If you have ever added a website bookmark to your home screen on an Apple iOS device (iPhone or iPad), then you know that often times the preview icon you get is less than desirable. If your a web developer, then you may have often wondered if it was possible to have your website icon displayed on the home screen rather than a screen capture of the webpage. Well, it can be done, and it’s actually quite easy.

Create your website icon – Create you website icon with desired graphics, at 512 pixels by 512 pixels, and PNG format. Name and place the icon on your web server.

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/your-image-path/your-icon-name.png" />

Add the above code snippet to your html header – Place the above code between your website header tags and that’s it. Enjoy pretty app-like website icons on iOS home screens!

Before / After

I have no idea if this works on Android, as I don’t have an Android device, but I can confirm that it does not work on Windows Phone 7, which is unfortunate. Although, there is a hack-a-round way to get it working on Windows Phone 7, hopefully they’ll support this natively in Windows Phone 8.

If your a PC gamer, you know –unless your living under a rock– that Steam is the de facto online distribution channel for PC games. Certainly there is always a deal to be had from the site, but the summer sale is here, and it’s sure to be something you don’t want to miss. Keep your browser refreshed to get access to latest daily deals, deal packs, as well as flash deals.

First off, this post is inspired by my friend over at Fat Guy Running and his journey to become more fit and active. About two years ago, I was overweight. And to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t exactly tell you how I got there. Of course people say that when you get married you gain weight for a number of reasons: change in diet, change in activity level, etc. All these are totally valid and probably what contributed to me becoming as out of shape as I was.

Added to this is the fact that I work a desk job. Prior to getting married, I worked out five to six days a week after work to counter the affects of sitting in front of a desk for eight or more hours a day, and it worked. Back then, about four years ago, I weighed about 215lbs. At six foot five, I consider that a pretty healthy weight, despite the fact that Body Mass Index, or BMI, says otherwise — BMI is a whole other story I may write about at another time.

So, like I said, I got married, moved, and become a dad all in the span of about a year, which totally made making time to stay in shape a low priority. My commute to work went from five minutes to about thirty on a good day. Free time to work out went from “whenever I wanted” to “whenever I could”, which was almost non-existent. Fast food become more and more a mainstay in my diet because of convenience.

Honestly, I can say that I was okay with the changes at the time, because priorities are priorities. But one should also consider their health. Before my downward health spiral, I had only had minor problems with my back. To be clear, back problems run in my family, my father and I have the exactly same problems with our backs going out from time to time. Personally my problems never had gotten too bad, but in hindsight, I see it was because I was staying in pretty decent shape. Suffice it to say, after I stopped working out my back problems ballooned, along with my weight.

At the peek of my journey into the abyss I weighted about 280lbs. And after other things around me began to fall apart, I told myself, “there are a lot of things I can’t control, but the things I can, I will, otherwise I have no one to blame but myself.” This was on September 10, 2010 –probably the loneliest day of my life.

So, I began to work out again at the pace I was before –about five to six days a week– and started to really pay attention to my diet. The workout consisted of mostly, if not all, cardiovascular activity at first, and after time transitioned into more weight training. I also started eating healthier by cutting out the obvious things which are bad for you, considering most of those things as ways to treat myself from time to time.

The journey has brought me back almost entirely to my former weight. Now I weigh about 225lbs, and although I’m not completely back to my former weight, the journey of reaching that goal has taught me a lot about self-worth, consistency, and lifestyle. Back problems are back to being an every now and then thing, with nothing as nearly as bad as it was when I was overweight. For the most part, I completely feel like my old self again.

I cannot say that I’ll never be out of shape or overweight again, but I will control the things I can, otherwise, God’s got it.

As broadband becomes more widely adopted and speeds continue to increase, it was pretty much a guarantee that sooner or later one of the big three console makers would get into the cloud gaming arena, which up until this point has been ruled by the likes of OnLive and Gaikia. Sony has taken a huge step in that direction by acquiring the latter company, and setting up for what should be a very interesting next generation of gaming.

The acquisition of Gaikai doesn’t come as a huge surprise, the timing does. As many rumors where floating around before and during the Electronic Entertainment Expo that such an announcement would take place. While a deal may have not been reached at the time, turns out the rumors were true and Sony is well on its way to having some sort of cloud gaming implementation in its next iteration of the PlayStation.

So what could a cloud-based gaming solution bring to the table for the next PlayStation?

Sony may no longer need to include special hardware in the next device that would allow for backwards compatibility. Since the games could be delivered via the cloud, it frees up hardware costs, as well as allowing Sony to make a smaller, more streamlined device.

Also, that same back catalog can be delivered to other devices such as smart TV’s, the PlayStation Vita and smartphone’s, as well as tablets. Really the possibilities are endless here, granted the end user has a good internet connection.

The cloud is great, but I don’t really expect software of the upcoming generation to be cloud based, not even the demos. Point being that Sony should want their latest and greatest to run at its maximum potential. The occasional lag or less than desirable graphic may be okay for older things, but new titles should be expected to run superbly. That being said, we should definitely expect Sony to utilize Gaikai server technology to deliver digital downloads of these next generation titles to the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation Vita.

I guess we really just have to wait and see what Sony has up its sleeve, but the potential is apparent, and E3 2013 can’t get here soon enough. Yes, the next generation is shaping up nicely.