The Internet Archive – Universal access to all knowledge…I just have to share this with you.

Felt just like a kid as I applied for my virtual library card, then spent the better part of two hours discovering and reading old books that have been scanned into the archive. Besides books, this coolest of places on the Internet has a whole array of media types that include:

• The Wayback Machine: type in a web address and it takes you back to old archived dates of the pages. Oh my gosh I found old websites that I created and are long gone.
• Moving Images: animation, sports, news – you name it you’ll find it archived one way or another.
• Audio: think podcasts, music, news…they even have a special Grateful Dead archive of files.
• Plus so much more – you have to see it to believe it.

In December, 2009 the Library of Congress announced a project undertaking to mass digitize brittle books. “Almost 60,000 are available now and more are scanned every day. These books are in the public domain and come with no restrictions on their use. Feel free to harvest, index, investigate, and re-use.” ~Forum Announcement

Sparked by all of this information at my fingertips, I’m looking forward to researching and finding new discoveries! Do you have a virtual library card yet? Here’s the link – Internet Archive – see ya in the food and cooking aisle

The Saints Are Heading to the Super Bowl!

This really is a shout out for firsts too!

• Your first baby steps
• Your first car
• Your first kiss

Now the first time in NFL History the New Orleans Saints are going to the Super Bowl! As much as Mark and I love our Giants the game today won by the Saints – a history making game – is exciting on so many levels. A real shot in the arm for the people of New Orleans! Right on!

While I’m working on lenses there is nothing more time consuming or aggrevating  then searching around for or typing in over and over again HTML that could just as easily be copied and pasted, making the lens building quicker and more time efficient. For months now I have been building a Notepad full of the commonly used HTML that I use in my lenses. I’ll share a few of my faves here for you to copy and paste – get your Squidoo Notepad reference started today!

MEDIUM FONT:  <p style=”font-size: medium;”> – Change “medium” to a fixed size like x-small, large, etc or to a pixel size

LINK: <a href=”your link here” rel=”nofollow” title=”describe your link” target=”_blank”>Link name</a> – This will open your link in a new window, when someone scrolls over the link it explains the link, place the nofollow for affiliate links. Example: Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML

PICTURE ALIGN RIGHT: <img style=”float:right; margin-left: 30px;” src=”picture URL”> – Aligns your photo to the right, text to the left

PICTURE ALIGN LEFT: <img style=”float:left; margin-right: 30px;” src=”picture URL”> – Aligns your photo to the left, text the the right

X-SMALL TEXT TO RIGHT:  <p strong style=”font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;” align=”right”>text or  link name. Close with </p> or </a></p> if using a LINK. This is great for Wikipedia articles  because the Squidoo module does not let you edit the text and it returns with weird characters most of the time.

REFERRAL LINK: <a href=”http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/your lensmaster name” target=”_blank”>Join me on Squidoo or your own words</a> – Earn by referring people to Squidoo.

BORDER: <p style=”padding: 5px; background-color: #E1E8F2; border: dotted 2px #00518A; font-size: medium;”> – Lots of ways to switch this up, get some HTML knowledge under your belt and play…have fun with this

FEATURED LENS MODULE or LENSMASTER:  <p style=”font-size: 11px; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 6px;”><a href=”http://www.squidoo.com/url-of-lens” target=”_blank” style=”font-weight: bold; font-size: 12px; display: block; padding: 0px; clear: both;”><img src=”url-of-lens-graphic.jpg” width=”60″ align=”left” style=”margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 6px;”>[Lens Title]</a> [3-4 line excerpt/description goes here...] – The Featured Lens or Lensmaster does not allow you the versatility of using this code. Use it in a text module and as you get more comfortable with using HTML on Squidoo this code can be tweaked too.  (Reference lens and more info: http://www.squidoo.com/featured-lenses-module)

Find more HTML and CSS help on Squidoo’s Answer Deck. Now it’s your turn to share a tip or two for all of us to benefit from…thanks!