During Google's I/O conference it presented the MugTug Darkroom, an online Photoshop alternative that was created in HTML5. Apart from the fact that it is a technological masterpiece, it also drew attention since it can be used on Apple's mobile iDevices.

The MugTug Darkroom gives you access to the most commonly used features of Photoshop, such as white balance correction, contrast manipulation, cropping, rotating and scaling.

Test it out for yourself.

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Catherine posted some interesting insights on our forum on how to get links from .gov and .edu sites. She learned about these techniques during a seminar with Kelvin Newman.

1. Get in touch with bloggers. It is a good way to get links, and many blogs are hosted on university websites. Follow these blogs and keep in touch with them.
2. Give away discounts to students. Then ask colleges and universities to place a listing of these student discounts on their website. Works very well and often generates a lot more visitors!
3. Send press releases around where you mention the university in a positive way. Many universities have PR departments and they will mention your press release in their press releases.
4. Participate in projects and offer internships and graduate opportunities. Not only do you get cheap labor, but it also provides links to your site, since these vacancies are posted on the university website.
5. Sponsor an event for students. It costs almost nothing but provides a lot of links!
6. Talk about career paths at colleges and universities. Give a guest lecture. This will be blogged about  by students on their university web pages.
7. Advertise your vacancies on the university job board. Not just good for links!
8. Encourage students to analyze your business and make sure your business is part of a case study.
9. Make sure that you will be boycotted! Do something extreme. Even negative publicity can bring backlinks.
10. Launch a community on your website about a specific topic. Many government websites link to community websites that target specific groups.
11. Start a website for charity. If there are no commercial interests, it will grow fast and you control the backlinks to your site.
12. Several universities have their own directories. It is very hard to get listed on these directories, but it's worth a try.
13. Organize a fun night or a specific event. A local event can work very well. Many government websites are willing to link to such events.
14. Start a political campaign. This often creates a lot of extra attention.
15. Use your own job site to get links. Job-Websites grow quickly because the government is willing to link to these websites.
16. Go run for parliament / charity. It'll get you a whole bunch of backlinks.

Lorenz, our managing director pointed out that Google's head of spam made a statement that Google doesn't treat .edu or .gov domains as any different than any other domain.

Typically, our policy is: a link is a link, is a link; wherever that link's worth is, that is the worth that we give it. Some people ask about links from DMOZ, links from .edu or links from .gov, and they say: "Isn't there some sort of boost? Isn't a link better if it comes from a .edu?" The short answer is: no, it is not. It is just .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu's or .gov's. - Matt Cutts

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Carl pointed us in our forum today to a set of new free icons for your website developed by MediaLoot. These 12 original high-quality icons are all at a resolution of 256 × 256px. This collection was created especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The download includes both the layered PSD as well as the transparent PNG. You'll find an avatar, a portfolio, brushes / brushes, mail / envelope, color palette, colored pencils, tablet, laptop computer, SLR camera, easel with cloth / canvas and a cup of coffee.

Download the free icons (size 4.4 MB)

Download the free icons (size 4.4 MB)

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In the third quarter of 2010, Google will be shipping its first devices that can provide Google TV. These devices bring Internet and television together.

Google announced that it will work with Logitech and Sony to provide a box that you can plug into your TV that will allow you to perform various tasks on the internet. The box will be equiped with Android software and the Google Chrome browser. It will be a direct competitor for Apple TV, and in many ways, will exceed Apple's offering, by allowing you to run apps on your television. Google TV will be more than a video browser, it will allow you to play games, surf the net, play music, access photo libraries and much more.

Occasion

"Our Internet users can easily find interesting content and advice. It lacks only the quality and user experience that television can do, "says Salahuddin Choudhary, Product Manager Google TV.

"Television is a great and popular medium, it only lacked access to the Internet. Users can use Google TV to view their favorite channels, but also have access to websites, videos, photos and music. "

Use

The use of television will in Google TV will change the online landscape. Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movie.

By presenting Google TV developers are also enabled to develop specific applications for the new platform.

Google TV Ads

Google TV Ads allows you to target by network, daypart and program -- and change your mind on a dime.

Sign up for Google TV beta

Be one of the first to try out Google TV! Mark Erickson on Infinite Solutions shows you how to access Google's secret on-demand television service.

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With the release of the Google font API web designers get more fonts in their default arsenal. The Google API now has eighteen fonts.

Using the Google Font API is very simple. You place a special CSS link in your header, then define the font of your choice in your CSS. Google explains how to do this on their blog.

The fonts are open source and you can use them freely, even in your commercial projects and they work cross-browser.

However, just because you can use eighteen fonts doesn't mean you should be using them! The fonts provided are not in the browser cache, so they can affect performance. And your page still needs to look good of course.

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