Twitter recently updated their search feature, you can view it at http://search.twitter.com. It works pretty well, just type in your search terms and you will be given the latest tweets that match your terms.

I found today that it can be a great tool to find freelance jobs, you can use a similar query to find what you are looking for; http://search.twitter.com/search?q=freelance+web. You could probably spend an hour tweaking your search to find 20+ people to follow, some are automated feeds that just display jobs/gigs and some are people posting jobs. Either way, it can be a nice automated way to find freelance work, after you set it up.

Here are a few twitter profiles that you can follow to help get you started:

• http://twitter.com/keyfreelance
• http://twitter.com/coroflot
• http://twitter.com/Web_Design_Jobs
• http://twitter.com/Joblighted

I read last week from a NY Times article that despite the recession Amazon.com had a break through month with 6.3 million orders on December 15th, which translates to 73 items each second. Last year they had 5.4 million orders on December 10th.

Amazon.com has really transformed their business, from selling their own inventory, to adding a marketplace of many different stores. This is what really sets them apart from their competitors, by being able to offer so many different products and prices. For Christmas, I ordered a gift on amazon.com which was $11.00, elsewhere that same gift was $22-25. The price difference was amazing and is what makes amazon such a successful ecommerce business.

A few months ago, I created a little script using the jQuery library which will add class="current" to tabs, allowing you to highlight your menu for you users. Its pretty basic, but it searches the URL, if it finds a match with the link that was clicked - then it add's class="current" to that particular tab. You can then use that class in your css, to make a highlighted state.

Here is the code:

Feel free to adapt and use this code on your site, I would appreciate it if you could leave my comments in as the creator in the .js file. If you are unfamiliar with how jQuery works, you can read this tutorial which will get you up to speed!

jQuery Highlight Script (52)

Yesterday, I received an email from Appcelerator, informing me of a new product of theirs called Titanium. Appcelerator Titanium is an open source RIA platform for developer desktop web apps, similar to the Adobe AIR platform, in that it uses standard, common web languages such as html, css, and javascript. That is what caught my eye, as I've read a few books on flex and messed around a bit, but I already know the ins and outs of html/css/javascript. Thats my everyday toolkit for building websites and user interfaces. I ventured onto their website, and watched a few screencasts and then downloaded the demos, which included a twitter and youtube demo.

After checking out the demos sourcecode, I was pretty damn impressed. I thought to myself, "What's next? How do I start? ". I found the SDK, but just the word SDK can be a little daunting for a web developer, I like to think of it as more of a WDK or Web Development Kit. So I downloaded it, installed it, and followed a screencast from their website to generate my first app. It took about 20 min from start to finish, and Voila! I had a sample app running from an installer. Amazing!

My past experience with Ruby on Rails also helped, as the setup of the app is very similar to that of a ruby on rails project. The terminal commands were easy, and the ability to create installers for OSX, Windows, and Linux were kickass! The documentation was also excellent for such an early release, I only ran into one bug on windows, but I think it had to do with Chrome support for my code, so it could have been a self-inflicted bug and not a Titanium bug.

One of the most desirable things about Titanium is that it has the jQuery library built-in, AWESOME! So I decided to dedicate 2 hrs to messing around in Titanium to see just how far I could get. Well, in 2 hrs I built a little desktop app that allows you to play 6 videos through a custom flash player that are streamed from the web. I basically re-used code from another project that utilized flash, jQuery, and html/css to see if it would work and how fast I could get something up and running. Its not anything I would release to the world, but it really opened my eyes up to how fast I could get something done and the possibilities that Titanium have opened for me.

I'm ready to sell my books on Flex, remove Flex builder from my desktop and go all out on Titanium. What does Flex give me that Titanium doesn't, and if there is something - then Im sure the guys at Appcelerator will be adding soon enough, as this is just a Preview Release.

So if you haven't yet checked out Appcelerator Titanium, I highly encourage you to do so.

Thank you Appcelerator!

Also, today someone posted great article on The similarities/differences of Appcelerator Titanium and Adobe AIR

Magento Tutorials

Im compiling a list of the best tutorials from the web for Magento.

Magento Official Documentation:
Screencasts
Magento User Guide
Designers Guide
Knowledge Base
Webinar Archive
Magento Forums
Wiki

If after searching through all of these resources on the Magento Site and you still can find what you are looking for, then check out some of the tutorials below. The best thing about Magento is the community, people will find out how to do something and then share it with everyone else, and thats what makes the software better.

Installation

• Screencast: How to Install Magento on Shared Web Hosting using SSH
• Tutorial: Step by Step How to Install Magento on Crucial Web Host
• Official Magento Tutorial: Installation via SSH
• Official Magento Tutorial: Installation via FTP

Functionality

• Creating Landing Pages in Magento

Customization

• Setup a Blog inside your Magento Store
• How to get products to show on the home page
• Featured Products on Magento Home Page
• Custom Category Images Listing
• How to add Shadowbox Modal
• How to create a new Magento Theme
• Bestseller Products in Magento

Development

• How to use Template Path Hints
• How to write a custom Module