It is becoming more and more important to at least have a basic understanding of all the information that goes into making a fantastic website. Knowing limitations and pushing those limits makes web design and development fun, interesting, and challenging. If you work in this field you probably already know that web work is all about constantly learning new technologies, tools, tips and tricks.

Smashing Magazine

If you don’t know about this one then you have been missing out. While there is some fluff from time to time, you learn a lot from this site. There are a lot of top website and tools lists which can get tedious, but Smashing Magazine really does have the pulse of the web and this is the spot to be if you want to keep up to date on web trends. Some of their most popular posts are actually their trend posts. Critics will say that Smashing causes everyone to create the same type of designs, but I think it’s good to know what is working out there and what is not.

Noupe

Noupe is part of the Smashing network. It has a huge amount inspirational lists and resources. When you need a break from work or if you are feeling creatively drained it can be a great quick stop for a creative inspirational recharge.

Grafpedia

Grafpedia is the holy grail of Photoshop web design tutorials. The site sells their templates, but the real guts of the site is the full on tutorials. You can create all of their PSD templates by following their extremely detailed tutorials. Most of us won’t want to do that of course, but browsing the designs until you see something that makes you say “how did they do that” and then getting a detailed play by play tutorial on just that question is pretty cool. A fantastic resource for Photoshop web design techniques. Also a great place to start if you are completely new to creating Photoshop mockups.

ProBlogger

If you are a blogger, you should be reading this guys stuff. I started reading ProBlogger about two years ago. Some of the subject matter may be obvious for the more advanced bloggers, but you’ll probably gain new insights regardless of your skill level. Once you digest a lot of Darren’s site it does start to feel a bit regurgitated, but a quick visit every now and then always reveals something new for me. He also does a lot of his own tests and research on analytics and SEO. Problogger is also very professional and way less spamy than a lot of the get rich quick blogging tip sites out there.

Ajaxian

Ajaxian is for the more technically minded web designers and developers out there. As the name suggests they follow a lot of Ajax techniques, but the site has much more to offer than news about Ajax. If you want to know where the future of Web Apps are headed, this is a good starting point. Even if you are not a programmer, there’s a lot of cool bleeding edge stuff to see on this site.

Adobe BrowserLab

The best way to really test your websites is with the actual browser, usually via a virtual machine. Not everyone has time to install a load of browsers under virtual machines and if you don’t need to test the functionality then Adobe BrowserLab is the answer to your testing needs. The layout is slick and easy to use. You can select all the browser you want to test with and save them. The site then quickly renders image screenshots of all the browsers you selected. The next time you need to test out good old IE6 or some other hard to find browser version, give it a try.

Focus: Cross-browser testing
browserlab.adobe.com

Web Designer Wall

“A wall of design ideas, web trends, and tutorials.” This is another personal blog with a broad range of web design content. Tutorials, news, funky design techniques and everything in between. There’s a lot of content here and this guy posts often.

Pro Blog Design

This site has been around for a few years, but it only recently hit my radar. The focus is on web design with an emphasis on blogs. It’s got some fantastic tutorials and a lot of discussion.

WebKitBits

I recently discovered this gem of a site and it’s quickly becoming a favourite. WebKitBits is all about really cool projects done using the power of the Webkit rendering engine. Webkit is the browser engine built into Safari, Chrome, iPhone, Palm Pre, and Android, and it’s pretty awesome. This engine blows away Internet Explorer and even gives Gecko a run for it’s money. The stuff here is bleeding edge and some of it possibly years away before we see it in mainstream websites, but it will reignite you passion for everything web and you will be ready for the next wave of awesome.

Learning jQuery

jQuery should need no introduction by now and should be in every web designers arsenal. I would be lost without it or at least spending many more hours on my scripting. It’s the JavaScript framework library that went from “jWhat?” to “oh yeah, that’s easy we can do it with jQuery”. If you’re looking for people who know jQuery like the back of their hand, then this is the site for you as the authors share tips, techniques and tutorials and have written fantastic books on jQuery too.

BrushKing

While not exactly a web design focused site this is still a must see for web designers. It’s a Photoshop brush site with loads of free brushes. There’s always that one brush that you can plop into a web page and just add that little bit of extra wow. The quality of most of the brushes is stunning.

Web Design Ledger

Web Design Ledger or WDL for short is a web design knowledge and resources site. It’s another one of those fully loaded blogs that you can absorb information and inspiration from for hours. If you need a break from Smashing Magazine, check out Web Design Ledger.

COLOURlovers

Colour is so important, and COLOURlovers have got it covered. It’s basically a social media colour palette sharing site. Users share their colours, palettes, patterns and trends with the COLOURlovers community. The site is a great first step in the early design phase. They also oddly spell Colour correctly and incorrectly throughout the site.

Nettuts +

This is another one of those massive resource sites out there that offers free content and premium content. Nettuts + is only part of their huge tutorial network. If you need information on a topic or just want to get exposed to new techniques and ideas than this is the place to go.

A List Apart

This list would not be complete without A List Apart. I my opinion this site is the de facto authority on best web practices and techniques. Many of the well known techniques used today originated on A List Apart. Although they don’t post near as much as some of the other sites listed here, the content is almost always top notch. The topics cover code, content, culture, design, process and user science. A lot of well known industry leaders and thinkers have written for A List Apart.

Did I miss something?

If you think there is some awesome super duper resource that is missing from this list including your own site, please don’t hesitate to post it below in the comments.

Right now Bespin only works on FireFox and the WebKit Nightly builds. Bespin is “using exciting new technology in HTML 5 that only leading browsers have implemented”. This is the message you receive when you use anything but FireFox or WebKit nightly to access the Bespin editor. They are using some advanced features of the canvas tag and there has been some controversy over their choice. Ajaxian has great article on the reasons for choosing canvas.

Since Bespin is using cutting edge web standards it will probably work in most browsers by the time it is at a production level and ready for the masses. WebKit is the engine that powers Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, so it is only a matter of time before we see Bespin working in these browsers and any browser that supports the HTML 5 spec.

Internet Explorer fails again

Of course Internet Explorer 8 is coming out soon and it’s already behind the times and does not support the canvas tag at all. I don’t really see this as an issue as most Web Designers have long ago given up on this browser and since this is targeted at web designers and developers it should be a non-issue.

Working in the cloud

So what kind of things could we expect from Bespin in the future? Well I’m hoping it will be able to integrate into your website and hopefully as it grows it will gain things like source control and maybe even be integrated into some of the big content management systems out there. Think of working on your WordPress or Drupal theme in one browser tab and your admin page in the other. Bespin is open source and being designed with scalability and extendability in mind. In the developer video they give an example of collaborative coding, where you can literally see code changing in real-time in one screen while a developer types in the other. This would be great for training, code walkthroughs and tandem trouble shooting.

Bespin is far from being anything more than a fun tool to play around with right now, but the potential and imagination is there. This is definitely a project to keep your eye on.

Yes, there’s a lot of crap in the Blogsphere, a lot of scams, a lot of spam, and “paid bilge”. Am I missing something here? Aren’t forums, email, IM chat, feedback forms, and even Twitter and other social media platforms plagued by this parasitic garbage everyday? Aren’t we constantly hearing about how the newest CAPTCHAs have been cracked? Nothing on the web is immune from the darker side of human nature, just as real life is not either. The scams, the spam, and the get rich quick schemes are everywhere, so really I see no reason to single out blogs.

The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Why would my time be better spent on any of these services? Flickr is a social photography site and has nothing to do with what I am generally writing about. Facebook is a collection of friends and family, people who may have no interest in what I am talking about and a very small audience compared to what I can garner from a blog. Twitter is something I do understand and use daily. It is one of my favourite social media platforms, but it is an augmentation to my blog and a place where I can share quick short ideas with like minds. As much as I like twitter it has no where near the quality of the blog sphere and there is only so much you can express with 140 characters.

Where is the fun and satisfaction in posting to a select few on a social media platform?

I think where Boutin really misses the point is what fun is writing stuff that hardly anyone will see? A lot of bloggers write because we want too, not because we want to be the next Engadget. He further goes on to point out that other prominent figures are quitting the blog scene, so I guess that means we all should too; total rubbish.

Impersonal is correct: Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.

He’s right, an independent blogger probably can’t crank out 30 posts a day, but who cares, that’s not the point. Are you looking for quantity or quality. I follow many of the large tech blogs like Engadget, and they are fantastic resources, but they are also open flood gates. Smaller Bloggers like me sift through the deluge of information and break it down into smaller more focused bits of information. There is also a lot of specialization and niche topics in many smaller blogs that you just won’t find with the larger ones.

As for how personal a blog is, that’s really up to the writer. I’m not writing my blog for the personal interaction, that’s what social media platforms are for. I’m writing it because I like sharing issues I have solved with other people, expressing myself and occasionally ranting about an issue I feel passionate about. The social aspects which do come from blogging are just an added bonus, and I have met some cool fellow Bloggers during the life of my blog.

If we applied this negative attitude to everything then we wouldn’t have independent music, or small startup companies, because really, we are just being shoved aside by the big labels and corporations so why bother?

It always comes back to the dark corner of the web

That said, your blog will still draw the Net’s lowest form of life: The insult commenter. Pour your heart out in a post, and some anonymous troll named r0rschach or foohack is sure to scribble beneath it, “Lame.

First I will say that I have received far more positive posts than negative. Everything from thank you to contributing more information to a topic. This is typical of big media villianizing the Internet in general. Everyone is evil, everyone is bad, there’s nothing good on the Internet. This kind of thinking is typical of media outlets like CNN and it’s just not true. There is so much quality on the Internet, and the good far outweighs the bad. The only reason spam can flood our inboxes is because it’s automated. When it comes to real people posting on the web, there is no other testament to the good outweighing the bad than Wikipedia. If the trolls really outnumbered us, we would not have the great many resources that exist online today.

The little guy has a voice

Right now my blog is averaging 200 unique hits per day and growing; that is far more than I could do on any of the services Boutin mentioned. I love writing, and watching my traffic slowly grow has been very rewarding. I don’t think the Blogsphere is going anywhere, and I think mainstream media and big business are afraid of independent voices. If you live in Canada and followed the Rogers and iPhone pricing schemes you would know first hand that blogs have an effect, especially thousands of Bloggers uniting all chanting the same thing. We can create change, and it’s happening every day.

Keep writing and don’t let anyone tell you to stop, especially Big Media

Boutin has missed the real point of blogging. It’s not about beating the huge corporate blogs (although being the next super blog is always a nice thought), it’s about being an independent voice. It’s about saying a product sucks, or talking about what the mainstream isn’t talking about. I have several posts that appear on the front page of Google when searching, so the little guy can still be found.

Never let Big Media scare you away, mainstream television news is still talking about the horrors of the Internet daily. The web is a great place where everyone can express themselves. If Twitter or Facebook are your thing, than use those too, but if you like Blogging, never stop writing.

As geeks we like to talk about toys, gadgets, computers and technology, these are things that make many of us get excited. I know that I am extremely passionate about technology in general; the breakthroughs we are seeing in every area of technology are quite astounding, everything from consumer electronics to curing new diseases, the future looks amazing for some of us. What is also astounding is that in this world of amazing technology there are children starving to death every single day. The future doesn’t look so amazing for them and I can never quite wrap my head around that fact. How can we have so much and yet some other people have so little just because of where they were born? That’s a complex question with many answers, but what you really have to ask yourself is if you can make a difference. Even if it is a once and awhile contribution to a charity of your choice or a long term commitment or volunteering, it could even be as simple as talking to people about the issues and spreading awareness. If we can send people to the moon and make tiny computers that can surf the web and fit in the palm of our hands, then we can end poverty someday, and I hope that someday is in my lifetime.

Awareness

It starts with awareness, so many people aren’t even aware of what is going on in many parts of the world or don’t even care. Yes it’s hard to look at images and video of these places or read about them, but this is real, and ignoring it won’t make it go away. The more people are concerned about this the better the world will be for everyone. So much crime, hatred, violence and war are direct consequences of extreme poverty. If more people care about these issues then our governments will also care, because we are the government and we can push for change. Some countries like Canada will even double contributions made at certain times of the year or during a crisis.

Even if all you do is talk about it with friends or family you will have made a difference. Today some of my favourite blogs have posted some great information on these issues, so I will leave you with a list of great sites to ponder and explore.

• World Vision (You can give one time gifts or sponsor a child)
• ProBlogger – Reflections on Poverty
• Tech Crunch – Help Eliminate Poverty, Make a Microloan to An Entrepreneur
• Google blog – Information on Poverty
• Mashable – 8 Poverty Resources You MUST Check Out Today. No Excuses
• Official Blog Action Day website

Like it or not here it comes

This week Facebook is in the process of migrating all of it’s users over to the new design whether they like it or not, and right now there is a lot of kicking and screaming going on. Anyone who reads my blog regularly knows I love a good rant, but I don’t really get it this one.

I switched to the new Facebook when it was optional and never switched back. One of my biggest beefs with the old Facebook was how narrow it was. It was smaller than any site I visit and there was really no need for it, it’s not 1999 and there are mobile versions for smaller hand held devices. As for usability, I never really got the old or new design and still have trouble finding things, but I’m not a power user of Facebook. I’m sure if I used it everyday it would become second nature to me as will this new design for all the power users out there.

That said, protests are popping up all over the web over the past few days. Mashable has a list of 10 petitions you can sign and a way to temporarily get the old facebook back. So if that tickles your fancy check it out.

Take a deep breath

Will Facebook bow to pressure and change the design? Highly unlikely, this design probably took a lot of effort and research. The majority of people won’t care, and when you hear numbers thrown around like hundreds of thousands of people hate the new design, take it with a grain of salt. Lets not forget that this is Facebook, one of the most visited sites in the world with over 100 million active users worldwide, a few hundred thousand users is nothing, and even a million users is only 1%.

What I think will most likely happen here is people will have their little tantrum and then continue on using Facebook. Within a few weeks we won’t even remember the great Facebook protests of 2008.

FaceYourManga is a site where you can create a manga / anime style avatar of yourself. The sheer number of options from the type of head you want, colour of skin, and other characteristics like beards, glasses, lines and sideburns leaves ample room for creativity. Only a few of my Twitter followers have converted themselves into cartoons, but so far they do look a lot like there real human counter parts.

Anyone can make one and within moments of completion your new avatar will be emailed to you. Be warned though that you cannot go back and edit your avatar once completed. This would be a nice feature and would probably make the site a little more sticky. This one drawback is why mine has brown eyes instead of blue.

Although this trend may be short lived, it’s kind of cool seeing all these unique cartoons of people you know showing up everywhere, so go try it out, it only takes a few minutes to create one.

It seems Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the two guys who created Scrabulous voluntarily took the site down contrary to mainstream media reports of a forced shut down by Facebook. 48 hours later they have a reworked the application and called it Wordscraper which aside from the new name also has a new look and feel to it. I have only quickly tried the game and it has a custom game rules option and a random rules default when setting up the game. You can tell it’s the same Scrabulous interface, but the look is quite different. I will have to play a little more to see how similar it is, but congrats to the developers for getting this out so fast, I wonder if Hasbro will still be able to take legal action.

Lost opportunity

Hasbro’s own client is said to have many problems and be very slow. I can’t believe how blind this company is. The developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla breathed new live into Scrabble. Would Hasbro have even though of a Facebook application? Probably not for awhile, but once they saw someone bringing back a great game they were quick to squash it.

The part I can’t get is why did they not offer to buy out or work with these guys. Work on scrabble branding and come out looking good with a huge user base? Instead they pissed off a lot of die hard Scrabulous fans, released a supposedly buggy Facebook application and still have the competition of Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. I really hope Wordscraper turns out to be great and that everyone switches to it. I understand intellectual property rights, but seriously, these two developers turned a whole new generation of social media junkies to Scrabble.

The other great news is that if you have been posting to a lot of blogs with the same email address and they have Gravatar functionality set up, all your old posts will be updated with your personal Gravatar when you sign up for one. Also, if you have posted to a blog without Gravatars and they add the that functionality in the future, your old posts will then show up with your Gravatar.

How does it work?

Gravatars work by passing a few parameters through the URL to the Gravatar website. You tell the site what you are looking for, send an encrypted email address via MD5 hash along with size, default icon location and border colour. Some of these parameters are optional.

Example Gravatar URL

http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=b205b058e095597f982a65a1134a89cc&rating=R&size=40&default=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ianhoar.com%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fian_v2%2Fimages%2Fgravatar_default.gif

For people wanting to add Gravatars to their own blog it’s extremely easy with WordPress. There are several ways you can do this. WordPress 2.5 has Gravatar functionality built in by default. You can find out more about this on the WordPress Codex. There are also several plugins that will accomplish this including the official Gravatar WordPress plugin, which is the method I prefer over the built in WordPress functionality and will discuss below.

The reason I like the Gravatar plugin over the default WordPress support is that I find it more flexible. I can use my own image html and use my own CSS class and alt tag right in the HTML theme template. The WordPress Gravatar support generates the image HTML for you automatically and you can use the included class to style it.

Using the WordPress Gravatar Plugin

<img src="<?php gravatar("R", 40, "http://www.ianhoar.com/gravatar_default.gif"); ?>" class="gravatar" alt="<?php comment_author(); ?>" />

• The first parameter in the gravatar() function sets your rating. Gravatars have G, PG, R and X ratings. This setting allows you to set what kind of avatars you want to allow on your blog.
• The second parameter sets your size. In this case 40 x 40 pixels (the default is 80 x 80 pixels).
• The third sets the path for a default avatar if a user does not have a Gravatar.
• There is also a fourth parameter that allows you to set a 1px colour boarder. I prefer to use a custom class for this within the image markup itself.
• I’ve also set the users name as the alt tag for each Gravatar with the comment_author() function.

What if I don’t have WordPress?

You are probably in luck, the Gravatar website has detailed instructions on the Gravatar URL and other plugins for several blogging platforms. You can find a complete list in the Gravatar implementor’s guide.

Scroll down to see my first comment on this article and you will see my Gravatar in action. If you are a blog reader and you post a lot, why not get your own Gravatar today? Feel free to come back here and try it out in the comments section below.

Getting funny links or informative information from colleagues and friends is cool, but you can also follow company Twitters or big names in any given industry. I have added a few of these names to my Twitter but found that after only a few days I would remove them. The reason? A massive overload of messages or tweets. I was sitting at my desk the other day and looked at all my tweets from a cell phone I was following and my first thought was this is like Twitter vomit. Maybe some of it was good, but if I log on and all I see is one users tweets taking up the whole first page there is a problem.

I think Twitter is a great way to promote your company, product or blog, but don’t flood your users. I find myself much more likely follow links from tweets that consistently post quality without overloading me. If my front page is filled up with one users tweets, that’s a little annoying and the easiest way for me to get those off my screen is by not following you anymore.

So far I have removed one company product and one blogger from my Twitter. The sad part is I was and still am very interested in that product and that blogger, I just didn’t want to see 10 messages from them in less than 4 hours. Don’t abuse your followers, because if they are like me, you may find them dropping off. The ones that don’t drop off may just skip your tweets.

An example of a big name using Twitter well in my opinion is Barack Obama. I mostly added him to see how a politician would use social media; more out of curiosity than anything. I’m not even American and know little about him. He (or whoever he has doing it for him) rarely posts to Twitter, but when they do I usually see it since the tweet does not come up often.

One other Twitter tip is set up an icon. Tweets with the default icon blend into each other, and users are more likely to skip over them. If your icon is unique it will stand out more.

You can follow me on Twitter, I post blog updates, comments and the occasional links that I find interesting.

Happy tweeting.

Openmoko is open.
Open to life, desire, function, and simple beauty. Never closed, perfect, or complete. An empty vessel, ready to be filled with your ideas.

Openmoko is truly Open Source, even the physical phone is open—anyone can download the actual CAD files and design their own phone. Openmoko has a GNU/Linux OS base. This project almost has a pro hobby feel to it, something you can build, design, and program from the ground up. The current developer phone has all the bells and whistles you would expect from a touch phone.

Size and Weight
4.75 x 2.44 x 0.73 inches
6.5 ounces (185 grams)

Display
Touch Screen
2.8″ VGA (480×640) VGA Screen

Speed
ARM9 @ 400 MHz
2D/3D Graphics Acceleration

GSM
Tri band 850/1800/1900 MHz
Tri band 900/1800/1900 MHz

Power
Removable 1200 mAh battery

Memory
128MB SDRAM
256MB NAND Flash
microSD Slot

Input and Output
Input and Output
2.5 mm audio jack
GPS external connector

Hardware Highlights
Wi-Fi (802.1 1b/g)
AGPS
GPRS (2.5G not EDGE)
Bluetooth 2.0
3axis Motion Sensors (2)

Software Highlights
Openmoko GNU/Linux-based
100% FOSS on CPU
GNU/Linux development tools

(specifications are from OpenMoko website)

You can already get the developers version of the phone, and it costs around $400. You can order it in Canada through Koolu or you can order it from the Openmoko site. Koolu says due to large demand it will take 2 to 3 weeks to ship, so obviously this phone has a market.

I think it’s great to see more phones like this. It should greatly help innovation, along with Googles Android and now even Nokia’s Symbian being opened up. I will definetly keep my eye on this one, there is also a consumer level phone on the way.

See Wired for more information in Openmoko Neo FreeRunner on Sale July 4 and Design Your Own Cellphone With OpenMoko.