I’m sure it won’t take Apple long to get Google to remove it from the Market so hurry and get yours while it lasts.

If you’re a professional web designer you may already know this, but how many of you think that you need to stick to Arial, Helvetica or Times as the only fonts you can use on your web pages without using a graphic to display them? Just what I thought,  most of you. Well, I’ve got some good news for you. That’s old news.

It is possible to use a wide variety of fonts on your web pages, even some really fancy or funky ones for headlines if you want, and it’s really not difficult at all. The trick is embedding the font directly into the code for your page using CSS. Woah, don’t get scared, I’m about to show you just how easy it is and although there are a couple of ways to do this that require you to purchase the fonts, we have Google to thank for making it incredibly easy and free.

First I’ll briefly mention two websites where you’ll need to pay for the fonts you use. Typekit and Fontdeck are both excellent services but both require you to pay an annual fee to license the fonts you use although both offer a very large selection of fonts to choose from.

Okay, now back to Google and the free way to do it. Currently the Google Font Directory offers only 18 different open source fonts but each comes with several variations and I’m sure they’ll be adding more soon. Adding a font to your web page isn’t difficult but you will need to add a bit of code that Google provides when you select a font to the code for your page if you use the Google Font Directory and you’ll also need to know enough CSS to modify the font weight, size, letter spacing, etc. BUT here’s the really exciting part.

Google just launched a new service called the Font Previewer that gives you an on screen preview of a sample phrase for the font you want as well as controls to adjust the size, letter and word spacing, font weight, and the variant (bold, italic) — you can even add a drop shadow if you want — and then provides you with dynamically generated code as you make the adjustments. Once you’re happy with the results you simply copy the block of code and paste it into the code for your page and you’re done. No knowledge of CSS required.

Now that you know how easy it is to make your website distinct by using fonts besides the usual standard ones, do me one favor. Don’t go crazy and use a script font for your body text.

The Degasesque effect in this photo is just a happy accident and a combination of the low lighting and being shot on a cell phone. I took the photo because I thought it was cute the way the shorter girl on the left is standing on point to see over the railing and the look of excitement on the face of the child asking for an autograph is priceless.

David Perez told his employer, advertising agency Leo Burnett, that he would do anything to go to the Cannes Advertising Festival and they took him up on it. Starting on June 20, David will don a pair of webcam glasses and head to Cannes, France and while he’s there, he’ll do anything you tell him to do through his Twitter account. One would logically assume that there are some things he won’t do, but who knows, maybe he likes eating oysters while standing on his head naked in a fountain.

If you want to get in on the fun you can follow David’s Twitter account here and watch him make a complete ass of himself at DavidonDemand.com.

If you like to post screenshots of your or other’s Twitter tweets on your blog here’s a trick that will save you a little time. Instead of taking a screenshot, editing the image, and then uploading it to your server, all you need to do is change a few letters in the URL of the tweet.

To create the above screenshot of the one of my Twitter posts I simple changed this:

http://twitter.com/hughbriss/status/16177752718

to this:

http://chen.vc/hughbriss/status/16177752718

Thanks to Haochi Chen for this little time saver.

Here’s another somewhat more complicated option, but this one preserves any links so they are still clickable, just like the original tweet.

1. 
   hughbriss Nice to hear that @Starbucks is finally going to offer FREE WiFi. Even though I have a gold card and don’t need it. 14 Jun 2010 from TweetDeck

To create this style I used QuoteURL. You simply paste the url of a specific tweet into the text field, click save and then copy and paste the generated code into your post.

There are plenty of written and video tutorials on the best ways to use Twitter but Twitter now has their own official video tutorials and they’re posting them on their brand new YouTube channel.

I received an email from Twitter this morning letting me know that I’d recently changed the email address associated with my account and asking me to click a link to confirm. Only one problem. I didn’t recently change the email address associated with my account. Fortunately, I’m savvy enough to be suspicious about any email I receive, even when they look legit, but how many people get emails like this and automatically click the attached link, exposing themselves to all manner of viruses, providing their passwords to thieves, or setting themselves up for identity theft? The sad truth is it’s lots of people.

Here’s a screen shot showing the exact email I received and at first glance I’m sure the average computer user would assume it was actually from Twitter. After you take a look, I’ll point out a couple obvious and a couple not so obvious ways to tell that this email didn’t really come from Twitter.

Although the first clue seems obvious because it’s glaring in my screen shot, the problem is that many email clients don’t show the full header information and many people would not see this one. Take a look at who the email is from. I’m pretty sure no one from Twitter would be sending an email using JACLYNLANG@hotmail.com as their email address.

The next clue is the subject, “Confirm the password twitter”. Maybe “Confirm your Twitter password” would have made more sense and sounded like it came from Twitter instead of someone with poor English skills? And they do it again after the Hi Hugh part, “Confirm the password twitter, click this link:”

The last obvious clue is pretty funny, but they used a Hotmail account to send the email and Hotmail adds a tagline to the bottom of the email asking me to sign up. Does anyone actually believe that Twitter would send an email using Hotmail?

Finally, the best clue of all, and it’s not immediately obvious, and that’s the URL. It looks legit, doesn’t it? It shows that it indeed came from twitter.com, right? Wrong. Depending on what email client you use, finding out what email address this was actually sent from may or may not be a simple matter. For me, I simply need to mouse over the URL and my program pops up a window alerting me that the actual host is different from the listed host.

Fewer people would be affected by phishing emails if they just took the time to think before they clicked a link out of reflex, but as long as most computer users continue to do things out of habit or remain ignorant to the simple things they need to do to protect themselves, this is going to continue to be a problem.

Loic Le Meur is one of my favorite people and one reason is his constant and never wavering positive attitude. As the CEO of Seesmic, developer of both stand alone and web-based Twitter apps, as well as one of the best Twitter apps for Android phones, one would think he’d have a very good reason to be depressed right now, considering the latest news from Twitter. Apparently Twitter has finally gotten smart and decided to start adding functionality to their website they should have added long ago, and has also started releasing “official” Twitter apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones.

But, that’s not the way Loic is wired. Rather than moping around complaining that Twitter screwed him, he’s still optimistic about the future and will just put his efforts into developing apps that Twitter won’t be producing in-house. And who knows, maybe Twitter will buy his Twitter app instead of developing their own. Frankly, I hope they do, because I love Seesmic for Android.

If you’re serious about Twitter you’ve probably changed your background and instead of using one of the standard backgrounds, you’re using a photograph or some artwork or maybe even a custom background promoting your business. Good for you. One question. Do you know what your background looks like on different size monitors? What’s that you’re saying, you thought it looked the same to everyone? *Insert game show buzzer sound here.*

The problem with Twitter backgrounds is that they aren’t centered even though the main tweet area is. The backgrounds remain anchored to the left side of the screen, unlike most blog backgrounds that are set to remain centered no matter what size they are viewed at. Depending on the viewer’s monitor resolution more or less of the background can be visible on either side and most importantly, anything that’s on the right side might show and it might not. To illustrate this point I’ve created some sample screen shots of what some backgrounds look like at two common monitor resolutions and how you can compensate for what happens on the right side. The images on the left are as they appear at a resolution of 1280 x 1024 and on the right, the way they look at 1600 x 1200.

I’d like to point out that there is no perfect solution and even if your background looks great on any monitor larger than 1280 pixels wide, the left side may be partially covered on small laptops and notebooks, but to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, you just can’t please some people.

The image above illustrates a fairly common practice, which is to run a logo vertically up the right side. Looks great at 1280 but the image would be covered by the main tweet area on a larger monitor. The solution? Repeat the image so that if the first one is covered, the second one becomes visible. This is not a perfect solution because of intermediate size resolutions, like 1440, in which case you’d probably see some of both image, however, it’s an effective solution for most situations.

Some people like to have a photo collage on the right side. Again, if you line all your photos up so they look really nice on a 1280 wide monitor they’re probably going to be covered up on larger monitors. The solution is to include enough photos so that some of them show at any size.

The two examples above illustrate another popular technique of showing a realistic arrangement of items; strewn on a desk or pinned to a corkboard, for example. The important thing to consider when doing this is that the overall image is large enough and there are enough objects so that at least some of them are visible on any size monitor.

I used Chris Brogan’s background to highlight another thing I can tell a lot of you didn’t think about when you created your background or uploaded a photo. Many of you forget that not everyone has a big 20″ desktop monitor. Many have smaller monitors or view your Twitter profile on a laptop with a widescreen monitor which may have a maximum height of 800 pixels. By the time they add a few browser toobars they may only see 600 pixels or less of your image. For that reason I try to avoid putting anything important any lower than about 550 pixels down from the top of the graphic.

There are certainly many other factors to consider when you’re creating a cool custom Twitter background or picking a photo to use as your background but these are two of the most common mistakes I see. Now go change the photo you put on your background that shows you on the left and your girlfriend on the right so your friends know you’re still dating her.

Shameless plug: If you would like a custom Twitter background and just don’t have the skill to do it yourself and don’t have a graphic designer on staff, please check out Social Identities. We also customize Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr and most social networks and blogs.