More and more people like and user Twitter and therefore many siteowners want to place a follow-link on their website. But as simple text links are too uninteresting, we have collected the best icons and graphics on the internet. 

Twitter icon by fast icon

Twitter icon set by smashing magazine

Twitter social icon by design reviver

31 twitter icons by vincentabry

A little bird told me by mattknow

Twitter icons by flockey

Twitter icon by phiredesign

Cute twitter bird icon by wefunction

Free twitter graphics by randa clay design

Twitter birdy icon by Loondesign

Twitter icons by icontexto

It’s twitter time! by productivedreams

Twitter icons with attitude by monkeyworks

Pratika twitter icon by smashing magazine

(MAX)Icone blog by webfruits

Web 2Origami by Iampaddy

High resolution twitter bird icons by the design superhero

Happy twitter birds by webdesign.fm

Cute tweeters icon set by smashing magazine

Glossy twitter icons by AODdesign

Sticky twitter icons by Kuerbisfeld

The leaves fall by smashing magazine

For all who want to make their own one:

Create a twitter style bird mascot by vectortuts

You waste your server resources for web applications? Why don’t accept the help of Google. Just a few days ago Google launched its Google App Engine. Being still in beta it allows you to upload your web application on the Google network and use their computational power. With a free account you are already able to use 500MB space, a CPU usage of 200,000,000 megacycles and a maximum of 10GB bandwidth per day. Also you get several other features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Great – Where do I have to sign in?

Google App Engine is still in beta. There were 10,000 beta accounts available but after ca. 3 hours they were all gone. Google already announced that more accounts will follow in the near future. So don’t hesitate to subscribe to the waitlist.

At first what does Ajax mean?

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a web development technique used for creating interactive web applications. Ajax is asynchronous, in so far as extra data is requested from the server and loaded in the background. This is intended to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, functionality and usability. Ajax function calls are usually made in Javascript using the XMLHttpRequest object. The asynchronous content doesn’t need to be formatted in XML.

Scripts for your Website

As quite every modern website makes use of at least a bit of Ajax you may want to have a few of those cool effects for your page. So I collected the best scripts for you. All of them are free to use and easy to install.

Lightbox 2 – Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It’s a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

Thickbox 3.1 – ThickBox is a webpage UI dialog widget written in JavaScript on top of the jQuery library. Its function is to show a single image, multiple images, inline content, iframed content, or content served through AJAX in a hybrid modal.

Glider – This script makes it easy to create a sliding carousel component like the one seen at www.panic.com/coda.

TableOrganize – This script basically allows you to re-organize the rows or columns and browse the table using the up/down arrows.

Clickheat – ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones.

Reflection.js – allows you to add reflections to images on your webpages. It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean.

AjaxIM – ajax im (“asynchronous javascript and xml instant messenger”) is a browser-based instant messaging client. It uses AJAX to create a near real-time IM environment that can be used in conjunction with community, intranet, and social websites.

Relay – An Ajax directory manager that works and looks like the familiar one of windows and mac systems.

SWFUpload – is a small JavaScript/Flash library to get the best of both worlds. It features the great upload capabilities of Flash and the accessibility and ease of HTML/CSS.

NicEdit -NicEdit is a Lightweight, Cross Platform, Inline Content Editor to allow easy editing of web site content on the fly in the browser.

Vuzit – Vuzit is a web based document viewer you can embed in any web page. It’s fast and it’s free!

flot – Flot is a pure Javascript plotting library for jQuery. It produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side. The focus is on simple usage (all settings are optional), attractive looks and interactive features like zooming.

Control.Tabs – creates a tabbed interface from an unordered list of links/anchors that point to any elements on your page that have an id attribute.

IE7 – is a JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.

Resources for more scripts

Scripteka an extensive library of Prototype and Script.aculo.us based extensions/plugins.

At AjaxDaddy you can see Ajax examples, javascript scripts and web 2.0 demos in action.

MiniAjax, a showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts.

And have a look at more than 1000 Ajax examples at AjaxRain.com

Talking from web2.0, you think of fade effects, live form validation and other nice and often practical effects. But how are these things realized? Is it something that only professional programmer can assemble?

The only thing that would be helpful is a general understanding of Javascript and HTML. Many of the effects you may have in mind are realized by using open-source libraries or other freely available code snippets. You just have to integrate a few Javascripts and call a few functions to have a beautiful web2.0-ish effect for your website.

In my view the best library is script.aculo.us in connection with prototype.js. They are easy to understand, have a large documentation and a good community. Other libraries worth mentioning are jQuery, Dojo, MochiKit, mootools and YUI. After installing the libraries, it’s so easy to create. Make a few Ajax calls, fall back on entire functions, get some groove effects – and your code is much lighter than before! So why not try to use one of these libraries, after a bit practice you will thank yourself for taking this step.

But even if a library can’t provide you the effect you need, there always is a better way than writing everything on your own. Use some ready-made code snippets. You find them everywhere on the Internet. Snippets for some common problems are Lightbox and ThickBox, which make it possible to overlay an image or other content on the current page. Sometimes the snippets make use of a specific Javascript library. But be careful that not all libraries work well together.

To sum up, I can say that both JS libraries and code-snippets will save you a lot of time (and maybe money). So have a look at them and don’t let the complexity awe you.

Yesterday WordPress 2.5 has been released with a couple of new features. Those who want to upgrade WordPress now, can do it here.

The popular blogging platform needed six months for this major upgrade. But what changes with the new version? The most important update regards the all-new dashboard. It isn’t a static site anymore but consists of several customizable widgets and only provides you with the most important links. Therefore it is very easy to fit the dashboard according to your needs.

The developers of WordPress spend this version a completely new and fresh color scheme, changed the menu order and recoded the media gallery. Now it is possible to easily upload and manage images as well as videos and other files. Further remarkable new features are editing protection for multi-admin blogs and an built-in plugin update function. The whole list of changes can be read at the WordPress Blog. All in all WordPress 2.5 is a recommendable update, I am sure everyone will love.

Mark Zuckerberg did it and many others! They build successful websites and applications, and you can do the same! The first and most important thing is the idea. If your idea has potential then why not give it a try! Many people haven’t thought of becoming famous and rich by their websites but they were wrong.

What do you need to start your own website, blog or web application?

The idea – it’s the A and O to be successful! Are there already sites that do the same as yours? Is it possible to make money with your idea (sell premium content, banner advertising) or do you just want to be popular?

The website – do you master (x)HTML, PHP and JavaScript and maybe another language like Java? The point is – make yourself clear what is possible with your capabilities and what not. Maybe hire a professional programmer, but keep in mind that they are very expensive. Also nowadays it’s essential to permanently keep an eye on your sites’ security.

The design/layout – in the internet you find millions of examples of good web-designs. You can also find a lot of guides and tutorials that will help you step by step.

The server – how big is your project? Do you think you need a server right from the beginning? Or is a Shared Plan enough for a few weeks? If you have a heavy-load online application, calculate your budget carefully. Nothing is angrier than having the ultimate website but not the resources to host and operate it.

The breaks – After your project is running and even during the building time – take breaks! Turn off and do anything apart from thinking about your website. It’s a very important, maybe the most important thing you should take care of unless you want to lose the view on the whole.

When to start your website? – Now. Don’t lose time.

Good Blogs and Sites for more information

• OnStartups, Advice for Software Startups. Invaluable guides for entrepreneurs.
• DoshDosh, Internet Marketing and Social Media. Many tips and tricks on how to make the big money with any kind of website.
• Mashable!, The Social Networking Blog. See the ideas of other people and learn from them.

Time – time management means productivity, means money! In a world of multitasking you have to reduce stress and improve your self-organization. You can use pen and post-its or you try one of these web-based equivalents…

Online Mindmaps

1. Mindmeister is an Ajax driven web application specialized on collaborative mind mapping. Also it allows you to instantly start a Skype conference with your friends/partners.

2. Mindomo, a very heavyset mindmapping tool, enables you to structure your maps in every detail. It’s one of a few which supports image-integration.

3. Bubbl.us uses Ajax and Flash for creating beautiful and simple mindmaps. You can share them with your friends or print your work.

To-do Lists

1. Rememberthemilk is a powerful to-do list tool that allows you to locate tasks, share, publish and get reminded of them via IM, SMS or email.

2. Blablalist is a simple to-do list. It’s fast, and offers all the basic features. It tenders an easy-to-use interface, but loses points because of a nerving pop-up window, launched when setting up a new list.

3. Roughunderbelly is a Ruby on Rails running to-do list, which allows you to set yourself a deadline for your tasks and classify them.

4. Ta-da Lists, also built with Rails, offers a wonderfully simple and clean to–do manager. Ta-da Lists uses a lot of whitespace and big fonts to make the lists more appealing and open.

5. Voo2do provides detailed task management for individuals.

6. Toodledo allows you to group your tasks, assigned to due dates and priority.

7. With Taskthis you can create to-dos with notes and publish them via RSS. If needed you can share your lists with your friends.

Web Calendars

1. Yahoo Calendar – “Access dates and meetings from anywhere, anytime”
2. Google Calendar – “Simplify. Organize. (And relax.)”
3. Hipcal – “it’s about time”
4. Kiko – “dead simple calendar”
5. 30boxes – “it’s so easy my mom can do it”
6. MSN Calendar One of the big three together with Yahoo! and Google.

Now, three years after the release of Firefox v1.0, the revolutionary browser has been downloaded over 400 million times!

When the first version of the browser hit the internet back in 2004, it took only 99 days for the Firefox to be downloaded by more than 25 million delighted users. After 1 year the number quadrupled and passed the 100 million downloads mark.

This time was the starting signal for a never-ending, striking success of a web browser – it is free, has tons of good extensions and themes, has a huge community and made us feel the web2.0!

Zooomr has recently added a people search to it’s site. Now you can find other users and friends on Zooomr by searching for their names or email addresses. After starting your search you will be prompted to the normal photoresults-page. But you can click on a ‘People’-tab and it displays you all the people found in their databases.

All-in-all the people search is a useful update and leads Zooomr closer to social networking.

Peteris Krumins’ did it again! After building a Reddit clone with integrated picture previews (Reddit Media) he now coded a photoversion of digg.com – digpicz!

All he needed was the digg API and a bit code, to create a service many users were waiting for. Until now just a short announcement has been made on the official digg-blog that a picture page will be added to digg in the following weeks.. and he did it in about 7 hours!

To get more details on how Peteris build the site, see his blog.