http://www.jquery.com

What is JQuery?

JQuery is a Javascript library available free to web developers that makes it easy to add features to your websites, much similar to the popular Web 2.0 and AJAX heavy websites out their today. JQuery is a simple javascript includes into the head of your website, and then simply create a Javascript file on your site that reads the JQuery code.  JQuery.com has many demos and example scripts on how you can get JQuery running on your website in the matter of minutes.

What you may not know about JQuery

First, it has an excellent collection of UI (User Interface) components.  Learn how to make things move on your site, draggable, resizable, selectable, progress bars and more without having to use Flash.  Click on the [UI] in the top right of the page to see the User Interface features of JQuery.  (Note: make sure to add the JQuery UI library, when calling these functions).

Second, JQuery has an extensive collection of plugins from JQuery itself and the community of JQuery users.  Learn how to do popular effects on your site from the examples that are available to your in the plugins section.  Want to add an image carousel to your site?  There’s a plugin for that.  Want to add auto suggest search?  There’s a plugin for that.  Want to add tooltip boxes?  There’s a plugin for that.  I think you get the idea.

Here’s a (longer than normal) video on JQuery:

URL:

http://www.animoto.com

What is Animoto?

Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using their own patent-pending technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer. The heart of Animoto is its newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. It analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film.

What you may not know about Animoto

With Animoto you can create videos so fast and easy that it only takes a matter of minutes to upload some pictures, upload a song and click create.  Furthermore you can even add their Facebook application to use the pictures you already have uploaded to Facebook to create Animoto videos.

Here’s a lil video I have for you:

http://www.wordpress.org

What is Wordpress?

Wordpress is an open source blogging platform that allows you to build websites/blogs in the matter of minutes.  Wordpress has a strong community of developers which puts Wordpress on the forefront of simple, professional website building.  It couldn’t be any easier to build a website, than with Wordpress.  The community has collections of thousand of themes (change the look and feel of your site) free for download.  The community also has thousands of plugins (adds additional functionalality, such as shopping carts, advertisement, contact forms, and more) free for download.  All of this can be found on Wordpress.org.  To find the themes and plugins, check out http://www.wordpress.org/extend.

What you may not know about Wordpress

Literally anyone can build a Wordpress site in one sitting.  It’s so easy I put this quick video together for you below, starting with the very basics.  I walk you step by step, from the beginning on how you can get a website up with Wordpress.  You can build any type of website with Wordpress, whether it be a e-commerce (sell products), membership, blog, download, forum, or any other site you can think of, Wordpress can do.  It’s time to start thinking of Wordpress outside of it’s blogging roots.  (I plan in the future to create a post, outlining further details on how you can create Wordpress for a whole plethora of different type of sites, stay tuned).  For now, here’s a video of me installing Wordpress…