If you’re unfamiliar with "Net Neutrality" and the current issue with the big phone / cable companies (Comcast, Sprint, AT&T) trying to take it away, take a look at SaveTheInternet.com. And better yet, fill out their online form demanding that the FCC protect the current free flow of information that the internet is all about.

"Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer’s right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider."

To find out which Presidential candidates are for and against Net Neutrality, this site provides an excellent reference…for every other issue as well: 2008 Presidential Election Candidates on the Issues. The video below sums it up quite well in a humorous way.

I’m not sure how long Philadelphia has been added to Google Maps new "Street View" functionality, but it’s worth passing on how amazing it is. As you click on the arrows and move from block-to-block, you’re really walking through a city-wide-snap-shot. So, if you happened to be picking your nose as you were coming out of your apartment the day that Google Maps drove by, then you will be there for all to see, frozen in time! If none of this makes any sense to you, here is a Street View of Standard Tap at 2nd & Poplar in Northern Liberties.

Snapvine.com provides a really cool blog tool, free of charge, that allows users to call a phone number and leave an audio message on your web site. The messages remain available for all to listen to, allowing the user to toggle through various messages. I can definitely see this being highly abused, but it is really fun nonetheless. (If an unwanted message is left, you can log into your account and delete it, luckily.)

Here is mine below, personalized with a photo. This shot was taken on New Year’s Eve after the Eagles game, so excuse the green & white boa around my face.

I recently spent almost two weeks dog-sitting at my parents’ house. I decided to digitize and scan a lot of old photos, and add them to my new Flickr.com account. Here’s a quick look at some of them via a Slide.com slideshow:

The Slide.com slideshows are a little rough to look at, but their service is free, and based on few quick looks at MySpace.com accounts, you can see that it’s very popular. There are various ways to display your photos, and you can import them straight from your Flickr.com account. You can then get a snippet of “embedding” code, as is done here.

Any web designer or who hasn’t tapped into Firefox’s free
add-on, Firebug, is really missing out on a great time-saving tool. This add-on allows your to edit and debug HTML, CSS, and Javascript on live web pages. Get Firebug.

Like many web designers that are more used to designing table-based layouts, I was reluctant to use CSS. Early on, aside from stylizing some text and backgrounds, I just didn’t understand it completely and thought it was too buggy to position and layout web sites.

At the University of Barnes & Noble, the place where many designers purchase their ever-growing education, I couldn’t find a book that explained real world solutions to CSS, was conversational in tone, and gave multiple methods for achieving the same goal. This held true for tutorial websites as well. Most of them claimed they had the ultimate solutions, and barely any of them explained the science behind their tactics.

Andy Budd’s book, CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions, really sums up exactly what I was looking for. He doesn’t just give CSS options that work great in one browser. He gives the best option that works on all browsers, work-around hacks that solve the problem in other browsers, and lets you know if there will be any validation problems.

With this book, you can download chapter samples and test the results in your browser. At $34.99, it is well worth the price.

Twitter.com is a social community web site with one goal for each user: to let everyone know what you are up to at any given moment. Daily routines, from the dull to the exciting, can now be displayed in a limited text description, available for all to see.

Unlike MySpace.com, Twitter is not about blinging up your site. The sole tiny photo associated with your account, along with a customizable background, is the only graphical element that you can provide.

It’s amazing that people actually have time for Twitter at all. I find most people are chasing the clock with a “to do” list, and can barely follow it, let alone post to the world what they are doing. I do find that Twitter is a good way of putting your lifestyle under a microscope. If you were forced to add an entry every two hours, it might reveal patterns in your life that you really don’t want to know about, but want to fix. Whether you embellish or keep your entries bluntly true is up to you, but I find that this is a tool for people that have way too much time on their hands or simply can’t get enough web exposure.

A cool option, though, is that you can embed some code onto your website and have the latest Twitter entries appear there.

Through the U.K. produced Practical Web Design magazine, I discovered
a great Web Advice site called Boagworld.com.

This site features Paul Boag’s weekly topical podcast on all sorts of web design issues, as well as some great interviews with the leaders in web design. The
podcast is very conversational, laidback, and fun, truly intended for the web designer that is not a developer, but is looking to master Web Standards, XHTML, CSS and utilize great new Web 2.0 type of tools that are available. (I find myself talking in a British accent after many listens!)

If you’re a web designer that is looking for an interactive outlet filled with great resources, then you have got to check out Boagworld.com. Detailed coding talk, for the most part, is omitted, and designers of all skill-sets will find it very useful.

Found an MP3 streaming tool called “Playtagger” that is truly awesome. You just put a Javascript link anywhere within your HTML, and it turns your MP3 links into instant streaming players. A blue “play” icon appears next to the link automatically.

Here’s an example. Press the blue “play” button.

“Saint Germain Blues” by Carl Franke

Get Playtagger here:
http://del.icio.us/help/playtagger