As a follow up on last week’s roundup of 105 Examples of Clean and Minimal Twitter Apps, I thought this week would be the time to share with everyone examples of extreme minimalism in web design, and how with minimal elements, when properly used, so much can be achieved.

The 30 Examples of Extreme Minimalism in Web Design are grouped in 4 sections:

• Web Apps
• Portfolios
• A simple Yes or No answer
• Miscellaneous

The intention is to give inspiration for the fans of minimal web design, and to highlight the effectiveness and diversity of using minimalism in web design, even if it’s taken to an extreme. Enjoy!

Related Roundups

• 105 Examples of Clean and Minimal Twitter Apps

Resources and Articles

• Minimalism – From Wikipedia
• Design 2.0: Minimalism, Transparency, and You – by Emily Chang
• The Anatomy of a Minimalistic Web Design – by VandelayDesign
• "Minimalism" Is Just Designer Speak for Laziness – by ProBlogDesign
• Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Beautiful Minimalist Websites – by VandelayDesign
• 50 Inspiring Examples of Minimalism in Web Design – by Line25
• 56 Light & Clean Website Designs Using A Minimalist Color Scheme – by SpyreStudios
• Roundups related to Minimalism – on TopRoundups

Showcases and Galleries

• MinimalExhibit
• MinimalSites
• MinimalShowcase
• OnePageLove
• Siiimple
• SiteInspire.net

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You know the drill; share them with everyone by adding them in the comments.

Twitter is currently the hottest web service, and along with it comes a large flock of what is known as Twitter apps or mashups. It took me a while before I was able to filter out the simplest ones out there, and I’m happy today to share with everyone the 105 Twitter apps I found to have a clean and minimal design that compliments the simplicity of their single function.

This roundup of clean and minimal Twitter apps is divided into 4 sections; Search, User Related Info, Status Updates and Messages, and Everything Else. They are inspiring, fun, and require "minimal" brain power to use them. Enjoy!

Related Roundups

• 30 Examples of Extreme Minimalism in Web Design
• 5 Free Online Twitter Background Generators
• 20 Really Short URL Shorteners
• The Shortest URL Shorteners

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I have previously posted a roundup of 20 Really Short URL Shorteners, but now I feel the need to list the shortest URL shorteners out there, or at least the ones I know about. Basically, the shortest domain name possible is one that is made up of 3 letters and a dot; the first character could be a letter, number, or a Unicode character followed by the dot and the 2 letters of ccTLD (country code top-level domain).

Finding such a short domain name is not easy, even though there are more than 250 ccTLDs to choose from, and many domain lookup services to help you achieve that such as domai.nr. For that reason, and to set them apart from the many similar services, I bring you this roundup of the shortest URL shorteners, hoping their existence will be contrary to their characters length.

Related Roundups

• 20 Really Short URL Shorteners
• 15 Domain Lookup Sites That Do It as You Type
• 10 Online Clipboards for Easy Text Sharing

Helpful Articles and Resources

• Country code top-level domain – From Wikipedia
• List of ccTLDs – From IANA
• VisiBone Country Chart an interesting map of internet country codes. (via Jacopo Farina)
• How To Easily Create Your Own URL Shortener With WordPress – by Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media
• PHPurl a free and simple script in case you want to create your own URL shortening service – by Nile Flores of Blondish.net
• Shorten URL – a useful Firefox Add-on currently supporting 100 URL shortening services by LouCypher whom I thank for bringing to my attention a couple of the shortest URL shorteners I didn’t know about.

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TwitterContd allows you to type more than 140 characters on Twitter. It also allows you to create Short URLs, and upload up to 100 MB of photos, video, documents and audio. TwitterContd splits the long text into multiple updates and posts them as updates to your Twitter account.

Data is boring, information is interesting! I’ve always used this statement whenever the issue of data is being discussed. No one is really interested in looking at a large number of data rows, or even a small one. As humans, we tend to better understand a particular issue when it is presented to us in a visual way, and in this roundup you will find 20 sites using data visualization that deliver information to the user in an effective and inspiring way.

Related Roundups

• 15 Hand Picked Color Palette and Color Scheme Generators
• 6+ Visual Bookmarking Sites – Online Bookmarks a la Speed Dial
• 15 Online Background Generators
• Top 7 Icon Search Engines

Helpful Articles and Resources

• Data visualization – From Wikipedia
• 175+ Data and Information Visualization Examples and Resources – by Meryl.net
• Data Visualization: Modern Approaches – by Smashing Magazine
• 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools – by Mashable

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When it comes to online color palette and color scheme generators, the choice can be hard, as there are many tools out there that offer such functionality. At one point, I was tempted to list the 50+ generators that I know about, but then thought, this isn’t about making another "ultimate" list, what matters most are the tools that offer the functionalities required to unleash your creative juices.

Color is the most significant factor that affects our mood and perception of any visual element, and making the right choice of a color combination is considered a priority, regardless where it will be used. This roundup is about the online tools that will help you accomplish that, 15 to be exact, packed with features to make the process of generating color palettes, schemes, and themes a smooth, pleasant, and creative experience.

Related Roundups

• 15 Online Background Generators
• 5 Free Online Twitter Background Generators

Helpful Resources

• Color scheme – From Wikipedia
• List of colors – From Wikipedia
• HTML Color Names – From w3schools
• Color blindness – From Wikipedia
• Color Vision – A color deficiency simulator
• Online Color blind Selftest – From Tjshome
• Tools to check accessibility issues – From etre

Know Some More?

You know the drill; share them with everyone by adding them in the comments.

ColoRotate.org is a new innovative tool to explore colors in 3D, just as a human brain perceives color. There are plenty of tools to help create and explore color palettes, and many of them are excellent in what they provide, but remain constrained by their two-dimensional display and selection of colors. It’s true, we did adapt to the limitations of prior tools, but now is the time for revolution, and ColoRotate delivers that with grace.

The process of selecting and exploring colors is simplistic enough, and is grasped by the user at a glance. The tool clearly displays the multidimensional nature of the selected color and how colors are related to each other, just the way our eyes and brain process color. ColoRotate comes packed with features that make the creation of color palettes and themes a snap for both experts and amateurs, and just like other tools, a community is there, to share and explore.

ColoRotate was realized by Michael Douma, the executive director of the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA), who describes the tool as follows:

ColoRotate mimics the way the human mind senses and processes color, making it an extremely useful tool that also happens to be engaging and fun.

Repper is a new tool that generates cool patterns from images. The service is very simple to use, all you have to do is upload any image and start dragging as shown in the following tutorial.

Via PicoCool.

If you like background generators you can check out 15 Online Background Generators and 5 Free Online Twitter Background Generators.

What governs efficient browsing is the speed of finding bookmarks, specially the most used ones, and the fastest way to do that is the ability to easily spot what we need. In the case of bookmarks, a snapshot of a website would be the solution, and that’s what triggered the creation of visual bookmarking.

Visual bookmarks are not new, at least for installed applications. The concept of visual bookmarking was first introduced in Opera browser, and it’s adequately called "Speed Dial". Firefox doesn’t yet have this functionality, but if you are a fan like me, you can easily have it by installing an extension such as Speed Dial. Google, on the other hand, recognized the importance of visual bookmarks and had this feature included with the first release of Chrome. They even made it the first thing to see when you load a "New Tab". Visual bookmarks definitely improve the experience of finding the sites you are looking for, and they sure look good.

Today’s roundup is about 6 online services that let you "speed dial" websites by visually displaying your bookmarks in the form of tiled snapshots. The services are similar in essence, and they almost perform the same way; a quick sign up, start bookmarking, screenshots of your bookmarked sites start appearing, organize them in tabs or tags, access them from anywhere, and if you want to share them, the option is there. The bonus site in this roundup is a service that lets you "see the sites" bookmarked on Delicious.

Final Note

It is worth mentioning that other visual bookmarking services exist such as FFFFound, imgfave, vi.sualize.us, and We Heart It, but they are mainly specialized in bookmarking images or videos rather than entire web pages. This is an indication of how visual bookmarking is becoming the service of choice for accessing, managing, and sharing what interests us on the web; after all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Last week I have posted a roundup of 15 Online Background Generators, and since then I’ve realized that many people needed specialized generators for Twitter backgrounds, something that was brought to my attention by many feedback from the readers, and they are right about that. Twitter has become the place for anyone’s online presence, and having a good Twitter profile page is very important as it reflects who you really are.

Many services offer to create your Twitter profile page for a reasonable, and sometimes really unrealistic charge, what we care about is services that can generate a Twitter background free of charge and make them look good. That’s what this roundup is about, 5 free online generators to make your Twitter backgrounds stand out, and there is a bonus, a useful online tool to check how your Twitter background looks in different screen resolutions.

Related Roundups

• 15 Online Background Generators
• 15 Hand Picked Color Palette and Color Scheme Generators

Know Some More?

You know the drill; share them with everyone by adding them in the comments.