In this course, author Maria Langer explains how to use Twitter, the social network for sharing short bites of information instantly. The course walks through building and customizing an individual profile, reading and sending Twitter updates (called tweets), and building a network of followers. The training also describes how to get the most out of Twitter by following trending topics, configuring privacy settings, establishing a business presence, and tapping into third-party resources that make it easier to follow, send, and schedule tweets.

Extend your Drupal 7 sites with custom modules, which allow you to create everything from admin interfaces to forms. Author Jon Peck describes how modules extend your base Drupal installation, then walks through how to write your own module with a practical example featuring geo-positioned alternative energy centers. The course also describes how to control access to site features, create new content types, build forms, understand data persistence, embrace coding standards, and much more.

In this course, veteran author and animator Chad Perkins explores Trapcode Particular, an industry-standard Adobe After Effects plugin for generating particle effects. After exploring the menu structure, basic operations, and some key tips and tricks, the course tackles a series of short projects that represent the kinds of design and animation tasks that motion graphics or VFX artists can create, such as camera flashes, smoke, sparks, or even a flock of birds.

This course enables you to harness the diverse features in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom literally at the touch of a button. Photographer and teacher Chris Orwig shares the keyboard shortcuts that make working with the modules in Lightroom more intuitive and efficient, including ways to navigate the interface, minimizing, maximizing, and zooming panels and images as you go, as well as methods for importing images.

Whether you're building a web- or desktop-based application with Java SE or Java EE, many Java applications need to integrate data from a relational database. This course describes how to read and manage data from relational databases such as MySQL and SQL Server using the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API.

A style guide helps clarify a company's voice, look, and identity. In this course, Nigel French explains the components that make a style guide—sometimes called a branding guidelines book. The course shows the importance of the style guide for maintaining logo integrity, a unified voice, and consistent use of typography, color, and imagery.