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And that my friend, will do for now…

From the authors’ themselves:

Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list.

digsby is an email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as ‘Delete’ or ‘Report Spam’ with just one click.

digsby is a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.

First impressions are quite good, with the only problem as yet being that the Twitter connection keeps dropping, but I like the interface and the flexibility of the product overall. If anyone has any tips on getting the most out of Digsby, please drop me a comment.

So the Internet back then was 90% black and white or possibly 8-bit colour depending on your monitor at the time. And the biggest joy of owning a bulletin board was the interaction from other members. People you did not even know would add files, download files and get in touch. And the really cool part – they were not locals – but came from all over the place in Australia and even across the world. The first thing anyone did when they made a connection and logged in, was to check messages. It didn’t matter that most of what transferred was crap and hardly worth reading, because the real fun was in the fact that you could actually communicate via your computer.

And now we have the Internet as it is today, email is just part and parcel of our everyday life, and we perceive it as nothing too special. I now sit here on a 20mb broadband pipe connection and there is no connection sound anymore, indeed, I would not hear it even if there was – my connection is permanent and gets turned off less than most other appliances in my home. Media and files are attainable from all kinds of Internet resources and in most instances, unlike the days of Bulletin Boards, you have no need to sign up for membership. You just grab what you want, from wherever you want and whenever you want.

We all have permanent chat programs that come with our emails too and we can add friends, acquaintances and whoever else we like, from anywhere in the world at the click of a button. In actual fact, I tend to turn off more than I add as people from all walks of life try to add themeselves to my chat panel friends’ list. We can be much more selective now that it is so easy too. Emails should actually be a tool which provides instant response but I find that whilst some people are very good at giving replies, there are still many who are just lazy, rude, or a combination of both, and they simply do not reply. Of course, this is very different if they want something, but this runs parallel to most telephone conversations anyway – so it’s not too surprising.

And recently [meaning in the last 2 years] social networking has become one of the new buzz words flying across the Internet, with people in their millions have signing up for such services as Facebook, MySpace and Flickr. There are hundreds more on offer, and we all know at least one or two of them and depending on who you are, you either hate them or love them.

Many of my work colleagues have been using Facebook for ages, and although I signed up too, I just do not see the fascination in it to be honest. Maybe that is because I am very camera shy and the whole point of Facebook seems to be sharing yourself via photos – so no match fo me on that score. MySpace doesn’t interest me at all either. I have my own domains and web space so no need to go third party and use something that looks like it is full of problems [and kids].

Two programs have caught my eye though and I have just started using them more and more. I signed up for a Flickr account only weeks ago and although I hate the main page – it’s drab, boring and deviod of any design – I do like the fact you can store all your photos online. Well, when I say all, I mean 200 with the free account but we have gone the whole hog and paid the fee to be Flickr pros now so we have unlimited photo storage. This could be something they regret in my opinion. We have thousands and thousands of photos and even when we try hard to be sensible and only upload those ones we want to keep, well, that upload button is so easy to use and they all end up there somehow – just wanting to be viewed.

The other program is Twitter, which is a silly name but the program itself looks quite good. A part of me still thinks all of this social networking stuff is an absolute waste of time, but who knows, maybe I will be fully converted one day. As it is for now, I have signed up and even gone as far as adding many of the contacts from my email accounts as ‘following’ which basically means they are included in my Twitter list and each time they make a post it automatically comes into view on my Twitter. Trouble is, my contacts list is gi-normous because of my involvement with helping so many people set up their sites, and this means that there are more acquaintances in the list than there are real friends. This is my experiment though, to see if this social networking tool actually helps you to gain friends? By my own admission, I am a hard nut to crack in all things socially oriented, so it will be interesting to see what happens. However, just to show publically that I am really serious about this, I have even gone so far as to add a Twitter Flash panel to the bottom of this site on the main page. This displays everything that is happening in my Twitter and hides nothing. Check it out and let me know what you think – stupid or great? I am not sure what I think just yet!

Yet another tool that I have used previously but now using more frequently is the Last-FM music social network. I find this to be one of the best around and I think it is very cool that the music I play via my own system here in my home using Foobar, is then displayed on my Last-FM account, and with the help of a plugin, then listed on the website here [again on the front main page and single post sidebars]. Comparing this new technology to the bulletin board scenario [mentioned earlier] is like the comparing the Pope to reality. There just is no comparison. Wowsers, this stuff really is super cool!

On an ending note, I have to say that I am still very reluctant to share too much of my personal detail in any of these programs, but I may change my mind as I use them more and more. The fact that I use my actual name on this site as opposed to nicknames from the past, shows that I am climbing out of my shell and baa-baa-ing as good as the rest, but I see all of this as a day-by-day attitude and know in the back of my mind that a few clicks here and there can quickly shut down accounts, close the doors and bring it all back very quickly to my normally reclusive and hermit style, preference.

If you have read this far and would like to share your experiences or suggestions for better means of social networking, then please use the comments section below, or get in touch via Twitter, Flickr or Last-FM.

However, as any web designer will tell you, there are colours and then there are colours. It’s all black and white you see – but not really. White and black are not generally known as black after all [yes, yes, I know black and white are not colours but that's not the issue]. The point is, white becomes #ffffff and black becomes #000000 and everything colour-wise works from these junctures.

And as you delve deeper into colours and you work with them daily in code, you start to see colours in a different light again. RGB and Hex values slowly take over. You see a red car, but actually, you think to yourself, well, it’s not exactly red in the true sense at all – it is actually #a70909 with perhaps a hint of #be1212 in the sunlight. And you spot a great looking old wall with shades and cracks and it instantly appeals. Is if off-white, cream, grey [gray] in places, and that patch in the corner must be brown? But again, the colours just do not add up and your mind shifts into code mode again with flashes of #FEDCDC, #CCC4C4 and perhaps a dash of #602E1C.

Most graphics programs show you these codes when you choose a colour and even if you do not have a graphics program that does this, there are literally hundreds of places online [that's www or Net for some] where you can easily find the codes anyway.

So, here’s a few resources on offer…

Online

Do’s and Dont’s
A good article about choosing your colours using a colour wheel

ColorSpire
An excellent colour picker and a whole lot more. Fantastic tool. Thanks to Kevin for pointing this out!

Name That Colour
Contains hex code, RGB and a very nifty addition, the actual name of the colour as well.

Colour Name and Hue
With this little tool you can either enter RGB (Red-Green-Blue) values, HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness) numbers or a hexadecimal code for a color, to find its closest match of a named color and its corresponding hue. It is also possible to just use the sliders to see how color hues are changing. The list of colors comprises 1640 different color names extracted from several sources on the web.

HTML Color Name
A table that provides a list of the color names that are supported by all major browsers.

Photoshop-like JavaScript Color Picker
This color picker mimics Photoshop color picker by layering transparent images.

4096 Colour Wheel
Simple but very good. Hovering over a colour shows three varying hues and coliurs side by side. Nice for gradient work.

Colour Scheme Generator
Another wheel and gradient colour picker.

Colour Scheme Randomizer
Spin the color wheel and get a selection of three random colors. The color wheel randomizes among some 16 million colors. And since each spin produces three different colors, that gives endless combinations. (or 2 to the power of 70 or so, which is a very large number). Enough to keep anyone busy for a while.

Interactive Colour Wheel
Experiment with saturation, intensity, hue, and luma.

Accessibility Color Wheel
If accessibility is your focus, this one is for you. Even includes Deuteranope, Protanope and Tritanope settings. If you are not sure what that means, take a look at this colour picker – it includes explainations for the less intelligent, such as myself.

Colour Schemer
Gives a nice options for creating a colour scheme with 16 matching colours. Simple but effective.

Interactive Colour Scheme Chooser
You can use this interactive application to choose colors for sections of your Web pages [doh!]

Colour Theory Visualizer
Contains a lot of nice features, including the possibility to change the background so you can see how colours work on white and back. Even has an OSX widget for those who are Mac-oriented.

As mentioned above, there are hundreds, if not thousands available on the Net. Try a Google search for more.

Free, Downloadable Programs

ColorPicker
The significant difference between this tool and any of those highlighted above, is that this tool allows you to fin the colour of anything on your screen. And if you have ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Grab palettes of up to 16 colors at once and use four advanced color mixers to select a spectrum of possibilities. An excellent tool!

Anry Colour Picker
Free color picker and color mixing tool features five formats of picked color value (HTML, RGB, HEX, HSB/HSV, HSL), 3x/9x zoom of any screen area, saving picked color history, RGB and RYB color wheels, two harmonious color finders and RGB color mixer. Supported platforms: Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003. No installation required.

ColorSchemer ColorPix
ColorPix is a useful little color picker that grabs the pixel under your mouse and transforms it into a number of different color formats. You can use the built-in magnifier to zoom in on your screen, click on a color value to copy it directly to the clipboard, and even keep ColorPix on top of all other apps and out of the way.

In Your Browser

ColorZilla for Firefox
With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. I use this one extensively and find it to be one of my most used Firefox addons.

Not being a Mac or Linux user myself, I do not wish to suggest what programs or addons are the best to use. I just wish Internet Explorer had an addon such as those described above, but to date, I am not aware of any that exist.

And why do I choose G-Mail? Basically, it works. It rarely has any downtime, it is so easy to set up and use and it’s quick, reliable and does everything I want. The fact it is web-based has obvious benefits in that it is accessible from any location with an Internet connection and it has all the functionality and features that I need.

The ‘but’ though comes from my personal wish to set up an email account in my own fashion. Functionality is excellent and so is the ability to use it as your base email portal – by directing all other email accounts to this one location. The one downside in my opinion is that it offers little in terms of personal design. We all have our little hang-ups about font size, colours and shading, and G-Mail is not hot in this department. Sheesh, even Outlook has a few colours and themes to satisfy most tastes.

All is not lost though. For users of Firefox and the myriad of addons at your fingertips, there is G-Mail Skins, which I have used and it looks great. The only trouble is it seems to just drop off on occasion and right this munute it just will not work at all [for me anyway]. There is an issue with the language setup it seems, but you can chase that up if you so desire.

An alternative to GMail Skins is G-Mail Redesigned and personally I like this much better. The skins/themes are are very professional in ‘feel’ and very simple to install. You will need to install the Stylish addon [another great tool] and it is then a simple matter of loading your skin.

And if you are looking for some other really handy ideas and ways of getting the most from your G-Mail account, take a look through the links below.

http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html

http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/gmail-tips-and-tricks-monster-roundup-198488.php

There are many more sites but these two will give you enough to do for a full day anyway…

Take the example of VirtualBox. I use more virtual servers than physical these days and the thing is, once you start using virtual systems, you really do wonder how you ever coped without. They are quicker [when configured correctly] and they are so easy to backup and to restore in times of disaster. I use Virtual PC 2007 for many of my personal experiments and this allows me to use whatever operating system I need without the need for extra hardware, and I use Virtual Server 2005 for some of the more demanding tasks which require server capability. Both of these products are free and readily available – a fact that I often find gets lost when working with die-hard anti-Windows protagonists.

So why would something like VirtualBox interest me you ask? Well, the answer is very simple. The sheer fact it is open source means that there are developers who, dare I say it, think outside the box. And even more significantly, the overall development takes notice and continues to develop this out of the box thinking even further. Powerful stuff! And the main reason – whereas Virtual PC is only for Windows, VirtualBox can be installed on nearly all systems.

The only concern here is that Sun Microsystems have recently acquired [such a useful word isn't it] the company that have developed VirtualBox, and I just hope that things do not start to go downhill as a result. Maybe you should go grab the current version of VirtualBox right this minute, just in case…

A clear guide on how to set up VirtualBox is found at OpenComputer.net

Car manufacturers make cars with bio-fuel options, different colours, and cater for people of all sizes with seat controls, safety belt adjustments and so on.
TV channels know that what appeals to one will not appeal to another.

Common sense stuff you would think and yet wannabe web designers cannot see beyond the scope of their noses.

Anyway, for those people who do actually want to make their websites work in most browsers and try and reach a bigger audience with a stable design across all platforms, Browsershots is an excellent tool for use in this aim.

From the maker of Browsershots:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser.