Web 2.0

Typography Resources

You must have already seen many websites with fancy fonts and advanced CSS text effects. Web Fonts and Web Typography has totally evolved in last 2 years. Using Web Typography now you don’t need to have images for “cool” text effects and it has replaced heavy designs. Now you just need to code a little for a beautiful text line rather than creating its image on Photoshop. And with Web Fonts libraries, using typographies by designers and developers has been made even easier. In this article I will share few good Web Fonts Directory and links to Typography resources.

Finding Web Fonts

With Web Font libraries it has become very easier for designers and developers to find opensource fonts and use them in their websites. There are many good websites to find Web Fonts, I am including “Free” in parenthesis for sites which provide opensource fonts. Some of them are:

Google Web Fonts (Free)

Google Web Fonts

Adobe Web Fonts

Adobe Web Fonts

Open Font Library (Free)

Open Font Library - Open Font Library

Typekit

Open Font Library - Typekit

WebINK

WebINK Web Fonts

Font Squirrel (Free)

Font Squirrel Handpicked free fonts for graphic designers with commercial-use licenses.

Fonts Live

Fonts Live - Expertly Crafted Web Fonts from Monotype Imaging

Fontdeck

Fontdeck web fonts Real fonts for your website

Fonts.com Web Fonts

Fonts.com Web Fonts

Fontspring

Desktop and font-face fonts Fontspring

exljbris Font Foundry (Free)

exljbris Font Foundry

Webtype

Webtype

CSS3 Text Effects

There are already many tutorials written for various kinds of advanced CSSTtext Effects, you can visit here to see a list of 22 Advanced CSS Text Effects. Please be careful that these text effects might not be compatible with all web browsers. Though all web browsers support typographies very efficiently, and the WOFF is supported by all the major web browsers lately(Firefox 3.6 and later, Google Chrome 6.0 and later, Opera 11.10 and later and Internet Explorer 9).

Further Reading: There is a great article on Steven Snell’s Blog for Web Typography resources, dont forget to read it here.

Facebook Shortcuts

Lately I was surfing facebook.com and found that facebook has some default keyboard shortcuts which work cross browser. Thus, I am sharing few of the shortcuts which I found.

  • Alt+1: This key combination takes you to your Facebook home page, No matter where you are in facebook.com
  • Alt+2: This combination takes you to your profile, Again from anywhere in the facebook.com
  • Alt+3: This combination opens up the pending friend requests dialog.
  • Alt+4: By pressing this one you can see your Inbox(i.e. Messages).
  • Alt+5: You can see your Notifications by pressing this combo.
  • Alt+6: Pressing this takes you to the “My Account” where you can change your name and other details.
  • Alt+7: Pressing this takes you to the “Privacy Settings” where you can update/change your privacy settings.
  • Alt+8: This one takes you to the facebook fan page.
  • Alt+9: Takes you to the Terms and Conditions page(Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) which is bigger than a constitution of a country.
  • Alt+0: Takes you to the “Help Center” page. Where you can browse your applications and see facebook features.
  • E: takes you to events
  • F: takes you to friends
  • N: takes you to notifications
  • R: takes you to confirm requests

Also, Facebook added a new emoticon this must be in context to the number 42. Read its wiki for details and significance. You can get this in chat by typing :42:

UPDATE: Few more(Thanks to tudy).

Blogger.com vs WordPress.com

So you must be having a Blog(If NO, Go get one today). Where do you host  it Blogger.com OR WordPress.com. Or if you have your own Hosting space with php and Mysql then for sure WordPress.org. This post will compare Blogger.com with WordPress.com. Also don’t get confused with WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.org is a CMS which you need to host and is the best Blog System currently. I will not be including features which are in both of them OR neither of them.

Feature

Blogger.com

WordPress.com
Customization with themes Yes, You can edit the HTML and CSS No
Import No, Only from another Blogspot Blog Yes, From most of the Blog programs
Static Page No Yes, As much as you want
Analytics/Stats No, But you may install a third party Analytics program Yes, In built and is great
Image Storage 1 GB, Can be browsed through Picasa 3 GB, Can be upgraded
Classification Through applying Labels Through applying Categories and Tags
Contact Forms No, But Third Party contact forms can be installed Yes, Using [contact-form]
Comments Simple, But you can install powerful comments system like Disqus Nice comment system but you can’t install Disqus
Embed Object (Like: Flash) Yes No
RSS Yes, And can be optimized with Feedburner Yes, But No Feedburner optimization
Spam Fighting No Akismet
Change blog URL Yes No
Javascript Yes, You can Add it here No
Google Webmaster Tools Yes, Verify using <meta> tag and Add blog/atom. No

Please See:

  • If you wish to upgrade to WordPress.org soon then go for WordPress.com. As it supports Categories as well as Tags(Which is common in WordPress.com and WordPress.org).
  • If you don’t wish to upgrade to WordPress.org and don’t want to host things then go for Blogger.com
  • Most of people start from platforms like WordPress.com or Blogger.com and move to WordPress.org(It includes me).
  • Also if you are newbie in Blogging go for Blogger.
  • Blogger is also owned by Google which is a 800 pound gorilla in Internet.
  • There is also a http://draft.blogger.com where you can see features if blogger about to come.

My Suggestion: Go for Blogger.com. As it has the biggest advantage that is Flexibility.

Web Analytics

Web analytics is the measurement of the visits to a website to track website performance. Its also the process of collection, measurement and analysis of user activity on a website to understand and help achieve the intended objective of the website. So it is a tool that collects data on web site users behavior.

How can we use it ?

For Web Analytics you just need to Sign Up for a Web Analytics program and then add the essential code given by the Program to your site. Or Install a couple of plugin’s if you are on WordPress.

What programs are available ?

There are many of the programs available for analytics for Websites. I have included few which I like.

Google Analytics

For me its the best as it is owned by 800 pound gorilla of the internet market and the features it provides are very useful. All though it’s not highly advanced or high on features still it has everything which is required for analytics. One can add multiple sites here and most importantly its 100% Free. You just need to add the code to your website for its functioning(Or a plugin if you are on WordPress). Google Analytics can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents. You may integrate it with Your Adwords account too.

Clicky Web Analytics

Logo

It has all the features of Google Analytics plus many more like giving a Mobile version of your dashboard, Viewing the history for an individual page, Visitor segmentation, Twitter Analytics etc. It’s hugely accpeted. But the drawback is its not Free. Though it has a Free version too but using GA will be the better option then.

Analytics for WordPress using a simple Plugin(WordPress.com Stats)

Its like Google Analytics providing an incredible depth of information. Installing this stats plugin is easy, all you need is to put in your API Key. When running it’ll begin collecting information about your pageviews, popular posts and pages, traffic source, etc. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard. And because all of the processing and collection runs on there servers. it doesn’t cause any additional load on our hosting account.

2 Great Twitter Tools

Mutuality

Well Huitter.com offers a service called Mutuality which has the following features and are very useful in the journey of becoming a Pro-Twittrer.

  • Unfollow all who do not follow you back
  • Unfollow all
  • Follow all who follows you

I dont use the 2nd one but the 1st and 3rd are quite useful. One can also use the 3rd one as a manual auto follow feature.
Twitter Follower - Get Followed

Twitter Follower

is a database of Twitter users who will follow you if you follow them. By following the users in the database, you can quickly and effectively build your list and avoid that dread zero in the follower count. But everyone doesn’t follow you back in that list that’s the drawback as anyone can submit there name there.
Another feature from Twitter Followers:

Mass Unfollow Everyone Who’s Not Following You: The other feature of Twitter Follow is the mass unfollow button. Push this button and Twitter Follower will unfollow everyone who’s not following you back.

Source: http://www.johnchow.com/twitter-follower-my-new-twitter-site/

See Also http://www.buzzom.com

Other Useful Twitter Resource: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_auto-follow_twitter_followers.html

Microsoft Bing: Awesome !

Bing the latest offering from Microsoft is a great search engine, Its better than Google in various ways.

Bing has a better and more meaningful “Related Search”. It uses technology from Powerset (a search technology company Microsoft acquired) to display refined versions of your query down the left side of the page.
Bing also pop ups the text in the result page when you hover above the search result. Which will give the idea about to follow the result or not.
It has a Video Search in which one can refine the query by Length OR Screen size OR Resolution OR Source. I found this to be Good.
It’s Image search has all the features of Google as well as Introduced some more like layout, style, people.

And it knows that different kind of data is best represented in different format it will be hard to maintain this thing though as MS will depend on different sites to collect this data from.

Overall, The bing search is much more than expected and it may replace Google in Future as its just the beginning of Bing !.

Get your Social Media diagram by Geekchart

If you are a social media addict and share great links and content you get in the net with others and if you are a Geek in Social Media and do it in various platforms then this thing is for you. Geekchart is a new tool which gives pie chart based on your activity of various social media sites in the last 30 days

GeekChart fetches data from these 8 social media sources That is your blog, Twitter , YouTube , Flickr , Digg , StumbleUpon , Delicious , and Last.fm(and facebook coming soon.)

Geek Chart Keeps updating your Social Media diagram automatically as you continue to share.

I am sharing my Geekchart with you.


Priteshgupta’s Geek Chart

Free and Legal Music in Web 2.0

This is probably what everyone one wants these days.

Last.fm:This thing  has a Free Music Downloads section in bottom of the page, One can go there and browse for free downloads in that section, Of course the Downloads are limited still one can listen to unlimited and new songs there. I use this site frequently to share the name of my favorite tracks in my Twitter and Facebook.

ARTISTdirect:This is a brilliant place for free music, Some of the big releases aren’t always free, You need to pay for them. Still I use it a lot to see new tracks by top artists. One can use this site for browsing music by various Artists.

Kazaa: This site can be used to listen and download lots of free and latest music but this is only open for US. Not for any other country.

The usefullness of Twitter for me

Today even 1 day without Twitter kills me, Twitter is the best thing in the Web I have found yet(Another is facebook). Many people feel Twitter has no advantages and it is addictive, Time Waste and Lame. This isn’t true at all, There are great advantages of it but only one who uses Twitter can get it. A non Twitter user will surely think its a waste. This included me too earlier I didn’t know about Twitter and didn’t joined it, then one of my friend @ramkarthik Told me about Twitter and explained its uses and advantages in detail. Since that day I became twitter-addicted and just saw advantages in it. No disadvantages.

To make my point clear I am sharing this video its very humorous and one of mine YouTube favorite’s

The First good thing about Tweeple’s(Twitter People{Twitter user’s}) is that the Twitter crowd is very helpful. For an instance I broke up my WordPress and wasn’t able to fix it myself. I twitted and soon got help from many people(Mainly @Rampantheart).

Its great for connecting to people via Twitter, and Twitter provides us with 140 Chars so that no one gets bored by one’s Tweet and isn’t time consuming also. Most of the times I see Humorous Tweets in my twitter Timeline, Which is great. Basically it is a medium for connections with others in an easy and unobtrusive way.People say that micro blogging(Twitter) Makes one a better Blogger too.

A few possible advantages of Twitter are:

  • Stay connected with colleagues and friends when you are away.
  • Provides us with immediate support.
  • Be the first one to cast events/meets/summits by twitting in between and sharing the experiences.
  • Share Links and Other information
  • Learn more about people’s interests.

Do these basic steps and start tweeting today.

  • Sign up
  • Follow others.
  • Make friends on Twitter
  • Tell other people to join
  • And start communicating with people

Using Google services for a Website/blog

Google provides number of services/products to promote your blog or website on the Internet, the good thing about these services are that most of them are free for a very low price. These services are very helpful in various things. And all of its services works great for all types of blogs and websites.

Most of the services have a main focus for improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from Google Search engine via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results(viz. SEO).

Here is the list of Google Services for a Website/Blog :
In the order of their importance

  • Google Adsense:Offers a contextual advertising solution to web publishers Delivers text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to site content pages. Its great for earning huge bucks and trustworthy too(Because its Google).

  • Feedburner:Allows blog owners and podcasters the ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers. The best advantage is it converts a RSS feed to a Email newsletter by “Subscribe via Email” thing.
  • Google Webmaster tools:Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. One just need to verify the site and add Sitemaps.
  • Google Analytics:Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives.

  • Google Apps:
    Google Apps provide with Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Video and Google Sites complement traditional office software to make teamwork easier. The best thing is it provides with a Email ID of your Domain just by adding MX data into your domain (Eg: [email protected]).
  • Google Friend Connect:
    Grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. Google Friend Connect means more people engaging more deeply with your website.
  • Google Custom Search:
    Have a website or collection of sites you’d like to search over? With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine for your very own site.