In this tutorial, you will learn how to make a rotating 3D box in Flash CS4, using the 3D Rotation Tool.

If you’re a developer who’s somehow managed to get his (or her) hands on an iPad, congratulations.  If you’re a developer who hasn’t, well, welcome to the club.  Apple is reportedly implementing some security measures that speak to a certain degree of paranoia.

Douglas MacMillan spoke to “four people familiar with the more than 10-page pact that bars partners from disclosing information about the iPad,” and reported afterward that developers “must promise to keep it isolated in a room with blacked-out windows.”

Test units must be connected to immovable objects, too, never mind that the idea of using the iPad everywhere is a pretty important selling point.

So again, don’t feel left out if Apple hasn’t let you put your hands on an early unit.  While getting a head start on developing apps is no doubt important, it sounds like a whole lot of trouble.

DiscountASP.NET, a Windows shared hosting firm has introduced new security improvements to its SQL Server hosting platform via SSL encrypted SQL communication with SQL 2009 and SQL 2005 servers in the U.S. and U.K.

“We offer a secure web-based SQL manager powered by myLittleTools, and we support industry standard SQL authentication for our SQL hosting offering, but we wanted to provide our customers with an extra level of security,” said Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing and Business Development at DiscountASP.NET.

“Our customers now have the option of using SSL encryption over the line when connecting with their SQL databases on our SQL hosting platform.”

DiscountASP.net offers a secure online SQL manager powered by myLittleTools, and it supports industry standard SQL authentication for SQL hosting.

With this security improvement, DiscountASP.Net customers can use SQL Management Studio and use the “Encryption Connection” option when connecting their database.

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Headings

The first place to begin in writing your content is to create a great heading for each page. In the last post I discussed grabbing the visitor’s attention. This is one of the primary jobs of page headings.

The heading is different from the page title tag. Where the title tag is displayed in the search results the heading is viewed on the page itself. Sometimes you want the heading and the title to be the same, other times you don’t. The title MUST use keywords in it. The heading SHOULD use keywords in it. It all depends on the hook you want to use to grab attention and entice your visitor to keep reading.

Be careful that your title and heading aren’t too far removed from each other. The last thing you want is to get the visitor to click into the page and read a heading that doesn’t match up with their expectations.

A good heading tells people what they can expect from the content that follows. What information will they learn? What benefits will be presented? What solutions will you provide? The heading needs to project and give enough information that the visitor wants to keep reading without providing so much that they don’t feel they need to.

A good example of this is “Good headings help you increase search engine rankings.” This seemingly tells me just about all I need to know. On the other hand, “How to write headings that increases search engine rankings,” gives me a reason to keep reading. I know I’m going to learn something that wasn’t given away in the headline.

Make Your Content Compelling

The headline draws people into the content, gets them interested and makes them want to dive into what you have to say. Therefore your content needs to not disappoint.

Don’t skimp. Allow your content to go wherever it needs to give the reader everything that they want. The only time you can have too much content is when it get’s in the way of the sales process rather than promote it. Keep in mind, when readers have enough to make a decision, they’ll stop reading and do what they came to do. If you don’t have enough content to convince them then they won’t take the action you hope them to.

Site visitors come in a variety of personality types and personas. In order to speak your audience’s language you must hit a lot of different key points. Some people want to know about you, some about your products or services and others care about your qualifications. Others don’t care about that at all and want to know how the product or service benefits them specifically. Still, others may want to know your history and are looking for signals of trust.

If you leave any of these out then you’ll lose some potential conversions. And these and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Be careful, however, that you don’t spread yourself too thin. You can’t please everyone, but you can do a reasonably good job of figuring out who is your primary audience and make sure you are hitting the key points for them.

Write what you need to convince the majority of your audience and no more.

Seek Opportunity

When it comes to working keywords to your content there are plenty of opportunities to add your targeted phrases without mucking up the content. Look for these opportunities, but don’t jump on every chance to throw in a keyword just because you can. Good writing means using keywords conservatively.

Every paragraph is full of keyword opportunities but if you added every keyword possible then you’re in real danger of keyword stuffing. The last thing you want is for your keyword rich content to have too many keywords in it. Your visitors that came looking for a site based on the keyword they searched for will have a difficult time getting past the over-stuffed keyword content. Your keyword filled message will be lost due to the over use of keywords in the keyword content. (Get my point?)

Internal Hyperlinks

As mentioned above, good content isn’t just about keywords. It’s about giving the visitor what they need. Sometimes you can’t give them all they want or need on a single page. Sometimes you talk about something else that you can’t address fully without going wildly off point. This is where the magic of hyperlinks come in.

Too often people are afraid to “clutter up” their content with hyper links. They have a point, but only to a point. You can go overboard on the hyperlinks, but too few hyperlinks is worse than too many. Give your visitors the avenue to explore the site outside of the navigation. If you mention something that is explained elsewhere link to it. If you mention something that you should provide more information in a full context, write a new page of content and link to it.

Links let people explore and find other things they are interested in. Things that help them earn confidence in you, things that give them more information, things that teach them new things. Without the links these important areas of your site remain largely hidden, even if they are found in the site’s navigation.

Make it Pretty

Long paragraphs of content may get all the right points across but they are booooring to look at. And visually boring easily translates into just plain dreary to read. Make sure your text looks good. It’s not the job of the copywriter to add images, but that doesn’t mean the copywriter can’t make it easier to read.

Good use of headlines, sub-headlines, paragraph headings and section headings can go a long way to making your content easier on the eyes. You can also use bullet points, content boldings, italics, hyperlinks and numbered lists also make the content look better, easier to read and more digestible.

The content of a website is one of the most important factors in achieving top search engine rankings. But it is an even greater factor in ensuring the website performs with visitors. Without good content a site will fail both with engines and visitors.

Missed a part of this series?

Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO

Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags

Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags

Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes

Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names

Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links

Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking

Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords

Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms

Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers

Part 11: Everything You Need To Know About SEO Copywriting

Part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content

Comments

Rumor has it that Google’s working on something known as “Google TV” – a product that’ll act as a set-top box, delivering Internet content straight to the largest screen in the house.  And rumor has it that Google TV will be Android-based, too, meaning developers may want to prepare for it.

Dan Sung listed 18 different ideas for apps today, and some of them sound pretty great.  “Ad blocker” is an obvious – and invaluable – suggestion, of course.  An IMDB app with facial recognition software would be fantastic, too.

Other proposed apps include something that could split the screen between any number of channels and something that would level out volume differences.

So even if it’s a little early to start working on stuff, at least consider coming up with some goals and concepts.  Google TV could be a very big deal.

Android is winning over open source mobile developers, according to a new analysis by Black Duck Software.

Some 224 new projects specifically related to Android were launched in 2009, almost three times the number targeted for the iPhone, which at 76 is the second-fastest growing platform. Windows Mobile, which like the iPhone is not based on an open source software platform, was third with 75 new projects, reflecting the large number of Windows application developers in the market.

Highlights from the analysis include:

· New OSS projects for mobile totaled 3,207, a 39% increase compared to new projects created in 2008.
· New projects for Android represented 25% of all new OSS mobile projects and exceeded the number of new projects for the next six platforms combined.
· Forty six percent of the new projects were for one of the major platforms – Palm, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, RIM/BlackBerry, or Maemo.
· 2009 saw an 85% increase over 2008 in the number of lines of code written for mobile OSS projects.

“Strong growth in open source mobile projects reflects the sustained strength of the smart phone market, and Android’s accelerating growth in 2009 indicates that mobile application developers are drawn to open source platforms that have broad adoption by multiple handset manufacturers and mobile operators,” said Peter Vescuso, executive vice president, marketing and business development, Black Duck Software.

“Although RIM continues to dominate the smartphone market and Symbian accounts for some 49 percent of worldwide smartphone operating systems, Android’s open source platform appears to be attracting more open source development among mobile application developers.”

Saint Patrick’s Day is fast approaching… if I didn’t miss it already. It’s a great time of year to be Irish and have a love of ales. This week I decided to create a St. Patrick’s Day Wallpaper from my favorite drink. Guinness. So let’s begin.

To start download and unzip the asset-pack here. These are going to be the major contributors to our design. I made asset01 very large to make removing aspects of the design easier. I you would like a copy of the ai file please leave a comment at the end of the tutorial and I will send you a copy. Enough rambling… Open a new document in PhotoShop. We are going to make the size of this 1920×1080(You can make it the size of your resolution but for the purpose of this tutorial I am using mine). Then add a gradient overlay and Set the start color to #3A3A3A and the end color to #0D0D0D.

Now that we have our base we are going to make our green bar. So first we need to add 3 guides. The first will be the center of the wallpaper width, or 960. Next two will be horizontal guides at 500 and 800 respectively. Then make a selection within these guides, make a new layer and fill is with black. Now we are going to add a gradient overlay. This gradient will have five colors. The first will be color #004400 at location 0, the second will be color #026801 at location 20, the middle color will be #037702 at location 50, the fourth will be #207d18 at location 80, and the final color is #3F9631 at location 100.

Next we need to add two new horizontal guides (first at 50 and the second at 1030). These will serve as the bounding area, meaning no design element will be placed out of these guide areas. Now select your custom shape tool and select “Sign 6″ from the windows default shapes. Hold the shift key drag out the shape from the top binding guide to the bottom. Then fill the shape with black. Now we are going to add a angled gradient (four colors). Set the first to #B8B8B8 at location 0, the second at location 35 in color #C9C9C9, The third color #E0E0E0 at location 75, and the last at location 100 and the color set to #F7F7F7.

Make a selection of the shield and go to Selection > Modify > Contract (by 10). Fill the selection on a new layer with color #009543. Then add a Bevel and Emboss. Set the style to outer bevel, chisel hard, depth 100, Direction down, and the size to 10.

Now we are going to make the Irish flag on the shield. Make a selection 320 pixels on the right side of the shield and fill with #FF7300.

Then make the same size selection of the center and fill it with white.

Duplicate the inner green shield layer and move it to the top. Now we are going to change the blending options. We are adding five blending options:

Drop Shadow

• Color: 606864
• Opacity: 34%
• Angle: 120
• Distance: 5
• Spread: 3
• Size: 5

Inner Shadow

• Color: 828385
• Opacity: 85%
• Angle: 90
• Distance: 11
• Choke: 25
• Size: 22

Inner Glow

• Color: 3a3a3a
• Opacity: 50%
• Choke: 0
• Size: 8

Bevel and Emboss

• Style: Inner Bevel
• Technique: Smooth
• Depth: 100
• Size: 11
• Soften: 3
• Contour: Gaussian

Stroke

• Size: 1
• Position: Inside
• Depth: 100
• Opacity : 10
• Color: 000000
• Contour: Gaussian

Duplicate the previous layer. Remove all the old blending options and add a new bevel and emboss:
Bevel and Emboss

• Style: Inner Bevel
• Technique: Smooth
• Depth: 42
• Size: 27
• Soften: 14
• Contour: Half Round

Next make a selection of the inner shield, make a new layer and fill it with white. Then cut an arch from the top of the white area. Hide the new layer and select the bottom of the white area. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur the layer 20.0. Set the layer blend to overlay and the fill to 20%.

Un hide the top section and follow the previous steps. Only this time set the fill to 50%.

Now that we have our base shapes created we can start cutting our asset01 up. Make a selection of the harp in Asset01 and copy it to a new layer. Move it into wallpaper and scale it to fit inside our shield. Set the layer fill to 0%. Then add a black color overlay with a 50% Opacity. Next add an Inner Shadow. Set the blend to overlay, the color set to black, the opacity to 75%, the distance and choke to 0, and the size to 11.

Now grab asset02 and add it to our wallpaper. Make a selection of the shield and cut it out of Asset02. Delete the excess. Makes a selection of the harp and cut that from the shield shape. Set the shield shape layer blend to soft light.

Set the new harp shape to soft light as well. Set the layer fill to 20%.

Now add two vertical guides 50 pixels from either side. Now go back to Asset01 and cut out the red signature. Add it to our wallpaper and scale it down roughly to 20%. Place it 40 pixels above the bottom boundary guide.

Grab your font tool and select the “Copperplate Gothic Bold” face. Set the font size to 30 and the color to #d3d1d2. Then type out “Please Drink Responsibly” and align ing with the right side of the signature.

Next cut our “Guinness” from asset01. Make two copies in our wallpaper. Scale the first to 20 pixels larger then the green bar. On the first make sure the “N” fit snugly inside the green bar. Then add a gradient overlay and Set the start color to #e8e6e7 and the end color to #646464. Lastly add a drop shadow. Set the angle to 120, distance to 10, and the size to 5.

On the larger one cut the selection inside the shield to a new layer and delete the excess. Set the layer to a black color overlay set the opacity to 25%. Set the layer fill to 0%. Then add a 20.0 pixel Gaussian blur.

Next select the word “Draught” and copy it to our document. Shrink the ext down roughly 75%. Then add the same gradient overlay as the background layer from step one.

Now duplicate this layer. Then select the original layer and add a 10 pixel Gaussian blur. Then nudge the blurred layer 10 pixels to the right and down. Set the layer blend to luminosity.

Grab your font tool and select the “Copperplate Gothic Bold” face. Set the font size to 47 and the color to #010101. Then type out “A True St. Patrick’s Day Standard” and aligning with the top of the G in “Guinness”. Place it in the center of the shield. Lastly add a Drop shadow. Set the opacity to 30%, the distance to 5, the spread to 0, and the size to 8.

Saint Patrick’s Day is fast approaching… if I didn’t miss it already. It’s a great time of year to be Irish and have a love of ales. This week I decided to create a St. Patrick’s Day Wallpaper from my favorite drink. Guinness. So let’s begin.

To start download and unzip the asset-pack here. These are going to be the major contributors to our design. I made asset01 very large to make removing aspects of the design easier. I you would like a copy of the ai file please leave a comment at the end of the tutorial and I will send you a copy. Enough rambling… Open a new document in PhotoShop. We are going to make the size of this 1920×1080(You can make it the size of your resolution but for the purpose of this tutorial I am using mine). Then add a gradient overlay and Set the start color to #3A3A3A and the end color to #0D0D0D.

Now that we have our base we are going to make our green bar. So first we need to add 3 guides. The first will be the center of the wallpaper width, or 960. Next two will be horizontal guides at 500 and 800 respectively. Then make a selection within these guides, make a new layer and fill is with black. Now we are going to add a gradient overlay. This gradient will have five colors. The first will be color #004400 at location 0, the second will be color #026801 at location 20, the middle color will be #037702 at location 50, the fourth will be #207d18 at location 80, and the final color is #3F9631 at location 100.

Next we need to add two new horizontal guides (first at 50 and the second at 1030). These will serve as the bounding area, meaning no design element will be placed out of these guide areas. Now select your custom shape tool and select “Sign 6″ from the windows default shapes. Hold the shift key drag out the shape from the top binding guide to the bottom. Then fill the shape with black. Now we are going to add a angled gradient (four colors). Set the first to #B8B8B8 at location 0, the second at location 35 in color #C9C9C9, The third color #E0E0E0 at location 75, and the last at location 100 and the color set to #F7F7F7.

Make a selection of the shield and go to Selection > Modify > Contract (by 10). Fill the selection on a new layer with color #009543. Then add a Bevel and Emboss. Set the style to outer bevel, chisel hard, depth 100, Direction down, and the size to 10.

Now we are going to make the Irish flag on the shield. Make a selection 320 pixels on the right side of the shield and fill with #FF7300.

Then make the same size selection of the center and fill it with white.

Duplicate the inner green shield layer and move it to the top. Now we are going to change the blending options. We are adding five blending options:

Drop Shadow

• Color: 606864
• Opacity: 34%
• Angle: 120
• Distance: 5
• Spread: 3
• Size: 5

Inner Shadow

• Color: 828385
• Opacity: 85%
• Angle: 90
• Distance: 11
• Choke: 25
• Size: 22

Inner Glow

• Color: 3a3a3a
• Opacity: 50%
• Choke: 0
• Size: 8

Bevel and Emboss

• Style: Inner Bevel
• Technique: Smooth
• Depth: 100
• Size: 11
• Soften: 3
• Contour: Gaussian

Stroke

• Size: 1
• Position: Inside
• Depth: 100
• Opacity : 10
• Color: 000000
• Contour: Gaussian

Duplicate the previous layer. Remove all the old blending options and add a new bevel and emboss:
Bevel and Emboss

• Style: Inner Bevel
• Technique: Smooth
• Depth: 42
• Size: 27
• Soften: 14
• Contour: Half Round

Next make a selection of the inner shield, make a new layer and fill it with white. Then cut an arch from the top of the white area. Hide the new layer and select the bottom of the white area. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blur the layer 20.0. Set the layer blend to overlay and the fill to 20%.

Un hide the top section and follow the previous steps. Only this time set the fill to 50%.

Now that we have our base shapes created we can start cutting our asset01 up. Make a selection of the harp in Asset01 and copy it to a new layer. Move it into wallpaper and scale it to fit inside our shield. Set the layer fill to 0%. Then add a black color overlay with a 50% Opacity. Next add an Inner Shadow. Set the blend to overlay, the color set to black, the opacity to 75%, the distance and choke to 0, and the size to 11.

Now grab asset02 and add it to our wallpaper. Make a selection of the shield and cut it out of Asset02. Delete the excess. Makes a selection of the harp and cut that from the shield shape. Set the shield shape layer blend to soft light.

Set the new harp shape to soft light as well. Set the layer fill to 20%.

Now add two vertical guides 50 pixels from either side. Now go back to Asset01 and cut out the red signature. Add it to our wallpaper and scale it down roughly to 20%. Place it 40 pixels above the bottom boundary guide.

Grab your font tool and select the “Copperplate Gothic Bold” face. Set the font size to 30 and the color to #d3d1d2. Then type out “Please Drink Responsibly” and align ing with the right side of the signature.

Next cut our “Guinness” from asset01. Make two copies in our wallpaper. Scale the first to 20 pixels larger then the green bar. On the first make sure the “N” fit snugly inside the green bar. Then add a gradient overlay and Set the start color to #e8e6e7 and the end color to #646464. Lastly add a drop shadow. Set the angle to 120, distance to 10, and the size to 5.

On the larger one cut the selection inside the shield to a new layer and delete the excess. Set the layer to a black color overlay set the opacity to 25%. Set the layer fill to 0%. Then add a 20.0 pixel Gaussian blur.

Next select the word “Draught” and copy it to our document. Shrink the ext down roughly 75%. Then add the same gradient overlay as the background layer from step one.

Now duplicate this layer. Then select the original layer and add a 10 pixel Gaussian blur. Then nudge the blurred layer 10 pixels to the right and down. Set the layer blend to luminosity.

Grab your font tool and select the “Copperplate Gothic Bold” face. Set the font size to 47 and the color to #010101. Then type out “A True St. Patrick’s Day Standard” and aligning with the top of the G in “Guinness”. Place it in the center of the shield. Lastly add a Drop shadow. Set the opacity to 30%, the distance to 5, the spread to 0, and the size to 8.

Lots of companies make lots of forecasts about lots of things, and it stands to reason that they can’t all be correct.  A new prediction concerning the market for mobile apps is something developers should hope comes true, though, as it suggests $17.5 billion will soon be floating around.

You know how banks’ interest rates are quite low right now (and unfortunately, the government appears to have no plans to raise them)?  Well, GetJar doesn’t believe that problem applies to mobile growth.  It announced on the GetJar Developer Blog, “The overall mobile apps downloads are expected to increase from over 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion by 2012 growing at the rate of 92% CAGR.”

Then here’s the payoff: “The revenue from mobile apps which includes both paid downloads and revenue from advertising and virtual goods is expected to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion by 2012 at the rate of 62% CAGR.”

Next year should be a very good time to be a mobile app developer if this calculation proves accurate.

Cloud computing proponents have gone to great lengths to satisfy everyone’s security-related fears, and in many ways, they’ve succeeded.  Just the same, there are respects in which cloud-based databases can fail to measure up to traditional options, and database pros should be familiar with these potential weaknesses.

Adrian Lane discussed four issues in a Dark Reading post published this morning.  The first was deployment. He explained, “Many cloud providers do not allow common security technologies to be deployed at all.  These technologies either violate your service contract or the infrastructure they provide doesn’t accommodate them.”

Next, look out for visibility problems.  Lane warned, “[I]f you are moving to a database-as-a-service or pure SaaS model, make sure you have assessment and auditing options to verify that your provider is living up to your expectations.”  Also, “For platform-as-a-service, verify that the tools you use today will deploy and continue to function in the cloud, and that your provider does not have the ability to gain credentials to your database.”

The third thing to be careful of is a co-mingling of data.  Even if a service provider has effectively blindfolded itself, it might still be possible for other customers to access stuff that’s supposed to be off-limits.

Finally, read the service agreement to make sure you’re getting everything else you want, and that there are penalties in place if the provider fails to deliver.