I’ve always had a soft spot for Absolut ads. So simple and yet positively genius. According to Wikipedia, it’s the longest running ad campaign, ever. Not sure of the validity of this claim, but it’s certainly been a very long time. Based on the shape of the bottle, which is distinct among other vodkas, unlimited variations of the ad have been made. Over 1500, according to Wikipedia! I compiled some ads here to showcase the fact that each ad is completely unique, while maintaining the brand and making a statement. There is definitely something to learn here, this ad concept was first started around 1980, and it’s still running! Enjoy..

As I’ve wrote about on here before, I’m a learning junkie. I love love learning new things. It keeps my mind going, keeps me thinking of new and better things to do with my craft, and most of all I just enjoy expanding my knowledge base. I love the ah-ha moment when you get a new skill for the first time or you try out a new tutorial and it works! It’s a great feeling.

With that being said, my current project is learning php. This is something I’ve wanted to learn for a while now, and I’m finally doing it. After looking at the source pages for wordpress and what could only be called voodoo magic, I decided I needed to gain a better understanding of this language. Here are some great resources I’ve found so far:

http://www.ragard-jp.com/en/tutorials/php-tricks-for-non-programmer/ Good, easy to understand code to implement here. Easy beginner stuff!
http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/Default.asp This is where I recommend EVERYONE starts! Lots of valuable info on this website and it walks you through everything step by step, explaining everything from variables to arrays.
http://us2.php.net/tut.php PHP’s site, always a good idea to check out the php site when learning php
http://nettuts.com/articles/10-principles-of-the-php-masters
Some good stuff here, some of it was a bit more complicated than the stuff I’m creating right now, but good advice to keep in mind.
http://www.phpbuddy.com/article.php?id=17 More good, simple, easy to implement code here
http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/627 Lots of resources, I haven’t checked them all out, but I’m quite interested in reading Down the Rabbit Hole!
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=435 Lynda always has valuable stuff. I’ve only watched a few of the beginning ones here, but they seem helpful.
http://nettuts.com/php/learn-php-from-scratch-a-training-regimen/ Nettuts has had some good php resources lately, seems like others over there are on the php-learning-bandwagon as well!
http://nettuts.com/php/learn-php-from-scratch-part-2/ And another one from Nettuts.

Are you a learning junkie? What’s on your learning list right now? And do you have any php advice for me??

Do you know all of the web’s simple acronyms like www and url? What about the more complicated ones like xml or php? Everyone throws around these terms that are actually household names! But do people actually know what they stand for? My guess is no.. I’ll admit, I had to look some these up. But I thought it would be fun to see what you guys know and maybe you’ll learn a few new ones!

WWW – world wide web (okay we’re starting out easy!)
URL – uniform resource locator
HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTML – Hypertext Markup Language
XHTML – eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language
XML – eXtensible Markup Language
FTP – file transfer protocol
PHP – Hypertext Preprocessor
WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get (This one still gets me, it’s so simple!)
RSS – Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary
ISP – Internet Service Provider
DOM – Document Object Model
CSS – Cascading Style Sheets
CMS – Content Management System
CGI – Common Gateway Interface
DNS – Domain Name Server
SEO – Search Engine Optimization

What else can you add to the list?