Paul Grunt

Espresso. Time for something new in web development.

I got an email from Jan at MacRabbit today and I’m stoked to announce that I’ve been accepted into the Espresso testing group! MacRabbit makes the best CSS editor ever, CSSEdit, so I can only imagine how great Espresso is going to be. Espresso isn’t going to be a full blown and bloated solution to development, rather it will focus on allowing the community to develop Sugar with it’s SugarDevelopmentKit. Freedom to extend is always good.

Webmonkey was a great resource back in the day and now it’s back and it’s a WIKI!

“The original web developer’s resource has returned. Webmonkey has been completely redesigned, and we’re ready to rock once more. Also, our entire content library is now hosted on a wiki, so every tutorial, reference page and code example is open for editing. Come on in and show us what you’ve got!” - Webmonkey

Today, May 1st, is RSS Awareness Day. If you’re not too sure what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is and how it can speed up your daily info fix then you should watch this RSS in Plain English video!

I personally use NetNewsWire, a mac RSS client from NewsGator, to consume and read all the content from my favorite websites. You can also use RSS readers like Google Reader, Newsgator or MyYahoo.

Start using RSS and see just how much time you’ll save gathering and reading all your information every day.

GroupTweet is used to send private Twitter messages to specific groups of Twitter friends. GroupTweet piggy-backs Twitter’s service using the Twitter API. There are simple instructions for set-up and usage of GroupTweet on their website. If you need private twitter this is something you should try.

Rather than try and explain OpenID myself, I’ve posted their copy below.

“OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.” -OpneID

Signalfire is a FREE Group Chat solution that allows you to stay in contact with your teams, family and friends. Signalfire allows you to create many Rooms for collaboration, toggle between Rooms and manage members all using a Top Down approach to chat, similar to twitter, which allows users to focus naturally on recent chat entries.

Signalfire is a RubyOnRails application baked by the creative minds at NewLeaders based in Santa Barbara, CA.

Check out Signalfire! I think you’ll like it.

I’m a avid follower of PSDTUTS so when they announced the launch of NETTUTS I was really stoked. The family of design and development content sites is growing with every project these guys launch.

“Happy Webbies are like Happy Bunnies, but for web nerds.”

It’s nice to see the team over at SidebarCreative get listed at Happy Webbies since they’re all Very talented. Congrats SidebarCreative!

I’m finally taking steps to launch the new studio, CreationCloud. There’s a long company set-up TODO list, but there are also clients that need web design, web development, e-marketing and print ready creative work. Time to push some pixels and kick some ascii!

Please stop by CreationCloud once in a while and let us know if you need ANY creative “From The Cloud For The Cloud.”