Techniques Behind Modern Web
27 Feb
If you are going to start a business, you may have some ideas of your biz name and logo. I have no advice for the name because it is your business, no?
But you can try to create a logo by yourself with two cool online tools: one is completely free and the other costs around 100 bucks for true professional service.
This is an extremely easy-to-use tool. You’ll know what to do at the first look on its UI.

Just type your business name, select a logo sample and click “Create” button to go. I can say all logos it created for me look very attractive with trendy web 2.0 glossy style.

One problem is I could not save images from browser and I had to manage to copy-and-paste them to my image editor. Anyway, you should give it a try before looking for a professional service.
Try Smart Logo Maker here – Updated: This link no longer works
LogoYes provides a Flash logo creator which guides you to create a logo in 5 steps.
+ Step 1: choose your image. My choice is “HIGH-TECH“.

+ Step 2: Choose an Industry. I select “Technology + Science” industry.

+ Step 3: Choose a symbol. You can navigate through pages, select a category then choose the symbol you desire — there are hundreds of artful ones. I just pick a gear symbol under “Gears” category.

+ Step 4: Enter business name and slogan (if any). You can select (cool) fonts for your texts here. See mine:

+ Step 5: Layout and colorize your logo. Now it’s time to tweak everything you want with your logo like changing size/color, rotating text/symbol etc. After a few clicks, my logo has got a look as what I like.

Finally, step 6 is to buy the logo you’ve created. With $69 US (current price), you will receive every logo file you need for printing and the Internet: a vector-based EPS file, a high-resolution JPG file, and a GIF file. Use the EPS for professionally printed materials, the JPG for laser printing, and a GIF and/or JPG for your website.
For additional $30, you can create business card based on the logo you’ve made — highly recommended for serious business — and receive 100 free printed cards (you will receive your business cards as high-resolution EPS, JPG and PDF files too). Look at my (fake) card below for example.

Creating logo with “Smart Logo Maker” is a fun but before working with “LogoYes” you must know what you want to do. I don’t think $99 US is costly in comparison with price from designers while you still have all professional materials for printing/publishing. In addition, LogoYes retains the copyright to the symbol you choose and you can trademark your logo. Sound good?
Recommended Reading: This site recommends Website Magazine for 'Net Success
Don't forget to subscribe
so you don't miss out on future posts!
26 Feb
As you may notice, I've created a mobile version of this blog using service from WireNode.com. I'm very impressive with the simplicity of the service - it took me only about 5 minutes to do everything. Now you can read JustTalkAboutWeb DOT com from any mobile phone (optimized for iPhone too) via the link: http://justtalkaboutweb.wirenode.mobi/ To get more info about WireNode, ...
25 Feb
Mads B. Westmark and Jesper Rønn-Jensen have some great quotes for the agile project wall. The quote below is what Jesper likes best: "Small agile teams where we can show and tell - make working software and prototypes very fast in close collaboration with clients." And here are some other interesting quotes: "Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses ...
23 Feb
This is another useful JavaScript function by Matt Snider used for number formatting. For JavaScript being considered "the world's most misunderstood programming language", Matt tried to explain how number is treated in JS (read more here). Here are build-in functions of Number object supported by different IE and Firefox versions. method IE FireFox Explaination toExponential 5.5 1.5 Returns the expotential value of the number. toFixed 5.5 1.5 Returns a number with a ...
22 Feb
As the latest report from spreadfirefox.com, the Firefox browser has been downloaded over 500 million times by now. No surprise! The browser has around 17% market share worldwide and 150 million active users as stats early this month. Firefox has been my default browser for long time. 55.5% of visitors to this blog use Firefox against IE usage of 34.7% (see ...
21 Feb
A few days ago I wrote about how to use Spottt and adGridWork for free advertising. Here is the latest update on performance of these networks. Spottt plays nicely It's really interesting to see a variety of ad banners appearing on my blog, some are very creative and appealing. Spottt exposed the best performed ad after 2 days was for pud.com, simply ...
20 Feb
For a heavy JavaScript web application, one of the most important things you should do before making it public is to obfuscate and compress JavaScript and CSS. The reason to do that is obvious: your app will be faster and safer. When the web code is not optimized, it makes your visitors waste bandwidth and wait longer for the page to ...
19 Feb
Kontera -- in case you haven't heard of it yet -- offers advertisers and publishers in-text advertising solutions. After placing Kontera's JavaScript in your code, their system will automatically create in-text ads all through your site (I know the network after reading this post by John Chow). Ideally, the in-text ads should be created in post content instead of sidebar content ...
18 Feb
I've joined two ad exchange programs served by Spottt and adGridWork because I like the idea of letting the blog adverts by itself rather than via paid reviews or Adwords campaigns. Spottt Link Exchange I got Spottt's service via a post by Mike Arrington of TechCrunch. The service is part of the Adbrite advertising network, but is being run as a ...
14 Feb
Recently, I've talked about a new kind of social worm and useless/annoying Facebook apps, all are about built-in rival marketing functionality and unclear policies on responsibility of Facebook applications. In an effort to strengthen Facebook Platform policies, the Facebook Platform team has created two new pages on the Developer Wiki which are a must-read for those who want to succeed on ...