Laingan.com

I have had taken a few video clips using my mobile phone when I was watching the F1 night race on Sunday. I was quite excited to upload it to the server but I cannot get it to work on my Blog initially.

The WordPress control panel only allows the user to click and add either video or media if you wanted to display it on your website or Blog. What it will display is only the video URL that will bring the viewer to a new tab to watch the video clip but this is not what I want.

As the video file format is a MPEG-4 (MP4), I cannot get it to work with Macromedia Flash which is used by YouTube to embed video clips.

I did a Google search and managed to find some HTML codes that support MP4 file. The video-embedding codes work with Apple QuickTime media player and you need to download a plugin if you don’t have one already installed to your PC.

Here is how the HTML code that embedded with the MP4 video looks like :

<object classid=”clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B” codebase=”http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab” width=”320″ height=”195″><param name=”src” value=”yourfile.mp4″><param name=”autoplay” value=”true”><param name=”controller” value=”true”><embed height=”195″ pluginspage=”http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/” src=”yourfile.mp4″ type=”video/quicktime” width=”320″ controller=”true” autoplay=”true”></object>

Finally, I was successful in making the embedded code to work with MP4 file format and let the video clip play on my Blog. So far, I’m satisfied with the result. 🙂

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I often see motivational posters either displaying on the shelf inside the bookstores or hanging on the walls inside the office. I believe the posters will act as a reminder if not stimulus to get you motivated in your everyday working life.

Ever wonder how nice it would be like if you could create your own motivational posters. You can select the picture that you like, type in the motivational texts and choose the colour that you want.

I just came across a website that allows the users to custom make the motivational posters for free. What you need to do is to upload your picture, choose your design, type in some texts and hit the “Create” button. As simple as that!

Here is my custom-made motivational poster entitled “Persistence“.

Click on this link to access ==> Create Your Own Motivational Poster

Hope you have fun!

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I have the habit of taking photos of things that interest me. I’m patient enough to take a nice photo most of the time except for moments when I’m in a hurry 😉

There will be time when you find that there are some background objects such as a passer-by or over-crowded scene being captured in your photos but you just need the picture of your friend and none others.

I guess most people will wish that they could remove those extra if not eye-sore objects from your photos 🙂 And you will just keep those objects that interest and matter the most to you .

One of the good and free photo-editing software that I use lately is called GIMP (stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program). This is an open-source software that can do most if not all of the jobs of that expensive Photoshop. Thus, GIMP is often referred to as the “alternative to Photoshop“. However, the learning curve of using GIMP is quite steep if you do not know how to use it.

Today, I stumbled upon an interesting and free photo-editing software called Fotoflexer. This is a web-based software that has a tool called Smart Scissors that allows you to cut an object out of a background with just a few clicks. It makes the background disappear, leaving only the foreground subject.

Fotoflexer is very easy to use and you can follow the steps by watching the video clip below :

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I have downloaded an open-source vector graphic editor recently. I got to know about this piece of free software from Twitter so I think it can help to widen my horizon and learn new skills by joining some of the social networking sites 😛

I always wanted to learn how to draw cartoon but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. I think vector graphic software such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, Xara Xtreme and so on can help to shorten the learning curves.

However, most of these vector graphic software are very expensive except for Xara Xtreme which costs less than USD100. Luckily, I found the open-source vector graphic software called InkScape recently while I was considering whether to buy Xtreme or not.

I have been playing around with the software recently and I find it not too difficult to use. I managed to create some simple graphics using Inkscape and I’m having fun using it. But it is not flawless though. Of course, we cannot expect it to have the full-fledge features like those expensive software are providing. Anyway, I’m grateful and happy with Inkscape so far.

My niece’s classmate has had made a sketch of a cartoon mouse on the whiteboard in my house. I based on her master piece and got the inspiration to create the cartoon mouse using Inkscape with my laptop.

Here is my first self-created cartoon :

Do you like My Happy Mouse? I personally like it very much and feel happy that I’m able to draw a cartoon using vector graphic software.

If you are interested, you may download the open-source vector graphic software from : http://www.inkscape.org

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I have all along been curious to find out how other website owners add in shopping cart to their ecommerce websites. I think it is beneficial to know how to do that in case I have the need to do so in the future.

Incidentally, I received an email through a subscription site and it has a video link to show how to add a shopping cart to a website using Xsitepro which is the web-editor software that I use to design my website.

This email came in handy to teach website owners the skill so as to be more proficient for people to use the feature whenever a need arises in the near future.

In fact, it is a frequently-asked question as to whether it is possible to add a shopping cart to websites created with XsitePro and the answer is : “Yes, it can“.

In less than 10 minutes, the video clip will show you how incredibly easy it is to create a fully e-commerce enabled website in XsitePro, complete with shopping cart page and payment processing.

Click the link below to watch the video clip :
How To Add A Shopping Cart To Xsitepro

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I have just created my first website using Xsitepro. I find that this is a great paid web-editor software which is very easy to use. It came with 3 manuals, namely tutorial, tools and essential, that assist the user to design his/her own website.

I did use some free web-editor software before but I find that this kind of free software is more cumbersome to use especially if you do not have much experience or knowledge in designing websites.

I had bought a couple of how-to CDs that teach people on how to build websites using Microsoft’s FrontPage and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver more than a year ago. 

I took the Dreamweaver how-to CD out and spent my whole Sunday afternoon learning how to create a website using Dreamweaver. I must say that the CD is a very good guide as it holds your hand and shows you step by step on how to use the different methods to designing a Dreamweaver website.

However, I feel that Dreamweaver is a very sophiscated kind of web-editor software that suits professional web developers more than novice users. I really got frightened after going through the whole CD but I have to say that Dreamweaver is really a very good piece of web-editor software.

So, I would recommend beginners to use a free web-editor software to learn the basic of designing a website first and then purchase an easy-to-use one such as Xsitepro to start the journey of website designing for youself or for other people.

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