I am as much a Facebook addict as I am a Twitter addict, and it did not take TechCrunch in their article Facebook Tweaks Design, Drops Rounded Corners to tell me the notices about Facebooks design tweaks.

Already with every application and module a person adds to their profile, along with all the followers (I currently have over 1600 followers/ friends at Facebook), load time can get a bit bulky. Sometimes I even get the Facebook timeout connection too. Kind of reminds me of the Twitter Fail Whale. Yay, and I say congrats to the person who though rounded corners in Facebook would really be an asset, but really – keep it simple.

With the ridiculous and non-relevant advertisements, plus the applications, it is insane. Just in case those of you were not aware, there was an application to be able to change your Facebook background, but you had to download a toolbar. There are others than ask you to add a person, invite your friends to the group, and go to some chatroom to get the link to add your background. That is insane. It should be simple and not involve anything but adding the application itself. I decided to avoid that application like the plague because I really do not want another toolbar on my computer and I am really afraid of what the load time would be even though I have cable internet.

Although I would love to pretty up my Facebook, I am content with what it looks like. Getting fancy with a product like Facebook will degrade it and make it look like MySpace, the immature reject of Facebook.

What kind of design tweaks do you think Facebook should consider trying? What should be added? What should be removed?

I have to agree with TechCrunch’s article Right Before Facebook Bought It, FriendFeed’s Real-Time Stream Saw A Flood Of Usage, that I had no clue why it was bought. Kind of reminds me how no one knows why Yahoo! is shutting down Geocities. In fact, I recall Robert Scoble asking who would leave Friendfeed after Facebook had just bought the site. According to the Friendfeed blog – FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request, things will go on as usual until future plans are decided… or at least that was the gist of it that I got from reading.

So, will yet another social network service go mainstream? Who knows, but I guess until Facebook actually does something with Friendfeed, then until any plans are revealed, we can only hope that Friendfeed does not become integrated into Facebook like so many services that have been bought up by Yahoo and Google.

I wonder if the Sherman Anti-trust Act might have to be enforced with these Internet companies? Or perhaps I am thinking too much into it. I already use both services, but I wonder if Friendfeed will eventually be phased out, forcing using to just use Facebook?

What do you think? Do you use Friendfeed? What do you use it for? Do you see the site either becoming more mainstream or being phased out?

With recent news of either Tr.im url shortening service closing, Tr.im staying opening, or via TechCrunch, Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly’s 301works Idea, Wants to Sell, I am finding it a better venture to just have your own URL shortener. In fact, I have found quite a few recent articles that have stemmed from this Tr.im mess. Regardless if Twitter prefers one url shortener service over another because of close ties, or Tr.im was closing or selling, people only want to know if the service is going to continue and if they can use the service when tweeting links. People want a reliable service, even if it is free.

Shortened URLs are a wonderful resource to use with Twitter, Facebook, and many other social networks because it saves space and the potential eyeful of a URL with many characters. Of course, people could have shorter titles for their blogs, but what fun would that be if you cannot play with words. The title is very much the first thing a person sees and if it is catchy, people are apt to check it out.

Many of the free services are highly competitive for visitors attention. While some people love TinyURL.com, others like bit.ly, or another related short url service with a very short URL like tr.im, they all practically do the same. Some offer user accounts so you can monitor your submissions, and others have different ways of coding. All are usually free. Some have advertisements to monetize the site. However, they are all useful.

There are even free resources that you can install and have your own URL shortener on your domain, or even a side domain. I offer a free GPL one you can install and customize called PHPurl. I am in the works of continuing the PHPurl project to contain a WordPress plugin to twitter with the script using your chosen url shortener, even ones using PHPurl as its core. I also may come up with a captcha version. I am the only developer working on it, and so far my plate has been busy with other things that pay to put food on my son’s and my own plate.

Of course, there are more free URL shortener scripts that you can download. In fact, WebResources Depot has a great list.

What url shortening service do you use? What do you think about being able to having your own url shortener on your domain? And of course, what kind of suggestion would you like to see in PHPurl in the future?

I was feeling in the mood to do something outside-the-box with a roundup article. Some web and graphic designers have an odd, but interesting style… or as the title of this article says – otherworldly. Each of the sites featured below contain something pertaining to the world or environment and are done in a unique way. Some of the sites are featured because of their layout, some for the work they have done, and some – a little bit of both.

DesignSpasm is a portfolio by Sean Geng. If you roll your mouse over some of the graphics, they move, literally giving the page a unique and spacey feel.
One of his designs I liked from his portfolio was his water color effect.

Smriyaz is home to Mohamed Riyaz, a freelance designer from the United Kingdom. His layout features several well done and inspiring photographs. His main page has a photo of a foggy day that it just about looks mystical.

Kinetic Shadows is literally a jungle! From top to bottom, this is every wild person’s dream. If you check it out, be sure to check out the detail of the Seymour look-a-like (Little Shop of Horrors.)

Visual Elixir really is an elixir of design eyecandy! This portfolio by Jim Gunardson contains a lot of illustrations that rock!

Design Disease has a simple but eypopping under-the-sea look. By the way, Design Disease gives out a few of WordPress themes that are well done too!

Studio7Designs is a diverse portfolio that encompasses everything about the natural environment. What I liked first thing was stepping in and seeing their
vector graphics. They are quite unique!

Joolz is the portfolio of Julien Morel. Julien’s site may be simple, but his portfolio packs a punch with abstract graphics that are really bizarre and inspirational at the same time.

Are there any portfolios that you have seen that you believe should be on this list?

With the recent Denial-of-Service Attack (DOS) on Twitter, it has some users wondering what it is and how to prevent it.

According to Wikipedia, a denial-of-service attack is:

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users.

Some ways to create a DoS attack are ping flood, ping of death (PoD), smurfing, IRC flood, nuke, peer-to-peer, fraggling, SYN flood, teardrop, and distrubuted denial of service attack (DDoS). Actually, there are a lot more funny terms for DoS attacks. In the simplest manner, each of these DoS attacks require intense communication between between a computer or several computers to disrupt the site’s server by either using all its resources or slowing it down until it cannot be accessed properly. You can find out more at Wikipedia for each of the DoS terms.

I have had this happen on the first server I co-owned when I started webhosting. We had just reached 350 clients when that had happened and it was only a minor setback. Still, it was annoying and because most of these attackers use spoof IP addresses, it is hard to track, so I left it up to the company that leased the servers to go after the culprit. That is pretty much you can do when attack as it is illegal anyway. Server-side, our server was upgraded to prevent further attacks.

However, to prevent this, it is recommended your servers are up-to-date with the software and hardware on the server, especially those with features that can prevent flooding. Many major sites, even Microsoft have been victims of DoS attacks, so it is not all that uncommon. It might be lame advice, but it is the first prevention against such and your best defense up front.

Have you ever witnessed a DoS attack on a site? Was it yours? What other advice can you give to those wanting to know more about preventing DoS attacks?

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?

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?