Here are a few useful web apps that help you do things like choose a color palette or add vendor prefixes to your CSS.

Sprite Cow

Sprite Cow makes it easy to get the background-position offset and element dimensions for an item in your CSS sprite. It’s so much easier than trying to figure it out in Photoshop. All you have to do in most cases is click the part of the sprite you want to use and copy the coordinates into your CSS. Most of the time, it does an excellent job at selecting the relevant pixels.

Prefixr

Vendor prefixes enable browser to implement experimental versions of new CSS properties without causing compatibility issues down the line, once they become standardizes. Unfortunately, while current versions of some browsers (like Firefox) may understand border-radius and box-shadow, or whatever CSS3 property you’re trying to use, older versions require the vendor prefix still. That’s where Prefixr comes in. Paste your CSS in, and it will automatically ensure that your styles work in as many browsers as possible. It even handles the weird filter syntax that older versions of IE use. There are also numerous plugins to integrate it with your favorite text editor.

Kuler

Adobe’s Kuler is a tool for creating and sharing color palettes. Its editor lets you choose between Analogous, Triad, Complementary, Compond, Shades and free-form modes.

ColourLovers

ColourLovers works off a similar concept to that of Kuler. It’s all about creating, discovering and saving color palettes. ColourLovers has the advantage of a nice API, and integration with the ColorSchemer app for iOS.

JSFiddle

Need to brainstorm a bit of CSS or JavaScript? Or maybe you want to share something clever you did? JSFiddle is an interactive pastebin site that shows a live preview of any modifications you make, and it keeps multiple revisions as you save your changes.

Noise Texture Generator

Noise Texture Generator does what it says on the box: it makes textured images alike to what you would get using the Noise filter in Photoshop, but with an instant preview.

What The Font?

What The Font? attempts to use its powerful magic to identify the font used in an image you upload. It gives you a list of matches that may or may not be what you’re looking for, but are usually pretty close if not the exact font.

AjaxLoad

Need a throbber graphic for part of your website? AjaxLoad has a ton of options, and it can tailor them to fit your color scheme. They’re all animated GIFs, of course, since support for animated PNG images never took off.

Stripe Generator

Stripe Generator is along similar lines as Noise Generator. It’s an easy way to make stripey background patterns.

ConvertICO

Favicons are usually a pain to make, since Photoshop and most other popular image editors won’t export to the ICO container format by default. ConvertICO is a simple tool that accepts an upload of a PNG graphic and quickly converts it to ICO.

Starting today (Wednesday, Aug. 11th), all new customers will be required to select a plan upon signing-up — including choosing the free option if desired.

The following week, current HootSuite users will be asked to choose a package with the help of a migration wizard to help you choose the best plan.

For all customers (aside from Enterprise-class accounts), we’ll include a 30-day free trial. This period will allow you to experiment and discover which plan best fits your needs. Again, we’ll continue to offer a free plan for those of you who don’t require advanced options at this time.

The paid plans start at $4.99/month and quickly get pricey. I think their tier structure could have used some more work, such as allowing more collaborators and for cheaper plans, but maybe that’s just me…

Personally, I would use the design during development, and swap it out with a unique theme when all the coding work is done. But if you’re trying to put together a web app, and you don’t have any design know-how, and don’t want to hire a designer, you could conceivably use this. I’d just recommend customizing it a bit, so it doesn’t look like you have the exact same template as someone else.

You can view a live demo of the template, and download it here.

I just got a new Apple MacBook, as I’ve Twittered about, told everyone I know on Facebook, and all but made a T-Shirt that says “I have a MacBook.” I’ve been trying to adjust to the new (to me) platform, and adapt my daily patterns.

Surprisingly, I haven’t had many problems with old Windows habits (e.g. reaching to the top-right corner to close a window). My biggest issues have been with software. Some familiar applications have Mac versions thankfully. (If there wasn’t a Mac version of Firefox, I wouldn’t have been so quick to want to get a Mac.)

I had to find some Mac equivalents of some programs, like NeoOffice to replace Microsoft Works, and CyberDuck to replace FileZilla. (FileZilla is great, and there is a Mac version, but it behaves oddly, lacking a normal window, and extending down from the menu bar.)

Luckily, my transition (so far) has been easier than it could have been, thanks to web apps. I use Google Apps for my email, so I didn’t have to migrate my email to Apple’s Mail App. I use my own MyNT RSS reader for my feed reading needs, so, again, I was okay there. (On a related note, MyNT 2.0 is in the works, and it will be a couple lightyears ahead of the current iteration.) If not for MyNT, I’d have had to find a good feed aggregator for Mac OS X, and then muck around with CSV or OPML export/import to move my feeds over.

Storing data online definitely has its advantages. While you don’t want to store everything online (I’d hesitate to trust all of my documents—especially documents with private information—to Google Docs), some things definitely do work well as web apps. If you’ve ever used GMail or Bloglines between several computers before, you definitely appreciate the power of keeping some things online.

How does this apply to you? If you use web apps for some of your key applications, like email, RSS, calendar, you can work from anywhere. Most blogging software is generally web-based, so you’re all set there. Here’s an example:

• I use GMail (Google Apps if you want to be technical) for my email, so I can check my messages at any computer that has a reasonably modern browser.
• I use MyNT for reading my feeds, so I can keep up on news from anywhere.
• I blog with WordPress’s built-in editor, so I don’t have to worry about anything there.
• I use Google Calendar to store events important to my blog, such as the dates ads need to be taken down, and when I need to do some sort of maintenance.

So I can theoretically run my website with any computer that has a web browser, and preferably an FTP client, though that’s not necessarily something I need every single day (unless I’m doing some design or coding work on a site).

Web apps make sure you’re prepared if you need to work from another computer for a day, and they will make things easier the next time you move to a new computer.