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?

TechCrunch recently posted Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe. While I can understand why some are not, this is not the case. Anyone on Twitter witness the junk @dfizzy and his friends spread throughout Twitter, between June 5th through June 11th,2009.

Teens ARE using twitter, but in a way that Twitter was not intended. Instead of using it to talk with friends, it is to cause pointless shenanigans that were quite defamatory, like the #MileyisPregnant and quite a few other trending topics. In fact, it was a real lesson to these kids on the laws protecting people from defamation. I could care less about comScores. Remember, these surveys and usage scores are just a percentage. I had a recent encounter with an 11 year old girl on Facebook… yes… Facebook. I thought they had some laws about how old a user can be in their terms.

Teens may not use Twitter more out of cost if they use the text features. I have known people to remove their text option because their service providered said they were abusing their ‘unlimited’ text package. That was one thing I was shocked to hear.

Teens are using Twitter. You just have to open your eyes and see where they are that. Of course, Twitter is still in a place of going mainstream at this point, but it is noticeable to those who are huge Twitter addicts. As for the 15 year old kid who ‘interns at Morgan Stanley’ wrote why other kids do not talk about Twitter as a hot topic, is probably because he is not an average student. I think once school starts up again, I might visit the local high school in town and ask around to get a survey.

Do you see teens using Twitter regularly? How do you feel about teens that do use Twitter?

I have noticed more alerts from my Askimet plugin since the recent update in their plugin and the WordPress 2.8.1 upgrade. Basically, the notice usually says that there are issues and it might be a firewall problem. However, I have never had issues with this before.

I checked with the technician of my servers and was told that there had been no logged issues nor any recent graceful reboots, so I am wondering how sensitive this newest plugin version of Askimet is. Although it is no issue to be alerted as it is nice to have Askimet on the side to take care of potential spam.

Has anyone else noticed this with their blog since the upgrade of both the plugin and their WordPress?

I know it is a couple months old, but being me, some things need some cool off time, like why in the world is Yahoo! closing Geocities? Believe me, I did need the time. I had to go out of my way to go and download old files before I forgot. Being me, October 2009 would have rolled around and I would have lost some of my old writing.

I remember the days when I ran some Yahoo! Clubs (which has been Yahoo! Groups for close to a decade) and had some Geocities hosted website. The banner ads were obtrusive, but at that time, I was still learning web design and only cared that at least I had some space. I tried Freewebs (which is now just Webs.com) and even Homestead and Tripod.

A long time ago, when I joined Geocities, I had to join a certain ’street’ and then park on a lot number. Later, Yahoo! allowed users to have their username in the URL. So many sites and yet Yahoo! is closing it. Unfortunately, the ‘award’ winner webhosting they offer is junk. I have seen more complaints than anything with their hosting. Is it because of Geocities? It is because of the economy and something had to be cut. Yahoo! does not give much of a reason in their Geocities help section on “Why is Geocities closing?”

On the other hand, they seem like authorities evacuating a toxic spill zone by redirecting them to other services. Not only that, Yahoo! 360 and Geocities! Plus (offered to their AT&T clients) are also closing. I just want to say – this is Yahell! (That is an old phrase.)

Is Geocities too much to handle or worthless to be bought by another company?

With threats to sue last in June 2009 from people like the St. Louis Cardinal’s manager, Tony La Russa, Twitter has come up with verified accounts. Mashable was among the many that reported on this change after Twitter introduce the verified account feature and their reaction to the increasing impersonation attempts.

Right now, verified accounts is in the beta mode, but I do not blame Twitter for this. I have even been imitated online, and I am a nobody. Of course, I am someone in my circles, but not those who are in the celebrity spotlight. When I talk to someone on twitter, I want them to be the real thing. Unfortunately, celebrities have been harassed by fans who doubt their authenticity. Live examples can be seen on profiles like Trent Reznor, Robert Scoble, and Alyssa Milano.

As for my thoughts, kudos to Twitter for this. I am hoping with time this can be extended to others, whether it might be a simple (and hopefully not expensive) paid service that requires some honest verification.

What do you think of Twitter verified accounts? Have you been impersonated? What other things do you think Twitter should do besides this verified account experiment?

Let us face it, web developers can be under-appreciated. Most offer their work for free and ask for nothing. The problem is, some of these developers come up with great things. What spurred this topic on… well, the topic came up in the WordPress group in LinkedIn. It was apparent that I was not the only person experiencing a bit of under-appreciation.

Did you know PHPads has had over 2700 downloads since January 2009, and PHPurl has been downloaded over 700 times. This is not a rant. Believe me, if I felt like it, I would, but that is not the point. All of these people go through and download. Each download takes a little bandwidth and people are making money off of at least PHPads. A free tool that makes you money.

Think about all the scripts and plugins you have used, even those WordPress plugins. There are plenty of people who make plugins… many of which are very handy. I have helped test quite a few plugins and tweaked many more for my own use as well as use for clients. Have I donated – yes I have. How many plugins do you use? How many of them have a little link to donate? Have you ever donated?

I know that not everyone has a lot of money, especially with the tough economy, but we should help each other out in some way. It is the generally better to spread the word about the resource than to donate, but that little bit always makes a developers day. Here is how you can appreciate your developers, whether they are a developer of an entire script or even WordPress plugin:

• Blog about the script or plugin if you liked it. You never know… one of the people who read your blog and then visited that developer might spread the word or even donate.
• Tell people in your social media networks like on Facebook and Twitter about it.
• If a developer does not have a way for you to donate, contact them and urge them to put one up. Whether you do donate or not once they do put a donation button up, at least it is up and visible.
• Put up credit somewhere on your site on what script or plugin you are using, even if you are using it to develop a client’s website.
• Donate at least $5. It is not much, but every little bit is appreciated.

Simple, right? What others ways do you think might help developers become more appreciated?

Perhaps when you read the top, you wonder what I mean by ‘how to blog better lists.’ People love to read the top 5 of something to see if it is relevant – to them if they might be on that list, for information that could be provided, or if their friends might be listed. These type of blog entries are indentified with phrases like ‘top 10′ or even ‘5 best.’

There are a lot of lists with wonderful buzzwords attached to them. However, I have noticed when viewing these lists that they are quite long! It gets a bit boring looking through 20 or more things. It is great that you took the time to make such a list, but was it really necessary to include that many? What ever happened to the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Stupid)? It is not about the quantity, but the quality of the post. That is not the first time I have said that, but it does very much pertain to making lists.

Here are ways to improve your blog lists.

• Aim to blog between 200 to 400 words.
• Shorten your lists and break it up. Use the KISS method. For example, you do not have to list (example) ‘50 Designers on Twitter to follow. You can break those posts up. A lot of designers specialize in certain areas. Instead of sliding all of them in the same general genre, make several lists. If you have WordPress, your entry might call up those related lists if you have the proper plugins installed (like Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.)
• Make sure your list is honest and thurough. If your friend really is not all that awesome, do not include them. You are providing a list of people you recommend to people. This is important if your blog also ties in with your professional life. If you recommend someone who is not up to your own standards, you are not providing your best list.

These are just a few to consider and they are very basic. What other things do you recommend to bloggers to consider when making their top 10 or similar type lists?

I have finished another basic tutorial. It is on how to vector a guitar. The tutorial can be done in most graphic editors, but I have used it in Paint Shop Pro only because I happened to have it open and just went with it at the time.

As you can already see, I use a variation of this in the head image of this site. I have already been asked many times since I unveiled the layout late Sunday evening on how I do this. There are some images, but the original image is actually well over 1200 pixels tall, so the images for the tutorial I have only linked them and you will have to open them in a new window.

I hope it helps for some who want to create new types of images. I will be sure to have a vector tutorial of a bottle, a similar one to the bottle in my previous layout. With that one, I did it on my own without a base, but I went around and found something as similar to my image.

I do not have too many tutorials on my site, so what kind of tutorials would you like me to post on the site?