Google have started testing this and from what I’ve read not everyone is seeing it.

That’s right Google’s home page fades in, don’t worry you are not going mad.

Basically the home page of Google is very minimal until you hoover the mouse over the page.  Once the mouse is in action the home page comes to life and the fade effect will bring all the usual links into play.

There’s not much I can write about this other than it’s a nice touch from Google! I recorded the effect for you all to see.

Here’s a quick video showing the effect in action.

Here’s TechCrunche’s take on it.

Update:  Google have now gone live with this feature, read more about it at their blog.

I redesigned my blog over the last couple of months and after I changed my mind a few times, I stumbled onto Thesis.  Like many of you I have downloaded hundreds of blog themes and if you are like me then you may find it hard to choose a design.

That’s when I found Thesis.  Thesis is by far the best WordPress theme I’ve ever used and it is a little overwhelming at the start but it provides an extensive array of user feature allowing you to customize how your site looks in a matter of clicks.  This may seem a little restricted for some of you but if you are confident coding CSS then this theme is your blogging oyster.

This Thesis video gives you a quick overview of it and how I designed this site.

Tutorials

There are many Thesis tutorials out there but the chap you must follow is the teenage blogger Alex Fraiser.  Man can that guy code some nice sites.  I highly recommend you subscribe to his feed over at Blogussion & Asino also check out Greg Rickaby, he is clearly excellent at what his does.

See the tutorial below which inspired my design.

www.blogussion.com/thesis/4-ways-customized-thesis-theme

Also check out 8 Thesis theme Design Tips

See what’s new in Thesis 1.5

See what’s new in Thesis 1.6

Interested in starting a freelance business based around Thesis

If you have any questions about Thesis then please ask in the comment section below.

This short video shows you what Posterous is and a quick tour of the Posterous control panel and features.

Posterous is a blog posting service which will automatically notify ALL of your social networking services.  All you have to do is send an email to your Posterous account and it updates the services you have setup within your Posterous account.

Yesterday I was testing a few features. I recorded a voice message on my iPhone, emailed it to my Posterous account and within minutes it was online converted into a player. You can listen here, this was also added automatically to my Twiter and various other accounts. Pretty neat considering all I had to do was email it.

OK, so what’s the point of that you’re thinking… (I thought the same) Well there’s not much point in my example post but there are endless opportunities and ideas where this service could be used in your business.

Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. Launched in July 2008 and now growing fast. Posterous allows you to share your thoughts, photos, audio and files with friends and family.

Ideas

• Send voice memos to self.
• Send video recordings of site visits so your colleagues in the office could see them.
• Send images or videos for location visits.
• Send image of houses or garden you may be working on.
• Send interviews directly online so colleagues or VA’s could download them.
• Send private images to family and friends
• The list goes on…

These are just some examples of how I thought it could be used. Why not go and start your own daily iPhone cast and publish it online in your niche.

Go check out Posterous today and play around.

Once you setup your Posterous account let me know.

Found a new location based social network site called Brightkite it’s not taking off yet but it looks like it could get big.

It seems like these text, web twitter update sites are getting popular all of them having a different twist.

Brightkite is location based so you Check In and it pops up saying where in the world you are.

See my profile brightkite.com/people/DavidF and get posting.  The beauty of this is it work with the iPhone allowing the user to email pictures up.

I wrote this post a few weeks ago about a DVD project I had completed bu t I hadn’t really posted much about the DVD itself.

The DVD was really a tester project for me to learn all the skills needed to produce a DVD.

The good news is that it’s now listed on Amazon and ready for sale. The DVD is actually in NTFS format and viewable in all regions so I need to get Amazon to make the changes.

The sale page for the DVD is stored on another site, also I have listed on eBay for some extra SEO!

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW!!

Google talk launched a new service allowing user to chat with you directly from a link on your site.

You can see my chatback link on the right which shows my online status.

The great thing is your visitors don’t even need a Google account to chat with you, they can just chat with you as a guest. It’s simple to add to you site, I just copied one small iframe script and pasted it into my Blog template and the chat button looks like this on your page:

What is Joost?

What’s Joost? It’s free TV, with the choice to watch alone or with friends. Joost is packed with Internet tools such as instant messaging and channel chat, allowing people to really share the TV experience.

Joost TV has been launched and is looking like a neat little program.

When I first tried it out I was annoyed at how slow things were but left it a day or so, shut down some of my programs and tried it out today. It was a much better experienced and I was impressed with how good the quality was.

Although I don’t recognise many of the programs on Joost there’s lots of music related videos, comedy shows and sporting moments. It seems like the developer have much planned with video sharing and a developer kit coming out soo so some of you can create your own widgets.

Who’s Behind it ?

Joost or The Venice Project as it was known is bought to you by the team who created Skype, basically Skype does TV after they sold it to eBay for heaps of cash. Joost is a P2P TV and Video viewing platform in Beta. It’s a fairly small application and installed easily I my machine.

You can find out more info about Joost on their site or follow their Blog. If I had more Joost beta invites I would you send you one but I gave them all away earlier today.

The Video Review

Watch a full size video of the same review.

OK I’m back after pondering over using WordPress or sNews. It’s been a few months but I decided to go with WordPress as it has a few more plugins that I require.

Nothing against sNews, it’s a great CMS and one I will continue to use for some sites.