TweetDeck fills that gap and more.

Simply add a new column using one of your Twitter lists. You can also create a new Twitter List from scratch. Hover over the title to edit this list.

Click ‘edit list’ to add or remove members.  You can even create a new list from an existing list (yours or another user’s list you are following).

Filter your Friends list to easily find people and then drag n’ drop to add to the list!

That’s it! It’s a much improved Twitter Lists experience.

Bravo, TweetDeck.

As with all design though, it’s not just a case of slapping something on there and hoping for the best. Designers are using photographs in striking and clever ways.

As the point of most web sites is to communicate information and ideas, it’s vital that the information is both legible and visible. So if you’re using a dark photographic background, you’ll want to steer clear of using dark text. That sounds obvious of course, but sometimes people get excited about using a beautiful image and forget about the information sitting on top.

Another important issue to consider here is that the photographic background has to conform to lots of screen resolutions and monitor sizes. You need to test how the image looks on as many different browser widths as possible, which is not always easy to do. Chris Coyier has a terrific tutorial on how to work with a resizeable background image with CSS.

The examples I’ve picked out below show what I believe to be a strong creative slant combined with sound design principles. Each one has been nicely thought out. There are LOTS of flash sites using this technique so I specifically looked for site built in HTML and CSS for this post.  So without further ado, for your viewing pleasure and inspiration here are ten web sites using photographs as backgrounds.

Lbi Lostboys. This one is quite clever. Each time you refresh the page, a new background image is pulled in from Flickr.

Lonely Twitters. It’s probably best not to look at this if you’ve just broken up with someone. I think it will make you feel more depressed. Nice looking site, though.

Gavin Castleton has a nice handsome/zombie look going on with his home page.

Jirnsum has a cool image reminiscent of the famous New York construction workers photographs of Lewis W. Hine.

Isaora, looking mean and moody in black and white.

The background of The North Face web site changes on each page. Rollover the small “I” on the bottom left of each page to see a full view of the image.

Jansport has a nice rough grungy feel and large background image.

Coba Hair products use black and white photography for their backgrounds.

Upstruct, simple and fun.

Frances Hand Built Bikes

Is this a style of web design you like? What other sites have you seen that make good use of large photographic backgrounds?

For example, yesterday @IsraelConsulate held a Q&A session via Twitter using the hashtag #AskIsrael. There were some very contentious questions and I think they were handled well by @IsraelConsulate.

There is also the Israel Defense Forces’ Spokesperson’s Unit YouTube channel with videos of precision-targeted air strikes on purported Hamas missile facilities and smuggling tunnels inside Gaza. So far 16 videos have been uploaded and there are more being added as they become available.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (or his office) is twittering via @Netanyahu (if you speak Hebrew).

Israel’s push into social media seems to mostly be due to David Saranga who Wikipedia lists as the Israeli Consul for Media and Public Affairs and credits with being the “first diplomat who implemented Web 2.0 governmental initiatives, including the first official blog of a country, a MySpace page, YouTube channel, Facebook page and a political blog.” It’s unclear if Mr. Saranga is responsible for getting the IDF YouTube page and Mr. Netanyahu’s office to embrace these alternate medias as well.

I can’t think of another time social media has been used by a State to press their case. For better or worse, it’s propaganda and lobbying on the public at large. But the difference here is the engagement in dialogue vs. the typical official statements and video releases.

I did a Google search on the #tcot Twitter hashtag to determine what it stood for (Top Conversatives on Twitter as far as I can tell). I was pleasantly surprised to see the search.twitter.com service featured in it’s #1 spot.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Herbert Simon, American Psychologist

For the foreseeable future it will simply remain a mirror of this site, atxryan.com. However, I may either start to promote this domain more as my personal homepage or create a separate site that would serve as my professional portfolio. Seeing as how I’m either too lazy, too busy, or unmotivated to update this design, I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Still, I believe this is a good investment for the future.