It's possible to make text looked blurred using just CSS3. See the examples below, just hover over the first bit of text to see the possibility of using blurred text as a hover state.

Some blurred text

Some blurred text

Example:

HTML:

<h1 class="blurred">Blurred text</h1>

CSS:

h1.blurred {
	color: #FFF;
}
h1.blurred:hover {
	cursor: pointer;
	color: #666!important;
	text-shadow: 0 0 5px #444;
}

The colours need to be selected carefully, as the shadows are often a bit lighter than the foreground text colour. Shadow size also plays a role. 5px seems to be effective, but 10px can wash the colour out.

To apply the effect to a block element, you'll need to use the box-shadow property instead of the text-shadow property, but otherwise it's the the same.

For more effects, you could apply opacity to make the text a little see through and see how that works out!

If you find this useful, please check out my portfolio site.

I've now seen two Nike shoes on CNET's Crave blog and while one made me smile, the other made me frown.



The first shoe features a lot of nice subtle hints to the old NES controller. There's a d-pad pattern and the words 'START' and 'SELECT' well placed and small enough not to distract from the excellent choices in colour. As a huge NES fan and NES owner, these really got me excited.

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I put some time aside to watch the keynote from earlier this week where Apple unveiled their new line of laptops and a new cinema display.



As already stated by nearly every other commentary on the event, the announcements were not exactly surprising. Not they have been for quite a while now.

Anyway, the new MacBooks are beautiful. The all aluminium construction was heavily emphasised and impressive. The MacBooks transition to this new format was a great development, but the premium Apple have place on it will probably mean that the white version will probably be the biggest seller.

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A few weeks back, I started writing a blog post for Be Unequaled about the brand Threadless, however I closed the window midway through because to be honest, the visitors to BU just don't have the same interest in a brand unless the prices are high.

I will admit to being somewhat the same, but I have plenty of love for the budget brands! Not Primark though!

Anyway, my post was going to be about how bigger brands work together but Threadless has been fairly self contained. Their guest artists that make up their 'Select' range haven't really been anything special (to me anyway) in terms of their names...

Cue Jeff Staple of Staple Design! His design isn't that good in my opinion, but for me it's a new cross over between a successful, budget brand and a brand who's Pigeon Dunk collaboration caused a riot in New York!

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I've wanted a business card for some time now, but never really had a solid idea or design that stands out. Add to that the initial cost, not being able to get a fully customised card and the uncertainty over customs charges, it became a less and less attractive option. Luckily, I was given the chance to design my first business card in the last few days and I am very happy with the final results.

The business cards of other developers I've met are often cluttered and contain so much information. Name, title, company, address, telephone, mobile, fax, email, favourite colour, pet's name and so on. I wanted something simple that allowed people to know who I am, what I do and how to get in touch. What more does a business card need to do?!

I settled on having the following information

• Name
• job title
• email
• website
• skills

I also wanted a double sided design. After playing with some options, I settled on having my portfolio site's URL as a centre piece. It may only be something that other programmers appreciate from some of the responses I've had, but it's something I really like and am proud to have.

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Art. Lebedev Studios have come out with some interesting products over the years. One product that has really caught everyone's attention is the Optimus Maximus Keyboard. It features OLED keys that can be customized via macros set throught desktop that allow you to display any image or animation on each key or even over a set of keys.

Tekzilla featured the keyboard with Ryan Block after mentioning it on a previous episode and being inundated with requests.

The keyboard is certainly impressive and comes in two colours.



Art. Lebedev Studio have a lot more in their arsenal though

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I thought I'd blog a bit about web development tools, more specifically, the ones that I feel are essential for web development on a Mac. I'll be trying to cover both Tiger and Leopard versions of OS X.

First up;

Text editors

Among the most important tools you'll need for web development, unless of course you plump for using Dreamweaver. Personally, I find Bare Bones' selection of software to be the best. Text Wrangler is an awesome, free, tool and is now compatible with another piece of software that was previously only compatible with BBEdit, Bare Bones' flagship product

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