http://dummyimage.com/350×200

and viola!:

Any combination of height and width’ll work.  It’s simple and elegant.  And it gets better…

In addition to height and width, you can do all the standard ad sizes, screen resolution, even video format.  For a full-sized banner, just use:

http://dummyimage.com/fullbanner

Different colors? alt text?  jpg or png? just as easy:

http://dummyimage.com/400×100/0099ff/CCCCCC&text=TheNietz

Too lazy to save your own images and don’t want to link to their site?  They have that covered too, just download the source (MIT license) and run it on your own server.

If you do wireframes, this is a must-add to your toolchest.

[dummyimage] via [lifehacker]

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Youtube] via [Neatorama]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their first video for this was awesome, but sadly not embeddable (unless of course you embed the Vimeo version…). This caused a bit of an uproar to fans since it was embedding which made them so popular.   The Band responded, mostly that they were at the mercy of the labels.  This time it looks they worked around it with a little sponsorship (note the StateFarm truck at the very beginning, and the logo at the end).  So watch the video then add some collision covarge.  Enjoy.

Bonus:  The marching band video after the break

The original.  Equally as awesome:

Click here to view the embedded video.

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

The first big spike comes 24 seconds before the game end, when the US scored tied the game.  A few minutes later, a giant spike when Canada won the gold.  3.5 million status updates.

source: [TechCrunch]

[NASA]

Step 1. Log into gmail.

If you’re already logged in, log out and log back in again. if you are one of the chosen few you’ll see the following:

If not, pout a little.  Get up. Take a walk. Sit back down and try Step 1 again.  Google’s rolling it out over the next few days, so keep trying.  And when you do see it…

Step 2. Click on sweet, the customize.

Once you sign in, you’ll see some updates to your gmail layout, and be guided through the  customize screen where you can link Buzz to various Google accounts, Twitter, Flickr, and any blogs you’ve registered with Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Once you’ve added your networks, click next step and if your profile’s out of date, you’ll have a chance to update it.

Step 3. Start Buzzing

At the bottom of the screen you’ll see your feed; it’ll update with your friends likes and dislikes, and any of your blog posts.  The top portion is Twitter on steroids.  Text without the character limit, links and images. A little Google-centric (understandable), but still pretty slick.

What is Google Buzz?

Wave lite.

No, really, what is it?

Really, it’s Wave lite,  Google’s  gateway drug. The world’s not quite ready to comprehend Wave yet, so Google stripped out a bunch of features, leveraged their Wave-based AJAXy UI enhancements, and integrated it directly with gmail and reader.

What’s left is just the essence of social networking.  The quickness of Twitter, the network of Facebook, power of blogging, and a versatility not found in any of those products.

Eh?

I told you, Wave lite.  Google’s trying to make the social networking seamless.  It all starts with the inbox; no matter what your  social nexus is, you’ll always return to email.  With Buzz, you can update and share content, follow and manage your friends, and sort through your blogs; it doesn’t matter if it’s FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube or a blog, if you are checking email you can follow and update.  Google Reader for social networks.

check ‘em out:

[IconDock] via [WebDesignerWall]

[iTunes]