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English may be the so-called lingua franca of the World Wide Web, but consider this: three-quarters of the world’s population speaks no English whatsoever. Online, over 460 million internet users communicate in English. Yet there are over 1.5 billion internet users across the globe, which means that over a billion web users claim a language other than English as their native tongue. That’s a lot of people. The Web is a linguistic labyrinth and the need for businesses to talk to customers in their own language can’t be overstated. There's a cacophony of cultural complexities that must be considered before localizing a web site’s content for international markets. With this in mind, businesses that want to go global need to think local. - Albert Willis

WordPress is the most used blogging system and, thanks to the great community that works to enhance its features, nowadays it is used as full content management system. WordPress rocks, dude! For these reasons it is (maybe) one of the most hacked CMS. In some cases a website proudly powered by WP could be slow without a correct configuration and administration. There are some tricks that allow us to boost our WordPress installation in a few minutes. Below there is a list of useful tips to secure and speed up your blog system. Take your time for reading, they are very simple and they could be helpful to save your time in the future. - Albert Willis

ading designers agree - always start on paper. And AppBooks are the perfect way to conceptualize iPhone apps on paper, whenever and wherever inspiration strikes. These pocketable sketchbooks feature an exact-size iPhone template on every other page, with a graph paper background for notes or other creativity. Now you can sketch out ideas for your app with ease, and stop worrying about scale or proportions. Simple. - Albert Willis

ImageOptim will optimize your images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations. ImageOptim combines various optimisation tools: AdvPNG from AdvanceCOMP, OptiPNG, PngCrush, JpegOptim, jpegtran from libjpeg, Gifsicle and optionally PNGOUT. It's excellent for publishing images on the web (easily shrinks images “Saved for Web” in Photoshop) and also useful for making Mac and iPhone applications smaller. - Albert Willis

A California IT director leads his district in rethinking writing instruction and pedagogy. - Albert Willis

I briefly mentioned Flash cookies in a previous post in the context of ClickToFlash, but the topic warrants its own posting. Flash cookies (aka “Flash Local Shared Objects”, aka “Flash Web Site Storage”) are like normal browser cookies — smallish chucks of data the client stores on behalf of the server for various purposes. - Albert Willis

This guide will take you through the steps to install the necessary software to turn your Mac into a server with the required software to run Movable Type and then walk you though installing Movable Type. - Albert Willis

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly. This plugin is a fork of the excellent WP-Cache 2 by Ricardo Galli Granada. WP-Cache 2 caches the pages of your WordPress blog and delivers them without accessing the database. Unfortunately it still means loading the PHP engine to serve the cached files. WP Super Cache gets around that. When it is installed, html files are generated and they are served without ever invoking a single line of PHP. How fast can your site serve graphic files? That’s (almost) as fast it will be able to serve these cached files. If your site is struggling to cope with the daily number of visitors, or if your site appears on Digg.com, Slashdot or any other popular site then this plugin is for you. - Albert Willis

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly. This plugin is a fork of the excellent WP-Cache 2 by Ricardo Galli Granada. WP-Cache 2 caches the pages of your WordPress blog and delivers them... more... - Albert Willis

Also from our own archives, here are a few popular Quicksilver items from the extended 43 Folders family (including 4 video tutorials). And seriously: if you really still don’t see why QS is different, do watch the videos; writing about Quicksilver is like singing about a magic trick. Popular 43 Folders posts on Quicksilver Some of these could use a good tech edit, given their age and the evolving nature of QS, but they contain plenty of information to point you in the right direction. - Albert Willis

This simple piece provides the capacity for speaker or presenter to to participate in the backchannel of a talk or conference session by integrating live 'tweets' into an Apple Keynote presentation. Simply add text inside the tags [twitter] and [/twitter] in the presenter notes section of a slide and when that slide comes up in the presentation the script will grab that text and send it to Twitter on your behalf. Here are the details: The software works with Keynote (on a Mac) but not with Powerpoint. It's written in Applescript so it's easy to customize -- it's compiled as a 'stay open' application but you can open it in Script Editor to modify as you wish. Out of the box it will ask you if you want to add any #hashtags or @mentions to all the tweets (e.g. for a conference #hashtag), and will watch your presenter notes for tweettweet this/tweet while in presentation mode only. - Albert Willis

Nothing can be more useful than handy tools you can use “on the fly” in your design process. Whether you’d like to generate css layouts, create vector images, format or optimize CSS code, generate patterns- you can use dozens of tools to make your life easier. Today we wanted to share with you a comprehensive list of more than 15 online tools that will really make your life easier and on the fly. - Albert Willis

The Kids’ Well-being Indicators Clearinghouse (KWIC) is a tool to gather, plot and monitor NYS children’s health, education and well-being indicator data in order to improve outcomes for children and families. KWIC provides a holistic approach as it cuts across all service sectors and allows individuals and organizations with diverse missions to come together to improve outcomes for children and families. KWIC uses the Touchstones framework that was established by the Council on Children and Families and its 12 member agencies. Touchstones is organized by six major life areas where each life area has a set of goals and objectives—representing expectations about the future, and a set of indicators–reflecting the status of children and families. - Albert Willis

The strategies were developed by Dr. Jay Smink, Executive Director of the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University in association with Franklin P. Schargel. Students report a variety of reasons for dropping out of school; therefore the solutions are multidimensional. The National Dropout Prevention Center has identified 15 Effective Strategies that have the most positive impact on the high school graduation rate. Since 1986, the National Dropout Prevention Center based at Clemson University has conducted and analyzed research, sponsored extensive workshops, and collaborated with a variety of practitioners to further the mission of reducing America’s dropout rate by meeting the needs of youth in at-risk situations. - Albert Willis

Building iPhone applications is a visual process. These video tutorials are a great way to learn by shoulder-surfing with an expert, whether you’re thinking about getting into iPhone development or already well on your way. You’ll learn his workflow, his development techniques, and the tricks of the trade. And you’ll walk away with the confidence and resources to build your table-based iPhone application from scratch. - Albert Willis

EDUmobile.ORG conducts the Internet's most popular private Interactive iPhone Training Program, that is currently training over one hundred and fifty developers, at both the Beginner and Advanced levels. Our course creators and instructors have worked on mobile apps and mobile gaming projects published by top tier companies such as EA Mobile, iPlay, Oberon Media, Disney Mobile, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, and Vodafone amongst others. They have been actively involved for over 6 years in the mobile industry through our associated sister company Chakra Interactive. - Albert Willis

I have been discovering many people starting to enter the world of social media marketing in Indianapolis. It can be anything from an advertising firm to a small business coach. It is probably pretty confusing for business owners trying to learn about the amazing new tools available on the web. I wanted to help you out with your first steps in choosing a social media educator or consultant. - Albert Willis

Conversations are becoming distributed and fragmented on the Web. Content is increasingly syndicated and re-aggregated beyond its original context. Technologies such as RSS, Atom, and PubSubHubbub allow for a real time flow of updates to readers, but this leads to a fragmentation of conversations. The comments, ratings, and annotations increasingly happen at the aggregator and are invisible to the original source. The Salmon Protocol is an open, simple, standards-based solution that lets aggregators and sources unify the conversations. It focuses initially on public conversations around public content. - Albert Willis

It's prediction season again and we've pulled together our best prognostications for the 2010 social media season. - Albert Willis

This document describes the process of packaging and delivering a software product so that it can be installed on a user’s computer. The two major methods of delivering software are manual installs and managed installs. A manual install is the preferred delivery solution because it offers the simplest install experience for small or compact products, such as a single application package. For example, to install an application, a user may drag the application package from a CD onto a folder of their choosing. For more complex products, managed installs let you define every aspect of the install experience, including making sure the target computer meets specific requirements. Managed installs are generally used with products comprising several components to tailor the installation of each component depending on its kind. A managed install uses installer packages that define an install experience. When users open such packages, the Installer application guides them through the installa - Albert Willis

Compiled here is another top 10 countdown. This time we count down the top 10 PSD to HTML conversion tutorials. These top tutorials teach you how to take many different designs in Photoshop, and code them out into HTML and CSS. The list is in descending order leaving the best tutorial until last. Remember that this is WebDesignDev’s opinion about the order that the tutorials are in. What tutorial is your favorite? And does number one deserve to be number one? If you have any suggestions on tutorials you think should have made the top 10, then please drop by a comment. Anyway, enjoy the list. - Albert Willis

For Excel 2010 we’ve implemented sparklines, “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”, as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence. Sparklines help bring meaning and context to numbers being reported and, unlike a chart, are meant to be embedded into what they are describing: - Albert Willis

Playdar is a music content resolver service - run it on every computer you use, and you'll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and more. - Albert Willis

Playdar — currently available as a functional software program, which we’ve tested, and can verify that it works, although it’s not quite ready for the average user — is a new, more potent spin on the shareable playlist concept. At it’s core, Playdar is an open-source software platform that knows the location of all the music on your computer and home network. This doesn’t sound impressive on its own, but Playdar grows in power when combined with services and plug-ins through its open architecture, enabling music services to save money and increase their revenue, among other things. - Albert Willis

The mere promise of Google Wave inspired a rainbow of potential use cases, but Wave's best real-world use boils down to this: it helps a group get things done together. Here's how to manage a group project in Wave. - Albert Willis

What you will learn from this book Get started with your Social networking site Customize your site's appearance to give it a unique style Invite friends, create groups, and start blogs Automate your user registration Host photos, videos, and MP3s—enable users to comment and discuss them Use Elgg as a group podcasting platform Create, improve, and maintain a community Protect your network from spam Approach This book has a very easy-to-follow approach that will teach you how to do things with examples and lots of screenshots. As an example the book builds a community site for Linux administrators. Who this book is written for This book is aimed at people interested in social networking and e-learning teachers. - Albert Willis

Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning, and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. Mahara provides users with blogs, a resume builder, a file manager and a view creator - a tool to help users create arrangements of their content in a particular way for others to see. - Albert Willis

LEAP 2.0 is the name given to a set of exploratory concepts, aiming to provide a sound basis for practical interoperability between e-portfolio and e-PDP tools, and other tools dealing with the same kinds of information. The information covered may include, for example, digital artefacts created by the portfolio holder; structured information about those artefacts; about relevant activities, achievements, goals, people, abilities, interests, resources, plans, etc.; links to other resources, or definitions e.g. of skills or competences; unstructured or structured reflections and assertions about any of the above; relationships between all of the above. In the belief that information related to a person should be in all cases easily accessible to that person, and wherever appropriate under the control of that person, LEAP 2.0 provides the basis specifically for representing the kinds of information that can be owned or controlled by the individual concerned. - Albert Willis

LEAP 2.0 is the name given to a set of exploratory concepts, aiming to provide a sound basis for practical interoperability between e-portfolio and e-PDP tools, and other tools dealing with the same kinds of information. The information covered may include, for example, digital artefacts created by the portfolio holder; structured information about those artefacts; about relevant... more... - Albert Willis

An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web. Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks. - Albert Willis

This specification is intended to cover the representation of several kinds of information, centred around individuals, who collect, create and use their own information. Much of this information is typically of the kind that can be used for individuals' learning, but rather than being learning materials authored by an educator, the information covered by this specification is authored by the individuals themselves, about themselves. The individual, whether pupil, student, apprentice, employee or none of these, may be thought of as a learner for our purposes. If a learner reflects, on the information collected, or on other things, the expression of that reflection will be one kind of information that will take a natural place among the other kinds of information dealt with here. - Albert Willis

Dropout Risk Factors and Exemplary Programs a Technical Report C. Hammond, J. Smink, & S. Drew: National Dropout Prevention Center. D. Linton: Communities In Schools, Inc. May 2007. This study, conducted by NDPC/N, and sponsored by Communities In Schools Inc., finds that there are multiple risk factors which increase the likelihood that students will drop out. The evidence clearly shows that dropout is always the result of a long process of disengagement that sometimes begins before the child enrolls in kindergarten. The report also provides information on 50 programs that were found to be effective in addressing these risk factors. - Albert Willis