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Great arti­cle from Dries Buy­taert. And very true. Dru­pal is explod­ing. A major­ity of users prob­a­bly browse a few dru­pal sites a day. As Dries goes on to say:

Why aren’t we train­ing more Dru­pal devel­op­ers? I’d think there is a real oppor­tu­nity to make money as a Dru­pal train­ing busi­ness for at least a num­ber of reasons:

  • It addresses a real prob­lem. Because of Drupal’s con­tin­ued growth, peo­ple are strug­gling to find the Dru­pal tal­ent they need.
  • Dru­pal is grow­ing in the enter­prise, and one can expect a strong desire to buy Dru­pal train­ing in the enter­prise. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if big play­ers like IBM, Capgem­ini and Accen­ture, will start to offer some Dru­pal train­ing to their enter­prise cus­tomers. This could even result in a cou­ple of Dru­pal train­ing com­pa­nies being acquired.
  • A train­ing busi­ness can be a more scal­able and more lucra­tive busi­ness than a con­sult­ing business.
  • There is a wide dis­par­ity between those that can assem­ble Dru­pal sites ver­sus those who truly under­stand the con­cepts and prin­ci­ples behind the code. At some point, parts of the mar­ket will see value in Dru­pal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams. It is a mat­ter of time, but when it hap­pens, it will enable Dru­pal train­ing com­pa­nies to build a stronger brand.

This is a prob­lem that we need to fix. We need more world-class Dru­pal tal­ent to ful­fill the demand and to let Dru­pal reach its poten­tial. We need a well-rounded ecosys­tem that pro­vides more Dru­pal training.

Check out his highly infor­ma­tive site for the full arti­cle: Dries Buy­taert.

Google Short­cuts pro­vides tool­bar short­cuts to Google’s ser­vices in a clean, low-maintenance way. It comes with a few pre-selected, so when you install it, you’ll notice sev­eral icons appear on the taskbar.

You could argue that Google Short­cuts is no dif­fer­ent to man­u­ally drag­ging the ser­vices to your tool­bar, but there’s a limit how much you can do this before it starts to get dis­or­ga­nized. This tool, mean­while, makes the whole process more cen­tral­ized, cleaner and eas­ier to access, mak­ing it ideal for peo­ple who make heavy use of Google’s multi-faceted services.

From Google Short­cuts’ Set­tings area (also avail­able as a tool­bar short­cut), you’ll be able to pick which you want to show, as well as iden­ti­fy­ing whether the short­cuts should be vis­i­ble on the tool­bar, or If they should appear in a drop-down. You can also choose whether the link opens in a new tab when clicked

This is one of the best add-ons I have to date. It greatly improves my ease of access to most of the sites I visit on a daily basis.I haven’t seen any issues, per­for­mance or oth­er­wise that have arisen since it’s instal­la­tion. Highly recommended!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3576

Searching in Gmail

One thing that has improved my pro­duc­tiv­ity is search­ing mes­sages in gmail.

To find mes­sages in Gmail:

  • Type search terms in the Search Mail field.
    You can go to Search Mail quickly by pressing /.

Use the fol­low­ing operators:

  • sub­ject: — Search the Sub­ject line.
    Exam­ple: “subject:bahamas” finds all mes­sages with “bahamas” in the Subject.
  • from: — Search for sender name and email address. Par­tial addresses are okay.
    Exam­ple: “from:heinz” finds all mes­sages from “heinz@about.com”, but also all mes­sages from “your.heinz@tqn.com”.
  • to: — Search the To line for names and addresses.
    Exam­ple: “to:quertyuiop@gmail.com” finds all mes­sages sent directly (not via Cc: or Bcc:) to quertyuiop@gmail.com.
  • cc: — Search recip­i­ents in the Cc field.
    Exam­ple: “cc:quertyuiop@gmail.com” finds all mes­sages that were sent to quertyuiop@gmail.com as a car­bon copy.
  • bcc: — Search for addresses and names in the Bcc field. Note this only works with emails you sent to Bcc recip­i­ents from Gmail.
    Exam­ple: “bcc:heinz” finds all mes­sages that you sent with, for exam­ple, “hein@example.com” in the Bcc field.
  • label: — Search for mes­sages assigned a label. (Replace white­space char­ac­ters in label names with hyphens.)
    Exam­ple: “label:toodoo-doll” finds all mes­sages labeled “toodoo doll”.
  • is:starred — Search for mes­sages that are starred.

If Super­stars is enabled:

  • has:yellow-star — Search for mes­sages with a yel­low star.
  • has:red-star — Search for mes­sages with a red star.
  • has:orange-star — Search for mes­sages with an orange star.
  • has:green-star — Search for mes­sages with a green star.
  • has:blue-star — Search for mes­sages with a blue star.
  • has:purple-star — Search for mes­sages with a pur­ple star.
  • has:yellow-bang — Search for mes­sages with a yel­low excla­ma­tion mark.
  • has:red-bang — Search for mes­sages with a red excla­ma­tion mark.
  • has:purple-question — Search for mes­sages with a pur­ple ques­tion mark.
  • has:orange-guillemet — Search for mes­sages with two orange for­ward arrows.
  • has:blue-info — Search for mes­sages with a blue i.
  • is:unread — Search for new and unread messages.
  • is:read — Search for mes­sages that have already been opened.
  • has:attachment — Search for mes­sages that have files attached to them.
  • file­name: — Search within file names of attach­ments. You can also search for file name exten­sions to restrict your search to cer­tain file types.
    Exam­ple: “filename:.doc” finds all mes­sages with word pro­cess­ing attachments.
  • lang: — Search for mes­sages in a par­tic­u­lar lan­guage. (Spec­ify the lan­guage in Eng­lish; “Chi­nese” works, but “中文”, “Putonghua” or “Man­darin” do not, for exam­ple.)
    Exam­ple: “lang:French” returns all emails that con­tain at least un peu de Français.
  • in: — Search in a stan­dard “folder”. You can search in Drafts, Inbox, Chats, Sent, Spam, Trash and any­where (for every­thing, includ­ing Spam and Trash).
    Exam­ple: “in:drafts” finds all mes­sages in your Drafts folder.
  • after: — Search for mes­sages sent after a date. The date must given in YYYY/MM/DD for­mat.
    Exam­ple: “after:2005/05/05″ finds all mes­sages sent or received after (and not includ­ing) May 5, 2005.
  • before: — Search for mes­sages sent before a date.
    Exam­ple: “before:2005/05/05″ finds all mes­sages sent or received on May 4, 2005 and earlier.

Oper­a­tors and search terms can be com­bined with the fol­low­ing modifiers:

  • By default, terms are com­bined with (an invis­i­ble) “AND”.

Exam­ple: “milk cow” finds all mes­sages that con­tain both “milk” and “cow”.

  • ” — Search for a phrase. Case is dis­re­garded.
    Exam­ples: “milk’s cow” finds all mes­sages con­tain­ing the phrase “milk’s cow”; ‘subject:“milk’s cow’ finds all mes­sages that have “milk’s cow” in the Sub­ject field.
  • OR — Search for mes­sages con­tain­ing at least one of two terms or expres­sions.
    Exam­ples: “milk or cow” finds mes­sages that con­tain either “milk” or “cow” or both; “from:heinz or label:toodoo-doll” finds mes­sages that either come from a sender that con­tains “email.guide” or appear under the label “toodoo doll”.
  • — - Search for mes­sages that do not con­tain a term or expres­sion.
    Exam­ples: “-cow” finds all mes­sages that do not con­tain the word “cow”; “milk –cow” finds all mes­sages that con­tain the word “milk” but not “cow”; ‘subject:“milk’s cow” –from:heinz’ finds all mes­sages with “milk’s cow” in the sub­ject that were not sent from an email address or name con­tain­ing “heinz”.
  • () — Group search terms or expres­sions.
    Exam­ples: “subject:(milk cow)” finds mes­sages that have both “milk” and “cow” some­where in the Sub­ject line (but not nec­es­sar­ily as a phrase); “from:heinz (subject:(milk OR cow) OR label:toodoo-doll)” finds all mes­sages from a sender who has “email.guide” in their name that either have “milk” or “cow” (or both) in the Sub­ject line or appear under the label “toodoo doll”.

The Invoice Machine

Need to make an invoice? Start­ing up a com­pany or just a cus­tom invoice for a spe­cial client?

It’s always a good busi­ness prac­tice to stan­dard­ize forms, whether it be check­lists for email cam­paigns, when you set up a pat­tern for you and your co-workers to fol­low, you get bet­ter and bet­ter at accom­plish­ing the task at hand.

Check out the invoice machine, a great tool to help you out.

Great comic, show­ing how a sadly, and often, a web design goes straight to hell.

Came across this great arti­cle on with a bunch of jQuery tools for visu­al­iz­ing data. One of the ones I have found to be par­tic­u­larly help­ful is flop. Take a look at the flot api ref­er­ence on google code, pretty neat stuff. There also is a flot project page on google code.

Thought this was an inter­est­ing interview

Work­ing on a data visu­al­iza­tion project and came across this. Check it out!

In case you were look­ing to stab your­self in the eyes, save your­self the effort and just check out these mag­nif­i­cent works pro­vided by noupe.

worst-gov-sites

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