After using twitter for some time now in our work, we often found it hard to work out what was the best application for each purpose. There are a wealth of apps and widgets out there for your desktop, browser and phone, but which is the best?

We created 101 Best Twitter Apps exactly for that reason! Here you can submit, vote and see what others thought of the apps you are going to use. See an ordered list of what others have voted on and submit your vote for the applications that you have been using.

Ever wondered how to make an iPhone Application?

Well so did we! Having never really even used a Mac, this is going to be some challenge!

Check out the 101 iPhone Apps Blog for more information

It’s that time of the year again – when sites go naked to promote web standards. This year we’re taking part and Best Served Cold will be naked on the 9th April to show the world what we’re made of!

You can find out more about CSS Naked Day at the official website: http://naked.dustindiaz.com/.

Keeping with the 101 theme – check out the best Google Android Apps. It’s a small start but we’re adding to it and have plenty of ideas to keep it fully updated. We launched the site this morning and have added almost 40 applications already.

101 Best Android Apps

Well, I’ve just downloaded and installed Google Chrome and it’s looking very good indeed, fast and easy to use. And for a web developer like myself there appear to be some very handy debugging and code checking elements.

And best of all, so far none of our sites are breaking in it, so that’s a relief!

Download it here

It’s been three weeks since we launched 101 Best Websites and we’ve been a bit rubbish at keeping this updated with news! Firstly, the site is going well we’ve had over a sixty submissions and over a hundred followers on our Twitter feed… Now we just need to get the word out some more and continue to tweak the site and continually improve it.

Remember, the site isn’t just a CSS showcase site, you can also submit your favourite DOM/AJAX and Flash sites:

Flash showcase on 101 Best Websites

DOM/AJAX showcase on 101 Best Websites

You can follow our progress and check out the new submissions on our Twitter feed and why not share the site on facebook or join the 101 Best Websites group and suggest ideas for the site.

We hope you like the site and will continue to support it, tell your friends!

It all started yesterday morning at 10am: Could we build a web app in 48 hours over one weekend, just two developers and lots of caffeine.

Find out for yourself:

101 Best Websites

Review of the weekend

The idea for the site was to create a CSS / Design / AJAX showcase site with a rating system to start with, several different categories and topics to allow for plenty of updates. The twist to the site is that we’ll only show the top 101 sites in any category and the 101st site will get the same attention as the 1st.

We started with just a basic design, an idea of what we wanted to achieve and plenty of ideas. First job was to create a blog to write up our experience – WordPress of course! (101bestwebsites.com/blog/). Next we had to get the registration process seamless, keep it simple but secure. We decided early on that visitors to the site would need to register to submit new sites – our future plans would mean that it would become more important as time goes on.

Then came the submission process – this turned out to be a lot harder than expected, especially with all the little extras we had planned. The breakthrough came late last night on discovery of websnapr and the screenshot technology they provide.

This morning saw a lot of progress, submissions were successful, a few visitors (but no submissions) and we now have the categories set up and topics getting close to completion.

Our final big push this evening will be to get the ratings system in place so the site can do it’s initial job! It’s been a busy, sometimes frustrating but overall successful and satisfying weekend… Not sure I’d do it again soon though

Find out all details of the weekend and what we managed to complete

Can you build an entire Web App in 48 hours?

We are going to try and find out!

Looking around at CSS showcase sites recently, we decided that there’s room for a more usable, functional website which takes into consideration the needs of the modern web designer/developer.

Our plan is to split out the categories into meaningful segments, such as AJAX websites, Design sites, etc, but with a difference, the top ranked website by our readers won’t be at the top of the page, the 101st website will be! This way, up and coming websites can get a look in and start building up their popularity.

The only two problems we have in developing this project are:

• No money
• No time

With that in mind, we’ve blanked out a weekend in our calendar: 10am-10pm Saturday the 12th July 2nd August 2008 and Sunday 13th July 3rd August 2008. One backend developer, one frontend developer working simultaneously on the project with targets set for every two hours, we’re going to see if we can build an entire web application in just two days!

We’re planning on using CodeIgniter as our frame work, on a LAMP system, possibly with WordPress to write a blog every two hours detailing our plans and progress.

Watch this space for more details and to see if we can do it!

*Edit: Due to a technical difficulty we didn’t actually get round to building the web app on the 12th/13th July… But we have replanned our diaries and this weekend is the weekend!

Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day – the first part is up now with part two and three later this week. Don’t miss it!

Dr Horrible

After years of constant development, the people who make WordPress have made a major jump forward with usability and functionality in their user interface.

Not only is it far prettier, it contains many improvements and functional changes to help the end user. According to Matt over at Wordpress dot Org:

…multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages…

Here at Best Served Cold, we’ve already upgraded several installations for our clients who have been extremely satisfied with the new release. A simple upgrade can be done for less than £250 +VAT, if you want to find out more:

contact us for further information!