Archive for May, 2010
AfterEffects FTW, as they say on Digg! 
Now you’ll see just why we love it so much. Every news series has an opening ident, a short visual image employed before television program that works as an introduction to locate the viewer to the news channel. Well, at least that’s the initial idea behind those intros. Because by now they have indeed become one of the most spectacular and confusing animations in the world, just look at all those flying objects of random shapes and you’ll know that now the serve only one purpose – to show other news channels their AfterEffects departments suck. Well, at least that what it seems like after our research.
Alright, to be serious, these intros do more than just listing the slogans, logo and television company name. The audience likes news openings that have sparkling animation, elaborate action sequences, memorable effects, and just an overall vibe that gets them ready to enjoy the program. And that’s what we seem to love about them now.
Today we’re looking at the favorite opening intros for currently airing news series. Classical or cool and trendy, high tech or cartoonish, whatever design and animation style one prefers – these openers look very promising deploying impressive graphics engine and real time physics. Let’s start off viewing the perfect animation for transitioning to the news. With these intros we’re prepping you for smooth and captivating visuals.
BBC News Intro
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Aljazeera News Opener
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In our previous article we examined the range of e-commerce merchant systems and shortly reviewed the points to consider when selecting each the one for yourself. In this blog entry today we’ll take a deeper look at the forms of merchant payment services and give you some hints and tips on choosing the right one for your business.
When dealing with online payment many questions may arise as for merchant accounts and credit card processing instances. We’ll try to clarify the technology behind online credit card processing and explain some corresponding terms you may have found intricate. So, get the gist of what there will be referred to and look for the information you may find useful.
Payment Gateway, Merchant Account Provider and Third Party Credit Card Processor – differentiate the mixed-up terms
When it comes to a payment gateway, it is a separate e-commerce service that authorizes payments for e-businesses and online retailers and acts as an intermediary between the merchants’ shopping cart and all the financial networks involved with the transaction, including the customers’ credit card issuer and personal merchant account. One of the other main functions of credit card processing payment gateways, besides communication, is the encryption. A payment gateway uses SSL 128-bit encoding technology to encrypt and decrypt all the data being sent through it.
The e-commerce merchants can get a merchant account from a merchant bank or a merchant service provider in their local area or in another country (offshore/international e-commerce merchant account). As for merchant account provider, it is typically a separate company from the payment gateway. Some merchant account providers have their own payment gateways (in this case they offer a payment gateway and a merchant account all in one package), but the majority of companies use 3rd party payment gateways. An e-commerce merchant account is basically a service for which e-commerce merchants apply, and thereafter use online credit card processing services.
Another option is a third party credit card processor which is basically a payment gateway and merchant account rolled into one. Such companies handle your credit card processing on your behalf without requiring you to have your own merchant account. As such, they take care of different aspects of the transaction process such as authorization, billing, reporting, and settlement.
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Let’s now better differentiate these aspects.
Talking about the methods of accepting credit card payments we could say that there are actually two distinct types of services to enable e-commerce businesses to accept credit card payments. It is either using your own real merchant account or through a third party payment processor.
We know you’ve missed some premium freebies from us so we could wait no longer – TemplateMonster is proud to present the new awesome freebie to you all. This time it’s the free website template for all those Interior Art and Interior Design business that have been patiently waiting for their free website design. Your time has come, our friends! It’s here now and it’s all yours!
Free Website Templates from TemplateMonster:
And there’s a new option that we present to you now. From now on there will be two variants of this free website template download procedure. First is you may download only the HTML source files, directly from this blog post (just click on the template above). In case you want HTML sources AND the graphic PSD sources – that’s also not a problem, for that you just have to go to the TemplateMonster free template download page and type an email address that you want the template package to be delivered to. And of course – as always – using this free web template for your own business is absolutely and 100% free, just make sure you don’t resell or redistribute it. Ok now guys, hurry up to download this free Interior Art website template!
Download free interior art website template with PSD files (8.92 MB)
Download free interior art website template without PSD (215KB)
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…” – guess everyone is waiting for this brilliant season forthcoming when in broad daylight we could enjoy our favorite pastimes! In fine fettle TemplateMonster brings those warm and emotionally charged days closer holding for you a new summertime TemplateMonster discount promo timed to coincide with the beginning of anticipated summer season.
This flaming time when the prices are melting away so fast, our templates get red-hot because of how badly everyone wants them. The current summertime discount promo means that starting May 27th till June 4th the templates from our new Red Hot FlashMoto Templates category (these are 10 awesome designs we picked from our FlashMoto Templates product type) will be exclusively sold at a 40% discount! For all the rest FlashMoto driven templates we will give out a 5% discount to leave you a pleasant aftertaste.
Below is the list of the FlashMoto templates that are currently available at a 40% discount, browse through them and pick the one you like. You can also view the list of the remainder sublime templates (available at a 5% discount) by proceeding to our FlashMoto Templates page. Make sure you check them out – after all, it has never been this much easy to create the awesome Flash CMS based website saving that much money assets!
Greanex Business Flash CMS Template
Old price: $240
New price: $144
You save: $96
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Design Bureau Flash CMS Template
Old price: $250
New price: $150
You save: $100
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There is no doubt that the most intriguing new HTML5 tag is the canvas tag. Despite all controversial web discussions concerning this element it is obvious that canvas symbolizes the “semantic” web concept. Its aim is to simplify the process of rendering the 2D shapes and bitmap images. You may have seen a few “canvas” demos that already became viral on the web. As the result many developers and web designers have noticed that using the canvas tag is really effective and it saves much time.
Recent big news from the Google I/O conference showed us that the main market players admit HTML5 as a main perspective for the further development. Actually we hope that it will disctact us from all these media wars and that the social media world will expand a more useful information about new and interesting achievements of HTML5.
Today we have compiled some interesting applications and sketching tools that are build with the help of Java scripts and the “canvas” tag. These examples are only experiments but they’re definitely worth checking out. (Don’t forget that it would be better to browse all these application via Chrome or the latest versions of Opera and Firefox).
1. Spirograph
Spirograph is a geometric drawing toy that produces mathematical curves of the variety technically known as the hypotrochoids and epitrochoids (via WikiPedia). This example allows you to play with all kinds of parameters including size of mobile circle, static circle and so on.
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2. Bomomo
Inspiring tool that will make you feel like a real artist even if you are not. Great painting application with original patterns and interesting options.
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This article is composed by Andy Marcus, TemplateMonster lead product manager and the head of our R&D Dept.
If you ask yourself questions like that, you probably should continue reading this article, otherwise just go to our eCommerce templates section.
As I made templates for and worked with almost every popular shopping cart available it is going to be hard for me to stay unbiased during this review, obviously I do have my own favorite platform, but still I will try to keep the info fair.
Lets begin with some history. In the beginning there was Harald Ponce de Leon, who as a project leader started an open source e-сommerce solution osCommerce™. It was the first largest Open Source shopping cart available back in 2000, the forefather of them all. After a while the team that worked on osCommerce project has split into CRE Loaded™, Zen Cart™ and the original osCommerce™, therefore you will find much in common between those three. Each team was after perfection of their product, with their own approach, but the core code was pretty much the same. If you look inside you will find same variables, same functions in all three of them. Back in those times it was the revolution. Although osCommerce was the foundation it had neither the template system nor the ability to control the original layout by the end user, Zen Cart and CRE Loaded had a pretty nice functionality along with other things.
Actually CRE Loaded and Zen Cart were the response to the demands of a rapidly growing osCommmerce community, each of them has met the needs of their users in a unique way. For instance Zen Cart has a slogan saying “the art of e-commerce” meaning that Zen Cart is the art, and indeed back then it was nicely put together with their override system that gives the coder an opportunity to add and change functionality without messing and changing the original code. CRE Loaded contained the best and most useful contributions made for osCommerce, they had 3 versions of the cart, the community edition and 2 commercial editions with additional functionality. The code was partly object oriented and partly procedural (osCommerce’s boxes were class-based, but the rest was procedural). OsCommerce (and it’s derivatives) ruled the universe of free e-commerce solutions up until 2004.
Google’s third annual I/O conference has brought plenty of controversial news and we are sure that Internet audience will buzz about all this info for a very long time to come. Against the background all that high-flown announcements about new video codec, Google Wave open-sourcing, Chrome app store, Android 2.2 release, the presentation of the HTML5 add-on for the Dreamweaver CS5 has been kind of lost in the media sphere. And no one calls this extension revolutionary or controversial. Furthermore Dreamweaver is one of the best pieces of software that is popular among the developers from all over the world and it is hard to find other program that will beat it by its features and reputation. So we really think that the release of this pack will bring more fans to this software.
To tell you the truth this great news proves that Adobe looks out for a new way to resolve the problem that becomes really annoying for many web users – how to convince their clients (and Apple of course) that they produce stuff that is open for all formats (remember that someone called their Flash “closed system”?). It seems that HTML5 Extension for Dreamweaver CS5 is a nice move from the Adobe team to bring the “epic battle” to the new level by scoring points from the web developer audience by releasing this HTML5 pack.
What’s inside the box?
HTML5 extension to Dreamweaver CS5 will enable developers to “more easily create, deliver and optimize compelling content” across a wide range of platforms. The main features are:
- code hinting for HTML5 and CSS3, so now users can easily use the new HTML5 tags;
- developing content on a large a number of screens – from smartphones, to desktop computers;
- new CSS3 capabilities – users can also more easily design the multi-screen Web pages;
- WebKit improvements for Design View and Live View rendering;
- audio and video tags that allow to play media content directly via web browser (without any external plug-in or player) but this requires QuickTime installation;;
- HTML5 pack is totally free and you can easily download it right now at the AdobeLabs official website;
Jorge Taylor, Principal Scientist with the Design and Web group at Adobe, on Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack Extension.
They know what they’re doing and doing it right
Yes, as we have said before it is all about developers – and Adobe showed us that even if their dearest son – the Flash – will get lost in the desert of choices and intrigues from evil rivals, they won’t lose the war because developers will use their software to create websites and web design products with the help of their software. Evolution is a great way to keep your business on track and Adobe demonstrates us that there are many original solutions that will amaze your enemies and surprise your clients. Way to go!
If you ever struggled with AfterEffects and need to brush up your skills, than here is the list of highly effective video tutorials to get started with. They will guide you through advanced and challenging aspects of massively popular AfterEffects multimedia application. Plus you’ll be able to master this software to create compelling effects and deliver unmatched creative power for film and broadcast, video productions or animated web graphics.
Get into the multimedia field with truly professional standards. To begin getting the very most out of powerful AfterEffects please review the sections below to view helpful video tutorials. With thorough understanding they provide, you will be able to easily solve some of the trickier design aspects. Feel free to experiment and enjoy the new AfterEffects masterpieces.
Glass Orbs
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Knowing Earth
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Template Monster holds some news for you – our partners from VideoSmash.com have recently launched the awesome new Countdown Video Intro Pack which basically embraces 10 countdown clock videos, each just several seconds long. This means they could be seamlessly applied to enliven the intros of news programs, movie trailers or website intro animations etc.
In fact, there are multiple media needs you can use this pack for. Likewise on the score of their premium technical quality – these timer videos are equipped with an excellent sound track and are therewith available in three color schemes each. Additionally, these countdown video loops are done in the HD 720p quality (that’s a 1280×720 resolution) and are encoded mostly in the QuickTime JPEG codec (just a couple of them are in QuickTime H.264, no alpha channel).
Our customers are as always in advantageous position: within a limited-time offer this Countdown Video Intro Pack is exclusively available for them 50% cheaper (that’s in fact $15 instead of the $30 full price offered at VideoSmash.com). So hurry up to browse the collection of TemplateMonster products and power up your animations by getting yourself a nice Countdown Video Intro Pack!
Inspiration comes in many forms, for this week’s roundup TemplateMonster gathered a list of 40 awesome motion graphics and demo reels.
Showreels are made by motion graphic companies or individual designers to give an overview of their works and to show off their portfolios. Using AfterEffects reels in motion can bring the impossible through impressive visual effects and high-end graphic production. Demo reels in fact create stunning graphics for the new media: it makes you feel as if you are making a journey through the artist’s portfolio and animation works.
Now we’re excited to kick off this series with a set of visually stunning motion graphics videos that will grab your attention to leave you speechless.
Horsform Showreel
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Rokkaboy Showreel
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