Focus on web design , user experience , internet marketing , web hosting , etc.

Launch examines Bitcoin in an article that discusses the controversial P2P electronic currency, outlining what they’ve learned after researching it, and making some predictions for the future.

Bitcoins are a virtual peer-to-peer currency that can be sent and received directly from their site, or via and escrow service or currency exchange. The benefits are that your coins can’t be frozen, tracked or taxed, and transaction costs are very low.

From the article:

A month ago I heard folks talking online about a virtual currency called bitcoin that is untraceable and un-hackable. Folks were using it to buy and sell drugs online, support content they liked and worst of all — gasp! — play poker.

Bitcoin is a P2P currency that could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.

…Bitcoins are created by a complex algorithm. Only 21M can be made by the year 2140. Your desktop bitcoin software can make bitcoins, but at this point the electricity and time it would take to produce a bitcoin is larger than the actual value of a bitcoin (your laptop might take five years to make one, and they currently trade at $6.70 per bitcoin [ see https://mtgox.com/trade/buy for the latest exchange rate ].

Bitcoin miners use super cheap GPUs (not CPUs) to create the coins, but as more people come online to make them, the algorithm adjusts so that one block can only be made every 10 minutes.

Here is what Launch stated after a month of research:

1. Bitcoin is a technologically sound project.
2. Bitcoin is unstoppable without end-user prosecution.
3. Bitcoin is the most dangerous open-source project ever created.
4. Bitcoin may be the most dangerous technological project since the internet itself.
5. Bitcoin is a political statement by technotarians (technological libertarians).
6. Bitcoins will change the world unless governments ban them with harsh penalties.

As a result, they add that they are “100% certain” that governments will start banning bitcoins in the next 12 to 18 months.

Microsoft released on Wednesday a Firefox browser add-on extending HTML5-based video on the company’s Windows 7 OS.

The plugin enables Firefox users to play H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using built-in capabilities of Windows 7, said Claudio Caldato, principal program manager for Microsoft’s interoperability team, in a blog post. Mozilla Firefox is a principal competitor to Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser.

Microsoft has already been offering a Windows Media Player plugin for Firefox, for watching Windows Media content, Caldato said. “This new plugin, known as the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox plugin, is available for download at no cost. It extends the functionality of the earlier plugin for Firefox and enables Web pages that that offer video in the H.264 format using standard W3C HTML5 to work in Firefox on Windows. Because H.264 video on the Web is so prevalent, this interoperability bridge is important for Firefox users who are Windows customers.”

HTML5 is an ongoing update to the HTML specification that adds capabilities for multimedia.

The extension is based on a Firefox add-on that parses HTML5 pages and replaces video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plugin, enabling content to be played in the browser. Firefox in some cases might fail to play a video even if the add-on is correctly installed, because a page might use a call to canPlayType to determine if the browser can play H.264 content, Microsoft said in release notes for the extension. “Typically the check is done either using createElement(‘video’) or getElementsByTagName(‘video’) and then call canPlayType(‘video’mp4′). In both cases, the call will return empty string even if the Add-on is installed and the browser could play H.264 videos,” Microsoft said.

Also, the current version of the add-on uses Windows Media Player Plugin APis to control video playback, thus creating differences between methods and properties defined in the HTML5 standard and those in the Windows Media Player plugin. The company seeks to fix these limitations in the next limitation of the add-on.

1. Dynamic tooltip
Very cool tooltip! It’s very well made because it consists of cool transition effects and it also has a transparency and a drop shadow effect.

2. Popup Bubble
Brilliant tooltip! It looks so simple but it has awesome transition effects. This tooltip could be very useful for clean and simple websites.

3. jQuery Horizontal Tooltips Menu Tutorials
Beautifully made tooltip! This tooltip never disappears but follows when you hover over other links. Such a simple looking tooltip but its animation is brilliant.

4. Prototip
A lot of various very good looking tooltips which look awesome and have beautiful effects. Brilliant peace of work!

5. Coda Popup Bubble
Very nice tooltip with cool transition effect and it also has a drop shadow.

6. Awesomeness
Cool tooltip with nice transition effect and cool transparent border around it.

7. TipTip
Beautifully made tooltip with fade in / out transition effects, transparency and drop shadow effect.

8. (mb)Tooltip
Beautifully made tooltip with nice transition for input fields.

9. vTip
Simple but well made tooltip with a fade in transition effect. It has a cool looking border around it and when this tooltip appears, it also follows your mouse.

10. jGrowl
Cool tooltip which appears when you click on the link and then it sticks on the right-top corner of your window, and disappears after some time or when you close it manually by clicking on the close button. It also has fade in / out transition effects.

11. jQuery Ajax Tooltip
Interesting tooltip which can handle image and text together like a mini page. It has a drop shadow effect.

12. Digg-style post sharing tool with jQuery
Cool digg-style post sharing tool. This tooltip could be very useful for social networking website.

13. Input Floating Hint Box
Interesting tooltip with rounded corners for input fields. Tooltip fades in when you click on the input field and fades out when you click somewhere else.

14. Simpletip
Beautifully made tooltip with fade transitions. When you hover over a link, a tooltip fades in just above or below the link.

15. qTip
Very simple but good looking tooltip. This tooltip is available with rounded corners and also as a speech bubble tip.

16. Orbital Tooltip
Interesting tooltip plugin where you can set manually where your tooltip will show up.

17. Inline HTML Tooltip
Cool tooltip with nice transition effects.

18. tipsy
Interesting good looking tooltip which appears above, below, on the right or left side of the link.

19. Easiest jQuery Tooltip Ever
Simple tooltip but it could be useful to display an image when you hover over a link.

20. BsTip
Various simple tooltips with fade in and fade out transition effects and border around them.