Readaloo

HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace

 

If you’re using your social media profiles to promote your personal brand or business, chances are that pre-made themes and watermarked templates just won’t cut it. You need a custom design to make your profile stand apart from the rest and convey important information about who you are.

Some of our favorite social networks afford us this customization, but there are a few tricks that may save you some time and frustration when creating a custom profile background. While none of these can replace the eye of a great graphic designer, they should help you get a sense of the layout you’re after.

---

Choose an Image Editor

---

To start, you’ll need an image editor. Photoshop is probably best suited for the task, but there are plenty of free alternatives on the web.

Gimp is a free, open source image editing and compositing tool that has many of the layering and filtering abilities of Photoshop.

Aviary’s Phoenix is another great free tool that is entirely web based. You can edit and layer images in a Photoshop-like environment right in your web browser, then save the finished product to your desktop.

Photoshop.com also offers a free, “lite,” web-based version of the popular editor.

Once you’ve chosen your tool, it’s time to get to work.

---

Twitter

---

A great Twitter background makes an impression on potential followers. It should communicate who you are and what people should expect from your tweets. Here are some examples of great Twitter backgrounds:

Dimensions: The column that contains your tweets and profile information will always take up about 760 pixels of screen real estate. What’s left for the background will be determined by the user’s monitor. Everyone viewing your profile will see it a little differently, depending on the resolution of their screen. A safe bet to ensure that your background will not be cut off or tiled at most resolutions is a 1680 x 1200 pixel image. The image resolution should be web standard 72 dpi.

Maximum File Size: 800 KB

Layout: Accounting for the 760 pixel center column, the space left over on either side will depend on the visitor’s resolution. The space at the top for the Twitter logo will remain constant at about 65 pixels, and a good rule of thumb is to leave about 200 pixels at the left for your design. This will accommodate most monitor resolutions.

Twitter aligns the background image to the top left, so it is important to focus your main content in that area as shown. The further to the left an element appears, the least likely it will be cut off on a low resolution monitor.

There are a few tools that may help you determine what your layout will look like at different resolutions. To quickly determine your own resolutions as a reference point, jump over to whatismyscreenresolution.com.

For FireFox users, the Web Developer add-on will resize your browser to fit common monitor resolutions so you can see what your layout might look like for other users.

Screen-resolution.com is also a handy tool for popping URLs into resolution-specific browers windows.

Design Tip: Don’t clutter your background with too much information. Because URLs are not clickable in a background, this space is better suited for logos, photos, or other clean graphic elements that express who you are. If you’re encouraging people to connect with you outside of Twitter, make sure the one URL in your profile links to your contact information.

Also, be sure to choose text and link colors that compliment your background.

How To Add It:

---

YouTube

---

A branded YouTube channel is a great way to identify yourself to viewers when they land on your video pages. Here are some examples of great YouTube channel designs:

Dimensions: YouTube channel backgrounds work similarly to Twitter backgrounds in that they must account for the fixed width of the channel content. The area that displays your videos and profile information is 960 pixels wide. Note that the top area that displays the YouTube logo and search is not taken into account with regard to your background. Your background image will begin below the white YouTube bar, so all content should be started near the top of your image.

Like Twitter, screen real estate depends on monitor resolution. A good image size to work with is 2000 x 2200 pixels total.

Maximum File Size: 256 KB

Layout: It is important to understand that YouTube will center your background image behind your channel content. This means that your important image content should appear just to the left and right of the 960 pixel center column. It also means that people with large or widescreen monitors will see much more of your image stretching out to the right and left of their screen. This is why it’s good to use a very wide image (2000 pixels, in this example).

Whereas your Twitter background should be focused as far to the left as possible, the content in your YouTube background should be as close to the central 960 pixel column as possible without going behind it. Again, test different resolutions with the tools above to see where viewers might be cropping your image and adjust accordingly to account for variation.

Design Tip: Because widescreen monitors may view much more of your image on the left and right, it may be useful to incorporate a fade to a solid color on each end. Then, make the page background that same color to avoid an unsightly “break” in the design.

Also, be sure to implement complimentary box and text colors.

How To Add It:

---

MySpace

---

Though MySpace has fallen out of vogue in recent years, it is still a viable platform for younger users and a destination for many bands and music sharers.

If you’re looking to make a statement with your MySpace page, a well-tailored background could do the trick.

Here are some impressive ones:

Dimensions: MySpace’s “Profile 2.0″ customization is actually very flexible and allows a few options. You can change your content size between 960 pixels, 750 pixels, or 100% (which wipes out the background entirely). Decide which layout you like best and build your background to match. The full size should account for large monitors, so something in the neighborhood of 2000 x 2200 pixels should work here as well.

Maximum File Size: Any, but best to keep it under 500K for quick load times.

File hosting: Unlike Twitter and YouTube, Myspace will not host your background file, but simply reference it from a URL. If you don’t own web space, there are plenty of places you can host an image for free, including PhotoBucket and ImageShack. Upload your image to one of these sites and paste the image URL into MySpace’s layout editor.

Layout: Again, MySpace is surprisingly flexible, and the advanced layout editor allows you to align your background against any quadrant of the screen, or center it. It’s up to you how you want to approach the layout. Simply account for your content column (750 or 960 pixels) and design around it. Then position your image accordingly. The best designs fit their graphic elements snugly against the content column so that they’ll be visible at any resolution.

How To Add It:

---

Others

---

The two other big dogs of social networking, Facebook and LinkedIn, don’t offer background customization options. While this may be a disappointment to some, many would argue that the clean, uniform look of these sites has contributed to their success.

How to fix #Facebook's new privacy settings

 

When logging in to Facebook Thursday, I, like millions of other people, got the directive to update my privacy settings to fit in to the new, "simplified," scheme.

But at their core, the Facebook privacy settings have not been simplified. Beyond the set-up page, Facebook's privacy controls are now more complex and more powerful. The new set-up page seems more designed to pry this privacy from you than give you access to the new, and excellent, controls that Facebook has put in place.

What gets me about the page is that it doesn't seem to be designed for the users of the service. I get the impression it's set up to get users to give Facebook more permission than they should, to put their private data in the public sphere.

It does this by organizing around its "recommended" privacy settings rather than by your previous settings, and by not giving you access to the fine-grained control that's under the hood.

If you accept the tacit recommendations on the page, items that you likely used to keep restricted to just people in your network or to your extended network will be visible to everyone on the Web. Data that will be exposed includes your wall posts and photos. That's what Facebook recommends, and apparently wants. Likewise, your political and religious views, per Facebook recommendation, will now be shared with your entire extended network, which, if you're reasonably connected in the world, will easily include people with whom you'd rather not share this information.

I understand why Facebook is attempting to expand the permissions it collects from users to share their information. The more information that is open, the more interesting Facebook is to people trying to get in to the system or to expand their own networks. And the more people use Facebook to define their social circles, the more potentially monetizable data Facebook has, and the more valuable and competitive its database is, compared to other social systems.

Moreover, the more public Facebook users' updates are, the better Facebook can fend off Twitter, which has a social system that is by default open. On Twitter, unless users specify otherwise, anyone can follow them, and all updates are public. Facebook's social graph has been historically closed: Friending has to be mutual, and updates, so far, have been limited to just friends.

With the new defaults, Facebook becomes more searchable, more Twitter-like, and gets more traffic from search engines.

In return for asking for this openness, though, Facebook is giving users something new and valuable: The capability to control who can see each individual post with incredible specificity. I especially like the feature that lets a user put up a post that's open to their entire network (friends of friends) except for a specific person or people. It's a great feature for gossips, or for someone who wants to communicate with everyone they know--except their mother.

But I'd like to propose to Facebook that it re-work its new initial privacy page with one designed to help users, not Facebook's Google rankings. Here it is:

By default, this maintains your current settings. It also gives you relevant, if simplified, options for each of the main content types. And, finally, it's not subtle about alerting you that "everyone," in Facebook parlance, means everyone on the whole Web.

Meanwhile, here's how to exercise full control over your Facebook privacy settings. First, blast past the new simple settings page. It doesn't matter what you put on it. Then go straight to the top menu, and under the Settings drop-down pick "Privacy Settings." From that screen you can select several privacy-related categories. The most important is the "Profile Information" page, which gives you very precise, fine-grained control over who can see what. This is the privacy screen you should spend time thinking about and working on. Skip the over-broad and poorly-designed new set-up screen that Facebook is now forcing on its users.

HOW TO: Use #Twitter’s New Retweet Feature

One of the best things about Twitter is the way that it allows content and information to spread quickly across the network from person-to-person. This happened for two reasons: 1. because Twitter is a one-to-many communications platform and 2. because it allows for content to be easily repeated. In fact, the latter led to what we call the “retweet.” It’s safe to say that the founders of Twitter did not initially envision this as a use for their platform, but the retweet convention organized itself organically and was embraced by third-party apps.

Unfortunately, retweets were messy for a couple of ways. First, because of the 140 character limit placed on tweets, retweeting someone else’s content sometimes meant editing their text in order to ensure that the customary “RT” and “@username” attributions fit. Second, because there’s often overlap in who we follow, retweets many times led to redundancy in your timeline as more than one of the people you followed retweeted the same content. So a couple of days ago, Twitter rolled out a solution in the form of a completely new retweet system.

 

---

Retweets: Old vs. New

---

Retweeting someone used to be a completely manual process. You had to copy and paste their tweet, add the “RT” designation, and the “@username” attribution, then click the “update” button. Some third party Twitter clients had built-in retweet buttons, which would automatically add the proper attribution and designation text. Many times you would need to edit the original retweeted text in order to make it fit within Twitter’s 140 character limit. (This was because adding the “RT” and “@username” text would often push the tweet over the limit.)

The old style of retweets also led to redundancy within your timeline. 

Twitter’s new official retweet feature fixes both of these issues. Now, instead of retweets being appended with the “RT” text designation, they have a special retweet icon. Further, they come directly from the original tweeter’s account — regardless of whether you are following that person. If one of your followers retweets User X, you’ll see that tweet in your timeline, with the icon designating it as a retweet and a message telling you which if your followers retweeted that tweet.

Further, Twitter has fixed the redundancy issue by grouping together identical retweets. You’ll only see that tweet appear in your timeline once, but the message telling you who retweeted it will let you know which two or more of your followers retweeted.

Is this good or bad? Twitter’s new retweets are undeniably cleaner and more organized than the original, manual method. Your timeline will be easier to read and less noisy as a result, and the new API means that third-party clients can build in native retweeting in a much cleaner way (some already have). Also, you no longer need to edit original tweet text, which means it is less likely you’ll anger someone by inadvertently changing the meaning of their original tweet or messing up the attribution.

However, it can also be somewhat jarring to see people you’re not following in your timeline, and the new retweets lack the ability to add commentary to retweets. In the past, when retweeting something, users would often add their own two cents before the “RT” text. Adding comments is not supported by the current implementation of retweets on Twitter (though there is a chance it will be in the future).

---

How To Retweet

---

Retweeting works a lot like replying to tweets from the web interface. If you hover your cursor over a tweet — in either your timeline or on any user’s profile page, a “Retweet” link will appear directly to the right of the “Reply” link that has always been there. To retweet the tweet, all you have to do is click on the link.

But then what happens? The tweet you just retweeted will appear in the timelines of your friends regardless of whether they follow the original tweeter. If you think twice about your retweet, you can undo it. To manage your retweets, click on the “Retweets” link in the right hand side navigation. That will bring you to a page with three tabs:

– Retweets by others – These are all the retweets by the people you follow. They’re arranged loosely by time, but the most retweeted posts tend to bubble to the top of the list. From here you can reply to or retweet any of the tweets listed

– Retweets by you – This tab shows all of the tweets that you have retweeted. From here you can reply to tweets or undo your retweet (simply hover over the tweet and click the “Undo” link that appears).

– Your tweets, retweeted – These are your original tweets that others have retweeted. From here you can delete your tweets. You can also see who retweeted you, and when.

While there is no way to turn retweets off completely, there are two ways to block retweets from from appearing your timeline on a user by user basis. If you block a user, you won’t see their retweets in your timeline, even if someone you’re following retweets that user. You can also block retweets that a user you are following makes from appearing your timeline.

To turn off retweets from a specific user, visit their profile page and click on the circular green retweet button that appears next to the “Following” message at the top of their page. Once you click on the button, it will turn grey, indicating that retweets from that user will no longer appear in your timeline. You can toggle this option on and off using this button.

---

What Twitter Hopes to Accomplish

---

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams wrote recently that he hopes the new retweet feature will solve the problems of attribution confusion, messy or broken messages, and will reduce timeline noise. Williams said that the new retweet feature should “make Twitter a more powerful system for helping people find out what’s happening now that they care about.”

If embraced by users and third-party Twitter clients, there is almost no way to imagine that wouldn’t be the case. However, the inability to add comments to retweets is an issue that Twitter may need to address, especially to appeal to the power users who often shape the use of the platform and evangelize it to others.

What do you think of Twitter’s new retweet feature so far? Let us know in the comments.

60+ Great How To Sites and Resources

Ever had one of those moments when you really wished you knew how to do something specific? If only there were someone you could ask…

Thanks to the social web, particularly niche blogs and expert-driven communities, it’s easy to find knowledge, insights and guidance direct from the pros, no matter what the topic area. In fact, online tutorials and how-to sites have been around almost as long as the web itself.

Here’s a run-down of more than 60 great how-to sites and guides covering everything from building a mashup to being more productive, creating a website and more.

Have a great how-to site that will teach us something new? Add it to the comments and tell us more about it!

---

General How-to

---

wikiHow – A huge collection of how-to guides edited by the community.

eHow – One of the largest collections of tutorials on the web. eHow is a 2008 Open Web Awards Blogger’s Choice winner.

How To Do Things.com – Find articles from experienced contributors on how to do just about anything.

WonderHowTo – A human-edited collection of video tutorials from more than 1700 websites.

Instructables – A community that creates tutorials on an enormous variety of topics, some practical, some not-so.

Expert Village – A collection of more than 130,000 video tutorials.

Howcast – Find how-to videos on a variety of topics. Howcast is the 2008 Open Web Awards Blogger’s Choice runner-up.

MindBites – Watch how-to videos or create your own to earn money.

VideoJug – How to videos for just about everything in life.

SuTree – A collection of how-to videos covering everything from beauty & fashion to language.

---

Technology How-To

---

Wired How-To Wiki – Get information on how to do technology-related things from linkbaiting your blog to surviving a nuclear blast.

The Java Tutorials – A collection of Java tutorials from Sun on using various components.

the How-To Geek – A collection of computer tutorials covering everything from protecting your children online to using different wallpapers on dual monitors.

How to Make Your Own Web Mashup – A short tutorial outlining the steps necessary to build a mashup.

How to Podcast – A complete, free tutorial that teaches you how to set up your own podcast.

HowtoForge – A huge collection of user-friendly Linux () tutorials.

PCWorld – A huge collection of tutorials for PC users.

HowToJoomla.net – A collection of Joomla () tutorials.

Screencasting: How To Start, Tools and Guidelines – A guide outlining why you should screencast and how to do it.

How to get traffic for your blog – A huge list of things to do to get traffic for your blog from marketing guru Seth Godin.

How to design a website layout in Photoshop – A complete tutorial showing you how to create your website layout in Photoshop.

Tutorialized – A collection of tutorials and how-to guides on a variety of tech-related topics.

How to design a website – A comprehensive tutorial on how to design using HTML and CSS.

How to Design a Website – A web design guide from About.com.

Good-Tutorials – A large collection of web-design tutorials covering Java, HTML, CSS, PHP (), Ruby, and more.

Video-Tutes.com – Free video tutorials for a variety of software programs including Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and MS Word.

A Beginner’s Guide on How to Install Linux Software – A basic guide to installing Ubuntu ().

PSDTuts – A huge collection of Photoshop tutorials and other resources.

PhotoshopStar – How to Photoshop articles and tutorials on a variety of different techniques.

Gimp-tutorials.net – A collection of tutorials on everything from photo manipulation to text effects in GIMP ().

Tutorial Blog – A blog filled with how-to guides and tutorials on design topics.

Blog Tutorials – A blog offering how-to advice for blogging.

Noupe Tutorials – A blog that focuses on web design and development and offers a large repository of great tutorials.

CBT Cafe – The Computer Based Training Cafe offers free tutorials and how-to guides on Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and more.

Niche Blogging Tutorials – How-to blog posts from DoshDosh covering niche blogging techniques.

---

Productivity and Efficiency How-To

---

How to be More Productive – A guide from the Blog Herald that focuses mostly on how to be a more productive blogger.

How to GTD – A small collection of blog posts covering how to get started with Getting Things Done.

How to Start with GTD – A basic 10-step guide to starting out with GTD.

How To Be More Productive – A very complete guide to becoming more productive, covering everything from technology to dietary changes.

---

Business and Career How-To

---

Inc. How To Guides – A collection of business guides for just about every topic.

How To Write A Resume.org – A complete resource for writing resumes and cover letters.

How to Blog Your Way to Small-Business Success – A short guide on using blogging to promote your business.

Startup How-To Guides – A collection of business how-to articles from Entrepreneur.com.

Score – Find how-to articles on a variety of business topics from advertising to management to starting a business.

How to Market in a Recession – A how-to guide from Harvard Business school.

How to Twitter your way to marketing success – A guide to using Twitter () as a marketing platform.

---

Mashable How-Tos

---

HOW TO: Build Community on Twitter – Build a loyal following and engage those followers.

HOW TO: Market to Bloggers According to Timothy Ferriss – Techniques for marketing to bloggers from the New York Times bestselling author.

How to Track 500 Business Blogs in 10 Minutes a Day – A great guide for all of us who need to keep up with tons of incoming information.

How to Manage Your Social Profiles and Create Virtual Business Cards – A must-have guide for anyone who uses multiple social media sites.

How to Build Your Online Brand – Covers how to use social media and Web 2.0 tools to create a name for yourself online.

How to Know if You Should Fire Your Social Media Consultant – A guide to some tell-tale signs that your social media consultant isn’t all they’re cracked up to be.

How to Develop a Social Media Plan for Your Business in 5 Steps – A simple guide to creating an effective social media marketing campaign.

How to Live Blog a Conference – A guide to live blogging preparation and execution.

---

Miscellaneous How-To

---

How To Meditate – A complete online guide to teach you how to meditate in the Buddhist tradition.

How to Draw Manga – Manga University has a great collection of how-to articles on drawing different elements of manga characters.

Sushi Eating HOW TO – A complete guide outlining how to eat sushi and sushi bar etiquette.

How to Go Green – A collection of guides to green your life on topics ranging from investing and hybrid cars to workouts and weddings.

The Storque How-To – The how-to section of Etsy’s blog covers all sorts of topics from cooking to selling on Etsy.

How to Clean Stuff – Tutorials for cleaning everything from old photos to ballet flats.

Lowe’s How-To Library – A huge collection of home improvement how-tos.

PopPhoto HowTo Archive – A collection of photography how-to articles covering image editing, composition, lighting, and more.

How to Photograph… – A series of tutorials on photographing a variety of situations and subjects from weddings to urban landscapes to zoos.

How to #Jailbreak your #iPhone to #OS 3.0

How to jailbreak the #iPhone 3GS?

 

 

Here’s how to do it.

1. Find a Windows PC.
2. Install iTunes.
3. Download purplera1n.
4. Run purplera1n.
5. Wait.
6. Run Freeze.
7. Reboot.

Now you’re jailbroken. To run OpenSSH simply install the OpenSSH package in Cydia and ssh to your iPhone with root/alpine login/pass combination.