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After reading both WebProNews and TechCrunch on their articles about the new Twitter homepage, I am still left with questions. Jeremy Muncy does a great job breaking down the new Twitter homepage in his article Breaking Down Twitter’s New Homepage for those needing a little more explanation.

I could care less that the front page looks a bit too trendy in design. The problem is that as Jeremy pointed out, Twitter users would not be able to use this feature. For me, being a Twitter addict, I would love to have access to this feature other than entering it in the search in the sidebar of my profile. Right now, the Twitter search page is very plain and boring. What, are current users? – chopped liver?

There are no links to the main search page for Twitter users to directly visit. I do think that the real-time search function is an awesome attribute of Twitter and I think it could play big in helping them finally monetize their product. However, I revisit this one point again that I have in the past… when is Twitter going to tighten up on watching trending topics and specify what is spam. If people are going to protest, at least pass around a petition link instead of repeatedly throw up on the stream a pointless message. These type of trending topics could hurt Twitter when people visit the page. As anyone knows, your first 30 seconds on a site will leave a huge impression. If people are trending a topic that either seems immature, or pointless, they will turn away. That is the impression I have already gotten in responses from bloggers and my own visitors.

What do you think of this? What would you suggest to Twitter?

I could not pass up this opportunity to share this contest. It is the Yamaha neoHD Sweepstakes . In fact, for me it is very relevant as I have several remote controls and a lot of times I am looking around for the remote. On top of that, I have a television in my living, my bedroom, and my son’s room. So, that is a lot of remotes to keep track of. Just for my living room, I have my stereo, my DVD/VCR player, and of course the television, and then the surround sound system. It is quite annoying and no matter how many times I vow to stick every remote in a certain place, it seems to never work out that way.

What is a neoHD? Well, it is an all-in-one remote that can control up to 6 AV components including Blu-Ray and some game systems. The controller boasts to be advanced and give complete control but made for simplicity.

It is simple to apply to for the contest to win a Yamaha neoHD. You can go to the Izea Blog ( blog.izea.com ) and follow their instructions. Another way is if you are on twitter to tweet – “I just entered to win a #neoHD b/c I have too many remotes, visit (blog.izea.com) to enter”.

It does not hurt to enter and and for those tech guys who love nifty gadgets, this post is right up your alley.

How many remotes do you have? Is this a contest you would enter?

Sometimes I come upon sites that I just squeal because they are so cute. I know others do too, and sometimes even guys might take note and say ‘hey that site is cute’, even if it is not exactly their type of site they would choose to go to. The list below are sites that I have found to be uniquely cute.

BubblesSOC is a site that has been mentioned before, especially with their unique smilies. However, this site uses WordPress and harnesses its template abilities. This site has a lot of attention to detail in this matter. Just flip through each section and see it for yourself.

DailyCute.net is literally a blog and resource site filled with cute and cuddly things. From pictures to site links, and to even graphics, this site is chock full and oozing with cute.

Sugary Sweet has a pixel layout that is so cute. For anyone who dabbles in pixelling, it is definitely time consuming. Also, the summer fun of this layout is something that anyone should at least look at and appreciate at least once.

Artistique Ilustra has some great vectors as well as some great artwork. I am not a fan of dolls, but I thought the layout was pretty cool and could be considered cute.

PixelFreak.com, even though it is a portfolio, the pixels are amazing! There is even a section on pixelling people’s faces too!

Acyrlicana serves as a type of splash page for the artist Mary Winkler. It directs to her Deviantart account and her Etsy shop which contain loads of cuteness.

Claire Belton is also known as the QueenofDorks on Deviantart. Her site has a gallery of cute art, a shop, and some fun stuff for visitors to do like dress up one of her characters.

Kao-ani is a site that has many different graphics available for visitors to download and use like emoticons, kao ani (also known as bouncies), and more. Their pixel goodies are adorable!

Cute Plush is a boutique filled with items that are cute and remind me of some of the Japanese cartoon characters. Funny enough, I stumbled upon this and found it to be another site by Claire Belton (aka QueenofDorks). Definitely if you are a person who likes to have cute accessories, this is definitely a great place to start looking.

Pixilate is a site that contains cute pixel fonts, some wallpapers, icons, and more. It also contains a very intriguing navigation. When you click on the pots, the flowers grow taller and reveal the subpages that you can click on in order to go to.

Are there sites that you find are cute design-wise?

Occasionally I have to give kudos and this one was about time. I have no issues about how many followers I have. When I hit 9000 the other day I was shocked. I am still humbled that anyone would want to occasionally drop on in to see my tweets. However, I do enjoy connecting, which is something I say a lot. Others were frantic and getting a little peeved. I shook my head and laughed about it as it told me how much they lost track of quality, not quantity. Even if 600 people unfollowed purposely, it should not matter unless the person did something to alienate their followers.

When Twitter did their cleanup, I lost over 600 followers, all were accounts that I did not need. Why? Well, because they were spammers. No one likes spamming… or do they. I certainly do not. It is not their first cleanup, but it is certainly one that was much needed as Twitter mentioned follower counts were not accurate. With Twitter going mainstream, loads of spammers have been piling in and barfing their garbage onto the micro blogging stream. Yeah, that sounded nasty, but it is true.

Although I agree with TechCrunch’s article ( Twitter Cracks Down On Spam Accounts, People Lose Followers ) and their mention of the spam problem on Twitter, my issue is the teenie boppers starting pointless and spammy-looking trending topics that climb to the top. Hey Twitter, even though you cut those trending topics off the top trending topics list, could you cut the dumb kids doing it too? Some of them are ‘repeat offenders’ like @dfizzy (whom I refuse to link.) I would prefer seeing relevant trending topics. Some of the cute saying ones that you can participate in like #3drunkwords are harmless. It is the trending topics that have no value at all but to call unwanted attention, which is a part of the definition of spam. They are part of the problem that made Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails get so pissed off that he deleted his Twitter account – @trent_reznor.

And what about those sites that people can sign up for you to get an X amount of followers. In return, your Twitter account automatically tweets their message at least once a day, or in my findings, possibly more. I find it quite annoying seeing the same message from several people. The sad thing is that most of them when you inform them that it really does not work, they apparently did not read the site nor take note of opting out of the site. The messages enough are spam as they seem to be tweeted almost at the same time of day. So, I could see 5 or 10 of them. Some of these accounts, that is pretty much what their stream is all about. What about these people… are they spam, Twitter?

What do you think? What should Twitter considered besides obviously spam?

After Yahoo! posted on their corporate blog their acquisition of Xoopit, I am still reeling about them closing GeoCities. This is insane! Not only that, but they failed to even mention ANYWHERE in their corporation blog about the closing.

Literally millions used Yahoo! GeoCities free hosting. October 26, 2009 is the official closing day and yet they redirect their free hostees to other companies? What is with that move? I asked in another blog this mysterious and unanswered question, Yahoo!GeoCities – Why Get Rid of a Good Thing?

It is a move that I am pretty sure that when people hear about Xoopit being assimilated into Yahoo! so people can have photos displayed in their email account. Okay, but no thanks anyway since one of my oldest email addresses I have is a Yahoo! email and it is extremely bulky, in my opinion. Then, there was the fact that Yahoo! had closed Yahoo! Briefcase too, in March 2009 and Yahoo! 360 closed July 13, 2009. Okay, so they closed one, have Flickr, and now Xoopit.

Make up your mind Yahell!

Anyone else confused with Yahoo! and their juggling act?

If you have not visited Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s blog yet, well, you should. For those not aware of her and use WordPress, she is the one who wrote WordPress for Dummies. I recommend it and have it. In fact, the copy I have is the second one and I admitted to Lisa via Twitter that a former friend (note ‘former’) never returned my first copy. However, this is not why I am blogging. Lisa announced that she is officially going to write BuddyPress for Dummies. This announcement came a day after BuddyPress announced the release of its 1.0.3 version.

What is BuddyPress?

Months ago, I talked about BuddyPress, a CMS geared toward social networking. It contains activity streams, groups, extended profiles and more. I have tried this out for clients and it has been amazing. In fact, I am in the process of putting up a class reunion (yes, my own… can you believe it has been 10 years already) with BuddyPress. BuddyPress uses WordPress MU as its core, which for some of us who heard from Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp (I heard when I went to WordCamp Chicago 2009), eventually WordPress will evolve and have WordPress MU. It is kind of like a light weight Facebook with a WordPress core and as I recall Matt saying “all that MU goodness” at WordCamp.

This is a great project and I wish Lisa all the luck and know she will produce another great resource! For those of you interested, Lisa has a link on her block to the Amazon placeholder. The link to the WordPress For Dummies that I put above is her link as I would want her to get full credit and the money for her work. Stop by and congratulate her.

Do you have WordPress for Dummies? Have you used BuddyPress? What do you think of it? Have you or will you sign up to be notified when BuddyPress for Dummies is ready for purchase?

Since the recent article TechCrunch published, Twitter’s Internal Strategy Laid Bare: To Be “The Pulse Of The Planet”, it has gotten a lot of attention. Both from its own readers, the web community and Twitter too. TechCrunch had published confidential information about Twitter. However Evan Williams of Twitter had said otherwise that TechCrunch did not have such permission to share such documents.

There are people asking others to boycott TechCrunch while others praise TechCrunch and say Twitter is clueless on how to run their business due to the fact there has been no definite business model. Others like WebPro News questions – Who’s Right: TechCrunch or Twitter?

My own opinion is that TechCrunch should have gotten in touch with Twitter no matter what came through their inbox on what could be divulged. Twitter is entitled to keep their business model under wraps and their employee information by law is confidential. Was this a ploy of wankage by TechCrunch to get attention? Who knows, but at least Twitter came back with a response on their company blog (by the way… someone tell them to switch to WordPress please…perhaps Matt Mullenweg could?)

Biz Stone wrote:

Nevertheless, the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared.

So, what do you think? Should TechCrunch issue a retraction, or will this be quite damaging to TC’s reputation? Was it a wankage scheme to discredit twitter as well as get more attention? Is boycotting TechCrunch a suitable action?

EDIT: Please be sure to note that I am not boycotting TechCrunch. In my personal opinion, it is ridiculous to do so as TechCrunch does have a lot of great material to read and learn and enjoy. However, as I have previously said, I do believe TechCrunch should at least issue some apology. I would think if someone got information like they did of TechCrunch like what happened with Twitter, that they would want to be informed and asked if it was okay to go ahead and publish, or to what information could be given out. Also, if a hacker gives out information in the spirit of helpfulness, this is not the case. They should have told Twitter and helped by giving tips. Perhaps they would have been hired by Twitter for helping them rather than making a scandal of it. I did not think TechCrunch was a tabloid, but I also just got tired of seeing people post about them wanting to boycott and wanted to know if it was really necessary and why? It was pointless to comment at TechCrunch because half of the comments were like walking into a forum with half the responses with no point despite there was a topic at hand.

Recently I ventured across Twitter Backgrounds Gallery, a website that showcases Twitter users’ backgrounds. The site also allows users to rate each others’ backgrounds on a star rating system. This system does not allow users to sign up to submit, but rather suggest your background to their Twitter account (@TwitterBGallery ).

This is a fun tool for you if you are on Twitter and have spare time to check out other profiles. Some of the backgrounds are a bit inspirational too! They even share some articles to help you make your Twitter background be effective if you want people to follow you. This includes concepts you should consider while designing, which are great for both graphic designers and novices.

Twitter Backgrounds Gallery also has a contest area where there are occasional contests featured.