What exactly is an hCard? It’s a format which specifies that some information on a web page is an online business card. The address for Lumidant in the page footer is an hCard. This means when someone with the Operator Firefox extension visits this page they will have the opportunity to do a one-click import of Lumidant’s address and URL into their contact book. And that can’t hurt business. Come Firefox 3, this functionality will be available without extensions. Creating an hCard was pretty simple. All I had to do was add specific class names to my HTML elements:

        <div id="address" class="vcard">
          <a class="fn org url" href="http://www.lumidant.com" title="Lumidant | Cleveland Web Design and Development">
            Lumidant LLC
          </a>
          ·
          <span class="adr">
            <span class="street-address">1220 West Sixth Street</span> |
            <span class="extended-address">Suite 506</span> |
            <span class="locality">Cleveland</span>,
            <span class="region">OH</span>
            <span class="postal-code">44113</span>
          </span>
          · <a href="blog/">Blog</a>
        </div>

Have you ever wanted to take a screenshot of a web page that won’t fit on a single page?  I wanted to do that for a client today and found a handy utility that will do it for you.  TechSmith’s SnagIt makes the process far easier that taking multiple screenshots and stitching the panorama together in your favorite photo editor.  Unfortunately, it is not free, but there is a 30-day free trial.  If you’re a mac user there is a program called Paparazzi that
is free and will do the same thing.

A client sent me a Photoshop .psd file today containing a mock-up of a site he’s interested in having me design. Unfortunately, at the time I received the email, I was on a computer which did not have Photoshop installed, so I had no way to read or view the file. I downloaded GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and it worked perfectly. The only con with GIMP is that it’s not exactly lightweight if you just want to view a single .psd file, but I don’t mind having it installed as I may find other opportunities to use it.

In other unrelated software news, I heard today that a game called Guitar Rising is in development, which is basically a Guitar Hero knockoff except that you can plug in a real guitar!