Windows only: Free application Calibrize holds your hand through a simple three-step monitor calibration to ensure on-screen colors look the same from computer to computer. Once you've run the application and adjusted the color profile to its specifications, Calibrize saves the profile and automatically installs it on your system so the right color profile always loads up. It's quick and simple, especially if you don't know much about screen calibration to begin with. For a no-download alternative, check out previously mentioned Screen Check. Calibrize is freeware, Windows only.
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Whoooooa. That was my reaction as I surfed from tile to tile in Amazon's WindowShop, which is the most eye-popping online shopping experience I've ever seen. It's a collection of their most popular movies, books, music and other media arranged in a huge 3D grid, where every tile is a tiny demo of the product—a trailer, snippet or clip—and it's incredibly fast and smooth to dart from one to the other, with no lag at all.
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The new release of web traffic tracker Google Analytics is out. As I recently wrote in my Search Engine Watch article Digging Deeper Into the Latest Release of Google Analytics, this release marks a strong positive step forward for Google Analytics. GA also performed well in my recent web analytics comparison report, where I had 7 analytics vendors running simultaneously across 4 web sites.

In this article, I plan to look at 10 cool things you can do with the new Google analytics.
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Link building is the single most important element to obtaining high rankings in all of the major search engines. It is vital that continual efforts be made and long-term plans be laid out to insure a web sites continued success in organic search results, and reduced costs in paid placement (PPC).

Google created the most successful information retrieval device of all time based on sending spiders to follow each and every link they can find on each and every web document they come across. Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and all the other search databases have acquired the vast amounts of information they contain in similar fashion. Links play important roles in the ranking formulas of all search engines, especially Google, by providing numerous pieces of data for their algorithms to chew through.
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Having trouble keeping your cat off the kitchen counter or away from your plants? You've really just got two options: You can either accept the fact that your cat's going to get up there because you can't watch her all the time, or you could build a motion-sensing security-camera booby trap that scares the crap out of your cat whenever she jumps up there. Most of us would settle with the former option, but an inventive fellow named Brian decided that option two was the way he'd rather go, and the result is the Blender Defender. When triggered, Blender Defender switches on a blender, flashes a strobe, and terrifies cats. While you may never get around to building your own Blender Defender, it is nice to see someone using previously mentioned tools like ffmpeg, X10 automation, and a dash of Perl to make something interesting. Be sure to click through to see the poor cat suffer the wrath of the Blender Defender.
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Sure, iTunes' new visualizer is pretty, but you can't compete with the visceral, hypnotizing weirdness of Daito Manabe's facial electric stimulus. He tapes electric stimulators, looking like the same type used for electroshock therapy, to his face, and syncs them with his music so his involuntary facial contortions match up with the tune. Shots of the machine he used after the jump.
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My name is Heather Gordon, and I am the creative vision and solitary grunt behind Meridian Design. I work with my clients throughout the US and Canada to create unique designs for web and print, and provide guidance in SEO and marketing strategies.

Although trained as a visual artist, I have owned and operated two small businesses, taught courses in art, provided computer training, and have been a public speaker on the subject of online marketing and search engine optimization.

For more information about me and my work:

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