Best tablet apps to keep your kids learning during the holidays

Best tablet apps to keep your kids learning during the holidays

The holidays are a busy time of year, and it can seem tricky to keep your kids occupied during the hustle and bustle of the season. Thankful... 14:50

The holidays are a busy time of year, and it can seem tricky to keep your kids occupied during the hustle and bustle of the season. Thankfully, though, there are plenty of delightful tablet apps (visit iiNet for help with getting online) to keep your kids entertained, while teaching them new skills. Check out these enjoyable holiday apps made especially for kids to make sure they keep on learning during the holiday season!

A Charlie Brown Christmas

This awesome tablet app will surely keep your kids entertained during the holiday season! It features captivating narration from Peter Robbins, who originally voiced Charlie Brown as well as music from the original show. To keep your kids learning, it also has note and word highlighting to improve their musical and reading skills. Kids can enjoy participating in the Lights and Display Content and have fun unlocking rewards, in addition to decorating their very own Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.

Dora’s Christmas Carol Adventure HD

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This top rated educational game app is perfect for keeping kids learning during the busy holidays. It allows children a unique way to experience Dora’s Christmas Carol Adventure, complete with a number of mini-games and interactive activities designed especially for preschoolers. It helps children with their listening comprehension, reading and Spanish vocabulary. It also features Dora singing a Christmas Carol that kids can interact with and teaches lessons on the spirit of Christmas and the importance of sharing.

The Nutcracker and the Mystery of the Disappearing Cheese

Allow your kids to enjoy all of the wonders of the holiday season with this incredible educational app. It allows for imaginative play with activities that educate and nurture your kids’ creativity, including features that allow them to decorate a Christmas tree, drive a train, add logs to the fireplace, bake and decorate a cake, mix and match outfits and play with tin soldiers. It’s also jam-packed with educational games, including a writing game, memory game, matching game, counting game, maze game, patterns game and sorting game to provide them with excellent learning experiences.

First Words Christmas

This popular educational app created for toddlers is a wonderful learning tool for children that helps encourage exploration, engage their minds and teaches them the relationships between words and letters. Children can play with this educational app alone or even bring their parents into the fun as they show them all that they’re learning. It features 40 Christmas words, each gorgeously illustrated and complete with matching holiday sounds.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

This interactive book app was designed from the classic Dr. Seuss story especially for children. It helps kids learn new vocabulary by tapping on pictures, offers highlighted narration to encourage literary skills and even let’s kids record their own narration to share with their family and friends. Parental controls are also available to keep kids in the story, so you can make sure they’re keeping busy!

10 best bootstrap design tools for 2014

10 best bootstrap design tools for 2014

Bootstrap is no doubt one of the most commonly used front end framework in 2013. I am sure many of you have played with or developed on this... 21:17

Bootstrap is no doubt one of the most commonly used front end framework in 2013. I am sure many of you have played with or developed on this particular framework. While bootstrap is solid, there is no harming in seeking out more design tools that can make our lives a bit easier when developing on it. This is why I am rounded up this bunch of bootstrap design tool that you will be using in 2014 and beyond. As usual, if you have more tools to recommend, please leave a comment and let the rest of the community know.

Bootstrap design tool 1: Jetstrap

Jetstrap is a popular tool that designers can use to do mockups on the bootstrap framework. Beyond a mock up tool, Jetstrap also has lots of markups for designers easily and quickly create the interface effects that they want. It is 100% web based and has a trial account for you to take the software for a spin.

Bootstrap design tool 2: Bootply.com

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Bootply is a visual editor that uses a drag and drop interface for designers to quickly create their Bootstrap design. It is incrediably powerful, easy to use and best of all, free. I highly recommend this design tool to readers who want to build on the Bootstrap framework.

Bootstrap design tool 3: Divshot.com

Divshot is a front development tool that works with a number of frameworks including Bootstrap. It has quite a number of useful features including a visual editor, component libraries and a powerful theme switcher. The downside is that this is not a free tool but you do get a quality product.

Bootstrap design tool 4: Bootstrapdesigner.com

Bootstrapdesigner.com focuses on letting designers create html5 templates easily using the Bootstrap framework.  It has a base code for templates that allows you to easily modify them to create your own bootstrap html5 templates. For a theme seller, this will be a good bootstrap design tool to use.

Bootstrap design tool 5: Kickstrap.com

Kickstrap basically wraps a front end layer on top of Bootstrap such that you never see the underlying code. A design just needs to choose which CSS or JS components to use while developing the website. There are also extra stuff such as themes and other UI components to make front end development a lot more faster.

Bootstrap design tool 6: Button Generator

If you just want a quick and free way to generate buttons for your bootstrap design, you can try this. It is simple but gets the job done quickly and without any fuss. Best of all, it is free.

Bootstrap design tool 7: Presentation tools

Here is an interesting alternative to designing bootstrap. Rather than touching the code, you can download the templates from this site and use a presentation tool such as Keynote, Powerful etc to do the designing of the site. The template contains most of the elements you will need to do a beautiful mockup for your site.

Bootstrap design tool 8: Fancyboot.com

I loved this simple but useful design tool. You choose a component you want to tweak and Fancyboot will allow you to see live preview on how the component will look like with the ability to change the color scheme. It is free to use and can be a good way to color test your design.

Bootstrap design tool 9: Layoutlt!

Layoutlt! is one of the rare design tool that a non technical designer can use. Without using a single line of code, you can create a website design by using their drag and drop visual editor. For advanced users, you can still download the html code and start modifying whatever you need.

Bootstrap design tool 10: Easel

Easel is the only in browser design tool for Bootstrap.  The beauty of designing in browser is avoiding the need to go back and forth between the editor and the preview. This tool also allow collaboration so working together becomes much easier and faster.

Answering solutions that help your business grow

Answering solutions that help your business grow

When planning a budget for a business, you have to provide your company with what’s necessary and cut the dead weight. If your secretary is ... 03:56

When planning a budget for a business, you have to provide your company with what’s necessary and cut the dead weight. If your secretary is constantly busy, and you need help directing all of the incoming phone calls, you may be considering hiring someone else for answering services. With updated phone systems, you can set up an advanced answering system for all levels of your company at a much more affordable rate. Using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), you can establish an answering system with many helpful features.

Personalized Options

For professional appearances, you want your call menu and all of your answering services to be completely customized to your business. At-home subscribers may not care if they have an automated standard answering machine, but customers and clients want to feel like they can reach a human even when no one can answer the phone at the moment. You want to be able to customize all of the greetings and provide appropriate answering options for all of your callers. This will enable them to efficiently reach the people they are trying to reach and you to run the office with less hassle.

Adjustable for Departments

In most moderately sized companies, there is more than one department. In addition, the more employees you have, the higher the chances that different people will be working different shifts. With a quality business phone lines, you can have a customized answering recording for each sector and shift in your company. Try to find providers who can handle the size and complexity of your company.

Say that Jim is the human resources contact on Monday and Tuesday, but Kelly works the department Wednesday through Friday. With a good answering system, clients calling that department on Jim’s days will hear his personalized greeting, and those calling during Kelly’s shifts will hear hers. Clients may not be able to reach you all of the time, but they will appreciate knowing that your answering services are always as current as possible. They want to feel like the company is keeping up with them as well, so knowing if they missed Jim or Kelly will make them feel more connected to your business.

Flexible Settings

More important than a customizable program is one than you can go back and readjust. As your company changes, so may some of your employees and departments, so you want to be able to update all of your settings as necessary. A desirable business answering system will be advanced enough to offer several layers of answering services, but should still be very easy to navigate from your computer. You should not have to learn a whole new system to change your voicemail greetings and call directing services.

Multiple Greetings

If you want a different greeting to play for people calling after business hours, a VoIP system can provide that. You can program your hours and certain dates so that people calling at different times will hear different greetings. This will allow your callers calling during odd hours to know exactly why they couldn’t reach you, and when the best time to try again would be. Holiday greetings can also tell constituents when you will be resuming operations for the New Year. This may help you achieve more relevant voicemails as well, because people will know whether or not they will hear back from you that day. Your greetings can often be several minutes long, so you can pack in a great deal of information during off hours.

Calling Privileges

One of the most challenging things about running a business is being able to separate work life from home life. To make that easier, you can use your answering system to block all but pre-approved numbers from reaching you after-hours, on vacation, or over the holidays. Anyone not approved will be automatically directed to voicemail without tempting you to interrupt your well-deserved time off. You can always monitor your voicemails at a convenient time and call back the appropriate people, but only those who your settings have allowed through will actually be able to reach you during off hours. This will hopefully encourage many to wait for the next business day to try to contact you, but they will at least have the option to leave you a succinct message with their concerns.

You may not be able to get rid of a secretary altogether, but a quality business phone system will make things run much more smoothly for you at the office. Find a provider with a plethora of options and an affordable rate, and you can ensure that all of your incoming calls make it to the right destination automatically. A nice answering system will provide a professional front for your business, and it only takes the effort of setup to get started. Consider how upgrading your phone system from a traditional landline system might benefit your company.

Next generation theme – 3 designs in 1

Next generation theme – 3 designs in 1

It is often the case that we need to buy a different theme for each type of design that we want to create. There are some generic themes suc... 03:55

It is often the case that we need to buy a different theme for each type of design that we want to create. There are some generic themes such as Pagelines from Platform Pro that allows you to customize a lot of stuff but they require a bit of coding work. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a new concept called Stacks, created by Theme.co. In simple terms, Stacks is like having a few designs all roll into one single theme. The user just need to select which design they want within one theme and they will have their desired design. This is a great idea and one that I think might appeal to many folks.

Different designs within one theme

Stacks are available through one central theme called X. Within this theme, you simply have to choose which design you want and your whole site changes with just one button click. Below are the current 3 designs X has in its template.  They are called: Integrity, Renew and Icon. You can see how different they look.

Crafted by experts

Each of the stacks that you saw above has been designed by experts.  These are folks who have ran multi million businesses or advertising campaigns and are aware of the kind of features  a converting website should have.  These include best practices from a SEO and conversion point of view. Moreover, these experts have contributed articles and resources that will otherwise have a high price tag. Now, they are freely available to folks who have purchased X.

Each stack is fully customizable

Within each stack, you can further customize each theme using options and short codes. These custom options are not your run of the mill options. You can literally change any aspect of the design from header, width size, textured background, no of widgets, layout format etc. These unlimited customizable options make each stack very different from each other. Best of all, they can be preview live using X’s live customizer, which allows you to view your changes in real time

Other notable features of X

Besides the above, the X theme carries many other benefits and features that are critical to a theme’s success including:

• Responsive: Every stack looks equally good on web and mobile so you don’t have worry about where your site is viewed.
• Slider Revolution: Make your slideshow look good with the revolution slider which is bundled in with X (would cost you $16 if you bought it on your own).
• Intelligent Thumbnails: This is a really cool feature. You simply select how big you want your image to be in the customizer and X can automatically resize all your uploaded image
• Over 600 Fonts
• WooCommerce Ready: You can easily convert your website into an ecommerce store

Are stacks child themes?

Some folks might mistaken stacks as child themes but they are not. Child themes are essentially another theme that is developed within the same framework. Stacks, on the other hand, are already embedded within a single theme and can be change with a few clicks of the mouse. You can definitely still create child themes within the X theme.

X is a innovative theme that attempts to reduce the need for repeat theme purchases by rolling 3 unique designs into one theme. It is darling concept and I encourage you to check it out as it just set a new benchmark on how themes can be developed.

Effective PSD/HTML conversions with PSDCenter

Effective PSD/HTML conversions with PSDCenter

An improper PSD conversion to a webpage can make it heavy and slow, which is never good for any site that wants to build traffic and gain a ... 03:54

An improper PSD conversion to a webpage can make it heavy and slow, which is never good for any site that wants to build traffic and gain a good reputation. To make sites more sustainable and manageable, converting PSD to HTML means:

• Quick Loading Unique Design – Having a unique design will help you stand out from your competitors but you also want to make sure that its optimized to load quickly and increase your chances of conversion
• Easier CMS Integration – PSD to HTML conversions can help you easily integrate into your content management system, CMS, using any theme and lets you focus on managing your content.
• Better Cross Browser Compatibility – No matter where your customers and visitors choose to enter your site, you need to make sure that anyone anywhere can access your content regardless of browser preference.
• Semantic Coding – Your site is easier for any developer to understand, makes it more SEO friendly and easier to define is beneficial to everyone involved.

There are plenty of tutorials you can use to learn how to do this but not many have the kind of time or dedication to accomplish this like PSDCenter. Whether you’re an online merchant, have a lucrative email subscriber list or looking to have a new design for your popular blog, you can get your PSD/HTML conversion done properly.  Here are some great platforms you can convert your design on.

WordPress

If any company knows how to do PSD to WordPress conversion it’s a company that’s built on the WordPress CMS. They know how to optimize your code to make your blog run more efficiently. They can even make sure that your social media and other useful plugins become a part of every article or post on your site, giving visitors ample opportunity to share with fans and followers. While WordPress is built for SEO, each site needs to be tweaked and customized so that it takes full advantage of this feature. That means making sure your tags and Meta tags are right and ready. If you’re constantly generating new content from guest bloggers, you can create a multiple account system that streamlines the guest blog submission process without compromising your site or your personal information.

ECommerce

As an online store owner, you need to find ways to set yourself apart from your competition so that customers will think of you first when they need what you have to offer. More than a quarter of all customers do a lot of their shopping on-the-go and that means your site needs to be mobile ready. It’s not an option; it’s a requirement. Having a responsive design gives your online store that kind of flexibility which allows PC and mobile users to enjoy the shopping experience you provide. PSDCenter will set up your online store, create a logo and Facebook banner and make sure your site is ready for high ranking.  If there are any updates that need to be done, they will do that kind of maintenance for you. They are Bigcommerce experts so they are intimately knowledgeable about the platform as well as Shopify experts.

Email

This is a pretty straightforward email template update that is great for business owners interested in building and capitalizing on their subscriber lists. If you’re looking start or improve your email marketing, then you need to have a professionally done email template that aligns with your brand and your mission. There is one catch: For readers with CSS support such as MS Outlook, Outlook Express and Apple Mail, your template will be easy to see and download.  However, for those that don’t have good CSS support, this customized template may not be well viewed.

EBay Customization

More than a few online shop owners use eBay as an additional sales outlet but if you really want to integrate JavaScript into your listing, you have to know how to do it. EBay doesn’t really allow anyone to pull the code from an external source; it needs to be built into your page. Plus, if you want to use the high quality images from your site without incurring those extra per-image fees, you need to make sure you’re able to give customers the full view of your offering without impeding the experience. Using PSD Center you can make sure that your images display properly in whatever format you want using light code that won’t give you problems with eBay or create issues with customers. For mobile customers scrolling can be a deterrent hat takes up too much time. You can customize the page in a way that provides all the information they will need to access at the top of the page, making it easier for them to view your listing without scrolling. All they have to do is click on one of the tabs and see the offerings all on one screen.

Working with PSDCenter means that you will have access to all the customization features you need to make sure your brand is represented properly on multiple platforms.

15 gorgeous flat login design screen

15 gorgeous flat login design screen

One of the most crucial page for any website is the login screen. This particular page has evolved from year to year as designers take advan... 21:16

One of the most crucial page for any website is the login screen. This particular page has evolved from year to year as designers take advantage of the latest technology and design changes. This year, flat design has become really popular.  You can definitely expect more designers to start creating flat login design screens for 2014. To help you prepare for this change, I have round up some really beautiful flat login form design as a source of inspiration for future projects.  Regardless of whether you are designing a flat login form for webpage or mobile app, this round up will cover it.

#1: Flat login design for mobile by Calvin Smith

Featuring a gorgeous color scheme, this flat login form for a mobile app is just beautiful in its simplicity and the use of flat design technique.

#2:  Transparent flat login screen by Rich Smith

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You can’t get more minimalist than this. It uses the full screen design technique to make the whole login page more modern looking. However, if you need some space to convey information to your new visitors, this design might not be appropriate.

#3: Flat login design on Behance

Most designers should have an behance account.  If you have been using their mobile app, you will notice their flat login design, which is very sleek.

#4: Flat login screen by cssflow

I love the adding a rainbow header to the login form. This makes it stand out from the rest of the flat login form designs, without adding too much complexity to the whole thing.

#5: Flat login page with cool background color

Using the right background color can make a lot of difference in terms of look and feel of the login page. In this case, the use of the fresh green background is both modern and refreshing.

#6: Use of photos in flat login design

Another popular trend is the use of circles to represent images. You can see how this design concept is used in this flat login screen. It looks great and is worthy of a reference.

#7: Retro flat login design by Marina Belova

It is a nice concept to apply a retro feel to a flat login form. However, I don’t like the color scheme as it is not a good contrast with the kind of background image being used.

#8:  Animated flat login design by CHI-YI CHAO

The animation being applied here is rather nice and function. At its normal state, both the login and password boxes are grey out. Once you start tying, the color changes to white. It is nice touch to an otherwise static flat design.

#9: Horizontal flat login design by Nicholas Bittencourt

This is a very unique login screen design as you don’t see such a horizontal bar being used. Notice the use of the circular image again? Overall, I loved the creativity in this screen.

#10:  Elegant flat login using typography

The outstanding feature in this design is the use of typography to create an elegant look for the entire login page. I can picture this being used in luxury hotels’ webpage.

#11: Using drawings in flat login page by Mark Kwong

A good way to make your flat login design unique is to add a nice drawing image like what is shown above. You can use the image for half the screen to avoid cluttering the entire login page.

#12: Flat login design with full screen image and circular photos

Skype’s flat login screen uses 2 design concepts that are very trendy now: full screen image and circle photographs. This makes the whole login design looks very modern.

#13: Full screen photos with flat login design by Luiz Carlos Cavalcanti

Most full screen images are backgrounds. Here is one that uses a real person’s image. The effect is rather cutting edge and might be suitable for certain type of web or app design.

#14: Sophisticated flat login design

While the overall design seems simple, the combination of a black background, a beautiful font and a cool logo makes the entire login screen looks sophisticated.

#15: Floating flat login design

This floating flat login form is a nice touch by Apple’s iCloud. I assume upon signing in, the login form will disappear and the actual page can then be interacted with.

13 Cool Vintage Designs from the Petroliana Era

13 Cool Vintage Designs from the Petroliana Era

The industry is maybe the most important, most profitable within the entire world. everybody desires fuel to heat their homes, cook their fo... 04:03

The industry is maybe the most important, most profitable within the entire world. everybody desires fuel to heat their homes, cook their food and run their cars. It ought to come back as no surprise that the key brands making an attempt to urge you to buy fuel and oil for your cars pay plenty on advertising and funky styles to do and obtain you to use their merchandise. If you would like to examine a number of the foremost unhappy, coolest style work ever created, you ought to look at aggregation, packaging, vintage styles and gas pumps from the Petroliana era.

Signage and record from this era goes for a premium among collectors. If you look at eBay you’ll see folks dishing out high dollar for these signs of past. If you're inquisitive about the planning aspects of those, you may get heaps of inspiration for your own work. several graphic designers area unit mistreatment the textures of those signs and incorporating them into their own trendy work. If you don’t understand wherever to start with the Petroliana era, look at these thirteen cool vintage styles to urge started.

Sinclair

Sinclair could be a gas service primarily based out of Pennsylvania that staked its claim to fame by

employing a huge genus Bartle-Frere as their company being. The official company emblem uses Associate in Nursing italic font, however several of the company’s vintage styles make the most of daring fonts that actually signify drivers passing by.

Sinclair

Ace High Motor Oil

Ace High gas was marketed toward each automobile homeowners and aviation enthusiasts. investigate the awe-inspiring combination that uses basic blue and red with white starburst patterns to stress the cool emblem of the corporate.

Ace High Motor Oil

Fuelman

Fuelman was one in all the terribly initial gas firms that allowed customers to pay with mastercard solely Associate in Nursingd while not an attendant on duty. whereas their business was and still is innovative, it doesn’t compared to their picture being. These signs ar a number of the foremost desired and prized possessions for collectors of Petroliana record.

Fuelman

Tropical Gas

This cool vintage style is on a gas globe that went on high of Associate in Nursing old-fashion pump. the planning itself options the corporate name in daring written material with the shibboleth in an exceedingly written font. The word “tropical” is attended with a starburst, and there ar a handful of palm trees on a somewhat yellow background, good for Associate in Nursing island feeling.

Tropical Gas

Eagle and Bear Pure Motor Oil

Eagle and Bear Pure gas strived to convey their message by incorporating elements of nature into their vintage style. They conjointly used the eagle, the apex air predator, and therefore the bear, the apex land predator, as company symbols to point out off the strength of their product.

Red Head Gasoline

Before Wendy’s was created by Dave Thomas, Red Head gas used a picture of a fair-skinned kid as their company being. the planning is straightforward, however very stands out thanks to its quirk.

Red Head Gasoline

Hancock Gasoline

How does one blow their own horns that your whole of gas is that the best? Well you promote yourself with a proud chicken on the front of your cans of gas and your gas pumps.

Hancock Gasoline

Gulf

This gulf emblem could be a vintage style that's still seen in several major sporting venues nowadays. it's basic orange with some white through the center among blue written material.

Gulf

Chevron

Chevron is one in all the largest gas firms within the world and it's passed through loads of completely different whole identifies. the most effective one is maybe this vintage one that stands out with a temperament, not like their current bland assemblage.

Chevron

Fireball Gasoline

This may not be the most effective thanks to advertise your service station however it positive is cool. the massive fireball, while not the “Fireball Gasoline” written material in it'd look nice on its own as a vintage background in any of your own styles.

Fireball Gasoline

Sky Chief

Sky Chief was in hand by Texaco and was one in all the foremost sure places for commuters to induce gas. The company’s cool emblem offers off a way of trust and authority that alternative gas stations of the time didn’t have.

Sky Chief

Amoco

While it should not be one in every of the most effective styles around, you’re ne'er attending to miss Amoco assemblage. Their large torch signs is seen from a mile away on the country’s highways as a result of they're vast.

Anderson Prichard

Much like the classic Amoco aggregation, Anderson Prichard, or APCO, wasn't a lot of to appear at, however it had been arduous to miss as a result of the huge size of it.

Anderson Prichard

Mobil

Classic Mobil collection is regarding as exhausting to seek out these days because the illustrious Pegasus thereon. an indication just like the one higher than will run up to $1,000, and different additional elaborate Pegasus signs will price over $5,000.

Mobil

If you're curious {about|inquisitive about|fascinated by} learning a lot of about classic Petroliana vintage styles, tune into channels like attention and A&E. they need shows like “Pawn Stars” and “Hoarders” wherever collectors realize these signs and undergo their storied histories.