You frequently see censored images in newspapers, magazines and on the television. Pixelation is most often used to blur out the features of people to preserve their privacy. Whether it’s to protect the children of celebrities, a car number plate or a person’s private parts that have wrestled their way out of their clothes, there is a Photoshop filter to help censor those images. Here’s a really quick way to give your images that censored look using the Pixelate filter in Photoshop.
1. Open up the image that you want to censor. I’m using a wallpaper of the movie poster for Leap Year which I downloaded from MovieWallpaper.net. I don’t know anything about the movie, I was just looking for an image with a couple of faces in it.

2. Draw a circular selection around the man’s face using the Elliptical Marquee tool (M).

3. Press Ctrl + J (win) or Cmd + J (Mac) to duplicate and copy the selection onto a new layer.

4. With the new layer selected, choose Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic. This opens the Mosaic dialog box. Make sure the Preview check box is selected so you can see how the image will be affected.

Moving on from last week’s versatile Green, today we’re taking a look at the color Orange and its use on the web and in logos. Orange is combination of red and yellow, a warm vibrant color with connotations of energy and flamboyance. It’s less intense or aggressive than red but can be used in a similar fashion to grab attention and highlight important areas of a design.
Orange designs often convey a sense of friendliness and in the right hands can maintain seriousness and professionalism. On the downside, orange is sometimes associated with cheapness thanks to companies such as Easyjet which plaster all of their products and services in bright orange. In general though, it’s a great color to attract attention without offending or stopping anyone in their tracks.
Orange as a citrus fruit conveys thoughts of summer, sun, vitamin C and health. It also has connotations of autumn and change; autumn leaves changing from green to orange to brown. Depending on your audience you might choose a very bright yellow-orange or a more autumnal orange-brown.
Using Orange

iPhone applications have been the success story of the last year. Developers have churned out thousands of excellent — and dubious — applications for Apple’s popular mobile. Some companies have made a fortune selling their software for a few cents.
However, there is a growing trend for developers to move away from Apple’s proprietary platform and return to web technologies. A number of companies, including Twitter, Techmeme and Nextstop are producing mobile web applications that work well on the iPhone but are based on HTML5 in the Safari browser. For example, the jQuery iPhone reference uses jQTouch to simulate the iPhone interface and caches web files so it installs and acts like a regular application.
There are several benefits to this approach:

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As it’s almost Christmas Day, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at how Santa’s look and feel has changed over time.
Today’s Santa Claus is believed to have been inspired by a 4th century Greek Christian bishop, Saint Nicholas of Myra. Saint Nicholas became known for his gifts to the poor. Early artists impressions portray him as a bearded man in canonical robes. A little something like this:

Image Credit: Wikipedia
The Norse pagan God, Odin has also been linked to Santa. According to folklore, Odin was recorded as leading a hunting party through the sky during the festival of Yule. Odin’s appearance was described in Icelandic stories as Síðgrani, Síðskeggr, Langbarðr, which all mean “long beard” and Jólnir which means “Yule figure”.
When children placed their boots filled with sugar, carrots or straw (for Odin’s flying horse) near the chimney, their kindness was rewarded by Odin with gifts. This idea continued in Germany and the European low countries when Saint Nicholas and Christianity were adopted, with the modern practice of hanging stockings on the chimney breast. Again there are many artists impressions of Odin, here’s one with him sporting a beard and red coat on his flying horse.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

The start of a new year is exciting; the sense of possibility about what the year will hold can be invigorating. We don’t know what the next year will bring, but now is the time we hope and plan for big things to happen. One of the most common hopes for a new year is to be more profitable. Usually, a rate increase is one of the best ways to make that hope a reality.
But for many, the end of 2009 won’t result in a boost in pricing, due to a number of factors. So does this mean if you’re not raising your rates, you’re stuck at the same level of profitability over the coming year? Of course not! There are ways to increase your profits other than raising your rates…here are a few.
Cut Expenses
Make the coming year a time for getting on top of your business expenses. You will have to gather your financial data anyway in order to file your taxes, so take some time to analyze where you spent the most over the past year and consider what can be cut. Some possibilities may include monthly services, telephone service, and online memberships.
Outsource Administrative Work
It may seem counterproductive, but you can increase your bottom like by outsourcing some of the day-to-day activities that bog you down and don’t directly bring in income. Consider a bookkeeper to handle your monthly invoicing, or a virtual assistant to manage your marketing campaign.

I just had a call from a recruiter. Years ago (yes, years) I’d set up a “profile” on this recruiter’s site, entering my personal details and work history, samples of my work and a resume. This was the first time I’d heard from the recruiter since. He asked if I was still looking for work (I wasn’t, and hadn’t been for 18 months). He had a contract job with an immediate start that “fit the details you entered in our database.” Great.
Despite this experience, I know there are good recruiters out there. And good recruiters are worth hanging onto, because as well as work, they can be a valuable source of advice.
So I tend to treat recruiter relationships with the same care and attention I give to client relationships. Here are a few of the tactics I use to maintain good, fruitful relationships with my favorite recruiters.
1. Appreciate their position.
Yes, recruiters get paid to fill positions, but they’re not all simply out to get backsides on seats in their client organizations. Your preferred recruiters are likely to be the ones who know you, like your attitude and work, and want to make happy matches between client organizations and professionals.
Recruiters aren’t just job machines: they’re real people, just like us. When you speak to them, they may be under pressure. They may be working to a strict deadline, or keen to give you first dibs on a new contract that’s come in.

With most of us looking forward to a holiday break, you might be thinking about taking that idea you’ve been turning over in your head all year and making it your holiday project. The plethora of services out there means that you can focus on the exciting parts of your idea, and leave the boring details (like payment processing) to another person.
If you do, be careful which services you choose to rely on! As web developers become more dependent on third-party services like PayPal, Vimeo, and Apple’s App Store, we hear more horror stories of partnerships gone wrong. Just this week, two such situations crossed my desk.
First, Jacob Gorban of Apparent Software wrote about how PayPal actively sabotaged his business. In November, he teamed up with six other Mac software developers to launch MacGraPhoto, a two-week-long sale on a bundle of Mac graphics apps.
The sale was wildly successful, but the sudden activity on Gorban’s PayPal account triggered an anti-fraud lockdown. He was prevented from accepting payments, and eventually had his account funds frozen for six months, along with a lifetime ban from using PayPal. All this for no reason other than having launched a successful sale.

It’s a festive time of year and celebrations are in full swing. You may be on your way to an office party or a holiday networking event. Or maybe you send your clients holiday gifts every year. During the holidays, giving clients and colleagues gifts can be a great way to show your appreciation and celebrate a successful year.
But gift giving is not an anything-goes activity, especially in the professional world. If you give an inappropriate or offensive gift, even inadvertently, you could create an uncomfortable situation, hurt your relationship and even lose business in the process.
Keep these rules in mind if you want to avoid embarrassment and prevent losing any potential business opportunities as you embark on your holiday gift giving.
Heed Company Policies
Some companies have rules about the types of gifts that can be accepted or even if gifts are allowed at all. Make sure you’re aware of your clients’ policies that may impact what you can give, and respect the rules.
Match the Relationship
You’ll want to make sure your gifts correlate to each individual relationship, in terms of amount of business you do for the client, type of work and how long you’ve known them. You may not give all of your clients equal gifts, but instead aim for gifts that are relevant to the relationship you have.