Here’s a really quick 5 step tutorial on creating dotted lines in Photoshop using the brush tool. I’ve always used the font tool and the period for my dots, but this method’s a lot more versatile.  

(thanks bitbox)

This is a super-handy tip.  You can add this simple line of html code and avoid the need for javascript-

<meta http-equiv=”Refresh” content=”1 url=http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html”>

The “1″ is the amount of seconds before the page redirects.  

(thanks crazy leaf)

I ran across this awesome vector generator. I tried it and it works great. You can take a 50×50 pixel image and it will vectorize the hell out of it. You can download a decent .jpg version or cough up $5 for a month of unlimited use. This will definitely come in handy with logos.

(thanks noupe)

I really never thought of AdWords/AdSense being as complicated as this diagram makes it out to be.  There was an SMX event about a month ago and the trade secrets are now public.  A lot of the stuff didn’t seem very interesting but two tidbits stood out.  

The more controversial one involves basically taking advantage of poor saps who don’t know any better, offering them a link exchange, and then throwing a nofollow on it so you get the link love and they don’t, but they’re none the wiser.  This makes me feel a little dirty, it’s a minor offense to be sure, but you’re still deceiving people who trusted you.  

More interesting, was Michael Gray explaining that the Quality Score on landing pages in AdWords had nothing to do with the landing page and everything to do with your organic rankings-

Michael says the Landing Page Quality Score is a lie. It has nothing to do with your landing page. It has to do with your organic rankings. The better you do organically, the better your quality score will be. Learn how to break things.

The only difference was the domain age. The domain that was created in 2006 had its ad jacked up to $10.00. The domain from 2008 was just $.75. It’s not just the domain age. They’re looking at the number of trusted links you get over a period of time. You need a certain number of links but you have to do it over a certain period of time.

How do you beat the Landing Page Quality Score? Every few months Google updates their Landing Page score. If your Web site moves into a non-trusted price jacked category, buy a new domain, create a new ad group, and move all your keywords over.

Google is a data borg. Every piece of data that you give them is going into their borg and being used in their algorithm. Every piece of data can and will be used against you. Think twice before you give it to them. 

(thanks to bruceclay for spilling the beans)

I just found this video of some great urban art.  I will have to swing by 34th street one night to see if these are still up.  My guess is that they are not.  I wonder how long something like this can stay up before the powers that be put us back in touch with proper advertising outlet.  Props to posterchild for the effort.

  
(thanks wooster collective)

I use a MacBook Pro at home these days but I ran across this super simple way to get around having to buy a genuine copy of Windows.  I haven’t tried it, but judging from the comments it seems to work.  Apparently all you have to do is create a text document, copy the code below into it, then save it (first click on “all files” for the file type) as License Key.reg, then double-click the file on your desktop and when a dialog box pops up hit “yes.”  Pretty damn easy.   Here’s that bit of code-

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]  
“CurrentBuild”=”1.511.1 () (Obsolete data – do not use)”  
“ProductId”=”55274-640-1011873-23081″  
“DigitalProductId”=hex:a4,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,35,35,32,37,34,2d,36,34,30,2d,\  
31,30,31,31,38,37,33,2d,32,33,30,38,31,00,2e,00,00,00,41,32,32,2d,30,30,30,\  
30,31,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,86,56,4e,4c,21,1b,2b,6a,a3,78,8e,8f,98,5c,00,00,\  
00,00,00,00,dd,da,47,41,cc,6b,06,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,38,31,30,32,36,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,b5,16,\  
00,00,83,83,1f,38,f8,01,00,00,f5,1c,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\  
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,66,e5,70,f3  
“LicenseInfo”=hex:33,b7,21,c1,e5,e7,cd,4b,fd,7c,c6,35,51,fd,52,57,17,86,3e,18,\  
d3,f4,8c,8e,35,32,7b,d1,43,8d,61,38,60,a4,ca,55,c9,9a,35,17,46,7a,4f,91,fc,\  
4a,d9,db,64,5c,c4,e2,0f,34,f3,ea  

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents]  
“OOBETimer”=hex:ff,d5,71,d6,8b,6a,8d,6f,d5,33,93,fd

You can also go to Microsoft’s website to validate your copy.

I have no recollection of where I linked to this from but here’s the original forum post.