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Announced in April, the new version of iGoogle that brings social applications is tested in a small number of randomly selected Google accounts.

The new iGoogle places the tabs on the left-hand side of the page and you can expand the tabs to see the list of gadgets and status information, like the number of unread Gmail messages. There’s a new chat feature borrowed from Gmail that lets you chat with your contacts while visiting iGoogle - that means iGoogle gets a sense of presence because you’ll know when your contacts are online. Since the chat feature will be enabled by default, it’s obvious that Google will be able to add options for sharing items and discussing posts with the contacts that are online.

iGoogle also adds a list of updates from your contacts similar to Facebook’s newsfeed: you can see stories shared by your contacts in Google Reader, recent photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk status messages, shared iGoogle themes and gadgets.

Another change is that gadgets have an expanded interface, called canvas view. Gadgets authors will take advantage of this to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, while your feeds can be read in a Google Reader-like interface. In the future, iGoogle will support OpenSocial applications and the transformation to a social site will be complete.

Google announced that the canvas view will be rolled out to a small percentage of users this month and to more users in July, while the OpenSocial applications “will not work in production until later this summer”.

If you use AJAX already for your Web 2.0 projects or are just thinking about it and need information, check out this one-stop source of AJAX plug-ins. In addition to free code that covers things from fish-eye effects for icon browsing to auto completion text fields Ajaxdaddy shows you the code, and gives you a sandbox area to get a feel for how the widget performs and to do some experimentation.

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CSS Web Design Examples, Tutorials and Other Resource

CSS Beauty is not only an active database for well-designed CSS sites but it is also a way to connect designers with potential clients and a source for web design and general aesthetic inspiration.

Web Design Inspiration is a collection of screenshots showing excellent web designs. It is well worth browsing simply for graphic and web design inspiration.

Web Creme is a very simple site and easy to follow on RSS: screenshots are posted, often more than once per day, of truly impressive web designs.

Unmatched Style is a source for businesses and designers who seek inspiration from particularly attractive, interesting and progressive web designs.

Design Firms is one of many sites on which you can find designers directly but your best bet might be a simple Google search or simply contacting the author of a design found through one of the above-listed design inspiration sites.

25 Beautiful Minimalist Web Designs shows the awesome power of simplicity when it comes to web design - more isn’t necessarily better.

24 Great Niche Galleries has screenshots with descriptions and links to various galleries that you might want to see for more web design inspiration.

10 Great Web [Re]Designs of 2007 features mostly popular and mainstream sites you may already be familiar with but also provides some useful analysis.

Best of CSS 2007 is another great screenshot-packed eye-candy collection of cool web designs from last year - worth bookmarking for future inspiration.

Love it or hate it Web 2.0 design has had a big impact recently. Some consider it a passing fad, others see it as the future. If you’re in the former category then this is the list for you. Contained within this post are 99 resources for Web 2.0 design. Click on through and find:

• Badges
• Buttons
• Rounded Corners
• Logos
• Icons
• Gradient Images
• Speech bubbles
• Background images
• Colors
• Navigation icons
• Favicons
• Charts
• … and more.

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