It’s my desire to post on this blog once a week. I’m going to start that intention off with a summary of what I’ve recently come across on the web.

Textures

• Bittbox Jay Hilgert’s corner of the web. All kinds of goodies for free, active community of discussion, tutorials, application highlights…
• Lost & Taken - Caleb Kimbrough’s corner of the web where he is dedicated to “Free stock textures for your graphic design and photography projects”. This is an amazing because of the quality of the textures.

WordPress

• Plugin: BM Custom Login Screen : This find bridges design and development because is it not only about a WordPress plugin but this download also includes a PSD file for easier implementation. Checkout the rest of the Binary Moon site and you will find you’ve run across their work before.

Micro-blogging and Your Process

This past week a friend was working on a “homework” assignment as part of a job interview. She needed to pick my brain about the social tools on the web and how an employee would use those to communicate to it’s haters and lovers of the product. I thought I knew next to nothing on the subject but in the end I gave her a great head start and now I have another active friend on Twitter. Good luck on the job hunt my friend!

Micro-blogging Definition

• What is your process for communicating on the web for personal or business use?
• What do you know about micro-blogging or non-traditional methods for marketing or customer service?

This past week I tested two solid applications:

• For the Twitter toolbox is a web application BrightKit. “With BrightKit, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.” I liked the multi-user functionality and it’s in active development with awards.
• A blogging tool and desktop application Blogo ($25). Publish to twitter accounts  and blogs from one application. I’m still testing how this one fits in my daily routine. Check out the screencast to see it in action.

Management Tools

Application Things by Culture Code. I’ve bought and used this application for a month now. Enjoying the original release of just a couple of weeks ago as well as knowing there is a full development team behind it. It’s fresh. It’s great if you just want to use it for your work. I particular found the user contributed section of the wiki helpful in getting my tags set-up “correctly” from the start.

I’ve been a Palm Desktop guy for many years. Not sure what the future of Palm is and still not sold on the Mac application suite with all the syncing between applications but if that is your thing (no pun intended) this application will fit in with that process nicely… even on your iPhone!

Usability

I heart usability issues and raised my brow when I found Userfly - “Run instant usability studies for your website using your real users.” It’s in a very early development stage but I would keep my eye on this group. Could be an eyeopener of a tool in practice.

Nerd Humor

• Hilarious short movies by Mecano on why your web site hasn’t launched yet.

Have any bones to contribute?

Nifty and accurate, it’s all the rave!  Check the “level of friendship” for each of your “people”.

Personally I was surprised to find out who is still following me after excessively tweeting. If you use Twitter a bit more professionally though, I would suppose this is a great tool to keep your active network up to date.

Just 2 steps. Send anything under 100MB.

1. Pick a file
2. Pick a preset amount of time it will be available, up to one week.

3. If you’re picky I guess three is clicking upload

———–

A second option would be www.mediafire.com which can also be free and recently they have changed the per file upload to 100MB.

http://lifehacker.com/software/mac-tip/display-the-date-on-the-menubar-316029.php

Thank you Lifehacker!
more Lifehacker Mac Tips

“Konigi is a resource for user experience designers published by Michael Angeles. Konigi showcases examples of interface and visual design in its galleries, and points you to some of the best resources for UX in its notebook.”

Wireframe Graph Paper Notepad

The Product: “The Wireframe Graph Paper Notepad is made for visual designers, interaction designers, and information architects. The notepad has 40 sheets at 8 1/2 x 11 inches on…”

I ordered 2 notepads today!

Print your own: You can actually download and print your own PDF graph papers that konigi sells. I guess if I really like this product I should get a printer.

OmniGraffle UX Template

The Free Download: “Made for Web Designers. An OmniGraffle Pro (version 5) template for User Experience Designers with the formats you’ll need most for interface and interaction design. The doc is sized so you can work at 100%, and print at 8.5″ x 11″ or 11″ x 17″.”

• Wisestamp Features
• Firefox Add-on WiseStamp

How have I lived without this?! This signature creator is a great tool for sprucing up the often overlooked email signature. It’s base is feature rich but if you know HTML you can take it to another level. (Just make sure you know how different email systems translate HTML)

Just a few of the features I loved right off the bat were:

• Use multiple email signatures (Business and Personal)
• Add your logo or image to your signature
• Easily Include all your IM (Instant messaging) ID’s + icons
• Easily link to all of your social services-links & Profiles + icons
• Works with Gmail, Google App’s, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL and more…
• Add your personal signature to any online Html supported page (Google Docs…etc)

I think it was a wise choice for the needs of this client. The client didn’t want to have anything to do with a blog per say but so far they like what they see and they haven’t seen the backend yet. I’m happy with the choice because it’s very easy to get around the blog feel and easy to turn “off” most of it’s abilities to keep it simple and just for the client to use.

I have a long way to go to learn all the ways of Wordpress manipulation but I’m totally game to all the possibilities and just can’t wait for the next WP site I develop.

Without further ado, this is the list of plugin’s I ended up with when selfdiscover.org went live. All these developers totally deserve a piece of the measly little paycheck I will receive.

!Wartungsmodus (Maintenance Mode)

• WordPress Plugin Page
• The German author’s plugin page

I don’t know why it was so hard for me to find a good maintenace mode plugin but this was the gem when I did find it at the eleventh hour. All the logged in top level admins can see the site but for the rest it’s a simple maintenance mode screen. I used Google Translate to update the files as I need it to be in English.

Wordpress Attachment Extender

• Wordpress plugin page
• The author’s page

Half way through this project I realized there was no way to overwrite what has been uploaded to the Media Library. I thought, “what happens to all the links I’ve created when the file get’s updated. There is no way the client will fix all of them correctly.” Well this plugin seems to be the answer for now. There seems to be something fishy about this one but it works in WP 2.6.

cForms

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page

If this plugin was an engine it would be a V8 hands down. I still need to read the manual on this one but what grabbed me is the ability for more than one custom form. I know it can do a bunch more but I’m happy with that for starters. If all you are needing is one contact form, I would find something a whole lot simpler but for a new WP user I was able to use this right out of the box.

Events Calendar

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page

I’m guessing this is a standard for those out there if they don’t want the kitchen sink of calendars. I’m digging it without having purchased PHP Calendar. In would have to go back to my searches though because I vaguely remember calendars more specific to gigs. Anyhow, this one works like a charm.

Lighter Menus

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page
• This plugin was based off of Admin Drop Down Menu

Okay I installed this and I asked myself why doesn’t this come with the WP install. It saves so many clicks it’s stupid smart. I thought I would install this first thing on all my WP endeavors but to my surprise it didn’t work on this particular site’s theme. When the smoke clears I’m going to take the time to see if the plugin it was based off of works better. Anyhow, either one should be a base install in my book.

pageMash

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page

I’m not sure why I settled on this particular version of a page management plugin but when it came time to get all the pages in order as the client saw fit, PageMash came to the rescue. I wasn’t about to go through all those pages and change the order. Actually I started to but then realized I had to be crazy. I think the research to find this, install it and use it took less time that it would have to perform this in the basic out of box WP.

ShareThis

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page

If you are reading this list I’m sure you have to know about this plugin. I messed with a couple of personal WP install and sharing plugins on those but finally settle in on ShareThis. I’m not one for the long line of icons but I wanted something more than just a link since that can be overlooked too easily. The only issue I have with this plugin is how it is translated on the summary category or tag pages. I just haven’t looked into a solution yet but I’m sure there is one because this is an amazing plugin that has committed developers.

Post Template

• Wordpress plugin page - didn’t find one
• Author’s plugin page

I was delighted when I found this outside of the WP extend site. I use this for my daily declarations on nycbone.com. It’s just awesome in the way it saves time. I’ve been using it for so long I don’t have much to say but USE IT. Amazing find in the beginners tool box.

Quotes Collection

• Wordpress plugin page
• Author’s plugin page

Okay at this point I realize there are many randomizers of sorts out there and I’ll blog an entry about what I’ve found but for the clients needs in displaying quotes this was a gem of a find.

The Miscellaneous Others

A couple more that were perhaps too easy to use or implement but was greatful I found them:

• WPCandy’s Login Logo Plugin
• Breadcrumb NavXT (in development so soon to be a new version)

Finally, if you are still there, I have messed with a bunch of media related plugins for photos, video and the like but I haven’t slimmed my research down on those yet.

If you have any suggestions or feedback related to this list I would be delighted to hear about it since I’m a total newbie to the Wordpress game.