Elistist Snob, one of GearBox proudest creations, has received the honor of being featured in Smashing Magazine. The publication lists Elitist Snob among thirty of the web’s top blog designs, calling it “Excellent”. We tend to agree.

It’s bad enough when this happens while I’m using a Mac, forcing me to turn down the volume settings from the keyboard. But on a typical PC I scramble to find the volume knob on my external speakers before arousing disapproving looks from nearby co-workers.

What really irritates me, aside from the annoying nature of these boisterous ads, is how ineffective they serve their functions. Advertisers foolishly assume such ads will entice viewers to click on them and read more about the services they offer. WRONG! What happens with most users, such as my case, is they simply move on to another webpage. In fact, annoying web ads have the exact opposite intended effect upon casual viewers. Instead of luring customers, they detour them. And yet advertisers still pursue us with noisy animated Flash-based ads.

Will they never learn?

This is a great video taken from the Grand Opening of Apple’s Fifth Avenue Store in NY. Be on the look out for several celebrities appearing in video.

Bad news for Apple fans. The company announced Friday that Leopard would miss its scheduled June target release due to development timetables and resource attrition created by iPhone. Instead, the official product launch will be pushed back to… October. Yikes!Apple specifically blamed the delay on iPhone, saying that key OSX developers are being pulled off Leopard to work on iPhone’s embedded OS and software.

But analysts are saying that is smoke and mirrors, and that the true culprit behind the announced delay is because of “top secret” features in Leopard that are taking longer than anticipated to complete.

Personally I don’t see any problems. Tiger is still best in class in my opinion. It more than meets my needs for now.

Among the new features found in this release…

• Combine multiple files into a PDF package
• Combine multiple files into a searchable, sortable PDF package that maintains the individual security settings and digital signatures of each included PDF document.
• Auto-recognize form fields
• Automatically locate form fields in static PDF documents and convert them to interactive fields that can be filled electronically by anyone using Adobe Reader software*. (Windows® only)
  Manage shared reviews
• Easily conduct shared reviews—without IT assistance—that allow review participants to see one another’s comments and track the status of the review.
• Enable advanced features in Adobe Reader
• Enable anyone using free Adobe Reader software* to participate in document reviews, fill and save electronic forms offline†, and digitally sign documents.

After a lot of work and painstaking efforts, our new template is complete. This design is powered by WordPress. It’s not easy migrating legacy code into a new publishing framework. Our previous site was built on top of Mambo, an open source content management system that later forked into two different projects. Joomla! has become Mambo’s successor, more or less.

Great as Joomla is I wanted to move GearBox over WordPress because it offers simplicity and flexibility for managing basic dynamic web pages. WordPress is also a renowned blogging tool, seconded only by MovableType.

We hope you like the new design. Enjoy