Locker Pulse began as a side project that Adam was working on but now it has become our next major business venture at Pure Adapt. Read more about the conception of LockerPulse on Adam’s blog.

The design process has begun and I’m very excited to be involved in this unique venture into sports with the design ideas that we have. Take a sneak peek at what we have so far on the LockerPulse splash page and if you sign up now you’ll receive a special offer on launch. In the LockerPulse design we hope to bring users a better way to stay connected with their favorite sports teams through usability and simplicity with some badass aesthetics.

Starting with this unique design concept that we have really gives me an opportunity to push my design skills to the next level. Speaking of design, I want to say how much I hate IE for the umpteenth time, because it renders everything like crap. Now getting off that topic I’ll be using resources like Smashing Magazine for inspiration to get my design juices flowing and inject them into LockerPulse. The design is coming along and I can’t wait till we unveil it to the world in May.

LockerPulse is coming 5.1.2010! Sign up today to get a special offer when it goes public.

A major earthquake hit Concepción, Chile on February 27, 2010 which impacted Earth as much as to have shifted the Earth’s axis 3 inches and shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds. Recorded at 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale it’s the 7th strongest in recorded history. Here we have another country devastated by a major earthquake less than 2 months after Haiti was struck. My Monthly Charity for February 2010 will be for the Save the Children organization as they prepare to send an assessment team to focus on the needs of children and their families.

Any disaster increases the vulnerability of children. And we know from experience that an earthquake of this enormity — with widespread destruction of homes, schools, infrastructure and piece of mind — will put thousands of children at risk, said Charles MacCormack, Save the Children’s president and CEO. – Save the Children Readies to Respond to Massive Earthquake in Chile

Our mission is to create lasting, positive change in the lives of children in need in the U.S. and around the world.

Our priorities are to ensure that children in need grow up protected and safe, educated, healthy and well-nourished, and able to thrive in economically secure households.

We provide a wide range of programs, including:

• Training community health workers to care for newborns and young children;
• Protecting vulnerable children from abuse and exploitation;
• Helping communities in at-risk countries to be prepared in advance of natural disasters; and
• Improving children’s health through regular exercise and nutritious food in the U.S.

– Save the Children Mission Statement

Save the Children does work around the world to help children in need and when an earthquake of this magnitude hits anywhere in the world it will surely be needed. There is an estimated 580,000 children that maybe affected by the quake. There will be a lot of children that will be in dire need of assistance after an earthquake like this and Save the Children will do it’s part to help.

How can we help? We can help the children of Chile by contributing to the Save the Children’s Emergency Fund which helps the organization respond to those in need in the disaster zone. Recovery efforts have just begun but every little contribution will make a difference.

Donate to the Children’s Emergency Fund Now >>

While I was redesigning my blog and looking for inspiration I stumbled upon an amazing web design site, SmashingMagazine.com, which is choc full of useful web design information and inspiration.  When I first found the site I couldn’t get off it because of all the great information it had.

Smashing Magazine was founded in 2006 with the purpose of providing readers information about the latest trends and techniques in web development.

While I was on the site I found myself constantly pondering things like “I want to read this, I want to try that, or that’s awesome”. The quality of content that SmashingMagazine.com offers makes it one of my top design resources. Since discovering the site when I redesigned my blog about 5 months ago, visiting Smashing Magazine has become one of my beginning steps in my design process for inspiration and the latest design trends.

Check out some of their recent posts:

• 50 Useful Coding Techniques (CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms)
• The Seven Deadly Sins Of JavaScript Implementation
• Email Newsletter Design: Guidelines And Examples
• 35 Beautiful E-Commerce Websites

Smashing Magazine is an awesome design resource so as designers lets take advantage of resources like Smashing Magazine to keep up with trends and continue to innovate the web.

Nestling up to a cauldron of pressurized, molten rock is almost never a good idea. But in Mexico’s Naica mine, the payoff is worth the risk.

About 900 feet below the surface, there is a chamber filled with gypsum. It’s the same stuff that goes in the drywall in your house, only in Naica it spent half a million years parboiling in a chamber filled with magma-heated water.

Suddenly miners showed up and started pumping the mineral-rich broth out to get at valuable silver and lead deposits nearby. The result is a cavern filled with crystals 36 feet long and weighing in at up to 55 tons, easily the largest in the world…

See the complete story at Discovery.com – The Mega Crystals of Naica Mine: Big Pics.

The basis of this image swap technique is to set a background image to be your image you want to have swapped when you hover over it. Then insert the default image which will sit on top of the background hiding the background. Create a style to change the opacity of the default image to full transparency when you hover over it, voila you have an image swap.

Requirements
CSS3 Property: Opacity
Opacity changes the transparency of an element. Most modern browsers already support this CSS3 property. Set values between 0.0 (full transparency) to 1.0 (no transparency).

CSS2 Property: Pseudo Class :hover
Pseudo Class :hover is a dynamic action that happens when you hover over an element.

Examples:

Basic image swap using CSS.

The Code:
HTML
<div id=”css-image-swap-1″>
<img id=”swap-1″ src=”default-image-url” alt=”CSS image swap” />
</div>

CSS
#css-image-swap-1{
width:300px; height:150px; background:url(swap-image-url);
}
#css-image-swap-1 img:hover{
opacity:0;
}

I mentioned above that this method should work with most the modern browsers but I know it doesn’t work for IE7 and older because IE totally sucks.

I’m sure this has been done before but I’d thought I’d share this with everyone. I didn’t find this particular technique when I searched for CSS image swap but I did find others using this basic concept using CSS visibility instead of CSS opacity. Both techniques will get the job done for an image swap.

This Super Bowl weekend we got something fun in the works at Detailed Image.  We’re doing a Super Bowl free shipping promo with a special bonus for free products. The special bonus is if you pick the winner of the Super Bowl between the Colts and Saints you’ll automatically receive a free 8oz Optimum No Rinse and Microfiber All Purpose Towel.

This is another example of the creative promotions we can do at Pure Adapt. Last April we did this cool little Easter egg promotion where eligible orders received a random plastic egg with a gift certificate in it.

It’s exciting when we really get to be creative with our marketing.  We try to keep it fresh so that our promotions don’t get mundane and over done.  We’ve done a great job in my opinion in keeping things pretty flexible so that we can do promotions like this.  When I’m planning out our marketing promotions I can see it getting repetitive and it’s nice when you get something new out there for our customers.

The thing I like best about his promotion is how the customer gets involved in the promo for a chance to get some free products.

Here are the complete details to our Super Bowl XLIV promotion:

Super Bowl Free Shipping
Coupon Code:  superbowl44
Bonus - Pick the winner of the Super Bowl and get a free 8oz Optimum No Rinse (ONR) and 1 DI Microfiber All Purpose Towel. Enter your Super Bowl pick in the comment field as “Colts” or “Saints”.

Minimum purchase $75 is required for free shipping and bonus. You must place a valid order using coupon code superbowl44 to make your pick eligible for free products. This offer cannot be combined with any other offers. Free shipping is only valid to 48 contiguous US states. Offer ends Sunday, February 7, 2010 6:00 PM EST.

I’m looking forward to a great Super Sunday, can’t wait.

When a major natural disaster hits, the American Red Cross has been there for emergency aid for those in need since 1881. The recent devastating earthquake in Haiti prompts the return of the Red Cross as My Monthly Charity.

See my previous post about a string of tragic natural disasters in My Monthly Charity May 2008 featuring the Red Cross and all the great humanitarian things they do.

My Monthly Charity January 2010 will bring the Haiti earthquake aid to the spotlight featuring the Red Cross.

How the Red Cross is Helping

Funds Spent/Committed for Haiti Earthquake Response
American Red Cross Funds Spent/Committed for Haiti Earthquake Response [PDF]

In an operation that has involved more emergency response teams than any other single-country disaster in global Red Cross history, the American Red Cross has so far spent or committed more than $67 million to meet the most urgent needs of earthquake survivors in Haiti.

The American Red Cross is currently focusing on three areas through its emergency responders and partners:

1. Sending food to those in need, including 3 million pre-packaged meals and funding for World Food Program efforts that will enable them to feed up to 1 million people for a month.
2. Providing clean drinking water, including 3.5 million liters distributed to date in 68 settlements. Each day, the Red Cross is distributing enough water for 100,000 people.
3. Distributing shelter items, such as blankets, tarps, sleeping mats and tents, to families who have been left homeless.

The Red Cross is also meeting the health needs of Haitian survivors and providing support to Haitian families in Haiti and the US. This includes providing relief supplies, shipment of blood products, family linking services and providing Red Cross volunteers to the USNS Comfort, which have been in Haiti for one week.

Ways you can help the Red Cross:

• Make a donation
  • A new way of giving is now available right through your phone by texting “Haiti” to 90999 and a small donation will be made to the Red Cross. (See my post about “A New Way of Giving”)
• Volunteer your time
• Give blood

The effects of this earthquake has been magnified by the fact that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Haiti will needs lots of help to recover and you can help today. Aid the Haiti relief effort today through the Red Cross

It’s been just about 2 years since Tastefully Driven was launched in April 2008 and sadly to say it’s not working out for us and it will be closing down for good on March 1, 2010.

Why close down?

• Streamlines our warehouse and shipping processes
• Eliminates the cumbersome Amazon sales
• Lack of resources to make Tastefully Driven successful
• Focus on the growth of Detailed Image
• Opens up opportunities for new non ecommerce projects
• Amazon customers we get have no loyalty

The bottom line right now is that Tastefully Driven requires too many resources for a minimum profitability. There were big hopes for Tastefully Driven but unfortunately the resources just weren’t there to really do what we wanted to. Every time I go to the site I’m a little bit surprise on how great the site was developed but this is the best decision.

I personally like the decision to go less ecommerce because we’re in this vicious perpetual cycle of debt because of how retail works. As we grow we will need more inventory, which cost more money up front, which will continue to happen over and over till you max out your growth and profits are put towards debt and that’s not even including any expansion to new products. My view is that this cycle won’t stop for a while and this year we hope get more into self sustainable sites that make us money like a Sports Lizard or our new WoodyPaigeQuotes.com which should generate some ad money.

Overall this was a pretty simple decision for us to make as we always review what we do in our business and make the necessary changes. This is what I love about the business that my partners and I have created, is the fact that we have the flexibility to do what is needed and what we want to do.

Good bye Tastefully Driven! CLOSING SALE – 30% OFF EVERYTHING

The recent devastating earth quake in Haiti has brought forth a new way of giving through text messaging. Help Haiti by making a $10 donation to the American Red Cross by simply texting “HAITI” to 90999. Michelle Obama has been all over TV promoting this simple way to give (see video below).

Mgive has provided this very simple way for people to make a donation in seconds to the Red Cross. Mobile donations have raised millions of dollars for Haiti already and still counting. Basically by texting “Haiti” to 90999, a charge will show up on your monthly bill or debited from your pre-paid balance and a $10 donation will be made to the Red Cross relief for Haiti. In a short amount of the time this way of giving has proven how powerful mobile transactions can be.

This is just the beginning of mobile transactions as our mobile devices become more and more powerful.

• Texting donations like the Red Cross has done
• Paypal Mobile offers an easy way to send money using text messaging
• iPhones offer the capability to be a credit card terminal.

I can imagine a future where my mobile phone will become my central hub for financial transactions. Think about your mobile phone as your credit card, debit card and all your club and store cards. We’re making our way there and texting a donation is just the beginning. Mobile transactions are coming to a phone near you!

Like always when new ways of transacting become popular there will also be scams out there. Always be aware of who your are giving to, donate to reputable organizations and check the organizations credentials.

Help Haiti today by making a $10 donation to the Red Cross today by texting “Haiti” to 90999 or visiting RedCross.org.

Sometimes using the trackball can become a pain the ass while using Pandora on my Blackberry, so I went to seek out enlightenment from the almighty Google. A couple of searches later I got nothing.  Let the experimenting begin. After a little experimenting later I was able to figure out the most important keyboard shortcuts.

Pandora Keyboard Shortcuts for Blackberry from the now playing screen:

Space Bar – pause/play
L – goes to station list
U – thumbs up
D – thumbs down
A or S – next song
C – closes the ad
M – takes you to “more info” link on the ad

I’ve only done this on my BlackBerry Curve 8330 so I don’t know if this applys to other Blackberrys but I’d assume they’d be the same.