the IP address)

If you have your cameras accessible via [...]]]> By Isaac Adams-Hands

1. Find your Foscam’s IP address. (If you haven’t already set up your Foscam, here is how.)

If you have your cameras set up locally, (or if you are unsure,)

Open >> IP Camera Tool (Write down the IP address)

IP Camera Tool

If you have your cameras accessible via the internet.

Search for your “IP Address” using Google, or go to whatismyip.com (Write down the IP address)

Google IP Address Tool

2. Open VLC

3. Ensure you have VLC player 1.1.9 or higher

VLC >> About

About VLC Player

4. From the top of the screen in VLC, open File >> Open Network (or N )

Open Network

5. Add:  “http://your-ip-camera-url/videostream.asf?user=username&pwd=password“ in the URL bar, replacing the bold parts in the url above with your own details.

Network

6. Saving the feed (skip this part if you don’t want to save the feed to your computer)

Click “Streaming / Saving:” and press “Settings…”

Streaming / Saving

Click “Display the stream locally” to view what you are recording >> and click “Browse…” where you’d like the file save.

Settings

7. Test to ensure everything is working properly.