If you're organizing and editing large quantities of Photos, you need Lightroom 2! Watch as pro photographer Dan Moughamian shows you the ins & outs of this amazing graphics application. Lightroom is Adobe's Pro Photo editing and organizing application, and it's a requirement for anyone that is working with large number of photos. In this 4.5-hour tutorial by star trainer Dan Moughamian, you'll learn incredibly useful skills and workflows that will help you get the best results from your photo library.


With the digital revolution it's now very common to shot first and ask questions later. Consequently, if you're like most photographers you have endless amounts of digital photos to catalogue and control. This comprehensive tutorial begins by showing you how to organize large libraries of photo files using the detailed database & meta-tagging features contained in Lightroom's Library Mode.

Next, you'll move on to Lightroom's Develop Mode to edit your photos. Common digital photography skills such as editing hue, saturation, luminance, noise reduction, and other workflows are carefully explored. You'll even learn how to restore photos that are overexposed of under exposed, how to sharpen detail in images, and also how to use saturation to create sepia and other common photographic effects.

Of course, having photos that look great on your computer is only one step in the chain - you still need to output those photos for others to see. To that end, the final chapters of the course demonstrate concepts you need to know when it comes time to output your photos for print and the web.

This is a comprehensive tutorial, but you don't need to watch the entire show. Use the detailed menus and keyword search functions to quickly find topics of interest, or watch the program from beginning to end. That's the essence of Nonlinear Educating!


mORE iNFO:
http://www.designprovideo.com/tutorial/lightroom2101


Download:
http://uploaded.to/file/ge9o8q/designProVideo.Lightroom.2.101.Core.Lightroom.2.TUTORIAL.part1.rar
http://uploaded.to/file/4v7u9b/designProVideo.Lightroom.2.101.Core.Lightroom.2.TUTORIAL.part2.rar
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RAPIDSHARE

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http://rapidshare.com/files/201753602/Gxc.DPVPCS4-402DOIP_UDS.part3.rar

Cartoon Smart - Photoshop Advanced Brush & Texture Technique | 658.5 MB
Rls Date : 26/02/09 | Supplier : iNK H0RN
Like most CartoonSmart visitors you probably think of yourself as at least an intermediate Photoshop user, because at a basic level it is a very intuitive program and easy to teach yourself. But a bad habit that many self-taught users fall into is relying too much on Filters when they need to do something visually complex (and that includes yours truly, the author of this course summary) So this course dives right into plenty of advanced techniques you probably haven't ever seen used.

If you've never used Photoshop before, don't let the "advanced" part of the title scare you off. And if you do have some familiarity with Photoshop (even intermediate), that's even better because you'll probably be surprised how many things you've overlooked in the program.
Part 1: Introduction - And a large folder of source files / brushes used throughout the course
Part 2: Brush Techniques - Used in creating a rocky, grass scene
Part 3: More Brush Techniques - Used in a realistic wall/window project
Part 4: Surface Texture and Layer Effects - Used for plaster type effects or overhead landscapes
Part 5: Using the Pen Tool for Paths - To create things like realistic wires or curving text
Part 6: Seamless Tiling - For gaming surfaces or webpage backgrounds
This course is taught by Humberto Abreu, a professional video game texture artist and illustrator.

Rapidshare

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Lynda.com - Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Desktop Printing Techniques
Rls Date : 25/02/09 | Supplier : iNK H0RN
As Ansel Adams once said, "The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance." Now, with Photoshop CS4 for Photographers: Desktop Printing Techniques, creating breathtaking prints is within reach.

In this course, photographer and instructor Chris Orwig teaches techniques and workflows for crafting powerful and enduring images that bring the photographer's vision to life. From producing a business card to visiting a working press, Chris covers everything photographers need to know to achieve unique, compelling results from the printing process. Exercise files accompany the course.

Download Links:
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Rapidshare
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Learn to design code-compliant, earthquake-resistant structures with this practical guide

Earthquake Engineering demonstrates how to design structural members and joints for seismic resistance. The text guides readers through dozens of structural designs, documenting how to perform each step, make the necessary calculations, and adhere to relevant design codes. Most other texts on seismic design focus on theory and the construction of idealized structures; this text is a radical departure, presenting actual tested design methodologies that protect structures from the devastation of earthquakes.

All the design methods presented by the author comply with the current U.S. building codes. References to these codes are provided throughout the text, helping readers understand how they are integrated into an overall structural design.

Everything readers need to create sound designs, from analysis to design implementation, is provided, including:
* Dozens of worked problems throughout the text
* Complete reference chapters dedicated to matrices, differential equations, and numerical analysis
* Latest results of ongoing seismic research, including how these studies are likely to influence future design projects
* The latest 2006 IBC, highlighting significant variations from the 2000 and 2003 editions of the code
* Detailed coverage of seismic design for steel moment-resisting frame structures (SMRF), as well as braced-frame steel, concrete, masonry, and wood-framed structures

This text, with its many worked problems, is ideal for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. Now that the seismic engineering provisions of the IBC Code apply to the entire United States, this text should also guide practicing engineers not yet exposed to seismic design in designing code-compliant, earthquake-resistant structures.
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Until now, almost all books on logical database design focused exclusively on relational design. However, modern database management systems have added powerful features that have driven a movement away from truly normalized database design. Logical Database Design Principles reflects these recent changes. The book begins by covering traditional logical design principles, followed by an analysis of the normalizing and modeling of data. It then examines designing for specific purposes, such as object-oriented databases, online transaction processing (OLTP), and data warehouses. As the text progresses, it moves from the purely logical into some physical design, as determined by how the features of modern databases are implemented. Because this is a logical-design book, the authors attempt to make the examples database-neutral. Because various vendors implement features in different ways, this volume sometimes offers examples from a specific database management system. When necessary, it highlights a specific application, clearly demonstrating the concept being discussed.

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURES: Theory and Design, Analysis and Prescription describes how to organize people to achieve a desired outcome. This is done by way of establishing sets of rules from "real world" organization contexts. Moreover, the development of these rules within "real world" contexts means that the rules must be true, general, operational, technically sound, and easy to use. With an understanding of rules and the processes of their use, organization structures can be identified, which in turn form the basis of a theoretical framework. From this theoretical framework, generalized design rules are identified that can be used to design structures with specific purposes. An efficient design of organization structure(s) will result when design rulesalong with their useare inextricably tied to the structural components and with what these structures propose to do. The book discusses, examines, and demonstrates the interrelationship of the design rules, their use within organization structures theoretically and along with their practical implications. Throughout the book an extended example of the Masters Brewing Corporation (MBC) is used to illustrate the conceptual material and to make the implications of the organizational analysis explicitly concrete.

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Designers and advertisers continually have to interpret design briefs, produce new solutions to familiar problems and work to keep their clients' brands high in the public consciousness. This highly informative guide brings together for the first time discussions and case studies that illustrate the working methods of major advertising and graphic design firms.

Each chapter explores a different theme of 'problem solving', and concludes with a case study to illustrate a particular solution in detail. Themes include: producing innovative work, avoiding repetition, standing out in the market place, reinventing a tired brand, communicating essential facts in a culture of information overload, keeping a brand young and trendy, dealing sensitively with propaganda, the use of shock tactics, and word-based advertising in a world over-run with images and sound-bites. Examples featured are taken from classic and contemporary international advertising. Designers and agencies whose work is discussed in the book include Chermayeff and Geismar, Saatchi and Saatchi, BMP, Minale Tattersfield, Derek Birdsall, Niklaus Troxler, Bob Gill, Wieslan Walkuski, Makoto Saito, Paul Fishlock and Pentagram.

Michael Johnson is creative director of Johnson Banks, which was voted most creative consultancy in Britain in 1999. He is Chairman of Education for British Design and Art Direction (D&AD) and lectures regularly on design theory and practice.

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This text was designed for a graduate level course on computer architecture and organization. The book's content, especially the last half of the book, represents the most advanced material that a typical graduate student studies before directly encountering the design process. The text avoids extensive compendiums of current features of various processors or technologies, just as it stresses concepts that underlie these processor designs. It abstracts the essential elements of processor design and emphasizes a design methodology including: design concepts, design target data, and evaluation tools, especially those using basic probability theory and simple queuing theory.

Macromedia's new ColdFusion MX brings ColdFusion's proven ease of use and productivity to the scalable, standards-based Java technology architecture. Developers can now take advantage of MX's innovations to create rich Internet applications, and for the first time ColdFusion developers will be able to write Java code in ColdFusion templates. In Java for ColdFusion Developers, Hewitt helps the reader quickly get up to speed on the new features of MX, then leverages what the ColdFusion developer already knows to start delving into object-oriented programming concepts and Java programming. Learn the various development environments, basic Java syntax, error handling, exceptions and debugging, then get a GUI overview with AWT and Swing. Create Web sites in Java and learn servlet architecture, JavaServer Pages and how to work with databases. With plenty of code, audience-specific notes, and practical advice Hewitt helps Web developers graduate into full-fledged Java programmers.

The first Java guide specifically for experienced ColdFusion developers and Web professionals!

* Leverage your Web and ColdFusion skills to develop powerful Java applications
* Master JSP, servlets, custom tags, JavaBeans, JDBC, and other key Java Web technologies
* Install and run Apache Tomcat 4 and JRun 4 application servers
* Build several complete applications, including an e-commerce site
* Includes handy Java glossary and JSP/servlet references
* Up-to-the-minute coverage of Java 1.4, JSP 1.2, servlet 2.3, and ColdFusion MX

With ColdFusion MX and this book, any Web professional can leverage the power of Java to build robust, high-performance Web applications. Leading Web developer and columnist Eben Hewitt begins with a rapid-fire introduction to Java that builds on what you already know about ColdFusion to teach you exactly what you need to know about Java programming. Hewitt's focused examples, real-world insights, and code will take you from the basics of object-oriented programming to sophisticated JSP/servlet development, XML-based applications, and beyond!

* Master object-oriented application design and programming
* Build powerful servlets, JavaServer Pages, applets, and desktop applications
* Leverage XML & XSLT, exception handling, I/O, JDBC databases, and more
* Understand the similarities and key differences between CFML and Java development
* Integrate ColdFusion MX with J2EE and servlet technology
* Create JSP custom tags and use the brand-new JSP Standard Tag Library
* Includes complete references to JSP tags and the Servlet API, plus a handy Java glossary

Details: amazon.com


Download: 1.8 MB, rar'd CHM


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Hybridization of evolutionary algorithms is getting popular due to their capabilities in handling several real world problems involving complexity, noisy environment, imprecision, uncertainty and vagueness. This edited volume is targeted to present the latest state-of-the-art methodologies in Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithms . This book deals with the theoretical and methodological aspects, as well as various applications to many real world problems from science, technology, business or commerce. This volume comprises of 14 chapters including an introductory chapter giving the fundamental definitions and some important research challenges. Chapters were selected on the basis of fundamental ideas/concepts rather than the thoroughness of techniques deployed.

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Diomidis Spinellis' first book, Code Reading, showed programmers how to understand and modify key functional properties of software. Code Quality focuses on non-functional properties, demonstrating how to meet such critical requirements as reliability, security, portability, and maintainability, as well as efficiency in time and space.

Spinellis draws on hundreds of examples from open source projects--such as the Apache web and application servers, the BSD Unix systems, and the HSQLDB Java database--to illustrate concepts and techniques that every professional software developer will be able to appreciate and apply immediately.

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Algorithm Design introduces algorithms by looking at the real-world problems that motivate them. The book teaches a range of design and analysis techniques for problems that arise in computing applications. The text encourages an understanding of the algorithm design process and an appreciation of the role of algorithms in the broader field of computer science.

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems, ARCS 2009, held in Delft, The Netherlands, in March 2009.

The 21 revised full papers presented together with 3 keynote papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. This year's special focus is set on energy awareness. The papers are organized in topical sections on compilation technologies, reconfigurable hardware and applications, massive parallel architectures, organic computing, memory architectures, enery awareness, Java processing, and chip-level multiprocessing.

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Algorithms are solution methods used for optimal decision making in mathematics and operations research. This book is a study of algorithms for decision making with multiple objectives. It is a distillation of recent research in developing methodologies for solving optimal decision problems in economics, and engineering and reflects current research in these areas.

"This book is a study of algorithms for decision making with multiple objectives. It is a distillation of recent research in developing methodologies for solving optimal decision problems in economics, and engineering and reflects current research in these areas." - reader's review.

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- no plugins necessary, it works straight from the box
- paypal integration. you can ask for a fee for each ad that gets submitted
- image upload directly from the form
- image manager for uploaded images in the admin panel
- contact form to message the person who added the ad
- rss displays the latest ads
- subcategories for the main menu
- login box in header for easier access if you want only registered people to be able to post
- navigation arrows in the footer so you can see older ads
- notification email to the admin when a new ad is entered
- notification email to the admin when a new payment has been made
- widgetized sidebar so you can add ads from the admin panel
- allow people posting a classified ad the ability to input text (other than numbers) in the area reserved for for price (with words such as "neg" "negotiable" or "free", etc)
- Allow people to flag posts if there is inappropriate data or spamming
- auto prune feature for posts older than X days (the number if days can be set from the admin panel)
- ClassiPress option page is not at the top level in the admin panel so it is easier to get to it
- the theme validates

Demo:

Code:

http://wpglamour.com/tcp/

http://rapidshare.com/files/190395425/WPTheme-ClassiPress_GS69.rar

When you purchase the Print book, you can download a PDF copy from Manning Publications at no additional charge***

Microsoft describes Silverlight as a "cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web." That's a really boring description for a really exciting new technology. Anyone who has looked at the demos and gotten a taste of what Silverlight can do knows that Silverlight represents an entirely new level of rich web interface technology for Microsoft developers.

With Silverlight 2, developers can use JavaScript, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby to build user-friendly, interactive, and visually-dazzling web applications that work in most major browsers.

Silverlight 2 in Action covers Silverlight 2, a far more robust implementation of Silverlight than the Silverlight 1 release that supports only JavaScript. The much-anticipated 2 release adds powerful new features along with the ability to code in multiple languages and integrate your work with Visual Studio and the new Expression suite of tools.

This book delivers real-world examples and in-depth walkthroughs to help you confidently enhance your web applications using Silverlight 2.

Silverlight 2 in Action devotes extensive coverage to flexible layout components, the extensible control model, the communication framework, and the data-binding features "all cornerstones of software development. Author and Microsoft MVP Chad Campbell also describes rich media and vivid graphical and animation features. The final chapters include a variety of Silverlight deployment scenarios.

In addition to the fundamentals of Silverlight, you'll be introduced to architectural components such as the Silverlight object model. The book addresses the developer/designer collaboration model Silverlight enables, showing the developer how to include the designer effectively in the project workflow. This model is illustrated throughout the examples.

For ongoing reader support, the author will maintain a dedicated book-support website providing up-to-the-minute working examples, complete with source code, all in Silverlight.

Continuing from my previous post ”Use Social Networking to build Web Presence for your site“, another good way to drive traffic to your site is through Linkbait. In a nutshell, Linkbait is the act of creating content to a website with the aim of attracting links from other sites, improving incoming traffic and site authority. There are many ways where you can create linkbait content ? create unique downloadable tools/applications e.g., widgets, wordpress plugins, wordpress theme etc, breaking news story, well written article or posting controversial image or video.

Putting together a good strategy for get links to a site is one of the hardest parts of linkbait. Too many people jump right in to trying to get people to link to their site, without knowing the benefits of linkbait. Once you understand the importance and benefits of linkbait then they should be taking the time to lay the proper groundwork in place to have a link worthy site.

Benefits of Linkbait

• Site Authority
  Linkbait helps to build more incoming links (links from other Web sites) drive more traffic to your site by increasing the number of paths to your site. In addition, they help you at the search engines. An incoming link is seen as a “vote of confidence” by search engines and will improve your ranking.
• Direct Traffic
  Linkbait also benefits you by way of getting direct traffic to your website. Incoming links from other websites would surely pay high dividends, as users are likely to click on that link and visit your website, thus bringing you direct traffic.
• Improves PageRank
  PageRank is Google?s formula for determining the value of a Web site based on the relevancy and importance of its incoming links. Each Web site receives a ranking, based on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest. The higher quality and quantity of your incoming links, the higher your PageRank
• Deep Indexing
  If you work on getting links pointing to different pages of your web site, the search engines will index those pages faster than if you just have links pointing to your home page. Other pages within your site that are linked from this web page will then get indexed and improve their rankings also.
• Links Establish Your Site in ?Communities?
  No doubt, links help you to establish connections with other bloggers, web developers and many more. Since a link basically serves as an online recommendation of services, site owners have to be willing to stake their own reputation on what their users will find after the click. That’s why good link building goes beyond simply putting together great content or a great product. It focuses on securing a relationship between two individuals so that the link follows naturally.

Creating a linkbait

You can write it yourself or hire a content producer to create linkbait contents. If you?re creating a tool, you?ll need some developing skills or a developer. What kind of content has been effective linkbait in the past?. The best linkbait contets are contents that provide comprehensive list of a large collection of resources such as lists, tutorials, case studies, interesting pictures, useful tools, well-researched pieces, humorous writing, controversial content, attacks on well-known industry people, and breaking news that may attract people to link your website. Tips for creating a successful linkbait:

• Create great headlines to grab attention
  Within the first three seconds of a new encounter, your post will be evaluated? even if it is just a glance. Many readers will see your headline, and in the early phase it?s critical that they follow your link and help to spread your message. A good headline means success or failure for your blog entry. If you don?t grab readers’ attention, you won?t ever get to tell them your story. Check out posts by Performancing and CopyBlogger for tips on how to write great headlines that really work, here and here.

  Bob Bly of the Copywriter’s handbook sets forth eight time-tested headline categories that compel action and rake in sales:

  • Direct Headlines
  • An Indirect Headlines
  • News Headlines
  • The How to Headline
  • A Question Headline
  • The Command Headline
  • Reason Why Headline
  • Testimonial Headline
• Cover what is “HOT”
  One of the proven ways to attract readers is to cover breaking stories on the various social networking sites e.g., del.icio.us, digg, netscape as well as Technorati. Your linkbait post should cover things like a really cool tool, unique news story or article that people would really love to read about.

  Nick Wilson of performancing, mentions 5 linkbaiting ?hooks? in order to bait a link:

  • News hook
  • Contrary Hook
  • Attack Hook
  • Resource Hook
  • Humour Hook
• Create great content
  I can’t stress enough on the importance of content. Content is the KING and the best promotion and linkbait tool for your blog. With great content, all you need to do is to promote it, and then more links will be coming your way.
• Understand your reader
  Typically, content in your site is written with certain targeted readers in mind. These are people that would want to know more about your products, services or content. It is about the same for linkbait, instead of specific targeted readers, you need to create linkbait content that is appealing to an entirely different audience?one that can help your site achieve mass appeal in the niche that you select. Again, covering what is “HOT” is good way to start.
• Leverage on the power of social networking
  Social Bookmarking/Networking sites like Digg, Reddit, Netscape, StumbleUpon are a great sites to promote your content to the mass audience as well as attracting visitors and links.
• Build your reputation in the blogosphere
  Creating a reputation is an important part of making linkbait successful. At the initial stage, it is difficult promote your site if no one knows your site. You got to spend more time in the blogosphere by building more contacts, make more friends through social networking sites.
• Develop a content syndication plan
  Here you can broaden your thinking even further. The concept here is to write high quality articles and give them to other web sites for placement on those sites. You only do this type of work to get very high quality links. But you can get some awesome links this way.
• Be prepared for long and winding Process
  Linkbait is part of link building. As you might know by now, link building is not a start up activity, it’s a permanent one. It is an ongoing cost to your business that never goes away.

Good luck!!. I hope I covered enough for everyone to know about linkbait. If you have any suggestions or comments, please share them with me.

My suggested reading List :

• DoshDosh ? The Resource Linkbait - Using Lists to Build Authority, Traffic and Links to your Website.
• Matt Cutts ? SEO Advice: linkbait and linkbaiting
• SEOBook ? How to Identify Different Types of Linkbait
• TropicalSEO ? Andy Hagans? Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM
• Packim - Seven Long-term Link Building Mistakes
• Darren Rowse - 20 Linkbaiting Techniques

It is a total waste if you have a great site with great content but you don’t have the number of readers to appreciate it. Thus, one of the most common question is “How do I get people to my site?” While, the full answer to this question is complex, but the key is to make sure your web presence maximizes the chances for visitors to find you through the internet’s most popular search engines. Another good way to build up your web presence is by participating in social networking. Generally, online social networking involves connecting and sharing information with other like-minded people via the Web. So how do you use social networking to build up your web presence for your site?.

The latest trend to build up your web presence through social networking is called social media marketing (SMM). Social media marketing is a method of promoting your brand (be it your site, your blog, yourself, a product, a service, or a company) by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Myspace, Twitter, etc). The SMM goals will be different for every business or organization, however most will involve some form of viral marketing to build idea or brand awareness, increase visibility, and possibly sell a product or service. SMM may also include online reputation management.

You too can start your own SMM now. Basic steps to start your SMM :

• Signup to relevant social networking sites and create pages that provide links back to your site (for both traffic and link popularity)
• As part of SEO, create pages that will rank well in the search engines for low-moderately competitive terms/phrases
• Build profiles on sites that can attract links, attention and contacts from other members (Read my post on “Brand your face“)
• Be a part of the community. Contribute to the growth and value of social media sites

Here’s the list of good articles that you should read:

• Do it Yourself Social Media Marketing - A StepForth Whitepaper
• The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
• Measuring Social Media Marketing: It?s Easier than you Think!
• 8 Simple Rules For Social Media Marketing in Business to Business Markets
• 21 Traffic Triggers for Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Optimization vs. Social Media Marketing

So are you ready to build up your web presence for yourself?. You can start by connecting to me through these social networking services.

In this unique book, TCP/IP is discussed in regards to managing the network. From the planning behind the assignment of TCP/IP addresses to the appropriate use of diagnostic tools associated with network problems, the practical methods needed to manage TCP/IP networks are provided. The latest information on data flows, routing protocols and IP address classes is also included.

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Ever notice that-in spite of their pervasiveness-designing web applications is still challenging? While their benefits motivate their creation, there are no well-established guidelines for design. This often results in inconsistent behaviors and appearances, even among web applications created by the same company.
Design patterns for web applications, similar in concept to those for web sites and software design, offer an effective solution. In Web Application Design Patterns, Pawan Vora documents design patterns for web applications by not only identifying design solutions for user interaction problems, but also by examining the rationale for their effectiveness, and by presenting how they should be applied.
. Design interfaces faster, with a better rationale for the solutions you choose.
. Learn from over more than100 patterns, with extensive annotation on use and extension.
. Take a short-cut into understanding the industry with more than 500 full-color screenshots and a web site for help, discussion, and a collection of additional patterns.

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This book teaches test managers what they need to know to achieve advanced skills in test estimation, test planning, test monitoring, and test control. Readers will learn how to define the overall testing goals and strategies for the systems being tested.
This hands-on, exercise-rich book provides experience with planning, scheduling, and tracking these tasks. You'll be able to describe and organize the necessary activities as well as learn to select, acquire, and assign adequate resources for testing tasks. Learn how to form, organize, and lead testing teams Master the organizing of communication among the members of the testing teams, and between the testing teams and all the other stakeholders. Additionally, you �ll learn how to justify decisions and provide adequate reporting information where applicable.Target Audience: Software Testers, Programmers, System Designers, IT Managers

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Enterprise and web applications require full-featured, "Google-quality" search capabilities, but such features are notoriously difficult to implement and maintain. Hibernate Search builds on the Lucene feature set and offers an easyto- implement interface that integrates seamlessly with Hibernate-the leading data persistence solution for Java applications.

Hibernate Search in Action introduces both the principles of enterprise search and the implementation details a Java developer will need to use Hibernate Search effectively. This book blends the insights of the Hibernate Search lead developer with the practical techniques required to index and manipulate data, assemble and execute search queries, and create smart filters for better search results. Along the way, the reader masters performance-boosting concepts like using Hibernate Search in a clustered environment and integrating with the features already in your applications.

This book assumes you're a competent Java developer with some experience using Hibernate and Lucene.

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In the world of magic, there are two main streams of Magic : White Magic and Black Magic. (*Ahem this week I am still suffering from my Harry Potter withdrawal syndrome). Black Magic or dark magic is the direct opposite of white magic. It is used for malevolent acts or to deliberately cause harm in some way. In modern times, people who believe in or claim to practice black magic is described as harmful magic practitioner and they considered as taboo, as opposed to the good white magic that they do profess to practice. The theory can be applied to Black Hat Search Engine Optimization, SEO. They are considered to be illegal practices to gain high ranking in search engine result page (SERP). In order to avoid penalization by search engines, it is good to know what is Black Hat SEO.

Here are some of the example of Black Hat SEO that you should avoid:

1. Keyword Stuffing

“Keyword stuffing” refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking.

You should always try to focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Solution

To fix this problem, review your site for misused keywords. Typically, these will be lists or paragraphs of keywords, often randomly repeated. Check carefully, because keywords can often be in the form of hidden text, or they can be hidden in title tags or alt attributes.

2. Hidden Texts and Hidden Links

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

• Setting the font size to 0
• Using white text on a white background
• Including text behind an image
• Using CSS to hide text

Hidden links are links that are intended to be crawled by crawlers e.g., Googlebot, but are unreadable to humans because:

• The link consists of hidden text (for example, the text color and background color are identical).
• CSS has been used to make tiny hyperlinks, as little as one pixel high.
• The link is hidden in a small character - for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph.

Solution

If you do find hidden text or links on your site, either remove them or, if they are relevant for your site’s visitors, make them easily viewable.

3. Cloaking and sneaky Javascript redirects

If you are a Harry Potter fan then you would probably know that one of the three deathly hallows is the Invisible Cloak. In the world of Black Hat SEO, cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. While Javacsript direct is where a javascript is placed on a page that has been indexed by search engines and redirects the user to a different page with the intent to show the user a different page than the search engine sees.

Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and will be removed from the Google index.

Solution

Do not practice any methods that can be perceived as deceiving users.

4. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Even though, most of such duplicate content are not deceptive in origin, however such practices should be avoided if possible. Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:

• Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
• Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• Printer-only versions of web pages

However, in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic.

Solution

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If you think that there are duplicate contents across different domains, you should try to request for those contents to be removed from search engine index e.g., by using the Google Webmaster Tools.

5. Create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.

If you have a site that try to exploit user system’s vulnerability by installing install software (such as malware, spyware, viruses, adware, and trojan horses), it is considered to be a violation of the Google quality guidelines, and may be removed from Google’s index.

Solution

Always try to make sure what programs you installed in your web server and on your webpage.

So let me quote something from Professor Albus Dumbledore :

“And now Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure”.

So let’s be a good Harry Potter webmaster and practice white magic, white hat SEO, and be loved by all search engines.

To learn more about proper SEO techniques, you can refer to these posts :

• 15 Tips from Matt Cutts
• Black Hat vs. White Hat Search Spam Debate
• Newsweek : Hotwiring Your Search Engine
• Black Hat SEO or Spamdexing wiki

This book walks you through your first steps in T-SQL (also known as Transact-SQL), which is Microsoft SQL Server s dialect of the standard ANSI-SQL language. You ll learn the theory behind T-SQL querying and programming, how to develop T-SQL code to query and modify data, and get an overview of programmable objects. Although this book is intended for beginners, it is not merely a step-by-step book. It goes beyond the syntactical elements of T-SQL and explains the logic behind the language and its elements. Many aspects of SQL are unique to the language, and are very different from other programming languages. This book helps you adopt the right state of mind and gain a true understanding of the language elements. You learn how to think in terms of sets and follow good SQL programming practices. The book is not version-specific; it does, however, cover language elements that were introduced in recent versions of SQL Server, including SQL Server 2008. To complement the learning experience, the book provides exercises that enable you to practice what you ve learned. The book starts with a theoretical background to T-SQL querying and programming (Chapter 1) laying the foundations for the rest of the book, and also coverage of creating tables and defining data integrity. The book moves on to various aspects of querying and modifying data (Chapters 2 through 8), then to a discussion of concurrency and transactions (Chapter 9), and finally provides an overview of programmable objects (Chapter 10). This book features a companion Web site that makes available to you all the code used in the book, the errata, additional resources, and more.

If you are planning to venture into eBay, getting traffic to your eBay store is as important as getting traffics from search engines to your site. For ebay, it is vital that your product listings show up in eBay search engine and if possible web search engines e.g., Google, Yahoo! etc. In other words, it is important that potential buyers are able to find your items that you are selling in eBay. Items that are easily accessible will have a higher chance to be sold. Here are a compilation of 5 simple SEO tips for eBay store.

1. Put 1-3 keywords in your listing title

No doubt a proper researched listing title is the first step for proper SEO. For example, if you’re selling printer, listing title like “EPSON STYLUS C70Plus COLOUR INKJET PRINTER” is a better listing title than “Epson Inkjet Printer”

2. Proper keywords in your listing description

You should include a 200-word detailed description of your product. Again, you should provide a good description with all the relevant keywords.

3. Research proper keywords for your product listing

Try to find out what kind of keywords your competitors are using for the same product. Check out how successful are those keywords by looking at the completed listings history. Find out which keywords perform better by looking at the number of bids and selling price.

4. Create an eBay store or eBay ID using relevant keywords

Use relevant keywords for your eBay store or eBay ID. For example, if you are a Epson Printer seller, a more appropriate eBay store or eBay ID would be EPSONmall.

5. Create links to your eBay store

Now you have an eBay store ready with all your product listings, it is time to build links to it. One of the simplest way is to write a blog and with links to your listings and eBay store. Besides this, you can use your store signature and links in your emails, use your store url as a link from your main website if you have one or use your store url as a signature link in forums.

With these simple steps, it is possible to bring in traffic from eBay and also search engines outside of eBay. If you have any good tips, please share them with me.

If you refer to my previous post “10 Simple ways to increase Alexa Rank for your site“, it well known that one of the main criteria to increase your Alexa Rank is by using Alexa toolbar. However previous Alexa Toolbar is only available for IE. Now you can get Alexa stat in Firefox by using Sparky plugin. Sparky is a free FireFox browser plugin that accompanies you as you surf, providing useful information about the sites you visit without interrupting your Web browsing. With this plugin installed, you can learn about Web sites Traffic Trend information. Besides that, you can get detailed traffic information including Reach and Rank. With this plugin, you are able to surf more efficiently with Related Links for each page.

Sparky features overview

1. Traffic Trend

Sparky’s trendline feature allows you to track a website’s popularity over time, plotting the traffic rank for the last 4 months on a handy little sparkline.

2. Reach Meter and Traffic Rank

Sparky’s reach and rank features give you a quick overview of a site’s popularity. The blue bar gives you an overall indicator - is this site popular or not? The rank number tells you exactly how this site ranks in comparison to all other sites on the Web

3. Related Links

Sparky also comes with Alexa’s famous patented Related Links feature built right into the browser. Now, no matter what site you are on, Sparky can help you find similar sites.

4. Click Menu

With a click on Sparky you have immediate access to a wealth of additional information. Do a search for the site, find sites that link to it, see who owns it, where it is located, related links and much much more.

Sounds interesting?. Install Sparky now.

Do you have a blog?. If the answer is yes, then how well do you understand your blog?. For example, questions like “Do you know what is the loading time of your blog?” or “Do you know where do most of your visitors focus on for your blog” and many more. With so many questions unanswered, you as a site owner can find out and understand your blog more with some simple and free online tools. Here’s a list of 5 important tools that allow you to understand your blog more.

1. Pingdom Full page test

Pingdom is a nice tool to test your website?s loading-time. With Pingdom, you can do a Full Page Test loads with a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). General speaking, it mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser. The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars. You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file. Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects. Thus, based on the result, you can find out which scripts in your blog that are taking up most of the loading time.

2. CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg helps you visualize your visitors. With CrazyEgg, you are able to find out more information like where your site visitors are clicking, or more importantly, the areas of your site that your visitors are ignoring. For example is the heap map shown above, it is a cool visualization that will help you see which areas of your site are “hot” or which areas are “cold.” Based on the heat map results, you’ll see which areas your visitors are avoiding like the plague, and which areas they’re flocking to. It is also a good indicator on where you should place your ads or sponsored links.

3. Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools is a one-stop center where you can get comprehensive info about how Google crawls and indexes websites. Since Google is the current leader for search engine, you should ensure that your site is easily crawled and indexed by Google and access tools that will enable you to diagnose crawling issues, study statistics on how your site is doing in our index. You also have the choice to tell Google on how you’d like your site to be crawled and indexed. Refer to my previous post “10 Basic SEO steps by using Google Webmaster tools” to know more.

4. Google Analytics

One of the best free and brilliant tools for site owners from Google is Google Analytics. Google Analytics as a free service to help people to track all internet activities related to their web sites and measure the success of their Web sites. In other words, Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. Based on the information collected by Google Analytics, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web. Check out my previous post “Tutorial Video on how to use Google Analytics” to learn more.

5. Browsershots

There are several types of different browsers out there e.g, Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Safari, Opera and many more. Thus, it is important to test your web design in different browsers. With Browsershots, you can test and even capture screenshots of your web design in different browsers. Browsershots with a number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server. As a site owner, you can see how well your site is displayed. For example, you can test and find out whether your site is having any problem with browser like Internet Explorer.

Hopefully with these tools you can understand your blog more and improve it to make more money online. Yay!. If you have any other good blog tools, please share them with me.

Currently the most successful and popular online photo management and sharing site is non other than Flickr. It is reported that there are more than 500 million photos stored on Flickr. Flickr’s traffic grew 448% to 3.4 million from December 2004 to December 2005, according to Internet measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings. In the nearly 12 months since Yahoo purchased it, the site went from 250,000 registered users to more than 2 million. Flickr’s distinctive tool lets bloggers simultaneously post photos on their own blogs and at Flickr. With “tagging” — adding a few words of text to each posted photo — photos stored in flickr can be easily searched online and can be a good source of traffic for your site. Below are 3 simple ways to drive traffic from flickr to your site.

1. Use proper title and tags

Tags are like keywords or labels that you add to a photo to make it easier to find later. Photos with proper tagging can be searched and found easily others. In Flickr, you can tag a photo with phrases like “blue hydrangea tsurumai park nagoya japan.” Later if you or other visitors would like to look for pictures of hydrangea, photos can be easily located by just clicking that tag to get all photos that have been tagged that way.

Proper title is also recommended for all photos stored in Flickr. Instead of using default names set by your digital camera e.g. DSC0231, proper naming enables your photo to be easily indexed and searched by search engines. Recently, Yahoo Image Search has added Flickr images into its image index. Now, Yahoo Image Search is serving over 300 million Flickr photos in its query results via a live feed from Flickr; so once an image is uploaded to a Flickr account, it’s available via Yahoo Image Search too.

2. Add descriptive hyperlinks

In order to drive visitors from Flickr to your site, just enter the hyperlink in HTML format into the description box for your photo as shown below.

Then when you click save, the description will look like this:

Visitors that are interested to know more about your photo will click the link to go to your site.

3. Submit pictures to Flickr Groups

Flickr is not just an online photo storage site, but it is also an online social networking site. If you have a good photo that is interesting and good, one of the best way to promote your photo in Flickr and to attract more viewers is to add your photo to the group pool. The easiest way to add a photo to a group is to go to the photo’s page and click the “Send to Group” button between the photo title and the photo. Then choose the group you want to send it to, and you’re done!. A photo can be shared with multiple groups.

That’s it. Hopefully Flickr will drive more traffics to your site. If you have any suggestions or comments, please share with me.