JQuery is a fantastic, and one of the best options to date, to include flash-like dynamic interaction elements including animated rollovers, navigation, galleries, sliding pages and news. There have been great strides made in the scripts for these animations. Some of the better and newest JQuery plugin options and betas for 2012 are included here.

Arctext
Curve text using JQuery and CSS3.

News Ticker
Taking inspiration from the BBC News website ticker, jQuery News Ticker brings a lightweight and easy to use news ticker to jQuery.

Page Scroller
Smooth scrolling made simple. Add animated page targets to your website.

Promptu Menu
A jQuery plugin that allows you to display list items in a similar way like a iPhone home screen. If item count exceeds the displayed items on one screen, users can swipe through screens.

RCarousel
RCarousel, a continuous JQuery UI carousel.

Sliding Image Panels
Sliding image panels with JQuery and CSS3.

Slab Text
Put simply, the script splits headlines into rows before resizing each row to fill the available horizontal space.

Scroll Deck
A jQuery plugin for making scrolling presentation decks – vertical full screen page scrolling.

UI Bootstrap
With this theme, not only do you get the ability to use Bootstrap-themed widgets, but you can now also use (most) of Twitter Bootstrap side-by-wide with it without components breaking visually.

Full Calendar
FullCalendar is a jQuery plugin that provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar

1. Recycled Vintage Cameras Nightlight Project
Visit Instruction Page

2. Branch Salt Bowl & Spoon
Visit Instruction Page

3. Woven Map Basket
Visit Instruction Page

4. Make Drink Glasses with Bottle Cutting
Visit Instruction Page

5. Recycled Magazines Bowl
Visit Instruction Page

6. Strawberry Rhubarb Preserves
Visit Instruction Page

7. Canned Pickled Green Beans
Visit Instruction Page

8. Confetti Bean Soup in a Jar
Visit Instruction Page

The Guardian Eyewitness
Showcases the world’s most distinctive and provocative photographs, providing a daily, visual reflection of global events. Bringing thought-provoking imagery direct to your device on a daily basis. Includes pro tips written by award-winning photography team to offer technical insights.

WordPress
Easy management of your WordPress blog or site from your iOS device. Moderate comments, create or edit posts and pages, and add images or videos.

Typefaces
Wonderfully done typefaces app that will display individual characters, paragraphs, and full typeface info.

Cool Hunting
Daily buzz on ideas and products in the crossroads of art, design, culture and technology. Also looks at the people who produce them.

Web Designer Magazine
Premiere magazine for aspiring online creatives and industry professionals. Cutting-edge practical projects, industry news and view, showcase of the finest design talent.

StumbleUpon
Discover great websites and share it. Boost your creativity and be inspired by browsing through StubleUpon.

123D Sculpt
Just for a little creative fun, this is a digital sculpting app: you pinch and rub the screen to mould virtual clay.

Flipboard
See your social media in a magazine layout that is easy to scan and fun to read. Catch up on the latest stories, videos and posts from popular publications and people such as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Wired, Rolling Stone, Oprah, Forbes, etc.

Adobe Carousel
Just released, this new service from Adobe is a kind of photo hub that lets users upload pictures from any device and access from any other device with the Carousel app. Sounds just like Apple’s iCloud Photo stream but still well done and no storage needed.

To get it back, a ton of places online said to simply go into the store and option-click the word “installed”. Not sure why but that didn’t work for me.

With some luck, I wandered into the “View My Account” section under “Store” in the menu bar. After logging in, I noticed that that one of my purchases was listed as “hidden”. There it was! Just unhide it, and the app shows back up in the purchased list.

Even though at the moment the company seems a tad over dominating in too many markets, I can’t help but feel they deserve the reward of all those years of struggle. I will always appreciate how Jobs’ demanding persona made everyone rethink the mobile phone and its role in our lives with the large screen, open source apps, and touch technology. Everyone else seems to still be struggling to keep up and more and more of the general public are hopping onboard the Apple/Mac train with their technology expectations raised, no spyware/spam to deal with, ease of workflow, graphic appeal and inspired simplicity/design .

Thank you for the devotion to innovation! Oh yeah, and for Pixar, my nephew and friends little ones still ask to watch the half dozen or so Pixar shorts that have been on my iPhone since I got it.

Short Bio:

Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the Board of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. Apple is leading the consumer technology world with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, its family of iPod media players and iTunes media store, and its Mac computers and iLife and iWork application suites. Apple recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Steve also co-founded and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on Disney’s board of directors.

Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.

Letter of Resignation, 8.24.2011:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Quotes:

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“I want to put a ding in the universe.”

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

Commencement Speach, 2005:

http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Here are 5 great ways to be the change you want to see in the world. Enjoy!

1) Contribute to our Troops

Send letters and supplies to our troops in Iraq & Afghanistan via www.anysolider.com.

2) Design for Good

Design and/or develop a pro bono project for a charitable or non-profit organization.

Search available projects here.

3) Improve your Community

Write to your local Representative or Senator about what isn’t working in your local and national communities. I wrote to my local representative about the importance and need to improve small business growth and sustainability in our state. I commented on taxes and the need to do away with or create a more scalable small business entity tax. Surprisingly, I received a great response and unexpectedly felt that this small step made a difference by being a part of a larger voice of my community that will play a role in the voice and decisions that are made in our state and potentially in the nation.

Find your Representative

Find your Senator

4) Consume Better

Ok, so we’ve all heard it before, but really it’s amazing to buy your food from local growers when you can.

Find a CSA close to you.

5) Help end World Hunger

Get involved in the fight to end world hunger. The World Food Programme website has a wonderful “Get Involved” page with a number of ways to play a role in the fight against world hunger. You can get involved by donating or participating in FreeRice, Women 4 Women, Adding a banner to your site, Students against Hunger, and Teach Hunger to name just a few of the ways to help.

Visit the WFP site & learn more.

1. Live Anywhere Lighting by designer Linda Allen

Linda Allen, who has years under her belt as an established interior designer, just launched her first line of lamps called Live.Anywhere, which are exclusively available at David Sutherland showrooms.

Why the name Live.Anywhere? Linda wanted to create a line of lamps that could be used literally anywhere. When she realized that the technology for what she was trying to create didn’t exist though, she decided to invent it herself.

Linda Allen has re-designed the LED bulb to 7 watts, which emulates the power of a 50-watt bulb. The lamps are wireless, rechargeable and waterproof. They can be used indoors or outdoors, and might revolutionize the way we use outdoor space. They give consumers the ability to put a lamp in the middle of a room without cords to trip over, or on an outdoor deck for reading after sunset. Using this patented technology, you can — as Linda says — live anywhere.

2. KonnectUs – Cloud-based software allows for easy cross-platform sharting

Web design is becoming portable and will need to be able to shape shift for whatever device it is called to. KonnectUs is a brilliant first step in what I hope to see more of in the very near future.

Last year, we expressed a yearning for something we called the Continuous Client that would allow us to pick up on one device where we left off on another, and in less than a year we saw the advent of HP’s“Touch-to-share” technology, but our dreams weren’t fully fulfilled — we longed for a platform that would offer seamless sharing across all of our devices. Well, it’s like we rubbed a bottle and KonnectUs popped out. The cloud-based software is a collaborative effort between Sensus and Open Exhibits that enables you to transfer files and information across platforms — including Windows, iOS, and Android — with a simple swipe of your finger. As it turns out, KonnectUs was built with museums in mind, but the company is offering APIs for integration into third party applications — so maybe the perfect world isn’t that far off after all. ( Engadget, 3.24.2011)

3. Ecovative Design that could replace plastics.

Growing eco-friendly packaging from Fungi

Ecovative’s vision is to grow sustainable products that directly replace plastics. Its products require far less energy to create, can be grown from many different regional feedstocks and can be composted without processing in backyards and gardens.

Ecovative’s technology has the potential to eliminate a significant amount of environmentally harmful foams, including the expanded polystyrene used worldwide in packaging, automobiles, building construction and consumer goods.

Idea Categories:
Once you have “defined” your subject you will now have lots of material floating around in your head to work with. By looking at various creative ideas we can classify them into “idea categories”. With your subject in mind look at each category and see if any ideas come to mind? Are there symbols I can merge to illustrate “music piracy”? Can I change a physical characteristic of a pirate to make the association of music? etc.

Merge
Word Play (Pun,Rhyme, etc)
Juxtapose / context
Physical Characteristics
Non-Physical Characteristics
Comparison / Analogy
Function
Can & Can’t / Is & Isn’t
Time / Consequence
Irony / expectations / literal meaning
Parody

There is a new web browser out there and I like it!

It’s called Rockmelt and its built on top of Chromium, the open source platform that Google Chrome was built on. The Rockmelt press release says it’s fast, secure, and reliable and it seems to be. I was leary at first as I’m not a fan of applications that need to have direct connection to my Facebook account information, posts, friends, etc. However, once I got past that and starting using it I must say I’m impressed.

It’s intuitive, easy to use and gives me more easy access to all the information that I so often miss. I love the ability to add buttons on the right for my favorite RSS feeds and I can keep up easier with what my friends and family are posting. Also like the visual display of frequently visited sites, similar to Safari. I will be spending more time with this browser as it has shown that it is worth the effort. Thanks to the team at Rockmelt for creatively laying out the loads of information we’re constantly having to sift through.

ENGADGET SAYS:

Been thinking that Firefox or Chrome browser of yours just isn’t, say, social enough? Probably not, but RockMelt is hoping that’s exactly what you’ll think after you try out its web browser. The Mountain View startup, which is backed by web bigwigs such as Marc Andreeseen, has just released its new browser in a limited beta today, and it’s — as you probably may have guessed — built entirely around social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Using Chromium at its core, the browser naturally looks and feels a lot Chrome — fret not, Incognito mode is still there — but there are some clear interface tweaks. As you can see in the screenshot above, the left edge integrates your Facebook friends so you can chat, send messages or check out status updates no matter what site you’re visiting. (Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to poke from the interface! Blasphemy!) The right column is meant for Twitter and RSS feeds — both are updated in the background and use “push notifications” to let you know how many unread messages or posts you’ve got piling up. You can update your statuses from both rails as well as share the site you are reading by just hitting the large share button to the left of the search bar. It’s all fairly straightforward and actually works quite well.

However, RockMelt is pitching itself as more than just a sharing platform — it also claims to have improved the speed and ease of search. Instead of the search box taking you to a Google search page, it brings up the results in a box of its own and allows you to visit the different sites within the browser window — basically, you don’t have to keep clicking back and forth from that Google search page. It’s fairly neat, and actually does seem rather snappy. So, when can you try out RockMelt yourself? We wish we had better news, but it’s in a limited beta for both Mac and PC, so your best bet is to head over to the source link and give away your Facebook details (if you’re cool with forking over that info). Based on our first impressions, it’s definitely worth putting your name in the running.

MASHABLE SAYS:

RockMelt, a new browser that lives in the cloud and uses Facebook authentication to synchronize a user’s browsing experience across machines, went into limited public beta today.

It was built around the premise that the browser is busted. The thought is that older browsers aren’t made for the way we now use the web, and maybe it’s a solid way of thinking. After all, browsing is a passive activity, and the Internet is increasingly about interaction.

There are some unique concepts here, namely the fact that RockMelt lives in the cloud. This allows your “browser experience” to be, in a way, profiled. Your settings, bookmarks, etc., are all backed up online.

Using Facebook for authentication, your user environment can be replicated anywhere RockMelt is installed. And really, that’s what RockMelt is all about: The user environment.

Users of Google Chrome will feel at home, because RockMelt is built on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s browser. The major differences are columns running down each side of the browser.

The left side depicts your favorite Facebook contacts. When a contact is listed on the left bar, you’ll be able to quickly initiate Facebook chats with them or post content to their Facebook walls. You can also easily send them e-mails through the seamless contact popout.

Straddling the right side is your bookmarks — and here’s another area where RockMelt’s cloud is put to clever use. Bookmarks are updated from the cloud, so content is cached and waiting for you when you log on.

All in all, RockMelt is an interesting twist on the browsing experience. The social elements of the browser make for a compelling and streamlined online interaction process. And because it’s powered byChromium, it not only supports Chrome extensions, it’s guaranteed to support the latest and greatest aspects of the web, like HTML5 and CSS3.

RockMelt is now in limited beta and you can apply for an invitation.

PC WORLD SAYS:

A new Web browser, Rockmelt debuts in limited beta Monday and aims to help you keep tabs on your Facebook friends and your favorite sites, and make your Web searches faster. Backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, Rockmelt was first reported on by The New York Times in August 2009. At the time, Rockmelt was supposedly going to be a next-generation Web browser designed to take advantage of new Web applications and services.

A year later, and Rockmelt appears to be nothing more than another social networking-focused browser similar to Flock. Just like Flock, Rockmelt incorporates your social networking activity into browser sidebars so you can stay up to date on your friends’ activities while you browse other parts of the Web. Unlike Flock, however, Rockmelt features a single sign-on profile tied to your Facebook ID that you can carry with you using any computer running Rockmelt. Both browsers are based on Chromium, Google’s open source project that is basically a test ground for Google Chrome.

YOUTUBE VIDEO:

In addition to Dana’s inspiring words and down to earth humor, he mentioned a book that he highly recommends – Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. This book looks amazing and I immediately felt connected to its message. Already started reading the digital version.

Amazon Link | E-Book at B&N

Quotes:
“It takes courage to grow-up and become who you really are” ~ E.E. Cummings
“We are happy when everything inside us is corresponding to something outside us” ~ W.B. Yeats
“I do what I want to do, it’s just fortunate that other people like it” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
“Design can be a force for social good” ~ Dana Arnett
“Behavior is the new marketing” ~ Dana Arnett
“Design has no rules, question everything” ~ Dana Arnett
“Where is the knowledge we lost in information” ~ T.S. Elliott
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” ~ Albert Einstein