Unless you’ve been under a rock the past 2 years or so, you’ll know that HTML5 is the next generation of the markup language that has been powering the Web since its inception. Tech publisher O’Reilly has been busy ensuring that they do their part to educate the Web developers and programmers of the world and they accordingly have a slew of books on HTML5, one of which is in their Head First series.

Head First HTML5 Programming is really that – a book about programming, specifically in JavaScript. It is expected that you already know HTML and CSS, and while some JavaScript would be good, it’s not a requirement. The book starts off with a quick intro to HTML5, but by page 20, you’ll already have seen some JavaScript code.

Next up, it gets into the DOM (Document Object Model) that modern browsers are based on, and then you’ll naturally learn how to manipulate the DOM to get those fancy effects that you see Web2.0 sites sporting. After that, it goes full steam through the highlights of HTML5/DHTML features, programming, and techniques that power today’s Web2.0. For example, Head First HTML5 does a good job of devoting entire chapters to discussing some of the compelling multimedia aspects of HTML5 including video, and the Canvas tag. And it also covers advanced topics such as Geolocation, JSON and even Web storage.

As with the other Head First book we’ve seen (Head First WordPress), this one has you interacting with images, photos, call-out boxes, cartoons, and much more to keep you engaged and active. I can’t say enough good things about it, and I’d like to see other publishers ‘steal’ the technique!

If you’re looking to learn HTML5, I can highly recommend this book, but keep in mind that this is not meant to be a reference or a cookbook but a learning book; there are lots of others out there that that fill that function.

While you’re at it, you should also consider getting an up-to-date CSS3 book like Gasston’s The Book of CSS3. While it’s more of a reference than this text, it covers the bulk of CSS3′s new features including new text styling, positioning, gradients and 2D & 3D transformations, and it includes enough examples to help you better understand the material.

(Disclaimer: Gizmos for Geeks received a complimentary review copy of this product.)

Norton, a consumer-oriented Symantec brand, has a new advertising campaign for their security products that centers on protecting your data, appropriately called “Protect the Stuff that Matters”. Apart from their website which explains what their software does, has tools, and trial software downloads, they also have a number of videos.

Here are 2 of the videos, and the one with the babies is a must-watch!

This post was sponsored by Norton.

One of the longest continuing trends in mobile phones is the personalization of ringtones. Now that modern smartphones are as good as computers, you can make any song your own personal ringtone. Moreover, you will not have to buy these ringtones. You can make them for free with free apps. Read on to find out more.

Free Ringtone Making Apps For Windows

AV RingtoneMAX

AV RingtoneMax has one screen where you load your favorite music or audio file to edit into a ringtone. Other than cutting out the exact part you like with the help of a visual waveform, you can also add effects like fade-in and -out, 3D sound, etc. You can even mix two tracks together. And since it is very easy to use, it is a perfect app for beginners. It supports WAV, MP3, CDA, OGG, WMA, AAC, M4A and MP4. You can use the built in recorder to record any sound that you want and make or mix that in to your ringtone.

Audacity

Audacity is full-fledged audio editing software that is available for free for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It has a lot of advanced features but making a simple ringtone on it is pretty straightforward. Open the audio file that you want to use inside Audacity. When the file opens, you will see the waveform of the sound. Select the portion you want as your ringtone, then you can directly export that part as an MP3 regardless of original format – just go to File > Export As Mp3. If you want to add fades, effects and mix it in with other tracks, you can copy and paste the selection in a new file and work on it.

Free Ringtone Making Apps For Mac

iTunes 10

iTunes 10 no longer has the ‘make ringtone’ feature but you can still make ringtones with it for free. All you have to do is choose a song, go to its information and then change the start and stop times to match the part that you want as a ringtone. Now right click on it and choose ‘create aac version’. Then go to the new file, change the extension to ‘.m4r’ and open it into iTunes after deleting the previous reference to it within iTunes. When you do this, it will automatically get imported as a ringtone, ready for syncing. It works on both iTunes for Windows and Mac.

GarageBand

GarageBand is a powerful piece of music-making software that has a useful feature where you can export your work as a ringtone directly into iTunes. To make a ringtone, drag the audio file into a new empty project. Then cut out a 30-40 second part that you want as your ringtone. Make sure to apply ‘cycle region’ on it to make the ringtone repeat itself when the phone rings. Then go to the ‘share’ menu and choose to share as ringtone. If you are already used to GarageBand then you can also add in extra beats, sounds and other things to your ringtone or make your ringtone from scratch. GarageBand comes free with all new Macs.

Free Ringtone Making App For iPhone

Ringtone Maker Pro (by Mobile17)

Ringtone Maker is a super simple ringtone-making app that can take any audio file from your phone’s music library and turn it into a ringtone. Once you load a track in to the app from the start screen, you will see a small waveform view with a slider on it. You can drag this to decide where the ringtone starts. Below it you have the length selection, which decides how long the ringtone goes on for from the starting point. Below that is the play button for hearing what your ringtone looks like and also the create ringtone button that saves the ringtone. Additionally, the app recommends popular start positions from its user base.

Free Ringtone Making App For Android

MP3 Ringtone Maker (by LuckyStar)

MP3 Ringtone Maker is a easy to use app that can be used to make free ringtones. It can also assign sounds as alarms, notifications or to contacts. The app’s start screen allows you search through the songs on your phone, go to the sound library or go to the ringtone editor. Once you have entered the editor, you see a large, zoomed in view of the waveform of the selected song. There are start and end markers that you can drag across the screen to make your selection. It has a play button and forwards/backwards skipping buttons. After finishing, save the sound with the save button and use it as a ringtone or some other alert.

Free Online Ringtone Making App

Melofania.com

Melofania is an easy to use web app that allows you to upload your audio file on to the website and then use the in-browser tools to edit a portion of the file in to a ringtone. It also shows you the waveform to make things easier. You can choose either mp3 (most phones) or m4r (iPhone) format for download. The website also has free ringtones of popular tunes up for grabs.

So whether you are looking for an easy app or a fully featured one – you have a lot to choose from when it comes to making ringtones for free. No matter which phone or computer you are on, you will always have multiple free options for making the ringtone that you have always wanted.

If you have a smartphone, you already know how useful it is in a myriad of ways. Personal finance is such an integral part of our daily lives; make sure you’re harnessing the power of your phone to keep track of expenses, budgets, and investments. It’s a lifeline in today’s fast-moving world.

Whether you are a seasoned investor, starting out with your first checking account, or somewhere in between, you can probably benefit from tracking your personal finances with a software program. Knowing at a glance just where you stand financially can help you decide whether to give into that impulse purchase, or if you need a payday loan to cover your unexpected care repairs.

The beauty of using a personal finance app for your smartphone is that you have this valuable information just a touch away all the time. App developers know this too, so there are a plethora of great apps available in the personal finance section. Here are five of the best apps available for smartphones to help get you started:

From tracking your personal bank transactions and investments to watching stocks and taking credit card payments, smartphone apps are making life easier and freeing up our time to pursue the things that are most important to us.

Photo Credit: Piggy Bank by Images Money/flickr; Smartphone bar by Miki Yoshihito/flickr

Twitter has taken off in a larger way than perhaps even its founders ever imagined. Personally, when Twitter first appeared, I felt it had only limited appeal, at least in the way it was rolled out and marketed. Of course, Twitter has evolved and grown. And oh how it has grown.

But did you know that Twitter can be used for more than just reading tweets about “Winning!“, keeping track of trends or breaking news?

Here are just 10 unique, innovative and sometimes practical uses for Twitter that make great use of its popular API.

1. Control your PC with TweetMyMac – This is an application that lets you run features on your Mac remotely by tweeting to a dedicated account. There is a long list of features but the best two are probably taking a photo with iSight or making your computer speak the words you tweet – great if your Mac gets stolen! A Windows version is available here.

2. Look after your plants with Botanicalls – Featured in Wired, Botanicalls is a DIY gizmo that you put in a plant pot. Then, it tells you when your plant needs watering. Great for when you’re on holiday — it could even tweet your neighbor’s account for them to get a reminder. Kits are now available here for $100.

3. Turn your lights on and off – Couple Twitter with an INSTEON home automation light switch and you’ve got a remote application to turn your lights on and off. Perfect if you don’t want to get out of bed to turn them off or just want to scare your guests. This requires wiring a laptop up to some home automation hardware though — might be easier just to get out of bed.

4. Find recipes – If you’ve got a few random ingredients left in your fridge but don’t know what to make with them, then tweet them to #quieroreceta. The service will check its database and recommend what you should make! On the other hand, you could just follow the many Twitterers who tweet recipes in under 140 characters.

5. Make popcorn – Some guys managed to make a Rube Goldberg-styled contraption that listens for Twitter posts tagged #popcorn. When it’s got a hit, the gizmo starts up and makes you some popcorn! The video will explain all:

6. Tell you when your toast is ready – Another cool, but pointless, hack is called Social Networking for my Toaster. This is a DIY project that tweets when the toaster is toasting, and when the toast is done. Great if you’re, er, away from your toaster for two minutes.

7. Get your Tweets while driving – Ford seem to think that so many people are tempted to read their Tweets whilst driving that they reckon it’s safer to install a device that reads out your tweets to you. Hands free for Twitter, good idea or not? You decide.

8. Turn your toilet into a tweeter – HackLab has managed to make its toilet tweet in this DIY hack. There’s been a few problems recently but you can see on its Twitter account that it has worked well in the past!

9. Track parcels – Instead of logging onto the FedEx and UPS websites to check your parcels, all you need to do is tweet your tracking details to TrackThis, which will then tweet back when updates have been made to your parcel status — neat! This isn’t just limited to Twitter however — you can get phone, e-mail, and many other notifications via this service.

10. Lose weight - well, not quite, but Weight Loss Charts is a service where you can tweet your daily weight and it will compile the data into a chart and show you your progress over time, the idea being that this will act as motivation and inspiration. You can then share the chart to your followers.

Originally published on Dice News.

This week’s deal features the new breed of netbooks that are light in weight but not on performance, unlike previous Atom-based machines that you could almost hear crying in pain as you tortured tasked it with streaming a YouTube video. Terrible analogy aside, here are the deals:

HP Pavilion DM1z

The popular HP Pavilion DM1z has recently been refreshed with AMD’s latest CPU/GPU integrated processor. Aptly named AMD “Fusion,” this new “APU” (accelerated processing unit) strikes a great balance between performance and battery life efficiency. The AMD Fusion found in the dm1z is the mainline “Zacate” series, E-350 dual-core clocking in at 1.6Ghz. The integrated GPU is model Radeon HD 6310 running at 500Mhz with full DirectX 11 support and Shader 5.0 support (!).

A nice perk of this APU is the UVD3 video decoder support, letting you decode HD videos using the GPU. So whether you’re doing H.264 and VC-1 HD streams (or Blu-ray), your dm1z should chug along just fine.

Outside the internal hardware you’ll find a slick shell on this 11.6-inch ultraportable. The dm1z is also fairly thin, with thickness ranging from 0.8 to 1.2 inches and weighing in at only 3.5 lbs, making it a perfect on-the-go laptop.

As for ports and connectivity, you’ll find all the usual suspects: 3 USB ports, ethernet port, along with VGA and HDMI out. Memory card reader, Webcam, WiFi N, and Bluetooth are standard, and HP offers an optional HSPA+ mobile broadband card.

Finally, the best part about the HP Pavilion dm1z? Its battery life of up to 9.5 hours (HP claims) on a single charge of the 6-cell. All of this for around $400 as of time of writing.

Lenovo IdeaPad S205

The Lenovo IdeaPad S205 is the successor to Lenovo’s popular S10 series of netbooks, and like HP did with the dm1z above, Lenovo threw out the Intel Atom lineup for the newer and stronger AMD Fusion.

Another 11.6-incher, the S205 comes with very similar specs as the dm1z. What sets the S205 apart is its styling and price range. The S205 usually comes out a tad bit cheaper ($10 to $20 less than dm1z), and sometimes with an extra gigabyte of RAM to boot.

It’s equipped with the AMD Fusion E-350 dual-core processor and can pack up to 8GB of DDR3 memory and 750GB of hard drive space. Wifi N connectivity, 3 USB ports, a 6-in-1 memory card reader (which bests the dm1z’s 2-in-1 reader), webcam, and a 98% full-size keyboard with individual curved keys rounds out the feature set on this nice ultraportable from Lenovo.

Unlike HP, Lenovo isn’t claiming a wild battery life of up to 9.5 hours, but you still get a respectable 5 hours with its 6-cell battery. There’s no 3G/mobile broadband card option for in the US region, but the capability and slots are definitely there for those who like to mod their laptops.

You’ll find the Lenovo IdeaPad S205 at around $380 to $440, with RAM and storage space bumping up the price. We recommend going with more RAM if you plan to do any intensive multitasking, but you can probably skimp on the storage space as there’s plenty fast external storage drives at cheap prices these days.

HDTV Deals:

Sony NSX-32GT1 32-Inch 1080p LED HDTV

Available at Amazon for a very nice price, the 32-inch HDTV comes built-in with Google TV for all your internet media streaming needs.

Calypso CLP24LC1A 24-inch 1080p HDTV

Also available at Amazon for a great low price, this much smaller 24-inch HDTV from Calypso is perfect as a no-frills unit, especially if the high-end Google TV equipped Sony is too much on the wallet.

This Week’s Apps Deals:

Trickle for Twitter for iOS:

For the tweets lover, Trickle is now available for free for a limited time (usually $0.99). The minimally designed, hands-free app streams tweets from favorite follows. Works best while the iOS device is on a dock.

3D Pool Master XD

Its billiards, its 3D, its free! Free for a limited time at the iTunes store. Supports 2-player hot seat action along with online multiplayer play.

With hype of the pending Apple announcements when WWDC kicks off Monday, we scoured the web looking for clues about OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud and found the following spoiler preview of iOS 5. Enjoy!

Finally signatures have a chance to move into the digital world with the forming of a new company, SignNow. SignNow offers you software for your computer or smartphone that allows anyone, anywhere to sign documents. Since electronic signatures are legally binding in the US the system is an improvement on traditional pen and paper as it reduces waste yet carries the same legal weight.

All you do is upload the document that needs signing onto the SignNow website (registration isn’t even required) and then you can add sticky notes for where you want people to sign. You can then share the document with everyone to sign – when this is complete the signed document will be sent to the specified recipient.

The document that you have uploaded is deleted within 30 minutes of all the signatures being received, and is encrypted with the same 256 AES encryption that is used by the US military, SignNow claims.

Best of all, this is a completely free service making it perfect for businesses that are trying to cut waste, go green, or just want to embrace the digital world.

If you have an Apple Mac computer, then you should know that it isn’t 100% magical, and like other computers, it is subject to the nuances and vagaries of any other complex computing system. For example, you may need to recover a file from time to time. We’ll cover the ins and outs of that process in this article.

Mac file recovery software is needed when file loss occurs as a result of a power flicker, a frozen internet data stream, a computer virus, an abnormal shutdown of your Mac, a foreign object, accidental file deletion and more. No matter the how, the end result is that you’ll need some file recovery.

Knowing you have indeed lost one or more files, quick remedial actions are in order. You have a small window of opportunity to recover the file(s) since your Mac operating system directs your hard disk to overwrite the allocated file storage area once any new file of equal size is created for storage.

There are quite a few third-party programs for Mac file recovery. Affordable programs are in plentiful supply over the Internet and in stores. Such programs help you recover accidentally deleted files on good system volumes or lost files on corrupted system volumes of varying types including; HFS, FAT, HFS+, HFS Wrapper and HFSX.

Freeware can be found on the Internet to help you find deleted, but recoverable files removed from your trash bin. But be vigilant because some freeware is actually malware. The other ‘gotchya’ is that the ‘free’ part of freeware only allows you to find the lost files, but not actually recover them. You would have to pay a small registration fee to actually recover the file(s). If the program finds the file(s) but cannot recover them, you may (sometimes) be able to get a refund. Small consolation for important lost files but it’s better than nothing.

All Mac file recovery programs start with a scan of your system volume, your hard disk. File fragments, data and file and folder names will be displayed when found. Some programs allow you to view the file contents in case you don’t remember then based on just the file name alone. You can also direct where the files are to be recovered.

Note that photos, emails and data files can all be recovered so long as they have not had an equivalent file stored overwriting the ability to recover. Remember, the longer you take to act losing some files, the more likely the recover operation will not work, no matter how good the software is.

Here’s another productivity- and efficiency-based reason to use Gmail – background sending. This new Gmail Lab lets you quickly return to reading and processing email without having to wait for the current one to be sent.

To turn the feature on, just go to the Labs tab under Settings and enable Background Send. This one is a no-brainer. Just use it. I’m pretty sure this is one that will soon become a standard feature.