Useful JavScript / AJAX Examples

 clipped from www.smashingmagazine.com

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70 New, Useful AJAX And JavaScript Techniques

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Create astonishing iCal-like calendars with jQuery
Similar to the iPhone Calendar application, with event description that shows up on mouse hover. The trickiest part is making your images seamless and using a single image for all the graphics whenever possible to decrease download time. Check out the demo here.

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Dateslider
This element enables you to pick dates with a simple slider bar. By dragging the bar over the timeline, the dates change instantly. And when the user decides to manually change dates, the bar is automatically adjusted to the corresponding dates. Check out the demo here.

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Unobtrusive datePicker widget
This unobtrusive datePicker (calendar), which is accessible using the keyboard, requires no embedded JavaScript blocks, uses no pop-up windows and is suitable for use within documents served as application/XHTML+XML. Check out the demo here.

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Create a simple, powerful product highlighter with MooTools
Learn how to create a flexible tool to highlight your website products and services using the MooTools JavaScript framework. Check out the demo here.

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Ext Accordion
The Accordion widget and its InfoPanel are components that use the Ext JS Library. It can be used for page navigation, tool windows, hide-able details, log-in forms, options dialogs, sticky notes and more.

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e24TabMenu – AJAX drop-down tab menu
e24TabMenu is a plug-in written for script.aculo.us. It is a tab menu that expands and collapses smoothly. Check out the demo here.

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Ultra-versatile slider for websites
A simple step-by-step tutorial for implementing an ultra-versatile slider with horizontal scrolling and animated effects using MooTools. Check out the demo here.

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Easy Slider
Easy Slider enables images or any content to slide horizontally or vertically on click. Features include: auto-slide, continuous sliding, "Go to first" and "Go to last" buttons, hiding controls, optional wrapping markup for control buttons, vertical sliding, multiple sliders on one page. Check out the demo here.

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Supersized - full-screen background/slideshow jQuery plug-in
Supersized is a jQuery plug-in that automatically resizes (background) images to the size of the browser and runs them as a slideshow. It is lightweight and plays nice with all browsers. Check out the demo here.

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imgPreview
The imgPreview plug-in allows users to preview an image before clicking it and preloads the image so that when a user does click it there is no waiting time. The image preview displays in a tool tip-like box on hover. Check out the demo here.

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Fancy Upload
FancyUpload is a file-input replacement tool that features an unobtrusive multiple-file selection menu and queued upload, with an animated progress bar. It is easy to set up, server-independent and completely styleable via CSS and XHTML. It uses MooTools, so it works in all modern browsers. Check out the demo here.

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Lightview
Lightview was built to change the way you overlay content on a website. Designed to complement your content, it has the following features: smart image preloading, customization without CSS, adjustable rounded corners, no PNG required, resizing to always fit the screen and one-click slideshow.

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Sexy LightBox 2
SexyLightBox is a more lightweight clone of the classic Lightbox. It supports all kinds of images and different sizes. Large images are automatically resized to fit the browser.

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FancyBox
A jQuery Lightbox clone with some great features: automatic resizing to fit large images in the window; a nice drop shadow under zoomed items; grouping of related items with navigation; inline and iframe content displays; customization through settings and CSS.

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LightWindow
A Lightbox clone that renders to many media formats correctly, with some nice animation effects.

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Form.Check
FormCheck is a MooTools class that allows you to validate a form by performing different tests before submission. Check out the demo here.

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Starbox
Starbox allows you to easily create all kinds of rating boxes using just one PNG image. The library is build on the Prototype JavaScript framework. For some extra effects, you can add script.aculo.us as well.

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Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles

 clipped from mashable.com

HOW TO: Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles

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Start counting the number of social media websites you have a profile with, right now. Out of fingers yet? FacebookFacebook reviews, TwitterTwitter reviews, FlickrFlickr reviews, and YouTubeYouTube reviews are just the start of it - for people active on social websites, you could have several dozen social media profiles, half of them using a really old picture of you. Heck, some of them probably have inboxes filled with strange messages from some girl named "Leota" who wants you to visit her sexy singles website.

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While inbox spam and old pictures may not be the end of the world, keeping up a consistent image across the web and keeping your content fresh is vital to good business and strong relationships. With a little upfront effort, the task of maintaining multiple profiles can be less tedious, freeing up time to better connect with other people.

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Step 1. Understand your Current Position

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The first step is to exactly know where you have a social media profile and where you do not. Start by checking with Check User Names, which will search dozens of popular social media websites to see if your username is active. Check any you normally use. If any don't ring any bells, see if it's yours or if somebody already owns.

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Tip: Always keep note of other people using your most common username. Making sure people don't confuse you for somebody else is important for friends and potential employers alike.

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Step 2. Choose Your Platforms Realistically

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People may disagree with me, but I believe you should sign up for the most popular social networks regardless of whether you are going to use them all. This prevents someone else being mistaken for you and protects an account that you may want to use later.

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This doesn't mean you should be active on all of these services. Take a long, hard look at all of the services available and your time constraints and choose the ones that pique your interest the most. Keep some focus when choosing platforms. For the rest, place a note on your profile with contact information and links to your favorite social profiles.

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Step 3. Organize!

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This is the most important step! Don't be satisfied with a disarray of bookmarks and email notifications. Organize a bookmarks folder or two for the social media services you are using. Filter your email so that all of your notifications fall into their own inbox/label. Schedule time to log into these accounts and make sure they are in order.

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Tip: The most important thing to remember is to find a system and stick to it. These are the profiles that need your attention consistently; keep them free of spam and outdated information.

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Step 4. Automate and Combine Your Profiles

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No, I am not suggesting using a bot or having autoresponders. Instead, I am talking about grouping similar tasks together. One of the most common actions on social media is sending an update that you have updated your blog. Normally, you would have to copy and paste this type of message into Twitter, Facebook, and MySpaceMySpace reviews, not to mention Plurk, Brightkite, or FriendFeedFriendFeed reviews.

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However, with services such as Ping.fm and Twitterfeed, this can be done without any work on your end. Find tools that can help you spread you reach without eating up your time.

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Tip: Atomkeep is a cool tool for updating all of your social media profiles at once - it connects to your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other accounts and allows you to change bios and profile pictures with one action.

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Step 5. Keep it Fresh

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It's easy to tell if someone has abandoned an account and left it to grow weeds. If you intend to use a service, keep adding new content! You can't expect to meet new people on Digg or Stumbleupon accounts without digging or stumbling. And it can be confusing for other people if your profile has an old email address or says you're still in a relationship with your high school sweetheart.

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Tip: Use a Firefox extension like Shareaholic to help make adding new content to your profile easier.

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Go Forth and Network!

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Once you're organized and understand where you really want to spend your time, managing multiple social media profiles becomes less of a chore and more about sharing experiences, discovering new content, and building new relationships. That is why you made these profiles in the first place, right?

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More Social Media resources from Mashable:

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- Social Media for Business: The Dos & Don'ts of Sharing

- Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

- Personal Branding 102: How to Communicate & Maintain Your Brand

- Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media

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Which Type of Geek are You?

3 FREE Spam Filters - Compared

3 Free Anti-Spam Programs Reviewed

If viruses are the scourge of the information age, spam is the court jester. Essentially harmless if deleted, spam, or unsolicited email, is employed for all kinds of purposes. It can pitch real products and services, it can "phish" for personal information used to steal your credit or identity, it can transport malicious code that awaits you to execute it, or it can simply make fun of the size of your nether regions.

One thing's for sure: If too much spam makes it into your inbox, it's a real annoyance and, to the less Internet savvy, it can be dangerous. We pulled three, free-for-personal-use anti-spam programs off the Web and gave them a specific challenge: Beat Microsoft Outlook's own anti-spam prowess. The anti-spam programs are:

• SpamBayes
• MailWasher
• SPAMfighter

Outlook has a pretty decent spam filter. Frequently updated by Microsoft, Outlook manages to route, on default settings, most of a hail of spam into its junk folder while keeping legitimate messages in the regular inbox. It's not perfect on its own, though.

SpamBayes

SpamBayes is a free Bayesian anti-spam filter. Written in Python, it's available for Windows XP, Vista, and a batch of other operating systems and compatible with Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, IncrediMail, Thunderbird, and a host of other email clients.

If you navigate to the download page, you're offered a number of downloadables for various combinations of OS and email clients. Scroll down for a complete description of how the software works. In a nutshell:

SpamBayes attempts to compare email messages and classify them as spam (unsolicited, unnecessary junk), ham (legitimate messages), or unsure. Therein lies the initial problem with SpamBayes: it requires extensive training on the part of the user, as most email drops into the unsure category at first.

click on image for full view

click on image for full view

We had to sort through each message and, using a toolbar it installed into Outlook, tell the program which ones we wanted and which ones we didn't. Considering the sheer amount of email we receive, it was cumbersome at first. We spent a good chunk of our day telling SpamBayes which notes were spam and which weren't.

We're not going to ding the sheer amount of time and effort that the team put into developing SpamBayes, and then offering it for free. However, compared to SPAMfighter, it required simply too much footwork for a set of email accounts flooded with messages, good and bad, all day long.

The SpamBayes Toolbar

Toward the end of its trial period, SpamBayes slowly started to recognize the difference between spam and legit messages, and sent them to the proper folders. The Junk Suspects folder it created in Outlook for notes it was unsure about, however, continued to fill up steadily, and required our frequent attention. SpamBayes might work well for someone with few email accounts who doesn't get a lot of messages, but the amount of training required turned us off.

One more note: after we uninstalled SpamBayes, it left its toolbar in Outlook. This, folks, is where bloat comes from: Programs that don't completely uninstall.

In the end, we prefer Outlook's built in filter, which, though not as accurate as SpamBayes has the potential to eventually become, works right out of the box with little input necessary. Continued...

Product:	SpamBayes
Company:	SpamBayes
Price:	$0
Pros:	Accurate after training.
Cons:	Training requires a monumental amount of effort if you receive a large amount of email.
Summary:	SpamBayes, at first, for someone who receives a lot of email, requires way too much work on the part of the user. It does, however, become more accurate with training and might work for lightly used email accounts, or very patient people.
Rating:

MailWasher

MailWasher is an anti-spam freebie that works with your email server, and requires its own front-end separate of Outlook. It allows you to delete illegitimate messages without downloading them from the server, and to bounce spam back to the sender as if your address is invalid.

click on image for full view

Before downloading your email, MailWasher gets the headers (the data that identifies the email source) and allows you to decide what to do with each piece of mail. As it learns your habits, MailWasher processes mail automatically for you. After you use MailWasher, you proceed to your email program which downloads the approved messages.

click on image for full view

Our complaints about MailWasher are twofold: First, as with SpamBayes, we had to do the vast majority of the dirty work in identifying, bouncing, allowing, or otherwise processing headers. MailWasher's training period seems to be about equivalent to SpamBayes. Secondly, MailWasher doesn't integrate with Outlook; it requires its own front-end. That forces an extra step on the user who simply wants to retrieve legitimate email.

The good news about MailWasher is that it works independently of email clients, so it works with any of them. You can do as you please with any email it receives, and it does eventually learn your habits and process email on its own.

Unfortunately, the amount of work you do to weed out junk mail isn't worth the time of anyone who gets the amount of mail we do.

Once again, we end up preferring Outlook's built-in filter. Continued...

Product:	MailWasher
Company:	MailWasher
Price:	$0
Pros:	Blocks spam at the server, not your computer; learns your patterns eventually.
Cons:	Massive amount of user input required. Doesn't integrate with Outlook; requires an extra step in retrieving email.
Summary:	Once again, we have a program ideal for users with light amounts of incoming email, but training this utility will break the backs of heavy email users—at least at first.
Rating:

SPAMfighter

Unlike "training" spam filters, SPAMfighter Standard uses a community-based service. Everyone who uses it trains its server to recognize what email is spam, and what isn't. This makes it work immediately. There's no training period; you don't have to do the work for it. That scores big, big points with us.

It's also amazingly accurate—more accurate than Outlook's own junk mail filter. We found ourselves recovering much fewer legitimate messages from the spam folder, and flagging fewer illegitimate messages that came through to our inbox as spam.

SpamFighter's Toolbar

SPAMfighter installs a toolbar into Outlook, and it allows you to block or unblock messages, whitelist or blacklist addresses and domains, and more. It's extremely handy and quick to use, but you won't find yourself using it much because of SPAMfighter's amazing accuracy.

SPAMfighter creates its own folder in Outlook and drops suspect emails into it. It didn't fill up very often, though, with unknown emails only trickling into it a few at a time. Really, we didn't have to put much work into SPAMfighter at all, and that's how we like it.

click on image for full view

It works better than Outlook's installed folder, and it's free for personal use (corporate users require SPAMfighter Pro which costs $29). We've decided to go ahead and leave SPAMfighter installed for our personal email. It's that good.

Product:	SPAMfighter
Company:	SPAMfighter
Price:	$0
Pros:	Works immediately without frequent user input; few messages end up in the wrong places.
Cons:	Occasional input needed, but nothing compared to the other anti-spam programs sampled here.
Summary:	Easily the best anti-spam freebie we tested.
Rating:

Economic Crisis - Unemployment Stats

 clipped from money.cnn.com

Unemployment hits 25-year high

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Jobless rate hits 8.1% in February as a record-high 12.5 million people are unemployed.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. economy continued to hemorrhage jobs in February, bringing total job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million, and taking the unemployment rate to its highest level in 25 years.

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Other economists echoed Gilliam's view that the battered labor market has yet to hit bottom. John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia, pointed to the weekly initial jobless claims, which are still above 600,000 a week, and the large increase in the number of people working part time when they'd prefer full-time work as signs of more job losses to come.

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"I'd love to believe this is the worst, but I suspect we'll continue to lose jobs for months to come," he said. "All we can hope is that the pace would slow down."

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Underemployment rate keeps rising as well

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The number of workers with part-time jobs who either can't find full-time positions or have had their hours cut jumped by 787,000 in February to 8.6 million.

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Counting those part-time workers, along with discouraged job seekers no longer counted as unemployed by the government, the so-called underemployment rate hit 14.8% in February, up from 13.9% in January. This was the fifth straight record high for that reading, which has been calculated since 1994.

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Silvia said the cut in total hours worked and the jump in those now working only part-time are both signs that the overall economy will continue to slow.

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He said many people with part-time jobs are not earning enough to pay their bills. That will probably lead to more cuts in consumer spending, which in turn will lead to more drops in revenue for businesses and more layoffs.

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The job losses were widespread, with manufacturing and construction companies, as well as business and professional services firms all losing more than 100,000 workers.

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The report also showed that businesses in more three-quarters of the sectors in the economy reduced the number of jobs in the last month. Over the last three months, 83.2% percent of industries have lost workers, a record high for that reading.

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"What started in construction and manufacturing and financial services has spread to every industry," said Gilliam.

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NIN - Live - Canon 5D Mark II

NIN: Burn Live from on stage, Melbourne 2.25.09 [HD] from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

EFF - Guide to Fight Spying Eyes

 clipped from www.eff.org

EFF Releases How-To Guide to Fight Government Spying

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March 3rd, 2009

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'Surveillance Self-Defense' Gives Practical Advice on Protecting Your Private Data

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San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched its Surveillance Self-Defense project today -- an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying. You can find the project at http://ssd.eff.org.

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EFF created the Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate Americans about the law and technology of communications surveillance and computer searches and seizures, and to provide the information and tools necessary to keep their private data out of the government's hands. The guide includes tips on assessing the security risks to your personal computer files and communications, strategies for interacting with law enforcement, and articles on specific defensive technologies such as encryption that can help protect the privacy of your data.

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"Despite a long and troubling history in this country of the government abusing its surveillance powers, most Americans know very little about how the law protects them or about how they can take steps to protect themselves against government surveillance," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "The Surveillance Self-Defense project offers citizens a legal and technical toolkit with tips on how to defend themselves in case the government attempts to search, seize, subpoena or spy on their most private data."

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Surveillance Self-Defense details what the government can legally do to spy on your computer data and communications, and what you can legally do to protect yourself against such spying. It addresses how to protect not only the data stored on your computer, but also the data you communicate over the phone or the Internet and data about your communications that are stored by third party service providers.

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"You can imagine the Internet as a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up all of the private information that you let near it. We want to show people the tools they can use to encrypt and anonymize data, protecting themselves against government surveillance," said EFF Staff Technologist Peter Eckersley. "Privacy is about mitigating risks and making tradeoffs. Every decision you make about whether to save an email, chat online, or search with or sign into Google has privacy implications. It's important to understand those implications and make informed decisions based on them, and we hope that Surveillance Self-Defense will help you do that."

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Surveillance Self-Defense was created with the support of the Open Society Institute.

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For Surveillance Self-Defense:
http://ssd.eff.org

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CIA Awkwardly Debriefs Obama On Creation Of Crack Cocaine

 clipped from www.theonion.com

Politics

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CIA Awkwardly Debriefs Obama On Creation Of Crack Cocaine

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February 26, 2009 | Issue 45•09

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WASHINGTON—In his first meeting with President Barack Obama, CIA crime and counternarcotics analyst Timothy R. McIntire haltingly explained to the nation's first African-American commander in chief the highly classified origin of crack cocaine and the resultant epidemic that swept across U.S. inner cities. "Well, you see, sir...thing is, we needed money to help those Contras back in '85, and we never really expected...so we distributed it, and...shortsighted...and, ha, well, Christ—is it hot in here?" McIntire said between exaggerated coughs. "Yikes, okay. See, it was a very tense time—not that that makes it right—and, uh, bottom line is, we're a different agency now."

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McIntire went on to disclose several other secret CIA operations, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the recruitment, four years earlier, of a Kenyan grad student for a clandestine program at the University of Hawaii.

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