CEOs' first jobs and suggesting it's ok if new grads land entry-level jobs that aren't quite "the stuff of their ambitious dreams." Like becoming Miss

Finally, Microsoft is gaining a bit of traction with its Bing search engine, in part due to nicely done TV commercials showing information garbage overload from "other" search tools, which Search Engine Land gathers here.

The ads "seem to be going over better than the Seinfeld/Gates ones," says Web Pro News. "We have to admit, this is starting to look like something," says The Next Web. TV Squad says one Bing commercial said the movie The Breakfast Club came out in 1986, but it actually came out in 1985, and Microsoft actually fixed the ad! Making that the fastest Microsoft fix ever.

So you know they're serious. Google CEO Eric Schmidt isn't exactly scared by the threat, but he suggested Bing can't buy true search love with ads.

The fun-loving Microsoft gang shows up (looking like the Manson family) in a slideshow aimed at new college grads over at Business Insider, showing famous CEOs' first jobs and suggesting it's ok if new grads land entry-level jobs that aren't quite "the stuff of their ambitious dreams." Like becoming Miss California.

May be blowing a marketing opportunity big-time: "Personally, I'd open up the bidding to businesses first before giving away vanity URLs to users

In another largely bogus bit of Web 2.0-related counting, Neatorama follows up on a CNN report that "Web 2.0" on Wednesday became the 1 millionth word in the English language.

That's' according to a site called Global Language Monitor, which says the most recent other additions include "slumdog," "cloud computing" and "octomom." Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 2 is among the few to point out that Web 2.0 actually isn't a word, it's a phrase.
And, oh, basically the whole thing is an estimate and a press release; there's no actual database of words.

Another momentous countdown is ticking away—for Facebook users. "The whole world A small number of super geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address," blogs Dashes.

Basically, starting after midnight EDT Friday, Facebook users will be asked to choose a username for their Facebook profiles (basically facebook.com/yourname). This page is counting down the nanoseconds.
Facebook says it's gonna be first-come, first-served, and apparently some insiders have already cut ahead in the line, like the goober who snagged www.facebook.com/mark. Quick Online Tips says Facebook allowed selected clients and fancy journalists to pre-grab their vanity urls now. Also, Mashable reports: if you have a Facebook "Page" (the kind with "fans"), "before you get too excited...read the fine print" which says you need at least 1,000 fans to claim a name. (Is "Trent" taken?) Inside Facebook thinks the Facebook Inc.

The Twitpocalypse is similar to the Y2K bug. The unique identifier associated to each tweet has now exceeded 2,147,483,6471

Meanwhile, a catastrophe called the Twitpocalypse is coming on Saturday! Maybe! This page has an ominous number-counter tallying the number of total posts on Twitter—and says when it reaches 2,147,483,647 it'll break some sort of barrier for unique IDs, causing all third-party Twitter apps to crash.

Just like the Y2K bug, we think it's most likely hoopla about nothing," Mashable says.
Even if the worst case scenario occurred and 3rd party apps simply went bonkers, Twitter.com should still work fine." Some are taking no chances.
Goth/industrial rocker Trent Reznor, who has used the Web to market his music and connect with fans, now claims he is now done with Twitter and all social media. Stereogum has his long farewell rant.
As Podcasting News relates, he blames "unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands." Then he explains how they can slit their wrists. Nice! Actually, the man behind Nine Inch Nails hasn't really quit, just "turned his Twitter account into a one-way stream of NIN-only material," says Ajax Blog.

Two of the coolest iphone apps I've seen in a while: there must be serious (for free) apps from sherwin williams and benjamin moore

New tools for developers are cool, too, says GigaOm, as the software opens "more options for payments... a vibrant paid web and a micropayment economy" among other stuff.

Design Sponge Online says two of the coolest new apps are paint-selection tools from Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore that allow you to snap a picture of something and magically match it to a paint color from their collections.

Also getting raves is a new app from car-sharing service Zipcar that, Jalopnik reports, lets users find, reserve and control Zipcars from their phones.
"You can unlock the Zipcar from your phone rather than with the usual ZipCar ZipCard and even potentially control certain features of some cars, such as the horn, from the iPhone app.

They haven't yet announced full control of the steering from an iPhone yet."

iPhone 3 Revealed, Facebook Landrush, and the Twitpocalypse

New details are emerging about Apple's awesome iPhone 3GS, the iPhone's new 3.0 operating system, the coolest new iPhone apps, and the stripping of Miss California's crown.

Yep, it's true: less than a month after embattled queen Carrie Prejean was assured by pageant-capo Donald Trump that she could keep her crown, this week he "fired" her, reports Gone Hollywood. "
Trump issued a statement stating Prejean failed to honor her commitments as Miss California USA and the end had come for the 'media seeking diva' - our description...not his," says Bitten and Bound.

Now we can concentrate on what really matters.
The Apple Blog reports that we know how "S" (for super speedy) the new iPhone is.
A spec sheet from Apple's telecom carrier in the Netherlands indicates the CPU runs at 600 MHz, up from 412 MHz in previous models.
Is everybody woo-hooing? The 3.0 system software has "100+ new features," and iPhone User Guide actually lists them all here to "get you drooling in time for the official release on the 16th June."

says Running Scared. The new video is being taken down here and there but seems to be here

And finally, stop us if you've heard this one... David Letterman has apologized on the air this week to Sarah Palin for his joke about her daughter and Alex Rodriguez.

Again. "An even longer and more obsequious apology than the first time,"
Letterman comes off as remorseful and genuinely pained by the whole incident," says TV Mojoe. "

The question now is: Will Team Palin quit while they're ahead by accepting Dave's apology and moving on? Or will they keep ginning up the phony outrage?"

Hunch Goes Live. It’s Neat!

Also new this week: A fun new website called Hunch asks you some random questions about yourself like "Do you like the smell of Play-Doh?" and then makes personalized recommendations, like what kind of car you should buy (for that one, we're guessing the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe).

Explains Technologizer: "You might describe it as a sort of mashup of Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia, and any Facebook quiz that helps you determine stuff like just who your favorite member of the Three Stooges is."

Hunch's answers are based on users' collective knowledge, and it's designed to learn as it's used. Says Boing Boing "Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation... Rock-Paper-Scissors... are all time-honored means of coming to a decision--and yet we think there's room for one more."

New Moon Countdown App for iPhone and iPod Touch

Back in the USA, awesome digital technologies prevent us from revolting altogether--because whoever wins our elections there's always cool stuff at Circuit City Best Buy.

The latest/greatest gizmo of course is Apple's iPhone 3GS, with a beefed-up CPU, more storage, a better camera and... a working compass? Raves Wired: "You don't need a stopwatch to notice the new phone is zippier than its predecessor."

Yep, Gizmodo notes: "There's a reason why Apple called this the iPhone 3GS for Speed and not the 3GC for 'compass' or 3GV for 'video recording."

The iPhone Blog walks through all the features of the iPhone's 3.0 system software, from voice control to in-app purchases and subscriptions. And cool new apps keep coming. Sirius XM will soon let you pick up satellite radio on the iPhone (via the Net) no personal satellite dish required.

But "we can't imagine it being as full-featured as the standalone receivers," Engadget says. And here's an app you can use to avoid machine-gun-wielding snipers vampires: New Moon Countdown. Warning, Twilight Moms reports: with every 100 downloads of the application the designer will donate a Twilight Saga book to a library, school, or women's and children's center in the Seattle Area."

Best in Blogs: Twitter Revolution; iPhone 3 Reviews; Letterman's Mega-culpa

First the cover of Time magazine and now this: Twitter has been such a fertile source of information from Iran during the election protests that the U.S.

state department asked Twitter not to go offline for scheduled maintenance.
Looks like Twitter has officially moved way beyond what you ate for breakfast. Says Mother Jones: "However things turn out in Iran, this will probably be forever known as the Twitter Revolution."

Concurs Clay Shirky at TEDBlog: "This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media." Wait — what exactly did Twitter do? "The Twitter technology added two elements to this," explains Marc Ambinder. "

Number one... by spreading the word about the location of government crackdowns and the threat of machine-gun-wielding soldiers, it probably saved the lives of any number of would-be revolutionaries.

Second, it spread the word internationally." That's especially important when, as Slate reports, Iran is cracking down on foreign journalists, and its military threatened that Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that "create tension" or face legal action.
Looks like all that's left to ask about Twitter is: now can a brother get a business model? DigitalBeat says, uh, actually more Iranians use Facebook than Twitter.

Jenny Sanford Meets With Husband For First Time Since Affair Admission

Still, the lefties do have a new place in their heart for Sanford. Says Daily Kos: "Wow. Who knew Sanford was such a romantic?" As usual, there are questions behind the questions.

Why did The State sit on the incriminating emails for months, and how could the paper not know who leaked them? "Whoever had those emails had been in a position for six months to pressure—or blackmail—Sanford," notes Mother Jones. "

An enquiring newspaper person might want to know more about that. The State engaged in great traditional reporting to get the scoop on Sanford's secret trip to Argentina.

But now it seems it's ready to turn the story over to bloggers."quo

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Elisabeth Hasselbeck Sued for Stealing Book Idea (Wait, Hasselbeck has Ideas?)

Well, here's an original line: "You are glorious and I hope you really understand that." So begins the batch romantic of emails between South Carolina Gov.

Mark Sanford and his Argentine mistress, Maria, which The State published Thursday.

Forced to fess up after an unexplained disappearance, Sanford's abject, prostrate confession this afternoon was wrenching to watch. "This is not the end of the story," The Fix says. "

He appears to have willfully misled his staff and the people of the state about his whereabouts... There will almost certainly be some sort of investigation into whether Sanford misused state funds on this trip."

Sanford had been a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012 (via The Swamp) but that's probably off now.
In fact, as Media Matters shows, Fox News has already decided to start calling the disgraced Luv Guv a Democrat.

Brad Blog notes: "All of that follows the recent admission by the GOP's other (once) 2012 Presidential hopeful, Sen.
John Ensign of Nevada, that he, too, was having an affair."

Chris Anderson’s Free Contains Apparent Plagiarism

Moving on... it looks like Wired editor Chris Anderson plagiarized some passages in his new book Free from...
Wikipedia! "We have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources," blogs Waldo Jaquith, who broke the news and details the infractions at VQR Online.
"Free as in copied!" quips The Noisy Channel."

The irony speaks for itself," snarks Gawker.
It's an embarrassing oversight for the normally meticulous editor, Fast Company Techwatch says. At his own blog The Long Tail, Anderson admits: "This is entirely my own screwup, and will be corrected in the ebook and digital forms before publication."

He said there was back-and-forth with his publisher about how to credit the Wikipedia passages he pasted, and ultimately a formatting snafu and lost footnotes."

The part I feel worst about is that in our failure to find a good way to cite Wikipedia as the source we ended up not crediting it at all."

Ok, coolio--now you can go buy a book called Free that's packed with information you can read for free online.

And in a plagiarism twofer, Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View has been sued for copyright infringement by a woman who claims Hasselbeck used swiped material in The G Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide "But let's get to the larger point: Did anyone ever think Elisabeth Hasselbeck actually wrote that whole book herself?" wonders Daily Intel.

Mengapa Kita Perlu Steve Jobs Love him or hate him, kebutuhan para CEO Apple kembali. Sekarang.

Yes, as the respected investor watchdog Corporate Library suggests in its blog, "shareholders deserve to know how serious Jobs' health problems are and what impact his illness and recovery will have on the company's strategy and operations."

But GigaOM says all the drama "makes you wonder whether those writing breathless dispatches on someone's frail health, as though they were auditioning for a job as Perez Hilton's research assistant, know anyone with a life-threatening illness."

Edible Apple reasons: "The bottom line is that health is a private matter, and to publicly demand that someone make their private health condition known to the public is classless."

Daring Fireball suggests this really seems like a spat between the Journal and the Times about who owns the story.

Still, Dan Lyons argues at a Newsweek online post that Apple and the world still need Jobs: "Those lines at the Apple store today? [Apple COO] Tim Cook didn't create those."

And Lyons, writing as Jobs in his revived Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, writes that the hospital's explanation won't get the media "to stop slandering me based on unfounded rumor and speculation...the hacks will just move on to the next complaint...The vultures will never leave me alone."

Best in Blogs: Steve Jobs Conspiracies; Wired Editor's Plagiarism; Sanford's Confessions

"Are Steve Jobs' innards really any of our business? wonders GigaOM, amid media hand-wringing and conspiracy-slinging over the Apple boss's recently disclosed liver transplant.

"Does the New York Times have a vendetta against Steve Jobs?"
asks Edible Apple.
Questions have been flying this week since Steve Jobs' return from his mysterious health sabbatical.

Last Friday the Wall Street Journal broke news that Jobs had received a liver transplant in Tennessee. Good for him, right? Live long and prosper.
But not so fast! Forbes claims Methodist hospital in Memphis denied that Jobs had been there—then admitted it!.
A NY Times article said the procedure "raised many questions...about the system for allocating scarce organs." Apple's "obsession with secrecy" was getting worse, another Times piece reported. Here we go again, Times blogger Joe Nocera added at Executive Suite, suggesting Apple's directors "have put Mr. Jobs's obsession with privacy ahead of the interest of the Apple shareholders." And it just keeps coming. Apple broke the law by lying about Steve's health, says Cult of Mac, quoting a professor of corporate communication. Exactly who's obsessed with what here?

Five Crucial Components of Web Design

Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

- SEO -
Getting free traffic to your site.

- Usability -
Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

- Aesthetics -
Visual appeal.

- Content -
Valid, up to date, relevant information.

- Graphics -
Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don't, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

* Provide a site search tool.

A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

* Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.

This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

* Provide logical and simple to follow content.

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written, without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up to date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can't be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

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Optimize Images for the Web Development

Creating graphics and posting images for your site is one fun thing to do in web development. Nothing makes your site stand out better than some great images.

Graphics and images can be used for entertainment, professionalism or a visual queue. A graphic designed properly can change your visitor's outlook and/or decision for your site. It is important to you have images ready and optimized for your website.

Optimize Your Images

One thing to remember when creating graphics and images for your site is to optimize. What do you mean by optimization?

Optimization is a way to compress data to make your file size smaller. One way optimization works is that it will read through all the color of the image and use other color combinations to make similar colors. This will then discard some colors that will not be needed for the particular image. But there is a downside with optimization. You will lose quality in your graphic and/or images.

Quality vs. Size

When optimizing your images watch the quality compared to size. You want the smallest size possible for your site, making your site load faster. This will make it easier for your visitors and search engine bots.

If you image or graphic becomes too distorted, raise your file size. You don't want a pixelated image on your site. You want your images to look good and professional. You just need to find a balance between having a clean professional picture and having a decent small file size.

Image Optimization Tools

Adobe Photoshop has put this into consideration in some of their new application versions. You can now do a File > Save for the Web Options and Adobe Photoshop has a pre-built optimizing process that is very good. You can choose what file type to save in and how much to compression and optimization. Adobe Photoshop is an expensive commercial program, another option is using Dynamic Drive's Image Optimization.

Types of Image Files

Last thing to touch on is JPEG, GIF and PNG. There are so many file types, but these are highly recommended for web development.

JPEG

JPEG is a compressed file that has very good quality standards. Because of its compression, colors and data are squeezed out of it to create smaller file sizes. This can cause some blur with images with sharp edges, which is great for photos. If you look at a photo there are no straight lines or edges. Everything is blended together, which why JPEG is great for photos. You can get great optimization out of a JPEG file.

GIF

GIF is used more for vector based graphics. A vector based graphic is when a graphic is made of lines and shapes. Vector graphic have sharp corners, edges or text. When dealing with graphics like described, it is better to use a GIF rather than a JPEG. A JPEG could case distortion on your sharp lines. GIF can also be use for animation. Frame by frame animation saved as a .gif will animate on your page. Transparency is another feature that GIF can support. You can save your images with a transparent background.

PNG

PNG is one of the newest web graphic technologies. PNG is great for quality and file size. You have the best of both worlds in a PNG. PNG can also support transparent backgrounds. The only downside to a PNG file is that some old web browsers don't support PNG. This problem is becoming less and less a concern. But keep that in mind.

Quickest Time for Web

Optimizing images and graphics is almost a must in web development. Having big file sizes could cause some of your visitors to leave your site. If your site is too slow to load, you need to optimize immediately. Rumour is that you have 3 seconds to pull a surfer in. If you site doesn't load in that amount of time, then you might lose them. Time your page in your browser and see how long it takes. If you are under a couple of seconds, you're doing a great job.

Outbreaks of swine influenza in Mexico City, Variety reported. 20. Century Fox's X-Men Origins: Wolverine

With people staying home in Mexico City, it's bad news for a certain movie about a mutant manimal that was supposed to premiere there this week. Wolverine "could well be among the casualties of the deadly outbreak of swine influenza in Mexico City," reports SciFi Wire, its priorities clearly in order. Hey, "no one is safe in the age of the swine flu. Not even the chic people," reported The Cut, linking a slump in the share prices of luxury goods makers to the pandemic (really?). Leave it to the chic to persevere, though. Now there are fashion-forward surgical masks (here, there and everywhere). "Swine flu may be God’s way of punishing the Internet for refusing to shut the hell up about bacon already," says Guest of a Guest. "But, as long as there are going to be people walking around with surgical masks on their faces, they might as well try and make us laugh, right?" News quote Click here

Avoid Flu Pig, virus can cause death

But the virus is real, and as its actual spread caught up with its advance publicity, new speculation broke out about what it will do to our fragile economy. After all, "the spread of contagious diseases among humans is an eminently economic phenomenon," observes an eminent economic professor at Economix.

So the swine flu outbreak is "the last thing the economy needs right now," says Real Time Economics. Explains Dismal Scientist: "Trade flows are already down around the world, and an additional barrier to travel and commerce could exacerbate the downturn or delay recovery." Ouch. "The effects of the virus have already gone airborne, striking a blow to a travel industry already severely hobbled by the recession," noted On The Money. Pork producers are especially upset and "would really, really like you to stop calling it "swine flu," reports Canada, eh? Pork is still ok to eat, but the authorities at Bacon Today say if you're worried at all and want to stay in the ballgame, there's always duck bacon. More Information

"Salma Hayek tertangkap flu babi," "flu babi di Hollywood," "Madonna tertangkap flu babi

Then came the obligatory swine flu spam infestation, with malicious links. "Spammers have combined it with a celebrity theme," Softpedia reported. "Salma Hayek caught swine flu!,""Swine flu in Hollywood!," "Madonna caught swine flu!," "Surprised? We shouldn’t be. Just another day in the office for spammers," blogs Sophos Labs. And don't forget about opportunistic people registering domain names related to "swine flu," noted Security Watch, which warned: "Quarantine yourself from them."