I so recently visited the New York International Auto Show just this past weekend and I have to say I think this year was the year of the foreign mid-size super cars. At the show there was the 2009 Nissan GT-R with its 3.8 liter twin turbo 24-valve V6 motor producing 480hp with 430 lb.-ft. of torque, with a price tag of over $100,000 it’s suppose to be the most expensive Nissan to date. Also at the show was the 2008 Lexus IS-F with its 32- valve V8 producing 416hp with 371 lb.-ft. of torque. This car is not only going to be one of these fastest cars out there under $100,000, but is also the first 8-speed sport direct shift automatic with paddle shifters and manual mode. The BMW M3 Sedan and Coupe were both present at the show sporting their 4.0-liter, V-8 engine producing 414hp to the rear-wheels starting at $53,800.

2008 Lexus IS-F

Without even knowing it videos can be very beneficial to your site in ways you never even thought were possible. I am going to give you a few tips that may help you in turning potential customers into potential buyers. When thinking about putting a video on your site you need to consider were you are going to host that video i.e. on your own personal server or YouTube. If you are going to host in on your local server please create a separate page for each video please do not for get to SEO the page as well. Do not repeat the same information that is on the product page you want fresh new content describing the video in relation to a product or service. Once you have finished this link the video page from your main page or home page put it in an ideal spot other then the footer or side navigation. You want the search engines to know this is an important video to your site. If you are going to host it on YouTube please make sure that you SEO the video for YouTube as well this will help drive traffic to your site i.e. the video name in relation to a product or service. Hopefully this was a little bit helpful leave any comments or views about this new trend.

With an offer of $44.6 billion dollars to acquire a slowly sinking Yahoo, my question is why? Bloomberg.com ~ “Yahoo’s inability to crack Google’s dominance in search has led to eight straight quarters of declining profit and a stock that, before today, had lost half its value in the past two years.” With evidence like that is a smart idea to purchase such a down sizing company. Microsoft in my opinion has one gold in mind and that is to acquire Google in the end which would then lead to a full monopoly of the internet market from the paid ads to your mail service. Supposedly this whole Microsoft is direct counter attack to Google agreeing to purchase DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, Microsoft who opposed the DoubleClick acquisition, claiming it would give Google too much control over the internet ad market. So as of right now it is a waiting game to see what Yahoo will say, Agree or Disagree.

With CES 2008 already gone I figured that I would highlight something that I thought was pretty cool. Basically it is Delphi iPhone control that actually allows you to control your vehicle. You can actually start the car, check its diagnostics, control the windows, and so much more without altering your iPhone. The application just runs through the Safari Browser. Just check it out for yourself at iPhone Controls Vehicle in Real Time Using Delphi’s Concept Web App on Gizmodo.

According to G4TV yesterday there are rumors circulating that Apple wants to take on the digital movie rental market. With talks like this are we really that far from the digital age that everyone is talking about. Personally I think this might seem appealing to some but it will be a while before we all will stop going to the local Blockbuster to pick up a newly released movie and package of microwave popcorn. For one thing if they are to succeed in this market they will have to tackle the popular and growing Netflix with their cheap digital downloads.

First find the image that you would like to apply this effect too, I am going to use an image that I took when I went to Florida this past summer.

1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Apply the following; Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels.
3. Next; Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.
4. Duplicate the layer and with the top layer selected apply the following; Filer > Blur > Gaussian Blur with a radius of about 4 pixels.
5. Finally change the Layer mode from Normal to Overlay.

Please view the bottom images to see if you had a similar effect.

Still haven’t found that perfect holiday gift for that special someone then I advise that you start moving and quickly, with the holidays just under a week you might be wondering, what have I been doing for the past month? Well have now fear I’m going to give you some great sites that you can visit to get those last minute gift ideas.

• Amazon
• Target
• Walmart
• Overstock
• Nordstrom

Granted you might have under a week to get your items but you can always pay the extra shipping cost to get them next day air.

So let us begin by opening up Photoshop and creating a new document about 350 x 350 pixels.

1. Select the Rectangle Tool and draw a square by holding down shift and dragging the rectangle tool from one corner to the next.
2. Next go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options
3. Apply a Gradient Overlay with the following settings this can vary depending on the color of you chose but for this example I am going to use #860909 at the start and #e60909 at the end.
4. Apply a Bevel and Emboss with the following settings Depth 21%, Size 117px, Soften 3px, Angel of 90 degrees, and both opacities at 55%.
5. Finally a drop shadow with the opacity of 45% and all of the default settings selected.
6. Once this is finished add a nice text and you done.

Until next time happy Photoshopping….

First find an image that you would like to apply the effect to, once you have found an image open it in Photoshop.

1. Create a new layer.
2. Take you Ellipse Tool and create several circles filling them with a different color each time…you may do one color but for an added effect you can add multiple.
3. Next apply a Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur with a radius of 14.
4. Finally change the layer’s type to Overlay.
5. View images below to see if you had a similar outcome.

Easy enough…

This is a quick and simple way to make your photos look like they are from a comic. First find a photo that you want to apply the effect too I found this one on Google.

1. Open the photo using Photoshop.
2. Filter > Texture > Grain and use these settings: Intensity 0, Contrast 52, and Grain Type select Speckle.
3. Filter > Artistic > Film Grain with these settings: Grain 3, Highlight Area 0, and Intensity 2.
4. Now duplicate the layer.
5. With the duplicated layer on top and selected Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. Set Max Radius: 4 and leave the rest with the default values.
6. Finally change the layer from normal to darken and apply what ever cool texts you want to apply.
7. View the image outcome of the steps below.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial until next time.