IStock Photo provides a variety of sizes for you to select from, but which size is right for you and if you are selling images how do you know what size to make them?

When browsing IStock photo size options, it becomes rather difficult to understand which sizes are Small Medium or Large, as they often have different dimensions associated with them. The examples of image sizes below show that IStock doesn’t have a hard, fast guideline for image sizes.

If you are buying photos, the medium to Large sizes will be more than adequate for your webmaster. If using for highlights, the Small and XSmall may even be usefull. Shoot an email to your webmaster if you have any doubts.

After reviewing the IStock Photo FAQ’s we see that item number four (see excerpt below) implies that IStock Photo resizes the images when uploading for sales.

What are the specs required for images to be uploaded or rules for uploading?

1. Images must be RGB JPG format only
2. You must own the full copyright to any image you upload. This means you must be the photographer or artist that created the image.
3. All trademarks must be removed. This includes logos, brands and entities with copyright or trademarked elements. This many also extend to trademarked products such as cast sculptures, toys, architecture and other elements of design. Copyright is checked with each file.
4. File sizes: the bigger, the better. 300 dpi 5″ x 7″ is optimal. 640×480 images are not usable by most graphic artists. All files should be 1200 x 1600 pixels minimum (anything smaller will be automatically rejected).
5. Entering keywords and descriptions: be descriptive. Include at least 10 keywords and use a title other than ‘dog’ or ‘man’. Supplying more keywords means your image will match more searches. Images with more keywords get downloaded more often.
6. Model releases: images with clearly visible people require a model release (iStockphoto Model Release) form for legal reasons. Children in images can’t sign a model release. A legal guardian or parent must sign for all children under the age of 18 years. You will be notified if you need a model release and it can be uploaded later if you’re not sure.
7. Legal notice: uploading images/artwork that belongs to somebody else (copyright or otherwise) will result in a suspended membership and in some cases may have legal ramifications.
8. Your account profile must have your full, real first and last names, and mailing address entered before completing an application. Anyone uploading with a fake name will be banned immediately.
9. More detailed information is available in the iStockphoto Photographer Training Manual.

Don’t get caught off guard and blow the big pitch!

First impressions can be everything – use multiple browsers!

First impressions can be everything when you are trying to sell products and services. That’s why it’s so important that you ensure your website looks good to any potential client.

For example both Google Chrome and Safari display similarly but Ie 7 and Ie 8 look nothing alike and FireFox is in a category all it’s own.

If you are a PC user you can’t assume all your website traffic will be using a PC and if you are a MAC user come on wake up! Apple has a minimal presence in the business computing world (MP3s and Cell Phones are a different story).

Don’t believe us? Check out this sample website in four different browsers!

Google Chrome	Internet Explorer 7	FireFox	Apple Safari

The Internet Archive, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, they provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.

One of their coolest features for webmasters is the Wayback Machine, aptly named for the WABAC machine used by Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman (from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show) to travel back in time.

The Wayback Machine pulls results from the Internet Archiver and allows you to view how a website used to look. This is similar to how Google allows you to view a cached version of a website, except that it keeps multiple copies. In most cases if the images in the archives are stored on the website’s own server, which means many results will appear with missing graphics.

What this means for webmasters is that in a situation where a client might have lost content from their website, the developer can copy the text from the Wayback machine results and then rebuild the page. It’s a bit of a bummer that many images won’t be available, but then it often takes much more time to write good copy than to create simple graphics.

If you want to be able to use the Wayback Machine, you will need to insure that your website’s Robots.txt is not blocking the archiver. From the sample results for saeler.com below, it’s apparent that many time periods are missing. These missing periods are from times when the archiver was blocked from accessing the website.

This article will show you how to stream MP3 or WMA music or audio on a web page using Windows Media Player object and embed controls (for cross-browser compatability). This will allow large sound files to be streamed as they are played, and will work perfectly in all major browsers (eg: MSIE, Netscape/Mozilla, and Opera browsers).

• How to stream music or audio from your website

The HTML required to embed a movie or animation into a web page can be complex. With the Embedded Media HTML Generator developed by CIT staff, you won’t need to remember the complex HTML code required to embed media in your Web pages. All you need to do is select your media type, fill out a simple form, click submit, and copy and paste the generated HTML into your Web page.

• Embeded Media HTML Generator

SENDA legislation states that all educational websites must be accessible to all e.g. websites must be readable by the web page ‘readers’ used by visually impaired users. This page provides tips on complying with SENDA.

• Validation Tips for SENDA

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

• Lorem Ipsum

Color Selector is an application for selecting, mixing and previewing colors, intended primarily for Web developers as it deals directly in HTML hexadecimal colours. It features several colour selection and display modes, can copy and paste HTML colours, and supports drag and drop.

Colours can be selected via RGB and HSV sliders, entered as an HTML hex code, or chosen from a colour palette or a bank of favourite colour slots. Pairs of colours can be blended together to obtain an in-between colour, for if you want to adjust one colour to be more like another. Text preview is also available, to determine how text of a particular font and size will look in a particular colour, over a chosen background colour.

All the program’s settings (with the exception of the live color copy state) are saved when the program exits, and restored again when next loaded.

Click Here to learn more

ColorZilla
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. And there’s more

Color Cop
Color Cop v5.3 is a multi-purpose color picker for web designers and programmers. It features an eyedropper, magnifyer with 1 to 16x zoom, 3 by 3 and 5 by 5 average sampling, snap to websafe, auto copy to clipboard, color history, and a 42 color complementary color palette. It can output color codes in the following hex formats: HTML, Delphi, Powerbuilder, Visual Basic, and Visual C++. Windows95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP.

Click Here to learn more about Color Cop

ColorPic
Ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Grab palettes of up to 16 colors at once and use four advanced color mixers to select a spectrum of possibilities.

Click Here for more info and to download

RedHat Color Picker
Like the color scheme of another website? this handy tool will tell you what they are using. Click Here to try it out!

To learn even more about using color on the web, Check Out Color Mixers.

Learn How to Set up Google Custom Search for Your Website and Make Money

What is a Google Custom Search Engine?

Simply put, Google Custom Search Engine is a tool which allows visitors to search your website by using Google’s core search technology. This enables you to list search results according to the sites and pages you specify. According to Google, the Custom Search Engine also allows you to:

Apply your Website’s look and feel to the search results page.

• Provide search refinements within results pages to make it easier for searchers to find the information they’re looking for.
• Make money from your Custom Search Engine by participating in Google’s AdSense program.

There are two main ways for visitors to experience your Custom Search Engine. One way is to direct them to a Google-hosted results page when they type in a search query and the second way is to integrate it by hosting the search results on a page within your website.

Click Here for the full tutorial

Create your own eBook covers to promote your white papers, eBooks, and other digital document products

• Ecover Generator