Even though many people frown upon cold calling, it is still an effective way to get business, as long as it is executed properly. Do not call indiscriminately, but rather limit the number of local businesses that you are trying to contact, learn a few details about their operation, pick up the phone, and explain how you can help them grow and profit from your services.

After Google Buzz and Wave, which never really took off, Google is launching its most powerful social networking project to date, Google+. At the time of this writing, you can join Google+ by invite only, but the interest is so great that many believe that Google finally got it right and Facebook has its first real rival. While the features, which Google+ offers are nothing revolutionary, the project seems to have taken the best from the other social networking sites, making it extremely easy for people to stay in touch with friends and family. It is still very early to judge if Google+ will make a dent in the Facebook’s business and take away some of their 700-million strong user base, but it is clear that the two social networks have quite a few features in common, but also differ in many aspects.

Another Friday another great list of links for web designers and developers.

When you spend countless hours working and worrying about your day-to-day tasks, it is always good to take a few minutes break, watch a funny …

You’ve seen them—painted posters of models and actresses pinned up on the walls of military barracks to give the boys something to fight for. With this tutorial, you can turn a normal photograph of a woman into one of those vintage pin-up girl posters.

Working online or in a young and dynamic IT company as a web designer or web developer has great many advantages and can be quite rewarding and satisfying, but if you have to choose your career path right now, you need to weigh carefully the pros and cons of each option. In addition, if you are about to start working for yourself, you need to evaluate your own capabilities and take a closer look at the earning potentials of each profession. Quite often, the line between web designers and web developers is blurred as most designers are likely to be able to code at least basic web sites and some developers might dabble in web design as well. A web designer is a person, who is capable of designing logos, banners, or other graphical elements, as well as whole web pages, while the web developer is the person, who is more involved on the technical side of the web building and adds functionality to the web sites.

Setting up a home theater, which enables you to enjoy watching high definition movies, listen to music, and surf the Internet at the same time is possible with the use of a media center PC. The media center PC is a computer, which serves as a video and audio source all in one, supports the highest definition PC and TV picture formats and the most widely used audio codecs and formats at the same time. Instead of linking a separate DVD player, Blu-ray player, gaming console, and a set-top box to an HDMI switch and then to your plasma TV, you can have a single media center PC, which would allow you to enjoy watching high definition movies, listen to music, display and preview photos, as well as use it as a regular computer. In addition, the unit could be used to record movies, download content, tune in to live Internet radio stations, play games, and more.

The web app development process can be an intimidating thing to take on. There is so much to do from wireframes to coding to design, so it is no surprise it is such a daunting task. In this week’s infographic we break the process down at a high level and hopefully provide a more structured starting off point. Enjoy!