I wanted to share something with the Woork Up community about doing pro bono work (as you probably know: “Pro Bono is a phrase derived from Latin meaning for the public good. The term is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service” – from Wikipedia).

Over the past 24 months, our firm has accepted 3 large pro bono assignments. These assignments were non-profit associations that had been hit hard in the recession. Their budgets were at zero for design, marketing or advertising, yet they still had ambitions, dreams and hopes of continuing with their work as non-profits. These difficult times proved especially hard for them in the realm of digital media because they needed complicated websites that managed their members, had good SEO parameters, managed calendars of events and usually a member and vendor directory of some sort and so on.

To a web firm, these can be grueling and time-consuming when you have paying customers of your own that you must tend to.

Our firm decided to take on 3 of these types of assignments in the last 2 years and we are very glad we did.

For one, the experience gives us more practice to do what we do.  It also gives us a sense of pride helping organizations who do good deeds, but can’t afford big agency pricing.  And lastly, it brings in a ton of business if done right!

Because the non-profit is so thankful to you for what you’ve done, they are very willing to share you name, send out newsletters, put your banner on their site, offer incentives and push your brand to their many members.

In 2009 alone, our small firm benefited from pro bono work to the tune of about $108,000.  The previous year, it was in the realm of about $200,000.

We estimated that the pro bono work, if billed out accordingly, would have cost the non-profits roughly about $60K total ($20K a piece) for all 3 associations. That makes our pro bono work a net gain of about $238,000 over 24 months.

So if you are looking for a way to break into a whole slew of businesses, start contacting non-profit associations who may be suffering right now. The work will be hard up front, but the payoff down the road can be huge.

And even if the payoff isn’t huge, if the non-profit is something you believe in, then you did a good deed!

The massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Chile Saturday morning, killing more than 300 people and causing widespread damages in many areas, has left devastating aftershocks in many areas of the country. Below are some dramatic pictures from Flickr that document this huge tragedy.

Santiago after the earthquake.

Original photo here

Santiago.

Original photo here
by Destino Para Lelos!

Temuco, Chile (Temuco is the capital of the Araucanía Region, Chile).

Original photo here
by unmyeong

Viña del Mar, Valparaíso Province.

Original photo here

Santiago.

Original photo here
by todosnuestrosmuertos

Santiago.

Original photo here
by Juan Downey

Santiago.

Original photo here
by Ignacio Nuñez C.

Concepción.

Original photo here
by mynameismatias

Temuco, Chile (Temuco is the capital of the Araucanía Region, Chile).

Original photo here
by unmyeong

Academia de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile.

Original photo here
by Ignacio Nuñez C.

Original photo here
by leonardophotos

Santiago.

Original photo here
by condeorloff

Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Divina Providencia.

Providencia, Santiago, Chile.

Original photo here
by action datsun

Concepción.

Original photo here
by mynameismatias

Concepción.

Original photo here
by mynameismatias

Temuco, Chile (Temuco is the capital of the Araucanía Region, Chile).

Original photo here
by unmyeong

Mariott Hotel, Santiago.

Original photo here
by Smartrock

From CNN.com – The first waves of a tsunami from a massive earthquake in Chile have hit the Big Island of Hawaii, according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Google Spreadsheet is a powerful and free tool to manage complex spreadsheets. This tutorial illustrates ten useful formulas you must know to help you simplify the way you work in Google Spreadsheet.

Vertical Look Up

This formula searches for value in the left-most column of array and returns the value in the same row based on the index.

For example, if you want to find the population of the value contained in the cell C2, from all values contained in the range A2:B4, copy and paste the following formula into the cell D2:

Filter

This formula returns a filtered version of the given source array.

In this example I filtered all values contained in the column A (range A2:A12) greater than 37.

Copy and paste the following formula into the cell B2:

You can also use multiple conditions to filter a source array:

In this case the formula returns all values contained in the range A2:A12 greater than 37 AND less than 60.

Concatenate

This function concatenates several text strings, contained in different cells, into one string.

If you want to concatenate all values contained in the cells A2, A3, A4 into one string, copy and paste this formula into the cell B2:

If you want to separate each single value with a space (cell B3), use this formula:

Find

This formula looks for a string of text within another string and returns an integer.

For example, if you want to find the “space ” within the string contained in the cell C2 (which contains this text: Jack Bauer), copy and paste the following formula into the cell B2:

This formula returns “5 ″ that means the “space ” is found within the source string after 4 characters.

Left and Right

Left extracts a substring from a string, starting from the left-most character.

Right extracts a substring from a string, starting from the right-most character.

If you want to extract the name “Jack ” from the cell A2, copy and paste the following formula into the cell B2:

If you want to extract the surname “Bauer ” from the cell A3, copy and paste the following formula into the cell B3:

You can also use the following formula to extract dynamically the name from an array of multiple values (Jack Bauer, Gregory House, Christian Troy, … ):

Split

This formula splits text based on the given delimiter, putting each section into a separate column in the row.

For example, if you want to split the values contained in the column A, using the delimiter ” ” (space), copy the following formula into the column B (the column C will be populated automatically):

Substitute

This formula substitutes new text for old text in a string.

If you want to substitute “Jack ” with “Mike ” from the text contained in the cell A2, copy and paste this formula into the cell B2:

Occurrence (optional, in this case “1 ″ ) indicates how many occurrences of the search text are to be replaced.

Unique

This formula returns only the unique values in the source array, discarding duplicates.

If you want to obtain an array of unique values from the values contained in the column A, copy and paste the following formula into the cell B2:

As you can see, this formula returns only unique values in the column A, discarding all duplicates.

Google Finance

This function returns market information from Google Finance related to a specific company.

For example, if you want to know the Google stock price, copy and paste the following formula into the cell B2:

You can use the same formula for the other companies in this example (NVidia, Intel, Cisco,… ). Other attributes are volume, earning per share, opening price and so on (take a look at the official documentation for a full list).

GoogleLookup

This formula attempts to find the values for straightforward facts about specific things.

For example if you want to find the countries of cities listed in the column A, copy and paste the following formula into the column B:

You can access some types of entities such as countries and territories (population, largest city), rivers (origin, length), actors and musicians (date of birth, nationality), planets and so on. For a full list of popular entities, take a look at the official documentation.

WordPress finally introduced a Post Thumbnail feature in version 2.9 which has made life quite a bit easier for WordPress theme developers that love to integrate thumbnails into their themes. There are many different ways to dress up post thumbnail images, but for this tutorial we are going focus on a simple 5 minute technique using CSS. If you haven’t already integrated post thumbnails into your WordPress theme, there are several detailed tutorials out there that show you how do to so. Here are two in particular that you may want to read by Justin Tadlock and Matt Brett.

Create a Transparent Hover Image

Using my latest TV Elements theme as an example, I’m going to show you how I added the transparent hover image over the post thumbnails used throughout the theme. The TV Elements theme uses 200px wide by 150px high post thumbnail images which I pre-set within my theme options (as described within Matt Brett’s tutorial). So, the first thing we want to do is create a transparent PNG image that we can use to display over the post thumbnail.

For this example, the image you create should be exactly the same width as your thumbnails but twice the height so that we can create a simple “hover ” state using CSS for each thumbnail. I have uploaded the source hover image file used for the TV Elements theme for your reference.

Some Very Simple CSS

It really is amazing how easy it is to create elegant eye-catching effects using just a few lines of CSS code. The first thing we want to do is create a container for our post thumbnails.

Next, lets add the CSS needed for the actual post thumbnail hover image.

Time for Theme Integration

Now the only thing left to do is to integrate all the above into your WordPress theme. This is much easier than you might think. For instance of you wanted to integrate this effect on your multi-post pages beside your post text, you would edit index.php and insert the following code right above the tag.

Fonts for Designers is a series of posts that proposes a selection of the best free fonts for web designers. Each new issue presents five interesting fonts you can use on your web projects. Here is a collection of five fresh and extreme useful fonts particularly adapted to design logos. Take a look at the following link for the previous issues.

DownloadSurface

DownloadMentone

DownloadKnema

DownloadLekton

DownloadMilocha

Here is a summary of Apple sales by operating segment and sales by product. All data are public and available on the Apple website at this link. You can use the following charts by citing this post.

Apple Sales by Operating Segment

The following chart summarizes net sales and Mac unit sales by operating segment during the three years ended September 26, 2009 (in millions, except unit sales in thousands and per unit amounts):

Apple Unit Sales by Product

The following chart summarizes unit sales by product during the three years ended September 26, 2009 (unit sales in thousands):

What will the future be like in the next 50 years? How will technology change our lives? And in 1960, how did people imagine the world in 2000? Here is a collection of 8 interesting videos with old and new visions of the future.

Microsoft Labs: A Glimpse Ahead

This video is part of a Microsoft Labs video series that proposes the Microsoft personal vision of the future in 2019. This series also includes the future of banking, future of personal health concept, future vision on manufacturing and other related videos you can easily find here.

Future Clothes in The Year 2083 by Lacoste

This spectacular promo video, which proposes an evolution of Tennis in 2083, was created for Lacoste’s 75th anniversary. Here is the movie in HD.

2057: The World in 50 Years

A spectacular video that shows how will change the world in the next 50 years.

Intel UMPC vision video

1981 Primitive Internet Report on KRON

In 1981, long before anyone had heard of the Internet, Steve Newman reports this story: how to use home computers to read newspapers using a telephone line.

GPO (BT) Vision of the Future

How BT envisaged how we would remotely communicate in the future.

Year 1999 AD

1999 AD was a film created by Philco in 1967 to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary. This video shows how technology was going to change our life in 1999.

Disney’s House of the Future

In 1957 this video promoted a new attraction at Disneyland, called Monsanto House of the Future, that represented a vision of a house set in the year 1986.

Lars Rasmussen at the Google I/O Conference (May 2009)

In may 2009, at the Google I/O Conference, Lars Rasmussen presented a new Google application called “Google Wave” that should have revolutionized the way to communicate and collaborate on-line. The new Google product immediately took many positive comments and was defined as one of the most promising tools of 2010. But the initial enthusiasm was short lived.
Google Wave is an application that merges instant messaging, e-mail, document editor, wiki tool and much more, but it seems none of this.

The lack of clarity in what the application does, generates confusion so that many users report that Google Wave is nothing else then a “big ” chat, too complicated, unclear and confusing.

In all honesty, I had the same sensation every time I tried to use it. Google Wave should be the killer application to manage, for example, living group projects or for brainstorming sessions but in practice its disadvantages are more than its advantages. One for all: chatting is an activity that requires a lot of time and is totally impracticable in all these situations that require complex interactions between many users.

If I need to do a brainstorming session with the other members of the group I’m working with, I prefer to do a conference call using Skype or iChat rather then wasting time in a chat. Talking directly with your partners is without doubt a faster and more productive way to collaborate.

Another aspect to consider is that Google Wave is not strictly a product for the masses such as Facebook or Twitter but it’s more addressed to professional users and this can limit its diffusion (by the way, SAP launched 12Spints a collaborative decision-making tool to solve business problems collaboratively and in real time inspired to Wave).

What’s the future of Google Wave? Will it have the same destiny of other Google products such as Google Answers or Lively (launched in july 2008 and hastily closed six months after) or the same success of GMail? What do you think?