Here’s a rundown on the software I found and the good and bad bits.

Things

First off, there are some excellent programs out there for OSX. Things is a great example of this. It works well and looks great, but only on a Mac and an iPhone. This isn’t a problem for some people but since I develop stuff for Windows Smartphones I also need a Windows computer for work and Things won’t work on that, there also isn’t an Android app yet, maybe sometime in the future!

At $49.95 Things is also quite expensive, although if it would work on Windows and on my phone, I’m sure I’d pay it. So if you only work on a Mac and use an iPhone, Things is probably the best it’s going to get!

Remember The Milk

Now I move on to web based applications. Remember The Milk is pretty awesome as well. The main online program is free, it’s browser based and does everything you need a GTD application to do. I don’t think it’s quite as pretty as a desktop app like Things, but that’s just my opinion! Because it’s browser based, it will work on Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, or whatever.

Their pro plan costs $25 a year which is very cheap and this allows you to get the Android or iPhone app. They also have an api which has allowed other developers to create applications to work with Remember The Milk, one of these applications that I tried out was Astrid. This means you can actually use the service on your phone without having to pay to upgrade to pro, although if you like Remember The Milk and you use it a lot, it’s worth going pro just to show your appreciation.

The only downside I could find for Remember The Milk was the lack of a standalone desktop application I could use. I didn’t want to have my to do list open in my browser all of the time. There are a few sort of hacks you can use to see your list somewhere other than your browser but nothing that felt natural to me.

Google Tasks

Google have their own GTD software which is also web based. It integrates with GMail, Google Calendar and iGoogle which is pretty good and there is also a mobile version which isn’t a mobile app, just a web page optimised for your phone.

Again, the lack of a desktop app and the fact that there wasn’t an actual mobile app put me off using this.

Doit.im

I started to think that maybe I was asking for too much from the GTD software and started to use Remember The Milk when I came across doit.im which basically does everything I need it to. There is an Adobe Air app which means it can run on my Windows PC and my Mac just like I wanted, there is also an iPhone and an Android app. All of the applications are synced to the web so all of my computers are up to date and everything works nicely and looks great!

I think the software is quite new so there are a few bug here and there but nothing major. The main one was when I installed it on my Mac it crashed the first few times I tried to run it which I think was something to do with their SSL certificate but it’s working now and hopefully they’ll get a better certificate soon so nobody else gets that problem.

Not only does Doit.im do everything I want it to, it’s also totally free and a according to their website it always will be.

Other GDT software to check out

This is a list of GTD software I haven’t had a chance to test myself.

Task.fm – Web based software with SMS reminders and email creation of tasks. They offer a free plan and a pro one for $3.99 per month.

Nozbe – Another web based one with an iPhone app.

TaskMerlin – Windows based GTD software

Disclaimer

I should point out here that I have nothing to do with any of the companies that make the applications I’ve written about. I’m just giving my opinions on the software.

Freelance Radio

Like all of the other Envato sites, Freelance Switch is pretty awesome and the official Freelance Switch podcast, Freelance Radio doesn’t let down either. They have talked about everything from working on the road to social networking.

I’ve only just started listening to this podcast but I liked it so much, I downloaded every single episode from iTunes and I’m listening to them in order.

Freelance Advisor

This is another podcast based around freelancing. I do like this podcast a lot as it’s one of the only UK based ones I have found which means a lot of the stuff in terms of accountancy etc is more relevant to me.

The podcast is founded by the same people that make the Crunch accounting system, however I haven’t found it to be too promotional.

Tweak

Tweak is a podcast aimed at creative entrepreneurs that is created by Josh Iwata. In his podcast he goes through important things such as choosing a pricing level, how to manage a project and how his design phase works.

Anyway, on with the post. A while ago I wrote a guide on installing multiple versions of IE on your computer for testing purposes.

Since then there have been a few changes, first off IE8 has been released and a few more programs have been developed. I’m going to go through a few options you have when testing your site.

Spoon Browser Sandbox

The first program I want to mention is the Spoon browser sandbox. For me, this is a fantastic idea. The first time you visit the site it will ask you to install a Firefox addon (if you’re running FireFox, I’m not sure what it does for other browsers). Then it will show you a fantastic list of browsers (IE 6,7,8; FireFox 2,3,3.5; Opera 9,10; Safari 3,4 and Chrome) all you do is click on the thumbnail and it launches the browser straight from the web.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this to work with IE8 when I tried (the browser launched and then just closed again) but it did work with Safari so I’m guessing it’s either a bug with the IE8 installer on their site or something up with my computer so I’d love to hear how it works for you guys.

IE Tester

IE Tester is a program designed just to test sites in different versions of IE. It lets you look at your site in IE 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 which is really more than enough. The program is a little buggy and does close every now and again but it is free and I’m sure they’re looking at fixing these little bugs. I would advise you download the DebugBar aswell as you need this to view the source of the page you’re looking at.

Browser Shots

This site takes the idea of cross browser testing from a slightly different angle. Instead of installing a program on your computer it takes your web URL and opens it in a number of different browsers on a number of different operating systems (you can select which ones when you add your site).

The downsides of this site are that it isn’t instant and you only get to see a screenshot rather than the actual page. On the other hand, you get to see your site on different operating systems so if you’re on a Windows PC, you could check your site out in Safari on OSX which really is invaluable if you don’t have access to multiple operating systems.

Litmus

So far all of the options I’ve looked at have been free so to balance the whole thing out I’m going to look at a paid option (they do have a free package aswell). Litmus is an online application that lets you test how your application or website looks in a load of different browsers in either OSX or Windows. Similar to Browser Shots, Litmus will show you a screenshot of your site in the different browsers.

Litmus really does have some awesome features that makes paying for the app worth it if you’re serious about your application or if you’re a designer/developer. First of all, you can get screenshots of sites that are password protected, just enter a username and password the application can use and it will do the rest. Litmus will also generate a nice compatibility report that you can use to explain your findings to your boss, client or whoever!

Finally Litmus will also let you test how your emails will look in different email clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and some more. It also does web based clients like GMail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Live Mail/Hotmail and a few others.

Conclusion

Hopefully now you will have a good idea of different ways to test your site in different browsers and even on different operating systems.

I’d love to hear how you’re getting on with the software I mentioned above or if you have any other suggestions!

You can watch the video below and read more information on it on the official google blog.

Just print it off, stick it on a wall near your desk and I’m sure it will help.

Download the WordPress cheat sheet here.

There are literally thousands of different statistics programs out there and they all have different features so finding the right one for your site and your taste is essential. I’m going to do a quick run through of the web statistics programs I like.

Google Analytics

The chances are, if you’ve only heard of one of these programs, it will be this one. Google Analytics is actually the program I use to track my website statistics at the minute. It does offer a lot of features such as ROI (return on investment) calculation which may scare new users a bit.

It produces some nice graphs and maps and is overall a very detailed program.

Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky offers a range of plans that go from free (3000 page views per day) to $49.99 a month (200,000 page views a day). This program has a very large feature list, they’ve even compared it to some other web stats programs here.

Mint

Mint charges a flat $30 per site and unlike the other programs you host it on your own server. I’ve never used Mint on my own sites, but I know a few people who do and they like it.

Again, Mint has a ton of features.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a little different from other stats programs. It shows you your stats in some pretty funky ways such as heat maps and confetti so you can see where your users click most. Crazy Egg also has a range of plans that go from $9 a month to $99 a month. Unfortuatley they don’t have a free plan but they do offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

Reinvigorate

Currently Reinvigorate is an invite only stats program. But you can reguister to get an invite on their site. Reinvigorate offers real time statistics, heatmaps and a load of other features. They also offer a prgram you can install on your computer that will give you up to date statistics for your sites.

Another feature of spotify is that you can share your playlists with other people using a simple link. Over at the Carsonified Blog, Mike Kus wrote a post with a link to one of the playlists he likes to listen to.

There are loads of other sites that let you share playlists you have created and where you can find playlists created by other people so I thought I’d mention a few!

Spotify Playlists

Share My Playlists

Spotify List

Spotify Friends

Your Spotify

Carling Spotify Playlists

Hodgers Playlists

Your Spotify Playlists

If you have any Spotify playlists that you’d like to share I’d love to see them!

In this quick guide, I’ll go through the basics of using CSS to tile background images.

Before I go into tiling I’ll demonstrate the way I use to define a background image and then explain it.

#mypage{
	background: #fff url(background.gif);}

This is the very simplest it gets. The ‘#fff’ tells the browser to make the background of the div white and the ‘url(image.jpg)’ tells it to put that image over the black. The image will be tiled vertically and horizontally. Using this CSS is exactly the same as using:

#mypage{
	background-color: #fff;
	background-image: url(background.gif);}

Now, maybe we don’t want the image to tile vertically and horizontally. We might have a webpage that has a gradient background that fades into a solid colour. CSS makes this simple to do.

In this example I want the background to fade from grey (#ccc) to white. First of all I save my image in photoshop. It’s simply a 1px wide gif image. To tile the image horizontally I would use the CSS:

#mypage{
	background: #fff url(background.gif) repeat-x;}

If you want to you could tile the image vertically by using:

#mypage{
	background: #fff url(background.gif) repeat-y;}

Again, this is shorthand for using the code:

#mypage{
	background-color: #000;
	background-image: url(image.jpg);
	background-repeat: repeat-x;}

Finally, you can tell the browser not to repeat the background image at all.

#mypage{
	background: #fff url(background.gif) no-repeat;}

Hopefully this quick article will have given you a quick demonstration on how to tile background images using CSS. I’ll hopefully be writing another quick guide on using fixed background images.

Now people are taking this method further, rather than just using a simple theme as a starting point for creating a new template, there are dedicated ‘framework’ themes which only contain the code necessary for the theme to work. This way you can start with the framework and build your theme around it. Obviously you’re going to be relying a lot on the framework so selecting the best one will be important. I’m going to go through a few WordPress frameworks in this post.

Whiteboard

WPFramework

Thematic

Carrington

Themehybrid

Buffet

WordPress Starter Theme

Ashford

Sandbox

OnePress

Naked WordPress

Starkers

You might also want to have a look at what wordpress.org says about frameworks.

I’d be interested to hear which frameworks are popular and the reasons people like and dislike certain frameworks so that in the future I could do a guide on creating a theme with the most popular framework.