Granted there are a ton of websites out there giving creatives the opportunity to share their inspiration with many, I stumbled over these guys on the weekend and quite enjoyed the random beauty submitted by it’s members.

The site is very easy and simple to use – and they have this neat ability to capture any image you decide to “Love”. All you have to do is add their handy dandy widget to your browser (I use Firefox 3 so I’m not sure if it’s compatible with other browsers). I’m going to try and dig deeper into what they’re using to do this because honestly I think it’s so intuitive that everybody should share in it’s brilliance.

However aside from their cool technology for such a simple site – it’s still fun!

Website: weheartit.com

Don’t believe me? Read them yourself…

I’ve started compiling some etiquette and best practices for using Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters. Most ideas come from other sources, to which I will give due credit. Most of these tips are most appropriate for people new to Twitter. (Apologies is any or most of the tips seem familiar to people who have used Twitter for a long time (i.e., several months).

1. Remember, Twitter is a conversation.
2. Ask questions; don’t just pontificate.
3. What part of 140 chars do you not understand? (Thanks to jyarmis).
4. Discretion: Some things are better left unsaid. So avoid stream-of-consciousness-blogging via Twitter. Check out this article about what happened when a tweet backfired.
5. Transparency is vital — just as with any other social media.
6. Consider quality vs. quantity. (I am going to look at what makes for a useful tweet in the next few weeks.)
7. Many users provide links to interesting articles, information, etc. Guy Kawasaki does this many times a day.
8. Use proper grammar. Check out Mignon Fogerty, the host of the Grammar Girl blog/podcast who tackles proper grammar usage on the popular micro-blogging site. Her tips are available at”Grammar Girl’s Strunk & Twite: An Unofficial Twitter Style Guide,” and include:
   • “Don’t start posts with ‘I am.’ You’re answering the question, ‘What are you doing?’ It’s OK to answer with fragments in a conversation.”
   • “Use proper capitalization. Typing in lowercase doesn’t save characters; it’s just lazy.” I totally support this tip.
   • “Don’t use abbreviations such as 4U and L8…Shorthand symbols such as >, =, &, and @ are allowed.”
9. For an interesting look at the impact of Twitter, IM , SMS and texting may have on language, check out the Boston Globe’s “Is language dead or evolving? Some see the use of shorthand and abbreviated text as the beginning of the end. But studies say students know the difference between formal writing and instant messaging.”
10. “Use numerals, not words, for all numbers.”
11. “If you can’t say it in 140 characters, reevaluate whether you should be posting it at Twitter.”
12. “Provide links and context whenever possible. Remember that many of your followers can’t see what you are responding to.”
13. If people follow you, it’s polite to “follow” them back. However, because of that, be careful about adding too many people at one time — that’s the Twitter version of spamming. People will think you’re trying to sell/hype something rather than start a conversation.
14. It’s really about conversation. When I tweeted about writing a blog on etiquette, I got a lot of response. But be careful contacting someone you don’t know — like in real life, you could be seen as butting into someone else’s conversation. If they don’t know you, they may not respond. (A better way to initiate a conversation would be to comment on that person’s blog. That assumes, of course, that the person has a blog.)
15. In fact, according to jljohansen in a tweet written after my first draft of this article, he said, “First rule of Twitter is ‘Don’t be creepy’ after that, Right and Wrong are dependent on social contract of your friends/follows.
16. To which Nedra said, “Sadly, the creepy people don’t realize they’re being creepy.”
17. See, how the conversation idea works?

Check out some other articles: Twitter + Etiquette = Twitterquette?, Twitter Fan Wiki, and “The 10 rules of Twitter (and how I break every one)” by Robert Scoble.

Of course, there may be a rule that I’ve just broken, according to a comment on Scoble’s blog, Scobleizer: Don’t blog about how you use Twitter.

I could go into a 2008 retrospective but I think there have been more dark moments that shining moments – so all I have to say is this:

WE all have the power and ability to steer our own course in this life. It might be small compared to schematics of the universe. But the beauty of this world is not what we accomplish as individuals but what we’re able to change together. Sounds pretty tacky I know – but take a step back for once and see the world for what it is – just one big bubble. A bubble we’re all inside of, a bubble that is fragile, but also a bubble that is majestic and everlasting, giving us life. A bubble that surely can live without us if it were sentient enough to just wipe us all out tomorrow, but a bubble WE can’t live without.

May 2009 bring you all joy, peace and power. Power to live life. Power to live it well!

FCV however, has been around since 2005 and in those short 4 years, it has grown at an alarmingly successful rate. I work as Lead Designer for them- and I might be accused of having a slight bias in terms of singing its praises – but if you sum up the talent, drive and passion we all share with technology, couple that with the fact we’re all under the age of 40, I’d say we have enough endurance to outlast even the big guns.

Don’t believe me, then check us out!

I have been a little slow on the post lately – but for good reason. New direction! 2009 will see some changes, some major some minor, but all we be in the good interest of sharing, collaborating and showcasing art and design globally.

With the holiday season in full swing I do wish everyone a safe holiday where ever you may be!

Well it looks like FOWA will be held in the Miami next year – with some great speakers covering topics like:

- The future of the browser
- How to build a community that is crazy about your product
- Using video and podcasting for increased success
- How to build quickly with Django, Symfony, cloud computing and Git
- How to make powerful web apps using Objective-J and Cappuccino
- How to achieve tech team nirvana
- Future web business models that will actually work

Michael Arrington TechCrunch

Michael Arrington is the founder of the Crunch Network and editor of TechCrunch, the leading blog covering new Internet products and companies. He also co-founded Edgeio, an online classified listing startup. Previously, he worked as a corporate lawyer at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini, worked in sales and business development at RealNames, co-founded Achex, which was sold to First Data Corp., and was COO at Razorgator.

Daniel Burka Digg & Pownce

Daniel Burka is the creative director of Digg and is one of three cofounders of Pownce. He is also one of the founders of the Canadian company Silverorange where he worked on various projects including branding and user interface design for Mozilla. At Digg, Daniel works with Kevin Rose to evolve concepts into a cohesive user experience. Enabling the site’s vibrant user community participate on the site is a constant challenge as the site grows and changes. Daniel also designs the user experience for Pownce and works with Leah Culver and Kevin on feature development.

Jason Fried 37Signals

Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary. 37signals’ products include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire, Ta-da List, and Writeboard. 37signals’ products do less than the competition—intentionally. Jason believes there’s real value and beauty in the basics. Elegance, respect for people’s desire to simply get stuff done, and honest ease of use are the hallmarks of 37signals products.

Okay – so a while ago the Big Buzz word out there was Twitter, which is a free social networking tool, a “micro-blog” if you will, created for you to get constant updates from your friends, family or even from your music artist, clothing company etc…

Its humble beginnings started with a company called Obvious who actually just used the tool internally before officially launching it in October 2006.

Well just like Facebook its popularity has escalated and grown to incredible numbers. But what’s the big deal?

Well Twitter allows you to post mini updates on what you’re doing, where you’re going, what you’ve seen, something you’ve heard and allows you to share it with all your Twitter friends (followers).  Like if you’re planning to head to the airport on a Friday morning in absolutely crap weather, and insane gridlock – you can save your Twitter friends the same agony by texting in – with your mobile – the traffic conditions. Or you’re out shopping and you stumble over a sick sale on some Chuck Tailors – just pull out the mobile and text your find.

You catching on yet?

It has an open API – which means that if you’re a code monkey you can develop an application like Twhirl, that allows you connect to your Twitter on your Desktop, and follow everyone’s tweets (à la MSN messenger style). If you have a Facebook account – you can hook your Twitter into it so that when you Tweet – it updates your FB status. Cool huh!! If you have an iPhone you can download the Twinkle or Twitterrific Application which lets you broadcast, attach pictures and chat to nearby peeps.

Simply put – it’s just another way to stay connected. So what are you waiting for chump!!

An old tradition in the Vancouver web community has been reborn.  Tonight at 5pm the reinvented Ideas on Tap is taking place at the Yaletown Brewing Company.  It’s a networking event for people interested in blogging, internet marketing and online social networking.  You can have a look at the blog to see who is coming.

Wordle is a fun little web site that lets you create art out of words.  It was created by an IBM software engineer named Jonathan Feinberg.  You can view other users’ tag clouds in the gallery or easily create your own based on a block of text, an RSS feed, or delicious bookmarks.  Then you tweak the appearance of the cloud by changing font, layout and colours.  The image above is constructed from mediakik’s delicious bookmarks.

For those of you who who are looking to find some inspiration in colour design check out the website ColorLovers.com.  The site lets designers share 5-colour palettes with other designers.  Sometimes users will also post the photograph that inspired the palette, or share a story of how they came across the color combination.

The site has all of the typical web 2.0 elements, like discussion groups and the ability to rank and collect favourites.  Because the site content is driven by designers, what you get is a reflection of what trends are popular at the moment.

The best part is that you are able to search through thousands of colours, palettes and patterns.  Once you’ve found a colour combination you love, try the feature that lets you create patterns using those colours.

There’s a blog on the site sure to be of interest to true designer geeks.  They talk about the latest trends and drawing inspiration from the real world.  Check out this intesting post where caterpillar colour schemes are used for design.

The couple turned out to be two NDP volunteers from North Vancouver.  Their image was supplied to The Element Agency by Getty Images, one of the largest suppliers of stock images.   The ad agency was forced to remove the clip when Jean and John Macintyre recognized themselves in the ad, but say they never agreed to have their image used.

Although it’s embarassing for the Liberal party, they are correct in saying, “When you deal with a company such as Getty Images, you are assured that all the appropriate rights were acquired.”   We’ll have to see what becomes of this story.

You can read more from the reporter who broke the story here.

As a way of celebrating it’s 10th anniversary, Google has created a search page that lets you query their 2001 database.  You will get a kick out of searching for terms like “iPod” or “YouTube” that didn’t exist in 2001.  Give it a try :

www.google.com/search2001.html

Okay this just goes to show how you THINK you may know enough – but sometimes you overlook the simplest task when it comes to browsing effectively. So thanks to the lovely fellow “webby”, (first catch phrase of the blog) Linda Bustos who posted this fun little video on her Facebook page.

It’s an informative and simple approach to typing in proper and effective keywords for what we all want to search for. For those that aren’t familiar with how search engines work, this will give you some valuable insight for sure!

Watch it!

Just as a caveat to all this – you should also have some presence by way of a portfolio online, demonstrating your “want” to contribute and also have some good writing chops.

That’s all folks.

Weblink: Facebook Canary Derby Group

If you’re new to jQuery, or if you’re still trying to figure it out – you’re not alone, because I am still learning, and the resources to get the information you need is quite abundant, with everyone contributing their own examples, demos and experiments. I could list all these resources to alleviate this search, but I found one site that already has done the leg work – Effectize.

If you have a great resource to jQuery, please post it – we can only grow and improve by sharing!

A few months ago I had experienced some frustration in trying to test out a eNewsletter on multiple email clients effectively. Untill a work colleague emailed me a link to Litmus.

How it works is pretty simple, and I was able to test out my newsletter on Outlook for PC and gmail. Which came in handy considering I’m working primarily off my mac. All you do is, once you have your newsletter front end done, sign into Litmus and email your newsletter to the test address they provide for you. Wait less than a minute and PRESTO you get detailed screenshots of your newsletter.

Don’t believe me? Try it out!

Aaahh – what a lovely and refreshing social experiment with how people navigate the web today! Don’t Click It, was conceived and built by Communication Design student Alex Frank as part of his final work. He basically create a test environment for users to navigate the site essentially without clicking anything. The first phase of the experiment is the completed interface, which is now live and presented in a way to test the user. With some minor statistical data recorded, you can actually view some of what they’ve collected in terms of how many people still tend to click, and who’s viewing what content on the site.

The second phase I imagine will be a more in depth record of that data. It’s a pretty cool concept – I dare you to check it out!

However, the most important part of this event is the CAUSE, so please donate $1 or $100. This money is for early cancer detection research. It’s proven that early detection of Cancer almost certainly helps in successful treatment, which almost is like a CURE.

For more information about the event and the cause go to the Canary Derby website.

And if you do want to donate, please go to my donation page.

Thank you All!

Sound familiar?

Well MarkiCart, is über cool, and über environmentally friendly. The first amazing feature of this evolutionary cart is that it has a computer chip, that reads all items you place in it – eliminating the need to unpack your groceries. Instead the whole cart gets scanned. That’s it!

The body is made from energy absorbing plastic that lasts longer, is more rigid, doesn’t scratch the car and far lighter and less noisy = BONUS!

You don’t believe me – check out the site: Markitcart

This is one crazy reality we will have to come to terms with – very insightful, but also very scary. Thanks Warren.