On the first day of disco my true love gave to me...

One afro wig.  I'm having too much fun with jib jab tonight...

We rock

That's Alice on the drums.

Web Store, the Most Important New Feature in Chrome 8

Even if Google didn't mention it in the release notes, Chrome 7 has support for installing web apps, but Chrome Web Store is not yet released. The store will be the most important new feature in Chrome 8, which will be launched very soon.

"Chrome 8 is the first version that supports the Chrome Web Store," mentions a Google Chrome engineer. There's already a new icon for the store in Chromium and this should be the final icon.


Google Chrome 7 was launched on October 21, almost 6 weeks ago, so Chrome 8 and Chrome Web Store should be available this week.

Most Shared Section in Google News

Google News has a new section that lists the most shared articles. It's not clear if Google counts the number of people who used the sharing feature from Google News or tracks the references from Twitter and other social sites, but Google's chart is not very reliable. When I started to write this post, the most popular news article was a story about Google's Groupon acquisition that has been shared by 2,189 people.


15 minutes later, the most popular article was a NASA press release shared by 10,893 people.


{ Thanks, Cougar Abugado. }

Ladybug Crafts Ink Winner!

Wow!! Have won this weeks Ladybug Crafts Ink challenge with my Buttercup stamp, red and white card, lovin it!! Gorgeous stamps, great talent, if you haven't joined in yet, what you waiting for! Thanks team.
nnaloracxx

Music round the Tree!

This frenzy of Christmas card making has surely gone to my head! Had to go searching for yesterdays newspaper to check what day it was, I was sure it was Wednesday today. Kinda earned an extra day crafting then, if you know what I mean! Onto my card, one for a man I think, always find them a challenge, usually tailored for that person so great satisfaction with the end result.

BoBunny Noel

Link to a YouTube Comment

If you happen to find a YouTube comment that's really interesting and you want to share it with other people, mouse over the comment, click on the "Share" button and copy the link.


Each YouTube comment has a permalink, but it's not easy to notice that the comment is displayed below the video in a special section titled "Linked Comment".


You could also use this feature to annotate a video before sharing it with your friends. Post a comment, copy the link and use it to highlight your comment.

the sewing haven

Last week I finished re-finishing a family sewing cabinet.  It was made for my mom by my dad 35+ years ago.  It is the most wonderful sewing cabinet you can imagine- it folds up so you can easily hide projects when you are in the middle of them, and has the perfect cabinet space for storing patterns and material. 


 
As I was sanding and taking the cabinet pieces apart to re-finish, I couldn't get over how ingenious the cabinetry was and how sturdy my dad made it.  He was quite a craftsman!  When I asked my mom how he was able to make things like the grooves for the sliding cabinet doors, or the ingenious pop-up thread spool cupboard, or the wiring for an outlet within the cupboard, she said it was when they were young, newly married, they had just finished up Med school (or in the middle of?), and they were asked to housesit at a castle-like residence in San Francisco.  The place had a spectacular woodshop and my dad delved into the tools and made my mom this dream sewing cupboard.

Here are some "before and after pictures"

 
I wanted to give it a light-look, so I refinished it in a creamy white paint. 

I switched out the knobs for some antique-looking glass knobs. 
 
And added some trim to the top and sides (thanks James for sawing!)


We stuck the cabinet in the guest room, and now it is my favorite room in the house!  If anyone wants a sewing retreat vacation- you can come visit me ;)

Google Earth 6: Better Street View and 3D Trees

Google Earth 6 doesn't have too many new features. You can now use Street View just like in Google Maps by dragging the pegman icon. "To view street-level imagery for a specific location, zoom into an area at an altitude of approximately 500km. You will see a pegman icon appear at the top right below the navigation controls. Click and drag the icon across the 3D viewer. A blue border will appear around roads that have street-level imagery available," explains Google.

Another new feature is the "3D Trees" layer that can be enabled from the "3D Buildings" section. Google Earth includes 3D models for city parks (San Francisco, Chicago, Tokio, Athens) and remote forests (Amazon Forest).

Historical imagery is now more accessible: just click on the date of the oldest imagery in the status bar and you'll be able to see all the historical images that are available for the same location.

Google Earth 6 also adds ground-level navigation that lets you explore 3D buildings and 3D trees, 3D measurements for heights and widths of buildings and a much better Tour Recorder that improves motion fidelity.

baby's 1st christmas

Morning folks, a card using the LOTV squares,quick make, keeps the mojo cruising along, think we all need a helping hand sometimes, thought I had made heaps of Christmas cards, must of been all in the mind as no where near finished yet. Made the backing paper using Hero Arts Small dots and Large Plaid Pattern, embossed using TH distressing inks and embossing powder.

would like to enter LOTV

Ladybug Sketch Challenge

Afternoon folks, seems to of been ages since I posted a card! Not been idle, just haven't had much time, where does it go? Been crafting on and off all weekend, nothing else for it so much snow here. My card is for the Ladybug Crafts Ink challenge this week. Bought this stamp at the SECC where I seen Debbi colouring this cutie with promarkers. Me, I used my Prismas, still haven't got round to

Google Maps Will No Longer Support Mapplets

Three years ago, Google introduced mapplets, a special flavor of gadgets that added new features to Google Maps. "Mapplets are Google Gadgets that are made especially so that they can be loaded by a user on maps.google.com, and have access to the main shared map. Users can load multiple Mapplets simultaneously for a quick and easy way to mashup content from multiple sources."

In May, Google announced the deprecation of mapplets, but only developers cared about that. Users could still go to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and add a mapplet from the directory. Unfortunately, Google Geo Developers Blog informs us that the directory will be closed and all the links to mapplets will be removed.

As part of the deprecation plan for Mapplets we will shortly be switching from rendering Mapplets within Google Maps, to rendering them on a dedicated Mapplets page. (...) Bookmarks for existing Mapplets will continue to work. They will be automatically redirected to the new Mapplets page for the relevant Mapplet. (...) However because the Mapplets page is not part of the Google Maps application, Mapplets will no longer have access to Google Maps user profiles. (...) The above changes will be made on or shortly after Wednesday December 8th 2010.

Google Maps Directory includes 1550 mapplets that show crime information, weather data, information about population density, earthquakes, airports, hotels, golf courses and much more.

If you've added one or more mapplets to the "My Maps" section from Google Maps and you want to use them even after the links are removed, find them in the Google Maps Directory, convert their URLs and bookmark them. For example, replace:

http://maps.google.com/gadgets/directory?synd=mpl&url=http://www.google.com/mapfiles/mapplets/distance/distance.xml

with:

http://maps.google.com/maps/mapplets?moduleurl=http://www.google.com/mapfiles/mapplets/distance/distance.xml

Google Chrome and Multiple Profiles

Google Chrome has always supported multiple profiles, but you had to use a command-line flag (--user-data-dir="c:\path\to\the\profile") to associate a profile with a folder where the browser will save its state.

At some point, Google added an option that allowed you to open a new window and use a separate profile, but it was quickly removed. According to a design document from Chromium's site, this feature be available again.

"The multiple profiles feature will allow the user to associate a profile with a specific set of browser windows, rather than with an entire running instance of Chrome. Allowing different windows to run as different Chrome identities means that a user can have different open windows associated with different Google accounts, and correspondingly different sets of preferences, apps, bookmarks, and so on -- all those elements which are bound to a specific user's identity."


Users will be able to associate a profile with a Google account and log in at the browser level. This is a great feature for Chrome OS, but it will also work in Google Chrome.

Google will associate each Chrome window with an identity. "On Windows (and Linux), this is accomplished with a colored and labeled menu-enabled tag at the top of the browser frame, next to the window controls. On Mac OS X, the window frame is too small to accommodate a tag; instead, we add an item to the menu bar, with a special colored background, in the same way the Windows tab is specially colored."


{ spotted by François and David.}

Blog Candy Winner!

And the winner is.......... Stampersue. Congrats. My email is in my profile, let me know your address and I will get it posted.

nnaloracxx

Let it snow!!

I am getting to the last of my Christmas cards, and couldn't pass up on entering some challenges with this one

http://magicalmondaychallenge.blogspot.com/

http://simonsaysstampschallenge.blogspot.com/

http://craftycreationschallenges.blogspot.com/

http://fabnfunkychallenges.blogspot.com/

Gmail's Web Clips, Now With More Ads

I've never been a fan of Gmail's Web Clips, but I didn't disable this feature because it helped me keep up with news from popular sites without subscribing to them in Google Reader. The most annoying thing about Web Clips is that it mixes news headlines with contextual ads, but that still didn't make me disable this feature.

Gmail has recently started to only show ads in the Web Clips box if you don't click on the navigation arrows. If you only read your messages and don't interact with the Web Clips box, Gmail no longer shows headlines. Some of the ads are useful, but showing ads was just a way to monetize the box, not the main purpose of this feature.


Gmail's help center article explains that "Web Clips show you news headlines, blog posts, RSS and Atom feeds, and relevant sponsored links, right at the top of your inbox. Each clip displays the source from which it was received, how long ago the clip was published, and a link to access the entire story or page containing the clip. From your inbox, you can scroll through clips you've already seen by clicking the left arrow or see new clips by clicking the right arrow."

You can disable Web Clips from the settings page, but it's too bad that the feature is a lot less useful.

WOYWW!

Morning folks from a wintry N.E. Scotland,the view from my craft desk, a dusting of snow and they say there's more on the way for the weekend so will be staying put. Family will be out as usual so no time to craft. On the craft front, these are my lovely birthday cards from my crafting buddies.

Yesterday  started off  with a phone call from the other side of the world, Australia. My son Alan

Sleigh, Tatoos, and Comics, what a day!

There were 3 things in particular today that Jimmy did that I wanted to jot down for memory's sake. 

1.) One Horse Open Sleigh.  I turned on Christmas music this morning to clean the house to.  Jimmy was so cute, he suddenly got very busy and started collecting an assortment of things from his bedroom.  And then in the doorway of the kitchen he set up shop.  After a minute or two, he was ready to go.

Can you guess what he was doing?

 He was pretending to be riding a sleigh.  I think Jingle Bells inspired him.

2.)  Tale of the tattooed twosome.  Today I gave the boys a "homework" assignment.  It was really just one of Jimmy's Kindergarten worksheets copied (because Johnny wants to do everything Jimmy does nowadays).  They were working hard on it in the kitchen.  I was trying to get laundry loads done and return some phone calls.  As I came back into the kitchen, they were doing their "homework" under the kitchen table.  I thought that was cute and then left again to get some more things done.  I returned after a couple of minutes, and I could just tell they were up to something.  As they came out from underneath the table, they had marker all over themselves.  Johnny's was a pink fluorescent marker, so it didn't show up nearly as well as Jimmy's black ball point pen. 

 

I couldn't help but laugh and get the camera (although I did try to act serious enough so that they won't attempt it again).

Into the bath they went!

3.) Homemade comic.  Jimmy is at an age that is so much fun.  He has learned how to read this Fall and it has been so fun hearing him sound out words and read all sorts of things.  Lately, he's wanted me to read the comics with him in the morning.  I have to help him with most of the words, but I just love thinking about his little brain making all these connections with letters and words and sounds.  I've also loved witnessing his interests flourish now that he is beginning to read the written word.  Lately he loves to grab paper from the printer and draw drawings.  Today, these were his 2 drawings:

 

 The first one is of an astronaut, and the second one is of a comic strip he made up. 

 He read the comic to me and it actually had a dialogue!  It was about a good guy (G, or backwards g=e), and a bad guy (B).  I may just have to videotape it and try to make a mini-movie out of it :)

Mermaid

She loves her bath. She gets real excited and splashes and splashes. Kicks and kicks. I usually end up drenched (and I'm not even in the bath) by the end of bathing her!

Drag and Drop Upload in Google Docs

Google Docs added support for drag and drop uploads, a feature that's already available in Gmail. The main advantage is that the new feature doesn't use Flash or another plug-in, so it should be more reliable.

"If you're using Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you'll be able to quickly drag files into the drop area and shoot them up to the cloud," informs the Google Docs blog.


In the near future, this option could be used to upload folders, not just multiple files. Google Chrome already supports directory upload using the input tag.

Google Docs also added a menu option that lets you hide the title bar: View > Compact Controls. It's only available in the new document editor and it's probably more useful than the "hide controls" feature from the previous version of the editor.

7 Google Search Annoyances

Here are some of the most annoying Google Search bugs I've found recently:

1. Google's keyboard shortcuts are useful if you want to select a search result, but Google doesn't remember the page you selected when you go back to the search results page.

2. To add insult to injury, Google doesn't scroll to the search result you've clicked on after visiting the page and returning to the Google SERP.

3. Let's say that a search result snippet includes a useful information and you want to copy it. If you double click on a word from the snippet, you'll trigger Google's instant previews.

4. If your query includes quotes, Google's suggestions aren't useful because they ignore your quotes.

5. Google shows too many results from a single domain. If your query includes keywords associated with a site, Google may show up to 7 results from a domain. Google also lets you see other results from the same domain, but there are many duplicates.


6. If you restrict the results to visited pages and perform the same search using Google Web History, you'll get different results.

7. Sometimes personalization goes too far and replaces the top search result for a navigational query.


Did you find other annoyances?

Google's Thanksgiving Doodle

Google's doodles were special because they linked to search results pages, instead of linking to handpicked pages. Some doodles promoted Google services, so they sent users to special landing pages, but all the other doodles linked to regular results pages. That's not the case for Google's Thanksgiving doodle, which promotes a Google page with Thanksgiving recipes from Ina Garten.

"This Thanksgiving holiday, we are grateful for many things: family, friends, and of course, food. Just in time for the big day, beloved cookbook author and TV chef Ina Garten offers everyone six simple yet delicious recipes to make one of the year's biggest dinner parties as easy as, well, pumpkin pie. Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Cooking!"



Barry Schwartz notes that "it is uncommon for Google to offer pre-holiday logos" and that "the logo promotes a person without that person celebrating a birthday or anniversary".

Germany's Blurry Street View

Google has finally added street level imagery for some of the biggest cities from Germany: Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich and 16 other cities. Unfortunately, many of the images are blurred because of privacy concerns. According to Spiegel, the launch has been delayed for several years.

In contrast to other countries, the launch of Street View was met with considerable resistance from politicians and privacy protection advocates in Germany, including the country's consumer protection minister, Isle Aigner of the conservative Christian Social Union, who criticized the service as an incursion on people's privacy. (... )

As was widely expected, one doesn't have to look very far in Street View to find homes that have been blurred out. Prior to the introduction of the service, more than 244,000 households in the first 20 cities to be placed online submitted requests to have their homes blurred out. Google claims the figure represents only 3 percent of households. (...)

Nevertheless, there are considerable obstructed images in the German version of Street View. In any instance where an apartment renter asked to have their flat pixilated, Google blurred out the entire building they live in. Data protection authorities believe that up to a million households across the country have been blurred out by the company.

Google's Guide to the Web

Google Chrome's comic book was a great way to introduce to the world a new browser, but not everyone knew what's an URL or a web app. "20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web" is a guidebook created by the Google Chrome team that tries to address this issue by explaining complicated terms like "Internet", "cloud computing", "JavaScript", "HTML5", "cookies", "URL", "IP address" using illustrations and real life analogies. Here's an example:

"An IP address is a series of numbers that tells us where a particular device is on the Internet network, be it the google.com server or your computer. It's a bit like mom's phone number: just as the phone number tells an operator which house to route a call to so it reaches your mom, an IP address tells your computer which other device on the Internet to communicate with — to send data to and get data from."

The guidebook is actually a great example of an HTML5 web application that works offline and Google recommends to read it in "Chrome or any up-to-date, HTML5-compliant modern browser". Most of the examples from the book are about Google Chrome and that's what makes it look like a Chrome ad.

Blog Award from Lisa

Received this award from my fabby DT teamie Lisa . Appolopgy for the lateness on posting this kind gesture of yours and for thinking of me but as usual if I don't do something there and then I tend to forget and suddenly out of the blue it comes back to me.
This ones a bit different as you get a voucher to spend at digis with attitude - click HERE to find out all about it ..I have to tell you 3

Google Search as an Interactive Web App

2010 is the year when Google made the most significant changes to the Google search interface. After many years of improving the underlying search technology without too many obvious changes, Google felt that it has to morph Google search into a modern web application.


Today, Google's search engine has a lot of features that clutter the interface and advanced search features that can't be disabled. The focus has shifted from simplicity to interactivity. Google tries to anticipate your query after typing a few characters, you can filter the results by clicking on an option from the sidebar and you can even preview the results using annotated screenshots.

Until a few years ago, Google tried to find the best search results for your query. Now it helps you find the best query for your search. Google shows search suggestions, automatically corrects typos, ignores words from your query and fetches the list of search results as you type a query. Google search is now a web app that empowers users to adjust the results and to make decisions. It's not a decision search engine, it's just a search engine that lets you decide what are the best results.

Google's results are already personalized using signals like location or search history, but that's no longer enough to sift through billions of search results. The search box can't always capture user intent, so Google had to find ways to extend the search box to the entire search results page.

"As people get more sophisticated at search they are coming to us to solve more complex problems. To stay on top of this, we have spent a lot of time looking at how we can better understand the wide range of information that's on the web and quickly connect people to just the nuggets they need at that moment," explained a Google blog post from 2009 that announced the search options sidebar.

Google is all about reducing the friction of entering a query. You no longer have to "feel lucky" when you type something in the search box because the results are displayed instantly and you can quickly adjust them. Google's results don't have to be perfect because you can customize them until they're perfect for you.

There's one Google doodle that captures the essence of Google's transformation from a simple search engine to an interactive web app. It was used to promote Google Instant, but it's probably the best summary of this post:

Whats on Your Workdesk Wednesday!

Morning folks, started this a few days ago and finished last night, added the gems and glamour glitter. Used my new thingy a Kandi professional rhinestone applicator more bother than it's worth I am thinking, gems keep falling off before I reach the;r destination and have to make a mad dash for my poky tool to place them in the right place before they set., that's if I can remember where I

Blog Candy

Should let sleeping dogs lie Carol! Tried to keep my blog candy at top of my page and what did I do! Vanished into thin air and no longer in my posts, strange!! So here goes again, not using mister linky, just leave a comment, post on your blog and would love you as a follower. Ends 24th November. Thanks

nnaloracxx

A Glittery Christmas

A very frosty morning here today, beautiful blue sky overhead. A walk with the dogs and hopefully settle down to some playing, may have to do some tidying up first, such a messy crafter, a constant battle. 
 Not the kind of card I make nowadays but seen this 3d Robin and knew my Mum would love him, rather old fashioned I know but like to make cards appropriate to the person and this is her kind

Lego Maniacs

 The boys want to send these pictures to Lego magazine.

They probably spend about 1/2 of their play time playing legos.  They are definitely little lego maniacs. 

 Their dad is quite a lego maniac too.

Jimmy built a "motor ship"

Johnny built a "spaceship rocket"

From Our Home to Yours!

Afternoon folks, Really wanted to go to Pink Ladies day at Simply Create but the body told me otherwise, not to worry , have the house to myself so crafting away to my hearts content. Getting round to using some of my buys from the SECC from the other week, quick little cards.



Craftwork CardKraft cardHunkydory silk card red and creenHunkydory Diamond SparklesOpaque embossing powder

Jimmy's kinda famous

 A MBA classmate of James put together an i-phone app recently that features 4 little kiddos and their adorable, contagious laughs.  Jimmy is one of those kiddos!  It is his laugh from his hiccup/laughing episode in the bath when he was around 2 years old.  The app went live yesterday, but I didn't have an i-phone, so I had no way to view it.

 Luckily, our friend Jill had an i-phone and she downloaded the app and we got to watch it. (by the way, Jimmy totally had a crush on Jill tonight.  It was very cute).

Here's a link to the app.

And here's the apps promotional website.

By the way, i-phones are REALLY cool.  I'm kinda coveting one right now.  C'mon verizon get with the program...

Golden Friends

I've had two old friends (that are golden) come to visit in the last week.

 

Susan came from Dallas last Saturday night for a short visit and Jill came this evening for dinner all the way from DC (she was in town for a conference). 

 These are women that are just wonderful, so down to earth and make such good company.   Please come again!

 The above picture sequence is so funny.  Jill's phone had an app on it that allowed us to take photo booth pictures.  As a joke for one of the snap shots we said "everyone pick your nose".  Johnny seemed to not get the memo that the "picking the nose" round had ended.