I have recently seen many Web Developers try to get hold of HTML5 and CSS3 – as they both hold keys to the future of Web Development.

If you are one of those, then the following links are essential to bookmark.  They make an excellent weekend read – and help you feel absolutely enlightened!

• Dive Into HTML5
• CSS3.info

Few other tutorials and articles to give you an heads up:

• Push Your Web Design Into The Future With CSS3
• CSS 3 Cheat Sheet (PDF)
• HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using

Another interesting article on HTML5 – iPhone developers abandoning app model for HTML5?

Happy Learning!

Money related resolutions are very popular in the new year.  Everyone wants to get out of debt, everyone wants to reduce their expenses and everyone loves to create an additional source of income.  In this post, I will show you 2 online tools, that will help you maintain your Money Resolutions this new year.

Xpenser

This is an extremely simple but powerful tool to manage all your expenses, with their receipts (if any).  The major strength of Xpenser comes from its support of variety of channels – to record expenses.

You can record expenses to your account, in one of the following ways:

• Direct Entry on Xpenser Online Tool
• Send your Expense Details from a registered Email
• Send the details from SMS/Text Messaging (carrier charges will still apply)
• Send Expense Information as a Twitter Direct Message to Xpenser
• Send the details via Instant Messaging
• Speak about your expense after setting up a Voice account….

One other key feature with Xpenser, is the ability to use variety of Currencies and the accurate conversion it provides.  I find this feature missing in many other Personal Finance tools – which are biased toward USD.

Xpenser FAQ is the best place to get an answer for most of your questions.  Try out this sweet little tool and I am sure you will not regret!

PocketSmith

PocketSmith is an online money management tool – that is not very simple to use but its strength lies elsewhere.

It is a web based tool not only to record your expenses/income, but also forecasts your future cash position.  This tool helps you manage all the cash-flow in a calendar format – that is very intuitive and easy to visualize.

Some of the features of the tool include:

• Set and achieve your Financial goals
• Compare your Budget with the actuals
• Integrates with your Back Accounts
• PocketSmith calendar can be connected with Google Calendar

You can know more about PocketSmith here.  Though the Free version of the tool will suffice most of your financial needs, they also have Paid Flavors for needy users.

These 2 tools, when used with purpose can help you stick with your Money Resolutions this New Year.  However, to make these Resolutions a success – one has to develop a sense of money discipline – which no tool can help and must come from within!  Good luck this New Year and may you Grow Richer!

Google Chrome is getting better everyday – and the long awaited extensions are here.  In this post, I will show you 5 cool Google Chrome extensions to make your Web experience better.

Note: To use extensions, you must install the Google Chrome Beta version

New-Google-Doc — Creates a New Google document right from your Chrome browser.  The button sits prettily next to your Omni-bar and looks to be working well so far.  A must have extension for all Google Doc addicts (like me!).  However, the button opens up a New Document and to create Spreadsheets etc., you will still have to use the menus.  I would love to see the button provide options to create the different type of Documents – to make it much cooler!

Google Mail Checker — This extension is for all the Gmail lovers.  The extension puts up a small icon on the toolbar and shows the number of unread messages in your Inbox.  This help you decide, when to check your mail (the button click directly opens the Inbox)

Evernote Web Clipper — This cute extension helps you add Web clips to your Evernote account on the click of a button.  Very similar to the Evernote Firefox plug-in – this extension works real cool.  A handy one for note takers and Evernote users!

Bit.ly (shorten, share and track your links) — As the name suggests, this extensions lets your shorten URLs in a jiffy.  Very handy if you share a lot of web pages on Twitter – this button shortens the URL and then lets your post it to Twitter (along with the Page Title and also shows you all regular bit.ly statistics on the URL like Twitter reactions etc.).  Another cool feature of this extension – it shows up the Full URL and the Page Title on hovering the mouse over any bit.ly link.  Very cool!

Bit.ly extension previews the URL on Mouse Hover

Google Reader RSS Subscriber — If the site that you visit has a valid RSS feed, then this extension lets you subscribe to the feed on Google Reader by click of a button.  Instead of the Toolbar, the button is shown on your Omni box.

Hope you liked all these extensions.  One super-cool thing about extensions in comparison to Firefox plug-ins is, extensions never need a browser restart! Have a good time with Google Chrome and feel free to let me know any other nice-to-have ones.

You comment on a blog post.  You comment on a website.  Have you ever wondered how to manage all these comments from a Single Dashboard?  BackType provides you a solution.

How it works?

First signup for an account with BackType. Once done, you provide the details to claim comments from across the web.

By claiming – you setup the URLs that you usually comment with.  For example, if you specify http://yoursite.com whenever commenting on any blog or website, setup this URL with BackType.  Similarly, specify all such URL so that BackType can look for your comments.

In addition, BackType allows you to enter your social networking account details like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg etc. With this, even the comments you make using these accounts are grabbed by BackType.

Claim your URL and link your Social Networking Accounts

BackType also lets you add a widget to your blog, that shows all the websites and blogs you have recently commented on.

A Handy widget to display Comments on your Blog or Website

BackType Subscriptions and Alerts

BackType provides you with the following subscription options, to track comments and discussions across the web.

Subscribe to People

You can subscribe to comments made by popular people on the web like – Chris Brogan, Michael Arrington, Garry Tan etc. Whenever they comment on posts over the web, you can keep track of them and participate in powerful conversations.

Subscribe to Articles and Blog Posts

You can specify links to Articles or Blog Posts and let BackType intimate you whenever comments are posted.  Also, you can specify the Articles or Blog Posts and BackType fetches you related happenings from all over the web, that revolves around the specified items.  This helps you follow powerful stuff on the internet and the wave created around them.

Alerts

This is one of the powerful feature of BackType.  Assume you are interesting to track the happenings around PHP Developer Conference 2009. You can setup an alert for this “keyword” and BackType sends you e-mail whenever the “keyword” is mentioned in any comment across the web.  How powerful is it?!

Why should you use BackType?

BackType helps you mainly with the following:

• Manage your Comments in a single dashboard
• Follow powerful people and their comments across the web
• Subscribe to comments on particular Articles or Blog Posts
• Get Alerts when some keywords are specified on any comments across the web

Following comments and engaging in a comment network is essential for any blogger.  So get started with BackType and manage your comments like a pro.  Happy Commenting!

Imagine! You are browsing the internet at workplace and suddenly come across an interesting piece of information, that you want to post to Facebook.  Alas, Facebook is blocked in your workplace! So what you do?  Posterous – is for your rescue.

If Posterous sounds extremely new to you – checkout their FAQ here http://posterous.com/faq.  It is pretty exhaustive.

So, Posterous lets you post text, images or even videos right from your mailbox.  For instance, to post something to Facebook, set up your Posterous account, send an e-mail to a particular address – everything else is taken care by Posterous.

Keep an eye on this space for a detailed post on Posterous and how it might evolve into a “king-size” Twitter!

On 21st of this month, Yahoo! announced the roll out of a new home page through their corporate blog (Yodel Anecdotal).  In the times when social networking means more than just connecting with people, let us briefly look how Yahoo! leverages Web 2.0 and tries to provide some interesting stuff through their new home page.

What’s New

Logo changes color

The traditional “red” colored Yahoo! logo has given way to a more catchy looking purple one.  Also their favicon has been changed to match the new logo.

Featured News section

Earlier, the featured news section shows the top news with an image and to read the rest, user has to click a link, to be taken to a new page.  But in the improved version of the home page, up to 20 items can be scrolled using the arrow keys, without navigating away from the page.  This definitely helps the user experience – by providing more information on a given page.

Change the Page color

Now users can choose a favorite color for their home page, as there is “no one size fits all” with web applications.  But this appears very naive – compare it with the themes available for the iGoogle home page!! Yahoo! has a lot to improve in this area.

Favorite Applications

This is an interesting improvement from the previous version of the home page.  On the left side, you see the traditional applications that you find on a regular Yahoo! home page – Buzz, Cricket, News etc.

But the real improvement can be seen, once you hover over any of the applications listed here.  A layered screen pops up and displays the information.  For instance, this is what comes up when I hover over the Movies section.

Also many other sites like – All Things Digital, eBay, NYT, HowStuffWorks, WSJ – can be added to the Favorites section.  Another interesting thing to note is the ability to add any of your favorite site, by just providing the URL.  But this did not work well with me, when I tried to add my blog!

Interesting to note is that the following are also supported as favorite applications – Facebook, Gmail, MySpace. I did not try out MySpace, but had NO success setting up Gmail and Facebook.  Even after I granted access to my Google Accounts, Yahoo! was still asking me to ‘Sign In’.  Worse with Facebook, I was stuck on the Authorize screen. I am sure this feature is still in BETA (or ALPHA?) level!

You can check out this post on the Yahoo! official blog – http://ycorpblog.com/2009/07/21/welcome-home-to-the-new-yahoocom/ – to know more details about the new home page.

What Can Improve?

Speed

I have been using iGoogle for ages now and I know that it is slow!  But Yahoo!’s home page, with relatively light features is slow too.  Though my Internet connection is not very fast, but there is a good scope for improvement.

Applications are buggy

I was enthralled to find Gmail and Facebook listed among the applications but was only disappointed to find them not working.  I am sure Yahoo! is still working on their home page, but expecting a lot of improvement on this front.

Screen elements must be draggable and rearrangeable

I definitely expect my screen elements to be draggable, so I can keep my favorite ones at the top while moving the rest to somewhere I don’t see often.  I definitely look forward to this from Yahoo!

Lack of Themes and Gadgets suck!

There is no full fledged theme support with Yahoo! home page.  Also, there are no ways (yet!) for custom applications to plug-in with the page.  These are some valuable lessons, that iGoogle can teach!

Will the new Yahoo! be my home page? Not Yet!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the new Yahoo! Home page.  You can either put them as comments to this post or ping me on Twitter @thotsunlimited

Twitter is slowly but surely becoming a “Google” of ideas.  A wealth of information and ideas get into Twitter everyday and grasping even 1% of those is a gargantuan task. To better optimize your time and get the maximum information out of Twitter – I suggest you the following 2 simple ways:

Use Twittorati

Twittorati is a latest entrant into the array of Twitter based services.  But it is not just all about Twitter! In their own words:

Twittorati tracks the tweets from the highest authority bloggers, starting with the entire Technorati Top 100 and soon including many more of the web’s most influential voices.So if you start following Twittorati, then you can be rest assured to get the best of tweets from the best-in-class people.

I can already see some well known names like – Darren Rowse (ProBlogger), Michael Arrington (TechCrunch), Brian Clark (CopyBlogger), Pete Cashmore (Mashable) – whose tweets are featured in Twittorati.

Thus, Twittorati marks the consummation of Blogging and Tweeting.  In addition to reading the tweets, Twittorati helps you to:

• Find the Top Links shared over Twitter
• Find Top Blogs, based on their Technorati Authority
• View Latest Photos shared around people’s chat

You can also choose to follow Twittorati on Twitter – @twittoratinews

Follow the Twitter AllTop Site

Alltop is the brainchild of Guy Kawasaki and few more guys.  In their words – “Alltop is an online magazine rack of popular topics”.

In the same lines, Alltop for Twitter, is a magazine rack of popular and latest information from the Twitter world.  It ranges from information about Twitter to information shared on Twitter.

Make sure you bookmark this site and visit everyday – to be rest assured that you don’t miss anything important on Twitter.

I would strongly recommend these 2 resources, to get the best of twitter everyday.  Let me know if you find these useful.  Also, enlighten me with the other ways you may use to keep track of Twitter!

At first, masses had access to the internet using their wired computers occupying a finite space at home.  Then came in the wireless technology and notebooks, that simplified the browsing experience to an “anywhere anytime” activity.  The technology slowly spread into the mobile phones (especially iPhone), that brought a new dimension to accessing information on the Internet.

Here comes CrunchPad, whose sole purpose of existence is to browse the Internet. Powered by Linux and Webkit, this device directly boots up into the browser.  Right now, the availability of onscreen keyboard is not confirmed but it is crucial to complete the internet experience and subsequent success of the product.

CrunchPad is being sponsored internally by Michael Arrington and the TechCrunch group.  The pictures of the prototype has been launched and it looks pretty cool.  Here is what NYTimes has to say about the CrunchPad.

A few pictures of the prototype that looks pretty impressive:

Prototype suggests that both portrait and a landscape mode are supported.  Also there is a hint about attaching an external keyboard to the device.  But I strongly believe an on-screen keyboard would make things better.  It is very sleek and could be used anywhere at your comfort.

Why would CrunchPad be a success?

• It is highly focused into a market segment – the Internet.  Such products definitely find their way!
• Clean and simple
• With Cloud computing and Web 2.0+, you can run an entire computer within a browser.  So this makes a browser based device, self sufficient!
• Those who use computers spend more time on Internet than on anything else.  So this is again a favorable point!
• A sub-$250 price tag definitely sounds lucrative!

But can it compete against the Netbooks which are relatively priced?  Can Netbooks hold the advantage with local computing resources in addition to the browsing capabilities?

These are questions to be answered, once when we get the first feel of the CrunchPad.  But for now, it seems to be heading for a success!

I came across the blog – Woork – by Antonio Lupetti a few months back.  It is one of the blogs that can catch your attention almost instantly.

Nowadays, when I am stuck on something during my web development projects – like choosing a font, implementing Captcha or some AJAX controls – I instantly look up to Woork.  There is a good 90% probability that you will find the relevant information there.

Just thought of sharing this info with you.  Let me know if it helps…

If you are an active social networker (a.k.a. Twitter/Facebook/MySpace user), then NutshellMail is something to know about.

NutshellMail is a tool, where you can configure and view updates from your social networking accounts – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn – all in a single dashboard.  You can also add multiple email accounts and view mails sent to them.

The power of NutshellMail comes with the delivery of a daily summary email, that contains updates from the accounts you have setup.  For instance, to see the twitter messages from the people I follow, I can just login to the inbox of my email.

I primarily use NutshellMail to:

• Read Twitter messages
• Read Direct Twitter messages sent to me
• See who are my new followers or quitters!
• Updates from LinkedIn
• Messages to me on Facebook
• Friend/Other requests to me on Facebook

I am sure NutshellMail simplifies you social activities, when you have limited time at your disposal.

I encourage you to try it and let me know how it goes!