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I was reading through a set of posts tonight by Brian Solis (www.briansolis.com) called “The Socialization of Your Personal Brand - Part I ,II, and III” and I think he captured the issue of why you need to think about your Personal Brand better in this post than any I have read as of yet.

“Your digital identity defines who you are and in this genre of Web-savvy content creators and purveyors, your online reputation does indeed precede you. The pictures and videos you upload, the bookmarks you share, the profile you define on each social network, those you befriend, the comments you share on blogs and other profiles, the posts your publish, the tweets you send on Twitter, basically everything you contribute to the Social Web shapes and contributes to your personal brand and how people will most likely perceive it. Hopefully in most cases, it can promote and showcase your expertise, and sometimes, what’s representative online can and will be used against you.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog posts and comments, basically every piece of content you generate collectively feed search results in Google, Yahoo, Ask, and all other search engines. All it takes is someone to “Google” aka search your name to begin the process of forming an opinion and perception based on the search results – usually without your knowledge and definitely without the opportunity to explain the results.

Whether you’re a student, currently employed, seeking a new job, a brand ambassador or the official community manager of a company’s social media strategy, your activities online contribute to and ultimately shape your identity and lay the foundation for your reputation.

It’s been said that Google is the new resume. Truth be told, any search engine, whether social or traditional, is the resume – it’s the Wikipedia entry for the rest of us. It’s no longer what we decide to curate onto a piece of paper or onto one traditional one-page digital resume. It really is moot in a world when anyone can practically piece together your story without the help of a document designed to shape and steer our perception.

“Seventy-seven percent of recruiters report using search engines to find background data on candidates. Of that number, 35 percent eliminated a candidate because of what they found online.”

– Kevin Donline, Star Tribune Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota”

Read the full post on his personal blog here – Part I, Part II, and Part III

Brian does a great job of identifying the problem, but what about the solution? From what I can tell, a lot of what is being recommended (on other sites) as personal branding is just noise.

Your Personal Brand should be authentic. It should therefore emerge from your search for your identity and meaning in life, and it is about getting very clear on what you want, fixing it in your mind, giving it all your positive energy, doing what you love and develop yourself continuously. Your Personal Brand should always reflect your true character, and should be built on your values, strengths, uniqueness, and genius. If you are branded in this organic, authentic and holistic way your Personal Brand will be strong, clear, complete, and valuable to others.
You will also create a life that is fulfilling and you will automatically attract the people and opportunities that are a perfect fit for you. If you are not branded in this unique (honest) way, if you don’t deliver according to your brand promise, and if you focus mainly on selling and promoting yourself, you will be perceived egocentric, selfish and a jerk, and your branding will be simply cosmetic. You will end up simply talking about yourself instead of talking about something that’s useful to others.

Any recommendations on other great blogs (Like Brians) or people I should be following on twitter?

-Andrew Wayman

Andrew Wayman

Over the past few months I have been thinking a lot about the concept of personal branding and what it means to my over all career. Each and every one of us is a brand and personal branding, by definition, is the process by which we market ourselves to others.

A Brand is a promise that links a product or a service to a consumer through a mental association that gets stirred up when the consumer interacts with various brand touchpoints. A brand is the perception of a product, service, experience or organization by the consumer, and can either be positive or negative.

As a brand, we can leverage the same strategies that make corporate brands appeal to others and we can build brand equity just like them. So with that in mind I have started a journey to treat my personal brand as if I were trying to build a company brand.

1. What do you want your brand to be?

“The Brand Called You signature story in Fast Company in 1997 argued that we should imagine ourselves as brands and manage our professional lives accordingly. That idea is every bit as relevant now as it was then. The difference, as author Tom Peters points out, is that in good times, the Brand Called You was a luxury. Now as companies continue to discard employees like used Kleenex, you have no choice but to actively market your personal brand.” /John A Byrne Editor Fast Company

As a brand, you need to discover what you are passionate about. Without that mental drive, you lose focus and become lethargic; therefore you stop your current activity and jump to the next. When branding yourself remember that you must create a strong and consistent brand (Don’t skimp just because it’s about you). Strong brands are clear about who they are and what they are not; which is why branding yourself can be an easy process - You already know who you are and what you are not.

The key to successfully branding yourself and doing it effectively is to first establish a personal brand identity. Once you have done that focus that message on who you are and what you stand for within your chosen field. Your final step is to get the word out through a variety of media channels that are viewed by the people most likely to be interested in your message.

As people begin to see your name and become aware of the benefit and knowledge that you offer, before you know it thousands of people will not only know who you are but they will begin to seek out your services and expertise. They will identify with your brand which is YOU.

Before you start a blog, a business or proceed in your career, you need to take time to find out more about yourself. You will waste a considerable amount of time second guessing yourself later if you don’t invest now.

2. Creating your brand

Now that you know what you want to do and have a niche in mind, it’s time to get it on paper and online. The following are tools that can help you get started:

1. Start by creating or updating your Resume/cover letter/references document: This is a great place to start, since social media has allowed us to reverse the recruiting process. Instead of just submitting our resume, it can become the basis of an online billboard that can be shared, distributed to hiring managers, searched and more.
2. LinkedIn profile: Your professional profile on this social network is extremely important because it takes into account everything a recruiter would desire from an applicant: cover letter, references list and resume.
3. Portfolio: Having a killer online portfolio is obviously invaluable to freelancers (show the quality of your work and get potential clients excited about what you can do for them), but it can also be the corner stone of a great personal brand. A great portfolio will sell you and your abilities–you just have to get people to see it. Here is a list of ” 8 Amazing Free Online Creative Portfolio Community Sites - Share and Inspire”.
4. Blog/website: You need to own yourname.com or a website that aligns with your name in some fashion. Depending on who you are, how much time you have on your hands and if you can accept criticism, you should either start a blog or stick with a static homepage. Those who blog will have a stronger asset than those who don’t because blogs rank higher in search engines and lend more to your expertise and interest areas over time.
5. Facebook profile: Over 160 million people have profiles, but almost none of them have branded themselves properly using this medium. Be sure to include your work experience and remember that those party pictures make up part of your “online footprint”.
6. Twitter profile: Your Twitter profile should have an avatar that is carved out of your Facebook picture and used in your LinkedIn profile. You need to use a distinct background, fill out your profile and include a link to either your blog or LinkedIn profile. Twitterbacks.com, developed by internet mogul Jim Kukral, has templates you can use to sculpt your very own Twitter background (Photoshop skills not included).
7. Email address: Don’t overlook your email address as not being a significant part of your toolkit. Most people use email over all social networks and when you connect with someone on a social network, you are notified via email, so get used to it. Your email address poses a great opportunity for your brand.
8. Business card 2.0: It doesn’t matter if you’re a college student, CEO, or a consultant, everyone should have their contact information readily available to share. You never know which chance opportunity will change your career, you need to be ready for it. You can create and share business card through your mobile phone using mydropcard.com or rmbrme.com, or the web, BusinessCard2.com is a great social network for creating and distributing your person business card.

Now What?

After you have put in all of this effort, it’s time to showcase it to the world, especially your target audience. Don’t be fooled by the myth that if you build it, they will come. Unless you’re the luckiest person on earth, you’ll have to actually communicate everything you’ve created to others. I recommend reaching out to several people in your network who you trust (if they are in your target audience that is even better) to review your “Brand” to see how well you are communicating your brand message. As I go through this process and learn more about my Brand and personal branding in general I will be cataloging and sharing everything I find. Feel free to add any recommendations in the comments.

What’s Your Experience?

Do you actively work on Brand image? What else have you found that it helps you to find new business or to build your own name recognition? -Andrew Wayman

Sources:

• Tom Peters - The Brand Called You
• Dan Schawbel - http://mashable.com/2009/02/05/personal-branding-101/
• Quintessential Careers - http://www.quintcareers.com/branding_self-marketing.html
• Steve Pavlina - http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/02/personal-branding/
• Chris Brogan - Chris Brogan’s free ebook on personal branding/

I have been trying to find the most useful social bookmarking tools for my blog, since I couldn’t find a good list out there I decided to post the list I found.

These are the ones I that are the most interesting…

• ShareThis – Lets your readers bookmarks posts and share with friends. Also provides analytics on their sharing habits.
• AddThis – Plugin for bookmarking your blog posts and submitting them to social news sites. It’s a simple, free widget blog owners can add to their site that shows a number of bookmarking options at the end of a blog post (there’s also a feed reader widget for easy RSS subscriptions). Readers can bookmark the post on Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Google Bookmarks, Bluedot and other services with a single click. As an example, we’ve added an AddThis button to the end of this post.
• Apture – Links specific words or phrases on a web page to multimedia content like images, video, maps, music and more from 20+ sources. Keep visitors on your site, instead of sending them away. Embed media with a single click without urls or codes.
• CommentLuv – Enables you to reward your blog readers by leaving a titled link to their last post automatically whenever they comment thus encouraging more comments by more people on more posts!
• Outbrain – Lets users rate blog posts and suggests similar content from your blog and elsewhere.
• Plista – Shows similar stories or products.
• Snap – Adds a “preview” function to the outgoing links on your blog.
• Zemanta – Automatically adds links, pictures, and tags to your blog posts.

• Buttons:
  • Add to Any – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks and RSS readers button generator.
  • Bookmarkz! – Social Bookmarks button generator.
  • Blogger Social Bookmarking Tool – Social Bookmarks button generator. [info]
  • iFeedReaders – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks or RSS readers. By twistermc and TopRankResults [example – RSS/Bookmark][Alternative link/link]
  • Feedpass – Multiple tool page, information about feeds, subscribe, email and bookmarks the feed. [info] [example]
  • Socialbookmarkit – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks [example], signing-in enables custumizing.
  • Socializer – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks. Javascript and PHP script also for blogs Blogware, Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, WordPress and Zen Cart(Shopping cart system). [info]
  • Socialize it – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks. HTML, Javascript, PHP, WordPress, Blogware. [example]
  • PopMarks – The one used here. One button for in-page popup to multiple Social Bookmarks. Customizable javascript code. Multi tool button (bookmark, subscribe, search…) for Blogger, WordPress and Typepad. by Greg Hill and 3spots.
  • Social Bookmark buttons revisited – For blogger beta, (Mag.nolia, Digg, del.icio.us, blinklist, furl, yahoo, simpy, spurl, reddit) shows destination when hovering the buttons.
  • Get socially bookmarked – For blogger beta, like the above with more.
  • Addtobookmarks – Buttons for Del.icio.us, Digg, Google, Yahoo, Furl, Simpy, Spurl, Blinklist. Javascript code for download, available in Four layouts.
  • Blogger Template snippet – by Dhiraj Gupta Blogger.com Blog buttons with styled tooltips.
  • wpBlogBMLet – Generates bookmark buttons for del.icio.us, digg, blinklist, furl, yahoo myweb2.0, simpy, shadows, spurl & buddymarks to copy past on a webpage.
  • Book-It-Up! – by Salpet-X3M. Copy past javascript, add a link to multi post to BlinkList, del.icio.us, Furl, Spurl and Yahoo Myweb.
  • Official Yahoo! Buttons – javascript code for Yahoo buttons, including email.
  • Referendum Voting – An Ajax voting system by Alex Bosworth
  • BumpBox Voting – Ajax voting system with simple implementation in to all main blog engines, WordPress included. [info]
  • Digg official Voting buttons – Requiers a submitted/dugg link. example
  • Digg Voting button generator – Requiers a submitted/dugg link. example
  • Reddit Voting buttons – Offical reddit voting buttons, has 3 different styles (copy/paste javascript)
  • Movabletype Vote Plugin
  • Dupral Vote up/down Package – A bit like reddits vote button. [example]
  • 100 Social Bookmarks ‘Add to’ footer links for blogs – Only the codes + info for blogger beta.
  • Social Bookmarking Buttons you can Hotlink or download of course.
  • blabb.com – This is the services official button like most have except that here anybody can submit without registering(!) [example]
• Tag generators:
  • Technorati delicious bookmarklet – Generates delicious links with re=”tag” for Technorati’s crawler.
  • ICE Tag Generator & Social Bookmark Link Creator 2.0 – For Technorati, Flickr, del.icio.us and Furl with target options.
  • Keotag tag generator & social bookmark links generator – Technorati, IceRocket and del.icio.us tag generator and BlinkList, del.icio.us, Netvouz, Yahoo, Furl, Shadows, RawSugar and Digg blog button generator.
  • Tagnorati – Injoke.org Technorati Tag Generator.
  • Fintan’s Technorati Tag Generator – Technorati Tag Generator.
  • AjaxTag – Technorati Tag Generator.
  • Technorati Del.icio.us Tag Generator – French Technorati and del.icio.us Tag Generator.
  • Technorati and Delicious Bookmarklet Tag generator bookmarklet using javascript alert.
  • Tag4Writer – Windows Live writer plugin for generating any tag.
• WordPress plug-ins
  • Wordpress template snippet – by Dhiraj Gupta, multi post for hosted blogs with nice tooltips.
  • Add Sexy Bookmarklet Buttons – by Seoblackhat, multi post, also has slashdot.
  • Sociable – by Push cx, multi post Wordpress Plugin
  • Social Bookmark Wordpress Plugin – by Thomas McMahon, multi post
  • Wordpress Socializer Plug-in – Like the above for 44 Social bookmarks services, blog button generator and a javascript and PHP script for blogs footers. [info]
  • Socialize it – One button for multipost to Social Bookmarks. HTML, Javascript, PHP, WordPress, Blogware. [example] [download]
  • Notable Wordpress Plugin – multi post
  • Add To WordPress Plugin – multi post
  • mog.rif.icio.us WordPress plugin that displays del.icio.us bookmarks organized by tag in an expand/coll

This week, the mobile computing world revolves around the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Among some of the highlights were the announcement of the second Android phone, as well as Yahoo’s new mobile initiative, and the announcement of a partnership between Nokia and Skype that will bring Skype’s VOIP client to Nokia’s high-end N97 phone.

Yahoo Mobile

Yahoo announced a new (but as of yet unavailable version) of its Yahoo Mobile service. This will be a major upgrade to Yahoo’s current mobile offerings and Yahoo Mobile will include all of Yahoo’s key services like Yahoo Mail, News, Calendar, and Messenger. On every phone except for the iPhone, the Yahoo Mobile package will include Opera Mini and Yahoo Maps.

Second Android Phone

The HTC Magic is the second Android phone after the G1. The first reviews have been quite positive, though the HTC Magic is clearly also entering a very crowded field. Besides some general updates to the Android operating system, this new will also allow for video recording - a feature that is still missing from Apple’s iPhone.

Skype on Nokia Phones

While consumers would clearly love to make VOIP calls from their cellphones, most device manufacturers have shied away this, as most network operators obviously want users to use their own network for calls. Nokia and Skype announced a partnership that will bring Skype to Nokia’s high-end N97 phone. Users will be able to make Skype calls when they are on a 3G or Wi-Fi network.

Bolt Browser

New browser for mobile phones: the Bolt Browser. The developers claim that their browser, thanks to using data compression, can load pages significantly faster than any competing mobile browser. Opera made a similar claim last week when it unveiled its Opera Turbo service.

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This is a list of over 50 designers, in no particular order, with a link to their Twitter profile.

cssglobe - Alen Grakalic of CSS Globe

chriscoyier - Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks

snookca - Jonathan Snook of Snook.ca

zeldman - Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog

vpieters - Veerle Pieters of Veerle’s Blog

mike9r - Mike Rundle of 9 Rules

randaclay - Randa Clay

cameronmoll - Cameron Moll of Authentic Jobs

andybudd - Andy Budd

simplebits - Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits

danbenjamin - Dan Benjamin of Hivelogic

mollydotcom - Molly Holzschlag of Molly.com

adactio - Jeremy Keith of Adactio

clagnut - Richard Rutter of Clagnut

clearleft - Clearleft

collylogic - Simon Collison of Colly.com

mezzoblue - Dave Shea of Mezzoblue

orderedlist - Steve Smith of Ordered List

ryancarson - Ryan Carson of Carsonified

jophillips - Jon Phillips of Spyre Studios

blogdesignblog - Vinh Le of Blog Design Blog

bartelme - Wolfgang Bartelme of Bartelme Design

tdhedengren - Thord Daniel Hedengren

justcreative - Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design

imjustcreative - Graham Smith of ImJustCreative.com

gracesmith - Grace Smith of PostScript5

feather - Derek Featherstone of Box of Chocolates

danrubin - Dan Rubin of Superfluous Banter

ilovetypography - I Love Typography

jcroft - Jeff Croft

tonychester - Tony Chester of OnWired

meyerweb - Eric Meyer

larissameek - Larissa Meek

stillframe - Brad Smith of The Big Noob

elliotjaystocks - Elliot Jay Stocks

shauninman - Shaun Inman

markboulton - Mark Boulton

rsg - Rob Goodlatte

saturdave / Dave Cooksey

iamluc - Luc Melgar of Octwelve

collis - Collis Ta’eed of Eden

abduzeedo - Fabio Sasso of Abduzeedo

wpcandy - WP Candy

bgardner - Brian Gardner

corymiller303 - Corey Miller of iThemes

youthedesigner - Gino Orlandi of You the Designer

adii - Adii

dustinbrewer - Dustin Brewer

tkadlec - Tim Kadlec

seanHodge - Sean Hodge of AiBurn

chrisspooner - Chris Spooner of Spoon Graphics

Woork - Antonio Lupetti of Woork

Please feel free to add a link to your profile in the comments. My profile is andrewwayman

These resources provide tips and tools to make it easier to track, control and manage your online reputation so you stay on top and in control of your personal and professional image.

Articles

These articles provide some useful and informative reading material for anyone wanting to know more about online reputation both for businesses and individuals.

1. Protect Your Online Reputation: This article from SEO Chat lays out some basics for monitoring and protecting your online reputation.
2. Ten Tactics That Could Save Your Online Reputation: The CEO of Trakur gives some great advice in this Mashable article on how your company can avoid reputation meltdown.
3. How to Manage Your Online Reputation: This article goes through a number of tools and how to use them to keep your reputation intact.
4. Social Networks Become Powerful Tool in Online Reputation Management: Find out how social networks are playing a bigger role than ever in online reputation from this short article.
5. How to Create Online Reputation Tools for Your Brand: Worried about the online component of your company’s brand? This article gives some advice on creating custom tools to monitor and control your online rep.
6. Online Reputation Handbook: You’ll find just about everything you ever wanted to know about online reputation in this helpful handbook.
7. Manage Your Online Reputation: Lifehacker gives some great tips and pointers, as well as links to tools that can help you get control of your reputation.
8. Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide: If you’ve never done much with online reputation before, or haven’t even considered it, check out this business-geared article.
9. How To Protect, Fix Your Online Reputation: From keeping problems from arising to fixing them when they do, this article is full of helpful advice.
10. Using Social Media to Manage Online Reputation: Find out how social media can be a help, not just a hindrance, to online reputation.
11. Basics of Online Reputation Management: Here you’ll learn the basics of getting your online reputation in order.
12. Managing Your Reputation Online: Technology Review provides this informative article that can help you understand and take action when it comes to your virtual reputation.
13. Online Reputation Management for Individuals: Online reputation isn’t just a concern for businesses, and this article explains how individuals can keep their name in good standing as well.

Websites and Blogs

These sites are dedicated to helping you keep an eye on and manage online reputation, providing the basics, suggestions for security, and much more.

1. Online Reputation: This site has articles on everything from brand reputation management to monitoring your reputation online.
2. The Reputation Blog: Business owners and leaders can take advantage of the advice offered by this blog.
3. Reputation Advisor: Here you’ll find advice and articles that provide essential information on keeping your business’ rep and your own looking good.
4. Reputation Management: From information on slander protection to posts about using search engines to monitor your reputation this blog is full of great info and insight.
5. CopyBrighter: Get some new insights into online reputation management and social media from this blog.
6. StepRepBlog: Find out just what social reputation is or get tips on connecting positively with customers from this site.
7. OnlineReputation.com: This site provides more in-depth explanations on how to use reputation tracking software, advice on building a solid online rep, and much more.

Personal Identity

These tools can help you manage your numerous online profiles, monitor your personal reputation and more.

1. ClaimID: Check out this program that uses OpenID to manage your personal identity over several sites, meaning you only have to remember the password for one, not numerous ones.
2. FindMeOn: Want to connect your identity over several sites? FindMeOn lets you do that while keeping your information private and secure.
3. FreeYourID: Make maintaining your online identity easy, with this tool that bases it directly on your name.
4. Garlik: If you’re worried that your identity may be more than marred and straight out stolen, give this tool a try. You’ll be able to search for mentions of you on the web that might involve identity theft.
5. myOpenID: Don’t worry about having multiple logins with this OpenID site.
6. SpyShakers: Try this tool to get access to any of your profile passwords remotely. It specializes in protecting your information from spyware.
7. TypeKey: TypeKey allows you to integrate your blog into your OpenID, allowing you to manage pretty much everything with one main profile.
8. Realmee: Here you can create a personal profile that will allow you to more easily control what others can see of you online.
9. LookUpPage: Want to control what people find when they search for you? This site helps out, by giving you a central page that comes up at the top when your name is searched for.
10. MonitorThis: Try out this site to monitor and track keywords over multiple search engines, giving you clues about who’s talking about you.

Professional Identity

Keep your business’ name out of the mud by protecting it with these helpful tools.

1. Trust-Index: Find out how well your business is trusted with this tool.
2. Google Alerts: With Google Alerts you can get email updates of the latest google results based on your name or other topic of your choosing.
3. BoardTracker: Whether you post on boards yourself or want to see if anyone else is talking about you, this tool makes it easy to filter to threads.
4. Vanno: Get an online reputation the democratic way, with this site that allows others to vote on the stories, videos and blogs about your company.
5. Serph: Use this search tool to look up your company and find out just what kind of buzz is going around the web about your company.
6. Searchles: This social search engine can help you keep up with the news out about your business.
7. Omgili: Search through the numerous forums out there to find out what people are saying about you using this helpful tool.
8. BoardReader: This tool is especially useful, allowing users to search through forums, videos, Twitter conversations, IMDB and more.
9. Joongel: Zoom in on the type of media you’d like to search with this online tool. Choose from videos, photos, shopping sites, and more.
10. Techrigy: This company makes it easier and simpler to monitor your business’ reputation online.
11. Keotag: Match blogs with tags that reflect talk about your business or related topics using this tool.
12. UpdatePatrol: This tool makes it easy to watch websites for updates and changes, which can sometimes be useful when you want to know what a particular site is saying about you.
13. BrandsEye: Hook up with this company to get stats and other information on where your business or blog reputation stands online.

Blog Tools

With the great proliferation of blogs out there, it’s worth your time to keep track of what’s being said about you on them. These tools make it easy and convenient to do just that.

1. Zuula: If you want to get posts just from blogs, try out this search engine. Users can also limit results to photos or videos.
2. SezWho: Follow who’s important in the blogging world and what they may be saying about you with this tool. Also useful to find out where your personal blog may stand.
3. Technorati: Whether you’re blogging personally or professionally, listing your blog with Technorati can be a big help in managing your online reputation. You’ll get updates whenever someone links to your blog so you can keep tabs on what people are saying about you or your business.
4. BackType: BackType is a service that lets you find, follow, and share comments from across the Web, allowing you to keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve said on blogs.
5. TweetBeep: TweetBeep will let you keep track of conversations on Twitter than mention you or your business or anything else you’d like to track.
6. co.mments: When you sign up for an account with this site you’ll be able to track comments and conversations that can influence your online reputation.
7. Blogpulse: Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the blogging world, especially in relation to your business using the tools offered on this site.
8. Trendpedia: For businesses, this can be a valuable tool to track when and what your business is getting attention for and how you’re doing compared to your competitors.
9. Twist: Twist allows users to compare mentions of several different topics and view recent tweets about each one, making it easy to track info about businesses.
10. monitter: This tool lets you do much the same as Twist, but you can monitor topics in real-time or by geographic region.
11. Buzzlogic: Track buzz in the blogging world with this site, and find out just who’s word matters when it comes to blogs.

Profile Management

These tools make it easier to keep track of your social networking profiles and your online reputation in turn.

1. Comwat: Use Comwat to organize your social networking profiles into one so that its easier for others to find and easier to control what they see.
2. onXiam: Here you can establish a central online identity, use this identity to link up all your other sites, and even promote this new online location as well.
3. OtherEgo: Show off everything that you’re involved in on the net through this centralized site.
4. Zoolit: Check out this landing page service that makes it super easy to manage all the social networks you’ve been using.
5. Venyo: From lengthy blogs to simple comments, this site allows you to access everything you’ve done online, building up a trustworthy reputation at the same time.
6. ProfileMat: Pull all your existing online profiles together into a “mat” and allow users to comment on this new singular profile instead.
7. SimplifID: This site allows users to organize the online world by creating one central place you can access your blogs, social networking sites and more, allowing you to categorize it by type of viewer.
8. SocialURL: Here you can connect all your online identities by linking your social networking profiles to one URL.
9. ProfileBuilder: Want to create a professional looking profile using material from your existing social networks? This site lets you do just that, keeping or blocking the elements you choose and giving you a super useful home page to visit.

Managing Your Reputation

These tools allow you to hunt down what’s being said about you and find out just what others think of you or your business.

1. Naymz: Give this site a try to get feedback from people you’ve worked with, customers and friends.
2. Rapleaf: Here you can look up your personal or professional reputation, rate other people and businesses and get your own ratings.
3. RepVine: Using a search engine is the easiest way for people who want to know about you to find out more. This site helps you to control what they find when they do this.
4. Keotag: Manage the blogsphere with this site that allows users to find tagged blog posts over several blog search engines.
5. TrustPl.us: Are you trustworthy? This site works by analyzing your or more like your business’ trust scores and giving you a ranking.
6. ReputationDefender: If you’ve found information about yourself online that’s less than true or extremely detrimental to you, try out the services of this company that helps you get things said about you online removed.
7. FriendFeed: Whether you want to keep up with what your friends are looking at or keep up with what’s being said about you personally, this site is a useful tool.
8. Social Media Fire Hose: This helpful tool tracks your name, brand or product across sites like Digg, FriendFeed and others that specialize in social media.
9. Trackur: If you’re willing to shell out for a little help monitoring your reputation, Trackur is a great choice with tools that will search through all kinds of sites from social media to video.
10. Radian6: This tool makes it easier to monitor social media, often to the benefit of businesses who can use the information to their advantage to build better reputations and products.
11. Cision: For a fee, this tool can help you monitor “100 million blogs, tens of thousands of online forums, and over 450 leading rich media sites.”
12. Web of Trust: Ensure your website is considered trusted by joining up with this site. After all, no one wants to be associated with a dangerous site– it’s just bad for business.

General Tools

If you haven’t already, bookmark these sites which can be a big help in maintaining your reputation positively online.

1. Digg: Check out Digg regularly to see if anyone has submitted stories about your or your business.
2. Reddit: Similar to Digg, this site will allow you to see how much interest there is you on the Web.
3. delicious: This social bookmarking site is a good place to see if your webpage or information about you or your business is being passed around by others.
4. Flickr: Think there may be some less-than-impressive photos of you out there? Trying searching this photo site to see if you come up.
5. Facebook: Facebook can be a great place to network, just make sure you keep your profile free from things you wouldn’t want spread about you.
6. MySpace: With millions of visitors, this popular social networking site can be a great place to get your and your business’ name out there.
7. LinkedIn: Here you can create a professional profile that will allow you to interact with others in your profession in a safe and positive manner.
8. Google: There’s no easier way to find out what your online reputation is than to do a simple Google search.
9. Rollyo: If you want a more customized option for searching, try out this great search engine that you can tailor to your online reputation finding needs.
10. Furl: Another social bookmarking site, here you can track who’s interested in your sites.
11. Twitter: Whether you want to communicate with others or track the buzz about you on the net, Twitter is an essential tool.
12. Wordpress: If you’re going to start a blog to be the face of you or your company, this site makes it easy to do so.

Enjoy!

-Andrew Wayman

You’re more apt to be able to fulfill this outlandish scenario if you’ve got the right tools, and now you can get them all in one place.

ReadWriteWeb highlights the Computer Repair Utility Kit, which is offered by TechNibble.com of Australia. The kit, which includes a whopping 57 different programs for fixing an errant PC, takes up 188 megabytes of space and easily fits on a decent-sized flash drive.

Now, the kit is not just 57 executable files thrown into a folder, requiring you to dig around and figure out which is which when you’re in crisis mode. Rather, it comes with an elegant and handy launcher program that categorizes the collection for easy access.

There are programs for managing files, gathering system information, making repairs, recovering files, networking, fighting malware, tweaking a system and more. Among the most useful:

• PC-Decrapifier, which removes the most common junkware packed onto new systems by brand-name PC makers.

• Malwarebytes, SmitfraudFix and Hijack This!, some of the best tools available for fighting spyware.

• TweakUI for Windows XP and VistaTweaker for Windows Vista, which lets you customize the Windows interface ad infinitum.

• Firefox, a portable version of the best browser available.

• Norton Removal Tool and McAfee Removal Tool, which completely uninstalls the components of these developers’ ubiquitous programs.

• CCleaner, for cleaning and fine-tuning a Windows system.

• There’s also a list of 11 different Web sites which can be used with these tools, or provide troubleshooting tips.

All the programs included here are fully working versions, and the complete toolkit is free.

Even if your PCs - and those of your friends and family - are running just fine now, you should go ahead and download this and drop it onto your favorite flash drive. You may not need it now, but you know you’ll need it eventually.

Enjoy!

-Andrew Wayman

Layout

• YAML Builder This is by far the best layout generator out there, definitely use this if you want to practice CSS.
• Templatr- Almost like YAML without the pretty colors.
• CSS Creator- This generator will create a fluid or fixed width floated column layout, with up to 3 columns and with header and footer. Values can be specified in either pixels, ems or percentages.
• Firdamatic- Firdamatic™ is an online tableless layout generator that allows you to create and customise layouts easily only by completing forms, making creating skins for your Firdamatic-based layout a breeze.
• The Generator Form- Allows the creation of easy to create websites right from the click of a button.
• Qrone CSS Design Editor- You can easily edit CSS with this design editor by Qrone.com
• CSS template generator- This HTML & CSS Style Sheet template generator outputs a full featured 3 column template. Resulting in an instant web page with a customized template that can be used to control the look n feel of an entire site.
• HTML PHP CSS Website Template Maker- This PHP - HTML - CSS template generator creates a two column layout with both a header and a footer. This PHP / CSS Style Sheet template generator outputs full featured tableless code i.e. tables are NOT used for the template with the column layout.
• CSS rounded box generator- Allows for the creation of rounded CSS boxes.
• CSS layout generator- This generator will create a fluid or fixed width column layout, with up to 3 columns and with header, footer and menu. Values can be specified in either pixels or percentages.
• Wordpress Theme Generator- This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge.
• Construct Your CSS - A visual layout editor based on Blueprint and jQuery. A video tutorial is available as well. You can use the keyboard to create layouts on the fly. By Christian Montoya.
• XHTML/CSS Markup Generator - Markup Generator is a simple tool created for XHTML and CSS coders who are tired of writing boring frame code as they just begin slicing work. Its main purpose is to speed up your work by generating (X)HTML markup and a CSS frame out of very intuitive, shortened syntax, so that you can jump directly to the styling of elements.
• Dynamic Layout Generator - This tool generates cross-browser multi-column liquid designs and enables you to visually change the width and colors. You can drag the sliders to choose the width you want in your layout and preview the layout online. The CSS code is generated automatically.
• iStylr - Online CSS Template Generator - An advanced WYSIWIG online CSS-editor with syntax highlighting, drag’n’drop-functionality, template import/export, image manager, stylsheet sharing option and a visual DOM tree. A registration is required (OpenID-login is supported).
• The Only CSS Layout You Need - A collection of basic cross-browser layouts.
• Faux-Column CSS Layouts - There are a total of 42 faux-column CSS layouts for downloading. All markup has been validated against a strict Doctype.
• Fixed-Width CSS Layouts - There are a total of 53 fixed-width CSS layouts for downloading. All markup has been validated against a strict Doctype.
• ___layouts - The foundational ___layouts file offers five preset page widths, the option to have a fixed width or a text “zoom”-style scaling effect and two core templates that give you the ability to nest subdivided regions of one to four columns. The framework supports fluid-width layouts and fixed-width layouts.
• 100 Free High-Quality XHTML/CSS Templates - In this post, we showcase 100 free high-quality templates. Hopefully, some of them will save you some time in your design and development. While they are generally free for personal or commercial use, always remember to check the license first for any restrictions or guidelines.

Optimization

• Online CSS Optimizer- This tool is used to optimise CSS code. Enter either a URL or Copy & Paste the stylesheet into the box, and click Go. More information on this tool can be found on the about page.
• CSS Compressor- Use this utility to compress your CSS to increase loading speed and save on bandwidth as well.
• CSS Analyzer- This service has been provided to allow you to check the validity of your CSS against the W3C’s validation service, along with a colour contrast test, and a test to ensure that relevant sizes are specified in relative units of measurement.
• Clean CSS CSS formater and optimizer based on CSS tidy.
• CSS Tidy- CSSTidy is an opensource CSS parser and optimiser. It is available as executeable file (available for Windows, Linux and OSX) which can be controlled per command line and as PHP script (both with almost the same functionality).
• Tabifier- The tabifier is a tool to properly indent computer code. The style it produces is a mix of my personal preferences for indentation plus what he could manage to make a program produce from dirty source.
• Lonnie Beast- CSS online formatter, easily format your CSS without any programs.

Navigation

• DOMTab- DOMtab is a JavaScript that turns a list of links connected to content sections into a tab interface. The script removes any “back to top” links in the section and automatically hides all but the first one when the page is loaded. You can use as many tabbed menus on the page as you want to.
• List-O-Matic- List-o-matic lets you choose the content, layout and presentation of your list-based navigation menus. Just give it a go - it’s child’s play!
• Tabs Generator- Creating tabs has never been this easy!
• CSS Navigation Generator- This web tool generates the necessary code you need to build up a valid and accessible text based imaged navigation bar with one sprite image, XHTML and CSS.
• CSS Menu Generator- CSS Menu Generator will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons.
• CSS Button Generator- Generate buttons and field text easily.
• CSS Play- Huge database of menus.
• List-O-Rama- List-O-Rama will allow you to generate nice CSS inline menus in seconds. Just walk through the wizard and insert the text of the links, choose the vertical or horizontal menu, pick the design and click on finish.
• Izzy Menu- Choose from dozens ready styles or create your own menu style. IzzyMenu, online menu generator is the best solution for amateurs and professionals!
• CSS Buttons- CSS Buttons will allow designers to quickly implement consistently looking, cross-browser, buttons regardless of the element used. CSS Buttons is a plug n’ play solution for Multilingual, CMS, Blogs, and similar web sites faced with dynamic content challenges.
• CSS Tab Designer- CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required!
• CSS Menu Generator- Over 31 designs of CSS menus ready to be picked.
• CSS Menu Generator- Easily generates menus for your use.
• Listamatic - Nested list options, there are plenty to choose from.

Font and Typography

• Type Chart- Type chart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
• EM Calculator- Em Calculator is a small JavaScript tool which helps making scalable and accessible CSS design.
• Vertical rhythm calculator - Want to convert pixel values to EM values, this calculator is for you!
• Type Tester - It has beautiful layout and a very friendly user interface.
• CSS Font and Text Style Wizard - Allows for the easy creation of css font options.
• Font Tester - Are you tired of having to refresh the page to view how your font will look like? Font tester to the rescue.
• Sky CSS Tool - Online CSS Authoring Tool. «Sky CSS» allows you to create CSS classes almost without using manuscript code.
• Clear CSS Generator - You can easily select colors from the palette to preview your future web-project design right now.
• Hyphenator - Hyphenator.js brings client-side hyphenation of HTML documents to every browser by inserting soft hyphens using hyphenation patterns and Frank M. Liang’s hyphenation algorithm commonly known from LaTeX and OpenOffice. The goal is to provide hyphenation in all browsers that support JavaScript and the soft hyphen for at least English, German and French. Here is the server-side script that does the hyphenation.
• CSS Type Set - CSS Type Set is a hands-on typography tool that allows designers and developers to interactively test and learn how to style their Web content.
• Typechart - Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare Web typography while retrieving the CSS.
• CSS-Typoset Matrix and code generator - A matrix table that presents font sizes and (symmetrical and asymmetrical) margins for various base font sizes — in pixel and em units. It also generates the source code on the fly. Created by Jan Quickels.
• Em Calculator - Em Calculator is a small JavaScript tool that helps you make scalable and accessible CSS design. It converts sizes in pixels to relative em units, which are based on a given text size.
• Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) - Facelift Image Replacement (or FLIR, pronounced “fleer”) is an image replacement script that dynamically generates image representations of text on your Web page in fonts that might otherwise not be visible to your visitors. Written by Cory Mawhorter. How To Use Any Font With FLIR: Tutorial.
• Vertical rhythm calculator - This tool converts pixel values to em values depending on the font size of the text. You can also set margins and paddings automatically, depending on the line height you’ve defined. Very useful.
• typeface.js - Instead of just creating images or using Flash to show your website’s graphic text in the font you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if your visitors had the font installed locally.

CSS Frameworks

• Elements- Elements is a down to earth CSS framework. It was built to help designers write CSS faster and more efficient.
• Sen CSS- SenCSS is a sensible standards CSS Framework. This means that SenCSS tries to supply standard styling for all repetitive parts of your CSS, allowing you to focus on the fun parts. In that sense, senCSS is a bit like a large CSS Reset.
• Eswat- Easy to edit grid based layouts.
• Clever CSS- CleverCSS is a small markup language for CSS inspired by Python that can be used to build a style sheet in a clean and structured way. In many ways it’s cleaner and more powerful than CSS2 is.
• Logic CSS- The Logic CSS framework is a collection of CSS files and a toolset designed to cut development times for web-standards compliant web layouts and templates.
• CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework - A cross-browser, modular framework that contains 14 customizable templates for designing drop-down-menus.
• BlueTripCSS Framework - A full featured and beautiful CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) framework which combined the best of Blueprint, Tripoli (hence the name), Hartija’s print stylesheet, 960.gs’s simplicity, and Elements’ icons, and has now found a life of its own. The framework contains 24-column grid, sensible typography styles, clean form styles, a print styleshet, an empty starter stylesheet, sexy buttons and status message styles.
• Hartija - CSS Print Framework - Hartija is a CSS print framework that attempts to unite the best CSS printing practices into one single CSS file.
• AM framework - This framework contains six basic templates: for fixed, fluid, one-column, two-column and three-column layouts, as well as a jQuery template.
• Typogridphy - Typogridphy is a CSS framework constructed to allow Web designers and front-end developers to quickly code typograhically pleasing grid layouts.
• formy-css-framework - A CSS Framework for better form management.
• emastic - Emastic is a CSS Framework. Its continuing mission: “to explore a strange new world, to seek out new life and new Web spaces, to boldly go where no CSS framework has gone before.”

CSS Firefox Extensions

• CSS Validator- Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page.
• Firebug- Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page…
• Grid Fox- GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it.
• FireScope- FireScope is a Firefox add-on that integrates with Firebug, to extend it with reference material for HTML and CSS.
• CSS Viewer- I love this tool! If you ever go into a website and want to see its CSS properties this tool will allow you to do just that.
• CSS Mate- Inline CSS Editing Evolved. Originally a port of the fantastic EditCSS tool that he had been using for many months. He gutted it, made each stylesheet load into a seperate tab.
• Dust-Me Selectors - A Firefox extension (for v1.5 or later) that finds unused CSS selectors. It extracts all of the selectors from all of the style sheets on the page you’re viewing, then analyzes that page to see which of those selectors are not used. The data is then stored so that when testing subsequent pages, selectors can be crossed off the list as they’re encountered.
• Aardvark Firefox Extension - With Aardvark, you can: clean up unwanted banners and surrounding “fluff,” especially prior to printing a page; see how a page is created, block by block; and view the source code of one or more elements.
• CSSViewer - A CSS property viewer that displays all information about a design element.
• Dummy Lipsum - This Firefox extension dynamically fills a selected field with Lorem ipsum text; the function is called via the context menu.
• Firefox: Test- und Entwicklungstools für Webentwickler | Dr. Web Magazin
• GridFox - GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize and allows you to create the exact grid you based your layout on.
• 20 Firefox Add-Ons To Enhance Your Web-Development - Yet another overview of useful Firefox add-ons that can help developers create websites more efficiently. Among them are Codetch, Pixel Perfect, Link Checker and ColorZilla.

CSS Online Tools

• PSD2CSS Online - A free online service that generates Web pages from Photoshop designs. By following the guidelines and naming conventions, you can precisely choose how the transformation from PSD to (X)HTML and CSS is done.
• Conditional-CSS - Conditional-CSS allows you to write maintainable CSS with conditional logic to target specific CSS statements for both individual browsers and groups of browsers.
• MoreCSS - MoreCSS is a design-oriented JavaScript library that allows you to write code for applying automatic hyphenation and creating pop-ups, tool tips, tab menus, zebra tables, advanced list styling and cross-browser opacity style. But the really special thing is that you can do these things as you would with regular CSS.
• px to em - This tool is what its developers call “px to em conversion made simple”. Type a base font size in pixels, and the tool will produce a complete pixel to em conversion table, making elastic Web design much easier to produce.
• CSS Frame Generator - This tool returns corresponding CSS in a line-by-line way indented with spaces to reflect XHTML structure - each selector and all of its properties and values in one line. This may be a bit strange for you at the beginning, but if you get used to it you’ll find it much better.
• CSS Redundancy Checker - You can use this tool to find CSS selectors that aren’t used by any of your HTML files and that may be redundant.
• CleverCSS - CleverCSS is a small markup language for CSS, and inspired by Python, that can be used to build a style sheet in a clean and structured way. In many ways, it’s cleaner and more powerful than CSS2. You can also work with variables.
• WordOff - WordOff applies some rules to strip the cruft that is pasted into WYSIWYG editors from Word. For example, attributes are removed for all elements except <a>, <span> and <div>, empty elements are removed and consecutive line breaks are reduced to two. It also contains an API.
• Postable - “I absolutely hate having to switch all the ‘< ‘ and ‘>’ signs in my code to ‘<’ and ‘>,’ respectively. I also hate having to write “&” any time I want to include an ampersand. It makes including code snippets on my blog and whatnot extremely annoying, and today I finally got fed up.” This handy tool is a little app that will do all that for you. Created by Elliot Swan.
• Kotatsu - Kotatsu is a simple HTML table generator. The tool lets you attach classes to cells in the same column easily.
• htmldevelopertools - This tool allows you to update your CSS files on the server in a browser window. Currently works only under IIS + .NET 3.5. An interesting idea. Could someone create a similar script for Apache? Let us know, and we’ll support your both financially and with the broad coverage of our magazine.
• Deploy - Deploy is a free open-source Web application that allows you to choose the name of a project, the Doctype, whether you want a CSS reset or jQuery integration, and it creates a zipped, ready-to-use package with all specified files and folders. The tool has been optimized for Fluid, the Mac application that creates SSBs (site-specific browsers) for websites.
• CSS Evolve - CSSEvolve lets you play with many properties of a website, including the website’s color scheme, fonts, borders and more. CSSEvolve works through a process of simulated evolution in which you select website features that you like and refine them through multiple generations.”It uses a traditional blind watchmaker, user-driven genetic algorithm to drive CSS changes on a website of the user’s choosing. Basically, a set of mutated CSS variants are produced, the user selects changes that he or she likes, the algorithm randomly combines those changes through crossover and mutation and the process continues.” [ via ]
• Lorem 2 - This tool provides you with an “all around better Lorem experience.” It contains short paragraphs, long paragraphs, short list items and long list items to use in your wireframes.
• SelectORacle - A small script that explains CSS selectors in plain English or Spanish. Particularly useful for CSS3 selectors.
• JS Bin - A Web app specifically designed to help JavaScript and CSS folk test snippets of code in a particular context and debug the code collaboratively. It allows you to edit and test JavaScript and HTML (reloading the URL also maintains the state of your code: new tabs don’t). Once you’re happy, you can save and send the URL to a peer for review or help. They can then make further changes, saving anew if required. Alternative: CodePaste or EtherPad.
• CSS Text Wrapper - The CSS Text Wrapper allows you to easily make HTML text wrap in shapes other than just a rectangle. You can make text wrap around curves, zig-zags, or whatever you want.
• Writing Tests Against CSS - CSS is hard to test automatically. Do font sizes meet expectations? Does the layout width correspond to the initial mockup? This tool helps you spot changes in unexpected areas of a website’s layout and design. It can also extract rendered DOM values, such as text size, from a given Web page and compare them against expected values. This could be useful for both regression testing and assertion-based, test-driven development. Written in Python by Gareth Rushgrove.
• CSS Sprite Generator - With this tool, you can upload all of your images (you have to place them in a .zip file first) and it will combine the uploaded images into a single sprite and generate the CSS for you.
• Sky CSS Tool - An online CSS authoring tool, Sky CSS allows you to create CSS classes almost without using handwritten code. A JavaScript-compatible browser is needed for proper functioning.
• CSS Tidy Online - An online version of CSS Tidy, a tool that allows you to keep your code clean by compressing the code.
• Web-Based Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS - A huge compilation of some of the best free Web-based CSS optimizers/compressors, code formatters and validation services. By Jacob Gube.
• Grid Designer 2.4 - This tool enables you to create a grid by specifying the number of columns and the widths of the columns, gutters and margins. You can also specify typography in the same tool and export the final CSS and (X)HTML markup. You can also bookmark your grid and typography settings and create designs with spanning columns. Created by Rasmus Schultz.
• Yahoo’s Secret Text-Sprite Generator - Basically this is a URL you can hit that creates a perfect sprite-ready PNG graphic of text you add to the URL.
• Replace CSS Colors - Editor - This tool enables you to change the entire color scheme of your website without going through the CSS code. You choose your local CSS file, replace colors and then download the new CSS file.
• The Box Office - The Box Office lets you wrap, float or contour text around free-form images using CSS for (X)HTML pages.
• MinifyMe - A small AIR application that can compress multiple CSS and JavaScript files into one and runs on your desktop.
• cssdoc - CSSDOC is a convention for commenting in CSS to help individuals and teams to improve writing, coding, styling and managing CSS files. It is an adoption of the well known JavaDoc/DocBlock-based way of commenting in source code by putting style, DocBlocks and tags together.
• CSS Menu Generator - This tool generates vertical, horizontal and drop-down menus online. Various color schemes are available, and you can also customize the menus online.
• sheetUp - DOM Stylesheet Library - Simplify the tedious task of manipulating style sheets contained in document.styleSheets. You can use the sheetup bookmarklet to integrate a built-in CSS/HTML-editor in your browser.
• CSS SuperScrub - This tool claims to significantly reduce the size and complexity of your CSS by programmatically stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls and intelligently grouping the remaining element names.
• DrawAble Markup Language - Drawter Beta 2 gives you the possibility of literally drawing your website’s code. It runs on every single Web browser, which makes it really useful and helpful. Each tag is presented as a layer you have drawn.

Handy Kits For Designing With CSS

• Regex Patterns for Single Line CSS - If you are formatting your CSS style sheets single-line, you may find Dan Rubin’s Textmate macro useful and helpful. “This macro retains a single blank line where your original contained two or more blank lines (helpful if you group your rules) and adds white space that matches my standard formatting preferences (which I find makes it easier to scan quickly).” And if you don’t use Textmate, you can use a regular expression instead; it is also provided in the post.
• 21 Excellent Dreamweaver Extensions for CSS Productivity and Standards - An extensive overview of various Dreamweaver extensions, such as CSS Sculptor, CSS Menu Writer, Link Fader, CSS Layouts, Format Table, Style Switcher, etc.
• Graph Paper - This graph paper is made for visual designers, interactive designers and information architects. You’ll find styles for wireframing user interfaces, storyboarding interaction and plotting values on a two-by-two grid. Plus, you’ll get a basic grid for drafting sitemaps or anything else that might come up.
• Starter Kit For Developers (PSD) - This starter kit is a free Photoshop template that includes forms, grids, ad placeholders, dummy copy and other design elements (13 MB).
• CSSHttpRequest - CSSHttpRequest (CHR) is a method for cross-domain AJAX, using CSS for transport. Similar to JavaScript, this works because CSS is not subject to the same-origin policy that affects XMLHttpRequest. Like JSONP, CSSHttpRequest is limited to making GET requests. Unlike JSONP, untrusted third-party JavaScript cannot execute in the context of the calling page.

In-Browser CSS Tools

• Collection of Web Developer Tools, by Browser - Sometimes it is not easy to keep track which tools are at a developer’s disposal (and which ones are actually useful). This article lists the best tools available and quickly describes how to activate, install and use them.

Coding and Programming With CSS

• CSS Extra Coda Plug-in - CSS Extra is a plug-in for Coda that gives you access to some dynamic CSS. Although it is not truly dynamic in that it will not force Coda to process the variables and settings, it gives you the commands to process the CSS instead. What this means is that you can have constants, bases and a layout module within your CSS.
• Edit in Place with JavaScript and CSS - This tool offers you more intuitive editing (in-place editing) of your documents and style sheets. The idea: in a selected area, the user can enter the markup or change the current value directly.
• Simple CSS - Simple CSS is a free CSS editor that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. It allows you to create CSS from scratch and modify existing sheets, using a familiar point-and-click interface. Freeware.
• AWK - AWK is a very powerful programming language that you can use on the command line for advanced text processing.
• cssutils - A Python package for parsing and building CSS.
• RESTful CSS - A new method for organizing CSS that better maps on to the way that popular Web application frameworks are built. The examples are based on Ruby on Rails, but the concepts should be easily transferrable to other MVC frameworks. By Steve Heffernan.

CSS Bookmarklets

• Design Bookmarklet - Design is a suite of Web design and development tools that can be used on any Web page. Encompassing utilities for grid layout, measurement (rule) and alignment (unit, crosshair), Design is a powerful and useful JavaScript bookmarklet.
• ReCSS: Reload your CSS - This little bookmarklet makes refreshing your CSS a breeze. It comes in quite handy when you’re developing dynamic applications. Tested in IE and Firefox.
• XRAY - A bookmarklet for Internet Explorer 6+ and Webkit- and Mozilla-based browsers (including Safari, Firefox, Camino and Mozilla). You can use it to see the box model of any element on any Web page.
• MRI - MRI is a bookmarklet for Internet Explorer 6+ and Webkit- and Mozilla-based browsers (including Safari, Firefox, Camino and Mozilla). You can use it to debug and test selectors.
• CSSFly - A tool for editing websites easily, directly and in real-time in your browser.
• 15 Must-Have Bookmarklets For Web Designers And Developers - An extensive list of 15 handy Web designer and developer bookmarklets. The whole pack can be downloaded and imported into Firefox.

Miscellaneous

• CSSHttpRequest - CSSHttpRequest is cross-domain AJAX using CSS.
• Grid Designer - Creates grids without having to waste time creating them manually.
• CSS Text Wrapper - Ever thought about making shapes with text? Then this tool is right for you.
• Collaborative Javascript Debugging - Test live JavaScript with HTML and CSS context
• Fixed Width CSS Layouts - Stop wasting time creating your own layouts, instead use one of these.

Enjoy

-Andrew Wayman

UC Berkeley researchers have outlined their view of cloud computing, which they say has great opportunity to exploit unprecedented IT resources if vendors can overcome a litany of obstacles.

The 11 researchers’ cloud computing forecast is documented in a paper called “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing.” The research group works in the Reliable Adaptive Distributed Systems Laboratory (RAD Lab), a 3-year-old outfit funded by companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM and Sun.

“We argue that the construction and operation of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer datacenters at low-cost locations was the key necessary enabler of Cloud Computing,” they write.

But to take full advantage of the opportunity, vendors need to rethink the way they build their products. Application developers need to ensure their offerings can not only scale up, but scale down quickly to satisfy the needs of customers who resort to cloud computing to meet short-term needs. Developers of applications and infrastructure software also need pay-as-you-go licensing models that conform to the reality of cloud computing. Makers of infrastructure software must also craft products designed to run on virtual machines, a foundation technology in large-scale data centers used by cloud computing suppliers.

On the hardware side, vendors need to think big, the researchers say. Vendors need to be thinking along the idea of building container-scale products, that is, those the size of a dozen or more racks. Energy efficiency and flash memory are among other important considerations for hardware makers.

The paper outlines 10 obstacles to cloud computing:

1. Availability of service
2. Data lock-in
3. Data confidentiality and auditability
4. Data transfer bottlenecks
5. Performance unpredictability
6. Scalable storage
7. Bugs in large distributed systems
8. Scaling quickly
9. Reputation fate sharing
10. Software licensing

The Berkeley team also ticks off a bunch of suggested ways to address these obstacles. For example, it suggests that customers go with multiple cloud providers to ensure service availability and calls on the providers to ensure availability by exploiting their massive amounts of bandwidth to thwart DDoS attacks. The researchers call on companies in the cloud computing market to help customers avoid vendor lock-in by getting together on a standard set of APIs that application companies can build to. The researchers argue for use of encryption to protect data as part of a broad security initiative.

The paper also serves to define different types of cloud computing providers, ranging from bare-bones offerings such as Amazon EC2 at one end of the spectrum to more application-specific services such as Google AppEngine.

Despite the many obstacles cloud providers have in front of them, the Berkeley team clearly sees cloud computing as a big opportunity — not necessarily a low-margin business.

-Andrew Wayman

cloud computing

I can remember my life before my introduction to the Internet, back when I regularly used a phone book for something other than a doorstop? In the future, we may think back about the days before cloud computing in the same way.Chances are, you use cloud computing already. You can access messages on your Gmail account at any time from any computer connected to the internet. But if someone were to take off with your personal laptop, they would never find those emails on your hard drive–because Google stores them for you. And even if you lose all of the pictures and videos stored on your computer, the ones you loaded onto Flickr and YouTube will still be there the next time you sign on.

Cloud computing allows users to store data and applications on a large, centralized supercomputer or network, like the one Google operates. In an ideal cloud-computing world, all you would need to access any program or data you wanted would be laptop with a processor, keyboard, and monitor–no local hard drive necessary. You could load photos from your camera straight onto the Web and use a photo-editing application stored on the cloud to fix the red-eye.

Universities and national laboratories such as Argonne and Fermilab have been some of the first institutions to take advantage of shared data storage and computing power through organizations like the Open Science Grid. The press and the blogosphere have debated the merits of grid computing versus cloud computing, but the two are in many ways complementary, we reported in symmetry breaking last year.

“Cloud computing is about to hit the mainstream in a major way”, according to Michael Nelson (a professor at Georgetown university and former science adviser to Al Gore. Nelson recently advised President Barack Obama’s campaign team on innovative uses of IT).

“We are entering the next phase of computing,” Nelson said in a presentation at the AAAS conference in Chicago. “The next two or three years will define the next generation of the Internet.”

Nelson predicted that 100 billion devices will connect directly to the Web within five years. Data will move from iPhones, video cameras and even dog collars outfitted with GPS trackers straight to the Internet. Within a decade, 80 percent of computing will take place in a cloud, he said.

The new computing model will raise a slew of issues involving privacy, security, copyright, liability, and competition, Nelson said. But then again, you probably never thought you would be able to use the Web to transfer money from your savings account to checking or to watch the latest episode of “LOST.”

-Andrew Wayman