I don’t see this product often in the market, and the first time I was it was on an plane flight to the Philippines with a stop over in Taiwan on Eva Air and was flipping through their in-flight product catalog. I saw the product was less than $30 and decided it’s not bad for it’s price, bought it and gave it try. When I came back to the US and started searching online, looks like all over amazon and you can buy one of these online. Ok, so enough of the intro… let’s get down to the results. I took a sample photo and check the results below.

I simply looked out my office window from the SEO Department’s office at Internet Marketing Inc. And for those familiar of the area, this is in Mission Valley, San Diego on the northern side of highway 8. My window is facing the southern side and took a photo first without the 8x zoom lens.

I then too another photo outside using the 8x Zoom iPhone Lens and zoomed into the building across the highway. Like any other zoom in camera, the further away it is, the more shaky the viewer can be and if your hands are not steady enough, this can sometimes blur the image. The photo below was not using a tripod, I was just simply holding my iPhone when I took this picture.

Resizing the first image without the zoom lens in Photoshop to compare what I got out of the lens and putting this side by side, you can see the extra detail you can get.

For the majority of people who totally do not know where I am when I took this photo, to put this in a better perspective of distance, below is a screenshot from Google maps.

Using the scale of Google maps on the image, this distance is approximately 600 meters, which is more than half a kilometer, and more than a quarter mile, almost near a half mile too. Just to make sure, I used Google Street View to make sure I was referencing the right building.

600 meters away is good enough to be a good paparazzi tool and would be handy for TMZ reporters. Using the iPhone can also easily upload the photos wherever, send by email, etc. And the zoom in lens can be used to see whatever details from celebrity tattoos to celebrity diamond rings.

Now if you are planning to buy this, since the lens connects to the casing of the phone, make sure you get the right one depending on your iPhone version. The iPhone 4 has square edges while all older versions are rounded bevel backs.

iPhone 3/3GS version (image taken from Amazon.com)

iPhone 4 version (image taken from Amazon.com)

Taking photos zoomed in and very far away has a tendency to be blurry if your hands are not steady enough and tripods are recommended. If you are buying this online, make sure you buy it with the tripod. Both links to Amazon above have tripods with them.

If you ended up on this page, most probably, you are running HTMLDog’s Sons of Suckerfish Dropdowns and you did some compatibility check either by using an old Windows XP computer running multiple IEs, some virtual machine or using MSIE’s developer tools changing browser mode or document mode. I had the same problem with another website and thought I found the solution by Matt of Built From Source although the fix was not working for a 2nd level drop down. What happened was when I initial hover on the top bar menu and the first dropdown is displayed, all second level dropdowns also appear all at the same time.

If Matt’s simple fix to the SuckerFish Dropdown IE7 issue was this:

#menu li:hover, #menu li.hover {
position: static;
}

I have a simple fix too for the second level. But first thing to mention is, I think the second element #menu li.hover did not really do anything since there is no hover class in my code. So I disregarded that and simply changed my code to this:

#nav li:hover ul{

position: static;

}

#nav li:hover ul ul{

position: relative;

}

And like Matt’s solution… VIOLA! The second level is fixed! Still thanks to Matt for giving me a place to start and not relying on IE conditional comments or CSS hacks for IE problems.

U shape image with an exclamation point inside on car dashboard light

I made a quick trip to the drugstore and used my daughter’s car when I noticed that a U shape icon with an exclamation point is lighted in the dashboard aligned with the other reading meters in the car. This was the very first time that I encountered it so I was clueless as to what it was. Being on the road already I just continued driving and drove slower than I am used to. I did not feel anything odd or unusual while driving so it didn’t alarm me much. Then I did my quick purchase and ran back to the car. Start the engine and again saw the sign. I readily got my mobile phone out and search answer online. Funny how coincidental it was that this article also just came out at this time read this now I know what it means and what I should do. Thanks goodness now I am one of those persons who knows what this sign means.

Perseid Meteor Shower 2010

I wonder if anyone of you believes that Friday 13^th brings bad luck. Because I do, there haven’t been any major catastrophe that happened to me as far as I can remember but I was made to  believe that if the 13^th day of the month falls on a Friday I should expect that something bad will happen to me. So while waiting for my husband to arrive tonight from his once in a blue moon night out without me (yes, you guessed it right, I fore go my night out tonight ). I was anxiously waiting for his return since it’s almost dawn already when I receive a call from him asking me to go outside to bring him a jacket. He just said it’s really too darn cold outside as this wee hour. Knowing that it really is cold I unwillingly oblige.  Walking from our unit going to where he was parked I wondered why he was not anywhere where he parks. As I looked around I saw him parked right atop another street where street light had been scant. Walking towards him saw some sprinkle of lights which I mistakenly thought as a sign of a bad omen I sped off going towards him so we can go back home as fast as we can. So imagine my dismay when he asked me to sit atop the rear hood of our car just to marvel the vast sky. With cold seeping through my hoodie and my angst of him coming home this late. I just lean on and waited for him to make excuses. But he never said a word. He just looked up the sky for a good 20 minutes when suddenly he said, “Look up babe falling stars is trickling by two’s”. There and then I saw some falling stars drop fast from the sky. It was a beautiful sight to behold an experience of a lifetime I would say since we had been doing the meteor shower watching for 2 consecutive years together and it was only now that I was able to see such magnificent shower of light in the vast sky. We savor the moment for the next ten minutes and it was gone. Right after we got home I Googled the meteor shower and here’s what I found an really cool educational video about where the Perseid meteor shower come from and what causes it to appear every year.

Adobe Acrobat Connect

To make video presentations of what you are doing on your screen, there are several ways to do this. Currently at my day job, we like using Adobe Acrobat Connect. It is a good software platform that can run on any operating since it is an application service that runs on an Adobe server that you simply connect to and uses Adobe Air which runs like like Flash as a desktop application. Advantage of this is you can Air pretty much on any operating system, thus you are sure Adobe Acrobat Connect will run on any computer. Although good service often does not come free. But still Adobe Acrobat Connect is affordable at $39/month.

But Adobe Acrobat Connect is only one option to record your screen that you may use for some instructional video, and it’s main purpose is not only as a screen recorder. It is a full web-based online meeting/collaboration platform with tons of power that if you just need a screen video capture software, there are many other options such as GoToMeeting, Jing Project, Screenr and more listed below.

GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar by Citrix|Online

Citrix Online - Makers of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC

The same people that gave you GoToMyPC which is a remote PC controller over the web, also makes software for online web conference meetings and public/private webinars just like Adobe Acrobat Connect. It also cost $39/month if you pay for the whole year. But if you pay on a monthly contract, it is actually $49/month. I personally like the intuitiveness in using GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar compared to Adobe Acrobat Connect. But somehow some people at our company have been saying the voice conference over the phone is clearer on Adobe Acrobat Connect, but in my experience, I never really had any serious problems with GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. And like Adobe Acrobat Connect, this is a full remote meeting/collaboration/presentation platform. Has more power than just screen grabbing your actions. So there are more options that are actually free, like Jing Project, Screenr, and NCH, read more about them, below.

Jing/SnagIt/Camtasia by TechSmith

TechSmith - Makers of Camtasia, SnagIt and Jing

TechSmith is really a screen capture company. Images or videos, adding annotations, cropping, resizing, saving in files, saving to clipboard and everything you need in a screen capture grabbing company. When you go to their site, it starts to become confusing which software you need. As a quick guide, you can think of it this way, for professional video screen recording, for professionally done presentations, Camtasia
is the way to go. For the best image capture would be SnagIt and if you want something for free, but limited power, but good enough (Video Screen Capture is only for 5 minutes maximum), use Jing Project.

It seems Camtasia + SnagIt and Jing is the top team to beat. And there does not seem to be any other reason to use something else. But actually there is some reasons why you might want to use Screenr and also NCH Debut Screen Capture. Read more about them below.

Screenr

Screenr - Share videos on Twitter

In the age or real time search, social media and microblogging, Screenr easily captures short videos and easily post them on Twitter. If you are an active Twitter user, you may want to consider using Screenr. All uploaded videos are also in the MP4 or Mov format what makes it compatible also for the iPhone that does not play Flash video. So sharing on Screenr can be seen everywhere. This is a free tool and since it is free, you have a limited time of recording also per video.

But if you want just to screen capture anything for free, capture all movements of your mouse and keyboard as you explain everything on your microphone, NCH Debut Video Capture Software.

NCH Debut Video Capture Software

NCH Debut Screen Capture

This may not have the zooming in functionality of Camtasia and the annotation power as well, but this software can record screen video as long as you want. It is really limited by your available disk space. And the best thing is, this is all free! Today, NCH Debut Video Capture Software is still my personal favorite. It gets the job done, and I didn’t need to spend anything. Although they have a pro version which is probably more comparable to Camtasia, but with the free version, this will make many people happy already.

Ronnie Garcia's web design of his personal website.

Design stolen exactly how it looks like, mainly just minor color changes

Now as of current blog press time, there is another website stealing his design, depending on the time you read this, you may probably not see the same design if they decided to change their design. But as time of writing, this German website Webteque.de just copied the site almost exactly the same.
 

Webteque.de, the Web Design Copycat Stealer

Even the minute web design elements on the page, all the same

Check the calendar date of the last article.

Copied calendar date on latest articles

The menu, contact form, headers, subheaders, breadcrumb, links, sitemap link, all the same.

Comparison of Ronniesan.com and WebTeque.de

Take a closer look at the stolen web design, check the links

List of links on Ronnie Garcia's Site and on Webteque.de

WTF, *LOL*, he copied the exact same links. Clearly, this is not how to steal someones web design. Actually that is how he found out, the links were aside from being popular web design related pages, they were also linking out to friends. And one of them, Usability Expert Jegan Chen pointed this out saying he noticed WebTeque.de linking to him and appeared in his referer logs. It was Jegan that told Ronnie about it.

Try to appear more legitimate with an older copyright year.

WebTeque.de's old copyright date with a new copied design.

He just stole the web design and is not yet finished, and claims to have a copyright on it since 2008. Well just for the benefit of the doubt, you can say the copyright was for the content and not for the design.

Inspiration or Stealing?

I had my share of active web designing days from 1997 to 2006, today I do more SEO work now and with some occassional web design and development side projects and I guess many web designers have looked at other websites for “inspiration” where you take a few things here and there, but never have I did a straight out copy of everything and just modify the code. To me that is stealing already, but of course this is my opinion and I know this is a debatable issue. Some can say the Internet is free, the source is free, whatever, but I think in design, there is a clear distinction between a stolen copy of a design and a design inspired from some other design. What do you think?

Being a Filipino, with many friends and relatives in the Philippines, I sometimes need to call someone in the Philippines to their landline of mobile phone. And in some cases, the person I need to contact may not be near a computer or may not even know how to use the computer well like my mother. So I am going to exclude talking about Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, MSN/Live/Windows Messenger and others.

Now based in San Diego, California, Every now and then, I receive a random call from a telemarketer promoting some service to call the Philippines saying they have an extremely low rate to call the Philippines. Cheapest than most overseas long distance calls.

Not being rude and also being open-minded to listen to the various options I may have to call the Philippines, I often entertain these people and I just always ask the bottomline. How much? And not a single time has any one of these telemarketers matched the prices of what I was currently paying to call the Philippines

And to share what I have been using and why, I am sharing my review in comparing several companies that you can use to call the Philippines.

• Directoph
• Skype
• PinOnSale
• Vonage
• Packet8

See who wins the review! Download the comparison table document here.

If you find this helpful and you know people that need to call the Philippines, or if you are in the Philippines and have relatives abroad that need to call you, feel free to pass this blog post to them so we all get to save some money and use the money to save for more important things like sending money to the Philippines.

Sexy Breast Mouse Pad Design

And remember it is nice to have good ergonomics. We don’t want you having any Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. So these mousepads are padded in the right areas.

Ergonomic Padded Breast Mouse Pad

Hat tip goes to Alfredo for sending me an IM about it.

XML Cake!

Hat tip to MoinAnjum‘s  A New Morning!