Around this time last year, we brought you the top 10 must-have gadgets of 2007. As we enjoy the last few days of 2008, it is only fitting that we consider the ten best gadgets of the year that has come and is nearly gone as well. In no particular order…

1. Apple iPhone 3G – The iPhone 3G improved on the first iPhone in almost every way, but perhaps the most notable introduction was not the phone itself, but rather it might have been the App Store. No need to jailbreak to get some terrific iPhone applications!

2. Creative Vado Camcorder – Pictures just don’t cut the mustard anymore and that’s why we want affordable video recording. While less popular than the Flip Video, the Creative Vado is also more affordable at under $100.

3. BlackBerry Bold Smartphone – Thanks to a push from AT&T, we got treated to our first GSM 3G BlackBerry this year and she’s quite the beauty. The leather back adds even more style to an already fantastic business phone.

4. Lenovo ThinkPad W700 – You’re limited in screen real estate with most laptops, so that’s why the ThinkPad W700 has a secondary display built right into the side. That’s pretty innovative and could usher in a whole era of dual monitor notebooks.

5. Targus Zip-Thru Laptop Case – The new TSA regulations allow for certified bags to pass through airport security without the removal of a laptop. The zip-Thru Corporate Traveler from Targus is but a single example.

6. Belkin Mini Surge Protector Dual USB Charger – It’s far from the sexiest gadget on the list, but it happens to be one of the most useful for business travelers. With surge protection on three power outlets and two USB ports, the Belkin Mini Charger truly is a blessing.

7. BlackBerry Storm – What? Two BlackBerry phones on a single list? The Storm is definitely worth mentioning, because it is the first touchscreen BlackBerry from RIM. Further still, that touchscreen “clicks” like one giant button.

8. Asus Eee PC 1000H – The Eee PC made the list last year and Asus has continued with leading the netbook charge with the Eee PC 1000H. It’s got a more workable keyboard, a larger display, and a real hard drive.

9. Gears of War 2 Microsoft Zune – Although the iPod still dominates the MP3 player market, the Microsoft Zune is still a very viable alternative, especially the special Gears of War 2 edition that’ll have all the gamers in the audience swooning.

10. Balanzza Digital Luggage Scale – Much like the Belkin Charger, the Balanzza isn’t sexy or highly sought after, but it’s quite useful. Never pay weight overages on your baggage again by weighing your luggage ahead of time.

Welcome to the new Web Development series on the BlueFur Blog. I’m Matt Freedman and I’ll be writing the new Web Development, Everything PHP, WordPress Development and Moving Beyond SSH series’. During the Web Development series, we’ll cover everything from AJAX to XML and will have content for beginners and techies alike. So, let’s get started.

(X)HTML is an essential part of the Internet; it is the structural markup for webpages. If you’ve ever viewed the “source” of a webpage, that is (mostly) HTML or XHTML. During the next couple of weeks, we will have a multi-part mini-series on XHTML. During this week’s tutorial, we’ll be going over the basics of XHTML.

Basics

The basic rules of this markup language are simple:

• An XHTML document must start with an XHTML declaration, and contain a head, title and body.
• XHTML is made up of tags which are surrounded by angle brackets (< and >).
• All tags in XHTML must be in lower case and be closed.

Let’s start out with that first point. The simplest of XHTML documents will look like this:

[code='xml']

Hello world!

[/code]

In the above code, the first two tags are the XHTML declaration. You’re telling the browser that this is an XHTML document using the Transitional rendering mode. There are a couple different XHTML rendering modes, but Transitional is the most forgiving. The third tag () is the head section. This is where you will define various page properties and tell the browser to import external stylesheets and scripts. The next tag is the title tag, this is where you will specify the title of the page that will appear in the titlebar of the browser. After that is the body section and that’s the end of the document.

Something very important to note in the above example document is the closing tags. The XHTML declaration states that all tags must be closed. This is generally done by copying the starting tag, but prepending a forward-slash to the tag name (so a tag). There are a few exceptions to this rule. Some tags have to be “self-closed”, where a space and forward-slash are appended to the starting tag name. So, for example, the br tag (which adds in a line break) is formatted like
. Notice how there is no closing tag, but the tag in itself is self-closed. These are referred to as “singleton” tags. The tags that require to be self-closed are link, meta, img, br and hr.

Basic Tags

In addition to the standard “building blocks” tags, you’ll also need to know some basic formatting tags. To separate text into paragraphs, you should wrap each paragraph in

tags. To produce a line break, you should use the singleton tag
. To make text bold or emphasized (italicized) wrap it in <strong> or <em> tags, respectively.

Next time on the Web Development Series

Next Monday we will be going over more advanced tags and tag attributes. If you have any questions so far, please feel free to ask them in the comments section of this post.

The winners of the last Geek of the Week with 10 wins is Rinko who wins $50. The following is the list of participants and their wins after 15 rounds.

• Rinko 10
• Jeff 3
• Aaron
• Marilyn

The Geek of the Week series is now on hold due to low competition. We will be looking for a new Sunday topic in the new year.

We have covered some great topics this year for our weekend projects. If you did not do some of them then I suggest you look back a the top 10 and add them to your things to do in 2009…

1. Make Your Site iPhone Friendly - With over 2 million phones users now surfing the Internet you should make sure your site is iPhone ready. 

2. Favorite Icon - Add a favorite icon to your site so that when people bookmark your site it will make it easier for them to find later. Also it can help with branding.

3. Securing Folders - I have seen some friends not read and follow this tutorial. You always think it will happen to another person but if you do not keep up with security on your site you can be a victim of phishing, defacing and many other things.

4. GeoIP Country Redirect - Redirect users based on their IP to a particular Country specific page. This will help you with online sales and targeting your content.

5. Link Check - Check your site links to ensure there are no broken links. Broken links can effect your site ranking in search engines.

6. 404 Pages - Are you loosing visitors because you use a generic 404 page? You would be surprised how much traffic you could be loosing.

7. Social Backlinks - Social Media is the new SEO. To get started this project will help you find the various social sites and get backlinks.

8. Log Check - Reviewing your logs will reveal a lot of things you may not know about your site and your visitors.

9. Email Signature - Generate traffic to your site by adding an email signature to every email you send out.

10. Geotagging Your Site - As we have entered into a  world where pictures, people, articles and almost everything is tagged you should geotag your site to ensure that search engines can use those details for future.

As it was posted earlier we will be adding more development topics. The following topics will start next week…

Follow along as this on going series covers taking a server from SSH to production. This will be good for those that want to purchase an Xdev server and follow along. Although we use cPanel for our shared and managed servers there is a lot of things you can do differently if you install it manually.

Did you purchase web hosting so you could build a site you can be proud of? This weekly topic will cover how to do web development from HTML to XML and everything in between.

WordPress development has been one of the main focuses of this blog over the last few years. Most of our top 25 posts are all in regards to some type of WordPress development. It only makes sense to introduce a weekly topic covering WordPress development.

As a Linux based company PHP is one of the keys to using our hosting. If your not using PHP then you should be. There are so many applications you can build with PHP if you just has the knowledge, this topic will help you gain that knowledge.

Some of the greatest pleasures in life also happen to be the simplest. There’s something to be said about snuggling up next to the fire and sipping on some egg nog with good friends and family. In keeping with this (and as you recover from your Boxing Day shopping spree), let’s spin around the blogosphere and keep it simple.

Scott Young has noticed that the world is getting incredibly complex these days, so he reminds us of the power of less. This inspiration comes from a book of the same name by a guy named Leo Babauta. Are you prepared to make more with less?

Tyler Ingram likes to keep things simple and sweet as well, and that’s partly why he finds Twitter useful. Being limited to just 140 characters, you really are forced to get your point across as quickly and efficiently as possible. None of that idle chatter. Just pure substance. That is what Twitter is all about, right? Right…

Fortune Watch always keeps an eye on our money and how it moves about in the market. Given the recent economic downturns, many people are looking to simplify their lives even further, reducing expenses everywhere they can. One of the victims of this trend is our furry friend. Yes, people are giving up pets as the economy falters.

Girlie Geek likes to play video games as much as anyone else, but you would think that the experience is largely confined to other gaming enthusiasts. Not so! Are you gaming during the holidays with your nephews and grandparents? The Nintendo Wii and games like Rock Band really bring the whole family together. Simple entertainment that won’t break the bank.

Daily Writing Tips addresses a common salutation that we tend to use when we write any kind of letter, asking if “Dear Sir” and other conventions are too awkward and intimate for business encounters. In the end, keeping it simple with these accepted conventions is probably the best idea.