A review from amazon.com..

Ready for some excitement and adventure? Pick up The Beach and lose yourself on a tropical island…

Richard, a twentysomething backpacker who spends most of his time searching for bigger and better places to see, finds his way to Thailand for a little R&R. But something is definitely different about this trip and most of it comes in the form of his crazy hostel neighbor, Daffy, who talks incessantly and angrily about a beach. Tucked away in a remote and off-limits part of Thailand, the beach Daffy speaks of is considered a utopia, a perfect world that is unspoiled by tourists, a prize at the end of a tiring quest. Naturally Richard is curious, so he sets out with a French couple, Etienne and Francoise, and a map drawn by Daffy in search of this pristine fantasy land.

The island commune in The Beach would definitely pass for a secret Woodstock hideaway. Richard’s journey is like no other; a riveting and spectacular adventure. Reading this book was the next best thing to swimming in their private lagoon, spearing fish and viewing the underwater corals. Island politics and the obsessive desire to keep the island’s secrecy plays a heavy role in this novel and is also a prime example of how, even in paradise, one can somehow manage to destroy it.

Dark and sinister, as well as sarcastically funny, The Beach is a fast and furious novel that transports readers to another place in the blink of an eye. Alex Garland’s writing is razor-sharp and indicative of his amazing storytelling talent. The movie cannot begin to touch the depth and fascination of this unforgettable novel.

A review from amazon.com..

Like many, I had heard of the book “Fight Club” after seeing the movie. As soon as I found out that it was based on a novel, I remember thinking to myself;

How could this be a book?

Is that even possible?

The movie alone was so unbelievable that if it were done wrong, it would’ve been a horrible mess. But it was done just right, and the results were amazing.

One of my friends had read the book and told me on many occasions, “You’ve got to read the book.” I told him that I’ve already seen the movie, and again, he says to me, “You’ve got to read the book. It’s great, and it’s actually different than the movie in a lot of parts.”

That worried me, because I absolutely LOVED the movie. It’s one of my favorites. I remember trying to read a book that another one of my favorite movies, “The Fan,” was based on, and it was not an enjoyable experience. The book was COMPLETELY different from the movie, and not in a good way. I ended up never finishing it.

So, I was hesitant at first, but about a year or two ago I decided to give it a shot. And am I ever glad that I did. “Fight Club” is an outstanding novel. The writing is so refreshing and shows us the mind of a promising new author, Chuck Palahniuk. This was his very first novel, and I found that so amazing. Because this was one incredible debut. I have read plenty of novels all from different kinds of authors, but I have NEVER read a debut as incredible or impressive as this.

To give you a brief idea of what the book is about without giving away too much is it revolves around the narrator, an insomniac who can’t get a grip on his life. With insomnia everything is a distraction. He can’t focus on his job, he can’t focus on people, and most of all, he can’t focus on his life. Soon enough, he meets a slippery soap salesman, Tyler Durden, who is about to show our narrator a new outlook on life. And this is where they invent “Fight Club.” It doesn’t take long before everything starts to get out of control….WAY out of control, to one shocking climax and finale. (Don’t think you have the answers because you’ve seen the movie. TRUST me on this one.)

This is a humorous novel with some darkness to it. It is both funny and thrilling at the same time. The book is filled with some of the most memorable lines; some that were used in the movie, others that were not. This is dark satire at its finest.

Know this; reading the book and watching the movie are two different experiences. Yes there are similarities, and there are differences. The only thing is that unlike “The Fan,” the differences in the novel “Fight Club” really work and doesn’t take away anything from anyone who was a fan of the film. It still stays true to the idea and story. Chances are you will enjoy the differences. That alone gives you a reason for reading, since you know it’s going to be a different ride.

After reading “Fight Club,” I knew that Chuck Palahniuk had a unique voice and talent. And I have found myself to be right from reading some of his other novels. (So far I have read this, “Choke,” and “Lullaby.”) This is a very easy book to read. Not for people who get grossed out easily, though. If you have seen the movie, read the book. If not, still read the book. I can’t really say which is better, the movie or the book. To me, they were both different experiences, and I found them both just as enjoyable. But one thing for sure, all the credit should be given to Palahniuk. After all, “Fight Club” came from his mind. A terrific read and one of my favorites.

Even if you have seen the movies, take your time to buy & read the books, then see the movies again. This is really a fantastic experience

So go buy Fightclub by Chuck Palahniuk and The Beach by Alex Garland. Paperback versions go for just a few bucks, but if you want something to put in your livingroom bookshelf, buy the more expensive release.

First impressions
The user interface is well done and quite intuitive. I like the way that menu-elements are changed, providing a more simple browsing experience.
There are also some major changes to colors and design. The colors stands in contrast to each other and give a good impression. Though the light-blue color might be a bit too light on the eye. Wordpress 2.5 now uses rounded buttons almost everywhere (Jippey!) looking really good.
The tables are changed to a more professional look, and does at the same time give a better overview of the contents.

Plugins
At this point I can’t seem to find any error with the plugins I am running. That include a little bunch of plugins, so you might get lucky too.

Writing posts
Even though there isn’t that much changes to the “Writing-part” of wordpress, the experience is better. Some minor changes to the layout, and how elements respond. And, of course, the colors. You can now also easily add media to the post. You can now save or publish the post from the right handside.

Your update
This update went fine, but you should always be careful when updating wordpress. Many people have reported problems with plugins etc. Some people have solved problems by deactivating plugins before the upgrade and then activating one at a time when the upgrade is done. ALWAYS take backup. Not just of the files, but also of the database. I did this by using phpmyadmin and exporting the tables with data, you should also use that!

All-in-all Wordpress 2.5 is a major update, and also a fantastic one! I am very satisfied with the performance and look of the new version, and would recommend everyone to upgrade (carefully) to the new version!

Forget about powerdropping, chaindropping and so on. Also forget about the Ethical/Moral issues here. Because entrecard is built upon the idea of bloggers visiting each other and leaving their card done in a human way, every technique, even powerdropping breaks this scheme.

A tool that could enable a user with one or many blogs to drop 300 cards for every blog, every day could be of some power. Today Entrecard users could even buy and sell credits. I have seen prices of 10.000 entrecredits as high as 85$.

Lets do some calculation:

1 blog
300 drops = 300 credits.
30 days x 300 drops = 9.000 credits

Lets assume that you get 50-100 drops at your entrecard daily if you drop 300. That is average 75 /day a month.
30 days x 75 drops = 2.250 credits
SUM: 11.250 credits!

2 blogs: 22.500 credits!
3 blogs: 33.750 credits!

If you count that in dollars., you might get (if you are lucky):

1 blog: about 90$!
2 blogs: about 180$!
3 blogs: about 270$!

That beats a LOT of link-exchange/affiliate/adsense/etc programs!

Now, as you can see, you can easily make 270$ a month. How much would you been willing to pay for such a tool? Please comment!

Disclaimer: Just a mindbugging experiment.

Users running the Entrelist:

• Leisa Watkins
• Bong (JB)
• Treasure Nature
• Drink Deeply
• Lofty Matters
• Dance of Motherhood
• Luna Tail
• Custody, Divorce And..

About
As you can see on my right sidebar I have a list of the last Entrecard droppers. It is automatically updated with the last droppers. You can choose to display a list of 1-98 links, where 5 is default. This widget can be useful for both you and your visitors. You don’t have to check your inbox all the time and you show appreciation to the ones that drop by your site!

How to use

Locate your RSS-feed. To do this:

1. Log on to Entrecard.com
2. Go to your dashboard
3. Right-click on the RSS-icon as you can see in the picture
4. Choose “Copy Link Location”
5. Paste the URL in the code and place it on your webpage (eg. Wordpres: Theme editor)
6. Note: Be careful if you are trying to add it as a text-widget in wordpress. You can take a look here at the wordpress support, though it shouldn’t be any problem.

Disclamer: You may use this code on your webpage, but then on your own responsibility. The widget can be removed at any time, without notice. I will try my best not to do that.

Example:
RSS-Location: http://entrecard.com/feeds/inbox/xxx/rss2.0
Then, the code is:

<script src="http://www.hverven.net/entrelist/gen.php?count=5&feed=http://entrecard.com/feeds/inbox/xxx/rss2.0" type="text/javascript" id="entrelist"></script>

You signed up for a text-link-ads program because they paid 0.1$ more in pay-per-click, instead of your earlier images ads. Great! You think, I will now earn more revenue. Though, the result of your converting now resulted in some loss, and you don’t know why.

Color blindness & poor sight
Did you know that one in 12 men, and one in 200 women has some kind of color blindness? You may also think about all the users with poor sight. Let’s say your site has 5000 unique visitors a day, a simply calculation will result (1/12 * 5000) in 416. That means that in a situation 416 potential users may have not seen or have problems with viewing your ads. That’s almost 10% not clicking your ads! In those situation keyword-relation doesn’t mean a thing. What simple tasks can fix these to problems? Read upon color blindness, often some specific colors are subject of color blindness. Use contrast websites. As for users with poor sight, offer a way to increase the text on the site.

Short about ads
There are many ways to place ads, but concerning usability a few things comes to my mind. You may think. Hey! “If I have a blinking banner with strong colors, users will se it and therefore most likely click it.” This might be right, but it must be placed with great care. If you place it alone and badly integrated to the site the users is most likely to ignore the ad subconsciously and proceed on the site, this is done because the users don’t percept the ad as a part of the page. The gestalt principles explains some reasons for this. It also happens if you use (eg.) borders on images you can click, and no borders on images you can’t click. Many ads don’t come with borders, so in that situation your site should not use borders on images that is clickable. This because users won’t percieve the ads as clickable.

Figure 1 - Placement example

The reason this is better is because the user now percieves the information the way we want. Now we need to integrate those ads well and we have a good basic for traffic. Now that you have placed ads, you may have several groups of ads (like shown on the images above) in your page. Maybe in the left and right sidebar. It is very important to distinct the different groupings of ads as they may have quite different results. There are many ways to do that. Find a script that distinct outgoing links, or use the channels setting in Google AdSense. In AdSense you can make different channels for your ads. You can make a channel called “Left sidebar” and another one “Right sidebar”, after some time you might find the reason for that the “Left sidebar” is more effective than the other. This is it for know, I will close with some recommended reading.

Recommended reading

• Jacob Nilsen’s site. Great information about usability etc.
• Simulate colorblindness. Cool!
• Google about placement of ads.

Don’t forget to subscribe to RSS and be the first to be updated about the next article in the series!

NEW! Download PDF of the article. Read it offline!

• Download the pack: jQuery easyThumb.

t.php: This is the php-file that generates thumbnails (note: The code originates from FhImage, flash-here.com).
jquery.easythumb: This is the plugin.To make it work you will only need these two files, and the CSS-code located in index.html.

Example

• Online example, check the source-code.
• Check the index.html file that is located within the .zip-file.

Note: The example takes use of Lightbox plugin.

License
You may use jquery.easythumb.js freely. For the other files, follow their own license. You also use this scripts at your own risk.

Updates
This is the very first version. Updates will come in the near future.

jQuery
To this date I haven’t found any good method to make thumbnails in jQuery. On the web I have found a plugin that “simulates” a thumbnail. The plugin is named jQuery Thumbs and functions as dynamic wrapper of the images. The fullsize images are wrapped with CSS-code that crops the images and centers them in the thumbnail. In other words; Lets say you have a 640×480 (px) image, and you want it thumbnailed down to 125×125 (px). jQuery Thumbs then crop the image and you are left with a 125×125 (px) image that is the center of the original image. This is sort of a fake thumbnail since you may not end up with a good results, because it depends on having your original image centered.

This is how jQuery Thumbs works (Taken from jQuery Thumbs webpage)

I’m currently working on a plugin for jQuery that is combined with PHP. It will let you generate thumbnails on-the-fly from a unsorted list of images.

Thanks for all the comments! Many interesting views have appeared. Read trough the comments if you are interested in entrecard. Anyway, the winner is: Mark Fulton. Congratulations! He will receive 1050 entrecard credits!

The other contenders was:

• Black Zedd
• Steve Robbo
• Blargumentor
• Jayne D’Arcy
• Simon
• Kevin
• Sammy Ashouri
• Webduck
• Shonzilla
• Louie
• 21stCentyrman
• Gian Paulo
• Justin (Pushapixel)
• Mike Huang
• Mc2w
• Mikko

Thanks to all.

The conclusion: I will still continue to use entrecard

You may have noticed the entrecard.com-widget on this site at the bottom om the sidebar. The widget is a space for other sites to advertise in. To advertise they use entrecard-credits that they earn by dropping their entrecard on other sites etc.

Ok, to be clear: Entrecard do increase your traffic, but is that all you really want? Because in my perspective the traffic is of such bad quality that it is just numbers. Have anyone noticed any increase in AdSense earnings? I guess not. The users that comes from entrecard is about 95% focused on finding your widget and dropping their card, to earn 1 credit so that they increase their fortune. Therefore I’m not going to update my entrecard anymore, as quality traffic is much more important than just unique site visitors. It is worth noticing that you can advertise on other sited with the 125×125 image, but my experience tells me that even that isn’t worth it.

I’m giving away 1,000 entrecard credits + the credits earned in the following 10 days!

To be one of the “lucky” people to get this credits, just comment this post. In the comment I just want you to be honest about your opinion about the quality of the traffic that is generated from entrecard. The giving away will be closed in 10 days. More precisely December 21, 2007! Now, wouldn’t that be a fine Christmas gift?

Leave your comments now!

jQuery really simplifies and makes magic of web galleries. Since there are many galleries out there, I will try to map your needs when choosing your next gallery script. Anyway, the contenders are:

1. jQGallScroll 2.0 and jQGallView/jQGallViewII/jQGallViewIII.
2. jQuery slideViewer 1.1.
3. Lightbox
4. EOGallery
5. NextGEN Gallery.

What do I test for?

1. File size & Dependencies
   Because users need to load the script, this affects the loading time. A lightweight script is more wanted than a large with just about the same features. Dependencies also needs to be updated once in a while.
2. Look & Feel
   Does it look good? Is it smooth? Is it too much eye-candy?
3. Intuitiveness
   This is a very important step of having serving a great gallery. Though this is only a semi-subjective test of mine, but it may point something out.
4. Setup & Use
   Can you add images from administration-panel? Can you create an unsorted list of images and it will be generated automatically?
5. Styling
   The use of CSS and styling possibilities that comes with the script.
6. Support for multiple images
   Although you can make an unsorted list of thousands of images, that may not be as clever as you think. How does the gallery support multiple images.
7. Overall score
   Each test counts as 1 point. That adds up to max 6 points, the same as a dice! To get a point on a test, it will be evaluated as either good or bad.

The test

1. jQGallScroll 2.0 and jQGallView/jQGallViewII/jQGallViewIII
   
   File size: About 8 kb. Both the javascript and the stylesheet.
   Look & Feel: Very flashy effects. (It really looks like it is flash). The images are loaded on-the-fly and not preloaded! Good! Though, the thumbs are placed in the list when the page load. (Doesn’t look especially good).
   Intuitiveness: The “current image” is above the selectable thumbnails. The thumbs are placed under the image, and the container has it’s own scrollbar.
   Setup &Use: Unsorted list of images. You need to create thumbnails yourself.
   Styling: Separated CSS file included. The styles are already defines, but you have plenty of space to do modifications.
   Support for multiple images: Yes. Example contains at least 66 images.
   Webpage/Demo: Webpage
   Score:
2. jQuery slideViewer 1.1
   
   File size: 1.5 kb (Great!). Dependencies: jQuery easing.
   Look & Feel: Nice effects. You have plenty of effects to choose from (jQuery easing). By default the image slide horizontally. Looking good and smooth.
   Intuitiveness: You choose the next image by clicking on a link under the view. A list from 1-n as generated for every image.
   Setup &Use: Unsorted list of images.
   Styling: Separated CSS file included. The styles are already defines, but you have plenty of space to do modifications.
   Support for multiple images: Yes. BUT: Images are preloaded. In other means, many images = long loadtime.
   Webpage/Demo: Webpage
   Score:
3. jQuery lightbox
   
   File size: 6 kb packed. About 18 kb unpacked.
   Look & Feel: Fades the screen, preloads the image and resizes the viewer on the screen to fit the image. Very nice effects, though it can be too much for someone (effectwise).
   Intuitiveness: By moving your cursor to the right corner or left corner you can browse the images. Press CLOSE X to close the view. Pretty intuitive.
   Setup &Use: Unsorted list of images. You need to create thumbnails yourself.
   Styling: Separated CSS file included. The styles are already defines, but you have plenty of space to do modifications.
   Support for multiple images: Yes. Images are loaded only when they are about to be viewed.
   Webpage/Demo: Webpage
   Score:
4. EOGallery
   
   File size: 3 kb packed. About 5 kb unpacked. Depends on jQuery thickbox.
   Look & Feel: Views 3 images at the same time. One large in the middle, and one on each side to navigate. Large images is opened in thickbox (pretty similar to lightbox explained in this article). Though I find the gallery to be unsmooth. I also couldn’t find any counter on how many images the gallery displays. You can also display the images as a automated slideshow.
   Intuitiveness: Browse next or previous image by clicking on the thumbnail. A bigger image is displayed if you click on the current active image.
   Setup &Use: You need to type some HTML-code. Unsorted list with some CSS-code. You might want a PHP-script to generate the code.
   Styling: Separated CSS file included. Quite large file.
   Support for multiple images: Yes. Images are loaded only when they are about to be viewed.
   Webpage/Demo: Webpage
   Score:
5. NextGEN Gallery (Wordpress plugin)
   
   File size: Large. Can be minimized by deleting components or customizing.
   Look & Feel: There are many possible configurations. You can display images as a flash gallery, or as ordinary albums. You can even display by albums or slideshows. Everything is done quite smooth.
   Intuitiveness: Browse the demo-pages to get an impression. In my opinion it’s quite well-done.
   Setup &Use: This is a wordpress plugin. So there are some new steps. Read the instructions.
   Styling: Multiple separated CSS-files.
   Support for multiple images: YES! And even galleries. All this is with a great administration interface. You can even upload zip-files with images!
   Webpage/Demo: Webpage
   Score:

Conclusion

They are all good candidates. NextGEN Gallery is in it’s own category and is recommended if you use wordpress and is in need to handle a lot of images. JQGallView is a very nice try to accomplish a good gallery that is also easy to setup. It must be the best example of the candidates that is pure jQuery and manages to display a lot of images. If you just want to display a nice bunch of images, as you normally would slideViewer is a great gallery script! Very smooth effects and preloading. Though it has it’s limitation, it may be the best gallery out there to just show the few images you want with minimal code and effort. Lightbox is also nice if you want to display few images, though you must setup the lists and thumbnails yourself (Could be very good if implemented together with a php-automation of thumbnails etc). EOGallery on it’s side, didn’t impress me that much.

In my opinion the winner IS:

jQuery slideViewer 1.1

Most users won’t install hundreds of images. If so, they would choose a complete different type of script. If you want to display your images fast, with style and with almost no effort. Choose slideViewer. Now, go take a look at the slideViewer webpage.

jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

That is true, for sure! I have developed web-applications that uses the jQuery library for a time now, and it has really simplified my work. This applications use plugins that extend the library even more. There are many jQuery plugins available and some of them that I have used include Autocomplete, jqModal and interface.

What do you need to get started?
First you need to download the jQuery library from their official site: jquery.com. Then you need to import the library to your html-file:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>

That’s all you need to get started, now let’s take a further look into the world of jQuery. This example will show a hidden text when a user clicks a link. It will also change the hidden text to a new one.

Example 1 - Show a div (with text) that is hidden. (View online demo)

<html> <head><style type="text/css">

#hiddentext { display: none }

</style>

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.2.1.js">
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function(){

$("#showtext").click(function(){

$("#hiddentext").css("display","block");

$("#hiddentext").html("This text WAS hidden");

});

});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<a id="showtext" href="#">Show me the text!</a>
<p>This text is visible</p>
<div id="hiddentext">This text is HIDDEN</div>
</body>
</html>

What is next?
You can start right now by going trough the online tutorials provided by the jQuery team.

Projects i’m working on, and note to self
I currently have two ongoing projects right now.

• webSlide: This is a web-based slideshow. It uses Javascript, jQuery and dynamic scripting. It’s purpose is to display dynamic and updated content. The content can be loaded from URL or edited online. When finished it will view slides on a big LCD-monitor at work, giving us up-to-date information from the intranet.
• jQuery thumbnail gallery: This is in an early stage, but the idea is: A gallery that is based on slideviewer, but displays the image links as thumbnails (optional). The thumbnails and gallery is to be generated automatically just by using a php-function, or by making a unsorted list with images yourself.