I love to share good resources when I find them, and this one is a great find. Created by web designer Grace Smith, it’s a site devoted to finding and sharing “the best freelance related articles, tips, tools, guides and resources available online.” The articles are hand-picked and the quality is excellent. For freelancers just starting out, it’s a terrific resource. There are plenty of articles for the seasoned pro too. As we all know, freelancers never stop learning. By the way, this is not a sponsored post - I just think this is a terrific resource!

http://thefreelancefeed.com/

Well…I’m no longer on the fence. I’m really enjoying Twitter. I’ve made some great work connections and gotten to know some genuinely nice people. For anyone who freelances or works alone most of the time, it’s a fun way to feel connected to everyone out there. I’ve  received lots of useful, time-saving info from fellow designers and developers, and I’ve been able to quickly share info that helped other designers out of a bind or pointed them in the right direction. I’ve never been one to network too actively, but Twitter is, in my opinion, the most effective tool for networking and sharing information I’ve seen yet. Want to know more about how it all works? Check out The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein.

Since my last post, I’ve discovered a few tools that make “tweeting” a little easier:

Twhirl - a desktop client for Twitter powered by Adobe AIR that allows you to quickly view and post updates, retweet, send direct messages and @replies, post images to TwitPic, search tweets and more…

TweetDeck - Another Adobe AIR app, TweetDeck is also a desktop client that integrates with Twitter and Facebook. It allows you to manage messages, create groups, shorten URLs, record video clips and more…

TwitPic - Lets you share photos to Twitter from your phone or through the website

TweetPhoto - Another good photo sharing tool

WordPress Plugin - For self-hosted WordPress blogs, this plugin will allow you to integrate your Twitter account with your blog.

Ping - A service that allows you to post to all your social networking sites at the same time

Twinkle - A nice app for the iPhone and iPod Touch

I’m sure there are many more. Please post a comment and share your favorite Twitter apps with other readers.

If you’re not familiar with Open Source, read this overview at the Open Source Initiative, http://www.opensource.org/. In a nutshell, Open Source is a development method that allows for collaboration among talented designers, developers and programmers, and offers shared access to source code and permits redistribution under licenses that meet the Open Source Definition. The Open Source community is truly amazing, and this development method often results in applications that surpass their commercial counterparts in quality and usability.

Some of my favorite Open Source offerings are:

OpenOffice - I use it exclusively for all of my word processing and spreadsheet needs.

jQuery - This is a fantastic JavaScript library that makes adding really cool JavaScript functionality to your websites a breeze. Check out ThickBox, which was built on the jQuery library, for a nice way to display images.

Joomla! - I love Joomla! This is a terrific, very powerful, content management solution. It’s easy to learn and allows web developers, even one-man studios, to painlessly offer content management to their clients. Try the online demo - you’ll love it!

These are just a few Open Source offerings. You can find more at SourceForge.net, just one of many sites where developers post their projects.

While you’re out there collecting all of these great Open Source apps, don’t forget to donate to the Open Source Community!