In just 18 short days, Socket has already hit 100 purchases. To put that in perspective, our popular and successful first theme Caulk hit 100 purchases in about 2 months. So that means Socket is officially selling more than twice as fast as Caulk. We’re very proud of this success and we’re glad that so many people have been able to benefit from Socket’s awesomeness. Pick up the theme for a mere $37 from Theme Forest today!

We recently did some customizations of our Caulk theme for the Blogger’s Bug website started by Mike Wilkerson of 2GuysTalking fame. In return, he gave us a huge shout-out in his weekly 24 series podcast which you can Listen to here – you’ll hear the Outer Spice plug at 4:50. If you’re into 24 (I used to be until around season 6) then you should definitely give his podcast a listen. Here’s the official website: 24podcast.com. Oh, and did I mention this is the official podcast of the Fox television series 24? So, you can also get to it by going to Fox’s website and clicking on the 2GuysTalking podcast link. Thanks again for the shout-out, Mike!

In other news, OSWC is wrapping up development on our newest premium Wordpress template called Socket, which will be available for sale on ThemeForest.net. We have also recently finished several other projects that will be appearing in our Portfolio section soon. Check back often!

Here is a website I came across with over 100k icons. The problem I’ve found with other free icon websites is that it’s hard to browse through the myriad of icons available, and when you do finally come across a set you like, you discover it is not free for commercial use. The great thing about this website is how it lists the icon sets out thumbnail style so you can easily view many at once, and it lists the license directly below each thumbnail. The only thing it’s missing is a way to sort by license, instead of just sorting alphabetically by icon set name. Check it out for yourself: FREE ICONS!.

Hayabusa

Japan didn’t care that no one had ever soft landed and taken off from an asteroid.  They picked an asteroid 500 million kilometers away named Itokawa and took off with their sweet ion engines.  Normally, (well actually only 2 other missions have even attempted to get near an asteroid) you’d just get near a asteroid and scan it or take pictures of it.  Not Japan.  They’re soft landing on it, grabbing some samples and RETURNING TO EARTH WITH THEM!  The first ever asteroid samples are on the way back to the land of the rising sun.

Things didn’t really happen exactly as planned.  There was an actual lander called Minerva that was going to elegantly land and hop around on the surface of the asteroid.  It didn’t get accurate altitude readings so when they let it go, it said “PEACE” and flew away.  It was all good though, Japan had a plan.  They just shot the stupid asteroid with a few ’sample collectors’ (come on, lets call it what it is – SUPER ASTEROID BUSTING GUNZ) and litterally flew threw the resulting dust- sealing up the cargo area and setting course for Earth.  AWESOME.  Lets just hope this doesn’t end with a Zombie apocalypse when we open the hatch.

Cassini-Huygens

With it’s Plutonium power plants, the Cassini-Huygens probe sent off to Saturn and its moons.  The Huygens probe was built to land on one of the moons of Saturn called Titan.  It took 2 and a half hours to get through the thick atmosphere, but miraculously it landed and sent pictures back to Earth.  Titan is the only other planetary body that Humans have found lakes of liquid.  Methane lakes the size of lake Michigan.
Slow down for a second.  This is a moon.  Of Saturn.  We landed on it, took pictures and sent them back.  We’re talking OVER A BILLION KILOMETERS AWAY.  Just check these pictures out- it blows my mind that I’m looking at the surface of a moon off of Saturn…

Venera 13

The Russians sent a probe to Venus called Venera 13.  Venus is kind of a pain to get to, as well as pretty tough to land on.  For instance it’s about 460 degrees on the surface.  CELCIUS.  The atmospheric pressure is around 93 bar, which doesn’t seem too impressive until you realize thats about the same pressure you’d find 1 kilometer under the freaking ocean.

So the crazy Russians didn’t care about the tough environment and sent a probe to the surface.  They took pictures, took readings of all kinds of things and beamed them back to earth.  Pretty ho hum, right?  Oh, did I forget to tell you?  They did this 27 YEARS AGO.  Never mind their country was falling apart, they still scrounged up just enough awesome to pull this incredible mission off.  Kudos to our Ruskie cousins.

We didn’t even go over the vasimir engine, phobos probes, New Horizons, LCROSS, or many other completely awesome space missions.  If you think nothing cool is going on up there, think again friend.

Subscriptions are another genius idea from Google. You can add pre-made calendars to your own calendar so you always know what’s going on while viewing your private calendar. For instance, you can now subscribe to your favorite sports team! Take a look in your Google Calendar at the top right toolbar and you will see a link that will take you to subscriptions:

You can also click Settings to get to this area. Once there, you will notice that you will see the different types of calendars you can subscribe to. The current default category is Holidays, and you can see that there are plenty of different nationalities represented:

To follow your favorite sports team, click on the Sports tab and choose one of the seven currently available professional sports (including Cricket and Rugby!) to find the team(s) you want to follow. Obviously I chose one of the greatest sports organizations ever created by mankind:

That’s it! Navigate back to your calendar and it will magically be populated with all of your sports team’s games so you can make sure you don’t plan anything else at the same time. Let’s check this coming Sunday – looks like the Colts are playing the Rams. Better make sure I don’t have any conflicts:

Doh!

Launchy

Website:  http://www.launchy.net
Me: A cool, relatively lightweight program that lets you launch programs with just a few keystrokes. Alt-Space- then type ‘no’- then hit enter and notebook will open up. You can customize keystrokes and teach it all your apps. Very cool and useful if you’re doing repetitive things.
About page: Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
Download: sourceforge

7zip

Website: http://www.7-zip.org
Me: Open source zip program with great compression.
About page: Usually, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format. And 7-Zip compresses to zip format 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.
Download: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z465.exe

Audacity

Website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Me: powerful open source audio editing software
About page: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to- Record live audio/Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs/Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files/Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together/Change the speed or pitch of a recording/and lots more.
Download: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows

Auslogics disk defrag

Website: http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag
Me: Free defrag that takes about 1/10 the time of regular defrag AND doesn’t restart when your PC goes to sleep.
About page: Auslogics Disk Defrag is extremely simple to use, does not require any analysis phase and is faster than most of the other disk defragmentation software. It will help you get the maximum performance out of your expensive hardware investments. And, what’s most important, it’s absolutely free.
Download: http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10567503.html?part=dl-6267754&subj=dl&tag=button

Aviary

Website: http://aviary.com
Me: Free online graphics editor.
About page: Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. We’re on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing.
Download: http://aviary.com/tools

Qik

Website: http://www.qik.com
Me:  Awesome android app that lets you stream live video to the web via your android phone.
About page:  Qik enables you to share your moments live with your friends, family and the world—right from your mobile phone!
Download: Various phone marketplaces

Screenr

Website: http://www.screenr.com
Me: create web based screencasts for free.
About page: Engage Your Audience By Embedding Screencasts In Your Site. Embedding Screenr screencasts is a great way to add life to your site, add context to an instructional post, or give your site some personality. Here’s some embedded screencasts we’ve seen in action.
Download: http://www.screenr.com

IntenseDebate

Website: http://intensedebate.com
Me: Commenting system application for blogs, etc.  There are actually too many awesome things about intense debate to put down in a concise manner.
About page:  Just go here and read the features http://intensedebate.com/features
Download: http://intensedebate.com/

you convert it

Website: http://www.youconvertit.com
Me:  Lightweight, quick conversion app.
About page: Free! Convert any media file format (Documents, Images, Audio, Video & Archives) without buying or installing anything on your PC.
Download: http://www.youconvertit.com

Irfanview

Website: http://www.irfanview.com
Me: Image converting, resizing, optimizing application.
About page: IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7.
Download: http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm

Not surprisingly, the team never found it’s rhythm and ended up loosing.  Cutler said after the game -

“It’s still a learning process, We haven’t been together that long in game situations, so we’re still learning. But that is no excuse for what happened out there.”

Wow, that sounds like you’re kind of blaming your entire team for your 4 interceptions.  Nice!  I hate that I’m going to do this (being a colts fan) but Tom Brady is a leader of men.  His teammates would go through a brick wall for him.  Their fear is that they’ll let him down.  That ‘fear of letting the team down’ is what all successful teams and organizations have.  They have it because they’ve got a leader that knows how to lead.  Now those are great words, but this all sounds pretty vague.  What makes leaders great?

• Resolution – the ‘will’ to make things happen.  Putting aside ego, pride, self-promotion to get something done- no matter the cost
• Know when to take risk – Sometimes you need to risk it all.  Sometimes you don’t.  Know how to quickly figure out which is needed.
• Share rewards with subordinates – When you succeed, funnel the praise and spoils of war to your subordinates.  SHOW them you care.
• Be one of the ‘guys’ – leaders who perch up on their high horse don’t get the type of relationships that those who live, eat, play with the team.
• Readiness to take blame – Take the blame for your team.  You need to be the shield of protection to them.
• Never dwell on success or failure – Celebrate wins, address failure.  MOVE ON afterwards.
• Confidence in yourself and peers – If you don’t trust your team members then you’ve got the wrong ones.
• Presence under pressure – Be the anchor in the storm.  As Gene Kranz (NASA – Apollo Flight director) said during the Apollo 13 rescue -’Settle down and work the problems.’
• Continuous Ambition – You’re always striving for more, for better results, bigger prizes.

Gene Kranz led by example.  Here is his address to NASA after the a fire swept through the Apollo 1 capsule during a test, killing all three astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom:

”Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”

If you can harness the skill of leadership, there is almost no limit to what you can accomplish.  Time will tell if Cutler figures any of this out in Chicago.  Look to the Super Bowl for the quarterbacks and that have the skill of leadership-  you can’t get there if you don’t have it.  We couldn’t have landed on the moon in 1969 if men like Gene Kranz didn’t have it.  We wouldn’t have this great nation if the radical American revolutionaries didn’t have it in the late 1700s.  It’s not for the meek.  It’s not for the unsure.  It’s mantle is heavy, and unforgiving.

Leadership.  Its what’s for dinner.