View the live demo

Features:

- It’s easy to install. Simply copy the files over your original Kosmos template files.

- It includes an editable Logo in PSD format to customize for your own site.

- It includes 3 separate ad spots for either Adsense or Banner ads.

- It includes thumnails of each site on the category pages.

- It is CSS/XHTML

- It has complete instructions on how to install it included in the downloadable zip file

- It has a nice price tag - Just $27 - instantly download it via e-junkie.com

PS. There’s no pesky links in the footer you have to keep in place… besides the ones for Indexu.

There homepage is really slick too.  The catch phrase “beautifully engineered” says it all.  They go on to say “Discover the new standard in Web browsing. Download Opera today to get the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online.”

Check out some it’s new features.

For BitTorrent downloaders this feature really stands out:

Download Manager with BitTorrent

Opera starts downloading as soon as you’ve saved the file, so there’s no wasted time. Pause and resume downloads with the push of a button, and choose multiple files to download simultaneously without any fuss. Opera also features built-in support for the social file distribution protocol, BitTorrent, which makes it easy to download Torrent files without the need for a separate application.

And I really like Opera’s Speed Dial feature.

Speed Dial feature

Typing addresses for sites you visit frequently is ineffective. Get your favorite Web page with just one click. Speed Dial is a set of visual bookmarks you see when you open a new tab, like a dashboard for your online life. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial and Opera will make suggestions based on browsing history and bookmarks.

Quick Find feature

Have you ever forgotten the page where you found that great article or that perfect gift? When using Opera the browser remembers not only the titles and addresses, but the actual content of the Web pages you visit.

And if you’re a intense researcher and like to keep many tabs open, somtimes for days then Opera’s tab and sessions feature is great.

Tabs and Sessions

Opera is very light on your computer, so it’s possible to have many tabs open at once. Drag and drop tabs around to change their order, or get a preview pausing over them with your mouse. You can even save a session of tabs for later, making it easy to pick up where you left off.

I think it might be time to give Firefox a rest and start using Opera full time.  Internet Explorer… I waved byebye to you a long time ago.

According to Google:

“We recognized there was a need for a Google icon that would better work across multiple applications including web, mobile and client applications. We felt the small ‘g’ had many of the characteristics that best represent our brand: it’s simple, playful, and unique. We will be looking to improve and enhance this icon as we move forward.”

Simple, playful and unique? That’s not the impression I have of Google at all. Am I missing something?

What do you think? Big G or little g?

Here are some iterations of the Google Favicon:

Read more about it here.

W3Markup Provides:

• Pixel-precise PSD conversion (PSD to HTML)to CSS / XHTML by hand (W3C Valid)
• CSS / HTML implementation into skins, themes, CMS, shopping carts or other software
• “Re-slicing” of existing sites (bring old code up-to-date)

With:

• AJAX, sIFR, swfIR, mootools, script.aculo.us, jQuery, Prototype code,
• Search engine friendly / semantic code,
• Usability, accessibility and page weight optimization,
• Cross Browser / Platform Compatibility { FF 1.5+, Safari 2+, IE 6+ },
• 100% control of code style and preferences via our order form,
• Easy online project management via our intranet

They can convert your Adobe Illustrator, Fireworks or Photoshop artwork into CSS / (X)HTML code for you! They handle it all: AJAX / JavaScript, CSS, (X)HTML, CSS drop-downs / flyouts, mouseovers, file optimization saving you time and headaches at a fair price.

They have a super easy to use order form where you can select all the options you want.

They have a ton of options available covering everything one would need. You can even deliver your website template to cells, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, Blackberries and other PDAs.

You’ll have to visit their order form to check out all the options available to you, but if you are curious if they handle the javascript functionality as well. You can see they support every major javascript library available.

Preferred JavaScript Library

Select the JavaScript Library you prefer them to work with if your project requires advanced scripting functionality.

• mootools
• script.aculo.us
• jQuery
• Prototype
• Mochikit
• Dojo
• None

Software Implementation

W3Markup can convert your PSD to be implemented into various blog, content management, shopping cart and portal software (scripts) packages.

Templates

• DreamWeaver Template $39
• Server Side Includes $19

Blog

• Blogger $179
• Movabletype $279
• WordPress $279

Shopping Carts (e-commerce)

• CubeCart $279
• Shopify $329
• X-Cart $329

Content Management Systems

• Drupal $279
• Expression Engine $279
• Pligg $279
• Mambo $279
• Symphony $279
• Textpattern $279
• Typo3 $379

Frameworks

• Joomla $279
• SMC $279

Forums

• phpBB $199
• vBulletin $279

Other

• MySpace Profile $199
• Email template $299

They can also convert PSD’s into these Content Management Systems / Frameworks / Portals »

(starting from $400)

Apache lenya, Ariadne, Bitweaver, e107, eZPublish, CleverCOPY, CMS from Scratch, CMS Made Simple, Cofax, Collaborative Portal Server, ContentNOW, osCommerse, Dotnetnuke, Dragonfly, easy Portal, Elxis CMS, Etomite, exponent, Flux CMS, Fundanemt, fuzzlime, Geeklog, Jahia, Jaws, jLibrary, Krang, Managee, MasonCM, MDPro, Microsoft Office SharePoint, Midgard CMS, MMBase, Magento, MODx, MySource, OpenACS, OpenCMS, Ovidentia, Pheap, PHP-Fusion, PHP comasy, PHProjekt, PHPnuke, PHP Website, Pivot, Plume, PostNuke, rubrics, runcms, silverstripe, SiteFrame, SlashCode, SPIP, SyntaxCMS, TRIBIQ, ttCMS, TypoLight, V2 CMS, WebGUI, Website Baker, Xaraya, Xepient Open-Point, XOOPS, YACS, YaWPS, Virb, Zope / elevateIT / Silva

If you are looking for an easy way to have your artwork turned into a website template then look no further then W3Markup.com.  Their easy to use order form makes it a snap.

Please note prices may change at any time. Please check their site for up-to-date pricing information.

Anyone remotely familiar with hot rods knows who Boyd Coddington is and surely will be sad to see he has passed away. I can’t believe it myself. I regularly catch “American Hot Rod” on tv here in Norway when I can. It’s always cool to see what they are working on.

Boyd has built some of the sweetest hot rods in existence and is world renowned for his custom hot rods. Some of which you can see below. He will be greatly missed. You can read more about his passing here.

My resolutions for 2008 are:

• Stop Smoking
• Juice Everyday
• Stop Drinking Coffee
• Work Out Regularly
• Make More Money
• Travel More

Well I’m proud to say that I haven’t had a smoke or a cup of coffee since New Years. Kinda nuts when I used to almost live on coffee and cigarettes. I owe it all to juicing daily. Seriously. I’ve traded in smoking and drinking coffee for drinking fresh juice multiple times a day. I have a lot more energy and feel healthier then I have in a long time.

I’m no stranger to juicing. I got the itch a few years ago after reading about living healthy and seeing Jay Kordich’s Juiceman Juicer infomercials. You know the old dude with crazy eyebrows… I’m sure you’ve seen the commercials. Anyway I juiced for awhile but it didn’t stick because well it’s kinda a pain in the ass. You need tons of stuff to juice and it takes awhile with the prep and clean up.

This Xmas though I decided to get another juicer and start again. Now that I have time during the day it’s not so much a pain and it has really helped me to stop smoking. I wake up and juice an entire pineapple, two oranges and two apples. It is so much better then starting the day off with a few cups of coffee and cigarettes. Healthier too!

Then during the rest of the day I drink usually a few glasses of carrot and apple juice. Vegetables are better to drink then juice because of their nutrients but fruit juice tastes a whole lot better. I have Jay Kordich’s “The Power of Juicing” book which lists a ton of great recipes. Basically you can juice anything except bananas and mangos because they are too soft to go through the juicer.

Anyway, if you’re a smoker and want to quit try juicing and keep occupied. I find that it helps to chew on something,, gum, sunflower/pumpkin seeds - if you’re craving nicotine maybe try some chewing tobacco. I know that’s not a whole lot better but if it can help you go another day without smoking then its a good thing. Just try not to get addicted to that.

So I’m pretty proud of myself for going this long… the longest I haven’t smoked in probably years.

Now I just need to work on the going to the gym and making more money part so I can travel more.

Amazon.com has some good juicers available such as Jay’s Juiceman series of juicers as well as Jack Lalane’s model. Do a quick search by clicking Juiceman below.
Juiceman

If you’re holding up to your New Years resolutions let me know! I’d love to hear about them.

Anyway, if you are in search of an old classmate I’d try on free sites first such as myspace or facebook.com. That’s if you remember their names. Classmates offers listings of schools where you can just join your old school and graduating year so you’ll automatically see who’s signed up that was in your class. Very convenient. If you do remember your friends names, which I guess you should if they were really your friends then you should definitely try facebook and myspace first. If you are desperate to find them them you can always try the whitepages online. The other sites listed will help you as well.

I don’t think disallowing the Googlebot to index his site is the smartest move even though he probably feels like it’s the only thing he can do to get back at them. In reality it is only hurting him further. When you live in a country you are governed by it’s laws and you have to follow all of them or else you face the consequences and that is true for the web. We are living under Google’s rule and we have to act accordingly or else we get our wrists(sites) slapped.

But you say,, Google doesn’t tell us all the rules so how are we supposed to know?

Well when you’ve been online long enough studying Google, optimizing for Google, you know exactly what they want. It’s the reason they went public. They are after all a business who has to please their shareholders. A corporation must continue to see increasing profits or it is dieing.

If they make it difficult to rank in their results pages it’s partly due to them wanting you to use their adwords service which anyone can pay for and immediately rank #1 if you pay them enough per click. Of course they want to keep their search results relevant because that’s how they gathered their following to begin with, but it’s not that important anymore. They know they have enough people who will gladly pay them for those positions they could make the entire top ten results ads and people would still use them for search.

What they don’t want is webmasters or SEO’s manipulating their SERPS even though they created search engine optimization with the advent of their toolbar which displayed a websites Pagerank which is a visual indicator of how popular a website is. With Pagerank webmasters could visually see how supposedly popular their sites were and everyone was soon in a rush to increase it by getting as many backlinks as possible. That even meant buying text links for the sole purpose of increasing the flow of Pagerank to their website thus boosting their PR.

Buying text links is artificially increasing your link popularity. It’s why businesses like text-link-ads.com and linkworth.com exist. It’s also why businesses like payperpost cropped up. Pay a fee and you can get links to your site. Google does not like this as it’s not natural linking but paid. And they aren’t the ones getting paid. They make zero money when you rank #1 in their SERPS naturally.

Google’s known about people buying massive text links for years now so that’s nothing new. First the sites buying text links were penalized. If all the sudden you had 50k new backlinks coming from 2 main sites they could easily tell. But now it seems like they might be going after the sites selling text links. Either way you should be careful about buying and selling text links. I don’t think it will go away because links are still the most important thing in SEO. SEO’s have always been smart on how to get around the actions of search engines to thwart their activities so new methods of flying under the radar will be invented.

When I saw Vlad’s post about losing his pagerank I commented on what I think is the reason for his sites PR demise. Now I only speculated about this because I don’t know his SEO strategies if any but what I could tell is that he like many other bloggers link out way too much on their blogs. You know, including every widget available and freely linking out to blogs, affiliate programs, text link advertisers etc. Affiliate marketers who blog and bloggers in general seem to be more prone to this. After all it is very easy to add widgets to your wordpress blog. It’s also enticing to be a member of every site offering a widget that will display your blogs visitors such as mybloglog.

I don’t recommend using using these types of widgets. Especially not 3 or 4 and I think it’s best to keep your ads hidden. Meaning hide your affiliate links using javascript. I think Google will penalize more site owners if all it looks like they are doing is promoting affiliate programs and that is how a lot of bloggers earn their money. That and via selling text links. Including a section titled “sponsors”, “text links” or “advertisers” is coming to an end, especially if the links are in an ordered list and have zero description. You need to remove any consistencies with your site that Google sees in other sites that seem to be trying to manipulate their SERPS. That also means removing your links pages or even link directories on your site.

If you’ve seen a loss or increase in Pagerank I’d love to hear about it. This site has stayed the same through the update.

Andy Beard wrote a good post about Pagerank you can read. He also talks about the recent Pagerank update and how it’s upset a lot of people.

You can surf the web, eBay, Yahoo/Google/Flickr images in a 3D fashion with more to come with Space Time. I guess they are working on a version that also searches Myspace, Youtube, Amazon.com etc in 3d. Note that the Flickr search brings up the entire webpage not just the photo you search for while searching Space Time.

The eBay search is pretty cool as you can browse through auction listings while getting a glimpse of the auction photo. Most eBay photos aren’t what they seem though. Most eBay photos are generic, ie. the same picture of ipod as every other seller has.

The regular web search is kinda cool too in that you can easily compare websites designs across multiple sites in a flipbook type fashion. It’s super easy to browse but you have to double click on the images to view the actual site. That part seemed kinda awkward but I still think it’s a cool idea. It’s a break from the regular way we search and view the web.

Check out Article Submitter, another piece of SEO/Marketing software from Brad Callen, the maker of SEO Elite.

Freely submit your articles to 85 of the top article sites. 85? Yes, 85… I didn’t even know 85 article sites existed… let alone 660 which is what you can upgrade to if you want.. not sure who would want to though. Even though the software makes it easier for you to submit to article directories it doesn’t do it automatically.

You still have to sign up for those 660 article directories and submit your site by hand. Article Submitter makes it a bit easier by autofilling a lot of your info on submission, but 660,, that’s a lot of article sites to submit to! Again something you might want to consider outsourcing. I think 85 article directories is enough to submit to but that’s just me. Of course 660 is more coverage and you might very well get links solely from the article directories themselves. Check it out if you are doing article marketing for SEO purposes.