"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."

Could higher royalties help push e-reader devices further into mainstream usage? Many think they are going to get much more popular anyway. When authors and publishers can get more money out of Kindle books, it’s going to help push more publication of e-books, if not Kindle-specific titles.

Rory Cellan-Jones at BBC News has an interesting piece, which asks, "Is publishing about to have an iPod moment?" It looks at the very real possibility that e-readers will become much more mainstream.

"…2010 is supposed to be the year that publishing’s digital revolution really gathers pace," he notes. "There is now a wide range of e-readers on the market – in the UK devices like the Sony Reader, the Cool-er, and Amazon’s Kindle are all making it relatively easy to download and read e-books."

We recently got an up-close look at the latest Cool-er devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. You can check that out below.

As for the Kindle itself, DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. For that new 70% option, books must meet the following requirements:

- The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

- This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

- The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

- The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

- Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The option is only for in-copyright works and is not available for books published previous to 1923, which are public domain. The option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

Related Articles:

> Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Real Books On Christmas

> Amazon Kindle Breaks Monthly Sales Record

> Amazon In eBook Deal With Best Selling Author

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The physical act of removing clutter from my workspace left me free to focus on what remained. Much of what’s left is not physical, however. Like me, many online business owners have more electronic items in their business than physical ones. This is the point where many independent service professionals get stuck — trying to organize and take inventory of all those electronic assets and determine how to best utilize them in the coming year.

How can you track these electronic pieces of your business? By taking an inventory. You can take this inventory on paper, on a white board, on your computer, or wherever works for you.

Here are 17 points to include in your online business inventory:

1. Target Market. Describe the market(s) you serve and how you serve it/them. This will help you streamline other assets you find in your business to help you evaluate whether certain projects are right for your business.
2. Domains and hosting. Track down all the domains you own and where they are registered and where they are hosted. Note which domains are attached to web sites or are in use some way (even those that are forwarded to other sites). Which ones are not being used at all? What fees are you paying annually to renew these domains and hosting accounts?
3. Web sites. List all the web sites that you are currently using, including where they are hosted, the username and password to access the hosting control panel, FTP information, and emails associated with the site. Note how much traffic each web site has received over the past few months and estimate how much revenue the site is producing. Then, make a second list of all the web sites you own that are currently under development or are currently working on.
4. Blogs. List all the blogs you use, separating those that are inactive from the ones that are active. Note where they are hosted or the service hosting them, the username and password to access the hosting control panel, and login information. Note how much traffic each blog has received over the past few months, the number of subscribers you have to the blog, and estimate how much revenue the blog is producing, if you can.
5. Email marketing. List every mailing list, including your newsletters, autoresponders, customer lists, affiliate lists, prospect lists, etc. Note the purpose of the list, number of subscribers for each, and estimate how much revenue that list is producing.
6. Products. If you sell information products, make a note of both those that have been completed and are for sale and those in development. Also note any products that you give away for bonuses or give away on your site. If you sell physical products for which you keep an inventory, write them all down. Record how many you’ve sold of each product in the past year.
7. Paid Memberships. Inventory all the paid memberships you have in paid forums, PLR sites, professional associations, membership sites, and other memberships you pay for that are directly related to your business, along with their URLs, usernames and passwords. Take note of how much you pay for this membership and how often and how you use it.
8. Free Memberships. Note all the free memberships you have in various groups, forums, social networks, etc. Outline why these memberships are valuable to you and how much time you spend on each of them on a daily/weekly basis.
9. Software. Record all the software you have on your computer that is related to your business, including license/registration info, purchase price, and date purchased. Make a note of how frequently you use this software.
10. Outsourcing Team. Write down who works with you, what they do, how much you pay them per hour or per job, and their average monthly payment.
11. Affiliate links. Regularly recommending products and services for which you are an affiliate is a great way to add another stream of income in your business. Make a list of the products and services for which you are an affiliate, including your affiliate URL, affiliate account URL and username and password, and how much you have made in sales from each affiliate relationship.
12. Master password list. Incorporate all the passwords you have collected thus far into a master list, along with others you use regularly.
13. Speaking topics. Note the title, description, learning points, and interview questions of talks that you give regularly both face-to-face or virtually as a presentation or an interview.
14. Articles. Note the titles of all of the articles you have authored, along with a summary description of each. If you use an article distribution service, you may find your article index there. Move all of your articles under one folder on your computer so that you can easily access them in the future.
15. Recordings. Note the titles of all of the audio and video recordings you have made, including those where you were someone else’s guest, along with a summary description of each. Write down how the recordings are being used — for sale as an info product, as a bonus for one of your products or someone else’s product, or as a free giveaway.
16. Services. Note the nature of all services you currently provide, and those you plan to offer in the coming year, as well as your current pricing plans, future pricing plans, and how much money you made from each service in the past year.
17. Clean it up. Now it’s time for serious evaluation and to make some difficult choices. Remember, these will be some of the most important business decisions you’ll make to help you refocus for a highly productive and profitable business. There are just two rules to follow here: — If it doesn’t fit in with your chosen target market and business plan – GET RID OF IT! — If you still decide to hang on to it anyway, but it weighs on you in any way – GET RID OF IT!

This business inventory and cleanup may take a week or more, but once it’s completed, you’ll have a visual accounting of all of your business assets, which will help you plan for a profitable year in your business.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Business Planning: Your 17-Point New Year’s Business Inventory and Cleanup

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Since 1998, A List Apart has sought to serve the international web design and development community with educational, insightful, and sometimes visionary articles on web standards, emerging ideas and technologies, and best practices in content, usability, and design.

One barrier has long prevented us from fulfilling our goal to the utmost. But today we transcend it. Introducing A List Apart Arabic—an authorized A List Apart publication. Thank you and congratulations to Mohammad Saleh Kayali and his partners.

Look for additional international A List Apart editions, coming soon.

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Many times the choice that seems obvious for designers is serif fonts, due in part to the fact that they work well in the form of a headline or body content. Though with the following fonts you’ll see that we have digressed from filling up this list with serif fonts. Instead, we hand-picked a variety of well-known and a few obscure fonts that we believe do a good job of conveying readability when used for print.

Are we missing any? Let us know in your comment!

Tallys

Excelsior

Perpetua

Trajan

Akzidenz Grotesk

Geo Sans Light

Avenir

Meta

Stempel Schneidler

Vintage

Rockwell

Museo

Helvetica

Times New Roman

Stuart Standard

Houschka Pro Light

Adelle

Gylphya Std Black

Geometric Slabserif

Clarendon Light OT

Memphis

Coolvetica LT

Public Works

RePublic

Editorial Comment

Sling

Old Sans Black

Nevis

Chunk Five

QuickSand

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Mail Browser is a free Gmail plugin that allows you to easily manage your contact list and attachments.  The plug-in works best with IE and Firefox.

Here are some features that you might want to check out:

You can download it here.

Main Image Source: Mail Icon from Icon Archives

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According to PC World, most consumers who are using the iPhone 3GS is its camera.  Here is what we are supposed to expect:

“A better camera with flash, improved battery life, tethering-capability, and a choice of carriers top iPhone users’ “wish list” of features for the next-generation Apple handset, expected later this year. Also on the list: multitasking, a faster processor, and a better desktop application for Windows.”- David Coursey PC Word.  Read more

Aside from the news abouve,  T-Mobile released information about selling the 4G iPhone starting July 4 2010. This info will be public 01/27/10.
4G iPhone : thinner, GPS accurate within 5 feet (currently 50-100 feet),  multitasking,  5 mp flash camera.  Qualcomm to supply chips, which means T-Mobile Service for data.  Watch the video for more details.

Main Image Source

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Anyway, someone posted a code fragment on the TDD mailing list, asking how to test one class in isolation that has methods that explicitly depend on static methods of another class. When you have dependencies, the typical approach in testing is to mock the dependencies so that you test the “unit” in isolation. Dependencies on static methods (and static data members) are pretty much impossible to mock without resorting to some sort of “cheating” (preprocessing the source or manipulating the compiled binary).

Folks on the list responded that this dependency was a design flaw that needed to be fixed to make the code testable. Arnauld Bailly of OQube went a little further:

Don’t use static. Static is evil. Use objects. Refactor to use objects and DI. Then your problem disappears.

Static is something that crept in Java probably because Sun wanted to market its language to C/C++ developers (just kidding, but who knows? I don’t have time to search on the web for the “right” answer).

Don’t use static (and don’t repeat yourself .

Nuno Filipe Marques also suggested refactoring to use objects rather than class statics and then rely on Dependency Injection (DI) to make the class easier to test.

Charlie Poole agreed that this is a design flaw and also criticized statics:

If your goal is that class1 should be independently testable, then it’s a design flaw. [snip]

That’s not to say that the statics are OK – IME, they bite you sooner or later. It’s a question of how soon.

The reason for this negativity is much the same as why CFCs should not depend on shared scopes (such as application and session): it introduces a hard-to-test dependency. Most CFers seem to accept the argument that allowing CFCs to depend on application and session scope (except in very tightly controlled circumstances) is a problem for both testability and maintainability.

Consider that issue when you find yourself thinking that “static” would be good to add to CFML!

As an aside, Scala has an interesting approach to this problem: instead of statics, it allows you to define a singleton object (with the same name as the class with which it is associated) – with regular methods and data members – so that you can inject it just like other objects and therefore maintain isolation for testing (and thus improve maintainability and flexibility). There’s nothing wrong with using a singleton object in place of static methods and data members on a class – don’t assume the Java way is the only way!

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Online shopping is a great way to economize and reduce the stress of shopping, but shopping online for certain types of products can be harder than shopping in person. Recently, I looked at how well major online retailers (Macy’s, Target and Overstock.com) facilitate shopping for a deceptively complex, though very common, item: a set of 300-thread-count, white cotton sheets for a queen-sized bed. Here’s what I found.

Macy’s

As with all things Macy’s, its website is highly polished and savvy with marketing. The home page is clear and well organized, with categories that are well delineated and prominently displayed. This clarity continues on the “Bed & Bath” landing page, where the “Sheets” option is emphasized, being listed under “Bedding” as well as in the “Featured Categories” on the right. But once they’ve made their big choices, most shoppers will undoubtedly run into problems.

The “Sheets & Sheet Sets” page is a stumbling block. The ways of filtering the hundreds of options in this list are limited, and the filters we find are confusing and inconsistent anyway. Although a prominent “Brand” filter is available, I don’t purchase sheets regularly, and so I don’t have a strong commitment to any one brand (at least not any stronger than I do to color, pattern, material, etc.).

The left navigation menu provides additional options, but these are of limited value. The list mixes promotional navigation (”One Day Sale”) with content (”Sheets Buying Guide”) and filters (”By Threadcount”). The best way to help shoppers narrow down a long list of items is by adding a filtering function, allowing shoppers to prioritize. This page would greatly benefit from a function that allows users to sort or filter based on common criteria such as color, price, size and material.

So, I try the “Sheet Buying Guide,” the link to which is prominently highlighted on the “Sheets” page. The “Guide” is a well-written glossary of terms, but it doesn’t deliver on my expectation of assistance with selecting sheets. Strike two.

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The left column offers more product categories. Because the difference between “Sheet Sets” and “Bed Sheets” isn’t clear, I choose “By Threadcount” as the next best option. Selecting “200-320 Threadcount” reduces the results to a more manageable size. The pictures help me to distinguish the items, making it easy to dismiss patterned sheets and focus on the seven solid-color choices that fit the bill. However, with each item displaying as many as six different prices and four lines of underlined descriptive text, even this small handful of options is difficult to scan. Being able to compile a few options into a comparison table would really help!

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It seems the only way to tell which sheets are available in white and queen size is to check them out one by one. So I start clicking on items. The first looked fine but got poor customer ratings. Seeing the rating on the product page, along the number of people who reviewed and would recommend the item, is helpful, but seeing this information on the results page would have saved me a click.

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The second item might work, but I have to scroll down the page to see the available sizes and prices. Listing the sheet sets of different sizes alongside pillow cases and single sheets makes it a bit hard to scan for what I’m looking for. Also, I notice that printed and solid colors are listed as separate items, making the list longer and more complex than it needs to be. Being able to make my selection in a simple multi-step process would be better (e.g. Step 1: select the size. Step 2: select the color, etc.); either that or combining all of the colors into a DHTML drop-down menu that includes a thumbnail image. I decide to keep looking. The third item is a possibility, but it’s a bit pricey.

The fourth item isn’t available in queen size. The fifth doesn’t come in white. Now I have to remember: was it the first or second one that I liked? I wish I could mark candidates so that I didn’t have to remember (or takes notes). The inconspicuous “Compare to best sellers” link might have been helpful, but it isn’t: items are displayed in a nicely organized table, but they seem randomly selected from multiple product categories, such as mattress pads and pillow cases, and relevant data is missing from the comparison rows.

Moving on, I notice something new on the sixth product page. While previous pages displayed all sizes in a single-item selection list, this one has “Size tabs” at the top of the list. Did I miss this before? Because these tabs are so discrete and appear only on some product pages, I can’t be the only shopper who missed finding the best option for my needs.

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Once I’m ready to make my selection, I scroll down to find… “Add to bag”? Macy’s would do better to stick with the standard “Add to Cart” phrase, and not introduce verbal cleverness—and uncertainty—at the moment a shopper is ready to commit to the sale. I click this, and the page refreshes with an error message at the top of the page. I’ve forgotten something, though the message isn’t specific about whether I omitted color, size or item type. I need to scroll down to learn that I haven’t entered a quantity. Displaying the error message next to the offending field would be better, or better yet, default the quantity to “1″ when I select an item color.

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I correct the error and proceed, getting important feedback in the form of a pop-up window that confirms my selection, the cost and a running total of items in my bag. Appropriately, two options are presented: “Continue shopping” or “Checkout.”

The check-out page displays a clear and detailed list of items I’ve chosen, with an option to easily change quantities by using a drop-down menu next to each item. Any change quickly recalculates the total cost, including shipping charges and estimated tax, without requiring me to “update” or “save” the change, as one sees on many other commerce websites. At least this part of the process was a good experience.

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Though Macy’s website has many nice features, the most important function of finding the right product is unwieldy at best. The absence of an effective method of narrowing down a list of products to find the item I’m looking for made the experience more difficult than it should have been. Although the high-quality photography makes it quick and easy to scan products, the combination of multiple colors or elements in a single shot sometimes confused me.

Target

I had high hopes for Target, which has done such a great job of transforming itself from a cheap discount chain into an affordable, appealing and style-conscious retailer. I went onto its website hoping it brought its customer focus to the online experience.

The home page is cheery, though a bit overwhelming. Colorful graphics and promotional headlines vie for attention and thus decrease the prominence of the main navigation a bit. On mouse roll-over, the main navigation pops up a list of categories and sub-categories. For my purposes, “Home” seemed the best option, and “Bed + Bath” the most logical choice. But then I notice a “Bedding” category in the promotional rotating carousel, which looks more relevant. Big mistake. There’s nothing there about sheets. I’ve landed in the seasonal section for some reason.

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I return to my first choice, selecting “Bed + Bath” from the main navigation. This page has several other overlapping categories, such as “Bedding collections” and Home bedding basics.” I have to look hard to find “Sheets” under “Bedding Basics” just above the fold.

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The “Sheets” page looks friendly, with bright-colored dots and a “Shop by color” option front and center. A quick scan reveals several other obvious filtering possibilities: I can also shop by “Material” or, on the left side, by “Color” (again), “Fabric,” “Special sizes,” “Thread count,” “Type,” or “Brands + designers.” Although I’m not sure what the difference is between the two colors, I choose the “White + Cream” color dot.

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The “Results” page has a clean appearance, with various options for displaying items: as a thumbnail grid (the default) with larger images or as a list; although these options are indicated by icon and are not immediately obvious. I can also sort by such useful attributes as price and rating. A single price range is displayed for comparison. And knowing how much credence to give a rating is easy with the number of reviews indicated.

But there are too many items to sort through. I choose “300 thread count” from the filters in the left column, expecting the results to reduce to a manageable number. Instead, I get a whole new list of results, in all colors. Stranger still, bedskirts and duvets also appear in the long list of items. Apparently one can’t combine the color filter with the thread count filter. Not ideal. I guess I’ll have to wade through the list of “white” sheets.

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The “Quick info” pop-up helps a bit, displaying additional information in a pop-up window atop the results page. It’s useful for seeing which sheets are available in queen size. Many of the “sheets,” though, are just pillow cases (too bad I can’t filter these out). In some cases, critical information such as color and thread count are missing, even on the “Full Details” page. One item comes in assorted colors, but I have no way to select the one I want. No wonder it has no reviews.

I find one option I like, but I’d like to compare it with others. I notice an “Add to TargetList” button in the “Quick info” window. I hope this marks the item as a strong candidate so that I don’t have to take notes. Unfortunately, I’m required to “Create a new list” before I can save the item. I want to keep shopping, but perhaps this won’t take long after all: it asks for my name, email address, reason for creating the list… and this is only step one of two! This is too much work. The retailer should let unregistered shoppers use this feature. Relatively few people must cross this high barrier to entry.

Once I’ve made my selection, I see a clear option to “Add to cart” or “Find it at a Target store.” This second feature is very good. It returns a list of nearby stores, showing the availability of the item along with address, phone number, hours and a map link: great if I wanted to do a little pre-shopping. Instead, I choose “Add to cart” to complete my online purchase. My “Quick info” pop-up refreshes, confirming my selection and recommending items that other guests have “shopped for.” Two buttons let me either “View cart + checkout” or “Continue shopping.” Choosing the latter simply closes the pop-up so that I can continue where I left off. Nice.

I liked the Target experience a bit better than Macy’s. Even though I was left with a long list of products to browse on both websites, Target allowed me to drill down a bit further. Also, the “Quick info” window made browsing quicker, freeing me from having to click through to successive product pages, as I had to do on Macy’s website.

Overstock

Unlike many of its competitors that have taken traditional brick-and-mortar businesses onto the Web, Overstock focuses exclusively on its online business. But has it taken advantage of this focus to create a better shopping experience for consumers?

The home page is simple, with a rotating promotional carousel featuring products intended to catch interest. With a specific task in mind, I easily locate the “Bedding & Bath” category among the primary navigation options near the top. On roll-over, a drop-down list presents sub-categories that are sufficiently distinguishable, and I select “Sheets.” So far, so good.

The main “Sheets” page is nice. Overstock.com has obviously considered the needs of the shopper. A set of clear filters displays the number of items in each category. It allows me to apply filters additively, with useful options such as size, thread count, color and material. The effect is a manageable set of relevant options. One nice feature is that the number of results in the unselected categories refreshes automatically whenever a new filter is applied. One can even remove a parameter by simply unchecking a box.

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Another good feature is the prominent display of user ratings for each search result. This makes it easy to compare items without clicking into the full descriptions. But I would also like to see the number of reviews. For me a four-star rating averaged from 10 reviews holds more weight than a single five-star review.

When filtering by color, I expected only solid colors to be returned, but several had a clear pattern. Still, the images made it easy to distinguish between them. Also, I didn’t see any way to set multiple criteria within a category. For example, I couldn’t choose to see all options priced under $50. But price is one of many sort options, so this is less of a concern. And Overstock.com sticks to a single price, regardless of size, which makes items easier to scan; unlike competitors that present a range of prices. Despite minor issues, the page gets me very close to finding my new sheets.

Clicking an item on the results page takes me to a product detail page. At first I’m a little confused. I didn’t expect other products to be shown so prominently here. Then I notice the discrete “People who viewed this also viewed” label above the items in the right column. Seeing other products distracts me from the task at hand. Rather than provide an unobstructed route to my purchase, the website has introduced alternatives—and indecision—at the crucial moment of sale. Also, should I care about items that others have merely “viewed” and not actually bought (bought items being shown lower down on the page)?

I make my decision and select a product. The drop-down menu is fairly long, with all size and color combinations presented in a single list. A more usable interface would be to display these attributes in two separate lists, with the options in the second list updated according to what you select in the first.

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The shopping cart page is presented very clearly, with the options to “Shop more” or “Continue checkout” prominently displayed. But when I decide that I need two rather than one set of sheets, I really have to search to find the “Edit” link. Making the quantity field editable and then updating the total price, as other websites do, would be much better.

I also notice the “Save for later” link. This sounds great for setting aside items that I am not ready to purchase now but might want later. But having to put the item in my cart first doesn’t seem right. I’d much rather be able to do this from the product page, where the function could act as a kind of bookmark, while I continuing browsing.

Now I’m ready to complete my purchase. Once I register, the checkout is contained on one page, with clearly numbered steps. Though a bit overwhelming, a quick scan shows that the page asks for only the necessary information. Moreover, I don’t need to worry about losing my order, which has happened a few times on other websites midway through their multi-page process.

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Overall, using Overstock.com was a positive experience. Despite a few very minor issues, I was able to make my purchase quickly and easily with comfort and confidence. Other online retailers should aspire to its virtues: a concern for the needs of the consumer, intuitive and effective tools and a clean crisp layout.

Shopping Made Easier

It’s clear from my exploration of Macy’s, Target and Overstock.com that a “one size fits all” approach to e-commerce design leads to some user experience challenges when the product category is complex or varied. On the one hand, online stores shouldn’t be obliged to customize the shopping experience for each product category, which would be economically unfeasible. On the other hand, appropriate, well-presented product filtering options go a long way towards ironing out the bumps in an “uncommon” shopping experience.

Interestingly, all three websites I looked at seemed to be constantly changing their design and tweaking the language and navigation options to see what works best. I’m glad to see incremental improvements being made on major retail websites. But given how long these websites have had to improve their processes, it’s surprising more haven’t done so already. Hopefully, as retailers become more aware of best practices and see the value of engaging skilled usability experts, the online shopping experience will reach its full potential as a stress-free alternative to shopping in store.

Further Reading

• Search Results Design: Best Practices and Design Patterns
• Principles Of Effective Search In E-Commerce Design
• 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design
• Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters
• What People See Before They Buy: Design Guidelines for E-Commerce Product Pages With Eye-Tracking Data
• Revealing Design Treasures From the Amazon

(al)

© Janine Coover, Nick Gould for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: shopping, usability, ux

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PS – If you have found any other beautiful typography on any other websites that you think deserves to be in this list, or on the next list, then feel free to drop in a comment.

Calm And Subtle Typography…

Thadeu Morgado

* * * * *

Juan Diego Velasco

* * * * *

84 Colors

* * * * *

Guerra Creativa

* * * * *

Meta Lab

* * * * *

Two 24 Studios

* * * * *

Food Inc Movie

* * * * *

Krop Creative Database

* * * * *

Gist

* * * * *

Iceberg

* * * * *

Speak Light

* * * * *

File Maker

* * * * *

Classic Clutch

* * * * *

Clear Spring

* * * * *

Africa Tour 2008

* * * * *

Host Riser

* * * * *

Lifejacket

* * * * *

Paramore Redd

* * * * *

Product Planner

* * * * *

Adcapital Industries

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Loopt, the location-based mobile application that was a precursor to Foursquare, reports that Starbucks is sitting pretty at the top of the checkin food chain in 2010.

Loopt did some creative manipulation of its wealth of place data and put together a list of the 75 most popular chains based on checkin volume over the past few weeks.

Starbucks is far and away the most popular chain with a checkin volume that is nearly 32 times that of In-N-Out Burger (which ranks 54th on the list).

It also looks as if New Year’s resolutions are inspiring people to either hit the gym more frequently or at least publicly assert that they are doing so, as 24-Hour Fitness is burning the rest of the competition in the number five spot. On that same note, Subway ranks pretty high up on the list, but its checkin share is dwarfed by McDonald’s. Clearly you want to have your cake and to eat it, too.

According to Loopt CEO Sam Altman, to come up with this data set, the company “normalize(s) the number of checkins per chain by dividing all of them by a chosen reference (In-N-Out, which is approximately representative of the average).  The thought here is that, for example, 8,739 checkins doesn’t mean much to anyone, but 2.45 is a good indicator of relative popularity.”

Slicing checkins to determine relative chain popularity is certainly a very interesting way to look at the Loopt data, whether or not it’s 100 percent reflective of societal shopping and eating trends. The fact that people are willing to publicly share what they’re doing and where they’re doing it en masse means that the most popular places are the places at which people want to be seen. Making that extra checkin effort is a net positive for the business, and clearly Starbucks is riding high on the checkin wave.

We’ve published the full list below, so take a look at the results and let us know what you think of the results.

Most Popular Chains

[img credit: dianaschnuth]

Tags: Food, loopt, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, starbucks

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You are welcome to share more useful iPhone clients that will be helpful for our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

Google Mobile App

You can download Google Mobile App to your smartphone to search fast. It will allow you to quickly navigate to other Google services, such as Maps and Gmail etc.

eBuddy

With eBuddy you can have one single buddy list with all your friends from multiple IM and social accounts. eBudd also made it easy for you to manage your buddy list, add new buddies, organize them in groups, sort by account, or search your list.

Photoshop

It’s easy to use the Photoshop.com Mobile App on your iPhone. Simply drag your finger to crop, adjust color, apply effects. You can crop, rotate, change color with just a touch, give an extra glow with Soft Focus, apply one-touch effects like Warm Vintage and Vignette etc.

Skype

You can download the iPhone App and then sign into Skype from any WiFi zone and reach friends and family free with Skype-to-Skype calls.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is your mobile browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now on Twitter from your iPhone or iPod Touch. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date no matter where you are.

Yahoo Messenger

Take the Yahoo Messenger anywhere on your iPhone. This will help you to share photos, emoticons and links, right from your iPhone and it will alerts you when a new IM arrives, even if you’re not in the app.

Facebook for iPhone

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Facebook for iPhone will help those people to stay connected when they are away from their computers but would not like to away from facebook.

Waze For iPhone

Waze is a free social mobile app that enables drivers to build and use live maps, real-time traffic updates and turn-by-turn navigation for an optimal commute. 100% powered by users the more you drive the better it gets. Join the community of drivers in your area today.

Gmail

You may have Gmail via mobile anywhere with you.

Evernote

Evernote for iPhone lets you create notes, snap photos, and record voice memos that you can then access any time from your iPhone, computer, or the web.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. You can access your Dropbox on the go and download files for offline viewing. There is an option to sync photos and videos to your Dropbox and to share links to files in your Dropbox.

AIM

Connect with friends and family and keep track of status and presence updates in real time. Just sign in using your existing AIM, AOL, .mac or MobileMe name, or register for a free screen name right to your device.

Hootsuite

HootSuite for iPhone is the only Twitter app that lets you view statistics. It’s also the only one that lets you schedule your tweets in advance. With HootSuite for iPhone, you can send tweets to multiple accounts simultaneously, from the palm of your hand. But that’s not all.

Google Earth

With Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch, you can fly to far corners of the planet with just the swipe of a finger. You can explore the same global satellite and aerial imagery available in the desktop version of Google Earth, including high-resolution imagery for over half of the world’s population and a third of the world’s land mass.

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Looking at YouTube’s most-viewed videos of all time today reveals an odd intruder. A four-minute music video named “Twista ft. Do Or Die-do you” tops the list with 79,441,058,538 views.

The number is obviously fake, but YouTube positions it at the top of the list, which will give the video a lot of (unwarranted) attention. The question is: How does one inflate the number of views for a YouTube video to 79 billion? And how long will it take YouTube’s admins to fix it?

The video was posted by YouTube user LadyMC311, but nothing on her profile (if you’re able to endure the awful choice of colors that will make your eyes bleed) indicates how this trick (or hack) was pulled. Other videos she had posted only have a couple hundred clicks.

Screenshot of YouTube’s all-time top list is below. If you have any information on how this trick was done, let us know in the comments.

[Thanks to our reader Mohammad for the tip]

Tags: hack, trending, video, youtube

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What can you use the application for?


Mailchimp.com is a complete, web-based email marketing list and campaign manager solution. It allows the user to manage lists, create sign-up forms, create custom emails for campaigns, send emails and manage campaigns. The site offers integration with a number of desktop and web-based services, including Google Calendar, Salesforce and Outlook. Users can add addresses to their list one at a time, via web signup, or by importing them from popular email and list management software. The user can also generate the HTML code for custom email list signup forms for their website using the list form tool. Users can create custom campaigns that include custom HTML and/or text only emails generated using the Campaign Builder. The emails can incorporate links, banners, custom templates and forms, and can be integrated with Google Analytics for monitoring campaign performance.

The Campaign Builder also allows the user to specify a list or a portion of a list to send the email to. The site includes over 50 pre-defined templates, and these can be customized as much as the user wants using the site’s browser-based WYSIWYG editor. Templates and text can also be edited in HTML and CSS if the user desires. Once the email is completed, Mailchimp takes care of all phases of campaign management including sending, monitoring clicks, sending emails when someone subscribes to a list, and integration with Google Analytics if chosen. The user can see at a glance the success and ROI of their campaign using the analytics tools provided by the site.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Atlanta, GA-based Mailchimp.com was founded in 2001. The site has undergone steady growth since launch and currently has over 190,000 registered users. The site is used by corporate heavyweights such as Mozilla, Intel, Fujitsu and Canon.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Mailchimp.com comes from sites such as ConstantContact.com and DadaMail. ConstantContact.com provides a very similar service to Mailchimp.com, does not provide a free account, but is priced lower than Mailchimp.com. DadaMail is a hosted solution which provides similar features to Mailchimp.com. Dadamail can be purchased installed for less than $100, and administration is entirely web-based as well.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The Mailchimp.com site has a very clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site is quite responsive, and the browser-based tools respond much like a dedicated desktop app. Page loads happen quickly, as do email or signup form editing. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar shown on all pages of the site. There is no advertising displayed on the Mailchimp.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Mailchimp.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process simply asks for email address and password. Validation of the email address is required. A free account is limited to a list size of 500 addresses and 3,000 monthly emails. Registration for a paid account asks for email address, username, password and credit card information.

What does it cost to use the application?


Two types of paid pricing are available from Mailchimp.com – monthly and pay as you go. There are 5 monthly pricing plans available, all with unlimited monthly mailings and with list size limits ranging from 2,500 to 50,000. Pricing ranges from $30 to $240 per month. Contact Mailchimp.com for pay as you go pricing.

Who would you recommend the application to?


Mailchimp.com is recommended to any individual, small or large business or organization who needs a complete mailing list and mailing campaign management solution. The site provides a full-featured, turnkey service that is easy to use, yet flexible and powerful.

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You are welcome to share if you know more free mac apps that are really useful and our readers/viewers may like.  Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

WeTransfer

WeTransfer is a free service to send big or small files from A to B. This will help you send your videos, music, photo albums or documents to friends and colleagues.

Youblisher

With Youblisher you can make your pdf documents flippable and attractive looking book style presentation. It is like touching a real document.

Mitto

Mitto is a safe and secure online password manager. This free Internet password storage service lets you add the passwords to all of your favorite sites in one place then logs you in to each one of them by simply clicking a button. Now you don’t need to remember or retype your passwords anymore. You can access your passwords securely from any computer, organize them with tags, securely share them with trusted friends and more.

Squareleaf

Squareleaf is a simple and intuitive virtual whiteboard, complete with all the sticky notes you’ll ever need. Unlike the real thing, Their notes don’t fall off all of the time.

FlockDraw

FlockDraw is the most seamless realtime collaborative drawing tool ever. You can do whatever you want. Do it together. Just grab a tool and pick a color and start drawing something.

FreeMyPDF

you can use this site to remove passwords and restrictions (such as printing, copying text, etc.) from PDFs.

Apollo

Using Apollo can help you get accurate feedback from your clients. You can use it to give feedback easily to your colleagues/friends etc.

Profilder

You can create fabulous looking profile with Profilder easy to use yet powerful editors. It has thousands of free high quality palettes, patterns and backgrounds to be used.

Google Browser Size

Flexamail

Flexamail allows you to control the web while never leaving the comfort of your inbox. You can post images, share files even surf the web. If you know how to use email, you already know how to use Flexamail. It’s easy to learn, easy to use, yet powerful.

ideone

ideone.com is designed mostly for programmers (but, of course, common plain text can also be uploaded). You can use it to share your code in a neat way,  run your code on server side in 38 programming languages and do it all with your own input data.

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This was our selection of 20, so if you think that there are any others that deserve to be part of the list, why not let us know by dropping in a comment. Enjoy the list.

iPhone App Websites…

Outpost

* * * * *

Tea Round

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Dig Deep Fitness

* * * * *

Outside App

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Tapbots

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Cellar App

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Broadersheet

* * * * *

Tap Tapas

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The Typography Manual

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Paraply

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Barista

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The Fun Tip Calculator

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June Cloud

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Wheel of Tea

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Tic A Tac Poker

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Ego App

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Happy Dangy Diggy

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TweetDeck

* * * * *

WordPress For iPhone

* * * * *

Tweetie

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Vitrue’s Social Media Index (SMI) assigns brands and products a score based on overall buzz from status updates, videos, photos and blog posts. The company has tallied its results for 2009 and released its top 100 social brands based on index scoring, with last year’s winner — the iPhone — reigning supreme once again.

Although the index focuses on consumer mentions and reactions — as opposed to indexing brand engagement via social media — the list is still a veritable powerhouse of information in terms of consumer buzz and word-of-mouth recommendations.

So who tops the list? iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox and Nike rounded out the top 10 in 2009, respectively.

We also learn from Vitrue’s blog post on the list that Adidas was the biggest gainer, jumping up from the number 85 slot in 2008 to take over the number 14 spot in 2009. NBA, Nike, MLB, Nissan, Victoria’s Secret, HP and KFC also showed significant improvement from the previous year.

Some other interesting findings from Vitrue include:

- Game consoles dominate the top of the list: (Wii #7, Xbox#9, PlayStation #13, Nintendo #21)

- Luxury brands appear on the list this year with good representation: (Gucci #27, Louis Vuitton #81, Prada #88 and Burberry #94)

- Media brands make up 8 percent of list: (CNN #3, MTV #4, ESPN #23, CBS #32, ABC #33, Turner #36, Fox News #56, NBC #68) This perhaps illustrates our socialization of their content

Vitrue’s Top 100 social brands for 2009:

1. iPhone
2. Disney
3. CNN
4. MTV
5. NBA
6. iTunes
7. Wii
8. Apple
9. Xbox
10. Nike
11. Starbucks
12. NFL
13. PlayStation
14. Adidas
15. BlackBerry
16. Sony
17. Mercedes
18. Microsoft
19. Samsung
20. BMW
21. Nintendo
22. Best Buy
23. ESPN
24. Ford
25. Honda
26. Ferrari
27. Gucci
28. Nokia
29. Major League Baseball
30. Dell
31. Coca-Cola
32. CBS
33. ABC
34. iPod
35. Mac
36. Turner
37. Nissan
38. Toyota
39. eBay
40. Amazon
41. Victoria’s Secret
42. Nutella
43. NASCAR
44. Disneyland
45. Audi
46. NHL
47. Red Bull
48. Verizon
49. Intel
50. Subway
51. Hewlett-Packard
52. Puma
53. Kia
54. Fox News
55. Porsche
56. Jeep
57. Dodge
58. Pandora
59. Walmart
60. Zappos
61. Suzuki
62. McDonald’s
63. Krystal
64. T-Mobile
65. Skittles
66. KFC
67. Volkswagen
68. NBC
69. Sprint
70. Pixar
71. Motorola
72. IKEA
73. Pepsi
74. Cisco
75. REI
76. LG
77. AT&T
78. Converse
79. The Gap
80. Chevrolet
81. Luis Vuitton
82. Toys”R”Us
83. H&M
84. Philips
85. General Motors
86. Pringles
87. Visa
88. Prada
89. Panasonic
90. IBM
91. VH1
92. Hulu
93. Oracle
94. Burberry
95. SEGA
96. Sears
97. Avon
98. Jet Blue
99. Lacoste
100. Comcast

Tags: brands, social media, trending

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As we begin 2010, there are over 100,000 iPhone apps available for download — an overwhelming array of choices, but plenty of gems if you know where to look.

To help you out, we’ve compiled all of Mashable’s iPhone app reviews in a definitive list to kick off the year. From social media, to business tools, to just plain cool, the iPhone does it best with these App Store standouts.

Put your downloading hat on — there’s a lot of awesome in our iPhone Apps List 2010!

PS. Look out for more updates to this list throughout the year.

Social

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Whether you’re talking about social media, or actually interacting with other humans face-to-face (shudder), there’s a plethora of apps that will help you connect, keep in touch, and avoid any unintended faux pas.

70+ Free iPhone Apps for Social Media Mavens

10 Fantastic iPhone Apps That Use Facebook Connect

5 Great Examples of Facebook Connect on the iPhone

29 Twitter Apps for the iPhone Compared

FriendFeed on iPhone: Comparing the Options

10 Essential iPhone Apps to Avoid Dating Disasters

5 Must-Have iPhone Apps for Wine Lovers

10 iPhone Apps That Bring Holiday Cheer

10 iPhone Apps to Help You Survive the Holidays

Business & News

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Show your BlackBerry brethren that the iPhone also means business. These apps will help you get work done and stay on top of what’s happening in the news.

8 Fantastic Free Business Card Apps for the iPhone

10 iPhone Apps to Avoid Work Disasters

14 iPhone Apps With Push Notification for Productivity

A Guide to Better Web-Working From Your iPhone

10 iPhone Apps to Manage Your Job Search on the Go

50+ Free iPhone Apps to Make You Richer

Top 30 iPhone Apps for Organization and Productivity

40 Free Apps to Read Breaking News on Your iPhone

5 of the Best iPhone Apps for Political Junkies

Entertainment, Music, & Games

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The iPhone is like holding a multiplex, a rock concert, and a Wii in the palm of your hand — that is of course if you have the right apps in tow. Check out these great games and other amusements that will surely keep your accelerometer… accelerating.

60+ Free Classic Tabletop Games for the iPhone

20 Free Role Playing Games for the iPhone

iPhone TV: Top iPhone Apps for Live Streaming Television

100+ Free Sports Apps for the iPhone

10 Free Music Based Games for the iPhone & iPod Touch

Social Music: 5 of the Best Free iPhone Apps

Star Trek on iPhone: 11 Apps for the Ultimate Movie Experience

5 iPhone Apps for Pulling Off Pranks and Tricks

Social Media Break: 5 Free iPhone Apps to Fight Midweek Malaise

Family, Shopping, & Travel

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The iPhone is a great tool for honing your domestic prowess. These apps will help keep the kids in line, get your dream vacation in gear, and hopefully save you some money in the process.

15 iPhone Apps to Tame the Kids

20 Fantastic Free iPhone Apps for Parents

Back to School: Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students

11 iPhone Apps for Stress Free Family Travel

11 Essential iPhone Apps for a Road Trip

10 Best iPhone Apps for Dog Lovers

5 Great iPhone Apps for Pet Owners

5 of the Best iPhone Apps for In-Store Savings

Miscellaneous

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Some apps could save your life, spark your creative passion, or just plain WOW you. These apps don’t quite fit in the categories above, but still deserve your attention — if you’ve got any space left.

20 Creative Apps For Your iPhone

10 Amazing Augmented Reality iPhone Apps

7 iPhone Apps That Can Save Lives

7 Soothing iPhone Apps to Help You Relax

Top 10 Free iPhone Apps to Lose Weight

Top 6 Augmented Reality Mobile Apps [Videos]

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, JulNichols, pmtavares, GreenPimp</a

Tags: iphone, iphone apps, List, Lists, trending

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Brian Solis is a principal at new media agency FutureWorks. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

In 2009, influence emerged as a source of filtering and focus, especially when Twitter released its new “lists” feature to empower users to organize and follow custom streams by topic, personality, and themes.

Klout, which analyzes content from millions of people to identify the top influencers on every topic, is one service that measures influence on Twitter. Klout today released its Top 2009 list of the topics that captured the attention of the most influential voices and their communities on Twitter.

Twitter recently published a Top 2009 Trends list, which essentially symbolized a digital microcosm of culture and conversations throughout the year. Klout’s list differs in the methodology used to organize it.

Per Klout’s announcement:

In 2009 we saw an explosion of users and content on Twitter. The “real-time stream” fed us information before the mainstream media could even react, user communities flexed their collective muscle and demonstrated the power of “word of mouth,” leaving companies to either ride the social wave or be subject to the wrath of millions of voices. There’s no denying it: in 2009, social media continued to profoundly change the way we communicate, the way we find and share information, and the relationship between brands and consumers.

1. Topics Influencers Talked About

-Social Media
-Iran
-Healthcare Reform
-Television
-Republican Party
-Wine
-Photography
-Dogs
-Movies
-Technology

2. Tags Influencers Talked About

-#followfriday
-#tcot
-#HHRS
-#quote
-#p2
-#FAIL
-#GNO
-#sgp
-#tlot
-#teaparty

3. Tech Companies Influencers Talked About

-Twitter
-Google
-Facebook
-YouTube
-Apple
-Amazon
-Microsoft
-Flickr
-Wordpress
-Digg

4. Movies Influencers Talked About

-Twilight: New Moon
-Harry Potter
-Star Trek
-Paranormal Activity
-Star Wars
-G.I. Joe
-Inglorious Basterds
-Hangover
-District 9
-Transformers

5. TV Shows Influencers Talked About

-True Blood
-Glee
-Mad Men
-Lost
-Saturday Night Live
-Heroes
-Dollhouse
-Big Brother
-Project Runway
-So You Think You Can Dance

6. Music Influencers Talked About

-Lady GaGa
-The Beatles
-Rihanna
-Jay-Z
-Miley Cyrus
-Chris Brown
-Beyonce
-Madonna
-Taylor Swift
-U2

7. People Influencers Talked About

-Barack Obama
-Sarah Palin
-Michael Jackson
-George W. Bush
-Glenn Beck
-Kanye West
-Oprah
-Lady GaGa
-Britney Spears
-Tiger Woods

8. Politicians Influencers Talked About

-Barack Obama
-Sarah Palin
-George W. Bush
-John McCain
-Nancy Pelosi
-Ted Kennedy
-Bill Clinton
-Michelle Obama
-Al Gore
-Dick Cheney

9. Sports Stars Influencers Talked About

-Tiger Woods
-Michael Vick
-Brett Favre
-Lebron James
-Kobe Brant
-Alex Rodriguez
-Tom Brady
-Derek Jeter
-Cristiano Ronaldo
-Manny Pacquiao

10. Companies Influencers Talked About

-Starbucks
-AT&T
-New York Times
-Verizon Wireless
-Ford Kanzler
-Walmart
-General Motors
-Nike
-Disney
-McDonalds

11. Products Influencers Talked About

-iPhone
-Android
-Blackberry
-iPod
-Windows 7
-TweetDeck
-Snow Leopard
-Amazon Kindle
-Xbox 360
-MacBook

12. Sports Teams Influencers Talked About

-New York Yankees
-Boston Red Sox
-Chicago Cubs
-Philadelphia Phillies
-New York Mets
-Pittsburgh Steelers
-Green Bay Packers
-Dallas Cowboys
-Denver Broncos
-New England Patriots

13. Countries Influencers Talked About

-United States
-Iran
-United Kingdom
-Canada
-China
-Sweden
-India
-France
-Australia
-Japan

14. Cities Influencers Talked About

-New York City
-Chicago
-London
-Los Angeles
-San Francisco Dao Las Vegas
-Boston
-Seattle
-Washington DC
-Paris

Tags: 2009, influence, klout, List, Lists, twitter

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The Oxford Dictionary may have chosen “unfriend” as word of the year, but what else was in our collective lexicon in 2009? A Words of the Year list commissioned by the Oxford University Press included a number of words from our familiar technosocial corner, according to the Telegraph.

“Tweetup,” “hashtag,” “freemium,” “paywall,” “unfriend” and “tag cloud” all made the list, which was compiled by dictionary expert Susie Dent after poring over the two billion-word Oxford English Corpus database. One of the more “late to the party” terms included is “Slashdot effect,” which finally achieves its small measure of lexical legitimacy despite having already arguably had its heyday.

Regardless, it’s interesting to watch terms from Twitter, Facebook and social media creep into a more mainstream consciousness. Any conspicuous neologisms you see missing from this year’s list?

[via Switched]

[img credit: greeblie]

Tags: facebook, hashtag, language, social media, Tweetup, twitter, unfriend, words

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If you want to share more websites that has been redesigned in 2009 please comment about them below. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

CNN

Twitter

Yahoo

WordPress

The White House

N.Design Studio

MSN

Abduzeedo

Network Solutions

Smashing Magazine

Reuters

Brand New

Web Design Ledger

XBOX

FOX News

ESPN

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You plug in the temperature, wind speed, and sky conditions, then add how you prefer to feel when you run (cool, in-between, warm). On the face, it’s a somewhat silly webapp (wear warm clothes if it’s cold, wear less if it’s warm). Still, for a lot of people, running is an extremely difficult habit to pick up, and if you’re starting your routine in the dead of winter, the last thing you want is to make your jog more difficult—so if you’re never quite comfortable once you’re in the middle of your jog, it might be worth a go.

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We’ll let reader Alex tell the tale himself:

Mainly, this tip is for when you’re looking for a list of products that all fall into a single category. All you have to do is type a single example of the product, followed by ” vs”, and you’ll get a pretty exhaustive list of alternatives.

For instance, let’s say you’re looking for new text editors. The one you’re familiar with is notepad++. Go to the Google home page and type: “notepad++ vs” and wait a moment. The auto-complete will pop up with a list:

Textpad
Notepad2
UltraEdit
PSPad
Programmer’s Notepad

… There—you now have a list of further research topics. For a slightly bigger list you can pick one of your results and repeat the process – In this case, type “jedit vs”. I recently used this in a quest to find a self-hosted equivalent of github that would host some of my code. “github vs” gave me a much larger number of products to research than any single web page had been able to provide me.

As Alex further notes, this system is sometimes better than even the Wikipedia pages that are just giant lists of software compared by features, since those pages are often subject to bias on the part of the selective crew of Wikipedia editors.

Know another search project that the Google Suggest box is perfect for? Tell us in the comments.

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The design community is abuzz lately, murmuring of revolt, an uprising against the sea of content that is pouring through our favourite social media outlets and flooding our RSS readers, almost the the point of saturation – or perhaps even beyond. Some are merely whispers of discontent. Other bold calls to repentance and change are almost prophetic in their zeal. Every day, this buzzing gains a little more steam, becomes a little louder.

Ignore it at your peril.

And what, you may ask, is the source of this unsettling clamour? I’m sure that you must have heard it already, somewhere out there. On the surface, it is a resistance to the “list” post. You know the type. These are posts which gather a number of examples of a certain design technique, resource or any other common denominator. They are everywhere. I’ve written and posted a few of them myself, for which I make no apology.

The issue, as it presents itself, is that these list posts are, apparently, nothing more than recycled content. An author grabs a bunch of other people’s stuff, mashes it all together as a collection of screenshots and links, hopefully with at least a little bit of introductory text. They then create some sort of catchy title, post links to a number of different sites and sit back and watch the traffic pour in.

In some ways, it does seem just a bit too easy. In other ways, the content may seem trite or hollow. However, while lists are taking the brunt of the assault, I have also seen some tutorials and freebies attacked on the same general premise. Consider the articles Learn About Design, Not Making Things Pretty, which discusses the general failure of these posts to actually teach anything, or Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me), which calls for greater thought and discussion and an end to a stream of copycats.

While both of these articles tend to attack lists posts to some degree, I think what they really illustrate is that, for many people, the issue is not so much the list post itself, but lifeless content, for which the poor and generalized list post is quickly becoming symbolic. The murmurer of which we speak, then, is more than just a general discontent with people publishing lists, it’s the beginnings of a complete revolt against the zombie content that has been slowly eating our creative brains.

I sensationalize.

Still, the fundamental truth remains. Readers in our community are getting tired of wasting their precious time on hollow content. It doesn’t matter if it’s a list post, a tutorial, a freebie or any other kind of post that you could imagine. If it doesn’t benefit them in some way (by teaching, equipping, motivating or challenging, for instance), readers are most likely to leave strongly dissatisfied.

But what does all of this have to do with the title of this article? Well, let’s bring it all back around. In all the buzzing and murmuring that we’ve outlined so far, in all the calls for change, one of the greatest targets of scrutiny always seems to be that most famous of design websites: Smashing Magazine. This particular site is actually known for publishing lists. They are even referenced as being where the site itself really got it’s start (again, see Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me)).

Naturally, then, when attacks on list posts start to rise, so too will the related discussion surrounding Smashing Magazine. And that leads me to the second and more important point of this article, which is an issue of language and expectations.

Let me ask a simple question: is Smashing Magazine a blog? The simple answer should be evident just looking at the name. It calls itself a magazine, and in many ways it acts like a magazine. It publishes articles from a wide range of different authors, with a high standard for writing and content. Much of what it publishes is actually list-based articles, which is something that you will also see frequently in printed magazines – 10 Exercises for Rock Hard Abs, 25 Ways to Look Great Fast, The 7 Things that Will Blow His… well you get the idea.

Lists are in no way exclusive to the design community. They are a tried and true technique for developing, organizing and publishing content in bit sized morsels. A site like Smashing Magazine is simply adopting the technique into a digital medium. As such, lists and other magazine-like articles actually make sense.

That’s why it’s called Smashing Magazine (at least, in part).

On the other hand, though, there are some parts of the site do make it look like a blog. It has a very blog-like layout, with a sidebar and categories and archives and banner ads. It displays its content in reverse-chronological order and has an RSS feed (and displays its subscriber count). It has tags and a list of popular posts. In so many ways it just feels like a blog.

So, I ask another question: what is a blog today? Is the word, so recently coined, already plummeting into meaninglessness, on account of suddenly meaning too many things at once? Just consider the dramatic differences between Abduzeedo and Andy Rutledge’s Design View. Both are excellent, but wouldn’t we call both of these blogs? If so, then where does the definition lie?

Is it a matter of content? Recently I wrote an article for SpyreStudios, outlining what I perceived to be the six main types of articles circulating through the design community. That hardly seems like a strong foundation for a definition. Nor would it probably translate well outside of the community.

Perhaps the definition lies in the adopted structure – articles posted in reverse chronological order, complete with categories, archives and comments? Probably not, given that there is really no singular structural element which is completely sacred, or without which a site would necessarily cease to be called a blog. Moreover, there are questions of transparency, dialogue and community that are bantered around when discussing the emerging role of blogs, suggesting that there is at least some form of cultural expectation surrounding blogs.

We want a blog to be something, but what is that something?

I don’t think we’ve figured it out. I’m not sure we ever will. In some ways, I believe that the blog could very well become the epitome of postmodern media. It resists definition in a way that other media simply have not been able to do. And, as it resists definition, so too does it undermine expectation. You cannot know what to expect from a blog on account of it simply being a blog.

There are, of course, other factors upon which expectations may be drawn, such as subject matter, history and readership. There are also established conventions, which we see repeated across many such sites. However, as we enter a new decade, I think we will start to see more and more variations on the concept of the blog. These sites (and perhaps not even sites) will continue to evolve and change through purposeful innovation and wild experimentation.

But where does that leave us? Nowhere concrete, to be sure, but I say again – that’s why it’s called Smashing Magazine. The famous design site may still strike us as being a blog. It does not, however, rely on the concept of the blog to define its form. Rather, it uses its own name to define itself as a magazine, produces content like a magazine (and thus justifies its production of quality list posts), adopting its bloginess only at a secondary level, as a means to publish and deliver its content. I think this is part of the reason that it has been so successful. It found its identity and allowed that identity to control (to some degree) the direction of its content.

How many other design blogs can say the same thing? Maybe some of the most successful, but probably not the majority.

It’s something I am struggling with myself. What is the Echo Enduring Blog? Where is it going? Should it even retain the title of “blog” (a question raised by the ubiquitous nature of the term itself)? These are all important questions that I am going to have to come to terms with, and which I believe many other bloggers will have to come to terms with over the coming months and years.

Smashing Magazine? Not so much, I think.

I feel that I must apologize for the arc of this article. I kind of start in one place and end in another, without really bringing things all the way back around again. It is a bit more a stream of consciousness type post (or, what some people might call a rant). Please forgive me. Now, what about you, dear reader? What are your thoughts, opinions and/or counter-rants. I’d love to hear them.

Exclusive Content

To thank you for subscribing to my feed, I am including exclusive, feed-only content for you at the bottom of each post!

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As 2009 comes to a close, it’s interesting to look back at what stories were the most popular, captivating and shared. Social widget AddThis has calculated the 15 most-shared articles from the sites that use its service.

Before looking at the list, we probably could have guessed many of the most popular stories. However, the ranking of those stories is an entirely different matter. Let’s put it this way, Michael Jackson’s death has nothing on an adorably cute kitten.

Here’s the complete list:

1. Santa Yourself – 71,848 shares
2. The Kim Komando Show – Video of the Day – African thunderstorm – 50,008 shares
3. Pawnation – “Suprised Kitty” Rampages Across Nation – 32,270 shares
4. disinformation – Cannabis College Now Enrolling Students – 24,338 shares
5. Pawnation – Viral ‘Extreme Shepherding’ Ad Campaign Lights Up the Welsh Hills – 18,165 shares -
6. TMZ – Michael Jackson Dies – 13,481 shares-
7. Mercola.com – Swine Flu — One of the Most Massive Cover-ups in American History – 12,722 shares
8. lemondrop – Best. Wedding Entrance. Ever. – 12,693 shares
9. Pawnation – Faith the Two-Legged Dog Turns Seven This Christmas – 11,546 shares
10. CNBC – Santelli’s Tea Party – 11,020 shares
11. tom’s hardware – Best Graphics Cards For The Money: November ‘09 – 10,802 shares
12. PopEater – Ukrainian Has Definitely ‘Got Talent’ – 10,620 shares
13. Telegraph – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past – 10,502 shares
14. The Kim Komando Show – Video of the Day – Man’s surprising laugh – 7,340 shares
15. El Caso Mascherano РInvestigación – Parte 1 Р7,149 shares

Granted, this list really says more about the demographics of users who visit AddThis sites than the Internet population as a whole — but it’s still fun to see what stories were shared the most.

We thought you might like to watch this now. I certainly do:

What story did you share or receive the most in 2009?

Tags: 2009, AddThis, jk wedding dance, michael jacksons, surprised kitten

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When you’re doing article marketing, you need to create a steady flow of articles. You may be just getting started and haven’t gotten into a writing groove yet. Or maybe you’ve written tons of articles and are feeling like you’ve written about your topic in every way you possibly can.

I assure you–you have more creative writing ideas in you. You just need a little help in looking at your topic in a new way to come up with new writing ideas.

Use these 15 article ideas to start your next brainstorming session:

1. Use a keyword suggestion tool such as WordTracker to look up searches that people are doing related to your topic. When you find a search term that is popular for your topic, then write an article to satisfy that term.
2. Take a look at your website stats and see what people have been typing into search engines to reach your site. Write articles to satisfy those searches.
3. Forums: Look at popular forums in our niche and see what topics are hot. Pick out some questions that people are asking that you think your target market might also be wondering, and then write an article that answers that question.
4. Blogs: Start following some popular blogs in your niche, and see what topics strike a nerve with the readers. You can usually tell what topics are hot by how many comments the post has. Sometimes just looking at the comments on a topic is enough to spark ideas for new articles.
5. Newsletters: Subscribe to newsletters in your niche and see what catches your eye. Use a compelling newsletter topic as a jump start for your next article.
6. Google Alerts: Create Google Alerts for each of your keywords and see what other folks are writing about your topic. The idea is to just catch an idea–you can cover the same or similar topic in a new way, with a new perspective, and with different information.
7. Solicit questions. If you have a blog or a newsletter list, ask your readers if they have any questions for you. Take the best questions and write articles that provide answers.
8. How To articles. What can you teach your readers? Think of a specific lesson, technique, or skill that your target market needs to know in order to succeed in your niche, and then walk them step-by-step through how to do it. Numbering each step helps readers follow your instructions more easily.
9. Top Tips articles, or any list article. All articles do not have to be in essay form–some articles can be lists. Be sure to include an intro and concluding paragraph and to choose an overarching theme that your readers would be interested in. For example, this article is a list article. My overarching theme is “article topic ideas”. All of the elements of my list contribute to that theme.
10. Got an e-book that you’ve written? You can break your e-book(s) up into articles. You can also use your table of contents as an article idea list.
11. Look at your newsletter messages–turn them into articles.
12. If you’ve done any audio interviews, you can turn them into articles. Just re-listen to the interview, take notes, and then create articles based on the information you covered in the interview.
13. Customer support replies–have you ever written a customer support reply that was so thorough, instructional, and useful that you thought you should share it with all of your readers? Some customer support replies are worthy of being turned into articles.
14. Forum replies and blog comments. If you leave really insightful, helpful, and knowledgeable blog comments, consider turning them into articles. Now, these comments have to have some depth and meat to them. You might have to develop the idea further to make it into an article.
15. Write a “Top 7″ article and then bounce an article off of each of the 7 items. That way you get 8 articles out of one Top 7 list!

Use this article idea list to brainstorm your next 15 (or more!) articles. How many article ideas were you able to come up with from this list?

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Stumped For What to Write About? 15 Article Topic Ideas…

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When you look at a list of top 10 websites in the world, or the US, which site do you expect to see on top? Google. But although Google still dominates the list, with 6.7 percent of all U.S. visits between January and November 2009, on Christmas day another site was on top: Facebook.

According to Hitwise, this was the first time that Facebook was the most visited US site. It’s logical: on Christmas day, everyone wanted to connect with their friends and family, which pushed the largest social networking site to the top.

But it’s still a testament to how huge Facebook really is, and it’s still growing. Add to that the fact that Facebook was the top search term in 2009, and Facebook’s 350 million users, and it’s clear that Facebook is dominating the web in a way very few web services have done before.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Norebbo.

Tags: facebook, social networking

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If you want to share more logo that has been rebranded in 2009 please comment about them below. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well. Click on the images to go from where the images has been taken and learn more about their creators and to appreciate them.

Mozilla’s Firefox

Armani Exchange (A|X)

MSN

Imagine Games Network (IGN)

Friendster

Art Gallery of Alberta

Pfizer

America Online (AOL)

Telecom

Hertz

Nickelodeon

The New York Public Library

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ)

Network Solutions

My Little Pony

Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI)

Chicken Now

PlayStation 3

Videocon

Vistaprint

Audi

Apple Quicktime

Sunny D

Union Bank

Packard Bell

Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design

France Guide

Corbis

Air France

AFC Champions League

MyFonts

Discovery Kids

Opera

Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD)

Thanks to Brand New that is the source of Logos above.

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• Find your favorite Twitter users from our list.
• Add them to your custom list.
• Import your current Twitter follow list.
• Put them into your own categories.
• Post and share your favorite tweets with your friends!

http://famouschatter.com/

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Originally posted at The Download Blog

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Grady – designed by Barley Hut. New released on July!

Fluid Solution – designed by Kaushal Sheth, and also offers more than 50 professional themes free to download.

Merdeka – artistic theme with a amazing upter nagvigation, designed by Ikram Zidane.

Upstart Blogger Modicus – designed by minimalist Robert Ellis, and also offer 2-column version.

Upstart Blogger Minim – designed by Robert Ellis.

Grid Focus – designed by Derek @ 5thirtyone.com

Foliage Mod- professional artistic theme design by 5thirtyone.

Gridlock – designed by Eston Bond, the latest version is 1.4.

Barecity – designed by Shahee Ilyas.

Silhouette – designed by Brian Gardner.

Hemingway – design by professional designer Kyle Neath, probably is the most popular one.

Japanese Cherry Blossom – base on Hemingway, excellent re-designed.

Unsleepable – designed by Ben Gray, based on K2.

Simplr – designed by plaintxt.org, the heaven of minimal WordPress themes collection, make sure to check it out.

IAMWW w2 DnD – designed by iamww.com.

Transblack @ romow

Cutline – one of the most popular themes, designed by Chris Pearson, he was also the designer of PressRow.

SimplicityBright – what i can say is elegant, the updated version supported English.

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Last month, Fortune Magazine named Apple’s Steve Jobs CEO of the Decade. Today, the Harvard Business Review has released its list of the best-performing CEOs in the world and unsurprisingly, Jobs tops the list.

Looking at just the strict financial results, Jobs’s influence on Apple is astounding. Since 1997, Jobs has delivered an industry-adjusted return of 3,188 percent (which is 34 percent compounded annually) for shareholders and increased Apple’s market value by $150 billion.

How the List Was Created

The Harvard Business Review has included a rundown of all of the factors that influenced their rankings. First, it identified the CEOs of all publicly traded companies listed on the S&P Global 1200 or BRIC 40 since 1997.

Additionally, CEOs had to have assumed the job no earlier than 1995 and no later than December 2007. That’s why luminaries like Warren Buffett and Jack Welch aren’t on the list. Performance was then tracked until the end of the CEOs’ tenure at the company or September 2009, whichever was later.

HBR then calculated the daily company returns for the entire length of a CEO’s tenure, using country-adjusted and industry-adjusted returns, as well as market capitalization changes. CEOs were then ranked based on each metric and those rankings were averaged for the final number.

Looking at the final list, you can see that Jeff Bezos from Amazon has actually achieved a higher country- and industry-adjusted TSR than Steve Jobs, but his market cap is more than $100 billion less.

Other High Ranking Tech CEOs

In addition to El Jobso, other high-profile tech CEOs on the list included John T. Chambers from Cisco (#4), Bezos from Amazon (#7), Meg Whitman from eBay (#8) and Eric Schmidt from Google (#9).

Tags: apple, Harvard Business Review, steve jobs

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It’s that time of year that everyone got their own wishes and expectations for this Christmas. We are no different, so each team member of abduzeedo wrote a 5 item list of our wishes for this Christmas. It’s a super cool list full of crazy things—we ask that you complete the list sending out your 5 items to make this list even bigger.

<!–break–>

Fabio Sasso

• Google Nexus One Phone
• Wacom Cintique 12wx
• Race Advantage T-Shirt
• The Alien Abduction Lamp
• Large Vinyl Bowl

Fabiano Meneghetti

• The Alien Abduction Lamp
• Rock-77 Poster by James White
• Led Cinema Display
• New Office like Parliament Design
• Mustang

Paulo Gabriel

• Nike+iPod Sport Kit
• Apple Magic Mouse
• Ultimate Ears 700
• Canon VIXIA HF20 Camcorder
• GeForce GTX 295

Paulo Canabarro

• Burton Vapor 163″
• Disputa pelo Alimento Artwork by Mundano
• Field Notes “The Kit”
• Tangerine Apostrophe Chair
• Agent White Print Headphones by Skullcandy

Alexis Papageorgiu

• USB Christmas Tree
• Etherwave Theremin
• Nikon D90
• Arrogant But Aufentic Hoodie
• Loaded Dervish

Gisele Muller

• iPod Nano
• Nike + iPod Sport Kit
• Rechargeable Battery – 13-inch MacBook (black)
• Nintendo Wii
• Some wide-angle lens for my Canon EOS Rebel XSI

Amanda Macedo

• Sexy Apocalypse Shirt
• Crosley AV Room Portable USB Turntable
• “Tie your shoes, pack a good lunch and remember that we’re all in this together” Public School Poster
• Urban Outfitters: Design your bike
• Fuji Instax Instant Camera

What’s your list?

About the author

Hi! I’m Paulo Canabarro and I’m here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me – pvpcanabarro@gmail.com you can also Follow me on twitter!

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Last week, Twitter revealed its list of the most-discussed topics of 2009, based on Twitter’s trending topics. Now Facebook has come out with their own list, based on data from the millions of daily status updates of its users.

While the world’s largest social network took a different approach than its upstart competitor (explanation below), it did match some of Twitter’s “most discussed” topics of 2009. However, it seems as if Facebook’s data analysis has revealed that people care a great deal about family (#5), Facebook apps (#1), Lady Gaga (#12), and, yes, even Twitter (#10).

First, How Facebook Performed the Analysis

Dubbed Facebook Memology, the company analyzed one- to four-word phrases within the Facebook status updates of 2009. They went even further, though, taking “bursts of activity” and other factors into account.

Facebook’s explanation:

“To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.”

The result is rather different than Twitter’s list of top topics: It groups together key topics and doesn’t discount frequently used words such as “I” (the #15 Facebook memology trend of 2009).

If you want more details on the technical side of the analysis, the Facebook Data team has posted a thorough explanation of its methodology.

The Top Facebook Topics of 2009

Facebook grouped specific keywords and phrases together to build their list of the most discussed topics on Facebook. Here’s the full list:

Facebook provides a very detailed analysis of their top 15 Facebook status trends, but most are self-explanatory.

The number one trend was Facebook apps, specifically the discussion of FarmVille in status updates. The game, which has taken Facebook by storm, has made not only FarmVille a popular phrase on the social network, but “Farm Town” and “Farm” as well.

One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though.

Facebook also acknowledged Twitter’s growth, as it is number 10 on this list. Specifically, Twitter and “RT” became popular trends on Facebook. Still, the company couldn’t help but make a minor dig at its rival by declaring that “mentions of the word Twitter decreased over the past few months.”

What do you think of these top topics? Does any of the data surprise you? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: facebook, memes, trending topics

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Unfortunately, most dropdown menus I come across in the wild are not keyboard friendly.

Read full post

Posted in Accessibility, Usability.

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My favorites include number 18, Pixel Purist by L-a-m-p-E and number 27, Panele Drewniane by finesy.

Let me know your favorite by dropping us a cheeky comment. Feel free to also share your DeviantArt designs with the WebDesignDev community.

30 Amazing PSD Web Designs…

Without further ado, here is the list. Enjoy!

#1 Designers Couch

By ftstudio

* * * * *

#2 Tru U University

By AreoX

* * * * *

#3 NetRunner

By DouglasEltz

* * * * *

#4 Colorful Blog

By deadlinesdesign

* * * * *

#5 Great Pakistan

By naseemhaider

* * * * *

#6 iClooly

By alighandour

* * * * *

#7 Mockup USA Liquids

By cerebrocreativo

* * * * *

#8 Zulawski Bank Spoldzielczy

By pcholewa

* * * * *

#9 Matias Blog

By Pilej

* * * * *

#10 New Company Portfolio

By aadi-f

* * * * *

#11 MM Web Layout

By detrans

* * * * *

#12 Rainbow Blog Design

By PanthereNoire92

* * * * *

#13 Best Destinations

By arEa50oNe

* * * * *

#14 Creative Talk

By kodcor3y

* * * * *

#15 Design Spartan

By DesignSpartan

* * * * *

#16 My Portfolio

By SencerBugrahan

* * * * *

#17 Tienda Peluches

By sogaso

* * * * *

#18 Pixel Purist

By L-a-m-p-E

* * * * *

#19 Fuksik Motoring Ads

By coy2k

* * * * *

#20 Atomia

By shizm

* * * * *

#21 The Trance Blog

By tRiBaLmArKiNgS

* * * * *

#22 Some Web

By Fedrick

* * * * *

#23 Visual Studios

By ECP-Pro

* * * * *

#24 Imagine Air

By Mindfuckx

* * * * *

#25 Clan Design

By pSHR

* * * * *

#26 Atak Interactive

By FIAMdesign

* * * * *

#27 Panele Drewniane

By finesy

* * * * *

#28 Another Portfolio

By shuffl3

* * * * *

#29 Glassy Template

By nodethirtythree

* * * * *

#30 Gor Ingenering

By TIT0

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Chances are you’re going to find yourself with some down-time over the holidays. Sure, you could go for a jog/swim/insert other energetic activity but let’s face it, after all that turkey and egg nog what you’ll really fancy is a semi-snooze on the sofa as you strain to watch some TV over your bloated belly.

Ever at your service, we’ve pulled together a list of what we consider are ten great geek films. We’ve left out anything adapted from a video game (they are almost all universally rubbish anyhow) and anything featuring robots, Vulcans, Jedis, and Keanu Reeves as too obvious to waste space on the list, focusing instead on computer-related flicks.

So, without further preamble, here are 10 great movies to geek out to over the holidays – so grab your popcorn and enjoy.

1. Pirates of Silicon Valley

Tom and Jerry, Popeye and Pluto, Steve and Bill. The duo that changed the computer industry forever are pitched against each other here in a made-for-TV movie following their intertwined early years. Enjoy Woz and be sure to look out for a young Steve Ballmer.

2. The Net

Gibson-gulping, pizza-eating Sandra Bullock wishes she never hit control and shift in this cinematic outing that sees her identity stolen by the evil digital elite as she uncovers a plot as improbable as her casting.

3. Hackers

“Their only crime was curiosity.” Well, that and really bad hair. Offering up a rad baddie that rides a skateboard despite being middle-aged, the prevalence of floppy disks in the film alone will make you nostalgic for the days of dial-up.

4. Wargames

Lovable nerd Matthew Broderick nearly starts World War III in this geek classic that sees his teenage hacker taking on WOPR, NORAD’s supercomputer, in a “game” involving nuclear missiles and the potential annihilation of the planet.

5. MacHeads

“I’ve never knowingly slept with a Windows user.” For some an operating system is a tool, for others it’s a way of life. This documentary follows the latter. Compelling, whether or not you subscribe to the cult of Mac.

6. Sneakers

Geek cinema goes all-star with this hacker slash conspiracy flick that features, among others Robert Redford, River Pheonix and Dan Akroyd as just a few of the stars discovering secrets about a “black box” they think the NSA has hired them to retrieve. Needless to say, all is not as it seems.

7. Antitrust

Tim Robbins takes a thinly-veiled turn as a sinister Gates figure heading up the NURV corporation where idealistic programmer Ryan Phillipe gets hired after college. If you like your geeks glossy and your plots full of holes, then this one’s for you.

8. Electric Dreams

So Eighties it’s almost painful to watch at times, Electric Dreams offers a plethora of gadgets from the decade as well as a self-aware “Pinecone” PC that forms one point of a love triangle. Will the geek get the girl? You’ll have to watch it to find out…

9. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes

We’re taking you back a ways with this 1969 movie that sees a very young Kurt Russell get an electrifying experience that gives him the brain of a computer, hence the tennis shoes reference of the clumsy title. The tech is sooo dated, it’s a little like a history lesson too.

10. Office Space

We’ve saved the best for last. A cult classic, Office Space’s geek credentials come from the plot line that sees disenfranchised cubicle-dwellers create a virus-like snippet of software to rip off the company for a bunch of money, but the whole show is stolen beautifully by Milton and his attachment to his red stapler.

BONUS: Primer

Impressive for its measly $7,000 budget, this recent cult classic follows a mind-bending story about a group of hackers who accidentally build a time machine. It’s so confusing it’s sure to make you wish you could go back in time yourself and ask Santa for the foresight never to try to understand how the plot of this head scratcher works.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59.

Tags: Film, geek, List, Lists, Movies

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I read a lot of design-related articles & blogs online – I mean, really, what else can you do when you live in Edmonton, which was the coldest place in North America on Dec 13 at -58C with windchill? Anyway, I’m constantly bookmarking items I think might be useful for me as a designer in the future – some I never end up using, but some I definitely do! This year, I found some great articles on web usability (always good to be able to effectively communicate why you made a particular design choice to a client), WordPress and jQuery, as well as a few others. Here are my Top Web Design Bookmarks of 2009, with thanks to everyone in the design community who keeps openly sharing their knowledge.

Perfect Full-Page Background Image

CSS Tricks is a great website – a web designer’s goldmine, if you will – and this is but one of a ton of great articles on Chris’ site. I  have yet to implement it myself, but I hope to soon!

10 Usability Findings & Guidelines

Smashing Magazine is well-known in the design community, and the main reason is its well-researched and written articles pertaining to web design. Check this one out for usability tips, like where viewers look most on a website (above image – I felt it needed an explanation or else it just looks like someone’s website caught Athlete’s Foot).

Hit the jump for more!

ViewLikeUs

In a year that saw a lot of simple, single-function websites, ViewLikeUs jumped on the pile with a beautifully simple tool for web designers: viewing their creations in all the major resolutions with the click of a button.

BrowserShots

Another site similar to ViewLikeUs, BrowserShots takes screenshots of a website in all the major browsers – a quick way to check and make sure everything looks the way it should. Another alternative is Adobe’s BrowserLab.

Website Design & Development Project Checklist

This post is a great resource for designers and the ever-present challenge of communicating properly with your (sometimes not-web-savvy) clients. This is a must read if you want to avoid headaches.

20 Top Design Blogs Looking for Writers

Being a freelancer means that occasionally you’re going to hit a slow period. Why not supplement your income by writing a few one-off articles for these well-known design blogs?

Flickrshow

Most clients want to update their websites themselves. That’s totally understandable, and easy-to-use CMS’ like CushyCMS or LightCMS make text editing easy. Photos can be a little more tricky – but Flickrshow pulls content directly from a Flickr account, so your client doesn’t even need to jump into any CMS to update the photos on their site. Especially great if you’re developing websites for photographers.

jQuery Slider

There was an explosion in the popularity of jQuery this year, and it’s easy to see why. This free content slider plug-in is easy to use & looks great. We’re thinking about using it in our next redesign of the Paper Leaf site.

10 Short ‘n’ Sweet Tips on Web Design

This article is focused on usability and what to consider when you’re designing for the web. A quick and useful read!

@font-face & 15 Free Fonts You Can Use Today

I have yet to implement the @font-face CSS rule, but we’ll be doing it in our upcoming Paper Leaf website redesign (probably using Quicksand OTF). If you’re unfamiliar, the @font-face rule allows you to embed OTF fonts in your web designs so you can get away from the standard “web safe fonts” (Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia etc) and still have your website look the way you want to all users.

The Best jQuery Plugins of 2009

Yes, I’m calling on another “best of” list in MY “best of” list. Wanna make something of it? For real though, this is a great list full of useful plugins to add some spice to your web designs.

WordPress for Designers

To round out the list, here is a great series of video screencasts from the gents at ThemeForest on using WordPress if you’re a designer. WordPress is way more than a blogging platform – in fact, it can be used as a sort of content management (CMS) system for a lot of clients. It’s open source, relatively easy to learn, and will give your clients the control over their websites that they want.

I hope you found this list useful. Thanks for reading and have a great year in 2010!

*note: some of these articles may have come out prior to 2009; I just found them and bookmarked them in 2009. Yay for loopholes!

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Im sure you think that there are so many other blog posts that deserve to be on the list, but this is WebDesignDev’s opinion, and to be honest, it would take until next Christmas to look through all the posts about web design that were posted in 2009 across the internet. Without further ado, here is the list. Enjoy and don’t get too carried away!

50 Best Web Design Blog Posts In 2009…

		#1. 35+ Essential Web Design Resources on Best Practice, Tips and Techniques Why You Need To Read… Tripwire Magazine has an awesome compilation here of essential web design resources on best practice, tips and techniques. This is a must read for all web designers. Read More
		#2. 6 Ways To Take Your Web Design From Good To Great Why You Need To Read… This article had to be featured. My Ink Blog tells us 6 different ways web designers can take a web design and transform it from being good (average) to great (standing out from the competition). Read More
		#3. Top 100 Freelance Blogs Why You Need To Read… O Desk have an unmissable compilation of the top 100 freelance blogs. Its great to read other freelancers blogs and know what they are up to. Some blogs being small and personal, and others being big and company based (such as freelance switch – envato). Read More
		#4. 30 CSS Best Practices For Beginners Why You Need To Read… Net Tuts have put together an amazing blog post titled 30 CSS best practices for beginners. This is an unmissable post if your starting out with learning CSS, or you just want to refresh your memory on it. Read More
		#5. 25 Great Examples of Using Gradient Effects In Web Design Why You Need To Read… Six Revisions have a top showcase of websites that use beautiful gradient effects. This had to be included on the list because there is some great inspirational designs listed here. I love the gradient effects too. Read More
		#6. 25 Funny T-Shirt Designs For Web Designers And Developers Why You Need To Read… Everyone need a bit of comedy every now and then. Web Designer Depot has compiled an awesome gallery of 25 funny T-shirt designs that web designers and developers will find comical. Read More
		#7. 20 Most Wanted Web Design Tutorials Why You Need To Read… A quality post here as we look at the 20 most wanted web design tutorials. Some of the website designs here in these tutorials are awesome! Read More
		#8. How To Create An Organic Web Design (And Showcase) Why You Need To Read… Web Designer Depot have a top post that teaches web designers how to create an organic web design, with many examples. This is a great guide and there are some top inspirational web designed showcased here. Read More
		#9. A Beginner’s Guide to Web Accessibility: 21 Ways to Make Your Site More Web Accessible Why You Need To Read… Accessibility is very important if your a web designer. If you are new to the web design industry, or just want to refresh your knowledge, then this post is worth a read as it reviews 21 ways to make your website more accessible. Read More
		#10. Web Design Trends For 2010 Why You Need To Read… Earlier on there was an article from Smashing Magazine about the top web design trends in 2009. This time were going a year ahed as Helikopter Design looks at the top web design trends we are going to be hopefully seeing in 2010. Read More
		#11. Best Web Design – March 2009 Why You Need To Read… Specky boy has an awesome compilation from the beginning of 2009, with the best web design from March 2009. There are some top quality and inspirational web designs in this collection. I love some of the effects used in many of these designs. Read More
		#12. 16 Best Web Design Galleries For Inspiration Why You Need To Read… Every web designer needs a bit of inspiration when they are stuck for designing. Weather this is web design / logo design or any design. Compiled here are 16 best web design galleries for design inspiration. Read More
		#13. Web Design Trends For 2009 Why You Need To Read… In 2009 we have seen some great website design trends. Ajax is being implemented into more and more website every day, and there are so many neat ideas. Check out the top web design trends we have seen in 2009. Read More
		#14. 27 Best Photoshop Web Layout Design Tutorials (part 2) Why You Need To Read… Here is an awesome compilation of 27 awesome web design layout tutorials using Photoshop. There are so many great tutorials here for both beginners and advanced web designers. Read More
		#15. Create The Fanciest Dropdown Menu You Ever Saw Why You Need To Read… A top tutorial here posted on our blog and written by Brian Cray. This menu is simply fantastic and is an easy tutorial to follow that’s broken up into many different steps for beginners and advanced web designers. Read More
		#16. 30 Most Influential People In Web Design Why You Need To Read… One of our best posts of the year. This is our list of the 30 most influential people in web design. There are some really big names on the list, and there has been much hype around other blogs about this list. Read More
		#17. Push Your Web Design Into The Future With CSS 3 Why You Need To Read… You can do some amazing things with CSS3. Even Im still learning everything about it. This article will teach you how to push your sites forward using CSS3. You really can do some amazing things with it. Read More
		#18. Best of CSS Design 2009 Why You Need To Read… Web Designer Wall have a top showcase that just had to be included on the list. Compiled here are the best in CSS web design throughout the whole of 2009. There are just some breathtaking web designs here that every web designer needs to check out. Read More
		#19. 30 Useful Web Design Books For 2009 Why You Need To Read… This is an unmissable list of 30 useful web design books for 2009. There are some top books listed here by some big names in the business. Read More
		#20. 50 Best Female Web Designers From Around The World Why You Need To Read… This list is nice, because you don’t often hear of many female web designers. Its a very different type of list, and there are some really great female web designers listed here. Thanks In Deziner! Read More
		#21. 50+ Nice Clean CSS Tab-Based Navigation Scripts Why You Need To Read… I hate having to look for a CSS based tab script when I want to use tabs on a web design Im working on. This article can come in handy and is well worth bookmarking. There are over 50 clean CSS based tab navigational scripts listed here! Read More
		#22. 30 Best Photoshop Web Layout Design Tutorials Why You Need To Read… Learn some great Photoshop layout techniques with these 30 top Photoshop web layout design tutorials collection. These tutorials are for web designers of all levels. Read More
		#23. 37 of the Best Web Designs from the Travel Industry Why You Need To Read… Vandelay Design has compiled this beautiful showcase of amazing web designs from the travel and tourism industry. I love these styled sites with a big splash page of an image of the hotel / b&b. Read More
		#24. 16 Gorgeous Web Safe Fonts To Use With CSS Why You Need To Read… This is another one of our most hyped articles. Many web designers are often confused with what fonts are web friendly n what operating systems. We have a list of 16 web safe fonts that look stunning. Read More
		#25. Fonts Used In Logos of Popular Websites Why You Need To Read… Ever looked at a logo and thought I wonder what font they use for their logo because that looks nice, or I wonder what this word would look like in that font. Here is a quality list of many different fonts used in logos from popular websites. Read More
		#26. Retro And Vintage Web Designs Best Of Why You Need To Read… Old school styled websites that look like designs from the 50s sometimes looks good on a website. Compiled here is a top quality showcase of the best retro and vintage web designs, put together by the famous Hong Kiat. Read More
		#27. 100 Web Designers To Follow On Twitter Why You Need To Read… Digital Labz have compiled a top quality post that lists the top 100 web designers to follow on the popular social networking site Twitter. There are some big names here, with thousands of followers. Read More
		#28. 25 Most Useful Blogs For Web Design And Development Why You Need To Read… There are so many blogs on the internet about learning web design (including WebDesignDev). Web Appers reviews the 25 most useful blogs for web design and development. Read More
		#29. Top 50 Web Design Education Blogs Why You Need To Read… Compiled here is a collection of the top 50 blogs that will educate any web designer of any level about web design. There are some top quality blogs listed here and its worth checking out and looking at a few of them. Read More
		#30. The 10 Most Common Mistakes Web Designers Make Why You Need To Read… Noupe have put together a top compilation of the top 10 most common mistakes most web designers make. Some of these mistakes you won’t even realize your making, so thanks Noupe! Read More
		#31. 40 Beautiful Examples of Minimalism in Web Design Why You Need To Read… Six Revisions have a top post here as they look at 40 beautiful examples of minimalism in web design. This basically means removing unneeded elements in a website that just clutter it up, making a nice simple design that works extremely well. Read More
		#32. Beautiful Showcase of Black And White Web Design Why You Need To Read… A Design Bump original we had to include on the list. Some people may think black and white is old, but really its a web design style that’s cropping up everywhere now. Black and white websites are simple and can just get the point across. Read More
		#33. Bokeh Effect in Web Design: 30 Excellent Examples and Tutorials Why You Need To Read… This is an awesome article for web designers, showing many different examples of the bokeh effect being used in web design. An unmissable top quality post from Spyre Studios. Read More
		#34. 11 Design Related Social News Sites for Web Design Articles Why You Need To Read… Ever wondered if theres a Digg just for design articles? Well actually theres 11 of them according to Jake Rocheleau as his blog looks at the best social news websites to submit your web design articles to. Read More
		#35. How To Design And Code A Flexible Website Why You Need To Read… Net Tuts have an awesome tutorial that teaches designers of any level how to design, then slice and code out a flexible style web design. This design is pretty tastey. Read More
		#36. 50 Amazing Flash Website Designs Why You Need To Read… One of our very own articles here. Compiled is an unmissable showcase of 50 amazing flash website designs. Read More
		#37. 35 Single Page Portfolio Designs Why You Need To Read… Single page web designs are ever growing. Having a full single page web design as a portfolio is a great idea, because it allows you to be creative, and keep your website clean and all within few files. Read More
		#38. 30+ Professional Business Website Design Tutorials In Photoshop Why You Need To Read… Smashing Share have an article that looks at over 30 professional business website design tutorials you can follow using Photoshop. This is a must read post for all web designers. Read More
		#39. 26 Beautiful Wood Textured Web Designs Why You Need To Read… Another Design Bump original that I just had to include on the list. Here is a gallery compiled by Design Bump that showcases 26 beautiful wood textured website designs. Read More
		#40. 8 Ways Web Design Is Changing The Graphic Design Industry Why You Need To Read… Web Design is having a huge impact on the graphic design industry. Graphic Design Blender looks at 8 ways that web design is changing the graphic design industry. There is some really powerful stuff in this article. Read More
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		#50. 114 Best Resources To Promote your Design Related Articles and News Why You Need To Read… Ever written a perfect blog post and then it gets hardly any traffic, re-tweets and diggs? Well this blog post tells us about 114 best resources that web designers can use to promote their design related articles and news. Read More

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One of the best aspects of Twitter is that it has become a central nexus for discussion of the topics of the day. Twitter is quickly becoming the world’s water cooler, making it a useful tool for figuring out what’s being discussed across the world. Twitter’s Trending Topics are especially useful, as they highlight whether the Twitterverse is talking about Tiger Woods, the Mashable #openwebawards or Santa at this very moment.

Just a short time ago, Twitter released new data on the top trending topics of 2009. It’s a collection of the most discussed news events, people, movies, TV shows, technologies, sports and hashtags from the last 12 months. While some of the rankings won’t come as a surprise (e.g. Michael Jackson is the #1 most discussed person of 2009), you may not have expected some of the others (e.g. #3drunkwords).

The full list, which we are reprinting below from Twitter’s blog post, is a unique and interesting insight into what trended in our culture. Clearly the #IranElection Crisis, where Iranians utilized Twitter and social media in its protests against the election of President Ahmadinejad, was incredibly important to the Twitterverse as it claimed three of the top 10 trending topics for news events in 2009. Michael Jackson, Harry Potter, American Idol, Google Wave, the Super Bowl and #musicmonday were all top of their respective categories as well.

The list speaks for itself. Tell us what you think of Twitter’s most discussed topics of 2009. Does anything surprise you about it? Is there something that you thought would be included? Let us know in the comments.

List of Top Twitter Topics of 2009

Reprinted from the Twitter Blog:

News Events
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows
1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues)
1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology
1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags
1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

Tags: trending topics, twitter

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