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Social media is the current rage of all geek and non-geek internet users, where geeks can play online games on social networking sites too. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Friendfeed, MySpace and other popular social media have interesting unique logos, which have now inspired some interesting Social Media Icons Pillow designs!

Social Media Icons pillow will surely make geeks feel at home and provide some relaxation, quite similar to the way social networking sites make people feel at home in their own online world with friends. Most geeks are no longer unsocial beings; they do have a virtual social world. They network a lot on social media and have hundreds of friends.

These pillows are ideal for geek homes – a place where real and virtual world always meet and co-exist. One can rest on these pillows after a long tiring day of games, work, social networking and think about next scribble on the Facebook wall or listen to some music streaming in from MySpace or can simply Tweet away!

These pillows are available at Etsy Craftsquatch for $14.99 -19.99 per pillow. The colors and logo designs look quite artistic too. These logo designs too were created by creative talented geeks and they really look nice on pillows too. There is also other Soft RSS Icon Pillow, Mac Keys inspired pillows and even Adobe CS3 icons pillows for tired geeks.

John Gunther has released GChart 2.5, a client-side library that adds a new canvas-rendering option for sharper, better looking, alpha-transparent, pie, line, and area charts.

John told us:

    “Canvas-rendering corrects GChart’s most serious visual quality limitations (including the most often mentioned problem by its users: the banded-filled pie slice).

    Coupled with its existing feature set and ease of GWT integration, the canvas-rendering option makes GChart an excellent choice for those who want to add basic charts to a GWT application without a lot of fuss.

    To access these features, you’ll need to plug an external canvas library into GChart (GWTCanvas in the gwt-incubator is reccommended) as described in detail in the setCanvasFactory method.

    With the external canvas in place, the next step is to tell GChart you want a curve to be “continuously filled” by invoking setFillSpacing(0).

    With each such continuously filled curve, GChart automatically exploits your external canvas library to improved the quality and speed of that curve’s rendering. Specifically, banded-filled pie slices become solid filled, dotted connecting lines become continuously connected, and (the biggest stretch) bar charts become area charts. See the setFillSpacing method’s javadocs for a detailed description of how each existing symbol type implements this new “continuously-filled”, canvas-powered, rendering option.

    Note that GChart’s previous HTML-only rendering is still available, and is the default rendering mode if you don’t bother to plug in an external canvas.

Tweet or Comment: That is The Question
Not too long ago, I was sitting in the office thinking to myself that I would be doing more service to all of you if I talked about cooler things that would make you go “Hmm” – things that kind of ramble in my head during the day that really could spark a conversation with all of you. More than just the pointing of tutorials and industry news, though you’ll still be getting those anyway. That got me thinking about the entire Is Photography Art? conversation we had a couple of days ago – and while I got a couple of cool comments.. I got more tweets from my Twitter account on it (Follow me on Twitter here). Now, I happen to think that -both- are essential in the grand scheme of things on a blog, but it made me ponder the question: Are comments considered more important than tweets? If you’re considering working a blog I think its worth examining both and drawing your own conclusion.

Commenting on Comments
Let’s take a look at comments- both positive and negative on a blog. You spend some time writing about something you think is interesting and inspiring and you post it. A few hours later, you get some comments in and you’re overjoyed at the fact that someone replied! What does that give you? I believe Comments can be broken down into the following types: The “Pump-You-Up”, The “Know-It-All”, and “The Troll”. Yes there are some obvious exceptions to the rule, and creating a blog with that community is possible.. but we’ll talk about that in a later post. Let’s deal with these 3 first:

The “Pump-You-Up”:
Mostly a “Thank you for saying that” “That’s awesome” “Cheers to you” “I think you rock” as feedback. While this comment is always appreciated because it shows how much someone values what you do, it can be short lived. Think the crash of a candy bar… before you know it, you can spend your time on the blog -waiting- for the affirmation of 150 comments to come in, and you’ll declare anything less a failure on your creative part. In the end, you didn’t create your blog for the immediate adoration of the public, you created it to share a passion, an idea, and in the process of it.. try to make something out of it- some fame.. some money through advertising or promotion, or what have you.. These can be turned into powerful allies, and there are great examples of it on the net.

There are two other types, how it compares to Tweets, a cool tutorial listing, and the contest winners.. all waiting for you at the Read More section. Click below to get to the rest of it.

The Know it All
There are people that just LOVE pointing out inconsistencies for a psychological ‘chit’. Blogs seem to bring people like that out in droves. There will invariably be a misspelling on the blogger’s part, a poor choice of words on one section, a reference to an idiom somewhere that the random person will delightfully bring to the attention of the blogger in an email. People will take offense to the slightest of things, and will make it their mission to construct that correct-o-gram to point out that you, the mighty blogger, have failed in your quest. It doesn’t matter that the content is free. It doesn’t matter that you spent the day coming up with a really interesting idea to contribute to the interwebs- you didn’t know the difference between There, They’re, and Their.. and for this, you must be punished. The great part about this commentor is that you will NEVER have a shortage of free editorial staff available if you retain their services on the blog.

The Trolls
These i’ve pretty much explained out in earlier blog posts.. the people who will comment and say the most incredibly rude thing you will sit back in your chair when you get it, and wonder why you ever began to blog in the first place. The easiest way to deal with these is to just know thy enemy and hit delete. They contribute nothing and don’t really require energy on your part.

Now (as before) there are obvious exceptions to this rules, but I can’t tell you how many people I know that get the “blog” bug.. only to run into these comments and become disillusioned. I also cant tell you how many people I run into that use the comments as the sole marker for the success or failure of a blog. You’ll also notice that over time, the commenting on a blog will be very predictable, making a community of people that traditionally comment on topics. A year later.. a post you make will have 200 comments.. congratulations. But are they the same 200 people that read day after day? Have you -grown- the following any?

The Case for Tweeting
On the surface, Twitter seems like just another fad that everyone’s jumped on – and to some extent that may be true. However, one of the things that Twitter has going for it is a living technology (for the lack of a better explanation). You fire up Twitter and you say “Listening to Depeche Mode while Retouching a Photo in Photoshop” and within seconds, someone can comment on your “Status” – faddish, yes! However, this can be pretty powerful:

• For one, it can ‘humanize’ the person doing the tweeting. Personalities seem more accessible, friendlier, which increases their reach. That accessibility can make you more trustworthy, which makes people more willing to listen to whatever you may pitch to them.
• Because you’re limited to 140 characters, the ‘message’ needs to be concise. No long articles (like this one).
• Because of it’s immediacy, a blog post that you want to have followed on Twitter can be more like a conversation with a group of people. Because the conversation is dynamic and spontaneous, there’s less of a probability of a Flamewar.
• The true power of reach is felt however with something like Tweetdeck. There are people out there that fire up Tweetdeck, click on the magnifying glass, and type “Photoshop” in the search bar. Immediately comes a column of information of people who are talking about Photoshop, in semi-real time! That tweet that I just made about listening to Depeche Mode while Retouching and Listening to Depeche Mode is picked up by anyone searching the Twitter universe for “Retouching”, “Depeche Mode”, and “Photoshop”. Depending on what I have on my profile and on my background graphic, I could get the person to pop by, say “Oh.. this could be cool” and come by my website. I’ve now gained a new follower. How to keep him there is the topic of another blog altogether.

Are there drawbacks to the Tweet? Absolutely. Twitter can sometimes be seen as this technological popularity contest where people aren’t really following you for anything special.. its all about numbers. In that, the message can get diluted and pointless. Because of it’s potential to reach so many different people, there are countless of people trying to find ways to exploit it, which confuses the conversation further. However, it’s a powerful medium, and I dare say one that can take you to a better solution than the comment alone. Which one works? That’s going to be for you to decide. I argue that things like Twitter can give a person operating a blog a tremendous amount of reach, as well as create this technically organic family that can carry your message pretty far, and offer you invaluable information, just by typing 140 characters at a time.

Book to Check Out: SocialCorp
I haven’t read it yet, but I am -really- excited to check out Joel Postman’s SocialCorp. Checking out the Peachpit site the book, “…will help companies of all sizes develop and implement a strategy to become a SocialCorp, a company that has adopted social media intelligently and effectively, in a way that does not compromise the company’s primary obligations as a corporation.” I saw Joel speak at Voices That Matter, and was so taken by the presentation, I couldnt wait to order the book. As soon as it comes in I’ll share what I think.

Using Indesign Multiplace
This tutorial shows a method for using Adobe Bridge with the Multiplace command in InDesign CS3 and CS4. Click on the link below to get to the tutorial:

Using InDesign Multiplace with Adobe Bridge by AJ Wood

In one of the recent posts, we looked at some reasons why some developers switch to the Mac. If you’ve decided to make the switch yourself, you can do a lot to make the transition smoother. We will take a look at some must-have software, configurations and hacks that can make your life easier as you switch and that can get you up to full productivity (and maybe beyond) in no time at all.

We have tried to find as many free solutions as possible, but you have to pay for some applications to get their full functionality. If we have missed a configuration, hack or piece of software that you found helpful when switching, please post it in the comments.

Configurations

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Right-Clicking

One of the most visible differences between Macs and other computers is the former’s lack of a second button on the mouse. The Mac mouse harkens back to the original mouse invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which also had only one button. Eventually, Windows grew to ubiquity, touting its two-button mouse, and the world became comfortable with that configuration. As a switcher, you’re used to that handy right-click, and lucky for you, the habit doesn’t have to end.

All Macs support right-clicking, and it works just as it does on a Windows system, popping up menus and extras. Without messing with your settings, you can always hold “Control” and click to active a right-click on a Mac, but this gets tedious pretty quickly. To make the experience more seamless, go into your preferences and activate “Tap to click” and “Secondary click,” which will allow you to tap the trackpad with two fingers simultaneously to trigger a right click. It may sound odd, but it takes only a few minutes to get used to. You can also just hold two fingers down on the trackpad and click the physical mouse button to get the same effect. Of course, plugging a two-button mouse into a Mac is another way to get your right-click back.

Tweak Mouse-Tracking Speed

The mouse tracking on a Mac feels quite different from that of Windows because it does not accelerate. This can be partly alleviated by turning the tracking speed all the way up. But if you really pine for that Windows feel, you can try SteerMouse, albeit for $20.

Turn Off Screen-Dimmi

While some people want their screen to dim after a period of inactivity, it can quickly become annoying for others. This feature can be turned off in the preferences under the options for “Energy saver.”

Turn on the Firewall

Macs include two firewalls: a packet-filtering firewall called IPFW that filters traffic based on type, port number, origin and destination, and a socket-filter firewall (new in Leopard) that filters based on the application making the request. While the socket-filter firewall in OS X is disabled by default, you can go into “Preferences > Security > Firewall” to enable it. IPFW is short on configuration options, but that can be remedied by downloading either NoobProof or WaterRoof, which give you more security options.

Log-In Items

Setting applications to start upon logging in is actually quite simple on a Mac. If the application you want to start at log-in is on your dock, simply right-click its icon and choose “Open at log-in.” You can also go into “Preferences > Accounts > [your account] > Log-in items” and add applications manually there. Keep in mind that the more applications you set to open at log-in, the longer your systems will take to boot.

You can also change the background for the main log-in screen on your Mac. This handy little piece of freeware takes whatever your desktop background is and mirrors it onto your log-in screen. Or you can use the following command in your terminal to change it to any image you want:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture “/Library/path_to_your_pic/your_pic.jpg”

Hot Corners

Hot corners allow you to set up each corner of your screen to be a hot spot that triggers an event whenever you mouse over it, such as shuffling active windows to off screen to show the desktop or displaying widgets. This gets interesting when combined with the “Expose” and “Spaces” features.

Expose spreads your windows out on the screen so that you can focus on a new one. Once you get used to it, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. To make it really useful, set up a hot corner to activate it. Additionally, Spaces allows you to display multiple desktops from a bird’s-eye view. Add this to another corner and you’ve got something really special. You’ll be able to show the desktop, drag a file, switch to a different space, find a window that’s hidden behind several others and drop the file into that window, all with one mouse click. Check it out in the video below:

Play around with different hot corner configurations to find the one that best suits you. I recommend using three of the four for the “Expose All Windows” and “Show Desktop” functions and Spaces. If you have a laptop, setting one of the corners to put the display to sleep is handy because no button or key does that otherwise.

Configure Spaces

Having multiple desktops to work from can be a boon to productivity. Spaces allows you to create up to 16 different desktops, enough to satisfy even the most spastic multi-tasker. Along with these desktops, you can specify that certain applications only open in certain spaces, as well as specify that some apps display no matter which desktop you’re working in. Here are a few applications we suggest displaying in all spaces: Chat applications (Adium, iChat, IRC), movie players (VLC, QuickTime, DVD player), Twitter clients and any application useful in more than one context. I have a space for general Web browsing, iTunes and iPhoto, email and communications, Photoshop and design, coding and development, Windows virtualization, notes and reminders and one that I keep clean just in case.

Add Activity Monitor to the Dock

Activity monitor is the equivalent of the task manager in Windows. Certain items, when added to the Dock, take on a few extra behaviors. In the case of the activity monitor, those items can display helpful information instead of their icons while sitting in the dock: such as a pie chart showing how much memory is being used, a live graph of processor activity and more. While you can always pop up a window and hit Command + Option + Esc (your new Ctrl + Alt + Delete) to force quit an application, you don’t get any information about programs that are running. Clicking on the activity monitor gives you the force quit option and a wealth of information about your processes.

A Smarter Finder

Finder is a file explorer that people either love or loath. You can do a few things to make it more useful, though. Right-click on the top part of the finder window, much like you would to edit a toolbar in the browser, and you’ll see that you can configure the buttons in the finder window. Choose “Customize Toobar” and add the “Path,” “Delete,” and “New Folder” buttons, along with any others you desire.

In the left sidebar of the finder, you’ll see a list of favorites, including your home folder, main disk drives, any attached drives and the most used folders (photos, music, sites, etc.). You can customize this list by dragging folders and other items onto the sidebar. You can also add “smart folders” (File > New smart folder) that filter files based on a set of rules. For instance, one smart folder I keep in my sidebar is a list of all files over 100 MB, in case I need to free up some hard drive space. If you want to add separators to the sidebar, there’s a neat little guide on how to do that here.

You can download toolbar scripts for even more functionality. For instance, you can add a button that opens the terminal in whatever folder you are currently browsing. Check them out here. Of course, if you end up hating the finder, you can try an alternative, like Cocoatech’s Path Finder

Hacks

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Widgets on Your Desktop

Widgets are Apple’s version of Konfabulator (now Yahoo! Widgets), but unlike Konfabulator, they are doomed to exile in the dashboard (a “second desktop” that pops up when you hit the right keys or hot corner). The problem with Dashboard is that the more widgets you have running, the longer they all take to pop up the first time you activate it after a restart. If you prefer to have your widgets available on demand on the desktop, enter the following command into your Mac terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES

To place a widget on the desktop, open up Dashboard, start dragging the widget and close the dashboard. Unfortunately, widgets will stay on top of all your windows. Frustratingly, the only way to override this behavior is to get a paid application called Amnesty Widgets, which makes OS X’s widgets more like Yahoo Widgets. Of course, you could just use Yahoo! Widgets and forget OS X’s widgets altogether.

Change Command to Control

This is an adequate configuration for most, but an absolute lifesaver for some. It took me a while to get used to using Command instead of Control, but I eventually broke the old habit. Some people have been known to give up on the platform because of this issue. For those of you who have a hard time adjusting, simply map the Command key to Control. doublecommand and fKeys are popular utilities that let you do all sorts of custom mapping to make your switch easier.

Maximize Your Zoom

One of the weirdest quirks to get used to when switching to the Mac is the behavior of the “Zoom” button on windows (the green button in the top-left corner of all windows). Instead of sticking the four sides of the window to the very edges of the screen, Zoom will simply expand the size of the window to fit the screen but the window will remain draggable. Often it doesn’t even do this and instead changes the size of the window in unexpected and frustrating ways. Luckily you can download a handy little plug-in to force Zoom to use the window’s maximize function. Other than using this plug-in, you’ll have to get used to dragging the bottom-right corner of the window to force it.

Hidden Applications, Hidden Files

If you ever need to find files that are hidden by default, type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

You can hide windows by hitting Command + h, but you get no indication that a window is hidden once it’s gone. To make the application icon more transparent in the dock when it is hidden, type this into the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES
killall Dock

Quick Look Expanded

Quick Look can save you precious seconds by showing you a preview of a file before opening it in its default program. Simply hit the space bar on a file to activate it. This is limited to certain files, but a few handy plug-ins out there give you Quick Look functionality for folders, Zip files and more. theAppleBlog.com has compiled a great list of fours such plug-ins.

Safari Debugger

Safari offers a great browsing experience, despite what you may have heard. It’s quick, clean and powerful, although not that easy to customize. You can apply a few neat hacks to make it a little more useful though. To enable the surprisingly rich Web development debugger tool, type this into your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu YES

For a wealth of Safari hacks and plug-ins, check out Safari Hacks and Pimp My Safari. SAFT is a great extension for Safari that provides a lot of great functionality for $12.

Customize Your Dock

Apple has very definite feelings about how the Dock should look because it does not give you many means of customization. To mess with the look and feel of the Dock, you can try Mirage, which removes all styling, Candybar, which gives you a variety of styling options, and Leopard Docks, a website dedicated to custom Dock stylings.

When the Dock is on the left or right side of your screen, it goes from a 3-D look to 2-D. If you prefer the 2-D and bottom-screen configuration, type this into your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

As far as the Dock’s behavior goes, here’s a must-have hack you can apply. Add a “Recent files” stack to the Dock by entering the following in your terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’
killall Dock

Open-With Defaults

If you want a certain file to open in a certain program, right-click on a file of that file type and select “Get info,” which will bring up a box with all sorts of information about the file. We’re interested here in the “Open with” section, where you can choose its default program. Once you’ve selected the proper program, click the “Change All” button to make it the default program for all files of that file type. One suggestion: make TextEdit your default program for .doc and .docx files: it opens them much faster than Word or OpenOffice.

Software

While the software library on the Mac pales in comparison to the one on Windows in terms of sheer volume, it does have quite a bit of polish. This polish, however, often doesn’t come without a price. Free software for the Mac does exist out there, but it’s not nearly as widely available as you’re probably used to with Windows. That being said, there are quite a few apps, both free and paid, that you should install on your Mac to make the experience much more enjoyable and productive. Here are a few to get you started:

Multimedia

• Flip4Mac
  Install the free version to play WMV with QuickTime.
• Perian
  Every codec you’ll ever need for QuickTime.
• VLC
  The de facto media player for the Mac. Not only does it eliminate the need for the two pieces of software mentioned above, it provides more features than you’ll probably ever care to use. Use VLC instead of the built-in DVD player as well. VLC integrates nicely with OS X, and you can even use your Apple remote with it. Just download it.
• Connect360
  If you want to stream movies, pictures and music to your Xbox 360, this is a great solution for the Mac; some claim it works better than Microsoft’s implementation.
• Transmission
  A very lightweight and solid bit torrent client for the Mac. It fits in very well with OS X, style-wise.
• Songbird
  Not everyone wants to use iTunes to manage their music collection. Many prefer Songbird, the much-loved open-source alternative.

System and General Purpose

• Growl
  If having uniform system-wide notifications for all your applications sounds intriguing, you’ll want to check out Growl. It works with a vast array of software and is extremely customizable. Some notifications you’ll receive let you know when new email, instant messages or Twitter messages arrive, when your downloads are complete, when your computer has been unplugged and when a new song is playing on Last.fm (complete with artist and details). Growl has a myriad of useful plug-ins and uses. Take, for instance, the growl notification that tells you when your tests have passed in your Web application: a must for any Mac user.
• Unplugged
  http://unplugged.en.softonic.com/mac/download (unplugged)
• Quicksilver
  While OS X does have the “Spotlight” feature, which allows you to quickly find files and launch applications, it pales in comparison to the snappiness and customizability of the application-launcher Quicksilver, which is very similar to Firefox’s Ubiquity. Much like Growl, you can install tons of useful plugins to tailor the experience to your needs. When you start using Quicksilver regularly, you’ll find yourself going to the Dock less and less to launch and interact with your applications. It’s lightening fast and quite powerful. Imagine hitting a keyboard shortcut, typing “email,” “tab,” “compose,” , and “enter” to send a quick email to somebody. Another must have.
• Fluid
  If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of your computer time interacting with Web applications rather than client-side applications. You may miss the neatness of applications existing independently of your Web browser, too. If you do, then Fluid is the solution. It takes any Web page you specify and contains it within its own Mac application, complete with icon and windowing preferences. Imagine having a dedicated app for your Google documents, Facebook, your favorite Twitter client, your Web analytics and more. It draws on the same idea that Adobe is pushing with Air. Fluid is as extensible and customizable as Growl and Quicksilver.
• The Unarchiver
  You’re going to want a program that can handle StuffIt, RAR, ZIP and other compression file types with ease, and the Unarchiver is it. Free and straightforward.
• smcFanControl
  Macs tend to be a bit more of a walled garden than other computers, but that doesn’t mean they have to be. With the right amount of research, you can usually find a piece of software or terminal hack that bends the Mac to your will. smcFanControl is one such application, made for those who want to control just how hot their laptops get.
• Carbon Copy Cloner
  If you ever need to transfer your hard drive to another machine, and you will, Carbon Copy Cloner is truly the best solution to the problem. It’s rock solid, simple to use and makes the whole process extremely pain free.

Communications

• Adium
  Adium is the de facto chat client for the majority of high-end Mac users out there. It covers more networks than are worth listing here. This is another must-have app.
• Colloquy
  Probably the best IRC client for the Mac. Well designed and extremely extensible.
• Thunderbird
  A great alternative to the default Mail application.

Productivity

• Gimp
  Because the Mac doesn’t come with built-in image editing software of any kind, Gimp, the open-source alternative to Photoshop, is a handy install.
• Textmate
  Probably the most popular text editor for the Mac. It’s a hefty $50 but worth every penny.
• Sketchbox
  An improvement to OS X’s Stickies.

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