Bandwidth shot through the roof

The speed with which we access the Internet is one reason behind such a sudden and huge proliferation of videos on the Internet. But, it is not just the increased bandwidth that led to this development. There are many more things. One such thing is laziness on our part.

We are lazier than ever

Video marketers are getting hotter because consumers are getting lazier. Lack of work has taken good of us. Now are lazier than we ever were. Reading is too much time consuming. It requires active attention from our side, but we can consume video lying on our back munching “junk”.

We became multitasking

This is paradoxical. We have grown lazy, but at the same time we have given in for multitasking. When we read, we just read. We cannot do anything else, but when we watch, we do quite a number of things — play with ball, cook food, babysit kids, do other less-involving works. Video gives us space to multitask.

It connects well

Video also sells on the Internet because it connects well. By sending audio and visual stimuli, video connects with us on an emotional level, which articles fail to do that — yes, it does not hold true for stories and well-written articles, of course.

Because video fools our mind

Through sights and sounds, video gives us an illusion that the person who is delivering the message is present here and now when we are consuming it, which any article cannot replicate. A video fools our mind in believing that the communicator is present in the room, which is not so.

I hope, you now know why video is becoming “the new article” (as in the new black) for the online world. What do you think? What else video does to us? Fire up your writing genius and post your comments below this.

Be positive

Believe it or not, it reflects. Your positivity oozes out of everything you do and so does negativity. What people will think about you depends upon what you give away (positive or negative vibes). Most of the people get frustrated after couple of failures to land in a job. They become hopeless, but you need to understand hopelessness is not the solution, nor is the frustration. One has to tread forward until it becomes easy to walk and then run in full throttle.

Do not wait for a perfect job

Perfection is an illusion, and that too a bad one. Nothing is perfect, neither you, nor me, nor this article, and nor the job you are seeking. You must realize that you are no longer young, and you have a family to support, so you do not have the luxury to leave jobs coming your way. You need to be realistic of the situation, and be ready to compromise on the quality of job, and slightly on the paycheck you are offered, at least till you get what you want.

Update yourself

The biggest reason behind unemployment of people over 40s is their inability to keep themselves abreast of changes in technology. You need to update yourself with the changes in technology. By becoming up-to-date, you place yourself on equal footing with the youth, which will blunt the edge of negativity concerning your age. A 40+ person with good knowledge of recent technology is an asset for any company.

Think over it, and make a list of things that you think you do not know but are hot favorite among young people. See if those things are raising their employability, if it does then consider learning them.

What do you do when writing becomes drag for you?

Do you continue to write as usual or do you do something else?

Believe it or not, despite how torturous writing become, many writers continue to write and what happens? They end up producing mediocre work. This is wrong. This pulls the motivation down. A writer should not continue when he or she is not feeling like writing.

Stop Writing! When writing seems like a drag. There are quite a few things that you can do when writing becomes drag for you, which I am listing below. These steps will not only relax your mind, but it will also infuse enthusiasm in you that will make writing once again a pleasant exercise.

Things to do when writing becomes drag

• Take a walk in the woods.
• Sit near a pond, lake or river and listen to the sound of bird chirping and watch the water forming shapes.
• Listen to soulful music.
• Watch a movie.
• Read a book or a short story.
• Recite a poem.
• Dance
• Go out and take a walk
• See teenagers falling in love for the first time
• Surf the internet, but do not go to the usual sites that you visit
• Talk to an elderly person in your community and ask him about his life’s experience.
• Visit an orphanage, talk to kids there and play with them.
• Watch a game of sports.
• Paint, if you like painting.
• Observe the nature.
• Lie on the ground and watch the empty sky. Focus on the bubble that forms in the sky (it is actually an illusion).
• Relax
• Above all, follow your heart

You should not limit yourself to doing these things. Do whatever you wish is good for you, apart from writing, and see how the experience enriches you.

Years before, Internet Explorer introduced DHTML or Dynamic HTML to allow these kinds of effects to be done from within the browser. However, this was available to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer only. There is a way to implement these effects via Javascript however, you had to know about animation and mathematical and physics equations to create them. However, with the arrival of Script.aculo.us, these effects can now be easily created.

Script.aculo.us is not only for animation though. It also has several functions that allow the programmer to add drag and drop functionality, in place editing, dynamic creation of Document Object Model(DOM) elements on the page, AJAX functionality, playing sounds, and unit testing. That’s quite a mouthful of useful features that could not only make pages you make attractive but also make it functional and easier to program.

Checking out the homepage of Script.aculo.us, we can find links for all the features of the framework. They are categorized into 6 groups. These categories include: Core Effects, Combination Effects, Effect Helpers, Behaviours, Controls, and Miscellaneous.

The functions for the animation effects are found in the Core Effects, Combination Effects, and Effect helpers groups. Some of the effects that can be created include:

• highlight
• morph
• move
• opacity
• scale
• parallel
• queues

Parallel and queues are not really separate effects but are instead a way for the programmer to string together several effects to create the illusion of one continuous effect. Combination effects are a mixture of the core effects that have already been customized in a way so that they appear to be one smooth effect.

As for behaviors, script.aculo.us includes the following functions:

• draggable
• droppable
• sortable
• form element dalayed observer

These functions allow the programmer to create elements on the page that can be dragged and dropped using the mouse, sort values and text, and provide a way to monitor page events and respond to them after a specified time delay.

For AJAX programmers, the controls group of script.aculo.us would be beneficial. These functions include:

• in place editor
• in place editor for collections
• auto-complete
• auto-complete with results from a local array
• slider

The in place editors allows the programmer to allow the user to change values of elements on the page and save them immediately. The auto-complete features on the other hand allows the user to experience a more responsive system while typing information in the form of auto-suggest lists. Finally, the slider feature allows the user to use slider bars to choose from a range of values instead of typing in the values manually.

The miscellaneous group of features are truly varied. The builder feature allows the programmer to insert new elements to the page, while the sound feature provides a way to play and stop music on the page. Finally, the unit testing features allows the programmer to test sections of their program without much difficulty.

So if you’re a web programmer looking for a way to integrate great effects and features to your page without the pain of creating them all from scratch, you may want to give script.aculo.us a test drive today!