How was 2012 for you? Did you have a fruitful year, or a pretty bad one? Did you achieve any or all of your resolutions for 2012? Or do you think that it could be better but it just didn’t work out as you’ve expected?

(Image Source: Romina Militante)

We all want to have the best year this year, but life doesn’t work that way, does it? Usually you won’t see a change in your life year in, year out. But we all strive for a long-term positive change – we want it to get better and better, year after year.

However here’s the reality of the situation, life won’t change much if we stick to the same old lifestyles, making the same, unchanging decisions and the same, stubborn mistakes. If you’re serious about making 2013 a better year, here are some suggestions we want to share with you to help you get there.

Recommended Reading: New Year Resolutions: 40 Apps To Help You Achieve Them!

1. Set new year resolutions for 2013

It’s time to lock yourself in a quiet room and really put down on paper what you really want to achieve in 2013. Write them into a list, be as detailed as possible with what you want to achieve. Then, divide them into categories e.g. personal life versus career.

Next, ask yourself why you want to achieve these resolutions? What is the strong reason behind that line of resolution? What is the drive behind them? What makes you commit?

And finally, detail your plans to achieve them. Explore the plans you have, the timeline you will allow yourself to progress in, and split your goals into short-term, long-term types then give each one a deadline and stick to them.

2. Regain Control of Time

If you want to build a better lifestyle but find that you don’t have the time to do so, something has got to give. This calls for a need for some smart time management and time planning. Here are some suggestions to reclaim some of your time that is lost in time-zapping activities.

(Image Source: Max Mitenkov)

Activities like running through the channels on your TV and settling on none even after going through hundreds of channels. Do you really need to check Facebook that often, or surf on the tablet, then the smartphone, then your laptop and back to smartphone throughout the day? Is the time spent gossiping about your colleagues necessary to your social life? You get the idea.

Also check out: Productivity Tips For Freelance Web Designers

Try to relocate more of those spent hours on constructive work or rest. Spend quality time with your family, get out of the city, unplug from the Internet and just enjoy the company of your spouse, your kids (they will grow up very fast) or the favorite people in your life.

3. Expand your Comfort Zone

If year in, year out you find yourself ending up on each New Year’s Eve without a change in your life, career, self value or relationships then perhaps you should consider stepping out of your comfort zone and take up new challenges. Ships in port are safe, but that’s not what ships are made for – (Grace Hopper / William Shedd).

(Image Source: PhotoFlake.com)

New Friends

One way to do so is to find new friends and meet new people, the kind that can help you expand your social networks (offline!) The thing with old friends is once you are comfortable enough being in their presence, you don’t think about working hard to win their approval or to make yourself more likeable. New friends, they keep you on your toes, and with each new friend comes new ideas, opportunities and collaborations that could work in your favor.

Recommended Reading: Freelance Designers: How To Balance Your Work Life

New Hobbies

You deserve new hobbies, and we suggest three kinds that will help you make 2013 and the future years better.

1. Reading

Read more books, they are vessels of knowledge, passed on from one man to another, from a mother to her child, from a master to his apprentice. It doesn’t matter what you read about — money management, leadership, cooking, or arts and crafts. Reading is always the best learning tool to bridge the wise and reward those always in pursuit of higher knowledge.

2. Exercise

Run, brisk walk, pull weights, jog, stretch, swim, do yoga or play a sport with friends. It is never a wasted purpose to invest in your health. And while we’re on the subject, perhaps it’s time to start eating the right foods to go with your new health plans.

3. Charity

Charity starts at home but don’t let it die there. Don’t think of doing charity work as a chore, sometimes it’s as simple as helping out a stranger in need without expecting anything in return. Give the cashier loose change, give free coaching to kids in school, donate your old books to your local library, etc.

4. Find A Mentor

Regardless of which field or industry you are in, nothing beats instruction manuals, blog guides, books and lectures better than a stand-in teacher, or more precisely a mentor. Trying to find a mentor who

• has a wealth of learnable (transferable) experience
• succeeds in their selected field
• is willing to share their trade secrets and advice with you

(Image Source: Kelli)

Hitting the Jackpot

If you do find one, can it and listen to them. Absorb their teachings like a sponge, and don’t let misplaced arrogance rob your future of the experience. And be open to the idea that you can have more than one mentor in your life. In fact, the greats learn from the best and some of them keep real good company. Plus, even they never start from scratch. If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants – Sir Isaac Newton.

5. Take Action

This is the hardest part to carry out. Have your gameplan in hand? Now think about the reasons why you want to make 2013 a better year. Pinpoint the core to your resolve, your willpower. Remind yourself every day about your reason and purpose and let your passion lead you to take action, one day at a time.

(Image Source: vvallpaper.net)

Be consistent and persistent. Gaining momentum is important but once you have cultured your new actions into a daily habit, it is easier to maintain it or keep at it. If you don’t like to think or plan much, then let’s cut the long story short: Just do it.

Happy new year, and we hope that you can make 2013 a better year.

Technology evolves in amazingly rapid speeds. If you need any real observable proof of the speedy advancement of digital technology over the years, take a look at the gaming industry. From the very early years of black-and-white 2D games like Pong (1972) to the first 3D game, 3D Monster Maze in 1981, and from primitive first-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D (1992) to complex, life-like shooters like Battlefield 3 (2011), there’s no doubt that the gaming industry has seen its fair share of technological evolution.

It’s has been exciting ride for all of us gamers, both casual or hardcore types. Most of us have a wishlist for how games will turn out in the future. Well, it’s hard to say if they will come true, but we might very well extrapolate from existing trends, which is the whole point of this article. Here are 5 features you can expect in the future of gaming.

Read Also: 30 Awesome Gaming Devices For PC Gamers

1. Immersive Gaming: The Return of Virtual Reality (VR)

Some of you may be surprised to know that 3D films have existed since about a century ago. The technology just didn’t really didn’t take flight since then due to high costs. It is not until In the recent years that we’ve experienced the revival of 3D technology not only in films like Avatar, but also for gaming screens.

We have also seen the evolution of video games in terms of its graphical quality, so much so that one would have difficulty differentiating a video game from a real-life scene today. It appears that there is a movement towards more immersive digital entertainment, from movies to games. The question is, where do we go from real-life 3D graphics and beyond?

A Virtual Reality Comeback

With major leaps in technology that resulted in improved hardware capabilities, virtual reality (VR) has started to resurface in the gaming industry. Of particular note is the upcoming Oculus Rift, a VR head-mounted display (HMD) created by Palmer Luckey.

Due to be released early next January for a mere $300, Oculus Rift features a massive field view (107 degrees), quick-response (ultra-low latency) head-tracking system, and incorporates immersive stereoscopic 3D rendering capabilities as well. Its prototype which was showcased in various gaming conventions has already received numerous positive reviews from game developers and internet reviewers alike.

Recommended Reading: 5 Jaw-Dropping TED Videos You Should Not Miss

2. Secondary Screens for Gaming

With the booming market for handheld devices like smartphones and tablets, the console war between the three major brands (Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) has intensified, with a rush to invent a secondary gaming device for players.

Wii U

Consider the newly released Wii U GamePad, which features a built-in touchscreen that can serve as a supplement to games. In first-person shooter games, a second screen lets you access the map or your inventory seamlessly without leaving the game field. What you can do with a secondary screen is not limited to that, it adds to the gaming experience which is demonstrated wonderfully in this ZombiU gameplay trailer out for an inside view (Warning: the video contains gore and violence).

SmartGlass

Even Microsoft is catching up with the competition with the advent of Xbox SmartGlass. However, unlike the Wii U, SmartGlass is an app that acts as an additional tool for gamers to interact with. It can be downloaded into and accessed from smartphones and tablets to enhance the gaming experience.

Sony Cross-Play

Sony has taken its first step to integrate their Playstation 3 console with their handheld device, PS Vita via the Cross-Play feature, allowing the gamer to stop playing on one device and resume on another device.

3. Open-Source Gaming

Look at the number of free (or cheap) homemade games available in the mobile market today and you will have an idea where future games may be heading: Open Source! For instance, Ouya is an Android-powered, upcoming video game console (to be released April 2013, pre-order here) that works under the concept that games should be cheap to build and cheap to buy.

Independent developers do not have to purchase an expensive software development kit (SDK) to create games and release them to the market. Ouya offers 1080p gaming experience and contains tons of free-to-play and affordable games at only $99, it’s hard not to see where the attraction lies with Ouya.

Game Development

The console itself is the development kit, so anyone can build a game if they wish to do so. Making game development easier and cheaper creates more creative gamemakers, giving rise to more variety of free-to-play games for everyone. Games of the future may no longer be monopolized by major game developers, much like how video-making has been made mainstream by Youtube.

4. Augmented Reality (AR)

On top of seeing your actual physical environment, in Augmented Reality you will be fed with additional information or data overlay, digitally, in real-time. One good example of AR in action will be the mobile app, Wikitude. Holding up your smartphone and pointing towards your surroundings, the screen reveals nearby restaurants, ATMs, hotels, etc for your navigation.

In gaming, there’re already gaming apps like DroidShooting, a simple shooter game which lets the player interact with the surroundings in real-time. Holding your smartphone up, you will need to shoot targets appearing from everywhere around you. This is very primitive gaming, of course, but there is a window of possibilities for such a gameplay concept.

Eventually we may even have a gaming session with wearable UI like Google Glass where you don’t even need to hold up a console or device, and playing a game almost feels like you’re on the ground in the gaming realm.

Also read: 8 Next-Generation User Interface That Are (Almost) Here

5. Cloud Gaming

With more reliable and faster internet connections, the technology of cloud computing has begun to gain some momentum. The Sims creator Will Wright embraces the idea of cloud gaming as a crucial part of the future of the industry. For one thing, the gaming industry sees it as an oppotunity to make games as easy to access as music and movies.

With Cloud Gaming, we need not wait forever to get updates to high-quality games. It’s all in the cloud and all we have to do is connect to it with a stable Internet connection and play to our heart’s content. Games will also be cheaper and more easily accessible via computers and even tablets. How much longer need we wait for this? In August 2012, Sony has purchased Gaikai the world’s largest and most widespread cloud gaming service for $380 million and is expected to incorporate it into Playstation 4. So, not long, fingers crossed.

Conclusion

They say predictions about how technology will evolve in future have always been inaccurate because we can never really predict how we may deviate from the intended use of the original creation.

That said, it is still delightful to know that the gaming industry is heading towards uncharted territory, always exploring and pushing the limit. As for me, I’m one who would rather take a backseat and take pleasure in seeing how future games will unfold themselves!

HTML5 development is not finish yet. But, there a few new elements in HTML5 that can be used today, elements that are already supported in current and old browsers (with shim) such as header, nav, and footer. You probably have seen these elements used across our HTML5 tutorials but haven’t actually looked under the hood.

I think it’s time we explore these new elements and see what these elements are actually used for. This post is part of our series which covers new and exciting features in HTML5. If you have missed the previous ones, check out these titles:

• HTML5 Tutorial: How to Build a Single Product Page
• HTML5: How To Use <DETAILS> And <SUMMARY> Tags

Header Element

The new HTML5 elements, fortunately, are described with a very logical name and according to the specification the header element represents "A group of introductory or navigational aids.” (It is in my opinion that it is much better citing from the official and legitimate source for an accurate description, as often times the meaning could be distorted).

From the explanation above, we can conclude that the header element is not intended to solely define the header of a web page. The header element may also be used to define a part (typically at the top) that introduce the section that follows.

For example, in the following code snippet, I’ve put header element at the top of my post content to wrap the title and post meta;

<header>  	<h1>This is the Title of the Content</h1>  	<div class="post-meta">  		<p>By Author</a> <span class="category">Filed in Web 2.0</span></p>    	</div>  </header>  <article>  	<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus id   	felis et augue sagittis euismod quis at sem. Nunc sit amet magna ac velit congue   	ultricies. Sed eros justo, lacinia in fringilla sollicitudin, congue id massa.   	Nunc dignissim bibendum nibh, sed dictum massa pharetra sit amet.</p>  </article>

Since the title and the post meta, in this example, are placed at the top and acts as the introduction of the post content , we can wrap them inside the header element.

Nav Element

The nav element stands for Navigation. According to the spec. this element represents; “A section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page: a section with navigation links.”

While this element is clearly used for defining navigation specifically, the implementation is not limited to only the primary navigation, typically at the top of the web page. From the official description above, we can conclude that the nav element can also be used on any part of the page that also acts as a navigator, see the following example;

<h4>Table of Content</h4>  <nav>  	<ul>  		<li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>  		<li><a href="#history">History</a></li>  		<li><a href="#development">Development</a></li>  	<ul>  </nav>

In this example, we have used nav element to wrap Table of Content, where the links are still pointed to the same page.

Footer Element

Another element that is now widely adopted is the footer element. Generally we refer the footer to a section located at the very bottom of the web page, but let’s take a look how the specification describe this element; “The footer element represents a footer for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A footer typically contains information about its section such as who wrote it, links to related documents, copyright data, and the like.”

That is a bit puzzling, let’s make this thing simpler.

The footer is (still) logically placed at the bottom. But since the specification did not mention this element to be used exclusively for web footers, we can conclude that the implementation for the footer element may also be used at the end of a section. Let’s see the example below;

<div>  <header>  <h1>This is the Title of the Content</h1>  	<div class="post-meta">  		<p>By Author</a> <span class="category">Filed in Web 2.0</span></p>    	</div>  </header>  <article>  	<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus id   	felis et augue sagittis euismod quis at sem. Nunc sit amet magna ac velit congue   	ultricies. Sed eros justo, lacinia in fringilla sollicitudin, congue id massa.   	Nunc dignissim bibendum nibh, sed dictum massa pharetra sit amet.</p>  </article>  <footer>  	<div class="tags">  		<span class="tags-title">Tags:</span> <a href="#" rel="tag">Command Prompt</a>, <a href="#" rel="tag">Compass</a>, <a href="#" rel="tag">CSS</a>, <a href="#" rel="tag">Sass</a>, <a href="#" rel="tag">Terminal</a>  	</div>  	<div class="facebook-like">  		<div>10 likes</div> <!-- let's pretend it to be the facebook like -->  	</div>  </footer>  </div>

In this example, we have extended our post content to have a footer containing post tags and the post ‘Likes’.

Final Thought

header, nav and footer are not doing fancy things like the other new HTML5 elements, but these elements are primarily designed to make the web structure more meaningful both for browsers and humans, just like how the World Wide Web inventor, Tim Barners-Lee, think of it.