Web Design

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• Beginning Photoshop Tutorials: Start Here

  Tutorial Blog

  James Mowery

  28 Jun 2010 | 1:40 pm

  When you’re designing websites for a global audience, you need to be aware of cultural differences that will affect the way they are viewed in different parts of the world. You cannot expect the exact same website to be well-received around the globe. You need to adapt your websites to allow for cultural differences and make sure they are equally effective in whichever region you are targeting. (...)Read the rest of How to design websites that appeal across cultural divides © Tutorial Blog, 2010. | Buy iPhone Accessories | iPad App Reviews

• How to design websites that appeal across cultural divides

  Tutorial Blog

  Christian Arno

  14 Jul 2010 | 2:54 pm

  This Photomatix Tutorial will be geared towards the beginning user. When I was a newbie to Photography in general I didn’t even know the difference between aperture and shutter speed. When I was new to HDR I felt a similar sense of ignorance when I ran across certain terms related to HDR. I only began using Photomatix myself a few months ago but due to a pretty heavy immersion I’ve picked up quite a lot of information in that period of time. I’m breaking this tutorial up into two main parts. Part one is a very basic walk-through of HDR and Photomatix. Part two will go into…

• 40 Awesome Works of Art Made From Paper

  Noupe Design Blog

  vitaly

  3 Sep 2010 | 4:29 am

• 40 Tutorials and Techniques for Creating Business Logos

  You the Designer

  ronald

  31 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  Paper will never leave our lives, no matter how digitized we get. Its potential for beauty is celebrated in many designs today, whether in textures, layers, or other additional effects. These following paper textures and patterns range from the simple to the exquisite, from the crumpled and colored to the wrinkled, faded and nostalgic. Download as many of them as you wish, and we hope you are able to use them in some beautiful paper-inspired designs! Crumpled Paper Texture for Layers Download Source Dark Crumpled Paper Texture Download Source Schamka Download Source Old Paper Texture Download…

• 12 Logo Design Mistakes To Avoid

  Just Creative Design

  Jacob Cass

  23 Aug 2010 | 9:08 am

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  Bokardo

• Designing the Usage Lifecycle Workshop in Boston Oct 25

  Josh

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:29 am

  A quick announcement about a workshop I’m giving in Boston in October on the Usage Lifecycle. The workshop is for designers, design managers, product folks, and other people responsible for web sites who are struggling with creating a great user experience. The workshop will cover, among other things: How to design for the psychology of sign-up. You will learn four design strategies for improving your sign-up process right away. How to get users immediately engaged in your product. You’ll see how successful social sites get users engaged early on in the lifecyle. How to create…

• Dunning-Kruger Effect: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is Part 1

  Josh

  22 Jun 2010 | 3:45 am

  A fascinating read about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which to my observation is enjoying somewhat of a heyday in certain circles. I see reference to it everywhere…well here is an interview with David Dunning, the one who originally thought of it. “There have been many psychological studies that tell us what we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires and so forth.  We literally see the world the way we want to see it.  But the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that there is a problem beyond that.  Even if you are just the most honest,…

• How (And When) to Motivate Yourself

  Josh

  10 May 2010 | 4:18 am

  A great piece by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review about How (And When) to Motivate Yourself: I write at least one post a week. Does that take discipline? Sure. But when I break it down, the hardest part — the part for which I need the discipline — is sitting down to write. I’ll find all sorts of things to distract me from starting. But if I can get myself to start a post, I don’t need much discipline to finish it. This is my experience as well. I spend lots of time noodling over whether or not to sit down and write. I’ll wonder when I’m going to do it,…

• A good problem to have | Mike Industries

  Josh

  5 May 2010 | 10:46 am

  Mike Davidson rightly points out why iPhone/iPad apps are often better than their web counterparts. It also amuses me when people talk about two things in particular with regard to the iPhone and iPad. First, how much better some companies’ iPhone apps are than their web sites, as if the company is somehow so much more gifted at creating iPhone apps than web pages. It feels better because it’s designed for you to do things quickly. Most web sites are actually not designed for speed of task completion at all. They are designed to maximize page views or at the very least, time on site (and…

• Facebook Behaving Badly

  Josh

  21 Apr 2010 | 4:00 am

  The difference between Facebook’s public commentary on new features and the actual privacy implications of such features could not be more stark. Consider this tidbit from the EFF, Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information, about a change that Facebook made just days ago, on April 19: : “Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook’s privacy policy once promised, ‘No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any…

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  Smashing Magazine Feed

• Web Design Checkmate: Using Chess For Success in Web Design

  Alexander Dawson

  3 Sep 2010 | 2:49 am

    The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels — some philosophical, to a certain extent — between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess.Image creditIn this article, we’ll explore the relationship between the game of chess and the Web industry. We’ll learn…

• Showcase Of Appetizing Restaurant Websites

  Sam Wilson

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:54 am

    They say the first bite is taken with the eye. If so, these appetizing restaurant websites succeed in whetting our appetites, inviting us to a savoury next bite. In these designs, color scheme and introductory copy show vastly different aspects of the restaurant experience. Moody warm tones create atmosphere, vibrant greens underscore freshness, and earthy colors communicate a relaxed, friendly attitude.Because customers are increasingly using mobile browsers to make decisions on the spot, restaurant websites are doing a better job of communicating core information quickly.

• iCandies Icon Set: 60 Free Icons For Your User Interfaces and Apps

  Vitaly Friedman

  1 Sep 2010 | 4:08 pm

    Today we are glad to release iCandies Icon Set, a set with 60 high quality icons in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px, available in .EPS, .AI and .PNG. The set is designed by the talented folks from IconEden on a sole purpose of giving your projects a sleek and geeky style or provide crisp, attractive icons for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces. All the icons in this pack — 60 icons in total — are designed in Round Rectangle shape.Download the icon set for free!You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions.

• The Case For Open-Source Design: Can Design By Committee Work?

  Mushon Zer-Aviv

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:08 am

    In celebrating the merits of free software and the excitement over this radical networked production method, an important truth is left unspoken. Networked collaboration shines in the low levels of network protocols, server software and memory allocation, but user interface has consistently been a point of failure. How come the networked collaboration that transformed code production and encyclopedia-writing fails to translate to graphic and interface design?The following is an investigation into the difficulties of extending the open-source collaboration model from coding to its…

• Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: September 2010

  Smashing Editorial

  31 Aug 2010 | 4:04 am

    Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use some specific wallpaper for a long period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers over 12 months. And to make them a little bit more distinctive from the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you need to look up some date, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?This post features 75 free…

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  A List Apart

• Apps vs. the Web

  17 Aug 2010 | 3:00 am

  There's an app for that, and you're the folks who are creating it. But should you design a web-based application, or an iPhone app? Each approach has pluses and minuses—not to mention legions of religiously rabid supporters. Apple promotes both approaches (they even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store), and the iPhone's Safari browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 and brags a fast JavaScript engine. Yet many companies and individuals with deep web expertise choose to create iPhone apps instead of web apps that can do the same thing. Explore both…

• Good Help is Hard to Find

  17 Aug 2010 | 3:00 am

  Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to rethink how we approach this part of our site. Done well, help content offers tremendous potential…

• Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings

  3 Aug 2010 | 2:00 am

  Too many kickoff meetings squander the busiest, most expensive people's time reiterating what everyone already knows. If every meeting is an opportunity, why waste your first one? By asking stakeholders tough questions before the kick-off, and using the meeting itself to explore ideas and build relationships, you can turn a room of mutually suspicious turf battlers into an energetic team with shared ownership of the end-product and the kind of bond that can sustain the group through the challenges ahead.

• No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas

  3 Aug 2010 | 2:00 am

  You can't create what clients need when you're too busy saying yes to everything they want. As a user experience designer, it's your job to say no to bad ideas and pointless practices. But getting to no is never easy. Proven techniques that can turn vocal negatives into positive experiences for you, the client, and most importantly, the end-user include citing best practices and simple but powerful business cases; proving your point with numbers; shifting focus from what to who; using the "positive no"; and, when necessary, pricing yourself out.

• JavaScript Minification Part II

  20 Jul 2010 | 3:00 am

  Variable naming can be a source of coding angst for humans trying to understand code. Once you’re sure that a human doesn’t need to interpret your JavaScript code, variables simply become generic placeholders for values. Nicholas C. Zakas shows us how to further minify JavaScript by replacing local variable names with the YUI Compressor.

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  Tutorial Blog

• Photomatix Tutorial

  30 Aug 2010 | 5:21 pm

  This Photomatix Tutorial will be geared towards the beginning user. When I was a newbie to Photography in general I didn’t even know the difference between aperture and shutter speed. When I was new to HDR I felt a similar sense of ignorance when I ran across certain terms related to HDR. I only began using Photomatix myself a few months ago but due to a pretty heavy immersion I’ve picked up quite a lot of information in that period of time. I’m breaking this tutorial up into two main parts. Part one is a very basic walk-through of HDR and Photomatix. Part two will go into…

• How to design websites that appeal across cultural divides

  Christian Arno

  14 Jul 2010 | 2:54 pm

  When you’re designing websites for a global audience, you need to be aware of cultural differences that will affect the way they are viewed in different parts of the world. You cannot expect the exact same website to be well-received around the globe. You need to adapt your websites to allow for cultural differences and make sure they are equally effective in whichever region you are targeting. (...)Read the rest of How to design websites that appeal across cultural divides © Tutorial Blog, 2010. | Buy iPhone Accessories | iPad App Reviews

• Beginning Photoshop Tutorials: Start Here

  James Mowery

  28 Jun 2010 | 1:40 pm

  Photoshop is one of the most versatile tools available for the graphic designer or artist. Many people don’t realize how truly powerful the program can be when it comes to altering and enhancing images, but the fact is that most commercial images have been touched by Photoshop at some point. When it comes to using the application, well, anyone who has ever opened the program knows that Photoshop’s versatility comes with a somewhat steep learning curve. Fortunately, Photoshop tutorials are available for those who would like to learn how to use the program but need a little bit of…

• Beyond the Blog: Get on the WordPress Bandwagon

  Barbara Holbrook

  18 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am

  WordPress, long known as one of the most popular blogging platforms, has turned into so much more. With the release of WordPress 3 “Thelonious”, the platform really steps into its own as a powerful content management system for writers, designers and everyone else to create or manage stunning, cutting-edge websites. Most people prefer WordPress because it is not only is it easy to use, it’s totally free. You can host your WordPress blog on your own servers or use free hosting with WordPress.com. Either way, using WordPress to manage your website is easy—add pages, delete…

• 6 Tips to Secure Your Joomla Site

  William Smith

  16 Jun 2010 | 4:00 pm

  It has been a boom year for hackers and web hacking. Tom Canavan, Joomla web security expert, identifies an increase of greater than 600% in overall hacking this last year. Tom’s book “Joomla! Web Security”, a Packt publication, expands on the threats of web security. Hacker issues bothered a couple of our clients this year and if it didn’t do anything else for us, it sure kept us all on our toes. Hacking comes as more of an embarrassment than a true threat, however the results are damaging to intellectual property, brand identity and most of customer confidence. Hacking is a common…

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  Psdtuts+

• Garry Milne: Skating His Way to the Top

  Michelle Krasniak

  4 Sep 2010 | 8:00 am

  Like his creations, there are many layers to Garry Milne. While some of his images may have dark undertones, Milne is anything but. Here he talks about his inspirations, skateboarding and the importance of being nice to people. Mark Twain once said, “Clothes make the man.” If such a statement is true then we’re in for a hell of a ride with UK-based Illustrator Garry Milne as he describes his usual outfit as being a skin tight zebra print jumpsuit. That was quickly followed by the obligatory, “I’m kidding,” of course but still… So do I start with Garry Milne the person or Garry…

• Psdtuts Presents Exclusive Wallpapers by Jennifer Cirpici

  Emil

  3 Sep 2010 | 9:24 am

  Another extremely talented designer by the name of Jennifer Cirpici has volunteered to create two exclusive wallpapers for the readers of PsdTuts+. This months exclusive wallpapers feature something for everyone, on one hand we have a beautiful scenery shot with lots of bright colors, and on the other we have something more textured and rough with lots of interesting paint effects. So make sure to check this out, download the wallpaper and then view Jennifer’s other art. Exclusive Wallpaper – Breaking Canvas Jennifer’s DeviantArt Jennifer’s Behance Portfolio…

• Create a Graffiti-Inspired Illustration Using Photoshop and Illustrator

  Sarah Lyons

  3 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  Photoshop and Illustrator compliment each other in many ways. Today we will demonstrate how you can use them in tandem to draw and color a graffiti-inspired illustration. Let’s get started! Before You Begin Before you begin, it’s always good to do a bit of planning. For graffiti art, do some research and keep it in mind when you begin planning out your sketch. Use thicker lines for the outline, thinner lines for the inner details, and wispy lines for more defined creases. Step 2 Sketch out a drawing and scan it at 300 DPI. When you’re finished, go ahead and make a new…

• Quick Tip: Create a Realistic Credit Card in Photoshop

  Rulo Gonzalez

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:40 am

  In today’s quick tip tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a realistic-looking credit card using Photoshop and Illustrator in just a few short steps. Let’s get started! Step 1 To speed up the process, we will begin by putting together some basic graphics in Illustrator. Make a 3.5in by 1.9in rounded rectangle, then fill the object with a color or gradient of your choice. Draw some curvy lines as shown using the Pen Tool. Then go to Object > Blend > Blend > Blend Options > Specific Steps, enter 30 and click OK. Make two different lines with different colors. Select…

• Dried Ink Stains: 20 High Resolution Brushes – Premium Psdpack

  Grant Friedman

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:31 am

  Today, we have a new set of Premium Brushes available for Psd Premium Members. This set was crafted by Grant Friedman of Colorburned and includes 20 High Resolution Photoshop Ink Stain Brushes. If your next project calls for a grungy, stained look, then this set is perfect for you. Learn more at the jump! High Resolution Ink Stain Brushes This new Premium Psdpack Pack is available for Psd Premium Members today and includes 20 high resolution brushes ranging somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 by 2500 pixels. Each brush was created using varied mixtures of ink and water. This mixture was…

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  Think Vitamin

• ‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job

  Ryan Carson

  3 Sep 2010 | 9:03 am

  ‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naive clients. All web designers should be UX prosless than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneRyan Carsonryancarson A web site or web app should not be the result of a production line of people. A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Anyone else who is added into this equation is a waste of money and time. I’ve worked in the web industry for 10 years at three different web design…

• The Hidden Magic in TextMate

  Nick Pellant

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:00 am

  TextMate has become an essential part of my development arsenal over the last few years. When you first open up the application, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about- at first glance it looks like any other text editor. The true beauty of TextMate is the plethora of bundles, add-ons, keyboard shortcuts and tab triggers available. I’m going to go through some of my top tips on how to get the most from TextMate and increase your development productivity. Tip 1: Find Your Perfect Theme Getting yourself hooked up with the right theme is essential to a good days development. There…

• FOWA. Las Vegas. Baby.

  Ryan Carson

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:32 am

  Feb 7-9th 2011 Get ready for the best event you’ve ever experienced. Sign up to get notified when Early Bird tickets go on sale.

• Around the Web: 37 Signals, Apple, & @Beep

  Chrissie Brodigan

  1 Sep 2010 | 9:07 pm

  Hey there! It’s Wednesday, so this mid-week roundup is devoted to all things business and development. Some links are newsworthy, some retweeted across Twitter, and others just meet our “awesomeness” requirement, and regardless we hope you’ll enjoy them. Without further delay: How do you measure your customer happiness levels? 37 Signals built a little app “Smiley” for that, and blogged a good story. Write PHP without coding? Yep, and here’s how to do it. Why you might do it is up for debate. An introduction to the HTML5 canvass element Expand your world a bit…

• JavaScript Fundamentals: Basic Types and Tools [Video Tutorial]

  Keir Whitaker

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  In this video Jim looks at some of the tools that are essential in any JavaScript programmer’s toolkit. We also introduce some of the basic types in JavaScript, and how to create them. For more videos be sure to check out Think Vitamin Membership, new video tutorials are added daily.

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  Web Designer Wall

• Giveaway: iPhone Stickers

  Nick La

  26 Aug 2010 | 6:39 am

  First, I would like to thank everybody for reading Web Designer Wall and following me (@nickla) on Twitter. Today, I have iPhone stickers to give out to my followers only. I will be giving out 20 iPhone stickers (sponsored by Sticker Mule) with my illustration printed on it . All you have to do is tweet a message to me. For example: "@nickla, I like the Koi or Peacock or Phoenix sticker. #wdw_stickers". Winners will be selected randomly on Aug 27, 2010 and contacted by Twitter’s Direct Message.

• Flashloaded Component Giveaways

  Nick La

  20 Aug 2010 | 10:45 am

  Flashloaded offers Flash components that help you to build cool Flash stuffs without having to code any Actionscript. The components are very easy to use and customize. Just drop the component on the stage, customize it via the parameter palette, and you are all set. In this contest, Flashloaded will be giving out 5 components. To participate, enter a comment along with the component that you like before Aug 27, 2010. Update: the winners are 5, 43, 47, 57, 82, and 105

• CSS3 Media Queries

  Nick La

  18 Aug 2010 | 8:45 am

  CSS2 allows you to specify stylesheet for specific media type such as screen or print. Now CSS3 makes it even more efficient by adding media queries. You can add expressions to media type to check for certain conditions and apply different stylesheets. For example, you can have one stylesheet for large displays and a different stylesheet specifically for mobile devices. It is quite powerful because it allows you to tailor to different resolutions and devices without changing the content. Continue on this post to read the tutorial and see some websites that make good use of media queries.

• Free Ticket to Frontend 2010 Norway

  Nick La

  18 Aug 2010 | 8:28 am

  I will be speaking at Frontend 2010 conference along with a big list of famous designers. The event will take place in Oslo, Norway on September 1st & 2nd, 2010. I have a last minute free conference ticket to give away. Enter a comment in this post before Aug 24, 2010 for your chance to win a free ticket. If you are buying the conference tickets, enter "WDW" coupon code to save 10% discount. Update: the winner is #58.

• Themify Launched

  Nick La

  11 Aug 2010 | 10:23 am

  You may probably notice that I haven’t been updating Web Designer Wall for a while. I’ve been working very hard on a new project called Themify, a premium WordPress theme shop. It is a collaboration with Darcy Clarke, who is an amazing developer. Each theme is packed a framework and bunch of custom widgets. With the framework, you can apply theme settings, style everything, apply skins, and import/export the setting data. Let me know what your thoughts. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @themify.

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  Vandelay Design Blog

• 25 E-Commerce Websites for Your Design Inspiration

  Vandelay Website Design

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:37 am

  The success of an e-commerce website is defined by sales, not by design. However, that doesn’t mean that design does not matter. In this post we’ll showcase 25 well-designed e-commerce sites from a wide variety of industries. For more on e-commerce sites please see these posts from the archives: 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs 25 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs – Part Two 35 Excellent E-Commerce User Interface Designs 25 Creative E-Commerce Website Designs WordPress E-Commerce: 30+ Resources 37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers 9 Characteristics of…

• August in Review: 19 New Resource Packs for Premier Members

  Vandelay Website Design

  31 Aug 2010 | 10:38 am

  On August 1st we launched Vandelay Premier, a membership-based site that provides high-quality design resources and career resources. A lot has happened during our first month of operation, including the release of 19 new resources/packs! This post serves as a monthly roundup to display the new resources that are available for our members, as well as to list the new discounts that are available in the marketplace. Free Texture Pack: A few weeks ago we released the first free resource pack from Vandelay Premier. If you are not already a member you can still download this set of 4 textures as a…

• Tutorial: Create A Fun Ink Splatter Vector

  Vandelay Website Design

  30 Aug 2010 | 8:48 am

  Today we released a set of ink splatter vectors on Vandelay Premier and in this post we will be covering the process of creating these vectors. The process is not very difficult and it should be easy to follow, but it does take some time. Here is a preview of the final result of this tutorial. These splatter vectors are fun to create, and since the end result is in vector format it is highly versatile. Things You Will Need: A bottle of ink (I used black India ink from a craft shop) Paper (photo paper or heavy white paper) A straw A scanner Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Inkscape (optional)…

• 13 Ways to Challenge Yourself in Your Career as a Web Designer

  Vandelay Website Design

  25 Aug 2010 | 6:49 am

  A career in web design or development requires a constant effort to improve and to stay on top of new technologies and changes within the industry. No matter how much you improve or how many new things you learn there is always something else out there that can make you better at your work and improve your career. Fortunately, most designers and developers receive challenges on a daily basis in the normal course of their work, especially those who work for a variety of different clients. However, there are times when a designer should focus on learning and improvement outside of these normal…

• Effective Tour Pages: Trends and Showcase

  Vandelay Website Design

  23 Aug 2010 | 5:24 am

  I was recently working on the tour page for Vandelay Premier and doing some research on other tour pages to gather inspiration. I decided to put this post together because it is a topic that can have a great deal of impact on the success of a web app or web business. Looking at the analytics data shortly after launching Vandelay Premier it was obvious that the tour page will have an incredibly significant impact on the success of the site. When visitors arrive at a site that they are not familiar with the tour page is very inviting since it promises to help them get acquainted with the site…

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  digg.com: Top News

• Free Apple iPad GUI PSD For Application Developers

  5 Sep 2010 | 8:01 am

  Apple iPad GUI PSD is especially designed for application developers out there. You can easily customize it as the PSD was constructed using vectors.

• Blurry shot allegedly shows camera-equipped iPad in testing

  5 Sep 2010 | 5:17 am

  Purported picture of a future iPad in testing with a front camera capable of FaceTime video calls.

• Motorola Milestone 2 now official

  5 Sep 2010 | 5:10 am

  After a teaser video briefly appeared on YouTube yesterday, Motorola has now unveiled the Milestone 2, a GSM version of the Droid 2.

• Wikipedia Founder Says Apps, Not Paywalls, Could Save the News

  4 Sep 2010 | 8:19 pm

  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said in an interview with the Associated Press yesterday that paid apps like those found on the iPhone, Android and iPad could help financially troubled news organizations, but he didnt have anything positive to say about charging for content on the web.On the other hand, hes not optimistic about other micropayment plans wherein publications would charge users to access individual articles because at present there is not a centralized and widespread payment system as there is with Apples services (iTunes, iBooks and the App Store) or the Android Market.If I just…

• The iWatch Is Real: It's the New iPod Nano [PIC]

  4 Sep 2010 | 7:25 pm

  Apple makes computers, tablets, phones, TV set-top-boxes and a dozen other things, but to date it hasn’t made a wristwatch. Oh, wait, it has! It’s called “the new iPod nano.”

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  FreelanceSwitch

• Linkswitch #34: Finances, Style Guides, Press Releases

  FreelanceSwitch.com

  5 Sep 2010 | 5:30 am

  Blogging For Web Designers: Editorial Calendars and Style Guides A few years ago, you might not have pointed out during a meeting with a potential client that you maintained a blog. Over time, though, blogs have evolved from the being a personal hobby to a serious work tool. In fact, today, web designers are supposed to know much more than just how to design and build websites. Customer’s expectations have increased, and unless you are in position to choose your favourite clients, meeting these expectations requires hard work. Working For A Web Design Agency The most obvious job for a web…

• Measuring Service: Quantifying Your Experience for Maximum Impact

  FreelanceSwitch.com

  4 Sep 2010 | 5:30 am

  As you build your freelance business, you get the satisfaction of touting the work you have already done when talking to new prospects for your services. Demonstrating that you have experience delivering the services your prospects are looking for can make all the difference in landing that next project. Make sure you tally up that experience so that you can present it with maximum impact. Care to Have Your Gall Bladder Removed? A good example of the power of experience in recommending a service provider is surgery. If you are facing an operation, you want to go under the knife with someone…

• Poll: Average Project Time

  FreelanceSwitch.com

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:30 pm

  Over the past few months, I’ve been finding all types of new and exciting clients, with new and exciting projects.  One of the things that I’ve noticed is the variety of projects that are out there.  From quick projects – “The easiest $50 you’ll ever make” – to longer term projects, with multiple sections spanning a few months.  FYI – the $50 project was completed very quickly, the payment – still waiting! For some reason, I’ve always felt the need to compare my results with those around me.  It’s not to be competitive, but more to ensure that I am not leaving…

• Ask FreelanceSwitch #18: Job Estimating Tips, Pricing Quotes

  FreelanceSwitch.com

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:30 am

  In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at estimating and how to start charging for your work. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com. Power Up! Question #1 As I’ve learned from you guys, I always submit an estimate, contract, and deposit request before a project can begin. However, many times my estimates have been way, way too low for the actual amount of time I put into the…

• Goal Planning: Is There Life After Freelance?

  FreelanceSwitch.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:30 pm

  A goal without a plan is just a wish. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery You might have noticed it already, but I really enjoy living the freelance life.  The freedom and the flexibility that I now have allows me to look at things differently.  I may not have the security that comes from a steady paycheck, but as one commenter noted a while back, it’s unlikely that all of my clients are going to disappear at the same time, and I will always have the ability to go out and find new clients. As much as I enjoy this lifestyle, it’s not something I see myself doing for the rest of my life.  No, I…

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  Noupe

• 40 Awesome Works of Art Made From Paper

  vitaly

  3 Sep 2010 | 4:29 am

     By Tim Mercer Paper is a humble medium. It’s often cheap and you probably have some within 20 feet of you right now. Most of us just use it for jotting down ideas, writing notes or doodling but some resourceful artists out there use it to create stunning works of art. Often referred to as papercraft, this art form take the ordinary and transforms it into the extraordinary. Many artists use nothing more than paper to create anything from exquisite cut outs to the most detailed and realistic models. Today we present 40 Awesome Works of Art Made From Paper that will inspire…

• 30 Fantastic and Splendid Digital Painting Tutorials

  vitaly

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:21 am

     We all have our spirit of imagination from our childhood — we give a shape to our thoughts by drawing image on school yard, on a piece of paper or on a digital tablet. Photoshop, Wacom and Illustrator are beautiful tools that help us transform our imagination into beautiful drawings. Today we present useful tutorials teaching us techniques for digital drawing and painting. Digital Painting Tutorials Making of FunfairThis tutorial will show you how to make a funny character in Photoshop. Do you want to Play with meAuthor has created this artwork in Photoshop and with a Wacom…

• Beautiful Beach and Palms Wallpapers for Your Desktop

  vitaly

  1 Sep 2010 | 7:18 am

     We love to spice up your desktop with nice wallpapers, and sometimes with nature photography. It all depends on your mood. In this post, we’ll be showcasing Beautiful Beach Wallpapers. You’ll get to see the detail, skill, and dedication that go into creating these incredible wallpapers, and how they help fuel our daily lives with inspiration and beauty of nature. Beach and Palms Wallpapers Relax – Hammock Hanging from Palm TreeDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768 SoloDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768 3594 x 2527 James Bond Beach , ThailandDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768…

• Print Tutorial: Creating A Magazine Cover

  vitaly

  31 Aug 2010 | 5:58 am

     By Cameron Chapman Graphic design in a print environment can be a nice change for someone who normally does web design. It’s a slightly different skillset, but still incorporates a lot of the same concepts. Print projects can be an exciting new challenge, something that lets a designer stretch their creativity a bit and even recharge if they’re getting stressed out by too many web design projects. Designing magazine covers can be one of the most fun and challenging print design projects out there. Covers are so visible; it’s something everyone who sees the…

• Promoting Yourself To… GASP!… Live People!

  vitaly

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:11 am

     By Speider Schneider A friend of mine started an organization named “Creative Connect,” a twice a month get-together for anyone in the creative field. He said it was to, “get people away from their computers and to get them talking at least twice a month.” Mostly designers, programmers, illustrators and photographers with a spattering of marketing and management types show up and it’s something I look forward to attending in the light of day. Twice a month I gnaw through my own leg to escape the shackles of my computer and speak with real people…live…in person.

• 

  SimpleBits

• Back from vacation. But not really back yet.

  4 Sep 2010 | 7:29 am

  Back from vacation. But not really back yet.

• Ten Years

  28 Aug 2010 | 6:28 pm

  I’m about to head out on a little vacation, but I realized this Wednesday marks ten years of archives here at SimpleBits. Actually, there were a few other domains that came before simplebits.com (robotcom.com and cederholm.org). I’d actually been publishing short, frequent updates for a few years prior to 2000, either by updating a .html file by hand or using a hobbled together home-grown CMS built with PHP and Perl. Those old posts are long gone, but there’s about to be 10 years of archives still preserved here and that’s rather dumbfounding when I stop and think about it. It’s…

• "In the same way that a movie isn’t good because it’s in color, a movie isn’t good because it’s in..."

  27 Aug 2010 | 6:06 am

  “In the same way that a movie isn’t good because it’s in color, a movie isn’t good because it’s in 3-D.” - James Cameron

• Pixel patterns for Photoshop or Fireworks

  25 Aug 2010 | 7:14 am

  Pixel patterns for Photoshop or Fireworks: Handy set of pixel patterns by Naomi Atkinson in .pat, .mpx and .pdf formats. Beats drawing them by hand every time (of which I’ve been guilty).

• PaintbrushJS

  18 Aug 2010 | 12:34 pm

  PaintbrushJS: New from Dave Shea, “…a lightweight, browser-based image processing library that can apply various visual filters to images within a web page.” I’m salivating just thinking of the possibilities here. Be sure to check out the demo.

• 

  The Daily Report

• My other iPad is a Kindle

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:29 am

  The new Kindle has a lot going for it. It’s inexpensive compared to a full-featured tablet computer like the iPad; you can slip it in your back pocket, where it’s more comfortable than an old-style paperback; and it includes a Webkit browser. This last point is where folks like us start to give a hoot, whether we’re fans of epub reading or not. The flavor of Kindle’s browser concerns us because it affords us the ability to optimize the mobile viewing experience with a single line of markup. You can see this in action in the photo at the head of this article (published…

• Episode 18: Roger Black on web type and templates

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  1 Sep 2010 | 11:18 am

  Legendary art director Roger Black guests on tomorrow’s episode of The Big Web Show, co-hosted by Dan Benjamin and taped in front of a live internet audience. Roger co-founded the following new companies: Webtype, creators of high-end fonts for online typography; Treesaver, a platform that uses CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and the principles of responsive design to publish beautifully formatted content on any device with a web browser; Ready-Media, which designs templates for newspaper and magazine publishers (and attracts controversy); and Nomad Editions, a series of digital weeklies…

• HTML5 For Web Designers: The eBook

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  31 Aug 2010 | 8:37 am

  Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers is now available as an epub at books.alistapart.com. If you bought the paperback, watch your inbox for a special discount on the ebook. (To take advantage of this offer, enter the discount code in page 2 of the shopping cart’s checkout process, after you put in your billing information.) Also, be on the lookout for our second book, CSS3 For Web Designers by Dan Cederholm, forthcoming this Fall. Upcoming A Book Apart topics include progressive enhancement, content strategy, responsive web design, and emotional design by industry-leading…

• Announcing Lanyrd

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  31 Aug 2010 | 4:14 am

  No, it isn’t a Happy Cog project (it’s by Simon Willison and Natalie Downe) but we couldn’t love Lanyrd, the social conference directory any more if we’d created it ourselves. Lanyrd uses Twitter to tell you which conferences, workshops and such your friends are attending or speaking at. You can add and track events, and soon you’ll be able to export your events as iCal or into your Google calendar (the site is powered by microformats). Soon, too, you’ll be able to add sessions, slides, and videos. The site’s not for everyone. It’s for people…

• HTML5 Pour Les Web Designers

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  26 Aug 2010 | 12:42 pm

  Sacrebleu! The French edition of the ebook of Monsieur Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers is in the top five sellers in the iTunes Store Français. To answer your other questions: an eBook version in English is coming to books.alistapart.com next week, will soon thereafter also be sold via the iTunes Store, and will be followed by a PDF version. Get those downloading fingers in shape now!

• 

  Subtraction.com

• Freitag am Donnerstag

  desk@subtraction.com

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:26 am

  FREITAG am Donnerstag is “a breakfast lecture series” organized by the bag and accessory designer/manufacturer FREITAG in collaboration with my good friend Tina Roth Eisenberg, better known as swissmiss. The series is meant to highlight their new Reference collection of media-inspired messenger and city bags, and they’ve invited a few speakers — including myself — to give talks about the state of journalism and the media. The first event is next Thursday morning in Zurich, Switzerland in FREITAG’s very cool-looking Reference Editorial Space. Zurich is a bit…

• Print: An Interview I Conducted with Mark Porter

  desk@subtraction.com

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:08 am

  I came across this interview I conducted in 2008 with former Guardian design director Mark Porter and realized that I had never linked to it here. It ran in the December 2008 issue of Print Magazine (where I now write a monthly column) but that site is notoriously difficult to navigate. The interview is a bit of a relic of history now, as neither Mark nor I are still helming the design groups at our respective news organizations, but I thought it was still interesting enough to post here. Mark recounts his experience acclimating himself to the digital environment after spending most…

• Ars Technica: Delicious Library 2 Tried to Do Too Much

  desk@subtraction.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:24 am

  The publisher of the once well-regarded media cataloging application confesses that feature creep and a lack of follow-through subverted their ambitions for its second major release, leaving many customers frustrated and disappointed where the company had intended to wow them. “Let’s say, for instance, 80 percent of these features worked great. I’d think, ‘Yay, I did good, I added a bunch of great stuff to the new version, it was definitely worth US$20 to existing customers.’ But, that’s not how the customers see it — they see the 20 percent…

• Apple Blinks in the Living Room

  desk@subtraction.com

  1 Sep 2010 | 5:52 pm

  No one’s happier than I am that Apple hasn’t thrown in the towel with its living room efforts. After much neglect, the new Apple TV, announced today, is a step in the right direction: sleeker in size, more capable in content access, network savvier in its diskless approach to media, and — the clincher — more wallet-friendly at US$99. That’s a winning combination, I think. On the other hand, this new generation of Apple TV doesn’t appear to do too much more that I can’t already do with the older Apple TV and the Netflix Instant Watch-capable…

• Time Tracking Tweets

  desk@subtraction.com

  30 Aug 2010 | 4:41 pm

  Last week I asked my followers on Twitter if they could recommend a good application to help me track the billable time I’m spending on various client projects. Reaffirming the power of tens of thousands of similarly geeky compatriots, I was quickly deluged with answers, for which I’m very grateful. I had originally asked for suggestions for software both on the desktop and on the Web, but most of the replies focused on the latter. Which is kind of amazing to me. I remember entering work hours in a hoary old package called Timeslips when I started working as a designer; it ran…

• 

  ValleyZen.com

• Ambassador Bill Lane, Spirit of the West – 1919-2010

  Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

  11 Aug 2010 | 1:07 am

  I was deeply saddened by the news of Amb. Bill Lane’s death. It’s hard to believe his larger-than-life presence has disappeared. But maybe it hasn’t. As Shunryu Suzuki says in Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind: “Life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death…nor difficulty in life.” In many ways, Bill Lane is the same in death as he was in life. Around the Lane history corner, at Stanford, his booming laughter echoes. In many of the open spaces he helped protect, his footprints still linger. Most of all, I believe his presence can…

• Michael Moritz at Rosewood on Steve Jobs and Zen

  Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

  6 Apr 2010 | 12:03 pm

  “I had this extraordinary passport to go anywhere” Michael Moritz said today at the luncheon hosted for him today by Silicon Valley Bank at the Rosewood Hotel. Moritz was talking about his early days as a correspondent for TIME Magazine, and the significance of working there in those days. “Back then the dream of every PR person was to get their client on the cover of TIME…so everyone would willingly open their doors.” At first glance it is seems unusual that one of the world’s most successful venture capitalists started off as a journalist. But…

• 750 Attend TEDx Berkeley – Brains, Music and Wearable Computers

  Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

  4 Apr 2010 | 6:05 pm

  Yesterday TEDxBerkeley gathered world-leading thinkers, makers, and doers at UC Berkeley to discuss Doing the Unprecedented. The audience was composed of a diverse and curated mix of 750 entrepreneurs, executives, professors, students, and thought leaders from Berkeley and beyond. A stimulating day of presentations, discussions, entertainment and art sparked new ideas. To capture the theme of “Doing the Unprecedented,” Drue created an original work of art. Drue’s “A Small Step” is a bear in a space suit walking on the moon. Below is a photo essay of highlights…

• ValleyZen Reflections on a Fascinating Future Salon

  Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

  19 Mar 2010 | 12:30 am

  Unconscionable acts of many large corporations have become significant concerns of many people in the United States. Their concern have been further enlarged by the U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that Corporations can not be precluded from directly contributing money to political candidates or causes Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In issuing the decision, the Court invalidated some of the provisions in the McCain-Feingold Act. That act was intended to rebalance the political influence of people versus corporations. Mark Finnern, SAP Labs, organized a Future Salon to…

• The Zen of Arianna Huffington: Arianna says “Unplug and Recharge!”

  Bill Fenwick & Drue Kataoka

  2 Mar 2010 | 1:13 pm

  Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington is digitally connected in every way possible. But at her recent appearance at the Churchill Club, she challenged the audience to “Unplug and Recharge.” Here are some photos from the event. Arianna was most gracious in person. Before the event, she told ValleyZen that Huffington Post is beginning a new arts section and invited Drue to be a contributor. During the event, ValleyZen asked her about her book “Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend.” Arianna wrote this book when she was just 30 years old and interviewed nearly…

• 

  You the Designer

• 40+ Various High Quality Free Paper Patterns and Textures

  ronald

  2 Sep 2010 | 9:00 am

  Paper will never leave our lives, no matter how digitized we get. Its potential for beauty is celebrated in many designs today, whether in textures, layers, or other additional effects. These following paper textures and patterns range from the simple to the exquisite, from the crumpled and colored to the wrinkled, faded and nostalgic. Download as many of them as you wish, and we hope you are able to use them in some beautiful paper-inspired designs! Crumpled Paper Texture for Layers Download Source Dark Crumpled Paper Texture Download Source Schamka Download Source Old Paper Texture Download…

• 40 Tutorials and Techniques for Creating Business Logos

  ronald

  31 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  A logo alludes to its company’s identity in its appearance and visual impact; that’s how it starts branding. Seeing how important it is, we designers must not underestimate the potential of this simple graphic, and instead hone our skills as much as possible in creating and polishing logos, as well as understanding what makes logos work. These following logo design tutorials either show you what processes went behind the logos you see on the Net today, as well as guide you on how to create new ones of your own. Some even teach you how to make enhanced versions of popular logos, or…

• 40 Cool and Creative T-Shirt Illustration Designs

  ronald

  26 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  For such a simple medium, t-shirts are wildly popular nowadays because of the fantastic art and creativity designers breathe into them. Whether the designs aim to fool, delight or even shock your eyes, you inevitably end up wanting to wear that art yourself – and possibly inspire another art lover or budding t-shirt designer. Check out this very cool collection of refreshing t-shirt illustration designs; see if they don’t end up making you want to create some t-shirt designs with attitude yourself! View Source View Source View Source View Source View Source View Source View Source…

• A Showcase of Various Websites with Texture Web Design

  ronald

  25 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  The skillful use of texture can add visual interest to the interface of any web design. Whether you make your use of texture apparent to your visitors or not, it may well help you keep your audience interacting with your website, simply because the feel your textures lent your design just made them want to experience more. Here’s an inspiring showcase of textured websites that you can take cues from. You’ll see metallic, grainy, grungy, and woody examples, to name only a few. Feast your eyes on this showcase, and if you know any other textured websites that are worthy of mention,…

• 35 Unique and Inspiring Caricature Artworks

  ronald

  16 Aug 2010 | 9:10 pm

  Caricaturing is the art of illustrating the human face and figure in a way that exaggerates their prominent features. Most caricatures are satirical in nature, making fun of the people being characterized. They are often used in newspaper editorial cartoons and other similar media, although they are made just as often simply for their entertainment value. The following caricature design examples characterize a variety of personalities, from past icons to present superstars, from famous fictional characters to everyday real ones. If you’ve been looking for caricature inspiration for a…

• 

  Warpspire

• My TextMate Snippets & Triggers

  Kyle Neath

  A while ago I put up a collection of some of my handcrafted TextMate snippets. mostly focused on front-end stuff: HTML shortcuts, CSS gradients, jQuery plugin bases, commenting helpers, etc.

• The Geek Talk Interview

  Kyle Neath

  A quick interview I did over at The Geek Talk. Mostly covering my daily routine and whatnot.

• RSS Feeds for Warpspire

  Kyle Neath

  I was going to try and fix some bugs in GitHub Pages (that’s how this site is hosted) — but I think I’m going to give up that fight. If you’d like to subscribe to Warpspire, you can find the feeds at http://feeds.feedburner.com/warpspire

• Rethinking Warpspire

  Kyle Neath

  I think it’s always a good idea to take a step back and ask yourself why you’re doing something. So right now I’m taking a step back to rethink Warpspire. Getting rid of cruft The other day I followed a link to a blog post on Mint. I was presented with this screen: I hate what most designers have done to the web. You’d think people would be taking cues from things like Readability and Safari Reader, but they’re not. People are throwing more and more crap onto each page and making things harder and harder to read. Anyways, it got me to thinking about sites that I…

• What's your focus?

  Kyle Neath

  Every great website has a focus. If you can’t summarize the purpose of your website into one sentence, ten words or less — your idea will almost certainly fail. Talking to founders, I’d say this idea is pretty well established. Now let me reveal a secret that is not so well established: your website’s design should follow this same focus. Learn by example: source hosting sites Let’s start off with a field I’m pretty familiar with: source hosting sites. I’m talking about GitHub, BitBucket, SourceForge, Google Code, Launchpad and the likes. These sites…

• 

  AIGA Home

• What Design Can't Do

  Christopher Simmons

  1 Sep 2010 | 1:00 am

  What influence does design have on the success (or failure) of a business or product? Simmons considers the role of the designer at the table.

• Souvenir as Art

  Saundra Marcel

  24 Aug 2010 | 1:00 am

  Vacations are finite, but a souvenir is forever. Marcel considers the value of travel mementos, for journeys both real and imagined.

• Measuring Up: 4 Reasons to Work Well and Play Well with Others

  Roz Goldfarb

  20 Aug 2010 | 1:00 am

  Are you a team player? A survey of hiring managers shows that the ability to collaborate is not merely a desired skill—it is essential.

• AIGA National Design Center to host "I.D. Annual Design Review" exhibition in New York

  AIGA

  17 Aug 2010 | 10:33 am

  Since 1954, the I.D. Annual Design Review has recognized the best in product, furniture, graphic and environment design, from the iconic to the obscure. This year the esteemed showcase moves to a new level with the addition of a student prize and a new home for the exhibition—AIGA’s gallery on Fifth Avenue.

• Reflections on a Penguin-iversary

  Phil Patton

  17 Aug 2010 | 1:00 am

  Although many great artists have created covers for Penguin, Patton favors the uniform paperbacks that have defined the publisher from the start.

• 

  The Everyday Web Expert!

• Verizon Fascinate ringtones, wallpapers available

  Kyle Reddoch

  3 Sep 2010 | 2:06 pm

  A new device means new goodies, and this time we don’t have to wait for the Samsung Fascinate to launch before we get a peek at it’s innards.  We have the full system dump for you hackery types, as well as a bevy of new wallpapers and system sounds for the rest of us to [...]

• Motorola Takes Out Another Full Page Ad in the NYT Complete with Not So Subtle Jab at Apple

  Kyle Reddoch

  3 Sep 2010 | 11:46 am

  Just like they did before when all the cool kids were mocking antennagate (funny how a couple million dollars of free cases will silence critics so quick), Motorola is flinging the proverbial poo at Apple in their latest full-page ad for the Droid 2 found in the New York Times.

• Google To Update, Shorten And De-Jargon Privacy Policies – Here’s What’s Changing

  Kyle Reddoch

  3 Sep 2010 | 9:43 am

  Mike Yang, Google’s Associate General Counsel, just published a post on the Google blog, informing users that the company is making its privacy policies shorter and easier to understand for non-lawyers. They are also making some other changes, but to be clear, the Mountain View company isn’t altering its privacy practices as such. The updates [...]

• Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Unboxing And First Look

  Kyle Reddoch

  3 Sep 2010 | 9:41 am

  Android Community has received a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for AT&T to review and had a chance to unbox it, along with take a first look at the hardware. The device currently runs Android 1.6 and has Sony’s skin with Timescape and Mediascape on board. It has a 4 inch LCD display, with Wi-Fi, GPS, [...]

• Android’s Mobile Web Consumption Share In The US Is Surging, iOS Share Dropping

  Kyle Reddoch

  3 Sep 2010 | 8:37 am

  Media measurement and Web analytics company Quantcast has some interesting numbers on mobile browsing in the United States, and it’s preparing to release some of those statistics, across vendors. Earlier today, the company put up a teaser blog post, showing two graphs, one of them representing the share of mobile Web consumption in the US [...]

• 

  Experience Matters by Critical Mass

• What’s the value in Social Business Software?

  Doug MacKay

  3 Sep 2010 | 10:29 am

  I’m a skeptic.  I’m old school.  Work has typically been the place during the day to put the nose to the grindstone and, well, work.  It isn’t for playing, chatting, messaging, updating facebook, booking flights via TripIT or anything like that.  Work has been about making deliverables, staying on budget and making money, not socializing. But the world changes. Existing in the digital realm, we must not only adapt to new scenarios but correctly anticipate changes to deliver timely solutions in this ever-changing landscape. This is the conundrum for all IT members: how to…

• The Targeting Privacy Debate Rages On

  Anna Mer

  2 Sep 2010 | 2:53 pm

  As the long standing debate of online privacy policies rages on, consumers have become increasingly anxious about their personal information being shared with advertisers. As consumers voice their opinions, the leaders in the online space have to learn to manage a healthy balance of: sharing information with brands/advertisers to drive successful campaign performance vs. continuing to make consumers feel safe in their online behaviors. In the social space, consumers trust their social networks and feel that the information they share should not leave the tight circle of friends that they have…

• Get Schooled: Googley Lessons from the rapping author.

  Scott Shamberg

  30 Aug 2010 | 10:39 am

  Today, we have a video blog post from an old friend of mine, Aaron Goldman, sharing one of the “Googley Lessons” from his new book. Lesson #5: Be Where Your Audience Is… I hearken back to when Aaron was an intern for me at a traditional media agency. If I had known he could rap like that, well, he still would have been an intern. But get past the terrible rhythm and sideways visor and listen to the message. Great experiences happen anywhere and in order for brands to enable consumer interaction those experiences have to be easy to find. Isn’t that the most important lesson…

• Cloud Syncing Goes Mainstream: How 5 Innovations Will Change Music Forever

  AlanDodaro

  27 Aug 2010 | 11:22 am

  Alan Dodaro | Critical Mass Chicago With summer musical festivals there’s still a lot to look forward to on the music scene in 2010. But this isn’t a collection of up-and-coming artists or a rant about Ticketmaster. Instead, it’s a collection of upcoming developments that will how we obtain and consume music- coming soon to a digital device near you. Sharing all of your music across the internet to any device Earlier this year, Google acquired Simplify Media in a move that will open digital syncing services to the masses. Simplify Media provided a service that let you seamlessly share…

• Social Media Mud Wrestling: Who Owns Social?

  JessiO

  26 Aug 2010 | 9:31 am

  Jessi Odenbach | Critical Mass Chicago The quest for who should “control” a social media campaign seems never ending. This is a debate that I’ve had with friends working across the communications industryAnd while this should never turn into a personal attack, it absolutely turns into a battle big enough for the WWE. Not only are is this power struggle happening internally between departments, but externally between digital agencies, PR firms and social boutiques all vying for the social slice of the client’s business. The importance of figuring out this debate once and for all…

• 

  Graphic Design Links

• Email UI Faceoff - GMail vs Hotmail vs Yahoo - The results

  dainix

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:29 am

  We've got some really fantastic information on usability for Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail and Gmail. Read on to find out just who won our usability faceoff.4 Vote(s)

• Illustrator Tip #19: Funky Cartoon Mascots Design | Vectordiary

  vectordiary

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:40 am

  This is a very quick tutorial that will teach you how to draw funky music themed cartoon mascots. You can use it to tile it up to create a nice wallpaper or for book cover.3 Vote(s)

• Vector Woman Silhouette on Abstract Flower Background

  Serene

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:22 am

  Vector art silhouette of a sexy girl striking a pose. Colorful background containing flowers, stars, swirls and ornate elements. Download this vector artwork for free. This colorful illustration is perfect for a variety of your...2 Vote(s)

• 35 New Hidden Logos of 2010 a4 Messages revealed!!

  sunshinenroses

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:27 am

  Here are 35 exceptionally creative logos that have a hidden message within them. FedEx logo design is an old example now, check new brilliant hidden logos here. Few logo designers are capable of creating negative space logo design.2 Vote(s)

• Weekly Web Design Inspiration #66

  atikusdesign

  31 Aug 2010 | 1:05 am

  A showcase of the very best web designs from the last week8 Vote(s)

• 

  Just Creative Design

• 12 Logo Design Mistakes To Avoid

  Jacob Cass

  23 Aug 2010 | 9:08 am

  This was an article I originally wrote for the Sep / Oct 2010 edition of Layers Magazine, it has been republished here with permission. You can see pictures of the article in print at the bottom of this article or you can view the PDF here. The article is targeted towards designers, rather than business owners. One of the easiest ways to distinguish a company is by having a unique and memorable logo; however, creating a unique and memorable logo is not as easy as it sounds. Here are 12 common logo design mistakes that amateur logo designers often fall victim to. In no particular order……

• Book, TV & Blog Interviews

  Jacob Cass

  13 Aug 2010 | 7:05 am

  I’ve had a few interviews in the past couple of weeks, here are the links & a short summary of each. Take your pick. Duane Kinsey, the owner of Logo Bird, recently interviewed me for his logo designer interview series. The interview is based around my recent job search experience as well as logo design & social media. You can read the interview here: Logo Designer Interview: Jacob Cass On the topic of logo designer interviews, check out the interviews I conducted with Von Glitschka, Jeff Fisher, Leighton Hubbell, LogoBoom, Mike Erickson & Alen Pavlovic. How To Make More…

• Design Agency Job Hunting Tips

  Jacob Cass

  1 Aug 2010 | 3:14 pm

  “It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page.” This is the tag line of ‘Lemonade‘, a short film that I saw earlier this year about 16 advertising professionals who lost their jobs after the 2008 recession and then ‘found their calling’. Although I didn’t technically get a pink slip, I certainly got a blank page after parting ways with my previous employer. I was left with 2 weeks to find a new job before being booted back to Australia due to Visa restrictions. I considered my options very carefully and finally decided to stay in NYC as my…

• Designers, why do you do what you do?

  Jacob Cass

  21 Jul 2010 | 8:09 am

  This is a timely guest article by Jennifer Moline of PsPrint. – Jacob Cass The depressing economy we’re in has me very interested in careers – mainly, why we choose to do what we do. A creative career is often seen as a dream job – one that allows you to get paid for doing what you love. I’ve often wondered, however, if a creative profession is worth the stress. I believe people become graphic designers for the following reasons: While growing up they were always doodling on a notepad, eventually graduating to doodling on the computer. They’ve always been those…

• The 2014 FIFA World Cup Logo – Discuss

  Jacob Cass

  14 Jul 2010 | 8:27 am

  This is a guest article by Ana Paula Rodrigues outlining the unveiling of the new 2014 World Cup logo. The silent vuvuzela’s mark the end of the 2010 World Cup, but the preparations for the 2014 games are well underway. The 2014 World Cup host, Brazil unveiled the official logo last Thursday in Johannesburg, South Africa. In a clever marketing campaign, both the Brazilian Soccer Delegation and FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) decided to strike while the momentum of the 2010 games were still in play, and while it still garnered the attention of a worldwide audience.

• 

  Logo Design Love

• Landfit logo

  David Airey

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:04 am

  “I had a great idea,” said Tim. “It’s called Landfit. I match people who have gardens that they don’t use with people who don’t have gardens who want to use that space to grow flowers, herbs, and vegetables.” “If it’s about getting people to use unused spaces, why not grow vegetables in the unused spaces in the logo?” — GOOD PEOPLE Nice idea, designed by Good People. More logos using negative space. Published on Logo Design Love Related posts on Logo Design LoveSpin My LogoBrazil World Cup logo 2014“Man at Kiosk”Ian The…

• Spin My Logo

  David Airey

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:19 am

  Dan Johnson is a producer and motion artist at Panda Motion. As part of a promotion for Panda Motion’s sister company, Spin My Logo, Dan took two of my past projects and set to work animating the designs. The results offer a nice accompaniment to the static brandmarks. Miskeeto “I made a rippled pulse with varying degrees of opacity. This was then set as the alpha layer to the text in order to reveal it. The wings were made 3d and rotated on the y axis.” — DAN JOHNSON Giacom “All the pie wedges were parented to a null object. I applied an expression to the rotation…

• Facing your toughest design client

  David Airey

  24 Aug 2010 | 2:26 am

  The following article is by Giulietta “Julie” Nardone of Fearless Design. —— I read lots of freelance blog posts about handling difficult clients. They all seem to gloss over the most difficult client of all. YOU. The way you feel about yourself and your talent sets the tone for all your client interactions. Think of your clients as mirrors. If you complain they don’t treat you well it’s probably because you’ve taught them not to treat you well. If you complain they don’t pay you on time, it’s probably because you’ve taught them not to pay you on time. If…

• The art of interviewing your client

  David Airey

  19 Aug 2010 | 4:01 pm

  The following article is by Tim Lapetino, a principal at brand design firm Hexanine. —— For designers, it’s never enough to merely follow the design brief a client gives you. In identity design, we view our projects as opportunities to dig deep, mining the best parts of an organization to get at the heart of what makes each client unique. It’s these nuggets that are essential when attempting to distill a company’s essence into a logo. Gathering these insights requires a crucial bit of give-and-take — not as easy as it sounds. Like being a good investigative…

• Destination branding 101

  David Airey

  17 Aug 2010 | 8:38 am

  “Justify color selections by pairing them with similarly hued images from the destination.” Sound advice from Clinton Duncan, a contributor over on Brand New. Published on Logo Design Love Related posts on Logo Design LoveFree chapter from Logo Design LoveHow Twitter helps designersTen logo design tips from the fieldThoughts about PepsiPeriodic table of branding

• 

  Dexigner Design Portal

• Fabricate: Digital Fabrication Conference

  5 Sep 2010 | 11:23 am

  The Bartlett School of Architecture announced FABRICATE, a London Conference to assess the progressive integration of digital design with manufacturing processes, and its impact on design and making in the 21st century.

• Grand Designs Live Birmingham 2010

  5 Sep 2010 | 11:12 am

  Returning for the fifth consecutive year to the Birmingham NEC, the award-winning Grand Designs Live Birmingham is back, showcasing inspirational design, self build, interiors and cutting-edge homewares from the 8th - 10th October 2010.

• Objects with a Void

  5 Sep 2010 | 10:54 am

  Objects with a Void is a design exhibition about voids in objects.

• Healthy Homes for Haiti: International Architectural Design Competition

  5 Sep 2010 | 10:46 am

  ARCHIVE launched a global architectural competition calling for architects, designers, and health specialists to submit their ideas to the building of "healthy homes" for Haiti.

• Stylus: Trend Forecasting and Intelligence Resource

  5 Sep 2010 | 8:31 am

  Stylus is a new global information and inspiration resource for the consumer-facing industries.

• 

  Graphic Design Blog & Web Design Blog

• Geliografic - Illustrations and Art

  Toon

  3 Sep 2010 | 10:52 am

  Geliografic - Illustrations and ArtGeliograficTechnorati Tags: Geliografic, Illustrations, ArtSubscribe to this feed

• August Bradley Photography Portfolio

  Toon

  22 Aug 2010 | 6:57 am

  August Bradley Photography Portfolio August Bradley : Conceptual Portrait, Fashion & Beauty PhotographyTechnorati Tags: August Bradley, Photography, PortfolioSubscribe to this feed

• Churches Photography by Dirk Wiedlein

  Toon

  21 Aug 2010 | 8:23 am

  Churches Photography by Dirk Wiedlein Churchesby Dirk WiedleinChurches on the Behance NetworkTechnorati Tags: Churches, Photography, Dirk WiedleinSubscribe to this feed

• Fan Script Typeface

  Toon

  21 Aug 2010 | 8:16 am

  Fan Script Typeface To license the font please visit Fan Script Font - Veer.comFan Script contains over 1000 glyphs, including ligatures, swashes, contextual and discretionary alternates, Western and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Maltese, Celtic/Welsh Language support.Fan Script on the Behance NetworkTechnorati Tags: Fan Script, TypefaceSubscribe to this feed

• Top 12 Banksy Pieces of 2010

  Toon

  21 Aug 2010 | 7:55 am

  Top 12 Banksy Pieces of 2010 » »Technorati Tags: Banksy, art, street, 2010Subscribe to this feed

• 

  CSS-Tricks

• How Long Should We Ban IPs?

  Chris Coyier

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:36 am

  There are all kinds of reasons IPs get banned. A forums manager might ban an IP because the user at it is spamming. An admin of an email server might also ban IPs for spamming. A web service might ban an IP for using an API in an unapproved way.On this site, we used to ban IP’s in the forums all the time (the new forums have been much better in spam prevention). I also sometimes ban IPs from inside WordPress. There is a setting to “blacklist” IP’s in the admin area on the Settings > Discussion page. There are few in there from spammers, and a variety of people I…

• BonBon Buttons

  Chris Coyier

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:12 pm

  These are way above and beyond the level of any other “CSS3 buttons” I’ve seen. Multiple backgrounds combining gradients and images, uneven border-radius, pseudo elements, HSL coloring, @font-face icons, transitions, box shadows, text shadows, hover and active states… the list goes on. Every trick in the book masterfully employed.They make my button maker look dull and flat.Direct Link to Article — Permalink

• Fluid Width YouTube Videos

  Chris Coyier

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:05 am

  I saw that Andy Clarke had added a fluid width YouTube video to a particular page on one of his sites. His code relies upon a wrapping div and then images and video within this wrapper are set to the width of the wrapper:.img img, .img object, img embed { width: 100%; }I love the idea. It’s essentially the classic technique for dealing with images in fluid width designs. Andy’s code sets max-width to 100% here too, but since the width is already 100% that doesn’t matter. Max-width works best by itself. So it can scale down images which could be larger than the wrapper, but…

• HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up

  Chris Coyier

  1 Sep 2010 | 5:48 pm

  I’ve done my own The VERY Basics screencast, but this full series from Google, targeted at just-starting-out beginners, would be a good place to go directly after my intro, to take things further along.Direct Link to Article — Permalink

• Digging Into WordPress, The Book, Version 3

  Chris Coyier

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:34 am

  When we first released the book Digging Into WordPress, we thought of some reasons why people might not want to buy it. A big reason is because tech books can go out of date quickly, especially when the subject is a fast-developing technology like WordPress. So, we fixed that. When you buy this book, you get PDF updates to it for life.Today is just such an event. WordPress 3.0 has been out for a while now, and so it’s time for our second major update. This is the biggest one yet. We’ve combed through the entire book updating anything that was out of date or stale. We’ve also…

• 

  DevWebPro

• Microsoft Releases App Tool Kit

  Mike Sachoff

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:34 pm

  Microsoft has released an updated application security tool kit for developers. The Enhanced Mitigation Experience Tool kit (EMET) offers users the ability to deploy security technologies to arbitrary applications. The Microsoft Security Research & Defense blog offers more details. “This helps prevent vulnerabilities in those applications (especially line of business and 3rd party apps) from successfully being exploited.” “By deploying these mitigation technologies on legacy products, the tool can also help customers manage risk while they are in the process of transitioning over to…

• VMware Introduces Cloud App Platform

  Doug Caverly

  3 Sep 2010 | 11:54 am

  Give another point to cloud computing advocates.  Yesterday, VMware demonstrated its support for their cause by introducing a cloud application platform, and developers should be pleased, because VMware has their interests at heart in addition to its own. A formal release issued by the company explained that this move should allow “developers to build and run modern applications that intelligently share information with underlying infrastructure to maximize application performance, quality of service and infrastructure utilization.” That should bring more users – and money…

• Getting Visitors To Take Action With Your Content

  Stoney De Geyter

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:30 am

  When it comes to getting your visitors to take action, whether that be a sale, download, request, or call, it’s your content that is going to either make it happen or leave people blowing in the wind like a sagebrush through a ghost town. If there is anything that all the years of marketing research has proven it’s that people need to be told what to do if you expect them to do anything at all. Think about it. If you’re not telling your visitors what to do next, how can you expect them to do it? Sure, they can guess, make assumptions or “figure it out on their…

• What Questions To Ask Your SEO Firm

  Bill Hartzer

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:30 am

  I have to say that when I recently read this article I was a little bit annoyed and elated at the same time. I quickly recalled all of the search engine optimization work I did for a search engine optimization client. One of the most difficult keyword phrases I worked on for a search engine optimization client was “gift baskets”. In fact, the work I did over a year ago still has my client ranking above the company referred to in the article, and I did it all without buying one single link. That part makes me “elated”. What annoys me is that the company in this search…

• New Game Dev Platform Launches

  Mike Sachoff

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:51 pm

  Finnish game developer Rocket Pack has introduced Rocket Engine, a professional game development platform for the web. Built by and for professional game developers, the Rocket Engine is a fully integrated solution for plugin-free browser game development. The game engine is fully compatible with all major browsers and social gaming platforms, including the iPhone, iPad and Android devices, with no installation required. Our goal is to create high quality games that can be played anywhere, and we were used to professional tools such as the Unreal Engine or Unity3D.”, says Jiri…

• 

  The 99 Percent

• Coworking Spaces

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:57 am

  Guide to NYC co-working spaces (and thoughts on them) from Fred Wilson.

• Working for a Living

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:56 am

  GOOD Mag infographic on how Americans work and live, and if we are keeping our lives in balance.

• Watching the Corners: On Future-Proofing Your Passion

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:55 am

  "I wish I’d learned to embrace the non-douchier aspects of building awesome human relationships."

• Responsibility and authority

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:15 am

  It turns out you can get a lot done if you focus on responsibility rather than authority.

• Negative Emotions Diminished by Difficult Mental Challenges

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:14 am

  Can thinking about being happy make you less happy?

• 

  ScribeMedia.org

• Digging Digg? At Least We’ll Try

  ScribeTribe

  26 Aug 2010 | 9:22 am

  A new version of Digg launched. Called Version 4.0, the primary changes to the social news site is to make it, well, more social. The overarching goal is to help users find news of personal interest more easily. They do this by taking a page from the Twitter handbook and showing you stories submitted by people you follow. End result, instead of showing you sitewide “Most Popular” items, they’ve created a “My News” section for easier curation. We’ve been in and out of the alpha release the past few weeks and were interested to see how the actual release…

• 3 Steps to a More Effective Retail Facebook Presence

  Kevin Ertell

  25 Aug 2010 | 11:25 am

  Watch all video interviews from eTail East 2010.                                Sponsored by Amidst the many clouds of uncertainty surrounding retail use of social media, a few key strategies are starting to emerge. Three recent studies, including a white paper written by yours truly, have examined customer interactions with retailers via social media. Encouragingly, all three studies (Emarketer recently summarized the findings from studies by…

• Video Ad Measurement Holds the Key for Online Video Monetization

  Tania Yuki

  24 Aug 2010 | 11:16 am

  Watch all video interviews from the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference.      Sponsored by Did you know that online video ads account for just 1% of total video viewing time in a typical month? While the debate rages regarding the risk of trading traditional dollars for digital dimes, it is easy to miss that the tonnage does not give digital a fighting chance in the first place. Even taking into account the higher brand favorability metrics relative to traditional channels that are commonly observed with digital video campaigns, something more…

• Seeing the Patterns

  Edwin Wong

  16 Aug 2010 | 6:20 am

  Watch all video interviews from the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference.      Sponsored by The role of the Internet in American consumers’ shopping behavior evolves constantly as new innovation and advances in the space emerge. As if the change in media consumption and technology isn’t enough, the struggling economy has also greatly impacted consumer sentiment and buying behavior. The complex nature of this amalgam demands that marketers better connect and engage with consumers, specifically through digital advertising. In “Seeing the…

• The Neuroscience of Radio Engagement

  Peter Cervieri

  16 Aug 2010 | 6:05 am

  Watch all video interviews from the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement conference.      Sponsored by Peter Pynta, Director, Neuro-Insight Pty Ltd, shares how radio content and ad break architecture influences ad effectiveness and engagement. Peter presented at the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement 5.0 Conference. Related posts:Biometrically Speaking – The Doctor Will Really See You NowEngagement 2.0: Using Media Engagement to Drive Brand Preference & SalesCommercial Audiences: How Does Radio Hold Its Audience Through the…

• 

  Design Shack

• Popout Details on Hover W/ CSS

  5 Sep 2010 | 4:58 pm

  “I recently saw a hover over trick that caught my eye and I thought it was a pretty clever way of showing more details on an element. I decided to give it a try and the solution was quite simple.” View Post

• Beautiful Vintage Design: Showcase and Resources

  5 Sep 2010 | 4:41 pm

  “In this post we’ll showcase some excellent examples for your inspiration, and we’ll also feature some resources, like textures and Photoshop brushes, to help in your own vintage-style design.” View Post

• Graphic Design Through the Decades Series: The ’70s

  5 Sep 2010 | 3:41 pm

  “While psychedelic rock-concert posters carried into the 1970s, that decade also saw an evolution in advertising, with more people’s up-close faces declaring their devotion to a product…” View Post

• CSS Design: Easy Peasee

  5 Sep 2010 | 1:00 am

  An interesting take on a web designer website. Easy Peasee uses fun cartoony graphics, bright colors and friendly messaging to draw you in. Overall it is a nice looking site with a simple to follow progression of information. If you stop by be sure to take a look at the interesting footer design. This design was featured on the 5th September 2010 . It falls under the category of Design, and has a layout style of Two Column. If you'd like, you can visit this site, or view all our other featured designs.

• CSS Design: CreativeSwitch

  5 Sep 2010 | 1:00 am

  A great looking site with a fun robot theme. I like that the background image is fixed while the artwork scrolls. I also like the custom illustrations and bold high contrast color scheme. This design was featured on the 5th September 2010 . It falls under the category of Portfolio, and has a layout style of Other. If you'd like, you can visit this site, or view all our other featured designs.

• 

  CSS Beauty News Feed

• HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up

  Alex

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:00 am

  HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up. Learn the basics of how UIs are created on the web and brush up on outdated UI development knowledge.

• CSS Counters: counter-increment and Friends

  Alex

  25 Aug 2010 | 8:08 am

  CSS Counters: counter-increment and Friends. Combine three CSS properties and a pseudo-element to create auto-incrementing counters — similar to what is displayed in an ordered list.

• HTML5 ★ Boilerplate

  Alex

  11 Aug 2010 | 9:11 am

  HTML5 ★ Boilerplate. A rock-solid default HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.

• 25 HTML5 Features, Tips, and Techniques

  Alex

  10 Aug 2010 | 9:08 am

  25 HTML5 Features, Tips, and Techniques. A primer of the things you must know.

• CSS3 Playground

  Alex

  10 Aug 2010 | 8:31 am

  CSS3 Playground. A web application that allows you to experiment and learn about new css3 capabilities.

• 

  CSS Drive News

• BonBon Sweet CSS3 buttons

  webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com

  3 Sep 2010 | 8:55 am

  Fancy CSS3 buttons that are sexy looking, flexible, and with the least amount of markup possible.

• Top Web Design Companies

  webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:30 pm

  A descriptive list and breakdown of the top 15 Web Design companies on the web today.

• RightJS Framework

  webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 5:24 pm

  A fast and compact JavaScript framework with simple syntax conventions and out of the box support for common UI interfaces.

• 35 logos with a hidden message contained inside them

  webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:35 pm

  Creating a conceptual logo with a powerful hidden message is more vital than making a fancy logo design. Here are 35 exceptionally creative logos that have a hidden message within them.

• 25 Online CSS Compressors to Optimize Your CSS Code

  webmaster@REMOVETHIScssdrive.com

  2 Sep 2010 | 1:22 pm

  One of the most important thing when developing websites is page loading speed, to load as quickly as possible, especially in the case of large websites.

• 

  All Graphic Design & Graphics News

• 5 Sep 2010 | 12:28 pm

  All Graphic Design Staff

  5 Sep 2010 | 12:28 pm

  Want to improve your resume, impress potential employers, and get your name in front of big companies and important people in the design community? Then you need to consider entering some graphic design contests and competitions.   However, consider a few things before entering.   1) How worthwhile is this competition? Look at past winners and Google them to [...]

• Do You Need to Know How to Draw or Sketch to be a Graphic Designer?

  All Graphic Design Staff

  30 Aug 2010 | 12:35 am

  The short answer is no, you don’t. But in truth this question requires a more complicated response. Plenty of graphic designers have gotten jobs without knowing how to draw at all. Nevertheless, learning how to draw or sketch can be invaluable for three big reasons. You have to be able to explain visual concepts and ideas [...]

• Best Paying Cities for Graphic Designers

  All Graphic Design Staff

  28 Aug 2010 | 9:46 pm

  Should you relocate to make more money as a graphic designer? Or even look for graphic design colleges in specific cities to improve your employment prospects? Certain cities do pay significantly more than others. If a high salary is your primary goal, then you should know the five highest paying metropolitan areas for graphic designers in [...]

• Why You Should Consider Graphic Design Contests

  All Graphic Design Staff

  18 Aug 2010 | 12:24 am

  Want to improve your resume, impress potential employers, and get your name in front of the biggest firms and most important people in the design community? Then you need to consider entering some graphic design contests and competitions. However, consider a few things before entering. 1.     How worthwhile is this competition? Look at past winners and Google [...]

• Can Graphic Design Schools Teach You to Be Creative?

  All Graphic Design Staff

  17 Aug 2010 | 12:52 pm

  Do you ever worry that you aren’t creative enough to succeed as a graphic designer? It’s a thought that crosses nearly every artist’s mind at some point. Fortunately, you can improve and build your creative skills by increasing your knowledge.   For decades, scientists and psychologists have theorized that several distinct levels of creativity exist. While the [...]

• 

  Vandelay Design Blog

• 25 E-Commerce Websites for Your Design Inspiration

  Vandelay Website Design

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:37 am

  The success of an e-commerce website is defined by sales, not by design. However, that doesn’t mean that design does not matter. In this post we’ll showcase 25 well-designed e-commerce sites from a wide variety of industries. For more on e-commerce sites please see these posts from the archives: 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs 25 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs – Part Two 35 Excellent E-Commerce User Interface Designs 25 Creative E-Commerce Website Designs WordPress E-Commerce: 30+ Resources 37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers 9 Characteristics of…

• August in Review: 19 New Resource Packs for Premier Members

  Vandelay Website Design

  31 Aug 2010 | 10:38 am

  On August 1st we launched Vandelay Premier, a membership-based site that provides high-quality design resources and career resources. A lot has happened during our first month of operation, including the release of 19 new resources/packs! This post serves as a monthly roundup to display the new resources that are available for our members, as well as to list the new discounts that are available in the marketplace. Free Texture Pack: A few weeks ago we released the first free resource pack from Vandelay Premier. If you are not already a member you can still download this set of 4 textures as a…

• Tutorial: Create A Fun Ink Splatter Vector

  Vandelay Website Design

  30 Aug 2010 | 8:48 am

  Today we released a set of ink splatter vectors on Vandelay Premier and in this post we will be covering the process of creating these vectors. The process is not very difficult and it should be easy to follow, but it does take some time. Here is a preview of the final result of this tutorial. These splatter vectors are fun to create, and since the end result is in vector format it is highly versatile. Things You Will Need: A bottle of ink (I used black India ink from a craft shop) Paper (photo paper or heavy white paper) A straw A scanner Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Inkscape (optional)…

• 13 Ways to Challenge Yourself in Your Career as a Web Designer

  Vandelay Website Design

  25 Aug 2010 | 6:49 am

  A career in web design or development requires a constant effort to improve and to stay on top of new technologies and changes within the industry. No matter how much you improve or how many new things you learn there is always something else out there that can make you better at your work and improve your career. Fortunately, most designers and developers receive challenges on a daily basis in the normal course of their work, especially those who work for a variety of different clients. However, there are times when a designer should focus on learning and improvement outside of these normal…

• Effective Tour Pages: Trends and Showcase

  Vandelay Website Design

  23 Aug 2010 | 5:24 am

  I was recently working on the tour page for Vandelay Premier and doing some research on other tour pages to gather inspiration. I decided to put this post together because it is a topic that can have a great deal of impact on the success of a web app or web business. Looking at the analytics data shortly after launching Vandelay Premier it was obvious that the tour page will have an incredibly significant impact on the success of the site. When visitors arrive at a site that they are not familiar with the tour page is very inviting since it promises to help them get acquainted with the site…

• 

  Fuel Your Creativity

• Refreshing styles of Corona

  Chad Engle

  30 Aug 2010 | 10:34 pm

  Advertisements take us away to far off places and far off lands theres not much more refreshing than being whisked off to a far-off beach with a nice cold one. Corona advertising has been synonymous to simplicity, bright colors and lots of beer and limes. With bright blues and clean sandy beaches Corona has made distinctive imagery that they own and in turn you recognize instantly. Corona, is a brand of pale lager owned and produced by Cerveceria Modelo at a number of breweries in Mexico. It is one of the best-selling beers in Mexico and is one of the top-selling beers worldwide. Corona…

• Is a color just a color?

  Chad Engle

  26 Aug 2010 | 8:59 pm

  For centuries color has been used to provide distinction between classes, businesses, kings, courts and everything else in between. So what exactly is in a color? Does it matter that purple has been used in connotations with royalty? Does it matter that most fast food places logos are red to stimulate your appetite? So a color is a color right? Not exactly. Below are a few examples with switched color palettes. Do you think the brand still looks the same? Does it give off the same vibe/aura in a different color? So if colors are “just colors” these brands being switched should be…

• BEST OF: FYC Flickr Group Showcase (6)

  Chad Engle

  23 Aug 2010 | 9:33 pm

  There are currently 1791 members in the Fuel Your Creativity Flickr Group, and with that amount of skill in one place there is bound to be something to wet your creative appetite.  Here we will focus our spotlight on some of our favorites that have been contributed to the group. These fine works of art are inspirational & intriguing. We will continue to choose and comment on the Flickr submissions, as long as the submissions keep coming in ;) . If you have yet to get picked do not get discouraged, it doesn’t mean we did not like the work you submitted… it simply means that out of…

• Drawing the Line

  Sam Wilson

  18 Aug 2010 | 8:57 pm

  There is a rush of anticipation one feels upon cracking open a fresh sketchbook. The blank page is a small area yet also an expansive laboratory for the creative process. Over time and around the world, artists have developed many ingenious techniques to advance their creative reach. Despite this, one of the most powerful means we have to develop concepts is deceptively simple: ink on paper. Far from fading in popularity, the fascination with sketching is exploding. Flickr groups like Moleskinerie, Line Drawing and The Drawing Club are growing as international professionals and hobbyists…

• Web Standardistas Book Giveaway **Updated With Winners**

  Chad Engle

  16 Aug 2010 | 9:05 pm

  HTML & CSS Web Standards Solutions – A Web Standardistas’ Approach is quite possibly one of the most authoritative books that you can learn XHTML & CSS through. This book makes learning easy opposed to monotonous reading and technical jargon. Even if you are an absolute beginner in web design, this book will teach you how to build future-proof web pages the right way using easy-to-master tools which are, in most cases, free. This book is easy to pick-up at any point, read a few chapters and learn, then practice (through their easy tutorials) and then go back to your day!

• 

  Boagworld

• Don’t reduce your audience to a stereotype

  Paul Boag

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:16 am

  I am currently speaking at a conference in Oslo, Norway. It has been a great conference and from what I can gather the first of its kind in the country. It is always so encouraging to see the web community coming together for an event like this. The conference organisers have done a great job, especially as it is their first conference on this scale. However, two things beyond the control of the organisers have given me pause for thought. I have found myself marvelling at how easily we put people (our users in particular) into predefined stereotyped boxes. Marketing to the geek stereotype My…

• Calling BS on perfectionism

  Paul Boag

  26 Aug 2010 | 10:36 am

  I recently came across this superb post entitled “Why I hate working with perfectionists” written by Karl Mendes. Karl perfectly summed up a growing problem I am seeing among many website owners and web designers. It is a subject I feel so passionately about that I felt I had to throw my hat into the ring. The problem The problem began with certain high profile web designers who I will kindly call somewhat elitist. These web designers liked to describe themselves as perfectionists. They believe in an obsessive attention to detail and an unwillingness to compromise their desire for…

• Work less, produce more

  Paul Boag

  25 Aug 2010 | 3:48 am

  This morning I tweeted the following… I was amazed by the response I received. To many it would appear that long hours are a badge of honour. They either represent how ‘overworked and hard done by’ they are or that they enjoy work so much that they don’t mind working 24/7. But do those arguments really stack up? I don’t believe so. Let me explain why… I have to work long hours. I have so much work. Most people claim that the reason they work long hours is because they have too much work to do. However in my experience work expands to fill the amount of time…

• You’re a failure: Deal with it

  Paul Boag

  24 Aug 2010 | 10:19 am

  Nobody likes to think of themselves as a failure and no website owner likes to dwell too much on the shortcomings of his website. However, all websites have weaknesses and it is important we know exactly what they are in order to do something about them. What is more, all websites develop new weaknesses over time. As content is added, structure is changed and designs are tweaked, we introduce problems into our sites that were not previously there. We therefore need a system in place that continually monitor for failures so that they can be addressed quickly before causing too much damage.

• Nothing is more important than business objectives

  Paul Boag

  23 Aug 2010 | 4:58 am

  Somebody recently asked me on formspring what the most important aspect of web design was. Without hesitation I replied business objectives even though that was not on the questioners list of possibilities. To me this was the obvious answer. However, as soon as my answer hit twitter it became apparent I was in the minority believing this. The overwhelming response was that I should have said ‘user experience’. The logic went something like this – if users are not happy then they will leave and you will have no business. When user experience and business objectives truly…

• 

  Dzine Blog

• 27 Weekly Best WordPress Themes from ThemeForest

  DzineBlog

  5 Sep 2010 | 1:20 am

  The themes from ThemeForest posted this week are, as the previous set, classy and well cropped. The simple but fancy line is still present, with quaint variations from now on, or designated attributes which outline the line of focus: either a corporate, personal, elaborate or a minimal design; all of them fitted  approaches for blog or web pages themes which are desired to be easy to maneuver as well as to admire by visitors. Pages load easily and are pleasant to the eye without exposing it to an exaggerated amount of visual stimulus. Moreover, the theme presented speaks not only for the…

• 10 Must Have Free Adobe Illustrator Scripts

  DzineBlog

  4 Sep 2010 | 5:38 am

  Sometimes when working with Illustrator tools is not sufficient when it comes to vector editing. Fortunately, Illustrator supports scripting from AppleScript, Visual Basic, JavaScript, and ExtendScript. When activated, these scripts perform operations within Illustrator or may involve other programs such as word processing, spreadsheet and database programs. You can use some of Illustrator’s scripts, downloaded scripts, or create your own scripts if you are a developer by consulting the Adobe Illustrator Scripting Center. Installation Place the script in the Adobe Illustrator CS3 (CS4…

• 30 Glamorous Fashion Designer Website Designs

  DzineBlog

  3 Sep 2010 | 8:10 am

  We’ll be looking now at a great collection featuring the best fashion designers’ sites. The tendency in this kind of sites, much similar with the photographers’ sites that we’ve seen before, is to let the images of the designer’s creation speak for themselves. Therefore, the photos or videos of the fashion collections and fashion shows tend to expand all over the screen and become, again, the main element of the site. The rest of the site graphics is subtle and elegant most of the times in order not to compete with the collection images on display. Of course,…

• 7 Important Tips for Website Copywriting

  DzineBlog

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:29 pm

  Readers don’t read all the words. They skim through individual words and scan them. Readers also tend to read slower on the computer screen then they do when they when they read books. There is so much content available on the Internet that your reader will not even miss reading what you wrote. It is up to you to offer your readers that something special that will keep them hooked on to your content. Given below are seven basic tips for hooking the attention of your reader when you are a writer on the web. Further below are some common English grammatical errors that many of us tend to make…

• 23 Unconventional eCommerce Website Designs

  DzineBlog

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:14 pm

  The snapshots gathered within this collection refer to a category of web designers that is willing to invest a great deal of resources in the looks of their pages. Ecommerce sites are very elaborate and striking original. Actually, these are the sites which participate and win web design contests which ensures them not only prestige - by the seriousness of the presentation - but also a greater number of potential clients which are put face to face not only with magnificent looks and presentation but, willingly or not, also with the concept behind the design. Of course, what is so provocative…

• 

  Nettuts+

• Build a Custom HTML5 Video Player: Free Premium Tutorial

  Jeffrey Way

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:32 pm

  Much like the other various Envato marketplaces, our newly launched Tuts+ marketplace will offer a free file each month. For September, that free file/tutorial just so happens to mine! I’ll show you how to build a custom HTML5 video player with Flash fallback support. Be sure to grab this one for free for the entire month of September. Next month, it’ll return to its original price. Though the idea of a video-specific HTML element was suggested well over a decade ago, we’re only just beginning to see this come to fruition! Forget all of that “HTML5 2012” mumbo-jumbo; the…

• An Analysis of Typography on the Web

  Toni Kukurin

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:16 pm

  Typography is one of the most—if not the most—important aspects of web design. Some would argue that it takes up to 95% of web design, so why do we often neglect its importance? The readers who come to your site will often decide whether or not to stay according to your typographic choices. After all, they came here to read in the first place. Think about it for a second: if content really is king, logically typography should be treated as the queen. In fact, even some font names suggest that classification; Futura, Optima, Times New Roman (OK, that’s probably a dude),…

• How to Create a Web-Based Drawing Application Using Canvas: New Premium Tutorial

  Alex Moore

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:51 pm

  Combining HTML with the all new <canvas> feature, you can make some pretty awesome web apps! In this Premium exclusive tutorial, we will create a neat interactive drawing application using HTML and JavaScript. Along the way, we’ll also learn the basic concepts of the all new <canvas> feature. Become a Premium member to access this, as well as many other amazing tutorials and screencasts. Join Net Premium For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from…

• Quick Tip: Getting Offline Access with HTML5 Application Cache

  Andrew Burgess

  2 Sep 2010 | 5:24 pm

  Just when you thought you’d seen all the cool features of HTML5, I’m here to bring you yet another one. The internet is no longer about just websites; it’s about web applications. Often, our users are on portable or mobile devices, and they won’t always have access to a network. With HTML5’s Application Cache, you can provide them with all or some of the functionality they would have online, no matter where they go. Premium Members: Download this Video ( Must be logged in) Subscribe to our YouTube page to watch all of the video tutorials! Step 1: Make the Cache…

• Creating a Web Poll with PHP

  Erik Wurzer

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:58 am

  Polls are nearly ubiquitous on the web today, and there are plenty of services that will provide a drop-in poll for you. But what if you want to write one yourself? This tutorial will take you through the steps to create a simple PHP-based poll, including database setup, vote processing, and displaying the poll. Step 1: Plan & Create the Database In order to store poll results, we’re going to store three pieces of information: A question identifier An answer identifier The number of votes a question/answer pair has gotten For this tutorial, we’ll be using PDO and SQLite. If…

• 

  Woork Up

• Tomorrow Apple Event: Any Expectation?

  Antonio Lupetti

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:27 pm

  The announcement dates back to just one week ago and it has already sparked the usual trepidation around the web about what the next shiny little device from Apple could be. From the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 1, Steve Jobs will reveal the Apple’s news, music-themed this time of the year: it will probably be a product to be launched in the coming weeks, but about which we don’t have many clues yet. The most reliable voices report about a complete redesign of the iPod lines that could probably inherit the dual cameras and Retina display from the…

• Internet Killed Blockbuster. Who’s Next?

  Antonio Lupetti

  29 Aug 2010 | 9:16 am

  Dallas – The bomb blew up just a few days ago when a Los Angeles Times article reported that Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is ready to file for bankruptcy. Overwhelmed by debt and losses amounting to over $1 billion since 2008, the video rental chain is yet another of the world’s most famous names to join the long list of once successful companies that have not been able to adapt their business to the radical changes in the market introduced by the Internet. Another high-profile victim. In a recent note (August 13), Blockbuster reported total revenues for the second…

• The Cost of Tweets (CO2 Emissions)

  Antonio Lupetti

  27 Aug 2010 | 1:26 pm

  What’s the cost of tweets sent daily on Twitter in terms of CO2 emission? According to data from Twitter, published in February 2010, every day around 50 million tweets are sent over the popular micro blogging platform. Considering an average time of 10 seconds to write one single tweet and the average consumption of 250 watt/hour for one single computer, the total daily consumption amount to 35 kW h (kilowatt hour). Multiplying this value for the average estimate of CO2 emission per kW, we obtain the daily value of CO2 emission which rises up to 492,000 Kg. Obviously this value is only…

• 10 Useful Frameworks To Develop HTML-Based Webapps for Touch Devices

  Antonio Lupetti

  25 Aug 2010 | 8:59 am

  Make HTML-based touch applications. Easy. In the last two years the rapid growth and diffusion of touch devices such as iOS or Android based platforms has forced developers and web designers to rethink the model of their own webapps for the new “touch experience” introduced by the iPhone in 2007. During this period several frameworks have been released to help web developers implement quickly applications for this kind of touch devices. Here is a collection of some useful frameworks to develop easily HTML-based webapps that will work on all popular smartphone and tablet touch…

• Best Practices To Design a Perfect HTML Navigation Bar

  Antonio Lupetti

  9 Aug 2010 | 7:16 am

  The navigation bar is an inevitable element in every website. In this post I want to share with you some simple practices and suggestions aimed at designing a perfect HTML navigation bar. Let’s start illustrating the typical HTML structure. Here is a schematization of a typical navigation bar that contains some links: The HTML code is really simple, nothing more than <div> layer with an unordered list inside. As you probably know, the HTML5 specification introduced a new element that identifies the navigation bar which is the <nav> tag. The <nav> tag substitutes the more…

• 

  Pro Blog Design

• Working With WordPress Shortcodes

  Pippin

  30 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  WordPress shortcodes are used frequently in plugins and themes as a way to achieve extra functionality, without the need to modify template files. You just type the shortcode word right into your post. Some plugins and themes use them to add event calendars, some for making announcements, while others use them for inserting contact forms. Simply, WP shortcodes are awesome. However, what if you’re a theme / plugin developer wishing to use them for your next great product, but you have no idea where to start? We’re going to fix that in this tutorial. 1 – Overview –…

• How to Edit the WordPress RSS Feed

  Michael Martin

  19 Aug 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Ever thought you could make some improvements to your RSS feed? Like letting it cover more (or less!) content? Or adding some extra details onto the end of your posts? In this post, I’m going to show you how to do exactly that. Here’s what we’ll be covering: How to include both posts and pages in your feeds. How to add thumbnails to your feeds. How to exclude posts with a certain tag. Set how many posts appear in your feed (Without affecting the rest of your site). How to show only posts from a certain category. How to add content to the end of each post (e.g. link to your…

• Design Critique: B2Bbloggers.com

  Michael Martin

  6 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  B2Bbloggers.com is a B2B marketing site that features a lot of guest posts on B2B marketing, and highlights a lot of content from around the niche. We’re going to take a look at the site’s design today, critique it, and work out how we could improve it. As we do hopefully you’ll learn to apply this same methodology to your own site. We’ll be working through this design as a case study, redesigning each section along the way, so you get to see each item as we rework it, including the full before and after design. Let’s start by loading the site in a new tab (Or if…

• MyBiz Theme for WordPress Discount Code

  Michael Martin

  3 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  Over on PliablePress, we’ve released our newest WordPress theme. MyBiz is designed for modern businesses who don’t want the “faceless-company” approach that customers are used to receiving. It’s vibrant, colorful (You even get 5 color schemes to choose from!) and yet still professional and well organized. Most of all, we’ve put an extreme amount of care into the homepage, giving you 3 different ways to ensure your best content is highlighted and that your visitors go to the pages you want them to see. Check out the walkthrough video below showing you some…

• How To Write a Restricted Content Plugin

  Pippin

  26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

  There are a lot of sites out there, particularly digital education sites, such as Net Tuts and Blender Cookie, that push out a lot of “premium” content that is only accessible to registered users. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you some of the basics of writing a WordPress plugin from scratch that will allow you to restrict content on your site to registered users. You will be able to restrict complete pages / posts by clicking a check box or just sections of content using WordPress shortcodes. Note: I will not be showing how to create a paid membership system, or how…

• 

  About.com Web Design / HTML

• Web Design Software Pick of the Week: Page Speed

  4 Sep 2010 | 8:00 pm

  Site speed is getting more and more important, not less. And knowing that your site is loading quickly can benefit your readers as well as your site. But once you’ve made your images as small as possible, what can you do to improve your page speeds? The Page Speed Firebug plugin can help. You just load this plugin (you must have Firebug installed already) into Firefox, browse to a page you want to check, and run the analysis. Not only does it tell you where your pages are slowing down, it shows you how you can fix it. Improve Your Download Times: Page Speed Creating Speedy Graphics for…

• Poll: What social networks do you belong to?

  1 Sep 2010 | 9:53 pm

  Social networks are getting more and more popular. People use them to connect with friends and colleagues, stay up-to-date on things that interest them, you can even use them to assist in your job search. But there are so many different ones out there. I have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account focused primarily on this site. But are there other social media sites that you use?

• Wordless Wednesday - Working Designer Profiles - Geoff Snow

  31 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pm

  How did you become a web designer? Fill out this form (be sure to include a photo) to be featured on the home page of About.com Web Design/HTML: Share Your Experience. More Web design resources and help: Follow me on Twitter or Become a Fan on Facebook

• Speed Up Your Sites by Compressing the Files

  30 Aug 2010 | 10:57 pm

  Back in April, Google announced that they were adding a new signal to their ranking algorithm – speed. I have been told recently that web page sizes are no longer as important because many people have high speed internet connections. Google has found in their tests that the slower a site loads, the less time people stay on that site. So, even if all your customers have DSL or better connections, they still will benefit from a fast site. And you will benefit from happier customers. One way to speed up your site is by having the web server compress the files before delivering them. This…

• Learn Why Including a Trailing Slash on URLs is Important

  30 Aug 2010 | 8:35 am

  The trailing slash on URLs is often left off, but that is a mistake as it can affect how quickly your pages load from the web server. That slash may not seem important, but it serves a purpose. More Help Naming Your Pages and Creating URLs Why do URLs often end with a slash? What Should I Name my HTML File? What is the index.html page? What's My URL? - Learn to Find your URL

• 

  lewro's blog

• How to get your first job as a web designer

  lewro

  3 Sep 2010 | 4:31 am

  Recently I have been asked again to write an article for Smashing Share. My contribution is trying to help those who are just thinking to start in this lovely industry. Here is the link. Hope you enjoy it.

• Fast learning with aBooks can’t always replace the eBooks. What about the paper?

  lewro

  25 Aug 2010 | 7:04 am

  As person addicted to learning and studying I am always exploring new ways to learn faster. I have been big fun of eBooks since I bought my Sony Reader but that one was now replaced with iPad. Today I want to talk a bit about audio books. Not sure what is the official name. aBooks? First of all – I love them! So now I have it out of my system lets get to facts. They safe your eyes and they save your time. They save your time massively. I can listen to a book which has couple of hundred pages in matter of few days without spending any productive time on it. What I mean is that I usually…

• Bactrack – iPhone app. for all of you who enjoys outdoor activities

  lewro

  22 Aug 2010 | 5:33 am

  Recently I have been involved in design work for a company from Chicago. The project was very interesting, not only because it evolved work with the latest images of iPhone but also because of the fact that I enjoy outside activities as well as programing and designing. Backtract allows you to track your progress while you running, rollerblading, cycling or enjoying any other outdoor activities. I have not had a chance to try the app. as I do not have currently data plan on my iPhone but hopefully I will be able to try it pretty soon. I am looking forward to it! If you guys already tried the…

• What is in your bag?

  lewro

  12 Aug 2010 | 12:43 pm

  Since I become freelancer I started to travel even more then before. I usually work from different place every single day. Yeah, I even work on weekends, don’t you? Just kidding. I work during the weekends but not huge hours. When you move around like this you need a good bag where you can keep all the necessary stuff. I have bought crumpler bag quite a few years ago. The quality is so great that it’s almost like new when I take it out of washing machine now and then. So the title of the article is: What is in your bag? I would be curios to know what do you keep with you all the…

• Playing with ideas for next version of this site

  lewro

  4 Aug 2010 | 11:23 pm

  I have spent lots of time designing Photoshop mock-ups for other companies lately so I got excited and start thinking about next version of lewro.com. My life has changed a lot since I left London and so my carrier. I am now full time freelancer, working on so many exciting projects for people all over the world as well as developing my upcoming app Quantify. If you have been coming here for some time you could notice that the site is slowly shifting from blog into a company website. People are mainly interested in my portfolio and type of work I do so I am trying to give them just that. It…

• 

  Clerkendweller : Web Security, Usability and Design

• CAP Code Remit Extended Online

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:47 am

  As mentioned previously, the Advertising Standards Authority is to extend its digit remit for consumer protection. Advertisements and other marketing communications by or from companies, organisations or sole traders on their own websites, or in other non-paid-for space online under their control, that are directly connected with the supply or transfer of goods, services, opportunities and gifts, or which consist of direct solicitations of donations as part of their own fund-raising activities. The announcement on Wednesday describes how the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) made the…

• HTTP Strict Transport Security

  31 Aug 2010 | 12:37 am

  It's good to see different groups working together to improve security. This week another browser manufacturer announced future support for an initiative relating to Transport Layer Security (TLS, the successor to SSL). HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) describes a method for a web site to tell client browsers that they should only interact with it over secure transport, i.e. TLS Whilst there have been browser plugins which support this draft specification, support for HSTS was announced for v4 of Google Chrome in January, and last week for v4 of Mozilla Firefox. Hopefully Microsoft…

• Automated Attack Responses by Web Applications

  27 Aug 2010 | 12:52 am

  I have been exploring further the possible response actions an application might make once it has detected a suspected or actual attack, as a contribution to the OWASP AppSensor project. There is now a draft document describing response actions, discussed and announced last week. The draft document AppSensor - Response Actions describes thirteen response actions, provides examples of each, and discusses how they might be categorised in order to help with selection of appropriate responses. It is still a working document. If you have any suggestions or comments on the draft document, please…

• E-Commerce Due Diligence

  24 Aug 2010 | 12:27 am

  Investment decisions for loans, mergers & acquisitions in primarily online businesses need just as much care as investing in more conventional businesses. This month I contributed to the Autumn 2010 newsletter of DeVere & Co, risk management, fraud and asset recovery specialists, with an article about Ecommerce Due Diligence. In the article I discuss some of the specific issues relating to due diligence of online/e-commerce websites and applications including intellectual property, third parties, sensitive data, security operations and customers. E-commerce sites often link many…

• Avoiding Popular Passwords

  19 Aug 2010 | 11:00 pm

  A few weeks ago I mentioned two new research papers about the use of passwords on website. Another new paper from Microsoft Research and Harvard University discusses how to avoid, and protect web sites from, users selecting popular passwords. The paper Popularity is Everything: A New Approach to Protecting Passwords from Statistical-Guessing Attacks describes online and offline threats and defences against the sue of common popular passwords. Password implementation policies can be guided by legacy approaches and various standards, but as mentioned previously, economics plays a large part…

• 

  AndySowards.com

• links for 2010-09-05

  Andy Sowards

  5 Sep 2010 | 6:01 pm

  links for 2010-09-04 | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, Programming Freelancer, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster? links for 2010-09-03 | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, Programming Freelancer, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being (tags: ping.fm) If you like this, You’ll love These. No Related Posts

• links for 2010-09-03

  Andy Sowards

  3 Sep 2010 | 6:01 pm

  xkcd: The Carriage LOL take that death. (tags: blog art computer science humour internet) links for 2010-09-02 | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, Programming Freelancer, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster? InkChaser.com 3,000 FREE Business Card Giveaway &#8211; WINNERS ANNOUNCED! | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, (tags: ping.fm) If you like this, You’ll love These. No Related Posts

• links for 2010-09-02

  Andy Sowards

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:01 pm

  InkChaser.com 3,000 FREE Business Card Giveaway &#8211; WINNERS ANNOUNCED! | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, Programming Freelancer, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster? Well it's that time again! Where we announce the winners of a contest! The most recent contest where we teamed up with InkChaser.com to give 3 lucky loyal (tags: ping.fm) links for 2010-09-01 | AndySowards.com :: Daily Professional Web Design, Development, Programming Freelancer, Hacks, Downloads, Math and being a Web 2.0 Hipster? Think Vitamin » How to Track Six Key…

• InkChaser.com 3,000 FREE Business Card Giveaway – WINNERS ANNOUNCED!

  Andy Sowards

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:57 am

  Well it’s that time again! Where we announce the winners of a contest! The most recent contest where we teamed up with InkChaser.com to give 3 lucky loyal visitors 1000 FREE Business Cards is OVER! Special Thanks to everyone who participated! The winners were randomly chosen. And The Winners are: ROB TARR GOPAL RAJU JOSHUA CURRIER Congratulations to everyone! Hope you enjoy the software!! If you didn’t win this one don’t be sad, There is always another contest around the corner at AndySowards.com! Subscribe so you don’t miss the next chance to win! If you like this,…

• links for 2010-09-01

  Andy Sowards

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:01 pm

  Think Vitamin » How to Track Six Key Metrics for Your Web App Great read for Web App devs (tags: analytics app business ecommerce measurement) Why & How Freelancers Should Exercise (from Fitness Expert Scott Tousignant) | FreelanceFolder Great read – I am trying to get back into fitness, because it makes me feel so much better – and less stressed out. I used to be a gym rat, for those of you that didn't know (pre-marriage of course LOL) Think Vitamin » JavaScript Fundamentals: Basic Types and Tools [Video Tutorial] Great video for Javascript Newbs Writing Clean CSS3…

• 

  webtoolkit4me

• PaintbrushJS by Dave Shea

  klou

  21 Aug 2010 | 10:40 am

  PaintbrushJS is a lightweight, browser-based image processing library that can apply various visual filters to images within a web page. So, who’s into photoshop filters with just a little Javascript, CSS and HTML elements? Your “thank you” goes to Author of Mezzoblue, David Shea! Related posts:Smoke Effects: 42 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes Moogenda: a calendar mootools agenda jQuery Offline plugin

• Never ending patterns!

  klou

  3 Aug 2010 | 1:43 am

  In this new, well-designed website you’ll find some packs of  100% Completely Tileable Seamless Patterns, with their source files included just in case you are in the mood of spicing them up! Right now there are 4 packs of patterns including lines, paper, rust effect and fabric but they promise to add more packs in the future. Those cool patterns can be used for Personal and Commercial projects and are free! Related posts:8 Tilable fabric texture patterns PatternWall – Free Seamless Patterns Seamless vector floral patterns

• Design by the law.

  klou

  28 Jul 2010 | 6:28 am

  Every designer knows that design (and especially web design) has rules and that’s one of the things that separates it  from art. Here are 10 great laws to follow and design by, written by Mr. Ross Johnson on 3.7 designs blog. Of course the best and most innovative designers are they who break the laws by expanding them or bring something new and better, but in order to rich this level you have to master them first! Read the full article Related posts:Logo of the Day – Logo Design Inspiration My Christmas 2008 book shopping list Visual design for the web: great articles

• cssigniter.com – Premium WordPress themes. Different

  Gerasimos

  19 Jul 2010 | 1:14 am

  Last year, i had an idea of launching a small premium WordPress themes shop. So, slowly but steadily i designed a series of templates and integrated them to WordPress. Thing is that as there many really great premium WordPress theme shops out there i had to figure a way and offer, well, something more, something different. And i think, i found it. In September cssigniter.com will see the light of the day. Every month i’ll be providing at least 2 new themes in more than one versions. What do i mean? Well subscribe to the newsletter, follow @cssigniter on Twitter and you’ ll get…

• WordPress plugin: Custom CSS stylesheet for posts or pages

  Gerasimos

  11 Jun 2010 | 8:08 am

  Having posts or pages designed a bit different from the rest of the blog/site isn’t something new. Some people i admire follow this technique in a really unique way. A friend of mine is doing it as well in a really interesting way but his site is under construction so i’ll update this bit as soon as he gets online. Note: All of them are using Expression Engine. So what is it then? Earlier today i needed this for a client project. Some pages need and some others will need in the future a different style than other pages. So i made this. It’s a tiny plugin that displays a list…

• 

  Web Design Ledger

• 10 Fresh and Useful jQuery Plugins

  Henry

  1 Sep 2010 | 10:04 pm

  When it comes to adding JavaScript functionality to a website, jQuery has become the solution of choice for web designers and developers. With it’s ease of use and ever-growing selection of plugins, there’s really no point to look elsewhere. Awesome jQuery plugins are popping up everyday, and we’re always on the look out. So for this post, I’ve gathered 10 fresh plugins that you should find very useful. Cute Balloon Cute Balloon is a jQuery script that allow you to easy make a beauty tool tip balloon, also with ajax content. Captify Captify is a plugin that displays…

• 11 New High-Quality Free Fonts

  Henry

  31 Aug 2010 | 11:39 pm

  Every week we try to hunt down high-quality freebies for our readers. One of our favorite freebies to find for you are fonts, because everybody knows… you can never have too many fonts in your library. In this post, we’ve rounded up 11 brand new fonts that are super high-quality. I especially love the AW Conqueror font family. You’re sure to find a use for these in your designs. Enjoy! AW Conqueror (to download, click on Solutions > Typefaces in the left menu) Alt Tiwo Alt Matey Doughboy The Olney Font Family Geomancy Paper Boat Neu Eichmass Oh! Mai Mai! Ingleby BS Konstata

• WDL Premium: Japanese Orchard Photoshop Brushes

  Henry

  30 Aug 2010 | 11:05 pm

  Today we’re releasing a set of Beautiful Photoshop brushes for our WDL Premium Members. This set from Azigos is called Japanese Orchard and contains 17 high-resolution brushes. If you’re looking to add beautiful hand drawn elements to your nature inspired design, these brushes are what you need. Be sure to check out Azigos for more high-quality Photoshop brushes. Here is a preview of the brushes. There are 17 in all. Download Japanese Orchard Premium MemberYou must be a WDL Premium member to download this file. Sign Up Login About this Partner Azigos is a project launched by…

• 45 Inspiring Design Agency Websites

  gmuller

  29 Aug 2010 | 10:41 pm

  A while ago, we showcased a list of 50 Inspiring Portfolio Designs which featured a collection of portfolio websites belonging mainly to individual designers. Today, along those same lines, we’re presenting a collection of design agency websites. We want to show you how some of the talented design studios out there are presenting their work and attracting new clients. Enjoy, and get inspired! nclud Solid Giant uber web://contact R/GA Icelab Hicksdesign Squarefour Mooze Design Bearded Studio Worry Free Labs Creative Mash Baker Associates zee Frexy Creativepayne Pepperminted Qube Studio…

• 200+ Seamless Patterns Perfect for Website Backgrounds

  Henry

  26 Aug 2010 | 11:15 pm

  We’re always on the lookout for great freebies to share with our readers, and today we’ve got some seamless patterns. Seamless patterns are a great way to add a lot of detail to a design and fill up a big area, such as a background. Here are over 200 patterns that are perfect for creating website backgrounds. You can use these as they are, or use them as a foundation to build upon. Photoshop Stripe patterns (20 patterns) Free Vector Seamless Backgrounds (6 patterns) Seamless Paper Patterns (6 patterns) Patterns .38 (25 patterns) Patterns 17 – Fancy (4 patterns) Woven Plaid…

• 

  Unmatched Style

• stephencaver.com

  Gene Crawford

  3 Sep 2010 | 11:50 am

  I love the large typography employed on these pages, the shapes just leap out at you then it’s all backed up with the larger blocks of nav items. The nav items are basically placed on the page twice above the fold, I’m not sure that’s totally necessary but it does look good visually. I also like the black in play with the faded yellow coloring for the background, it softens the design a good deal. Nice looking site here.

• claudiucioba.com

  Gene Crawford

  3 Sep 2010 | 6:08 am

  Loving the minimal clean type based layout here. I also dig the stark black and white with the red highlight. Nice clean grid that you can see clearly and easily make out the visual hierarchy in what you should be reading first. I know the note says the work in the portfolio is for large brands and privacy is required, but there’s got to be something that can be shown off in a more public fashion. I just wonder how effective it actually is to keep the portfolio private like that.

• foundationsix.com

  Gene Crawford

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:01 am

  Very thorough design, from top to bottom there’s not a spot on this website that hasn’t been given some TLC. The subtle texture and gradient, mixed so perfectly with just the right typefaces give the design a very inviting look & feel. There’s not a ton of content on the site but each page has been painstakingly worked over, from the portfolio entries to the form on the contact page, each element is unique and a little different than things we’ve seen before. Very nice website!

• tuispace.com

  Gene Crawford

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:00 am

  Interesting design here, I like how you can change out the background images as the user. I like a lot of the other aspects to the design as well, like the large box/shape that all the content is in for each page. It just has a nice feel to it with the set background image. The pages are similar but different enough to keep it interesting as you make your way through the site. Nice interesting fresh looking site IMHO.

• hype-nation.com

  Gene Crawford

  2 Sep 2010 | 5:44 am

  Nice use of the red and black here. I like the feel of the blocky type and nice thin lines in all the underlying shapes. I do feel like there’s a sense of split focus on the top-half of the page and the big slideshow setup. They even do a scroll-down focus when you click the next link in the slideshow. I feel like the visitor could stand to see a little more info on the company or people behind hype-nation than this single page gives us. Overall though, this is a nice looking single page design with strong and bold visual appeal.

• 

  Design Snack

• skyAxiss

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:51 am

  skyAxiss (http://skyaxiss.com)

• Mooze Design

  28 Aug 2010 | 5:51 am

  Mooze Design (http://moozedesign.com)

• Devstars Web Design Portfolio

  28 Aug 2010 | 5:51 am

  Devstars Web Design Portfolio (http://www.devstars.com)

• Nick De Clercq

  28 Aug 2010 | 5:51 am

  Nick De Clercq (http://www.nickdeclercq.com/)

• C4D Games

  25 Aug 2010 | 5:51 am

  C4D Games (http://www.c4dgames.com)

• 

  Desizntech

• Free 1000 Business Cards Giveaway

  Kawsar Ali

  31 Aug 2010 | 12:28 pm

  Here we go with one more giveaway. This giveaway is for 1,000 business cards to 3 readers, so that is 1000 per reader. If you need some more business card printed out or created one but did not get time to get printed, here is your chance to do it for free. How to Win? [...] Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1

• Top 10 Signs of an Unreliable Web Hosting Company

  Kawsar Ali

  25 Aug 2010 | 5:00 am

  A very vital part online presence relies on the web hosting companies. We as clients pay them money for hosting our websites, dealing with any issue with the server, providing us with a great service and more. Although, most of these web hosting companies claim to provide with the best service in the world, how [...] Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1

• Amazing Digital Art: Desizn Tech’s Flickr User Gallery Showcase

  Kawsar Ali

  17 Aug 2010 | 4:14 pm

  Flickr is a great place to show case your work. In case you did not know Desizn Tech has a flickr user gallery. In this post we are sharing some of best works in our flickr group we came across. Join the group to get your work featured next showcase. We have been inactive in [...] Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1

• 25 Fresh jQuery Plugin That Will Rock Your World

  Kawsar Ali

  11 Aug 2010 | 7:11 am

  jQuery Plugin repository keeps growing everyday with new plugins which has useful functions. These plugins makes our job as web designer so easy. For example: If we wanted to add an image gallery, an animated menu for a project we do not have to write the plugins from scratch. In this post we are sharing [...] Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1

• Recreating YouTube Search Form and Other Buttons Using CSS3

  Kawsar Ali

  5 Aug 2010 | 11:06 am

  CSS3 could not get here any faster. Lately, there has been a lot of post about CSS3. It’s wonderful features are too good not to use. Only folks at Microsoft do not seem to have the grasp of that concept. They could have supported CSS3 for Internet Explorer 8. However, that is another discussion. In [...] Massive Freebies Password: d08YkM1

• 

  milo

• About - milo - creative web design [Flickr]

  milo3oneseven

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:31 pm

  milo3oneseven posted a photo:

• Desktop wallpaper for new website design [Flickr]

  milo3oneseven

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:31 pm

  milo3oneseven posted a photo:

• Gallery - milo - creative web design [Flickr]

  milo3oneseven

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:31 pm

  milo3oneseven posted a photo:

• milo - creative web design [Flickr]

  milo3oneseven

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:31 pm

  milo3oneseven posted a photo:

• Niukita BuddyPress theme

  miloIIIIVII

  23 Aug 2010 | 4:17 am

  Updated university styles with the Niukita BuddyPress theme, loaded blue/white colour scheme, fully widgetized for control over the frontpage layout. Best suited for schools and/or university websites with this fully fledged BuddyPress / WPmu theme.Niukita BuddyPress theme featuring a two column fluid layout with built in options panel, frontpage news slider and automatic SEO titles.Featured items:related posts built inpage navi built indom tab menurelated postsfrontpage news sliderautomatic SEO titles

• 

  BlueWave Media

• Links for 2010-09-01 [del.icio.us]

  Kimberly Beaven

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

  Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources - Smashing Magazine Smashing Magazine * Smashing Magazine * Smashing Network Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources * By Aquil Akhter * August 27th, 2010 * Design * 80 Comments * Publishing Policy Advertisement To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape,…

• links for 2010-09-01

  info@bluewavemedia.ca (Kimberly Beaven)

  1 Sep 2010 | 7:01 am

  4 Advanced WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheets | Creativeoverflow Most blogs make use of WordPress as their chosen CMS to power their site. The biggest problem that can arise though is that the author/owner of the blog isn’t quite sure how WordPress 3.0 code works after updating to the new release of WordPress. This is where Cheat Sheets come in, I have gone to the liberty of rounding up 4 Advanced WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheets for you to download and use. This will not only help you learn WordPress 3.0 coding, but improve your blogging experience as well as your reader experience. (tags: wordpress…

• Links for 2010-08-31 [del.icio.us]

  Kimberly Beaven

  1 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

  Amazon S3 plugin for WordPress : tan tan noodles – msg free since 2005 This WordPress plugin allows you to use Amazon’s Simple Storage Service to host your media for your WordPress powered blog.

• Links for 2010-08-25 [del.icio.us]

  Kimberly Beaven

  26 Aug 2010 | 12:00 am

  Digital Filing System, Document Scanning Services | OfficeDrop Digital Filing System. Reinvented. The best way to get paper out of filing cabinets & into a digital filing system Sync out scans to Google Docs, Evernote, FreshBooks, iPad and OfficeDrop Online Self-scanning software, mail-in scanning service, award-winning online filing system with full text search 60-Day free trial with no credit card required

• links for 2010-08-25

  info@bluewavemedia.ca (Kimberly Beaven)

  25 Aug 2010 | 7:02 am

  Digital Filing System, Document Scanning Services | OfficeDrop Digital Filing System. Reinvented. The best way to get paper out of filing cabinets & into a digital filing system Sync out scans to Google Docs, Evernote, FreshBooks, iPad and OfficeDrop Online Self-scanning software, mail-in scanning service, award-winning online filing system with full text search 60-Day free trial with no credit card required (tags: cloudcomputing office paperwork productivity) Tweet This! Share this on del.icio.us Email this via Gmail Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on…

• 

  Pixelcrayons Blog

• PixelCrayons Comes Up With Premium PSD to HTML Service Package for $259

  admin

  31 Aug 2010 | 6:38 am

  First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to our loyal customers for trusting us so much. Thank you, guys! We are constantly working on improving our service spectrum. In our ever-changing world of technology, we realized that there is a need to introduce some advanced beneficial options in our PSD to HTML services [...]

• 13 Website Design Mistakes that Designers Should Avoid

  admin

  10 Aug 2010 | 4:16 am

  Website Designing is an art as well as a science. In the last decade, web design market has become very competitive. You ought to innovate some or the other thing in your work if you want to survive in this market.  Also, Internet surfers have become so smart that they can easily make out the [...]

• .Co TLD Is Now Available to Register

  admin

  21 Jul 2010 | 6:23 am

  Yes! It’s true. With the announcement of a new TLD ‘.CO’ in the market by .CO Internet S.A.S. (www.COinternet.co) businesses, organisations and individuals are rushing to book their domain name by choice, with .CO TLD, which they couldn’t have booked earlier due the unavailability of the same. Most of the international businesses, from the Brand [...]

• 6 Essentials of a Successful E-commerce Website

  admin

  12 Jul 2010 | 3:32 am

  E-commerce business is booming at a fast pace. “The first quarter returned the U.S. retail e-commerce market to healthy double-digit growth rates.” Also, it has been seen that though larger online retailers have continued to generate higher growth rates than the smaller retailers. Nevertheless, the small online retailers are finally beginning to see positive growth [...]

• Get Trained and Certified by Magento

  admin

  8 Jul 2010 | 12:59 am

  Isn’t that sound exciting to Magento Lovers!!! Since everybody knows that Magento is always on the improvement side of its online help info that’s available from your Magento Admin Panels. Also, you must have noticed that Koby and a crew of (most excellent) volunteer moderators have been working hard in response to your feedback to [...]

• 

  Cheese and Beans

• Photo Journey – from Marlow to Preston

  Jonathan

  5 Sep 2010 | 2:22 pm

  While spending the last hour or so of my weekend at home with my family this afternoon, I promised the children I would take photographs during my journey north, and post them up for them to see. The journey began with a walk towards the railway station in town – lugging a backpack full of computers, and a travel bag full of clothes to last a couple of days. Arriving a few minutes before the train arrived, I joined the other passengers on the platform… The journey into London took about an hour, via Bourne End and Maidenhead. Finally we arrive in Paddington Station, where many…

• Dipping a toe into the Tumblrsphere

  Jonathan

  5 Sep 2010 | 2:43 am

  Last night I ventured forth into the sweaty masses of the tumblrsphere, and began following a number of the lifestreamers. Until now, my connection to Tumblr has been largely though web designers, software developers, technologists, photographers, social media mavens, and any number of other like-minded souls. While skimming the surface of the sea of content, I remembered a piece I wrote some time ago about the incredible community within Tumblr – about the insight it gives you to the coming generation – their hopes, their dreams, and their fears. So, with optimism, hope, and…

• Turnaround Time

  Jonathan

  4 Sep 2010 | 7:44 am

  The weekends seem like some kind of “turnaround”, or “pitstop” at the moment. Rather than go into some huge and boring story covering the last few days, I think perhaps a few bullet points might suffice; Monday – work in office all day, freelance all evening Tuesday – office in morning, 5 hour journey to client city in afternoon (arriving 9pm) Wednesday – on-site with client all day, hotel room preparing for next day all evening Thursday – on-site with client all day, 5 hour journey home in evening (arriving home at 11pm) Friday – work in…

• Another morning in Preston

  Jonathan

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:40 am

  Sat in Cafe Nero in Preston city center once more, just around the corner from the office I will be working today. Watching the world go by, sipping at a cappuccino, and wondering what the day has in store for me. A pretty girl sits across from me, with her mobile phone cradled between the pages of a book, texting somebody. Nearer the door two retired guys are sat smiling – relating stories of the recent past to each other. Outside the window a shaven headed guy with a huge ear piercing and bright red shades is sat in the cold morning air. The girl serving in the cafe yesterday…

• A good day at the coal face

  Jonathan

  1 Sep 2010 | 4:41 pm

  Today has been a remarkably good day. It began at 7am, jumping into a worryingly flexible shower, before donning work clothes and calling for a taxi to take me to the “coal face” (as mentioned previously, I can’t talk with too much detail about work…) Arriving far too early in town, I wandered through the market, which was just setting up for the day, and found a good coffee shop. A guy sat in the far corner with a Macbook just like the one I sold a few months back. I smiled as I stirred chocolate powder into my cappuccino - he was wearing a black polo neck. The rest…

• 

  CSS Globe | Web Standards Magazine

• Fun CSS3 Animation Experiment

  3 Sep 2010 | 2:33 am

  A Fun CSS3 Animation and Twitter Feed Experiment

• 25 Online CSS Compressors to Optimize Your CSS Code

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:49 am

  One of the most important thing when developing websites is page loading speed, to load as quickly as possible, especially in the case of large websites.

• Maintainable CSS3 Using PHP

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:58 pm

  Using PHP-generated CSS, you can abstract your multi-line CSS3 stuff into just one line of maintainable code.

• Performance Optimization: How to Load your javascript faster!

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:10 am

  In this article I'll point out some important rules, how to use your javascript, which tools to use and what benefits you'll gain from it.

• Zebra-striping rows and columns

  1 Sep 2010 | 5:58 am

  Zebra-striping rows and columns with the nth-of-type selector.

• 

  Six Revisions

• Winners of Apple Trackpads from Sensational Jobs

  Jacob Gube

  4 Sep 2010 | 5:47 am

  Sensational Jobs, a slick job board for web professionals that’s taking the industry by storm, teamed up with Six Revisions last week to give Apple Trackpads to 3 winners. In this post, we’re announcing the 3 lucky Six Revisions readers who’ve won. The Winners of Apple Trackpads from Sensational Jobs The 3 winners are: James Rasmussen Jonelle Drew Watkins Congratulations! The awesome folks at Sensational Jobs should have already contacted you about your prize. Please Send a Quick Tweet! Please send a tweet congratulating your fellow Six Revisions readers. Also, stay tuned…

• 8 Tips for Using Virtual Assistants and Personal Outsourcing

  Jacob Gube

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  Personal outsourcing isn’t quite the hot topic that it was two years ago. With virtual assistant firms available left and right, could-be assistants have become less of a unique work accessory and much more of a sustainable, ubiquitous business addition. What was once a quirky but useful tool for the digital age has become standard — nowadays it’s rare to find a small design firm without a personal outsourcing strategy. But while personal outsourcing has become popular, it’s certainly not a process that’s loaded with security and simplicity. Virtual assistants…

• Use the 80-20 Rule to Increase Your Website’s Effectiveness

  Jacob Gube

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  Want to increase your website’s conversion rate? Want more subscribers, opt-ins, members, customers? How about doing less work while you’re at it? Too good to be true? Nope. It’s possible if you apply the 80-20 rule: focus on the 20% that will bring you 80% of the results. By doing an 80-20 optimization of your website — whittling your pages down to the 20% of things that produces 80% of the results — you’ll not only have a simpler site that’ll convert better, but you’ll have less work in developing and managing it since there’ll be fewer…

• 50 Amazing Free Icon Sets

  Jacob Gube

  1 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  There are a lot of free icon sets out there for you to use. In this collection, we rounded up a few icon sets from all over the web that you can use in your design projects. The hundreds of featured icons here are diverse in their styles: glossy, hand-drawn, realistic, textured are among the design themes you’ll find. I hope you find a handful of icon sets that you’ll bookmark, download, and use! Note: You should read the license of each icon set before using them. Some of the icon sets featured here are available only for personal use. If you want to discover more free icons,…

• Sponsor Love: Companies That Support Six Revisions

  Jacob Gube

  31 Aug 2010 | 9:30 am

  It takes plenty of resources to bring you articles about design and development free of charge. Without our sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to bring you top-notch content that you can enjoy and learn from. Thankfully, we’re able to do all of this with the help of our sponsors who support our community — companies that also create amazing products and provide excellent services to web professionals like us. We’d like to thank our site sponsors between July 1, 2010 – August 30, 2010 and talk a little bit about what they do. As readers, you can support Six Revisions…

• 

  Function Web Design & Development

• Free Theme: Quality Control, a Simple Ticket or Bug Tracker

  liam

  26 Aug 2010 | 10:42 am

  Spencer, the developer here at Function, has been working on putting together a simple ticket or bug trackingWordPress theme. The theme allows for easy creation of a ticket/support system right within WordPress, for free. Spencer worked on this entire project himself, it was a one man project, and it turned out great, so please direct all comments and praise towards him. Theme Demo & Download View the Demo | Download Theme Free. To get a true feel for the theme and it’s potential make sure you check out the demo. For more details, as well as a download link please…

• We’re Joining forces with WooThemes for WPBundle

  liam

  26 Aug 2010 | 8:43 am

  For anybody who may have missed it, last week we announced on the WPBundle progress blog that we were joining forces with the awesome WooThemes on our latest project, the WordPress Bundle, or WPBundle. The new partnership means an even more exciting future for the project that we’ve put so much love into. Brief Overview The partnership allows us to offer our customers the save level of support that people know and love over at WooThemes. The guys at WooThemes have a solid support system in place that is well known for it’s high quality and efficiency, and now anyone who buys from…

• Pre-Order WordPress Bundle for $80 and Win a 16GB iPad

  liam

  31 May 2010 | 5:21 am

  Grab the full WordPress Themes Bundle for only $80, plus your chance to win an iPad with WPBundle. The special offer is only available until July 4th 2010 and could even win you a brand new 16GB Wi-Fi iPad. Grab A Bargain and a Chance to Win. Back our project & Pre-Order to enter. Not only will you be helping support our project, but you’ll be grabbing the Bundle at only $80. That works out currently at less than $10 per theme. This is a special pre-order price and is only available until July 4th 2010. Anybody who wants to be a part of the project and buys the Bundle at this price…

• WordPress Theme Options Overload? A Judgment Call

  Spencer

  30 May 2010 | 9:54 am

  Lately, while I’ve been busy coding themes for WPBundle, I’ve had to make a few judgment calls. One of the main ones for me is how I wanted to handle the “Theme Options” people have come to know, and quite frankly, expect. Every theme these days has theme options, and there are a ton of guides on creating theme options. So now instead of it being about actually having the Options page, it’s turned into how many options can you squeeze into your theme. A Growing Problem But I see a problem with this. Not only are people resorting to creating custom pages so they…

• WPBundle: A WordPress Themes Bundle by Function

  liam

  24 May 2010 | 7:49 am

  For many people, this is the first you’ve heard of this. We’ve not really spoke about WPBundle before, we’ve just had our heads down working hard on it for a few months now. WPBundle is a Bundle of WordPress Themes we’re busy building and we’ve just launched the WPBundle Progress Blog. What is WPBundle WPBundle or WordPress Bundle, is as it sounds, a WordPress Themes Bundle, built by Function. It will include 10 core themes, and multiple style variations. We’ll be adding style variations throughout the life of the project to offer you regularly updated…

• 

  Arbenting Freebies

• Your Reputation Precedes You…On Freelance Logo

  Rob Bowen

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:53 pm

  In case you didn’t catch it, Rob had a new post go up on Freelance Logo yesterday called, Your Reputation Precedes You : Planting the Right Seeds for Your Brand! This is a look at not only the importance of building up trust for the longevity and sustainability of your brand, but it also discusses some areas on which to focus in order to better facilitate said growth. So if you haven’t had the opportunity to read through it, then we recommend that you follow the link over and take a look! Related posts:Minimalism in Logo Design… on Freelance Logo The Basics of Brand Building…

• Minimalism in Logo Design… on Freelance Logo

  Rob Bowen

  27 Aug 2010 | 11:38 am

  Rob has recently started writing for Freelance Logo and his first article went up today! Minimalism in Logo Design : Positively Perfect Negative Spaces is a look at this specific technique applied to logo design. Using the negative space to complete portions of the logo, and ways that you can effectively take this on. Complete with a brief discussion on working with negative space in general, and a showcase of effective implementation, this article can be a helpful read for any designers looking to work more with negative space. Related posts:Your Reputation Precedes You…On Freelance…

• The Perfect Brainstorm: A How To on Noupe

  Rob Bowen

  21 Aug 2010 | 1:39 pm

  In case it happened to miss your radar this week, Rob had another new article go up on Noupe. The Perfect Brainstorm: A How To is an extremely useful post that deconstructs the brainstorming process to assist you on getting more from your storm sessions. Brainstorming is such an essential part of our everyday creative lives and the post is full of helpful tips that you may or may not know about. The only way to find out is to head that way and check it out. Related posts:Tips for More Effective Business Meetings on Noupe Designers And Developers Working Together on Noupe Minimalism in Logo…

• Web Design Community Offers Advice To Beginners on SM

  Rob Bowen

  21 Aug 2010 | 1:33 pm

  Earlier this week, Rob had an article go up on Smashing Magazine that has gotten quite a good response. The Web Design Community Offers Advice To Beginners takes the fantastic answers from one of Smashing’s social media polls and delivers a useful guide for getting started in web design. So if you happened to miss it, head on over and give it a gander. Who knows, you might like it. Related posts:Freelance Advice Fridays! 12/11/09 Outstanding Free Ebooks on Design The Perfect Brainstorm: A How To on Noupe

• Tips for More Effective Business Meetings on Noupe

  Rob Bowen

  31 Jul 2010 | 10:19 am

  In case you missed it, Rob had a guest post go up on Noupe this past week on getting more out of your business meetings. Tips for More Effective Business Meetings is a bit of a different topic that Vitaly thought would make a useful post, and so I put the proverbial pen to the page, and behold the helpful advice did flow. The post was divided into both client and co-worker meeting categories for a clearer picture on the procedures that will yield more from the time you are spending in meetings. Related posts:Designers And Developers Working Together on Noupe The Perfect Brainstorm: A How To…

• 

  Line25

• Line25 Sites of the Week for September 3rd 2010

  Chris Spooner

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:00 pm

  Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs that I stumble across during my every day browsing. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Awesome JS, Draftboard, Doodle Pad, Mooze Design and Theme Trust.Awesome JSView the websiteDraftboardView the websiteDoodle PadView the websiteMooze DesignView the websiteTheme TrustView the website

• Post-Install Plugins to Enhance & Protect WordPress

  Chris Spooner

  29 Aug 2010 | 11:00 pm

  WordPress is a fantastic, easy to install application that’s packed full of useful features. It’s all ready to rock straight out of the box, but there’s a few easy customisations you can make with a cocktail of plugins that will enhance the functionality as well as offer crucial protection. This is my collection of post-install plugins that I immediately add to every WordPress install I work on – There’s no fancy gallery plugins here, just back-to-basics additions to improve speed, SEO and security.AkismetAkismet is so crucial to a WordPress blog it even comes…

• Line25 Sites of the Week for August 27th 2010

  Chris Spooner

  27 Aug 2010 | 1:18 am

  Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs that I stumble across during my every day browsing. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Little Black Dress Society, Themify, Hull Digital, CandyBar and Carbon Ads.Little Black Dress SocietyView the websiteThemifyView the websiteHull Digital Live 10View the websiteCandyBarView the websiteCarbon AdsView the website

• Beautiful Mac App Web Design Showcase & Trends

  Chris Spooner

  23 Aug 2010 | 12:00 am

  Website designs for premium Mac application websites are amongst the most beautiful web designs on the net. Here’s an inspirational showcase of some of the best, along with a look at some common trends and features.KaleidocopeCockpitTransmitRapidWeaverDelibarVersionsSilverbackEspionageSocialiteCornerstoneThoughtsPostboxEspressoCapoCommon featuresThere’s a hand full of design features that tend to appear time and time again in the designs of Mac app websites. Some of these design trends take inspiration directly from Apple, like the well designed features layout – a common…

• Line25 Sites of the Week for August 20th 2010

  Chris Spooner

  19 Aug 2010 | 11:30 pm

  Line25 Sites of the Week is a weekly roundup of the most outstanding website designs that I stumble across during my every day browsing. In this week’s collection, we have designs from Solid Giant, Word Refuge, Harry Ford, Steve Schoger and Apollo.Solid GiantView the websiteWord RefugeView the websiteHarry FordView the websiteSteve SchogerView the websiteApolloView the website

• 

  Nettuts+

• Build a Custom HTML5 Video Player: Free Premium Tutorial

  Jeffrey Way

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:32 pm

  Much like the other various Envato marketplaces, our newly launched Tuts+ marketplace will offer a free file each month. For September, that free file/tutorial just so happens to mine! I’ll show you how to build a custom HTML5 video player with Flash fallback support. Be sure to grab this one for free for the entire month of September. Next month, it’ll return to its original price. Though the idea of a video-specific HTML element was suggested well over a decade ago, we’re only just beginning to see this come to fruition! Forget all of that “HTML5 2012” mumbo-jumbo; the…

• An Analysis of Typography on the Web

  Toni Kukurin

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:16 pm

  Typography is one of the most—if not the most—important aspects of web design. Some would argue that it takes up to 95% of web design, so why do we often neglect its importance? The readers who come to your site will often decide whether or not to stay according to your typographic choices. After all, they came here to read in the first place. Think about it for a second: if content really is king, logically typography should be treated as the queen. In fact, even some font names suggest that classification; Futura, Optima, Times New Roman (OK, that’s probably a dude),…

• How to Create a Web-Based Drawing Application Using Canvas: New Premium Tutorial

  Alex Moore

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:51 pm

  Combining HTML with the all new <canvas> feature, you can make some pretty awesome web apps! In this Premium exclusive tutorial, we will create a neat interactive drawing application using HTML and JavaScript. Along the way, we’ll also learn the basic concepts of the all new <canvas> feature. Become a Premium member to access this, as well as many other amazing tutorials and screencasts. Join Net Premium For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from…

• Quick Tip: Getting Offline Access with HTML5 Application Cache

  Andrew Burgess

  2 Sep 2010 | 5:24 pm

  Just when you thought you’d seen all the cool features of HTML5, I’m here to bring you yet another one. The internet is no longer about just websites; it’s about web applications. Often, our users are on portable or mobile devices, and they won’t always have access to a network. With HTML5’s Application Cache, you can provide them with all or some of the functionality they would have online, no matter where they go. Premium Members: Download this Video ( Must be logged in) Subscribe to our YouTube page to watch all of the video tutorials! Step 1: Make the Cache…

• Creating a Web Poll with PHP

  Erik Wurzer

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:58 am

  Polls are nearly ubiquitous on the web today, and there are plenty of services that will provide a drop-in poll for you. But what if you want to write one yourself? This tutorial will take you through the steps to create a simple PHP-based poll, including database setup, vote processing, and displaying the poll. Step 1: Plan & Create the Database In order to store poll results, we’re going to store three pieces of information: A question identifier An answer identifier The number of votes a question/answer pair has gotten For this tutorial, we’ll be using PDO and SQLite. If…

• 

  Marcofolio.net

• Freebies: "Ancient stones" High resolution textures

  3 Sep 2010 | 10:50 am

  Last week, I came back from a short vacation to Italy. I had a great time, visited Rome too (including all the tourist attractions you need to see over there), but also visited the ruins of Ostia Antica. It's pretty impressive to see what the Roman people were capable to build, such a long time ago (it's not as impressive as the the Colosseum, but still). While my girl and I were walking - in the burning sun - through Ostia Antica, she came up with the great idea to take pictures of the impressive ruins to be used as textures for designers. She's the one that took these 14 pictures of ancient…

• Lights Off - A puzzle game using HTML5 canvas

  13 Aug 2010 | 8:32 am

  More and more HTML5 tutorials are popping up on the internet. Although it still is future talk, it's still great to see what this upcoming web standard can do for us. One of the most interesting new HTML5 elements, has to be <canvas>. This element allows the developer to draw anything using JavaScript. I've never played around with this element, but still wanted to experiment with it. Therefor, I re-created Lights Off, one of the first native games for the iPhone, but now using HTML5 <canvas>. I know my attempt to create the game isn't nearly as great as the real app, but the goal…

• Sharing some fudge with Franz Jeitz

  8 Aug 2010 | 10:17 pm

  It has been a while since I've had a chat conversation with another designer/developer (it was with Chris Coyier). But for the last couple of weeks, I've had a great chat/interview with Franz Jeitz, which you may know from his blog: fudgegraphics - freebies, tutorials and inspiration for design lovers. Let's sit down, take a cup of tea together with this tea-lover from London, and read this chat conversation with this creative man behind the scenes of fudgegraphics. Did you know the fudge-part of the name doesn't have anything to do with the food? Wonder what it does mean? I promise you,…

• jQuery quickie: Slot machine navigation

  1 Aug 2010 | 11:32 pm

  Navigation is one of the things you'll see on every website. I wanted to give this part a little bit extra life, and when I saw a movie yesterday that included slot machines, it suddenly hit me. Using jQuery and some basic CSS and HTML, we could add some sweet slot machine style animation to a normally boring kind of navigation. So, for today, we'll be creating a slot machine style navigation that you could use on your website. Since it's not such an advanced technique, this is also a jQuery quickie. These relatively simple tutorials will also give you a good understanding of jQuery. Simply…

• jQuery quickie: Unlimited Scroll using the Twitter API

  22 Jun 2010 | 10:14 am

  Time for another relatively simple jQuery tutorial, just like my previous jQuery quickie. At work, I'm currently working with Silverlight and implemented unlimited scroll. This is a great technique that could be used on loads of websites. Instead of the regular pagination, where the user has to click to see the next page, unlimited scroll automatically loads the next page when the user is at the bottom. I wanted to take this technique and port it to another jQuery example. So the quickie for today is Unlimited scroll using jQuery. I've using the Twitter API to make the example, so you'll…

• 

  Plaveb.com

• Professional Web Application Development Process Explained

  Mark Spenser

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Much is talked about web applications in my earlier blogs, and if you go through my blog comparing desktop applications and web applications, you will find the pros and cons of each. That apart, today I am going to explain the web application development process to impart my readers understanding on how web application projects are carried out.

• How to structure SEO friendly information architecture

  Mark Spenser

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Any website has a crucial element to be taken care of in its build-up phase which is its information architecture. If the data or content of a website is organized in a search engine friendly way, the results will be very positive from an online perspective. Designing a site’s architecture for high ranking may be the SEO objective, but a bigger objective than that is to make it soundly usable and customer converting. The ...

• How Twitter Thinks About Revenue Generation – The Mystery Explained

  Mark Spenser

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Twitter – the word, rather the website needs no introduction, but just to make a start, let’s do a formality. Twitter - a highly popular social networking and microblogging service which runs through a website that allows people to post 14-character messages, operated by Twitter Inc. Ever since its creation in 2006, millions of dollars have been spent funding it, but speculations have always been on as...

• Get More from Your Business with a Web Based Business Application

  Mark Spenser

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Many businesses are using internet and networking in a great way to enhance their performance. Web based applications are a preferred platform these days when it comes to business information systems. Combining the communication capabilities of internet with the exceptional development platforms available on the World Wide Web, such an application serves a highly functional, cost ...

• How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Service Provider Company – Part 2

  Mark Spenser

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  Domain - A best-rated web hosting service maybe having one of the most important features as enabling hosting of unlimited domain names. How this helps your account is that it’s cheaper and more feasible when it comes to paying hosting fees for every single domain name. The offer of some companies of getting “a free domain name for life” can also be worth considering.

• 

  Webdesigner Depot

• Our Favorite Tweets of the Week Aug 29-Sep 4, 2010

  Walter

  5 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot10 Beautiful iTunes 10 Replacement Icons: http://ow.ly/2zkA7Scary! McDonald’s…

• Comics of the Week #41

  Walter

  4 Sep 2010 | 3:31 am

  Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…Take a BreakThe Aggressive MarketerMy…

• In-Depth Review of Tumblr’s Custom Theming Ability

  Walter

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:29 am

  Tumblr. If you’re a savvy tech maven, you may have heard of, or had the chance to use, this powerful microblogging platform.No wonder; millions of people have chosen Tumblr as their blogging service, and the average Tumblr user creates 14 original posts every month. Half of those posts are photos, and the rest consist of text, links, quotes, music and video.Tumblr is nothing to sneeze at. It has proven itself worthy of receiving cash infusions from two venture capital firms and a number of angel investors.If you’re thinking of climbing on board the Tumblr train, this article is…

• Working For A Web Design Agency

  John

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  The most obvious job for a web designer is working for a web design agency, but if you’ve never done that before… then how do you know what to expect? Is it even the right path for you?Setting foot in an agency for the first time can be daunting. It’s filled with people who have probably worked in the industry longer than you and who probably know a lot more than you.Perhaps you’ve just finished a degree and you’re looking for a first job, or maybe you’re about to go back to office life after a few years of freelancing under your belt.Either way, today…

• Winners of Custom Stickers from Sticker Mule

  Walter

  1 Sep 2010 | 3:25 am

  After more than 300 comments on last week’s Sticker Mule giveaway, we finally have the results.As you know, Sticker Mule makes awesome custom stickers in all different shapes and sizes as well as skins that you could use, for example, for your laptop, iPhone or iPad. These are not only great fun, but can also be used as excellent promotional tools, or even gifts.Each of the 5 winners has won a voucher worth $100, which can be applied to any of Sticker Mule’s stickers or skins.The winners were selected at random and you can check the results after the jump.Here are the winners:#5…

• 

  Inspired Magazine

• GCSE Student Launches New Appstore Hit with Help From ‘The Studio of Dreams’

  Catalin Zorzini

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:33 am

  For the past 3 weeks, our friends from ustwo™ have been working on a radical new iPhone app with the latest member of the team, Jack McLean – a 16-year old work experience student. Here are all the details of the incredible story and an exclusive interview with Jack. Having recently finished his GCSEs, and unlike most teenagers over the summer holidays, Jack intended to spend his free time doing work experience, making sure his dreams of becoming a famous iPhone app developer became a reality.  In just 3 weeks he developed, produced and launched Terry Touch™ – with some help…

• There’s a Theme for That – The Best WordPress Templates for iPhone & iPad Related Sites

  Catalin Zorzini

  1 Sep 2010 | 1:22 pm

  “Niche WordPress themes” is one of our favorite topics – you know that by now. We had roundups for business, portfolio, shopping or super specialized themes, but this time we’re lining up the coolest 10 WP themes for iEverything – iPhone apps, iPad accessories, appstores and so on. Check out our selection and feel free to suggest new entries in the comments. Fone Deluxe | $27 | Demo | Download My App | $0.86! | Demo | Download Apz | $70 | Demo | Download iPhone App | $65 | Demo | Download my Application | $12 | Demo | Download Inspire | $70 | Demo | Download…

• 15 Kinetic Typography Pieces Based on Popular Films

  Kyle Kargov

  31 Aug 2010 | 3:32 am

  Do films require video to be entertaining? Take away the people in a movie, and what left is there? Add in cleverly designed typography, and you’ve birthed life into something that was lifeless. Below are fifteen examples of stunning kinetic typography pieces timed to fifteen different popular films. Rocky Balboa Kill Bill Pulp Fiction Fight Club Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels V for Vendetta The Matrix Requiem for a Dream Trainspotting Step Brothers Devil’s Advocate The Big Lebowski Ocean’s Eleven Wedding Crashers Zoolander

• Business Writing for the Web: 27 Ways to Write Better

  Alan Martin

  29 Aug 2010 | 1:35 pm

  This is a guest post by Alan Martin – a copywriter at Cooper Murphy Webb, the business writing and copywriting company. All business writing has one goal and that’s to persuade someone to do something. Whether you’re writing a blog post or sales copy, you want your audience to act. Persuasive writing can often be the most difficult type of writing, especially when the average person is barraged daily by a never-ending flow of information.  Follow these tips to become a more successful business copywriter, one whose readers not only read your entire email but also follow-through…

• 10 Must-have Products for Designers

  Neil

  27 Aug 2010 | 6:46 am

  Well since it’s Friday and everybody’s happy I thought we should get even more reasons to be cheerful so we invited Neil of Dennis and McGregor (one of our newest advertisers) to recommend us some insanely cool items to offer as a gift to a designhead. Or to crave for. FERM LIVING – COAT TREE WALL STICKER In our ever changing environment where space is always an issue, this is the perfect solution to eliminate clutter in your entrance.  Both decorative and functional this wall sticker will leave everyone wanting one. This will create a unique look and change the style and…

• 

  Mindsmack

• FastMall 3.0 Launches: Featuring ShopSavvy Bar Code Scanning, Keyword & Categorical Search, Offline Navigation Functionality and More.

  admin

  12 Aug 2010 | 8:06 am

  This is the app we have all been working on here at MindSmack for the last 4 months. We have developed a completely new technology called MapOS™ (Map Operating System) that powers the navigation for FastMall 3.0. This custom technology will allow any user to get turn by turn navigation indoors or outdoors without the need [...]

• MindSmack President/CEO Sam Feuer Interviewed By The Los Angeles Radio Reading Service About The Power Of The FastMall Experience For Anyone With A Walking Or Visual Disability.

  admin

  27 Jul 2010 | 4:01 pm

  If you were blind, visually impaired, physically unable to turn a page, or a senior with an age–related print disability, how would you stay informed? A bit about the wonderful service that LARRS provides: Without timely news, opinions, events listings, consumer information, and community service reports from printed sources, it is nearly impossible for people who are [...]

• Pioneer Press, TwinCities.com Writes About The Power & Functionality Of FastMall In A Brilliant Article.

  admin

  13 Jul 2010 | 5:00 am

  Excerpts taken from the following article – You are here: We test airport, mall and skyway apps – Julio Ojeda-Zapata. Internet mapping and navigation services have evolved in remarkable ways, but it’s largely been an outdoors game. When I’m finding my way on unfamiliar roads, for instance, an Android smartphone can give me turn-by-turn directions using [...]

• Micro location marketing in the malls of the world with the FastMall app and MindSmack.com President/CEO Sam Feuer.

  admin

  28 Jun 2010 | 7:56 am

  The coolest thing about a location-based service is when it can get you from one place to another — hence GPS and the insane consumer advantage Google had by including the software layer for free with the Android operating system. FastMall is a unique and needed service layer that combines that all-important aspect of getting around [...]

• Our FastMall Mobile Application Is Exploding. We Have Also Just Added The Largest Mall In Europe To The Interactive Map Arsenal.

  admin

  17 Jun 2010 | 9:01 am

  Metrocentre UK is the No. 1 shopping and leisure centre in the UK – and the largest in Europe. Based in Gateshead, the Centre has over 330 stores and is stocked full of key designer and cost conscious brands, with new retailers coming onboard all the time. Metrocentre is more than a shopping experience. Why not [...]

• 

  Inspect Element

• dConstruct

  Tom Kenny

  2 Sep 2010 | 2:48 pm

  Off to dConstruct tomorrow, my first industry related conference. Really looking forward to it, especially seeing Merlin Mann’s and John Gruber’s talks. Probably a bit late but any Inspect Element readers heading to Brighton? @tkenny me on Twitter if you are!

• The Wilderness Downtown, an HTML5 Masterpiece

  Tom Kenny

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:21 am

  Watch and enjoy. More details of how it works here including street detection within Google Maps Street View. Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas. Goodbye Flash (one day).

• Writing Clean CSS3 Code

  Tom Kenny

  1 Sep 2010 | 3:56 pm

  One of the main problems with writing CSS3 code are the vendor prefixes. These are the -moz- or -webkit- you see before properties such as border-radius or text-shadow. They’re a necessary evil at worst and you’ll have to use them to get the most out of what CSS3 currently has to offer. So what’s the problem? I’m very much a fan of the single line approach to writing CSS as seen below. It allows elements to sit under each other nicely, making them easier to find. Good commenting also helps. The downside of vendor prefixes is declaring the same value more than once.

• The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains

  Tom Kenny

  30 Aug 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Erping Zhu, had people read a passage of digital prose but varied the number of links appearing in it. She then gave the readers a multiple-choice quiz and had them write a summary of what they had read. She found that comprehension declined as the number of links increased—whether or not people clicked on them. After all, whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which is itself distracting. Interesting findings into adding links into passages of text. We all know that links are fundamental to the way the web works but linking too frequently will…

• Attention to Detail: You either have it or you don’t

  Tom Kenny

  26 Aug 2010 | 4:47 am

  Think about this when designing websites, attention to detail is what sets a design apart from others.

• 

  Posh CSS

• CSS Counters: counter-increment and Friends

  Sam Brown

  25 Aug 2010 | 1:17 am

  A comprehensive discussion of how to use CSS counters, including an infographic and details on browser support, benefits and potential drawbacks. Read more at www.impressivewebs.com →

• 27 Amazingly Realistic CSS Icons and Logos

  Sam Brown

  24 Aug 2010 | 3:48 am

  In this article, we have handpicked some awesome css3 experiments so far which will make you say wow. Read more at www.1stwebdesigner.com →

• Animated Sprites with CSS3 Transitions

  Sam Brown

  13 Aug 2010 | 3:16 am

  Using two familiar CSS techniques you can create animated CSS-only rollovers that degrade gracefully in nonsupporting browsers. Read more at www.impressivewebs.com →

• CSS3 Playground

  Sam Brown

  10 Aug 2010 | 10:38 am

  Explore CSS3 radius, box-shadow, text-shadow, and transforms in a WYSIWYG environment. (via Cameron Moll) Read more at css3.mikeplate.com →

• 960 Grid System and Full Width Backgrounds

  Sam Brown

  9 Aug 2010 | 1:08 am

  Best practices for implementing full width header/footer backgrounds using the 960 Grid System. Read more at gandrweb.com →

• 

  Onextrapixel

• Bokeh Effect in Web Design: Examples and Tutorials

  Hilde Torbjornsen

  3 Sep 2010 | 4:03 am

  Bokeh effect is the blurred or out of focus part of the image. This effect has become very popular recently, and is normally seen in photography mostly around the light sources. Many designers have made use of this effect in web design to bring the object into sharper focus while making the background visually appealing. This time we're going to show you some examples of the very popular Bokeh effect in web design and also share with you some tutorials on how you can create this effect yourself. What is The Bokeh Effect? This effect has become very popular over the last few years. The effect…

• 69 Sexy and Explicit Advertisements: See It Creatively

  Aidan

  1 Sep 2010 | 4:00 am

  Sex sells. In today's society, people are becoming more open minded. As such, advertisers are becoming bolder. They exploit our acceptance and desire for the sensual by using sex to turn heads regardless of your gender or sexuality. Sex has always been one of the most powerful and persuasive advertising tools. Only now, it is more socially acceptable to use sex to entice and attract consumers. WARNING: Some images may be too explicit and is not suitable for minors. The advertiser’s aim is to capture the attention of viewers by using sensual or sexually explicit tones to do so. Although…

• A Detailed Look into Popular Styles in Web Design

  Kayla Knight

  31 Aug 2010 | 4:05 am

  Just as there are a variety of designers out there, there are respectfully just as many web design styles. Some are good, some are bad - many are just experimental. However, there are those few styles in web design that we see all the time. They are the design styles that work, and that we've grown to know best. Sometimes popular web design styles can deter us since we love to create something original. As designers we like to see variety, but of course, our clients like to mimic and see consistency. In this post we're going to look into some of the more popular web design styles, and further…

• Embrace Constraints: How Limiting Yourself Won’t Limit Your Designs

  John Cowen

  30 Aug 2010 | 4:00 am

  If you’re a creative person it’s easy to believe you will be at your most creative without any constraints. In reality however, this isn’t the case. Your creativity needs a focus, which is found by setting limits. If you can do anything your creativity stalls – there are too many decisions and you get confused. Restrict yourself to just a few design elements and a set a deadline to give your creative brain a goal to focus on. This article looks at how designers can turn constraints into opportunities. The Myth of Creative Freedom A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to…

• Web Design: Reboot, or Just Upgrade Instead?

  Alexander Dawson

  27 Aug 2010 | 4:19 am

  Change is always hard, and knowing when to upgrade or redesign is among the most critical events in a site’s history. A successful transition from old to new will revitalise a community, give renewed interest in your content or perhaps better portray your services. A poorly thought through redesign may cause your current user base to consider going to your competitors instead. As such, we need to highlight the methods we use within upgrades and that may hold the longevity your site requires. Time for Something New Whenever you begin walking the pathway towards a website redesign, the…

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  Useful Tools

• An Easy Way To Manage Your Photo Collection

  Alison K

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:50 am

  I originally reviewed Dropico last year, when it was a cool concept that unfortunately, didn’t function as intended. I’m reviewing it again because I got a request from the developers to do so, and because when I checked it out, it has so many cool new features that it’s almost a different app. Dropico is an app that allows you to manage your photo collections on your computer and a variety of different social networks from one central location using a handy drag-and-drop interface. So, for example, if you want to move pictures over to Facebook from your poor abandoned…

• Cheat Sheets for Developers

  Alison K

  31 Aug 2010 | 6:57 am

  QuicklyCode is a handy library of cheat sheets and other resources for developers, much like DevCheatSheet. The site contains an organized collection of cheat sheets on various topics of interest, including analytics, programming languages, SEO and much more. The main differences between QuicklyCode and DevCheatSheet are in appearance and organization. DevCheatSheet has its cheat sheets broken down into topics like “Programming & Scripting Languages,” “Markup Languages,” etc. QuicklyCode has its reference materials broken down into four major categories: cheat…

• Business Cards, Updated

  Alison K

  27 Aug 2010 | 6:06 am

  The business card is one of those archaic but essential items that someone is always trying to replace with new technology. In the quest to render paper business cards obsolete, we’ve seen everything from smart phone apps like Bump to gadgets like the Poken. Now, Qubrit is a new startup that aims to replace business cards with an online profile containing your contact information. To use Qubrit, simply sign up, add your contact information and your social networking profiles, and you’re good to go.  There’s also a portfolio tab where you can add work experience, skills,…

• Terminate That Pile Of Resumes

  Alison K

  24 Aug 2010 | 8:11 am

  Tired of staring down a virtual “pile” of resumes? The Resumator is a handy app that makes collecting resumes and selecting candidates much more efficient. Instead of sifting through an email inbox stuffed with resumes, the Resumator lets you filter, organize, rank and track them. Here’s how it works: instead of writing up a job description and posting it on job boards, sign up for the Resumator and enter your job description there. You’ll be able to specify characteristics that would make an applicant stand out, such as college GPA or whether or not the candidate is…

• Make FollowFriday More Useful

  Alison K

  20 Aug 2010 | 9:42 am

  FollowFriday is a Twitter tradition. But how much are you really benefiting from it? Do you take the time to follow your tweeps’ recommendations? Does anybody take the time to follow you? FollowFriday is a handy little app that helps you get more out of #FollowFriday. When you first visit the FollowFriday site, you can see a list of the Twitter users who got the most #FollowFriday recommendations. Unfortunately, the list doesn’t update in real-time-it takes FollowFriday a little over 24 hours to get the final results. So, if you visit right now all you’ll see is a…

• 

  Slodive

• Wonderful work of Phil Saunders – I.D. 50

  SloDive Admin

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:05 am

  Older Related Articles:Amazing Art of Wen-Xi ChenPhantasmagorical Art of Anna AnjosExtreme Conceptual Artwork by Joel Dos Reis ViegasInspirational Work 1Inspirational Work 2Inspirational Work 3Inspirational Work 4Inspirational Work 5Inspirational Work 6Inspirational Work 7Inspirational Work 8Inspirational Work 9Inspirational Work 10Inspirational Work 11Inspirational Work 12Inspirational Work 13Inspirational Work 14Inspirational Work 15Inspirational Work 16Inspirational Work 17Inspirational Work 18Inspirational Work 19Inspirational Work 20Inspirational Work 21Inspirational Work 22Inspirational…

• Key to Improve the Conversion Rate of Your Online Store

  SloDive Admin

  27 Aug 2010 | 3:21 am

  Older Related Articles:Marketing Tip: Consider Video When Marketing to Twitter UsersHTML5 Versus Flash — Is It Really So?Roundup of 22 Cutting Edge PSD to HTML TutorialsArrival of autumn season is pronounced by passage of Temperature from summer into winter season. Its long awaited as it gives us a respite from scorching sun and brings our most favorite shopping time expected during Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Thanksgiving holidays. This season is even more important for online stores as this period is marked for spending big bucks by customers. Your website is the only way where you…

• Amazing Art of Wen-Xi Chen – I.D. 49

  SloDive Admin

  26 Aug 2010 | 4:37 am

  Older Related Articles:Phantasmagorical Art of Anna AnjosTerrific CG Work Showcase of Pascal Ackermann Awesome Conceptual Art by Daniel DociuInspirational Work 1Inspirational Work 2Inspirational Work 3Inspirational Work 4Inspirational Work 5Inspirational Work 6Inspirational Work 7Inspirational Work 8Inspirational Work 9Inspirational Work 10Inspirational Work 11Inspirational Work 12Inspirational Work 13Inspirational Work 14Inspirational Work 15Inspirational Work 16Inspirational Work 17Inspirational Work 18Inspirational Work 19Inspirational Work 20Inspirational Work 21Inspirational Work…

• 50 Captivating Horizontal Websites

  SloDive Admin

  25 Aug 2010 | 12:40 am

  Older Related Articles:Best Customized iPhone WebsitesSplendid Minimal Web Design Portfolio ExamplesAwesome Examples Of Single Page Web DesignDean OakleyHorizontal Website LinkJason LoveHorizontal Website LinkCandice HollowayHorizontal Website LinkTyler Finck, SurslyHorizontal Website LinkWe Love ChiefHorizontal Website LinkWe Shoot BottlesHorizontal Website Linkf clarie baxterHorizontal Website Linkif this were a…Horizontal Website LinkAlex FluerasHorizontal Website LinkBBHHorizontal Website LinkCharlie GentleHorizontal Website LinkCostume National BlogHorizontal Website…

• Cool Comic Art by Der-shing Helmer – I.D. 48

  SloDive Admin

  23 Aug 2010 | 2:48 am

  Older Related Articles:Caricature Art by Gary LockeInspiration Dose – Issue 1Tremendous FanArt by Kuroi TsukiInspirational Work 1Inspirational Work 2Inspirational Work 3Inspirational Work 4Inspirational Work 5Inspirational Work 6Inspirational Work 7Inspirational Work 8Inspirational Work 9Inspirational Work 10Inspirational Work 11Inspirational Work 12Inspirational Work 13Inspirational Work 14Inspirational Work 15Inspirational Work 16Inspirational Work 17Inspirational Work 18Inspirational Work 19Inspirational Work 20Inspirational Work 21Inspirational Work 22Inspirational Work 23Inspirational…

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  Inspect Element

• dConstruct

  Tom Kenny

  2 Sep 2010 | 2:48 pm

  Off to dConstruct tomorrow, my first industry related conference. Really looking forward to it, especially seeing Merlin Mann’s and John Gruber’s talks. Probably a bit late but any Inspect Element readers heading to Brighton? @tkenny me on Twitter if you are!

• The Wilderness Downtown, an HTML5 Masterpiece

  Tom Kenny

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:21 am

  Watch and enjoy. More details of how it works here including street detection within Google Maps Street View. Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas. Goodbye Flash (one day).

• Writing Clean CSS3 Code

  Tom Kenny

  1 Sep 2010 | 3:56 pm

  One of the main problems with writing CSS3 code are the vendor prefixes. These are the -moz- or -webkit- you see before properties such as border-radius or text-shadow. They’re a necessary evil at worst and you’ll have to use them to get the most out of what CSS3 currently has to offer. So what’s the problem? I’m very much a fan of the single line approach to writing CSS as seen below. It allows elements to sit under each other nicely, making them easier to find. Good commenting also helps. The downside of vendor prefixes is declaring the same value more than once.

• The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains

  Tom Kenny

  30 Aug 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Erping Zhu, had people read a passage of digital prose but varied the number of links appearing in it. She then gave the readers a multiple-choice quiz and had them write a summary of what they had read. She found that comprehension declined as the number of links increased—whether or not people clicked on them. After all, whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which is itself distracting. Interesting findings into adding links into passages of text. We all know that links are fundamental to the way the web works but linking too frequently will…

• Attention to Detail: You either have it or you don’t

  Tom Kenny

  26 Aug 2010 | 4:47 am

  Think about this when designing websites, attention to detail is what sets a design apart from others.

• 

  Miralize

• Its Time For Something Biblical

  Sean O'Grady

  18 Aug 2010 | 3:57 am

  So for the few of you who still read this thing, you may (or the more likely may not) have noticed that at the start of the summer I had redesigned this site with a bright blue shade, with green’s whites and textures galore. Sadly this is going to change mid-September, due to another refresh. I’m not happy with the comic feel to the website. It looks dated already, I ended up using lots of images. It doesnt portray exactly what I hope to achieve from it. I’ve been extremely busy with college work and work work but I hope to get some time to do some stuff when I get my break…

• Walt Mosspuppet on iPhone 4 Problems

  Sean O'Grady

  25 Jun 2010 | 2:47 pm

  Regular broadcast will resume shortly. For now, enjoy

• Daily Links – April 14th

  Sean O'Grady

  14 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm

  So things are abit busy over here. I have exams coming up, and along with that, I have a job starting in May for the kind people over at the Tipperary Enegry Agency. Should be interesting Anyways, these are my links for April 12th through April 14th: “Foursquare Cops” Web Show Catches Checkin Cheaters in the Act [VIDEO] – “Foursquare Cops” Web Show Catches Checkin Cheaters in the Act http://bit.ly/cB54oh – hilarious 40+ Very Handy iPhone Apps for Mobile Designers | tripwire magazine – 40+ Very Handy iPhone Apps for Mobile Designers http://bit.ly/az2rhB First…

• Starting Out – Things I’ve Learned as a Freelance Web Designer

  Sean O'Grady

  3 Mar 2010 | 8:59 am

  In the 14 months I’ve been officially freelancing, I’ve learned so much. I’ve had the privilege of working with some truly remarkable people and companies. When doing what I do, it’s easy to lose track of time, so when I look back at some of the first designs I’ve made I can honestly say I’m improving, but there is definitely vast room to improve. Below are a few key elements which I have tried to follow while freelancing, and hopefully an aspiring designer can learn from even one of these tips. Simplicity is Key The designs you make between becoming…

• Daily Links – 12th Feb 2009

  Sean O'Grady

  12 Feb 2010 | 3:01 am

  This week, the biggest news socially has to be Google Buzz, a social aggregator integrated into Gmail. It needs to be refined more, but right now, its doing its purpose, worrying Twitter. This is what else I’ve been reading this week. Subscribed to Popple3February 11, 2010New Beta of Google Chrome for Mac Now AvailableFebruary 11, 2010Subscribed to ZacharyZipsFebruary 11, 2010NOTHING IS IRREVERSIBLEFebruary 8, 2010Online Marketing for Beginners - Added BytesFebruary 11, 2010Gridmaker For Photoshop CS4 - Article - andrewingramFebruary 9, 2010Designers *First* Designs…February 8, 201010…

• 

  Inspiredology

• Friday Fix August 30 – September 3

  Chad

  3 Sep 2010 | 5:16 am

  The Friday Fix is a weekly recap of all things inspiring. We look at new web apps, portfolios, beautiful websites and anything else design related. Identity Designed Hollerado Mark & Phil Kembrel Mooze Design Supersteil Cassius PPF – Participatory Politics Foundation Unlocking

• Graphic Design Through the Decades Series: The ’70s

  Jennifer Moline

  1 Sep 2010 | 5:11 am

  As a child of the 1970s, I recall growing up with bright, clashing colors and balloony words. It was like the ’60s kept all the serif fonts to themselves and left the next decade with rounded typography. While psychedelic rock-concert posters carried into the 1970s, that decade also saw an evolution in advertising, with more people’s up-close faces declaring their devotion to a product. Cartoons and drawings were left to make-believe animals – the starkly drawn housewives of the ’50s were replaced with perky human beings. While the 1970s are often derided for their bell bottoms and…

• FITC Recap – What I Learned

  Avery

  30 Aug 2010 | 5:11 am

  I’d like to start by thanking Inspiredology for sending me to the Flash in the Can (FITC) conference in San Francisco. You not only gave me a ticket, but you gave me an unmatched insight into what little I knew about Flash. Now, please note that I was a skeptical design student amongst a sea of hardcore developers. Flash, to me, was a tool for making silly little animations in the early 2000’s, and was a poor excuse for a video embedding tool on the web. With the advent of HTML5 and as a web designer, I thought Flash was on its way out. However, having barely touched it myself, I knew…

• Friday Fix August 23 – August 27

  Chad

  27 Aug 2010 | 4:57 am

  The Friday Fix is a weekly recap of all things inspiring. We look at new web apps, portfolios, beautiful websites and anything else design related. Design Cocktail These design bundles are really catching on, I love it. Believe me, you want this bundle – it’s a great collection of vector resources. Be sure to grab this one. Theme Trust Henry Jones of WDL has released a new theme store, with some nice themes. It seems like everyone is doing this – not sure if the market is being over-saturated or not but – the themes are great. Citroen adidas Co.Design WPCandy Our…

• Sticker Mule $100 Giveaway

  Andrew

  25 Aug 2010 | 4:42 am

  If you haven’t heard of Sticker Mule, you need to! They can take your artwork and turn them into stickers of any shape or size. They do everything from bumper stickers to laptop and iPad skins. Want to win a $100 coupon? Enter Now! I will keep this post short and sweet! As I mentioned above, we’ve joined up with the nice people at Sticker Mule to give our readers some free custom stickers. Sticker Mule prints custom stickers in all shapes and sizes. They fix low quality artwork for free, and provide free shipping anywhere in the North America. Contest details below! Some of Their…

• 

  hongkiat

• 18 Website Speed and Performance Checking Tools

  hongkiat

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:21 am

  Google is taking site’s loading speed into consideration in determining its ranking. Even though this will not land a big impact, it is still something we (webmasters) should really look into. The reason is pretty simple – majority of visitors are usually in rush and no one is fond of waiting half a century before the website finally load its content or failed to load. In another words, if your site is slow, you are subjected to lose a lot of visitors. Visitors are traffic, traffic affects reputation and they can potentially generate revenue. It can be a domino effect if one…

• Winners of: Custom-Printed Plastic Card Gift Cards

  hongkiat

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:28 am

  Here it is, our winners for ShortrunCard custom-printed plastic cards contest. Sorry for the slight delay! A little recap of what the winners will be getting before we announce the list. 3 winners, each getting a $200 gift card, $100 gift card and $50 gift card, courtesy of ShortRunCard. These gift cards can be used to order customized plastic cards. Some of you raised the concern whether this includes the shipping fees – the answer is yes/no. Assume you won the $200 gift card, and your total bill plus shipping is $210; after redeeming with your gift card you will only pay $10 extra.

• Vintage Advertisement of Modern Technology

  hongkiat

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  Vintage design is always described as outdated, old looking design with most updated products like Facebook or Nintendo Wii featured… what? Yeah it’s not a typo, I mean it, and you’re gonna witness 24 modern products adapted into vintage style advertisement. Some of them are created by modern designer, yet others are modified directly from genuine vintage ads originated from your parent’s era. So get amused, get inspired, who knows vintage might be the design direction for your next viral ad campaign! Social Media Facebook “Striking, miraculous social…

• 45 (Fresh) High Quality Photoshop PSD Files

  hongkiat

  30 Aug 2010 | 7:00 am

  What’s great about .PSD files? For one, we can observe and learn how experts create awesome designs by exploring the different layers and techniques they use. Beginners can appreciate how different functions in Photoshop can affect their images, and hence gain an understanding of how to bring out their desired effects. What’s more, .PSD files allow us to experiment with several layers within the file itself, providing maximum customization for any curious user. If you can recall, we had previously showcased 60 High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers some time ago.

• Freebie Release: Web Template in Photoshop PSD – Polo360

  hongkiat

  26 Aug 2010 | 5:43 am

  Once in a while, we collaborate with creative designers to giveaway free stuff to readers through hongkiat.com. We figured it benefits all parties – creators get the credit and some exposures, readers get to download them for free with no strings attached. Today, we are going to do the same thing again. Viv Singh of vivrocks.com has designed a high quality web template for us. It is available in Photoshop PSD format. All layers are open so you can do any chances you want. Named Polo360, this template is suitable for portfolio site, WordPress home page or corporate site. It’s free…

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  ziipa.com

• vidyo

  4 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

• hswoopthat.com

  4 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

• writeraccess.com

  4 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

• notifo.com

  4 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

• podio.com

  4 Sep 2010 | 12:00 am

• 

  WebAppers

• How to Create BonBon Buttons with CSS3

  Ray Cheung

  3 Sep 2010 | 12:01 am

  BonBon Buttons are sweet CSS3 buttons that are sexy looking, really flexible, but with the most minimalistic markup as possible. There are 3 different materials. A “mate”, “glossy” and a “glass” version. The difference of the later two is that the glass version adds a dark blurry text-shadow which makes it look like you can see trough the button to its bottom.However, BonBon Buttons are not meant to be used on your next project that targets the average internet user. He just wanted to show a couple techniques how to use some of the new CSS3/HTML5 features.

• Jasmine – A JavaScript Testing Framework

  Ray Cheung

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:01 am

  There are some great JavaScript testing frameworks out there. Many only work from within a browser. Most don’t support testing asynchronous code like event callbacks. Some have syntax that’s hard for JS developers or IDEs to understand.Jasmine is a JavaScript testing framework. It’s heavily influenced by, and borrows the best parts of, ScrewUnit, JSSpec, JSpec, and of course RSpec. Jasmine is not tied to any browser, framework, platform, or host language. It work anywhere JavaScript can run, including browsers, servers, phones, etc.Requirements: - Demo:…

• How to Implement an Ajax Appreciate Badge

  Ray Cheung

  1 Sep 2010 | 12:01 am

  When you publish something online, there are not that many ways to determine whether people like what you have to say. Comments, the cornerstone of blogging, are too demanding, and users often prefer not to post one.If you’ve dropped by Behance, you’ve probably noticed their appreciate badge, which is a neat solution to this exact problem. With it people share their appreciation for somebody’s work. Tutorialzine taught us how to implement An AJAX Click to Appreciate Badge, which you can include in every page of your website with a bit of jQuery magic.Requirements: jQuery…

• How to Add Finger-Swipe Support to Webpages

  Ray Cheung

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:07 am

  One of the more interesting and fun aspects of iPad usage is the ability to effect change in a webpage by swiping a finger across the screen of the iPad. For example, swiping to the left to navigate to the next page in a series of pages, or swiping to display the next image in a series of images. For iPad users, these actions are intuitive and natural.However, for those who compose webpages, adding touch detection to a page can be a challenging and difficult process. No more. The information presented on Padilicious: Add Finger-Swipe Support to Webpages, will make it easy to add touch sensing…

• Useful Hover-based User Interface with jQuery, CSS3, HTML5

  Ray Cheung

  30 Aug 2010 | 12:31 am

  AddyOsmani is going to teach us how to create a useful hover-based user interface using jQuery, CSS3, HTML5 and @font-face. Why a hover-based interface? With the popularity of touch-based web applications simplifying the way that people can use sites on mobile devices, there’s room for us to look into ways of making it even easier for people to use sites in desktop-based browsers too.WanderWall achieves that and what it could easily be used for a portfolio or business site but the concepts we’ll learn could certainly be used to expand the idea further.Requirements: jQuery Framework…

• 

  Woork

• Tomorrow Apple Event: Any Expectation?

  Antonio Lupetti

  31 Aug 2010 | 2:27 pm

  The announcement dates back to just one week ago and it has already sparked the usual trepidation around the web about what the next shiny little device from Apple could be. From the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco on September 1, Steve Jobs will reveal the Apple’s news, music-themed this time of the year: it will probably be a product to be launched in the coming weeks, but about which we don’t have many clues yet. The most reliable voices report about a complete redesign of the iPod lines that could probably inherit the dual cameras and Retina display from the…

• Internet Killed Blockbuster. Who’s Next?

  Antonio Lupetti

  29 Aug 2010 | 9:16 am

  Dallas – The bomb blew up just a few days ago when a Los Angeles Times article reported that Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is ready to file for bankruptcy. Overwhelmed by debt and losses amounting to over $1 billion since 2008, the video rental chain is yet another of the world’s most famous names to join the long list of once successful companies that have not been able to adapt their business to the radical changes in the market introduced by the Internet. Another high-profile victim. In a recent note (August 13), Blockbuster reported total revenues for the second…

• The Cost of Tweets (CO2 Emissions)

  Antonio Lupetti

  27 Aug 2010 | 1:26 pm

  What’s the cost of tweets sent daily on Twitter in terms of CO2 emission? According to data from Twitter, published in February 2010, every day around 50 million tweets are sent over the popular micro blogging platform. Considering an average time of 10 seconds to write one single tweet and the average consumption of 250 watt/hour for one single computer, the total daily consumption amount to 35 kW h (kilowatt hour). Multiplying this value for the average estimate of CO2 emission per kW, we obtain the daily value of CO2 emission which rises up to 492,000 Kg. Obviously this value is only…

• 10 Useful Frameworks To Develop HTML-Based Webapps for Touch Devices

  Antonio Lupetti

  25 Aug 2010 | 8:59 am

  Make HTML-based touch applications. Easy. In the last two years the rapid growth and diffusion of touch devices such as iOS or Android based platforms has forced developers and web designers to rethink the model of their own webapps for the new “touch experience” introduced by the iPhone in 2007. During this period several frameworks have been released to help web developers implement quickly applications for this kind of touch devices. Here is a collection of some useful frameworks to develop easily HTML-based webapps that will work on all popular smartphone and tablet touch…

• Best Practices To Design a Perfect HTML Navigation Bar

  Antonio Lupetti

  9 Aug 2010 | 7:16 am

  The navigation bar is an inevitable element in every website. In this post I want to share with you some simple practices and suggestions aimed at designing a perfect HTML navigation bar. Let’s start illustrating the typical HTML structure. Here is a schematization of a typical navigation bar that contains some links: The HTML code is really simple, nothing more than <div> layer with an unordered list inside. As you probably know, the HTML5 specification introduced a new element that identifies the navigation bar which is the <nav> tag. The <nav> tag substitutes the more…

• 

  ComBridges

• New Wonderful Web E-Newsletter Covers WordPress, Video & Groovie Links

  ComBridges

  27 Aug 2010 | 2:52 pm

  Our latest “It’s a Wonderful Web” e-newletter is out and available for your perusal. It includes: An overview of our latest learning experiences regarding WordPress security and how you can protect your WordPress website Our latest video production success, a “book trailer” for an important new client book, “Dry Run: Preventing the Next Urban Water Crisis” Linky goodness called “ComBridges Connections” with an assortment of valuable links, insights and my latest video commentary on the “cord-cutting” that is making major waves…

• ComBridges’ Connections: Linky Goodness, Insights & Free Stuff 8.18.10

  Jon

  18 Aug 2010 | 11:35 am

  A recap of recent resources and references  posted recently via my Twitter feed and our ComBridges Facebook page are below; but first, a small bit of shameless self-promotion albeit something FREE that I think you may well find to be valuable: Watch, Listen & Learn: Free Webinar on Internet Marketing Read It’s a Wonderful Web; ComBridges July e-newsletter Marketing Lesson From the Grateful Dead: Loosen Up Your Brand As they say, this is “what I’m talkin’ ’bout!” If you don’t know David Meerman Scott, you should. He’s a true thought leader…

• Online Video Growth Spurt Marked By New Programs & Distribution Opportunities

  ComBridges

  9 Aug 2010 | 6:15 pm

  As discussed in my New Media / New Marketing segment on the Tuesday, August 10th edition of the TheTVNews.tv (see VIDEO embedded below), the convergence of TV and Internet forms of online video are jelling into a significant reality extremely quickly after years of promises. Evidence of this growth spurt include rapid growth trends such as the year-over-year doubling of streaming movies and TV via NetFlix, a new “digital locker” platform from major entertainment players designed to combat the iTunes dominance, and the increasing viability of “branded entertainment”…

• Hits of the Week: Early July 2010

  Jon

  13 Jul 2010 | 12:10 pm

  Welcome to a new feature of this blog. “Hits of the Week” (which we hope to offer weekly) will provide “linky goodness” i.e. valuable links posted to our ComBridges company Facebook page and Twitter feed. Here, we gather, in one place for your convenience, bunches of links to free PDF’s, articles and other resources. Please let us know if you find this service to be valuable. Thanks! A Professional Research Perspective of Brand Engagement via Social Media Highly recommended, Engagementdb is a very interesting resource, even for smaller companies who are…

• When Old Media Companies Don’t “Get It”

  Jon

  1 Jun 2010 | 3:22 pm

  U need 2 know about your digital rights As illuminated in this Wednesday, June 2nd’s New Media New Marketing commentary (starting at 1:58) on TheTVNews.tv, the news article linked right below this paragraph makes me a bit crazy regarding the many broadcasters and entertainment companies that still “don’t get it” about engaged consumers, mash ups and extraordinary value of free, viral (word-of-mouth) promotions. CNET: Yahoo, Facebook (and EBay) side with Google (YouTube) against Viacom Of course, Yahoo and Facebook are normally rivals of Google/YouTube. Leave it to…

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  User Interface Trends

• Tricky Images!

  Kate Vander Ploeg

  12 Aug 2010 | 3:36 pm

  Web design is about constantly work around constraints.  So when the constraints of the technology can be entirely masked, it is really exciting! These sites look like they are doing some complicated magic when really they are just utilizing images as backgrounds in creative ways. Feel free to share more examples you’ve created or found! Example using two background images: one in the top header and then another image place to the right of the div below Example using one background image

• Visually Impaired Touchscreen Accessibility

  Jeff Noble

  2 Aug 2010 | 7:56 pm

  David Reynolds, a visually impaired web developer, provided the following article with additional information by Jeff Noble. Touch screen user interfaces are a hot trend with some really exciting user interface possibilities, but the range of products from Apple, Android, and HP pose a whole new series of problems for those who are visually impaired. Apple is the most popular choice and the iPhone (3GS and beyond), iPod Touch, and iPad have the capability to ”enable” speech output, and can be easily “switched on” by a sighted friend. Once switched on, the device will provide speech…

• Spec Wreck

  Sarah Selser

  20 Jul 2010 | 9:38 pm

  Why is it so difficult to build to spec? (Just to be clear, I’m referring to all design fields, not just the software industry.) Is compromise just an inherent part of the process? How detailed do our specs really need to be? Lately, my specs have become pretty lean. This seems to work well on a small scale because additional verbal communication adequately bridges any gaps, but what about on a larger scale when verbal communication might not be an option (due to different time zones, etc.)? Is creating detailed specs, only to have to compromise during development, really the best way…

• Software is not sexy!

  Russell Wilson

  12 Jul 2010 | 12:06 pm

  sexy: (adj) marked by or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest I have never seen or used a software application that in and of itself aroused my sexual desire. Combo boxes, regardless of how nicely they are done, are not sexy. Fancy charts and graphs do not turn me on. And I can assure you I have never fantasized about buttons (regardless of how big they are). So those of you in marketing, please stop asking me to make software applications sexy! I can’t. It’s true, some products are thought of as sexy. They may exhibit visual cues that resemble those of humans, they may have some…

• The Return of SVG

  Ron Norman

  2 Jul 2010 | 11:34 am

  Trend: SVG use on the rise Software can be like wine.  Let’s say, a bottle of red wine. How about, a Cabernet Sauvignon, aged 11 years or so, that you forgot about in your wine cellar.  You’ve tried this one before, when it was still young, and it didn’t do much for you.  Now you give it another shot… You immediately notice hints of oak, vanilla, and traces of blackberries.  It’s a little much to take in, so you let it breathe.  You then notice rich tannins, and more complex aromas that you can’t place.  You look at the bottle, and read label:…

• 

  Noupe Design Blog

• 40 Awesome Works of Art Made From Paper

  vitaly

  3 Sep 2010 | 4:29 am

     By Tim Mercer Paper is a humble medium. It’s often cheap and you probably have some within 20 feet of you right now. Most of us just use it for jotting down ideas, writing notes or doodling but some resourceful artists out there use it to create stunning works of art. Often referred to as papercraft, this art form take the ordinary and transforms it into the extraordinary. Many artists use nothing more than paper to create anything from exquisite cut outs to the most detailed and realistic models. Today we present 40 Awesome Works of Art Made From Paper that will inspire…

• 30 Fantastic and Splendid Digital Painting Tutorials

  vitaly

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:21 am

     We all have our spirit of imagination from our childhood — we give a shape to our thoughts by drawing image on school yard, on a piece of paper or on a digital tablet. Photoshop, Wacom and Illustrator are beautiful tools that help us transform our imagination into beautiful drawings. Today we present useful tutorials teaching us techniques for digital drawing and painting. Digital Painting Tutorials Making of FunfairThis tutorial will show you how to make a funny character in Photoshop. Do you want to Play with meAuthor has created this artwork in Photoshop and with a Wacom…

• Beautiful Beach and Palms Wallpapers for Your Desktop

  vitaly

  1 Sep 2010 | 7:18 am

     We love to spice up your desktop with nice wallpapers, and sometimes with nature photography. It all depends on your mood. In this post, we’ll be showcasing Beautiful Beach Wallpapers. You’ll get to see the detail, skill, and dedication that go into creating these incredible wallpapers, and how they help fuel our daily lives with inspiration and beauty of nature. Beach and Palms Wallpapers Relax – Hammock Hanging from Palm TreeDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768 SoloDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768 3594 x 2527 James Bond Beach , ThailandDownload Wallpaper: 1024×768…

• Print Tutorial: Creating A Magazine Cover

  vitaly

  31 Aug 2010 | 5:58 am

     By Cameron Chapman Graphic design in a print environment can be a nice change for someone who normally does web design. It’s a slightly different skillset, but still incorporates a lot of the same concepts. Print projects can be an exciting new challenge, something that lets a designer stretch their creativity a bit and even recharge if they’re getting stressed out by too many web design projects. Designing magazine covers can be one of the most fun and challenging print design projects out there. Covers are so visible; it’s something everyone who sees the…

• Promoting Yourself To… GASP!… Live People!

  vitaly

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:11 am

     By Speider Schneider A friend of mine started an organization named “Creative Connect,” a twice a month get-together for anyone in the creative field. He said it was to, “get people away from their computers and to get them talking at least twice a month.” Mostly designers, programmers, illustrators and photographers with a spattering of marketing and management types show up and it’s something I look forward to attending in the light of day. Twice a month I gnaw through my own leg to escape the shackles of my computer and speak with real people…live…in person.

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  Bwired Weblogs

• Web and the Election

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:19 pm

  The web played a major role in Australia's recent federal election, and not just because of the National Broadband Network. The web, and especially social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, were not just a source of election news and information during the campaign. This election was fought online and in social media on a level not previously seen in Australian politics. Social media - enter at your own risk Thinking back to the prior federal election, most of us had probably never even heard of Twitter. During this election campaign, it has proved its capacity to not only…

• eCommerce Shopping Trends Online

  29 Jul 2010 | 2:28 pm

  How many times have you walked around a shopping center, looked in countless shops trying to find what you need? When all you have to do now is jump online to view a range of stores and products. There were no real surprises in my key findings of Online Shopping Trends. Its part of the norm now seeing everything progress to an online base and stores have taken great advantage of it. Key Statistics: Revenue (%): 2008-09: revenue increased by 3.6%     2009-10: revenue increased by 5.7% Share of the Economy stats: 2008-09: worth .23% of the economy     2009-10: worth .23% of the economy…

• Living in 3D

  16 Jul 2010 | 3:49 pm

  Life is 3D so why should we be living it through technology? It really feels like were stepping into the 'future', and its nothing like those old movies had envisaged it. Everything is moving more and more into the 3D world- movies, TV- even print ads and articles in magazines are getting in on the action. Technology has been and always will be ever-changing. There always seems like there is a way to improve something. Black and white television became colour, television had video players, progressed to DVD players, BluRay was invented and now we have 3D TV. Is it even necessary? I'm not…

• Technology Roadmap for Q1 FY11

  9 Jul 2010 | 2:56 pm

  We're going to kick FY11 off with a pretty hammering start with three serious upgrades. Yes, I'm calling it now... here it is: Read more... Author: Mark

• My first 12 months - almost!

  10 Jun 2010 | 12:33 pm

  I am now getting close to my first full year with year with bwired. My views on website development are constantly evolving and my approach to prospective customers is far removed from my early days. Read more Author: Jeff Nanovich

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  siteInspire

• Qus Qus

  hello@siteinspire.net

  2 Sep 2010 | 2:15 pm

  View in siteInspire | Go directly to Qus Qus

• Hugs for Monsters

  hello@siteinspire.net

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:15 pm

  View in siteInspire | Go directly to Hugs for Monsters

• Steinway & Sons

  hello@siteinspire.net

  2 Sep 2010 | 10:15 am

  View in siteInspire | Go directly to Steinway & Sons

• Mr. Oso

  hello@siteinspire.net

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:15 am

  View in siteInspire | Go directly to Mr. Oso

• Schwartz & Sons

  hello@siteinspire.net

  1 Sep 2010 | 4:15 pm

  View in siteInspire | Go directly to Schwartz & Sons

• 

  Website Design | Search Optimization | Social Media | Benzing Technologies

• Better Default Fonts For The Web

  Rusty

  30 Aug 2010 | 9:23 pm

  What are the best default fonts for the web? There often comes a time when our client does not like the font on their website and would like us to find alternatives. But before just using any font, we have to make sure it’s one of the default fonts most people have on their computer or we risk it not being shown and having a default font load instead. Luckily there are several default fonts included on Mac and Windows computers to choose from. But which one do I choose? and I don’t just want to use Arial everytime. So with a little research we can create a cheat sheet of default…

• My Top 5 eCommerce Platforms

  Rusty

  28 Jul 2010 | 6:19 pm

  It’s definitly been a while since I posted my last blog post and the reason is because of eCommerce. Online Shopping Carts have been running wild in my mind and a few recent clients have been keeping me busy designing and developing them. In this post I’ll go over the different eCommerce platforms I have used and will give my opinions on ease of use and management. These are simply my persoal choices for clients when they come to me wanting to sell something online. So let’s jump right in. 1. VirtueMart – I found VirtueMart to be very simple to use and maintain, plus…

• WordPress 3.0 Countdown to New Features

  Rusty

  6 Jun 2010 | 11:03 am

  With the recent release candidate of WordPress 3.0, the latest version in the most popular blogging platform online, the blogging team readies the new version with some seriously cool features. WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. WordPress 3.0 RC is their latest version of blogging software that has already…

• .COM & .NET Domain Name Price Increases

  Rusty

  3 Jun 2010 | 1:43 pm

  Starting July 1st, 2010 Verisign®, the registry for .COM and .NET domain extensions, will increase prices. The fees are charged to domain registrars such as GoDaddy and Tucows, which typically handle domain registration for customers. ICANN has an agreement that VeriSign is allowed to raise their .COM fees by up to 7% per year. This added $27 million dollars per year to their bottom line. VeriSign took advantage of this in the first two years of its contract, raising .COM registration from $6.00 to $6.86. It was assumed that VeriSign would increase its prices every year to maximize…

• Your Indoor Environment

  Rusty

  19 May 2010 | 12:13 pm

  your indoor environment, llc. provides safe, healthy products that enhance the quality of life both at home and in the work place. Our team of experienced indoor environmental specialists and consultants enjoy international business relations in the commercial industry.

• 

  Wardell Design Blog

• Starting a Website [Check List]

  Wardell

  18 Aug 2010 | 9:39 am

  So you want to start a website? Well before you go throwing your money around unwisely there are a few things you need and need to know before getting started.  The following information can save you time, money and headaches down the road. 1. Have a goal. What is the goal [...] Related posts:Firefox Add-ons for Design & Development Static Page Update Alerts SEO : Search Engine Optimization

• The Fiji Urban Hunt #fijihunt

  Wardell

  15 Aug 2010 | 7:20 am

  Yesterday I had one of the best experiences involving social media since my immersion into it  almost two years ago. The experience I’m speaking of is The Fiji Urban Hunt, which was sponsored by Fiju Warter, ING Direct and a number of other sponsors which can be found on the event’s web site. The teams for [...] Related posts:Twestival Chicago 2009 How to Win Followers and Influence Tweeters BlogHer ’09

• Droid Finally Gets Froyo

  Wardell

  4 Aug 2010 | 5:55 am

  Many Nexus One users have been enjoying  Android 2.2 aka Froyo for a couple of months already leaving Verizon’s Motorola Droid users wondering what the hold up was seeing as how the Droid runs Stock Android 2+ as well. Now the wait is  finally over, roms of Froyo were made available yesterday for eager users to [...] Related posts:Getting to Know Droid Just Upgraded to Google Voice Avatar Services

• Software Spotlight: CLCL

  Wardell

  1 Aug 2010 | 11:04 am

  CLCL is a clipboard cache/manager for Windows that I’ve been using for a few years now. Once launched it sits idly in your system tray waiting to be used. It’s simple to use yet highly customizable, letting you configure options such as shortcut keys, menu width, number of items stored in the cache, and left [...] Related posts:Software Spotlight: IETester Software Spotlight: BorgChat Simply the Best Email Client

• The New Digg

  Wardell

  11 Jul 2010 | 2:02 pm

  The new Digg adds features and layout which emphasize the users network instead of site wide content. I think this is a good move by Digg to stay competitive in the social media sphere considering the rate at which  some networks are stealing incorporating primary features from other sites. The site [...] Related posts:Your Network is What You Make It Social Media Toolbox Tweb Sites

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  Blog@PixelCrayons™

• PixelCrayons Comes Up With Premium PSD to HTML Service Package for $259

  admin

  31 Aug 2010 | 6:38 am

  First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to our loyal customers for trusting us so much. Thank you, guys! We are constantly working on improving our service spectrum. In our ever-changing world of technology, we realized that there is a need to introduce some advanced beneficial options in our PSD to HTML services [...]

• 13 Website Design Mistakes that Designers Should Avoid

  admin

  10 Aug 2010 | 4:16 am

  Website Designing is an art as well as a science. In the last decade, web design market has become very competitive. You ought to innovate some or the other thing in your work if you want to survive in this market.  Also, Internet surfers have become so smart that they can easily make out the [...]

• .Co TLD Is Now Available to Register

  admin

  21 Jul 2010 | 6:23 am

  Yes! It’s true. With the announcement of a new TLD ‘.CO’ in the market by .CO Internet S.A.S. (www.COinternet.co) businesses, organisations and individuals are rushing to book their domain name by choice, with .CO TLD, which they couldn’t have booked earlier due the unavailability of the same. Most of the international businesses, from the Brand [...]

• 6 Essentials of a Successful E-commerce Website

  admin

  12 Jul 2010 | 3:32 am

  E-commerce business is booming at a fast pace. “The first quarter returned the U.S. retail e-commerce market to healthy double-digit growth rates.” Also, it has been seen that though larger online retailers have continued to generate higher growth rates than the smaller retailers. Nevertheless, the small online retailers are finally beginning to see positive growth [...]

• Get Trained and Certified by Magento

  admin

  8 Jul 2010 | 12:59 am

  Isn’t that sound exciting to Magento Lovers!!! Since everybody knows that Magento is always on the improvement side of its online help info that’s available from your Magento Admin Panels. Also, you must have noticed that Koby and a crew of (most excellent) volunteer moderators have been working hard in response to your feedback to [...]

• 

  Helloewy: A blog from Loewy Design

• The Easy Way to Track Down a Stock Image

  Casey Bartholomew

  18 Aug 2010 | 7:27 am

  Your flaky freelance designer has abruptly closed up shop to go backpacking across Europe, leaving you without any assets or files from your business collateral or website. After partnering with a new, reliable agency, you need to track down your favorite stock photos used in all of your business collateral–but how? Instead of wasting hours doing aimless searches for your favorite image among dozens of stock photo websites, you can find what you’re looking for in seconds by using a handy little site called TinEye. TinEye is a robust reverse-image search engine that will locate your…

• Monocle Smile

  Marc Acosta

  2 Aug 2010 | 10:30 am

  A social media strategy is almost a requirement at this point for any commercial brand. For most, the common combination of a Twitter and Facebook account fed with frequent posts is usually enough. With every tweet your followers are reminded of your existence, and if you are lucky enough, they may even click through to any links you provide. But harnessing the power of social media in a carefully orchestrated campaign utilizing all the major platforms? That’s an entirely different proposition – and quite a feat if it can be pulled off. Despite the challenge, that’s exactly…

• 8 Steps to a Smarter Blog

  Casey Bartholomew

  19 Jul 2010 | 10:12 am

  Having a blog has become as essential as having a website. Everyone from the housewife down the block to the Fortune 500 company on Fifth Avenue has a blog. According to BlogPulse.com, there were 126 million (and counting…) blogs in 2009. This sudden burst of blogs has been made possible with applications such as Wordpress, Blogger, and Tumblr—which allow novices to whip up their own blogs in minutes. However, not all blogs are created equal. If you don’t keep up with blogging trends, and think in a smart way about your blog, you may be lumped into the 126 million (and counting…)…

• Success can be designed

  Donald May

  29 Jun 2010 | 1:42 pm

  I have always had the belief that design was a utopian endeavor to be undertaken by the smartest people in the world to solve problems. That designers were by nature helping the world evolve toward better, more beautiful, more sustainable, and more useful artifacts and services. I believe in my soul that this is true, but I also know it’s not enough. What also needs to happen is this: business leaders need to see how designers can be innovators for them. Designers can make businesses more efficient, make products more usable, help speed communications, minimize damage to the…

• In e-commerce we trust

  David Loewy

  28 Apr 2010 | 12:37 pm

  If you own a successful brick-and-mortar store, you’ve built it by providing high-quality products or services to your customers. You’ve earned their trust for a variety of reasons: they found what they needed, they like your prices, their friends shop with you, you’ve been around for years…and so on. So how do you build the same trust and confidence with an online store? Trust can be lost quickly, especially online. We ask a lot from online customers, and their suspicions are already on high alert for fraud, identity theft, hacking, spam and other risks. Not only do we want them to…

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  Little Box Of Ideas

• Why Do You Blog?

  Sneh Roy

  31 Aug 2010 | 1:42 am

  Today, I am starting a new series on the blog where I will put up a question that has been burning a hole in the back of my mind for a while and open up a discussion to whoever wants to share their thoughts and opinions. There is a great wealth of knowledge to be uncovered from the experiences of others and to do that, all it takes sometimes is to ask a question. My question to you today is,   "Why Do You Blog?" Do you blog for money or to feed your soul? How did you start? What is your story?     Here is my story of how I got started with both my blogs.   I was…

• Free Moleskine Icon Set For Logo Lovers And Designers

  Sneh Roy

  10 Aug 2010 | 5:40 pm

  I must admit, I have an unholy obsession with moleskines. Any blank, inviting piece of stationery that draws you to write, sketch and create and one that is absolutely beautiful to look at in its humble simplicity, ought to be obsessed about. I have a few moleskines, not many, just a few. They seem to have endless pages and last forever. I seem to be draw to the Cahiers more than any other kind. I love their organic brown covers. I do have a hardbound mini moleskine that is red and is quite spunky and handy in my bag. Lately though, I have been drawn to the classic black ones. I have been…

• 50+ Very Useful Free Vector Illustrator Patterns And Resources From 2010

  Sneh Roy

  5 Aug 2010 | 9:37 pm

  In my recent jaunts on the interwebs, I have come across some great vector freebies. I have handpicked a few that are free for personal and commercial use (with some requiring mere credits). In this little roundup today, I am listing 50+ awesome free vector illustrator patterns, seamless and otherwise. These are perfect for the scenes and texture treatments in my 365 vector character projet and am really enjoying using them. The 18th set is a very recent vector grunge set which is not technically a pattern or swatch but works beautifully on my vector backgrounds. I have also listed some…

• 2 Fun And Free Vector Scenes For Your Design Projects

  Sneh Roy

  22 Jul 2010 | 4:45 pm

  Everyday when I create new vector graphics, whether they are characters or just simple elements for a poster or website, I always find that there is a real scarcity of vector "scenes". You know the free stuff like brushes and icons that you can download and put together to present your design? I rarely come across plain, no-frills vector scenes that I can use as a blank canvas for my design. Now, it has been a while since I offered up a freebie on the blog. I have offered Vector Scenes/Background in the past and decided to offer some more. Today, I have for you two vector scenes.

• 15 Tools To Help You Find The Perfect Color Palette

  Paul Maloney

  20 Jul 2010 | 8:23 pm

  When designing a website or any other printed media a whole array of elements are vital to the overall look and feel of the project, if any of these aspects are incorrect or poorly thought out the project can suffer. Colour is one of these important parts of design. When choosing colour your initial reaction is "do these colours work together?” after that you have to consider things like accessibility. There are a number of online tools that can assist you with putting together a great palette. I have rounded up 15 such tools that can help you with colour selection, suitability and…

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  hongkiat.com

• 18 Website Speed and Performance Checking Tools

  hongkiat

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:21 am

  Google is taking site’s loading speed into consideration in determining its ranking. Even though this will not land a big impact, it is still something we (webmasters) should really look into. The reason is pretty simple – majority of visitors are usually in rush and no one is fond of waiting half a century before the website finally load its content or failed to load. In another words, if your site is slow, you are subjected to lose a lot of visitors. Visitors are traffic, traffic affects reputation and they can potentially generate revenue. It can be a domino effect if one…

• Winners of: Custom-Printed Plastic Card Gift Cards

  hongkiat

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:28 am

  Here it is, our winners for ShortrunCard custom-printed plastic cards contest. Sorry for the slight delay! A little recap of what the winners will be getting before we announce the list. 3 winners, each getting a $200 gift card, $100 gift card and $50 gift card, courtesy of ShortRunCard. These gift cards can be used to order customized plastic cards. Some of you raised the concern whether this includes the shipping fees – the answer is yes/no. Assume you won the $200 gift card, and your total bill plus shipping is $210; after redeeming with your gift card you will only pay $10 extra.

• Vintage Advertisement of Modern Technology

  hongkiat

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  Vintage design is always described as outdated, old looking design with most updated products like Facebook or Nintendo Wii featured… what? Yeah it’s not a typo, I mean it, and you’re gonna witness 24 modern products adapted into vintage style advertisement. Some of them are created by modern designer, yet others are modified directly from genuine vintage ads originated from your parent’s era. So get amused, get inspired, who knows vintage might be the design direction for your next viral ad campaign! Social Media Facebook “Striking, miraculous social…

• 45 (Fresh) High Quality Photoshop PSD Files

  hongkiat

  30 Aug 2010 | 7:00 am

  What’s great about .PSD files? For one, we can observe and learn how experts create awesome designs by exploring the different layers and techniques they use. Beginners can appreciate how different functions in Photoshop can affect their images, and hence gain an understanding of how to bring out their desired effects. What’s more, .PSD files allow us to experiment with several layers within the file itself, providing maximum customization for any curious user. If you can recall, we had previously showcased 60 High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers some time ago.

• Freebie Release: Web Template in Photoshop PSD – Polo360

  hongkiat

  26 Aug 2010 | 5:43 am

  Once in a while, we collaborate with creative designers to giveaway free stuff to readers through hongkiat.com. We figured it benefits all parties – creators get the credit and some exposures, readers get to download them for free with no strings attached. Today, we are going to do the same thing again. Viv Singh of vivrocks.com has designed a high quality web template for us. It is available in Photoshop PSD format. All layers are open so you can do any chances you want. Named Polo360, this template is suitable for portfolio site, WordPress home page or corporate site. It’s free…

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  Psdtuts+

• Garry Milne: Skating His Way to the Top

  Michelle Krasniak

  4 Sep 2010 | 8:00 am

  Like his creations, there are many layers to Garry Milne. While some of his images may have dark undertones, Milne is anything but. Here he talks about his inspirations, skateboarding and the importance of being nice to people. Mark Twain once said, “Clothes make the man.” If such a statement is true then we’re in for a hell of a ride with UK-based Illustrator Garry Milne as he describes his usual outfit as being a skin tight zebra print jumpsuit. That was quickly followed by the obligatory, “I’m kidding,” of course but still… So do I start with Garry Milne the person or Garry…

• Psdtuts Presents Exclusive Wallpapers by Jennifer Cirpici

  Emil

  3 Sep 2010 | 9:24 am

  Another extremely talented designer by the name of Jennifer Cirpici has volunteered to create two exclusive wallpapers for the readers of PsdTuts+. This months exclusive wallpapers feature something for everyone, on one hand we have a beautiful scenery shot with lots of bright colors, and on the other we have something more textured and rough with lots of interesting paint effects. So make sure to check this out, download the wallpaper and then view Jennifer’s other art. Exclusive Wallpaper – Breaking Canvas Jennifer’s DeviantArt Jennifer’s Behance Portfolio…

• Create a Graffiti-Inspired Illustration Using Photoshop and Illustrator

  Sarah Lyons

  3 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  Photoshop and Illustrator compliment each other in many ways. Today we will demonstrate how you can use them in tandem to draw and color a graffiti-inspired illustration. Let’s get started! Before You Begin Before you begin, it’s always good to do a bit of planning. For graffiti art, do some research and keep it in mind when you begin planning out your sketch. Use thicker lines for the outline, thinner lines for the inner details, and wispy lines for more defined creases. Step 2 Sketch out a drawing and scan it at 300 DPI. When you’re finished, go ahead and make a new…

• Quick Tip: Create a Realistic Credit Card in Photoshop

  Rulo Gonzalez

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:40 am

  In today’s quick tip tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a realistic-looking credit card using Photoshop and Illustrator in just a few short steps. Let’s get started! Step 1 To speed up the process, we will begin by putting together some basic graphics in Illustrator. Make a 3.5in by 1.9in rounded rectangle, then fill the object with a color or gradient of your choice. Draw some curvy lines as shown using the Pen Tool. Then go to Object > Blend > Blend > Blend Options > Specific Steps, enter 30 and click OK. Make two different lines with different colors. Select…

• Dried Ink Stains: 20 High Resolution Brushes – Premium Psdpack

  Grant Friedman

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:31 am

  Today, we have a new set of Premium Brushes available for Psd Premium Members. This set was crafted by Grant Friedman of Colorburned and includes 20 High Resolution Photoshop Ink Stain Brushes. If your next project calls for a grungy, stained look, then this set is perfect for you. Learn more at the jump! High Resolution Ink Stain Brushes This new Premium Psdpack Pack is available for Psd Premium Members today and includes 20 high resolution brushes ranging somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 by 2500 pixels. Each brush was created using varied mixtures of ink and water. This mixture was…

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  Inspired Magazine

• GCSE Student Launches New Appstore Hit with Help From ‘The Studio of Dreams’

  Catalin Zorzini

  2 Sep 2010 | 4:33 am

  For the past 3 weeks, our friends from ustwo™ have been working on a radical new iPhone app with the latest member of the team, Jack McLean – a 16-year old work experience student. Here are all the details of the incredible story and an exclusive interview with Jack. Having recently finished his GCSEs, and unlike most teenagers over the summer holidays, Jack intended to spend his free time doing work experience, making sure his dreams of becoming a famous iPhone app developer became a reality.  In just 3 weeks he developed, produced and launched Terry Touch™ – with some help…

• There’s a Theme for That – The Best WordPress Templates for iPhone & iPad Related Sites

  Catalin Zorzini

  1 Sep 2010 | 1:22 pm

  “Niche WordPress themes” is one of our favorite topics – you know that by now. We had roundups for business, portfolio, shopping or super specialized themes, but this time we’re lining up the coolest 10 WP themes for iEverything – iPhone apps, iPad accessories, appstores and so on. Check out our selection and feel free to suggest new entries in the comments. Fone Deluxe | $27 | Demo | Download My App | $0.86! | Demo | Download Apz | $70 | Demo | Download iPhone App | $65 | Demo | Download my Application | $12 | Demo | Download Inspire | $70 | Demo | Download…

• 15 Kinetic Typography Pieces Based on Popular Films

  Kyle Kargov

  31 Aug 2010 | 3:32 am

  Do films require video to be entertaining? Take away the people in a movie, and what left is there? Add in cleverly designed typography, and you’ve birthed life into something that was lifeless. Below are fifteen examples of stunning kinetic typography pieces timed to fifteen different popular films. Rocky Balboa Kill Bill Pulp Fiction Fight Club Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels V for Vendetta The Matrix Requiem for a Dream Trainspotting Step Brothers Devil’s Advocate The Big Lebowski Ocean’s Eleven Wedding Crashers Zoolander

• Business Writing for the Web: 27 Ways to Write Better

  Alan Martin

  29 Aug 2010 | 1:35 pm

  This is a guest post by Alan Martin – a copywriter at Cooper Murphy Webb, the business writing and copywriting company. All business writing has one goal and that’s to persuade someone to do something. Whether you’re writing a blog post or sales copy, you want your audience to act. Persuasive writing can often be the most difficult type of writing, especially when the average person is barraged daily by a never-ending flow of information.  Follow these tips to become a more successful business copywriter, one whose readers not only read your entire email but also follow-through…

• 10 Must-have Products for Designers

  Neil

  27 Aug 2010 | 6:46 am

  Well since it’s Friday and everybody’s happy I thought we should get even more reasons to be cheerful so we invited Neil of Dennis and McGregor (one of our newest advertisers) to recommend us some insanely cool items to offer as a gift to a designhead. Or to crave for. FERM LIVING – COAT TREE WALL STICKER In our ever changing environment where space is always an issue, this is the perfect solution to eliminate clutter in your entrance.  Both decorative and functional this wall sticker will leave everyone wanting one. This will create a unique look and change the style and…

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  Web Designer Wall - Design Trends and Tutorials

• Giveaway: iPhone Stickers

  Nick La

  26 Aug 2010 | 6:39 am

  First, I would like to thank everybody for reading Web Designer Wall and following me (@nickla) on Twitter. Today, I have iPhone stickers to give out to my followers only. I will be giving out 20 iPhone stickers (sponsored by Sticker Mule) with my illustration printed on it . All you have to do is tweet a message to me. For example: "@nickla, I like the Koi or Peacock or Phoenix sticker. #wdw_stickers". Winners will be selected randomly on Aug 27, 2010 and contacted by Twitter’s Direct Message.

• Flashloaded Component Giveaways

  Nick La

  20 Aug 2010 | 10:45 am

  Flashloaded offers Flash components that help you to build cool Flash stuffs without having to code any Actionscript. The components are very easy to use and customize. Just drop the component on the stage, customize it via the parameter palette, and you are all set. In this contest, Flashloaded will be giving out 5 components. To participate, enter a comment along with the component that you like before Aug 27, 2010. Update: the winners are 5, 43, 47, 57, 82, and 105

• CSS3 Media Queries

  Nick La

  18 Aug 2010 | 8:45 am

  CSS2 allows you to specify stylesheet for specific media type such as screen or print. Now CSS3 makes it even more efficient by adding media queries. You can add expressions to media type to check for certain conditions and apply different stylesheets. For example, you can have one stylesheet for large displays and a different stylesheet specifically for mobile devices. It is quite powerful because it allows you to tailor to different resolutions and devices without changing the content. Continue on this post to read the tutorial and see some websites that make good use of media queries.

• Free Ticket to Frontend 2010 Norway

  Nick La

  18 Aug 2010 | 8:28 am

  I will be speaking at Frontend 2010 conference along with a big list of famous designers. The event will take place in Oslo, Norway on September 1st & 2nd, 2010. I have a last minute free conference ticket to give away. Enter a comment in this post before Aug 24, 2010 for your chance to win a free ticket. If you are buying the conference tickets, enter "WDW" coupon code to save 10% discount. Update: the winner is #58.

• Themify Launched

  Nick La

  11 Aug 2010 | 10:23 am

  You may probably notice that I haven’t been updating Web Designer Wall for a while. I’ve been working very hard on a new project called Themify, a premium WordPress theme shop. It is a collaboration with Darcy Clarke, who is an amazing developer. Each theme is packed a framework and bunch of custom widgets. With the framework, you can apply theme settings, style everything, apply skins, and import/export the setting data. Let me know what your thoughts. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @themify.

• 

  Nettuts+

• Build a Custom HTML5 Video Player: Free Premium Tutorial

  Jeffrey Way

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:32 pm

  Much like the other various Envato marketplaces, our newly launched Tuts+ marketplace will offer a free file each month. For September, that free file/tutorial just so happens to mine! I’ll show you how to build a custom HTML5 video player with Flash fallback support. Be sure to grab this one for free for the entire month of September. Next month, it’ll return to its original price. Though the idea of a video-specific HTML element was suggested well over a decade ago, we’re only just beginning to see this come to fruition! Forget all of that “HTML5 2012” mumbo-jumbo; the…

• An Analysis of Typography on the Web

  Toni Kukurin

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:16 pm

  Typography is one of the most—if not the most—important aspects of web design. Some would argue that it takes up to 95% of web design, so why do we often neglect its importance? The readers who come to your site will often decide whether or not to stay according to your typographic choices. After all, they came here to read in the first place. Think about it for a second: if content really is king, logically typography should be treated as the queen. In fact, even some font names suggest that classification; Futura, Optima, Times New Roman (OK, that’s probably a dude),…

• How to Create a Web-Based Drawing Application Using Canvas: New Premium Tutorial

  Alex Moore

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:51 pm

  Combining HTML with the all new <canvas> feature, you can make some pretty awesome web apps! In this Premium exclusive tutorial, we will create a neat interactive drawing application using HTML and JavaScript. Along the way, we’ll also learn the basic concepts of the all new <canvas> feature. Become a Premium member to access this, as well as many other amazing tutorials and screencasts. Join Net Premium For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from…

• Quick Tip: Getting Offline Access with HTML5 Application Cache

  Andrew Burgess

  2 Sep 2010 | 5:24 pm

  Just when you thought you’d seen all the cool features of HTML5, I’m here to bring you yet another one. The internet is no longer about just websites; it’s about web applications. Often, our users are on portable or mobile devices, and they won’t always have access to a network. With HTML5’s Application Cache, you can provide them with all or some of the functionality they would have online, no matter where they go. Premium Members: Download this Video ( Must be logged in) Subscribe to our YouTube page to watch all of the video tutorials! Step 1: Make the Cache…

• Creating a Web Poll with PHP

  Erik Wurzer

  2 Sep 2010 | 11:58 am

  Polls are nearly ubiquitous on the web today, and there are plenty of services that will provide a drop-in poll for you. But what if you want to write one yourself? This tutorial will take you through the steps to create a simple PHP-based poll, including database setup, vote processing, and displaying the poll. Step 1: Plan & Create the Database In order to store poll results, we’re going to store three pieces of information: A question identifier An answer identifier The number of votes a question/answer pair has gotten For this tutorial, we’ll be using PDO and SQLite. If…

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  CSS-Tricks

• How Long Should We Ban IPs?

  Chris Coyier

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:36 am

  There are all kinds of reasons IPs get banned. A forums manager might ban an IP because the user at it is spamming. An admin of an email server might also ban IPs for spamming. A web service might ban an IP for using an API in an unapproved way.On this site, we used to ban IP’s in the forums all the time (the new forums have been much better in spam prevention). I also sometimes ban IPs from inside WordPress. There is a setting to “blacklist” IP’s in the admin area on the Settings > Discussion page. There are few in there from spammers, and a variety of people I…

• BonBon Buttons

  Chris Coyier

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:12 pm

  These are way above and beyond the level of any other “CSS3 buttons” I’ve seen. Multiple backgrounds combining gradients and images, uneven border-radius, pseudo elements, HSL coloring, @font-face icons, transitions, box shadows, text shadows, hover and active states… the list goes on. Every trick in the book masterfully employed.They make my button maker look dull and flat.Direct Link to Article — Permalink

• Fluid Width YouTube Videos

  Chris Coyier

  2 Sep 2010 | 8:05 am

  I saw that Andy Clarke had added a fluid width YouTube video to a particular page on one of his sites. His code relies upon a wrapping div and then images and video within this wrapper are set to the width of the wrapper:.img img, .img object, img embed { width: 100%; }I love the idea. It’s essentially the classic technique for dealing with images in fluid width designs. Andy’s code sets max-width to 100% here too, but since the width is already 100% that doesn’t matter. Max-width works best by itself. So it can scale down images which could be larger than the wrapper, but…

• HTML, CSS, and Javascript from the Ground Up

  Chris Coyier

  1 Sep 2010 | 5:48 pm

  I’ve done my own The VERY Basics screencast, but this full series from Google, targeted at just-starting-out beginners, would be a good place to go directly after my intro, to take things further along.Direct Link to Article — Permalink

• Digging Into WordPress, The Book, Version 3

  Chris Coyier

  1 Sep 2010 | 6:34 am

  When we first released the book Digging Into WordPress, we thought of some reasons why people might not want to buy it. A big reason is because tech books can go out of date quickly, especially when the subject is a fast-developing technology like WordPress. So, we fixed that. When you buy this book, you get PDF updates to it for life.Today is just such an event. WordPress 3.0 has been out for a while now, and so it’s time for our second major update. This is the biggest one yet. We’ve combed through the entire book updating anything that was out of date or stale. We’ve also…

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  Blog.SpoonGraphics

• Do You Need a Degree to be a Designer? (and more!)

  Chris Spooner

  2 Sep 2010 | 10:30 pm

  In this week’s Question Time video post I give some rambling answers about taking on more than you can chew with client projects; things that help me find more freelance clients; whether a degree is important to be a designer; and I show off my fluent Spanish. This week’s questionsHow do you deal with a client’s needs vs your technical skills – Do you charge less for a job where you have to learn new skills because it might take longer to complete?How did you create the outro at the end of your video clips?How much time do you spend each week divided between client…

• How To Create a Fun Cartoon Style Poster Design

  Chris Spooner

  29 Aug 2010 | 11:45 pm

  Follow this step by step guide to creating a fun cartoon style poster design. We’ll combine a quick character doodle with some bold and blocky text, then bring it to life with a muted colour palette and a mix of textures to give the poster an old and retro feel.The design I’ve created is a mini tribute to the Sloth character from the Goonies. The quick doodle depicts the basic form with just a few simple doodle lines. All the linework, including the outline of the text is given a rough texture to create a hand-drawn feel, then everything is brought to life with a muted colour…

• Apple iPhone Style Icon Pack for Premium Members

  Chris Spooner

  27 Aug 2010 | 1:49 am

  IconDock have kindly donated another premium icon pack from their fantastic collection for Access All Areas members. Moi is a set of 268 high quality icons inspired by the iPhone app icons. They are especially designed to match with their free social media icons.IconDock is the place to ...Log in to your Access All Areas account to read the rest of this post.Not a member? Becoming an Access All Areas member gives you the ability to view exclusive members-only content just like this. The premium category is already packed full of discount codes and useful design resources, and there's plenty…

• How To Create a Detailed Vector Sugar Skull Illustration

  Chris Spooner

  22 Aug 2010 | 11:04 pm

  Follow this Illustrator design tutorial to create a super detailed sugar skull illustration made from lots of sweet vector elements. We’ll use a mix of basic and advanced Illustrator tools to build various decorative objects to slowly build up the features until we have an awesome looking skull design that pays homage to the Mexican Dia de los Muertos tradition.View full size illustrationSugar skull originated as part of the festivities of the Mexican Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) holiday. The traditional sugar skull is a sweet treat that’s decorated with lots of bright and…

• How I Find Client Work as a Designer (and more!)

  Chris Spooner

  19 Aug 2010 | 10:30 pm

  Last week I introduced my new little Question Time video series. This week I run through a bunch of viewer submitted questions, including why designers use Macs, how I find my clients, how often I trim my eyebrows and what camera I use to record these things. This week’s questionsWhy do designers tend to use Macs over Windows PCs?How do you find your clients?How often do you trim your eyebrows?What camera do you use?What differences are there when communicating with clients in agency work to self employment?Links mentioned in this week’s newsGetting Carried Away with Balloon…

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  GoMediaZine

• What is a “Brand”?

  Aaron Grieve

  2 Sep 2010 | 10:30 am

  I read a lot of industry produced articles and papers on branding, all have one thing in common, the message is confusing, they use a plethora of “tech talk” and what I can only describe as gibberish, so let’s start anew. First off a logo is not a brand; a logo is a symbol or mark used to represent a company or person usually simple in design and flat in colour, although this generally does not hold fast in our day and age. The word “logo” derives from the Greek word Logo-gram, ‘logos’ meaning ‘word’ and ‘gram’ meaning ‘what is written’. The word…

• Interns Inc., Vol. 3

  Joanne

  31 Aug 2010 | 10:30 am

  Internships are an awesome way to gain experience and to learn about being a designer in the real world. Most are mainly summer internships, but there are definitely internships that extend throughout the school year. Typically, students aren’t expected to score internships until their third year, but it’s not uncommon to find young designers landing jobs in their sophomore and even freshmen summers. It mostly depends on you and how comfortable and confident you are in your capabilities. Don’t feel pressured to find a job right away after your first year, only to take on more than you…

• Starting your own shirt line. PART I: Start – Up

  SteveKnerem

  26 Aug 2010 | 10:30 am

  Greetings friends, This is Steve Knerem and I’m a freelance illustrator from Cleveland, Ohio that specializes in hand drawn art used for apparel and editorial pieces.  You can view my work at www.steveknerem.com. When asked by Go Media to write some tutorials about work I’ve done, I was more than excited to help others who are in the process of starting their own shirt line.  Turns out there was too much to say in just one article, so I’ve split it into a three part series titled “Starting a Shirt Line.” PART I – Start – Up PART II – The…

• Interview: Illustrator Ray Frenden

  Nick Steimling

  24 Aug 2010 | 10:30 am

  This interview was initially published in the Go Media Forum but we decided it was relevant to all our GoMediaZine readers as well. Ray Frenden the Artist. I think it’s necessary to put this all in context with a brief overview of the insane force of nature that is your work. What is it that you do, how did you carve out a name for yourself, and what are you currently up to? The usual spiel I trot out for these sorts of occasions is that I’m a self-taught illustrator with a penchant for monsters and the macabre who draws things for money and likes to write. I was weaned on old horror…

• Review: Phantasm CS plugin for Adobe Illustrator

  George Coghill

  19 Aug 2010 | 10:30 am

  Not many Adobe Illustrators are aware of the plug-in functionality of Adobe Illustrator. I don’t believe it’s promoted very well. There’s not a good one-stop shop to find plug-ins in one place, with reviews and user feedback. And it’s a shame, because there are many killer plug-ins out there for Illustrator. Today I want to introduce you to a plugin that in some ways goes beyond my notion of a plug-in, since it adds so many features that you wouldn’t ever expect to be able to do within Adobe Illustrator: Phantasm CS. Developed by Astute Graphics, Phantasm CS can…

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  BittBox

• Free Texture Tuesday: Hand-Stained Paper

  Caleb Kimbrough

  31 Aug 2010 | 5:00 am

  Today I’ve got a great set of hand-stained paper textures for you. Paper textures are some of the most prevalent resources around and for good reason, they are one of the most useful kinds of textures. You can never have to much of a good thing, right? I hope you have as much fun using these textures as I had creating them. Enjoy! Preview About The Author: Caleb Kimbrough is the man behind LostAndTaken.com, a blog solely focused on giving away free high-res textures. a

• Free Texture Tuesday: Bricks

  Caleb Kimbrough

  24 Aug 2010 | 7:59 am

  Looking back through past Texture Tuesday posts I was surprised to see that I haven’t posted a set of brick textures for you guys. Brick textures come in handy for any sort of grungy or urban designs you may be working on. I’m looking for some fresh texture ideas for future posts, so if you have any requests or thoughts just leave them in the comments. Thanks! Preview About The Author: Caleb Kimbrough is the man behind LostAndTaken.com, a blog solely focused on giving away free high-res textures. a

• Making a Photoshop Brush Part II: Texture Brushes

  Jay Hilgert

  23 Aug 2010 | 3:02 pm

  A long, long time ago I wrote a detailed tutorial on how to make a Photoshop brush. Today, I want to show how to make a texture brush. It’s one of my favorite ways to add texture to a design, without the need to mess with merging images and blending modes on top of that. Let’s get started. Start with a cool texture image. The Setup If you want to make a large brush, the maximum size is 2500 pixels (height or width, either one) Also, if you are running CS1 or earlier, your max size is probably 1000px. So with that said, you can create your file. Then place your image and get it…

• Free Texture Tuesday: Nebula Grunge 2

  Caleb Kimbrough

  17 Aug 2010 | 5:00 am

  Today I’ve got another set of nebula grunge textures for you. As with a lot of my other grunge textures, these were made in Photoshop by combining several different textures, in this case one of them being a copyright-free nebula image. I had a lot of fun making these and I hope you can find some unique uses for them. Enjoy! Preview About The Author: Caleb Kimbrough is the man behind LostAndTaken.com, a blog solely focused on giving away free high-res textures. a

• Photoshop 101: True Black (CMYK)

  Jay Hilgert

  12 Aug 2010 | 3:16 pm

  I’ve got a quick Photoshop 101 tip for print media. This can also apply to Illustrator, but I just filed it under Photoshop. We should all know by now that RGB documents are meant for screens, and CMYK documents are meant for printing. Therefore, when you print a CMYK document and you need a really rich black it’s important to remember one little teeny tiny thing: 100% K isn’t the blackest black you can get. More after the jump. Believe it or not, when working in CMYK for print media, 0 0 0 100 is not the best black you can get. If you have a keen eye, you might be able to…

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  Templates Block

• Screw Driver

  30 Aug 2010 | 9:01 pm

  You need a screw driver for all those bolts! This new Blogger template features a very unique design of iron and bolts. This template can be used for most types of blogs.  DownloadView DemoEssential Tips

• Fresh Fruit

  30 Aug 2010 | 12:23 am

  Fresh Fruit is a 2 columned Blogger template for fruits, food, health related blogs. The template layout has a clean and clear design.  DownloadView DemoEssential Tips

• Trifecta

  29 Aug 2010 | 8:54 am

  Trifecta is a nice looking template for personal blogs. It has a little bit grungy and floral layout and presents a sense of autumn and woodish. Hope you'd like it. DownloadView DemoEssential Tips

• House Galore

  29 Aug 2010 | 3:34 am

  House Galore is a Blogger template that is designed for houses, homes, property, etc related blogs. This template can also be used for personal blogs. It features a simple layout with RSS icon and search box too. DownloadView DemoEssential Tips

• Splenus

  28 Aug 2010 | 11:43 pm

  Splenus is a Blogger template with very nice dark color, rounded corners and good graphics. This template is suitable for most blogs. DownloadView DemoEssential Tips

• 

  Rebuilding The Web

• How do we save longdesc?

  Rebuilding The Web

  22 Aug 2010 | 3:25 pm

  The longdesc attribute, although potentially useful, was removed from the HTML5 specification, despite recommendations to retain it from the HTML Accessibility Task Force. The decision to drop longdesc was a lazy response on the part of the HTML5 team: the attribute isn't popular, so let's ditch it. At the same time, the Task Force's attempts to simply reinstate the longdesc attribute won't suddenly make the attribute popular, or ensure it is used as intended. What both parties need to do is remember their obligations. Once they do that, a proper solution will emerge.

• What should be the minimum / maximum length of alternate text?

  Rebuilding The Web

  5 Aug 2010 | 10:40 am

  Different guidelines recommend different maximum lengths for alternate text. Some recommend 80, 100, or 150 characters. Some have even calculated different maximum lengths based on language (e.g. 100 for English versus 115 for German). Some accessibility checkers also raise warnings if alternate text is too short. So what should be the minimum and maximum lengths for alternate text?

• Should photos in photo-sharing sites have alternate text?

  Rebuilding The Web

  25 Jul 2010 | 12:25 pm

  We take for granted that photo-sharing sites must have alternate text for photos in order to be accessible. After all, the assumption is that alternate text makes images accessible in content-rich Web pages; so why not use alternate text to make stand-alone photos accessible? Or is it time to challenge this assumption and have a debate on whether or not alternate text is the best way to make photo-sharing sites accessible?

• What should be the new mission of W3C?

  Rebuilding The Web

  14 Jun 2010 | 11:10 am

  As a new CEO of W3C takes the reins, the mission of W3C is getting a look over. W3C is the self-appointed steward of the Web. What happens at W3C will ultimately affect us all because the Web has become an integral part of our society. Going forward, W3C has made a commitment to be mindful of the needs of all Web users. How will they fulfill this commitment? And do you trust W3C to represent your interests?

• Can checklist accessibility be harmful?

  Rebuilding The Web

  7 Jun 2010 | 8:45 am

  Accessibility checklists based on WCAG or Section 508 guidelines were intended to help make Web sites accessible. These checklists are meant to ensure that the process of accessibility checking is done consistently and comprehensively. So how can accessibility checklists be harmful?

• 

  Blog Perfume

• Theme: Free WP Theme in Modern Minimalist Style

  Blog Perfume

  1 Sep 2010 | 1:01 am

  Imbalance is a free wordpress theme in modern-minimalist style. Imbalance is a very user friendly, jQuery powered theme which looks really well under any browser and OS. Perfectly fits for your blog, online magazine or portfolio websites. Pricing: FREE Requirements: - Source: http://wpshower.com/free-wordpress-themes/imbalance…

• Plugin: Transforms Your WordPress Blog Into an Ebook

  Blog Perfume

  30 Aug 2010 | 2:06 am

  Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including in this release – PDF, ePUB, TEI. Pricing: FREE Requirements: WordPress 3.0+ Source: http://anthologize.org/

• Theme: Free Photoblogger’s Theme for WordPress

  Blog Perfume

  25 Aug 2010 | 1:01 am

  Mansion is a free photoblogger’s theme for WordPress. It features a flexible-width thumbnail grid for both images and photo journal entries. Mansion is perfect for those who want to primarily showcase their photographs and occasionally write blog posts. Pricing: FREE Requirements: - Source: Get it Now

• Giveaway 3x Awesome Themify WordPress Themes

  Blog Perfume

  23 Aug 2010 | 1:01 am

  We have featured Blogfolio WordPress Theme from Themify a week ago, and our readers love it so much. Themify aims to build awesome WordPress Themes for us. They love to build innovative and creative things. Their themes are packed with a feature-rich framework and number of useful custom widgets. Their mission is to help you setup a beautiful and functional website in minutes. No coding or technical skills are required. Using the framework, you can customize everything from the functionality to the look & feel of your site. Themify is very kind to giveaway 3x Themify WordPress Themes our…

• Theme: WordPress 3.0 Theme For Wedding Industry

  Blog Perfume

  20 Aug 2010 | 1:09 am

  The Blissful Blog is a WordPress 3.0 theme for the wedding industry. It features a traditional blog layout with several added features that take advantage of the latest WordPress 3.0 platform. That means you can change the logo, background and add featured images with ease. The theme features beautifully clean design and typography that’s appealing to professionals in the wedding industry. You can consider purchasing the support documentation if you have any theme or installation related questions. Pricing: FREE – $19 Requirements: WordPress 3.0+ Source: http://blissfulblog.com/

• 

  Cre8pc Usability & Holistic SEO

• Eat, Play, Love More

  cre8pc

  24 Aug 2010 | 10:55 am

  There’s a scene in the movie, “Eat, Pray, Love”, where Elizabeth Gilbert (played by Julia Roberts) is sitting in the lotus position meditating after weeks of trying to learn how to quiet her mind. Her entire face was a smile, from her closed eyes, to her cheeks, to the relaxed corners of her mouth. Her look of serenity zapped me like a lightening bolt. Later that evening, myself and four members of my family went out to dinner and I did something I never, ever do. I ate a huge bowl of pasta and followed it up with dessert. By 9pm that same night, I crawled into bed to read a…

• Do You Know The Way to Good IA

  cre8pc

  3 Aug 2010 | 2:35 pm

  Have you ever sat around a large table with a group of people working on a giant jig saw puzzle? Some people are really good at it. They understand the puzzle. Others are content to find border pieces. It takes patience. It brings the group together while they put it all together. What if you have the chance to build your own house? You’ll hire an architect who listens to your goals, likes, dislikes and dreams. From that a plan is established. From the first shovel of dirt to the last drop of paint, it’s built with you in mind. You’re the mental model. You’re the…

• The You-Don’t-Matter Website (A Look At Ego/Vanity Sites)

  cre8pc

  21 Jun 2010 | 2:40 pm

  Last week I conducted a web site usability audit for a famous brand corporate web site. It never fails to amaze me why these companies don’t hire designers trained in search engine marketing and user experience design. I won’t divulge who they were. I never do that with client work because for starters, they had the brains to find me and get help. But what I found illustrated what I often find on corporate, famous brand web sites. There seems to be this arrogance that says, “We have the brand. We don’t need to optimize.  Who cares if people come.” Fashionistas…

• Re-Lit and All Fired Up

  cre8pc

  2 Jun 2010 | 3:02 pm

  After taking a sorely needed break from Stuff and doing lots of chilling with “Mom, can we go shopping” daughter, I’m back – poorer but happier. My office was moved and expanded to a new section of our finished basement and repainted. My old space is now the 16 year old’s “cave for the dudes”. I have a docking station with 3 monitors for testing and space for my laptop, so I can feel geeky. To my left is a whole bunch of exercise equipment that I may stop staring at and cutting articles out of magazines to show how to use. On my right is a gorgeous…

• Facebook Sending Photos of You for Criminal Investigation

  cre8pc

  25 May 2010 | 5:02 pm

  I learned today that unknown to most Facebook users is a facial recognition application used by Facebook that is sending information for criminal investigation use by governments. In the USA, the information is available for use at the state police level. The warning I got from my source was to get off Facebook. Knowing what he knows about how the software application is being used without public knowledge, is the reason his family will not use Facebook. I’ve been informed by other sources that ALL data from search engines and social sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and…

• 

  Web Design Blog - DesignM.ag

• On the Concept of Process

  Matt Ward

  2 Sep 2010 | 10:35 am

  I’m going to start this discussion of by revealing a secret about my own design work: I don’t have a process. At least, I don’t have a rock solid, time tested step by step formula that I follow for all my projects. That’s not to say that I shoot from the hip or fly by the seat of my pants, to use a couple of cliched old sayings. I certainly take the time to think things through and to be both thorough and methodical in my work. I just don’t follow the same steps every time. There are a couple of different reasons for this. The first is the nature of the project.

• Win a Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen or a PrintedPiece Premium Account!

  Brant Wilson

  31 Aug 2010 | 8:04 am

  PrintedPiece is doing a huge giveaway of 10 Premium Accounts and 1 Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen! To enter this giveaway go to http://giveaway.printedpiece.com/ Company Proile Printed Piece is a website where you can find print design inspiration from everything from corporate identity, collateral, apparel, posters, banners, logos, brochures, postcards, mugs, mouse pads, stickers, and much, much more! Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, Printed Piece goes one step further and helps you locate a designer or a printer in your area to help you get the project done. Printed Piece is an…

• 2000 Free Photoshop Patterns

  Brant Wilson

  30 Aug 2010 | 7:34 am

  Today I have put together the largest collection of free Photoshop patterns DesignM.ag has ever offered. Enjoy! Flowers Patters for Photoshop (6) Photoshop Patterns Photoshop Patterns (12) Victorian – PS Patterns (45) Vintage Patterns (12) Arabic Patterns for Photoshop (4) Grandmas Flowers (4) Paisley Seamless Paper Patterns (6) Grungy Abstract Squares Photoshop Patterns (4) Tileable Midnight Blue Grunge Patterns (5) Flat Grungy Summer Stripes Seamless Patterns (6) Intricate Lace Abstract Gears (3) Geometric Links (3) Soft Pastel Abstract Light Patterns (5) Gears and Cogs (3) Vintage…

• Quality Athletic Websites

  Brady Nord

  27 Aug 2010 | 1:07 pm

  There are not many aspects in life that can bridge gaps between religion, race, and nationality. Although, one that has proven time and time again is sport. There is not a city across the world that you can visit without seeing a team jersey or logo somewhere! Because of this, many sports clubs and teams have a unique challenge of designing their web presence to appeal to an international arena more so then the rest of us. I have assembled what I would consider out of the box and quality athletic based websites. Whether you love or hate the brand or team, I hope you would agree that these…

• Win 1000 Business Cards from Inkchaser!

  Brant Wilson

  25 Aug 2010 | 2:18 pm

  Inkchaser.com has offered to give 2 lucky DesignM.ag readers 1000 business cards! To enter this contest you must leave a comment on this post telling DesignM.ag readers what you would use the business cards for. Company Profile Based on their experience working with thousands of clients across dozens of industries and product categories Inkchaser helps corporate print buyers, graphic designers and small business owners with anything and everything print. When you choose Inkchaser you’ll be tapping the collective knowledge and expertise of over 200 professional print buyers to help get…

• 

  Pro Blog Design

• Working With WordPress Shortcodes

  Pippin

  30 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  WordPress shortcodes are used frequently in plugins and themes as a way to achieve extra functionality, without the need to modify template files. You just type the shortcode word right into your post. Some plugins and themes use them to add event calendars, some for making announcements, while others use them for inserting contact forms. Simply, WP shortcodes are awesome. However, what if you’re a theme / plugin developer wishing to use them for your next great product, but you have no idea where to start? We’re going to fix that in this tutorial. 1 – Overview –…

• How to Edit the WordPress RSS Feed

  Michael Martin

  19 Aug 2010 | 5:00 pm

  Ever thought you could make some improvements to your RSS feed? Like letting it cover more (or less!) content? Or adding some extra details onto the end of your posts? In this post, I’m going to show you how to do exactly that. Here’s what we’ll be covering: How to include both posts and pages in your feeds. How to add thumbnails to your feeds. How to exclude posts with a certain tag. Set how many posts appear in your feed (Without affecting the rest of your site). How to show only posts from a certain category. How to add content to the end of each post (e.g. link to your…

• Design Critique: B2Bbloggers.com

  Michael Martin

  6 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  B2Bbloggers.com is a B2B marketing site that features a lot of guest posts on B2B marketing, and highlights a lot of content from around the niche. We’re going to take a look at the site’s design today, critique it, and work out how we could improve it. As we do hopefully you’ll learn to apply this same methodology to your own site. We’ll be working through this design as a case study, redesigning each section along the way, so you get to see each item as we rework it, including the full before and after design. Let’s start by loading the site in a new tab (Or if…

• MyBiz Theme for WordPress Discount Code

  Michael Martin

  3 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  Over on PliablePress, we’ve released our newest WordPress theme. MyBiz is designed for modern businesses who don’t want the “faceless-company” approach that customers are used to receiving. It’s vibrant, colorful (You even get 5 color schemes to choose from!) and yet still professional and well organized. Most of all, we’ve put an extreme amount of care into the homepage, giving you 3 different ways to ensure your best content is highlighted and that your visitors go to the pages you want them to see. Check out the walkthrough video below showing you some…

• How To Write a Restricted Content Plugin

  Pippin

  26 Jul 2010 | 9:00 am

  There are a lot of sites out there, particularly digital education sites, such as Net Tuts and Blender Cookie, that push out a lot of “premium” content that is only accessible to registered users. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you some of the basics of writing a WordPress plugin from scratch that will allow you to restrict content on your site to registered users. You will be able to restrict complete pages / posts by clicking a check box or just sections of content using WordPress shortcodes. Note: I will not be showing how to create a paid membership system, or how…

• 

  Webdesigner Depot

• Our Favorite Tweets of the Week Aug 29-Sep 4, 2010

  Walter

  5 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot10 Beautiful iTunes 10 Replacement Icons: http://ow.ly/2zkA7Scary! McDonald’s…

• Comics of the Week #41

  Walter

  4 Sep 2010 | 3:31 am

  Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…Take a BreakThe Aggressive MarketerMy…

• In-Depth Review of Tumblr’s Custom Theming Ability

  Walter

  3 Sep 2010 | 3:29 am

  Tumblr. If you’re a savvy tech maven, you may have heard of, or had the chance to use, this powerful microblogging platform.No wonder; millions of people have chosen Tumblr as their blogging service, and the average Tumblr user creates 14 original posts every month. Half of those posts are photos, and the rest consist of text, links, quotes, music and video.Tumblr is nothing to sneeze at. It has proven itself worthy of receiving cash infusions from two venture capital firms and a number of angel investors.If you’re thinking of climbing on board the Tumblr train, this article is…

• Working For A Web Design Agency

  John

  2 Sep 2010 | 3:30 am

  The most obvious job for a web designer is working for a web design agency, but if you’ve never done that before… then how do you know what to expect? Is it even the right path for you?Setting foot in an agency for the first time can be daunting. It’s filled with people who have probably worked in the industry longer than you and who probably know a lot more than you.Perhaps you’ve just finished a degree and you’re looking for a first job, or maybe you’re about to go back to office life after a few years of freelancing under your belt.Either way, today…

• Winners of Custom Stickers from Sticker Mule

  Walter

  1 Sep 2010 | 3:25 am

  After more than 300 comments on last week’s Sticker Mule giveaway, we finally have the results.As you know, Sticker Mule makes awesome custom stickers in all different shapes and sizes as well as skins that you could use, for example, for your laptop, iPhone or iPad. These are not only great fun, but can also be used as excellent promotional tools, or even gifts.Each of the 5 winners has won a voucher worth $100, which can be applied to any of Sticker Mule’s stickers or skins.The winners were selected at random and you can check the results after the jump.Here are the winners:#5…

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  Yoast - Tweaking Websites & The WordPress Podcast

• Yoast: The heading structure for your blog

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:00 am

  The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they're interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog's homepage or your category archives. This post intends to give you the basic pointers to get your heading structure right for those three different cases.If you've ever heard of this new kid on the block called HTML5, or maybe even consider yourself an expert on it, please note that this post still treats headings in the…

• Yoast: Quick tip: paths and URLs in WordPress

  1 Sep 2010 | 7:00 am

  I was reading an article on Sitepoint about custom write panels the other day when I got heavily annoyed. The direct reason for this was one of their code examples and the authors apparent incomplete knowledge of the WordPress API's most basic functions and constants. In that example, he does the following:define( 'MY_WORDPRESS_FOLDER'  $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']   )   define(    'MY_THEME_FOLDER'    str_replace(dirname(__FILE__))   )   define(    'MY_THEME_PATH'     substr(      MY_THEME_FOLDER    …

• WordPress Podcast: Listen to Liz Strauss: “Treat Your Blog Like a Business!”

  31 Aug 2010 | 11:59 pm

  Liz Strauss gave a masterclass tonight; at least, that’s how it felt to both Frederick and myself. We talked about communicating with your audience, and Liz shared some experiences about open comment nights. We discussed positioning yourself and your blog, and how important personal branding can be.She told us about feedback loops, and how to use them to listen to your users / clients / audience. She tought us to build our network before we need it, and why and how you should be treating your blog like a business, even if it’s just a hobby. Aren’t you curious yet? Start…

• Yoast: 7 reasons for malfunctioning plugins (and their fixes)

  31 Aug 2010 | 7:50 am

  It happens to every plugin author: you receive emails from people that your plugin isn't working. There are about 7 reasons that - for me - seem to be the root cause of up to 95% of these emails, and I thought I'd write them down and show you how I try to handle them.1. Missing hooksIt annoys the *peep* out of me when I find out that my plugin is in fact working fine, but the *peep* theme author didn't think it necessary to add a wp_head or wp_footer call. This happens more than you'd think, but in most cases you can't really blame the user in question, the theme author is just a moron. For…

• Yoast: A reader story: One Project Closer

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:00 am

  I got an email from Fred of One Project Closer this weekend, outlining how he had handled improving the load time of his blog, and I was so happy with it that I asked whether I could post it online, to which he graciously agreed. So you can now read it in full:Joost,I wanted to pass along a HUGE thank you for pointing me in the direction of VPS.Net.About 2 weeks ago we decided it was time to move off of our Dreamhost shared hosting. I had remembered visiting your site several months back and seeing your note in the sidebar for a fast WordPress hosting solution. When we decided to move 2 weeks…

• 

  A List Apart

• Apps vs. the Web

  17 Aug 2010 | 3:00 am

  There's an app for that, and you're the folks who are creating it. But should you design a web-based application, or an iPhone app? Each approach has pluses and minuses—not to mention legions of religiously rabid supporters. Apple promotes both approaches (they even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store), and the iPhone's Safari browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 and brags a fast JavaScript engine. Yet many companies and individuals with deep web expertise choose to create iPhone apps instead of web apps that can do the same thing. Explore both…

• Good Help is Hard to Find

  17 Aug 2010 | 3:00 am

  Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to rethink how we approach this part of our site. Done well, help content offers tremendous potential…

• Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings

  3 Aug 2010 | 2:00 am

  Too many kickoff meetings squander the busiest, most expensive people's time reiterating what everyone already knows. If every meeting is an opportunity, why waste your first one? By asking stakeholders tough questions before the kick-off, and using the meeting itself to explore ideas and build relationships, you can turn a room of mutually suspicious turf battlers into an energetic team with shared ownership of the end-product and the kind of bond that can sustain the group through the challenges ahead.

• No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas

  3 Aug 2010 | 2:00 am

  You can't create what clients need when you're too busy saying yes to everything they want. As a user experience designer, it's your job to say no to bad ideas and pointless practices. But getting to no is never easy. Proven techniques that can turn vocal negatives into positive experiences for you, the client, and most importantly, the end-user include citing best practices and simple but powerful business cases; proving your point with numbers; shifting focus from what to who; using the "positive no"; and, when necessary, pricing yourself out.

• JavaScript Minification Part II

  20 Jul 2010 | 3:00 am

  Variable naming can be a source of coding angst for humans trying to understand code. Once you’re sure that a human doesn’t need to interpret your JavaScript code, variables simply become generic placeholders for values. Nicholas C. Zakas shows us how to further minify JavaScript by replacing local variable names with the YUI Compressor.

• 

  CSSJockey.com

• CSSJockey’s Brand & Design Pilfering

  CSSJockey

  19 Aug 2010 | 9:06 am

  In a disturbing recent finding I had to bring up this issue here. Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of messages, from my clients; friends and well-wishers online, warning and informing me about some XYZ pilfering my site design; framework and even linking up to CSSJockey claiming to be a former team member or a partner. I know it’s nothing out of the ordinary, happens every now and then to businesses online or offline. Still I believe “Prevention is better than Cure”. So, to my well-wishers, friends and business associates, I’d like to extend my gratitude for raising their concern…

• WordPress Themes & Why You Should Have Unique Design

  James Mowery

  20 Jul 2010 | 1:56 am

  When you have a website or blog you want to stand out from all the other websites out, which is why having a good WordPress theme that sets you apart is so critical. There are millions of websites that are run using WordPress and with that, there are many themes out there that are being used many times over. This can cause your website to look like many other websites if you are using one of the standard themes out there. If you can find a theme or someone to create a WordPress theme for you that is unique, you will be one step ahead in terms of branding and making your website stand out.

• CSS3 Tutorials and Resources

  CSSJockey

  14 Mar 2010 | 1:32 pm

  In my effort to keep up with my resolution this month, here is another list of some goodies. CSS3 is already a hit and still many designers/developers haven’t tried their hands on it. Well, CSSJockey to their rescue. Worry no more, Resources are galore!!! Resources: 1. Smashing Magazine – Push Your Web Design Into The Future With CSS3 Into The Future With CSS3 A good intro to CSS3 by Smashing Magazine 2. CSS3.Info – Introducing the Flexible Box Layout Module Introducing the Flexible Box Layout Module Know more about the one aspect of CSS3, that hasn’t received a lot of…

• A Collection of Logo Design Tutorials

  CSSJockey

  6 Mar 2010 | 8:04 am

  Designing a logo or a corporate identity sometimes eat up a whole lot of project time than designing its theme or any other part of the site. It may be the misguiding client specifications list or a designer’s block, or for starters a know-how block. Well, one can find numerous tutorials posted for designing a logo, but I’ve handpicked a few of most commonly used tools and designing elements that go into making an appealing logo. 1. Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make a Web 2.0-Style Logo -ALLEBA Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make a Web 2.0-Style Logo Learn to make simple, glossed,…

• 40 Handpicked Free Professional Fonts For Designers

  CSSJockey

  26 Feb 2010 | 10:50 pm

  In series of “Sharing Best Practices”, I dug up some nice and cool fonts from my bookmarks. Hope you find them useful. I’ll be listing more of these soon. Rockwell Extra Bold Classification: Slab Serif | Designer: No Data Available Source: http://www.fontemple.com/free-download/10947-Rockwell-Extra-Bold.html Rockwell Extra Bold Bebas Classification: Sans Serif | Designer: Flat-It Source: http://www.dafont.com/bebas.font Bebas Delicious Heavy Classification: Sans Serif | Designer: Jos Buivenga Source: http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/delicious.html Delicious Heavy Colaborate…

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  Young & Freelancing - Bryan Connor

• Advice to Myself

  bryanconnor

  23 Aug 2010 | 1:43 pm

  Heavily inspired by the brilliant writing of Frank Chimero in a recent post What advice would you give to a graphic design student? I’ve created a desktop background for myself with tailored advice for what I need to keep reminding myself of during this final year of school. I think it’ll help me focus and improve and if you think it might be helpful to you please go ahead and download the full size version. What Advice Would I Give to Myself? Personal projects are more valuable than client projects. Teachers should act as guides and mentors and not totemic figures. Learning…

• Dribbble Community Reactions: Infographic

  bryanconnor

  10 Aug 2010 | 11:33 am

  Dribbble, the fledgling community of designers posting snapshots of work, has had landmark week for both press and controversy centering around the true purpose of the community. Dribbble has been criticized for its exclusivity and many are waiting to see whether it will turn into a gallery for the best designers to post work and get patted on the back or a coveted space for receiving valuable feedback from some of the big names in the industry. In the past 24 hours Dribbble has taken one big step towards the later with a sizable sample of the community chiming in on the purpose of Dribble in…

• Photography from Turkey

  bryanconnor

  7 Aug 2010 | 6:12 pm

• Typography Self-Education Roundup

  bryanconnor

  5 Aug 2010 | 7:54 am

  While design school is an awfully good place to learn the basics of typography, there is also a tremendous amount of learning you can do online. It seemed like a few sites have been putting out typography resources, mostly in PDF form, recently so I decided to collect a few and add in some more to form this list of hyperlinks for typography education. Adobe A condensed but complete type primer from Adobe Education – Download the PDF – (via bonfx) FontShop Another site you might not expect to have an education section, FontShop has a collection of 4 PDFs about type. They are Meet…

• 826 Baltimore & The Stuff of Dreams

  bryanconnor

  2 Aug 2010 | 7:12 am

  826 Baltimore is the hypothetical extension of the 826 National family of non-profit tutoring organizations that exist around the country. Starting with 826 Valencia, the tutoring centers have always had a retail component to them as well. This began as a way to satisfy a zoning law and has  evolved into a distinct feature of the program as well as a legitimate source of program funds. Description Each center in each location has a unique store concept, each of which is creative, engaging for children and very well designed. Existing stores and centers include 826 Valencia ( Pirate Supply…

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  The Niche Store Builder

• SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 Footprint Removal

  Mark Hansen

  2 Sep 2010 | 12:58 pm

  Earlier this week I was talking about website footprints, and why I try to make sure I clean up after myself when using certain tools, plugins or themes. Ever since the Google MayDay update, I have been on an optimization tear… In the process of cleaning up code to speed up sites, it’s surprising how many tracks you find! In today’s post, I am going to talk about a kick-ass plugin called SEO Search Terms Tagging 2. I LOVE this plugin and it works FANTASTIC! But if you use it as-is ...SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 Footprint Removal posted from the Niche Store Builder…

• Can a Plugin Leave Tell Tale Footprints?

  Mark Hansen

  31 Aug 2010 | 5:28 pm

  There has always been a bit of heat about whether leaving footprints behind can hurt your efforts to build and market a website. Some people like myself, go out of the way to remove them, and others swear its just a case of being paranoid or wearing a tin-foil hat (I have one of those!) and is a waste of time. So the question is… Can a Plugin leave a trail that may hurt you? (I can’t resist)My guess is that most people fall somewhere in the middle of the road… ...Can a Plugin Leave Tell Tale Footprints? posted from the Niche Store Builder website.Related posts:New WordPress…

• How Bad Do You Want It? Win This Website

  Mark Hansen

  25 Aug 2010 | 6:12 am

  Quick, Simple and Easy 2-Day Contest to win one of the websites we built with the Keywords to Websites plugin. There are a few requirements, so please make sure you read this entire post… The Clean Air Guide was built earlier this month as one of the sites we used to test our use of the site builder plugin. It’s a very basic site that’s ready for additional natural article marketing or someone who may want to drive PPC at it, whichever you prefer. I have a sum total of about ...How Bad Do You Want It? Win This Website posted from the Niche Store Builder website.Related…

• Big Brands Get a Kickback from Google, Everyone Else Gets F*

  Mark Hansen

  24 Aug 2010 | 5:58 am

  Just because I decided to start using Bing versus Google for all my web searching doesn’t mean I don’t revisit to see whats going on and compare results with those returned at Bing. At some point over the weekend, I noticed that brands seemed to be popping into the result pages much more than before when I was searching for things related to my sites… guess what, Google made another change to reinforce brands! In the past, when you searched for an Apple ipod or an HP Printer,  you had a ...Big Brands Get a Kickback from Google, Everyone Else Gets F* posted from the Niche…

• WordPress Dropping All Pages? Don’t Panic!

  Mark Hansen

  21 Aug 2010 | 5:38 am

  For the third day in a row, I have been contacted about someone waking up and finding that their entire WordPress powered website had dropped all the pages and content! Today, it also happened to one of my own sites! Here is what you find:You Visit your Website The Homepage or ANY Page is Blank, or delivering a 404, not found error.Rule #1 – Don’t Panic…. I don’t know WHY this happening at this point, but every site I have spotted it on is using “page” for the homepage, versus the most recent posts like ...WordPress Dropping All Pages? Don’t Panic!

• 

  Seth Goldstein Online

• Google’s Priority Inbox Is Just What The Doctor Ordered

  Seth

  31 Aug 2010 | 5:51 am

  If you’re like me, you get tons of emails. Often times weeding through the piles takes more time than just reading the important messages and getting back to work. Google’s email system, GMail, has a new feature called Priority Inbox. It uses an algorithm to figure out what emails are important and what ones are just run of the mill, read them later, type emails. Google’s very good at their explanation videos for new features and products. Here’s the one for Priority Inbox. It really explains the concept well. Here’s what Google has to say about their new GMail…

• My Take On The Android Twitter Application Options

  Seth

  18 Aug 2010 | 9:30 am

  So I took it upon myself the past few days to try a number of different Twitter applications on my Motorola Droid X. Here is how they rated in my opinion: ***** – Five Stars is the best // * – One star means you should avoid at all costs Hootsuite:  (4 stars) So far this is the best one and the easiest to use. You can have multiple accounts and easily side scroll through your lists. I don’t read my home feed, instead opting to follow my curated lists instead. Hootsuite does this with ease and allows you to follow exactly what your following on the Web app version of the…

• Rachel and Tom’s Wedding Video Trailer

  Seth

  16 Aug 2010 | 9:57 pm

  I have to post this because it’s just so neat. Two years after Meredith and I tied the knot, her little sister Rachel and, her now husband, Tom tied the knot on August 1st, 2010 at the Talamore Country Club. It was a great night. Long but fun. Check out the great wedding video trailer Branded Productions (their videographer) posted on Vimeo: The two love birds just got back from their trip to Italia today. I’m sure they’re so jet lagged. Once again congrats guys! Tom, welcome (officially) to the family…. sorry for butting in line.

• Microsoft’s answer to Google Street View – Street Slide

  Seth

  8 Aug 2010 | 9:00 am

  Google is the king of the Web, we all know this. But Microsoft has been on the search giants heals for a while now. First with Bing, going after search traffic and other Google properties like maps. Now Microsoft is taking on Google’s Street View. Their creation, dubbed Street Slide, looks very interesting and looks to be a nice alternative to Street View. Below is a video explaining Street Slide. Will people take to this new Microsoft attempt to thwart Google? I’m not sure, but the concept is a neat one. What do you think? Post your thoughts in the comments.

• The Social Network Map – Old World Map Style

  Seth

  6 Aug 2010 | 1:23 pm

  Thanks to @GlennGabe for tweeting this and hat-tip to Visualoop.tumblr.com for originally posting this image. The image below shows, in an old world map style, the approximate sizes of Social Networking sites online. The image created by Flowtown is an absolutely brilliant way to illustrate the different sizes of a majority of the social networks out there. Check it out.

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  Make My Own Website Now

• Outstanding Social Media Presentation

  admin

  26 Aug 2010 | 3:54 am

• How to Build A Website Using Dreamweaver

  admin

  11 Mar 2010 | 5:54 pm

  How to Build A Website Using Dreamweaver By BJ Min If you want to discover how to build a website, then read this article. It will give you some ways on how to create a website using the Dreamweaver software. Macromedia Dreamweaver is the most popular web site editor tools. It enables you to build a website with small HTML knowledge. It allows source code to be edited easily. Dreamweaver has additional features including templates to make easy global change quickly and JavaScript behaviors to let you make rollover graphics and to know how to code scripts. Have some tips on how to create a…

• How To Import Your PSD Layout Into Dreamweaver (Part 1)

  admin

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:52 pm

• How To Make Your Own Website With Photoshop (Part 1)

  admin

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:48 pm

• Welcome to Make My Own Website Now!

  admin

  11 Jan 2010 | 8:33 pm

  Welcome to Make My Own Website Now! You know, if you really want to make money online, you’re going to have to have your own website. The reasons for this are many and are clearly explained why in the free ebook “Create Your First Website By 3:45 This Afternoon” which you can grab a copy of here and which shows you how to create your first website using the Kompozer web editor and the FTP client Filezilla – both of which are free. As daunting as the idea of trying to make your own website from start to finish is, trust me, the only thing you need is the right…

• 

  geeksonsteroids.com

• SEO or Search Engine Optimization

  janeth

  25 Aug 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Over at Yahoo Answers someone asked this question New online business – SEO? Hi there, I am setting up a new online business and need some advice on how to do the SEO. I used to look after a website with my old job and the agency I used charged us £1000 p/month for adwords but being a small business I won’t have that kind of budget. Thanks I talk to a lot of people every day that have similar questions about SEO and how to get a website ranked. So I thought I would post it here along with my answer. The best way to get a website ranked in the search engines is to totally ignore…

• Making Money without a Website

  janeth

  24 Aug 2010 | 8:15 am

  There are so many ways to get a product or information noticed that we’ve reached the point of being able to make Money online without even having a website. I can create a squidoo page, blog page, facebook page or even a twitter page and drive traffic from around the web to that page. Or for that matter I could advertise on Craig’s list, eBay or any of the other hundreds of classified ad/auction sites and not even have any kind of landing page.

• Geeks on Steroids

  janeth

  24 Aug 2010 | 8:05 am

  Geeks on Steroids I had decided this year to write some really good articles on ways to make Money online and I’ve done just that. However, what I’ve found out is that no matter how good the articles are or how cutting edge the content is it’s really hard to get people to link back to those articles. Or for that matter even comment on the blog post. To write a good article takes about a day however, to write something just to put on the blog only takes about 5 minutes. Google sees both articles the same so I have to wonder how in the heck all these folks that believe all you have to do…

• gfilotto.com

  janeth

  20 Aug 2010 | 9:45 am

  gfilotto.com Here’s what really gets me, the guy that owns gfilotto.com website has made some personal attacks against me, my business and my husband. Even saying that we are scammers even though he has never done business with us nor does he personally know anyone that has done business with us. The guy is suppose to be some type of Hypnotist, however I would personally wonder about someone hypnotizing me that makes personal attacks against people while having zero personal experience in the matter. Other words, if he would call someone a scammer while knowing nothing about this person…

• “How to Get the Right Website Design for You”

  janeth

  16 Aug 2010 | 9:32 am

  Companies as well as individuals from around the world spend a lot of time and money trying to create a website that they believe will keep their business one step ahead of their competitors. It’s for this reason that you should choose a website designer that uses modern techniques and ideas to deliver professionally designed websites. And it is equally important that the web designer brings the client up to speed on what is currently being used and in the web designers experience the best way to get the client ahead of the competition. As well as keeping the client “in the…

• 

  Productivedreams.com

• 20 Semi-transparent Glossy Icons

  Gopal Raju

  16 Aug 2010 | 12:40 am

  I’ve been so busy setting up and organizing my office, but today ProductiveDreams is back with a unique, high quality icon set. The icons are semi-transparent, glossy and can also be used as web graphics. Yes! a 512×512 version has been included in the package Available Sizes: 32×32, 48×48, 64×64, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512.And here goes a preview of all the icons. This icon set is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License And btw, version 2 is on the way…RELATED POSTSWelcome 2010 – A Free Wallpaper For…

• A simple CSS based usability tip for search buttons

  Gopal Raju

  25 Mar 2010 | 4:59 am

  This is a small tip to improve the usability of search fields. I realized the need of this while working on a recent project and thought it was good enough to share with my readers Do you have the habit of hitting the search button multiple times even before it loads the search results? Well… I used to do that and so do many other users. Clicking the search button multiple times results in additional server requests and slows down the page’s loading time. Why do users click again? Because they are users! They aren’t developers who understand what happens in the back end.Its…

• 3 common requirements/issues and the corresponding Jquery solutions for your next web project

  Gopal Raju

  17 Mar 2010 | 4:30 am

  Hi friends… Another post to boost your productivity Recently, while working on some client projects, I noticed a few requirements(I know there are many) that were common. I strongly feel, this will be useful for your next web project. 1. Empty form field value on focus/click The requirement/issue: This is a very common requirement. You would have noticed form fields that have a value by default which disappears when you click/focus on them. When you click outside, the value appears again. Solution:The jQuery emptyonclick Plugin works like a charm. All you need to do is download this…

• Making gallery submissions easy for designers

  Gopal Raju

  8 Mar 2010 | 1:56 am

  Submitting designs to galleries has always been a hectic task for designers. Do you agree with me? This post is to give you an overview on the procedure I follow to make this easy. If you have better ideas please do contribute via the comment form below.Requirements1. Firefox Sorry IE users!2. InFormEnter AddOn for firefox3. Details about your logo/website (will explain this below)4. Image of your logo in various dimensions (will explain this as well)I assume that you’ve already read my post – 22 Sites & Galleries to submit your logos. In this post I’ll walk you through…

• Welcome 2010 – A Free Wallpaper For Your Desktop & Iphone

  Gopal Raju

  24 Jan 2010 | 2:27 pm

  I know its late for a New Year gift, but better late than never. This wallpaper is for all my readers who have always been supporting, motivating and encouraging me throughout the years. This was created digitally using Fireworks and Photoshop and is something along the lines of the design of IndoFolio. I hope it will enrich your desktop. Its available for 1024×768 (standard) and 1280×800 (wide) resolutions. An Iphone version has been included as well. The wallpaper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License and mainly should not be…

• 

  Design Instruct: A Web Magazine for Designers and Digital Artists

• Font Collection: 10 Free Slab Serif Fonts

  5 Sep 2010 | 9:05 am

  A slab serif is a sub-type of serif fonts that has block-shaped serifs. A popular example of a slab serif font is the Rockwell font family. Slab serifs may also be referred to as mechanistic, square serif or Egyptian. Their strong and sturdy appearance makes them great candidates as headline and display fonts. This collection of fonts presents some excellent and free slab serif fonts. Continue reading...Continue Reading: Font Collection: 10 Free Slab Serif Fonts

• Inspiration: 30 Beautiful Textured Illustrations

  3 Sep 2010 | 7:00 am

  Illustrations -- before digital graphics software -- used to be highly textured; whether it came from the medium (e.g. paper, canvas), the painting method (like watercolors or chalk), or both. These textural components, as can be seen through our textured illustration tutorial by Ciara Panacchia, give artwork an organic and tactile element, and this visual showcase presents illustrations that embody these aesthetics. Continue reading...Continue Reading: Inspiration: 30 Beautiful Textured Illustrations

• Create a Cosmic Scene with Photoshop and Cinema 4D

  1 Sep 2010 | 7:00 am

  In this Photoshop and Cineme 4D tutorial, I will show you how to create a space composition, exploring techniques for creating 3D text in Cinema 4D, a glass effect in Photoshop and a slew of different light effects. Before creating this scene, the concept I I knew I wanted was to have a girl floating unconsciously in space, with two hands trying to get to her and a short message represented in 3D text. You can see in this tutorial what I ended up with. Continue reading...Continue Reading: Create a Cosmic Scene with Photoshop and Cinema 4D

• Create a Beautiful Paint Brush Icon in Photoshop

  30 Aug 2010 | 7:00 am

  This tutorial is meant to explain how to design semi-realistic objects achieved through simple procedures. The tutorial mostly uses shape layers, which will help you edit them later on and make your work more flexible and scalable. Continue reading...Continue Reading: Create a Beautiful Paint Brush Icon in Photoshop

• Retro Abstract Circles: Photoshop Brush Pack

  28 Aug 2010 | 7:00 am

  Inspired by funky, abstract 70s patterns, vinyl records, and the popularity of employing retro elements in modern design, these Photoshop brushes are perfect as decorative ornaments in your retro-inspired projects. Experiment with layer styles such as color overlays and gradient overlays, apply a Noise filter, and overlay textures on them such as the Rough Concrete: Texture Pack to produce interesting effects. There are 15 brushes in the set, each with 2,500px diameters. Continue reading...Continue Reading: Retro Abstract Circles: Photoshop Brush Pack

• 

  Reencoded

• Best Rated CSS3 Techniques & Practices

  GrindSmart Media

  3 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  There are plethora of techniques for CSS3 and how one should go about laying the code out, what techniques to use for different browsers, and a whole set of others. Within this post we take a look at several specific CSS3 techniques and practices that you should adapt to, to improve your CSS3 coding style as well as coding technique that also affects cross compatibility. Organizing Browser Specific Syntax As all of us who dived into CSS3 know, there is a lot of syntax that relates to certain browsers or compilers such as the border radius element and the likes. In order to better organize and…

• Get Inspired: 25 Cool Pieces of 3D Style Typograhy

  Hilde

  2 Sep 2010 | 6:00 am

  Typography is an art-form that holds great variety. While many pieces usually are 2d, there are a handful of really cool 3D style pieces that we’ve found for you today. This show great skills from the artists and can inspire us all – no matter what type of design we do daily. So sit back and enjoy!

• 10 Twitter Tools That You Should Definitely Know About

  Rishabh

  31 Aug 2010 | 10:56 pm

  Twitter has gone large, really large. Everyone of us has seen the tremendous growth this nifty little service with just a basic and simple idea has gone over the years. The main thing that makes twitter so powerful is their API. The twitter API enables developers to develop their own custom twitter applications and tools. With the API provided by twitter, developers can call the twitter services and  integrate them into their applications and tools very easily. There are zillions of twitter tools and apps out there. Some offer enhanced tweeting user experience while others are useful for…

• 30 Absolutely Awesome Free Social Media Icon Sets

  Hilde

  30 Aug 2010 | 6:07 am

  This time we’ve made a great collection for those who are looking for good social media icons. These are all good ones and they’re free to use. If you don’t have the time to design your own, or just think these are better than anything you could ever make yourself – make sure to get them! These can be used to spice up your designs, inspire you and add that final touch to your blog/website. Social Trucks Icons Dellifeed Polaroid OLED SocioLEGO Post it note style Freehand Colorstroked Cheers Old Bottle Crowns Social Vintage Social Media Bubblicons Splatter Sosial…

• Useful Tips for Designing Email Templates

  GrindSmart Media

  27 Aug 2010 | 6:00 am

  HTML Email Templates have been increasing in popularity recently as normal text emails are getting out of style for companies and services that send out emails on a routinely basis. With that said, many email templates have been arising with some not compatible from different aspects of its design due to design complexity. Furthermore, to help reduce email template errors and common mistakes, here we take a look at six tips to improving your templates in terms of design and layout. Say No to Complicated Designs Complicated designs for email templates are a major problem with many designers.

• 

  Alphabetix

• Twitter App Updates

  Laura

  2 Sep 2010 | 9:54 am

  Twitter is making some updates to their application policies that will affect Twitter users. New Authorization Rules As of the beginning of September, all Twitter applications are required to use OAuth to access your Twitter account. OAuth enables applications to access Twitter on your behalf with your approval, without directly asking you for your password. While they may ask for your password once, they are required to use OAuth to access your timeline or allow your tweet. What It Means for You Applications cannot store your password any longer. If you change your password, the apps will…

• Why Uniqueness Counts

  Laura

  2 Sep 2010 | 7:35 am

  When we’re talking about websites, uniqueness counts. Whether its the content or the design, making sure your website is original is essential for great SEO and user-friendliness. Creative Content Having great, unique content is one of the best things you can do to get people to your website. Good content is written in a way that is readable, is interesting to the reader, and has the right keywords to get you found in the search engines. Well-written content will get readers to your website and get them to come back. Give them something they can’t find somewhere else. While the…

• Determining the Value of Social Media Marketing

  Laura

  31 Aug 2010 | 9:38 am

  When you want to determine what social media marketing is doing for your business, you have to know the best way measure the value. Quality over Quantity In social marketing, it’s all about who you know, or rather, who knows you. You can have throngs of followers (feels good to be popular, doesn’t it?), but that won’t get you anywhere if your followers aren’t the right followers for you. You want people who pay attention to what you publish, not people who click “hide” as soon as your content starts popping up on their page. Interaction is important, and…

• Writing Great Resume Content

  Laura

  27 Aug 2010 | 8:42 am

  In the economy that we are facing, having a great resume is essential for getting the job you want. A resume that looks great and has stellar content can be the deciding factor between a job and the garbage. Here are some tips about writing great content for your resume. 1. Get Specific A generic resume that doesn’t make any specific notation about the job you are applying for won’t get you very far. You should make it very clear that you want the specific job that you are applying for. That may mean rephrasing your skills list, removing the skills that don’t apply to the…

• Social Media and Search Engine Marketing

  Laura

  25 Aug 2010 | 9:25 am

  What’s the connection between search engine marketing and social media? Having a social media presence makes you more likely to be to be seen by search engines. So, how does a social media presence help? Go Big Social media sites carry a ton of weight as far as search engines are involved. They have a ton of content, have a lot of visitors and are linked to from all over the internet. Currently, Facebook is the second ranked site in the world. YouTube is number three and Twitter is number 11. You can’t beat that kind of popularity. Using these sites, having your name and brand…

• 

  Dzine Soup

• 100 Amazing Freelance Blogs

  Cyrus

  31 Aug 2010 | 4:43 pm

  Share this on del.icio.us Bump this on DesignBump Submit this to DesignFloat Digg this! Add this to DZone Share this on Facebook Share this on FriendFeed Post on Google Buzz Add this to Google Reader Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Mixx Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Tweet This! Blend this! Buzz up! Box this on Zabox

• More amazing posters for inspiration

  Cyrus

  25 Aug 2010 | 4:59 pm

  Check out these inspirational poster designs that will leave you saying “wow”! Share this on del.icio.us Bump this on DesignBump Submit this to DesignFloat Digg this! Add this to DZone Share this on Facebook Share this on FriendFeed Post on Google Buzz Add this to Google Reader Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Mixx Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Tweet This! Blend this! Buzz up! Box this on Zabox

• New jQuery Constant Footer Plugin

  Cyrus

  23 Aug 2010 | 6:18 pm

  This new plugin was developed by our sister site, Pingable.org, a blog about WordPress plugins, themes and resources.  The plugin utilizes jQuery to create an always visible footer on your WordPress site.  It is always visible regardless of where the user scrolls on the page. Customizable settings include opacity, background color, height and footer content.  This plugin is available free of charge and can be seen right here!  (look down) Visit the plugin site to learn more. Share this on del.icio.us Bump this on DesignBump Submit this to DesignFloat Digg this! Add this to DZone Share…

• Help Envato Celebrate Their Birthday

  Cyrus

  22 Aug 2010 | 7:41 am

  It’s no secret Dzine Soup is a big fan of the Envato Marketplaces (ThemeForest, GraphicRiver, and others).  When looking to pull together another inspirational post for Dzine Soup, I found a limited time birthday bundle available worth $400.  The cost?  Only $20. Selections from the bundle are shown below, but include all sorts of resources like HTML website templates, PSD templates, a WordPress theme, a jQuery slider, a preloader, and more.  It even includes a premium Twitter widget.  Browse the screenshots below or head on over to Envato to purchase this package.  Warning: the…

• Awesome Lego Creations

  Cyrus

  15 Aug 2010 | 4:49 pm

  Check out these awesome lego creations.  Really, freaking, sweet. Share this on del.icio.us Bump this on DesignBump Submit this to DesignFloat Digg this! Add this to DZone Share this on Facebook Share this on FriendFeed Post on Google Buzz Add this to Google Reader Share this on LinkedIn Share this on Mixx Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Tweet This! Blend this! Buzz up! Box this on Zabox

• 

  Ask Insivia

• Marketing Videos Don’t Have to Suck

  Joanna Orcutt

  26 Aug 2010 | 8:29 am

  Whether it’s a commercial for your products or services, an introduction to your organization, or just for fun, marketing videos are one of those really great things that can go really, really wrong. It was nearly 15 years ago when Apple released this marketing video proclaiming the glories of the Mac OS over Windows 95. [...]

• Rohrer, The Entire Package

  Alexis Hazboun

  25 Aug 2010 | 7:50 am

  Providers of diverse printing and packaging solutions, the Rohrer Corporation sets eco-friendly and creative standards with high-tech equipment, ultimately producing outstanding work for their clients. Being the leader in their industry, the Rohrer Corporation needed a website to reflect their superior standing. Through the use of custom photography, a content management system, and a [...]

• Friending Clients on FaceBook

  Andy Halko

  16 Aug 2010 | 1:22 pm

  Often in presentations I hear: when it comes to social media keep professional contacts on LinkedIn and avoid connecting to work related folks on Facebook. I am not sure that I agree at all with this mantra. Yes, Facebook is more personal. I make jokes with my friends, post pictures of my off times, [...]

• Should we redesign or refresh our website?

  Laura Wright

  11 Aug 2010 | 12:01 pm

  Over the past few weeks, the Insivia team has introduced some changes to our website—an updated site structure and a video-based method of content delivery. However, the “look and feel” of the site stayed pretty consistent to what was there before. Last year, we did a complete overhaul. You could say that this year [...]

• Is Giving Away Free Information a Marketing Tactic?

  Chris Schmitt

  4 Aug 2010 | 6:50 am

  The story of the non-handyman, the broken dryer, and the power of Google If you’re reading this blog post, then you can see that we at Insivia aren’t bashful about giving away information about our business or our services. While there may be some bits of information that we hold close to the vest, it’s [...]

• 

  Web Design and Development

• Weekend Math and Science: Resources for How to Get Good at Math

  23 Aug 2010 | 3:00 am

  In the previous entry on this topic I promised to provide some excellent resources for my personal recipe on how to get (much) better at Mathematics. In this entry I will suggest video resources and leave the books for the next time. Beginners to Intermediate Level Math Tut...

• Why is Oracle Suing Google over Java?

  13 Aug 2010 | 1:06 am

  It is too early to tell but these (read here) kinds of moves by Oracle are concerning me. I can see two motivations happening here behind the scenes: - Google is indee...

• Why no posts

  9 Aug 2010 | 9:08 am

  If you were wondering where I have been and why there no new posts - I have been frantically preparing for the large PhD related exam. My department has changed the format and the topics, so for the past two months I have been studying literally 10-15 hrs a day. As soon as the exam is ov...

• BbWorld 2010 Notes

  26 Jul 2010 | 7:09 am

  BbWorld 2010 Notes

• Weekend Math and Science: Tips on How to Get Good at Math

  6 Jul 2010 | 4:35 am

  Here are the concrete steps, drawn from personal experience, that will help you or your family, friends or students get (much) better at Math. Before we start: Please trust me when I say that Mathematics is a beautiful, logical subject that if approached right is often easier to understand ...