Funeral for Mohsin Naqvi at al-Fatima Islamic Center

Imam Hashim Raza leads mourners in prayer during a funeral for Mohsin Naqvi at al-Fatima Islamic Center in Colonie, N.Y., Monday, Sept. 22, 2008. Naqvi was a Muslim, a native of Pakistan (he emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 8 years old and became a citizen at 16) and a U.S. Army officer. He was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Xuecheng Martial Arts School in Zaozhuang

Students practice martial arts at Xuecheng Martial Arts School in Zaozhuang, Shandong province, China on June 11, 2008. Around 300 students from all over the nation, aged from 5 to 17 years old, receive martial arts training as well as cultural courses at this school, local media said. (REUTERS/China Daily)

China Central Television headquarters building

In this Jan. 23, 2008, the construction site of the new China Central Television headquarters building is seen in Beijing. The building’s two angled towers were connected in December to form a continuous loop of horizontal and vertical sections. The 230 meter (755 foot) building, one of Beijing’s tallest, houses more than 10,000 staff. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)

A Bull Sarcophagus

A bull sarcophagus in which a member of the Ubud royal family was cremated burns during the funeral ceremony Tuesday July 15, 2008 in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. (AP Photo/Ed Wray)

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2008 has been an eventful year to say the least – it is difficult to sum up the thousands of stories in just a handful of photographs. That said, I will try to do what I’ve done with other photo narratives here, and tell a story of 2008 in photographs. It’s not the story of 2008, it’s certainly not all stories, but as a collection it does show a good portion of what life has been like over the past 12 months.

Lightning bolts

Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanoes are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008. (REUTERS/Carlos Gutierrez)

A refugee from Sudan

Kartoula, 14, a refugee from Sudan’s western Darfur region, enters a distribution centre to receive monthly food rations at Djabal camp near Gos Beida in eastern Chad, June 5, 2008. (REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly)

The Space Shuttle Discovery

The Space Shuttle Discovery lifts off from launch pad 39-A at Kennedy Space Center on May 31, 2008 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, en route to the International Space Station on a construction mission. (Eliot J. Schechter /Getty Images)

Tropical Storm Hanna is seen in Gonaives

An aerial view of floods caused by Tropical Storm Hanna is seen in Gonaives, Haiti on September 3, 2008. Haiti’s civil protection office said 37 of the 90 Hanna-related deaths had occurred in the port city of Gonaives. (REUTERS/Marco Dormino/Minustah)

U.S. Invasion to Afghanistan

A U.S. Marine, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, has a close call after Taliban fighters for his and country’s defend opened fire in return near Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan May 18, 2008. The Marine was not injured. (REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic) – US Invasion to Afghanistan.

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As 2008 is approaching to an end, the guys at Greepit! compiled a list of web inspiration  (more…)

The proper selection of typography in a design can set the appropriate theme and mood that the designer is going for. There are a lot of free fonts on the web – created by talented designers and type foundries.

In this collection, you’ll find 45 first-class, downloadable fonts for your use.

Clean, Modern, Web 2.0

Eurofurence

Cicle

Share

Reznor Broken

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DetectMobileBrowsers.mobi is a website providing a function & information on how to detect mobile browsers.

It can detect:

• iPhone
• Opera Mini
• Android
• Blackberry

It has an online function generator that guides you to create a personalized function according to “how you want to treat every browser”.

P.S. The code is free to be used on non-profit websites.

Website: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/
Download: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/#download

As every user has different screen resolutions & browsers can be resized to custom sizes, the browser won’t generate scrollbars at Flash movies with 100% sizes and possibly a part of the content may not be shown to the user.

swffit is a script that that resizes your flash movie automatically if your browser window size is smaller or greater than your flash minimum desired size to keep it accessible.

How to use it?

• Include swffit.js to your webpage
• Call the function: swffit.fit("my_flash", 1000, 590);
• That’s all

swffit can also be controlled with an API including enabling/disabling it or adding functions when it is activated & more.

Website: http://swffit.millermedeiros.com/
Demo: http://swffit.millermedeiros.com/example.html

Xuheki is an open source IMAP client with an Ajaxed interface.

It looks-feels like a desktop application & supports multiple IMAP servers/identities.

It uses the Net::IMAP::Client Perl module as the IMAP engine & built with DynarchLIB Ajax Toolkit.

Some features of Xuheki:

• Supports multiple folders with drag’n drop
• It can stay connected to an IMAP server
• Interface allows you to do multiple things once
• Multiple user support
• Contact list & more..

It requires Perl & MySQL 5 to run.

Requirements: Perl 5.8+, Apache 2+,mod_perl 2+,MySQL 5+
Compatibility: IE can have problems (not well tested)
Website: http://www.xuheki.com/
Download: http://www.xuheki.com/download/

Free vector world maps can not be found easily as there are only few around.

I needed a world map for a project of mine for showing visitor activities on a map and found very nice ones that I’m pleased to share with you.

World maps are very handy specially with the increasing use of mapping APIs etc. So, don’t forget to bookmark this post.

Here is a collection of free vector world maps that you can use in your projects:

Free Vector World Maps from Digital Vector Maps

Free vector world maps as well as dozens of other paid professional vector world maps.

Free Vector World Map With Nice Colors

Vector World Map In Blue & White

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Macromedia Flash & ajax, by default, has lacking seo features as there is, normally, only 1 url address for all the contents within these web applications.

A seo & deep linking solution for flash and ajax is SWFAddress that is developed by Asual.

SWFAddress is a small, but powerful library that provides deep linking for Flash and Ajax. It’s a developer tool, allowing creation of unique virtual URLs that can point to a website section or an application state. SWFAddress enables a number of important capabilities which are missing in today’s rich web technologies including:

- Bookmarking in a browser or social website
- Sending links via email or instant messenger
- Finding specific content with the major search engines
- Utilizing browser history and reload buttons

Seo & deep linking for Silverlight is on the way. There is already an example for Silverlight.

Website: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress
Demo: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/samples/

These are some more free Silverlight tools that will help you develop faster or add a twist to your applications.

Desklighter – Create Exe From Silverlight Apps

Desklighter is a windows utility that will create a standalone exe application that renders Silverlight content that is easily portable and accessible.

Silverlight Spy – Detailed XAML Inspection

Silverlight Spy provides detailed inspection of any Silverlight application.

Use the built-in browser to navigate to a web page. Silverlight Spy will automatically pick up any Silverlight application embedded in the page and display the structure of the application in the Explorer.

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