Web Design Tutorials and Tips

What’s up! Today we have another great giveaway and it is something useful for webmasters, entrepreneurs, bloggers, web developers or even designers. We are giving way 3 copies of PHP Link Directory (PhpLD), courtesy of David from phplinkdirectory.com.

Let’s take a look at what PhpLD is all about and how you can win yourself a copy.

PhpLD is a web directory script, written in PHP. Web link directories are collection of links to other websites, and are usually organized and sort by categories. Here are some examples of some notable web directories on the Internet:

• http://dir.yahoo.com/
• http://www.dmoz.org/
• http://www.avivadirectory.com/

Now, all these can be done with PhpLD script. It’s easy to install, customize and there’s no need to worry about coding. PhpLD can be used as a standalone link directory of a specific niche or you can use it as part of your website. E.g, if you run a web development blog, you can create a directory that consist links to useful Javascripts (MooTools, jQuery, Scriptaculous), snippets and plugin sites.

(Socialrific.com – Link directory site that uses PhpLD)

PhpLD comes equipped with tons of additional features. You are also allowed to control the widgets, layout, and customize the template; that gives you a unique-looking directory. Click here for more demo of PhpLD.

(Examples of PhpLD features.)

How to win

If you are interested in winning yourself a copy of PhpLD (worth $80/each), drop a comment below. Contest starts today, ends 5th of October 2010. Good luck.

Ever wanted to do some online shopping only to find out that the online store does not allow you to access their website from a country outside of their own? Many retailers (mainly from the United States or United Kingdom) do this; sometimes you cannot browse the store products, while others don’t ship outside of the country.

(Image Source: Fotolia)

Well, in this mini-series we will teach you how to access, browse and shop from websites like these. In this first post, we’ll first show you how to browse these websites even if you aren’t within the country.

Editor’s Note: In future articles, we’ll give you some payment alternatives for when the website does not accept your local credit card and how to ship your purchases from the website to your doorstep when they do not offer international shipping.

Recommended Reading: 20+ Coupon Sites For The Best Shopping Deals And Bargains

1. TunnelBear

TunnelBear is a very simple to use program with an On/Off switch to surf on US or UK websites. Upon installation, you’ll have to register with an email address in order to start using it.

You’ll then have 500MB of free bandwidth to use per month (tracked by the program). This is plenty if you know what you want to buy and just want to click on that ‘Buy Now’ button.

Download: Windows | Mac | iOS | Android

2. Tor Browser Bundle

The Tor Browser is a simple Firefox portable browser, modified with Tor to let you surf on websites that deny you access based on your location. Upon downloading the file and extracting its contents, just click on Start Tor Browser to begin surfing.

Don’t treat this as a replacement for your primary browser as the Tor Browser just allows basic usage without browser plugins.

Download: Windows | Mac | Linux

3. HotspotShield

HotspotShield is a program that allows you to surf and shop on blocked sites. However, the free version is heavily ad-supported and you might have to click on some ads to continue surfing.

There is no registration required or bandwidth limitations. Once installed, it runs in the background and you can use your primary browser to surf.

Download: Windows | Mac | iOS | Android

4. PrivateTunnel

To download PrivateTunnel, you’ll have to first register for an account and download the program. You get 100MB monthly bandwidth but can earn more if you refer friends to get the program or when they make a purchase.

The program is easy to use and lets you surf on websites in the US, UK, Canada and Switzerland.

Download: Windows | Mac | iOS | Android

5. OkayFreedom

You don’t have to register for an account if you can live with 500MB of bandwidth per month. However, you can earn 100 MB per recommendation and get a total of 1GB usage per month for free.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the OkayFreedom, the icon sits on your PC taskbar for easy access. You can check how much you have used here. It allows you access to websites in the US, UK, Germany, France and Switzerland.

Download: Windows

When you are migrating your computer system from Windows PC to Mac, one of the things that would be a hassle is the transfer of emails stored in your PC to Mac. This situation will arise when you set your email client to store all your email locally, especially for POP3 mail server. Email transfer can be done as easily as copying a file, but opening the email file… well, it’s not that simple.

Office emails are normally handled in Outlook on Windows Live Mail, while for Mac, you have a different email system by Apple, that caters to a different email format. If you happen to use Thunderbird as the client for your office emails on your Windows PC, then this migration is simple as Thunderbird offers the same application for Mac, but if you are on Windows Live Mail, you will need to change the file format so it can be read on your Mac. If you happen to use IMAP mail server, then this wouldn’t be much a problem since you can sync emails from the server (IMAP stores all email in server so you can access from anywhere).

In this quick guide, we will share how you can import Windows Email with .eml extension and open it in your Mac Mail. We will get this done with Eml2Mbx, a simple application that will duplicate eml file and change it to mbx file.

Import Windows Mail to Mac

Before you can import all email files from your Windows Live Mail, first you need to download Eml2Mbx from the official download site. Scroll down, look for ‘Eml to Mbx’ and download.

Once the files are downloaded, unzip the folder to anywhere that’s easy for access, and click open the file ‘Eml2Mbx’.

Before you can convert your files, you need to first export your email files. If you have already exported your Windows Email file to a folder in .eml format, start with Step 2 below.

1. Export Windows email

To export your email, open your Windows Email application, click on the ‘File’ button, go to ‘Export email’ and select ‘Email messages’.

Select ‘Microsoft Windows Live Mail’ and click ‘Next’.

Select the folder you want to save your email files to, and click ‘Next’. The folder must be an empty folder.

Now select the email folder you want to export, click ‘Next’ and you are done.

Your emails are now saved in the folder you selected earlier, with .eml extension.

2. Converting Email Extension .eml to .mbx

To convert .eml email format to .mbox so you can read them on your Mac, open the Eml2Mbx application you have downloaded earlier, look for the folder where you saved the email files. Then select the email file you want to convert and click ‘Open’.

Once you clicked on the ‘Open’ button, the file will be duplicated automatically, but with .mbx extension.

The Eml2Mbx.exe file can only convert 1 file at a time so this task is time-consuming, but you can convert emails in batches too.

To do this, open the Eml2Mbx folder you downloaded earlier, copy two files ‘batchconvert‘ and ‘eml2mbx.exe‘, and paste them in the saved email directory.

With the two files included in the same email folder, click to run the ‘batchconvert‘ file, and all your emails in the folder will be converted to .mbx format.

3. Import Windows Email To Mac

Now that you already have email files saved in .mbx extension, copy and transfer these files to your Mac as you get ready to import.

Open your Mac Mail client, go to ‘File’ and select ‘Import Mailboxes’.

Select the file type you want to import, in this case, select ‘Files in mbox format’ and click ‘Continue’.

Select all the email files (in .mbx format) that you want to import and click ‘Choose’.

Now your emails will be imported to your Mac Mail client, and you can access these emails from the new folder created with the name ‘Import’ on the left sidebar.

Conclusion

The process may look long, but it’s worth the effort to keep your email saved in your records even if you are changing your computer system.

One of the most human-friendly features for Operating System like Windows is probably its ability to change the displaying image on the desktop screen, a.k.a Desktop Wallpaper. It can be your girl friend’s photo, or a professional typography illustration, but if you’re like me who prefers a more relaxing computing environment, cartoonic wallpapers are probably for you!

(Image Source: Momkai x Desktops)

Not, they are not wallpapers from any Disney’s cartoon series, but 38 unique wallpapers which possess cartoonic feature and they are all fun, relaxing and even amusing! Make some of them your desktop wallpaper today so your tightened nerve can get relaxed every time you fall back from your work application!

Updates: Error links in wallpapers has been removed. (30-07-12)

Lion. Available in the following size(s): 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1920×1440. (Image Source: Vladstudio)

Whale. Available in the following size(s): 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1920×1440. (Image Source: Vladstudio)

Assembling Mobile Suit. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900. (Image Source: wallcoo.net)

Spektrum XI 11. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1900×1200, 2560×1600. (Image Source: Momkai x Desktops)

Belka And Strelka. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440. (Image Source: Smashing Magazine)

Chameleon Octopus. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1900×1200, 2560×1600. (Image Source: Momkai x Desktops)

Chasing By Boss. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900. (Image Source: wallcoo.net)

Ignate Paper. Available in the following size(s): 1920×1080. (Image Source: Apofiss)

Lemon Paper. Available in the following size(s): 1920×1080. (Image Source: Apofiss)

Little Shen. Available in the following size(s): 1920×1080. (Image Source: Apofiss)

Lights. Available in the following size(s): 1920×1080. (Image Source: Apofiss)

New Beginnings. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200. (Image Source: Smashing Magazine)

Bored Giraffe. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200. (Image Source: Martin Laksman)

Spektrum XI 16. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 480×272, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1280×800, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1600. (Image Source: Momkai x Desktops)

All You Need Is Latte. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200. (Image Source: Martin Laksman)

Kato. Available in the following size(s): 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200. (Image Source: Martin Laksman)

Monsters. Available in the following size(s): 1920×1200. (Image Source: ReckDesigns)

The Octopus. Available in the following size(s): 1900×1200. (Image Source: ReckDesigns)

Toast’s Death 2. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200. (Image Source: milkbun)

Toast’s Death 3. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1920×1200. (Image Source: milkbun)

Raiki Boy. Available in the following size(s): 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1900×1200. (Image Source: Raiki Boy)

Raiki Boy. Available in the following size(s): 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1900×1200. (Image Source: Raiki Boy)

Herp. Available in the following size(s): 640×960, 1024×1024, 2560×1600. (Image Source: David Lanham)

Phosphoric Acid. Available in the following size(s): 640×960, 1024×1024, 2560×1600. (Image Source: David Lanham)

Mesmerized. Available in the following size(s): 640×960, 1024×1024, 2560×1600. (Image Source: David Lanham)

Tools For The Job. Available in the following size(s): 640×960, 1680×1050. (Image Source: David Lanham)

Wild Wild Cats. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1440×1050, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1900×1200. (Image Source: Flameia Design)

Evolution. Available in the following size(s): 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050. (Image Source: Kriture)

Halloween Witch. Available in the following size(s): 1600×1200. (Image Source: ActionTintoy Studio)

Taco. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768. (Image Source: snow–skitty)

Popsicle. Available in the following size(s): 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900. (Image Source: snow–skitty)

Love Japan. Available in the following size(s): 1280×800. (Image Source: VampireJaku)

Stafyface Luvs U. Available in the following size(s): 1680×1050. (Image Source: VampireJaku)

Super Magic Happy. Available in the following size(s): 1280×800. (Image Source: orangecircle)

Shrimpy Cuttlefish. Available in the following size(s): 1280×1024. (Image Source: orangecircle)

Reflection

While there are great cartoonic wallpapers everywhere, we tried our best to provide you the wallpapers with highest quality possible, also with the sense of relaxation. These wallpapers are mostly in very high resolution, so you can also print them out as a wall poster to make your working environment even more relaxing, just a tip anyway!

I believe my eyes can’t catch every great piece of cartoonic wallpaper in the web, so, please share to us if you got any sweet cartoonic wallpaper, after all 38 are never enough for millions of readers!