PSP Tutorial: Web 2.0 Caution Bars

Web 2.0 has a whole bunch of graphic memes where certain styles and patterns are used. Caution bars are easy to do when you manually create alternating rectangles and rotate them. This is a great technique and all but it falls short when you want to make a seamless tile. In Photoshop, the technique is rasterized and easy to do. However for a Web 2.0  design, we’d like to keep things  vector just in case we need to change something quickly, for example, making one of the colors transparent. Now I’ll introduce the 1st out of a series of tutorials that explains how to make some elements of a web 2.0 design.

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Myspace: a place for Phishing.

A clever phishing attempt was made by registering a username that sort of looks like a html page. The username "login_home_index_html" was registered to resemble a myspace login area. The tricky part about it was that since the website was "myspace.com/login_home_index_html" it could easily fool anyone who was caught offgaurd. Netcraft broke the story first stating it was a hacked page used on Myspace’s own servers. Although that would be the worst case scenario, it was just a div layout that looked exactly like a login page except that the login would send information somewhere else. Another spam attempt was made yesterday where bots would send multiple messages to Myspace users. These bots would claim that they knew you from somewhere, and that they wanted to talk. Basically it was a lure for you to look at their obviously fake Myspace page so that you can click to install their sexywebcam.exe.

Busty MySpace Girls Deliver Trojans

Meet Veronica, she’s a 22 year old waitress who’s new to the area, she’s looking around for some fun to chill and hang out. Meet Taylor, she’s new to the area and she’s looking for a mate in the big city. Meet Track Slut, she does track by day and is a slut at night? Apparently they all say, "Lets have some fun and get this started Hi there friends" But what they really have in common is the Myspace Adult Content Viewer. Allegedly this Adult Content viewer lets you see these scantily clad women bare it all, but before you can take a peek, you are bombarded with trojans, keyloggers, and downloaders. It add itself as a BHO (Browser Helper Object) in Internet Explorer and modifies your start page and search page. Its just another day for phishers to log your bank account passwords and bombard you with advertisments. The most common trend of these Fake Myspace Spam Girls is that they all have model or webcam pictures and provide nothing about their personalities. Its like you can somewhat tell just by looking at the picture. 

Aim 6.0 Beta 2

Aim 6.0 launced again with a new UI designed to make things look like Userplane.com. I’m not entirely sure why yet but it may have something to do with AIM Chatrooms that went missing. Aim 6.0 has new features such as offline messaging, a new mobile area, an away status window which is far better than IM catcher, and the ability to log IMs has been reintroduced back. Next they are hinting towards changing the colors of the buddy list, can’t wait for that. The UI structure is basically the same as the first but they have added some additional changes such as creating a more larger screen name status area. This tends to get bulky once your searching for a screen name in your buddy list while you are signed onto more than 2 screen names. The icons on the bottom also tend to be a little vague as what they are representing. For Example, the first button shown looked like a video recorder to me, instead it was meant as a mobile button.

The Away Status Window is a welcomed new addition as it helps a little bit for the Aim 5.9 users who were used to seeing a window pop up while they were away. It keeps all your IMs on the side tab bar so that you can reach them when your ready. For now I haven’t see it pop up to front like the old IM catcher did. That was considerably annoying especially when you were playing a fullscreen game and all of a sudden it minimizes to show you a IM.  

PSP Tutorial: Windows Media Player 11 Button

Here is our second tutorial for Bumped! With this 3 part tutorial you will learn how to create a Windows Media Player 11 Button Entirely in Vector. Oye Vaye.. This tutorial is very challenging and fustrating, and you may give up when you try to edit "nodes." I have split the tutorial down to 3 levels of difficulty. Those who want to quickly make a button with the least amount of features can stop on the first page. If you can handle a challenge try to make it up to the third page.

Elements of WMP 11 Button Design.
The Button is made out of 5 Components.
1. Blue Circle
2. Top Shine
3. Shine Curvature: Optional..
4. Bottom Glow: Optional..
5. Bottom Left Reflection: Optional..

The Hardest part of this tutorial is the [3] Shine Curvature and [4] Bottom Glow. It will require advanced Node Editing. Node Editing is where you change the shape of the object using the pen tool. You will have to move lines a bit to get it right.

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GoogleTube vs YahAoL!?

I’m not entirely sure where this buzz came about, it may have been invented by BloggingStocks, but apparently Yahoo should buy AOL? Recently we all should know that Youtube was bought by Google. A little surprising just because with all the major deals with TV and Music companies, you’d think one of them would have jumped ontop of it. This gives GoogleTube a huge advantage in the online video market, and basically you can say Google is turning into Microsoft. I’m not entirely sure what happens from this deal, apart from the fact that the creators become instantly rich, and Google’s market share gets bigger and bigger. With the three media giants, Google, MSN, and Yahoo, something is bound to happen to stir things up. This is where "the littleblog post that could," comes up with a great idea… Yahoo should by AOL to compete against Google. Well it seems fantastical atleast but I won’t be too happy if that happens…

I often view Yahoo and AOL as opposites. Yahoo works one way (ask to add to buddylist/chatrooms for free/strong groups with limited features/no strong sense of the "Yahoo" community).. Aol works this way (add anyone you want/chatrooms for paying or verified/non existant groups/strong community since everyone is new). Now if you put those together you’ll get a whole mess of confused AOL users who have no Idea how to use Yahoo, or Happy Yahoo users who can talk to people on AIM. Personally I think from this deal, AOL would lose out, and it would probably have to intergrate itself into Yahoo. 

The deal would put AOL in good financial state, but from the community aspect, its going to be too big. Yahoo is freedom based, while AOL has Nazi TOS, and when these two communities combine all the newb language you’ve grown to hate will start flying everywhere. People will get upset at AOL as it does nothing against Yahoo Users. AOL community leaders begin to dissapate into this one unified "Yahoo." This  omnipresent entity that acts without thought and judgement and suspends a group / a community / a person without reason.  Can AOL user handle the pornographic free spirited hippies of Yahoo?

No… Yahoo is a great company but their ideas of limiting the potential of their groups communities left a permanent scar in my heart towards them. When they did things like… "oh your group only has 10mb we took off attachement"…"when you try to upload images it isn’t full sized"…"our software is bloated as hell and we want to make sure it crashes"… its been hectic trying to like them. Now that Google came along and changed the standards email and groups back to the way they were, Yahoo has been Web2.0fying themselves.

Now Who Is My Choice pick to buy AOL?
MSN ofcourse. I can see great dreams there.. :\
[Original Article]

Aim Buddy Info Updates

Want to remove or delete Buddy Updates from AIM Buddy Info?
Click Here!

Aim 6 has a new feature called Buddy Updates. They are displayed below your buddy info profile and enable you to insert RSS feeds to display links in your profile. The product seems to be a bit buggy on the server end, sometimes its up and sometime I get, “400 Bad Request” error messages. Aside from these quirks the only major problems client wise is that the Myspace feed didn’t show up in the Updates. I had to add it manually just to get it to work right. So, if your a startup or just trying to steer traffic to your site, these little feeds come in handy.

http://buddyupdates.aim.com/settings

Aim 6 Beta Released

Aim Triton officially changed its named to Aim 6 to mark its close to Gold Master rekease. Or knowing AOL, it can take another year for this to finally be finished. For those who have tested Aim Triton before, Aim 6 doesn’t really add anything new aside from UI changes, and a webcam chooser in its settings. Other minor changes in the IM window  is "NEW IM" is off to the left, the buddyinfo button is missing, tabs are gone. Some of these changes sound temporary but still the UI in this version is far worse than the previous Aim Triton 3.10.3.

One of the biggest problems in the IM window is the lack of a buddy info button. With all that extra space they have left in the white section, some icons can be dropped in for ease of usability. You really don’t want your users to navigate through a menu when it can be simplified by just adding one button. Another design flaw is that the New IM button looks out of place, this can just be fixed by centering it.

The theme looks great on the welcome screen. The design looks more practical and ergonomic than Aim Triton. It fits the buddy list quite well, but contrasts alot with the IM window, where blue is still being used for the tabs. Other than that its a step in the right direction of how a buddy list should look like.

Aim Triton has been in beta for years now, and we still don’t have the most requested features in it yet, below is a list of features in Aim Triton that has been requested so much times, that even beta staff gets tired of seeing them.

Disable Sounds While Away
Set Buddy List Font
Fix Format Screen Name
Docking Buddy List

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