CodeBox: Manage Your Snippets Effectively and Efficiently

A snippet, in terms of coding, is a small piece of code that you can use over and over again in various projects. So as a developer (or designer for that matter), it’s useful to have your snippets readily available while you’re working on your next big project.

This is where… read more

You! Be Informed! #0003

Another week has ended, and now it’s time for another roundup of design news! We spent the week poring through our RSS readers and sharing links we found interesting, and I hope you find them useful. Read on and learn a thing or two about the current goings on in… read more

Photographers: You Won’t Want to Miss This

Light Stalking just got a whole lot better for photographers

Our community has grown incredibly fast over the last few years. We are now a strong group of over 500,000 photographers (and growing daily) We know that you are extremely passionate about the art of taking beautiful photos. So, we are… read more

Why Has New York Become a Paradise for Tech Startups?

Asking budding entrepreneurs where they’d like to build their next startup often elicits the same three-word response: New York City.

Over the past four years, there’s been a 40% spike in startup financing in “Silicon Alley” — a bigger increase than anywhere else in the U.S.

Cities around the world… read more

Want to Turn Your Brand’s Fans Into Expert Advisors? Try This Startup

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Needle

Quick Pitch: Needle offers expert live chat service to online retailers to help customers… read more

Half of Consumers Use Smartphones While Working Out [INFOGRAPHIC]

Working out may be a time to unwind and clear your head, but more consumers are turning to smartphones to stay connected while exercising, according to a new study.

A new infographic from market research firm Lab42 found that 51% of consumers are using smartphones during their workouts, whether for checking… read more

YP App Adds Menu Search, Makes Finding Your Favorite Dish Easier

Looking for your next burrito, slice of pizza or cupcake just got a little easier with an update to AT&T Interactive’s YP app. Now in addition to searching for types of restaurants around you, you can look up specific items on the menu.

“We believe local is evolving from ‘search’ to… read more

Reshaping Our Perception of Success

Over the course of these last two weeks, I had the pleasure of attending an Envato meetup/conference in Malaysia. As you might expect, Envato is composed of ridiculously smart and talented folks…folks so smart that it quickly becomes intimidating! But I’m not here to talk about the conference specifically; instead,… read more

Meetings.io: Online Group Video Chats Without the Hassle

Scheduling meetings online is a pain, period.  If you think Skype makes your life easy, well, think twice. First of all, you need to have an account with them, then download and install their bulky software, then pester your friends to do the same if they haven’t done so already… read more

Beautiful Houses: NaCl Residence in Maryland

The idea in this series is to show beautiful and inspiring houses. Houses that are remarkable for its design, elegance, elements, concept or simply because they are beautiful. So if you like architecture, interior design and beautifully designed houses, you are at the right spot. Check out this week beautiful… read more

How To Use Android With Your Mac

As Mac users, we’re often expected to fit within the lines of the Apple “ecosystem” – a Mac, iPhone, and maybe even an iPad. But the fact of the matter is that for many people, using something other than an iOS device just makes sense.

With that in mind, I’m going… read more

How to Make the Most out of a Conference or Expo

An expo or a conference is a great way to network with other people who work in your industry, as well as a great place to reach a target market.

I co-own and edit a wedding magazine, so I’ve been to my fair share of bridal expos. And I’ve learned… read more

GrexIt: Turning Business Email Into an Internal Knowledge Base

Most of our business decisions, it seems, are made in our inboxes. We research the best tools for our job, contact customers, discuss plans with coworkers, and more, all via email. Many of us use old emails for references, too, and I find myself searching through Sparrow for old emails… read more

Tomahawk: A Full-Featured Open Source iTunes Alternative

Since being introduced in 2001, iTunes’ features have expanded well beyond its name. Once a simple music player, it has evolved beyond the realm of tunes and into a hub for just about all the media on our Macs. It also features an enormous digital content store, and is the… read more

How to Filter Out Problem Editorial Clients

Savvy freelance editors often have a preternatural ability to zero in on dream clients and to steer clear from troublesome ones.

Ideal clients are those that are effortless to work with, straightforward and clear, and earn you the most money in a short period of time.

In contrast, challenging… read more

How Should Firms Frame Their Social Media Strategy?

Formulating the social media strategy for any business involves answering quite a few ‘whys’, ‘hows’, ‘whats’ etc. This article explores the intermediate decisions to be taken by a firm in its social media journey right from conceptualization of entry to launch.

Customers are bombarded with messages from various newspapers, TV channels… read more

You Design It, They Do It

What if someone came to you and said, “I’ve designed this great website, but people don’t stay on it. Why?” How would you respond? Would you ask them whether they have done extensive A/B testing? Would you recommend testing the usability of the website?

People like to test a number of… read more

The Human Touch: Building User Relationships and Trust In Web Design

When creating websites you have to consider a great deal of aspects such as usability, visual-appeal, the technical side, and last but not least, brand building. Many successful and profitable businesses have been tackled this brand building with user-centric website design. They do this for different reasons, but the one… read more

Five Free WordPress Theme Package from WP Theme Generator

Today we have an amazing freebie for you – A package of five WordPress Themes courtesy of the guys from WP Theme Generator. All five of the feature-rich themes have been built to demonstrate the power, functionality and awesomeness of their generator. You can download them all for… read more

Shining Examples of European Comic Book Covers

As mentioned in our third edition of You! Be Inspired!, May is the month that celebrates everything and anything geeky. You the Designer’s team is composed of different types of geeks because of our various interests. One thing that binds us all, so to speak, is our love for comic… read more

TextDrop: An Online Text Editor for Your Dropbox Files

There’s dozens of writing apps out there, ranging from the basic plain text editors built into your OS to advanced note apps that can store all your text notes, as well as PDFs and a zillion other things. Even if you’re looking for a minimalist writing app, there’s so many… read more

Sunwayfoto Leveling Base Review

Another awesome video review from the team that brought you The Nice Clip

Want to make your tripod a million times more useful? This is the DYH-66X levelling base from Sunwayfoto. It provides +/- 16° of tilt, is fluid dampened, and has a scratch-resistant, anodised black finish. Sure, it’s built really… read more

When Will We See 4G MacBooks?

This week, the official dates for Apple’s annual WWDC were announced and most people who have been following Apple rumour sites have a fair idea of what exactly is going to be announced. We here at Mac.AppStorm have a strong inkling that the entire MacBook Pro line is going to… read more

Nikon Coolpix AW100

Compact Adventure Camera

The Nikon Coolpix AW100 represents the company’s initial offering in the rugged compact camera market. As youd expect from a camera in this category, it’s waterproof to 33′, shockproof to 5′, freezeproof to 14 F, and it has built-in GPS, making it great for all of your… read more

Tuts+ Premium Pack – Exercise Poses

Today we have a unique Tuts+ Premium Pack, which is created in Illustrator by Sharon Milne. It’s filled with 12 illustrated of men’s health exercise poses, much like the ones you’d find in sections of glossy magazine. Each is completely vector, available in AI and EPS formats. Log in or… read more

Removing Stumbling Blocks In Mobile Forms

A few weeks ago, I was quite surprised when I saw the pavement quickly approaching while I was out for a walk. Laying there stunned, I soon realized what had happened: I fell. Ouch. B-minus. I normally try to be as attentive as possible, but this time a big crack… read more

5 Tips for Controlling Natural Light

A Post by Mitchell Kanashkevich – author of our brand new eBook, Natural Light: Mastering a Photographer’s Most Powerful Tool.

In the post “Are you practicing these 5 Tips for Natural Light” I discussed 5 things which I consider to be the core ideas behind working with natural light effectively. In… read more

What Your Social Media Activity Says About Your Personality

I’m a sucker for a good study, and a team of Asian researchers have come out with one about how your social networking sites can accurately predict your personality—something you may (or may not) want to do if you run your own business.

There is a theory out there, which… read more

Organize Your Post-Production Files With Post Haste

Anyone working in a post-production field knows (or at least should know) the importance of a good file structure and naming system. With information, media, various files and more coming at you from every direction it can be difficult to find a place for everything. However, if a client abruptly… read more

Self-Hosted Support with Trellis Desk

Any business looking to ensure that they offer a good customer service to their consumers is going to want some way of providing help to their users online. In today’s competitive market, being the best is crucial and if your customers think that you’re going to do your best at… read more

5 Tips for Getting Featured on Top Design Blogs

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No matter what sort of art you create – whether you are a graphic designer, painter, illustrator, digital artist, videographer, or any other type of artist – being featured on the web’s top art and design blogs can result in a huge surge of active followers,… read more

Ask FreelanceSwitch: Client Communications and Incorporation

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at client communication and incorporation. 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.

Question 1

I’m a… read more

Creative Construction: A Collection of Crafty Collage Art

For so many of us who work in the realms of the digital, our creative processes can often come up a bit lacking in the physical, hands-on area. Which is why it can often be so inspiring to take a virtual tour of traditional artists’ works whose processes are often… read more

RIM Unveils BlackBerry 10 Tools for Developers

Trying hard to recapture the market share it has lost to Apple and Google, Research in Motion Ltd, or RIM, unveiled a series of tools and apps for developers, allowing them to create and develop applications in advance of its forth coming BlackBerry 10 platform.

To put it bluntly,… read more

On Dreaming the Future

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Photo: Presence by maistora.

Rewind to ten years ago.

In 2002, the iPod had just hit the market the previous year. Netflix hadn’t had their first profitable year yet. It was still 2 years until Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, GMail, or Orkut were officially introduced. The next year came… read more

Using Lens Filters to Improve Your Photography

Whenever we can find ways to shorten the amount of time we spend editing in post-production, it equates to extra time we can spend in the field taking more photographs. As photographers, we should always be striving to take photographs that are as near to the finished product as possible…. read more

GiftDish: Making Facebook Birthday Reminders More Useful

Remembering to purchase gifts and send good wishes for birthdays, anniversaries, and other events is often difficult. While I remember the biggest events, especially those for close family, it is hard to remember extended family and friend’s birthdays. You have to make special calendar events for those big days, and… read more

16th Annual Webby Awards – The Winners

Dubbed as the Academy Awards of the internet, the 16th annual Webby Awards were announced recently.

The Webby Awards honor online performers in four different categories: Websites, interactive advertising, online film & video and mobile apps. Again, each category is split into two prizes – The Webby Awards themselves… read more

Focus On Orlando Uy ~ Walking With His Camera

I met Orlando through social media about year ago and I quickly subscribed to his blog ‘A Walk With My Camera’. I’ve never been to the Philippines but I have discovered the people of Tacloban through Orlando’s lens. His love and respect for mankind shine through his images. Although his… read more

Over 46 Powerful Geeklets and Scripts for the Geek Within You

GeekTool is a small, yet remarkably powerful application that some neglect because of it’s steep learning curve. Thankfully for uniquely useful apps like GeekTool, there is always a community of users that make the app even better — and in this case simpler.

From basic to exceedingly complex, the following is… read more

World’s Longest Invoice: Dealing With Clients Who Don’t Pay Up

Have you ever been stiffed by a client? Many freelancers have—and it sucks. More often than not, the cost to take the client to court is frequently much more expensive than the unpaid invoice. So what’s a freelancer to do?

One thing they can do is join forces in a… read more

Applying Macrotypography For A More Readable Web Page

Any application of typography can be divided into two arenas: micro and macro. Understanding the difference between the two is especially useful when crafting a reading experience, because it allows the designer to know when to focus on legibility and when to focus on readability.

This article focuses mostly on a… read more

Sony SLT-A57 Review

As I recall, this camera’s big brother — SLT-A65 — led me to make these comments:

“It would be a tragedy if this baby ended up shooting family pics and snapshots. It’s too good! … my prediction is that this one will fly off the shelves …”

At first glance this… read more

7 Cringeworthy Business Card Mistakes

In this day an age it’s not uncommon to hear bold statements such as “The business card is dead, it’s all about wireless vCard” or “I’ll email my contact details over after the conference”.

The truth is business cards are as prominent as ever, especially with the ever advancing… read more

Nimble: CRM for Social Salespeople

Way back in 1989, when the idea of using computers to manage customer relationships was still in its infancy, a guy by the name of John Ferrara founded Goldmine Software which would spend the next decade pioneering CRM software solutions. In 1999 he sold Goldmine to a South African firm…. read more

Is Brainstorming Getting A Bad Rap?

I love brainstorming! I think it’s a way of getting the best for a project. It puts all heads together and brings out the best ideas, without bruising egos and involves the team equally. I’ve seen great things come out of brainstorms.

Lately, I’ve seen people stating that brainstorming isn’t the… read more

When an Editor is Not that Into You: Writing for Magazines Edition

I was listening to the recording of The Renegade Writer’s Become a Confident Writer Teleclass and they mentioned that adage: “Editors are just people.”

Now, I know from experience that they’re lying—but I’ll get to that in a second.

First I think it’s important to note that one of the prerequisites… read more

PrivacyScan: Protecting Your Privacy Both Online and Off

As more of our lives are shared online, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of the things we want to keep private. You may be surprised how much of a trail you leave behind just from browsing the Internet. From saved cookies to form history, your personal information is… read more

Announcement: Winners of Grafpedia Giveaway

A weeks ago, we created a contest at instantShift called Win 70.000 graphic Items with Grafpedia had announced the 5 winners of Grafpedia VIP Accountsto InstantShift readers.

We’ve got more than 80 response comments. After voiding spam and non-legit comments we have left with 68 valid comments. It’s really good to… read more

Turn It Up: Musically Inspired Logo Design

Many artists, whether digital or traditional find much inspiration in music. It often serves as a great mind opener for large amounts of creativity and style to be ushered in. Some artists believe music helps them to see shapes and colors, and often offers up feelings and emotions to help… read more

Access Your Thumb Drive Using Your Voice [VIDEO]

USB thumb drives are so convenient because of their tiny, portable size — also making them easier to lose. A new voice recognition thumb drive keeps your data safe, even if it makes its way into someone else’s hands.

Made by Hammacher-Schlemmer, the 8GB thumb drive uses a built-in… read more

Screenleap Aims to Make Conference Calls More Like Social Media

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Screenleap

Quick Pitch: Share your computer screen on the web with one click.

Genius Idea: No software is… read more

These Tactics Will Give You Great Video With a DSLR

With news DSLRs becoming better and better, more photographers are taking the leap to using their gear to shoot video. Let’s take a look at some of the strategies you can use to make sure your video turns out as well as your still shots.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that… read more

Instagram and its Impact on the World of Photography

A Guest Post by Guy Prives.

If you were not on a hot-air balloon for a journey around the world or in a Tibetan monastery on a pilgrimage yet have experienced these images on Facebook then it’s likely you’ve already been exposed to Instagram.

“Instagram” the photo-sharing application, recently bought by Facebook,… read more

Death Metal Illustrations by Mark Riddick

As every kid who enjoyed heavy metal I started illustrating influenced by CD covers from bands as Sepultura, Slayer and Cannibal Corpse. I always enjoyed the gore and splatter aesthetic of this type of artwork, but I actually thought no one could make a living doing extreme metal artworks. I… read more

Weekly Poll: Will Apple Merge Both App Stores Into a Single App?

Will Apple Merge Both App Stores Into a Single App?

Long ago Apple had what seemed like a simple idea: iTunes should be the hub to sync all of your i-devices to your Mac. It made sense at the time, when the decision really only encompassed the iPod line. Then… read more

Spam Texts: 4.5 Billion Messages a Year and Counting [VIDEO]

Text message spam promising free iPads or cash rewards may be obnoxious and unwanted, but they also carry a greater danger: clicking on texts can install malware that collects personal data from your phone.

They’re also booming faster than any other sector of the tech industry. Spam text… read more

Satirical iPad Magazine Makes Amazing Use of HTML5

What can a tablet magazine do that a real magazine can’t? One new publication launched on the iPad Tuesday is one of the best examples yet — and its staff of hilarious, talented writers is just the icing on the cake.

The magazine, Blackline, is an extension of a comedy podcast,… read more

Twitter Announces Improved ‘Discover’ Tab

Just days after releasing significant updates to its iPhone and Android apps, Twitter announced Tuesday its plan to upgrade its ‘Discover’ tab on both Twitter.com and its mobile apps.

Twitter introduced Discover in December as part of an overhaul to its website and mobile apps. The tab displays trending topics and… read more

Weekly Poll: Will You Subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud?

Will You Subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud?

The latest version of Adobe’s venerable set of creative applications will be released next week, but this launch is unlike any launch in Creative Suite’s history. Adobe is best known for creating native apps, including Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat, Illustrator, and more. These apps… read more

Half of Tween Girls Are Online Gamers

Online gaming among tween girls is on the rise, as more are turning to the web to take quizzes and participate in social role-playing challenges, a new study suggests.

A new report by tween gaming platform GirlsgoGames.com found that about 50% of tween girls between the ages of 8 and 12… read more

Puppy Acts as Seeing Eye Dog for Another Pooch in Touching Video

The video above tells the story of a blind, homeless dog that has been given a second chance, thanks to the friendship of another stray puppy.

Tanner, a 2-year-old Golden Retriever, was born blind with a slight seizure problem. After his owner died, the dog was forced into a shelter.

The stress… read more

7 Apps For Getting The Most Out Of Your Mouse

Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t deny that Apple’s family of mouses (mice?) have come a long way since the dreaded Hockey Puck, and provide a dramatically different experience than almost any other mouse on the market. The entire line up of peripherals feature multi-touch gesture support, which… read more

Use Punctuation Wisely!

I couldn’t help but chuckle at this recent story from The Boston Globe on the overuse of exclamation points.

Remember when email first came into prevalence? I do. Suddenly writing in all caps meant you were virtually yelling at someone. Typing made it easier to EMPHASIZE YOUR WORDS in a… read more

Posing Guide: 21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Couples

A Guest Post by Kaspars Grinvalds from Posing App.

In the previous articles in this posing guide series we looked individually at posing female subjects, posing male subjects and posing children. In those individual person portraits the main subject was a single person and her or his personality. In comparison, couple… read more

Why Musicians Need More Than Viral Videos to Succeed

As guitarist and co-founder of the Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan was at the forefront of one of the most important music movements in recent history. And he’s not finished. The Pumpkins have a new album coming out in June, and Corgan is splitting time between music and helping… read more

Kickstarter Has Raised $200 Million From More Than 2 Million Backers

Kickstarter has raised more than $200 million from 2 million backers, cofounder Yancey Strickler said on stage at Wired‘s business conference in Manhattan Tuesday morning. That money has funded more than 22,000 projects in the three years the crowdfunding platform has been in business, he added.

Less positively, Strickler said that… read more

Best Buy Leaks Logitech Solar-Powered iPad Case

A new listing at Best Buy has unveiled — perhaps prematurely — a very interesting gadget: A solar-powered iPad case by Logitech.

This confirms a recent rumor that Logitech is working on such a case, though Logitech itself hasn’t officially said a word about it yet.

The Best Buy listing… read more

Create a Detailed, Vector Clothespin Illustration

In the following tutorial you will learn how to create a detailed clothespin illustration. It all starts with a simple pixel perfect vector shape building techniques. Then we’ll use the appearance panel and Illustrator effects to add dimension to the illustration. You can use these professional techniques to create quality… read more

7 Smart Ways to Use Your Writing to Grow Your Freelance Business

Marketing is integral to the success of any freelancer, and the difference between mediocre freelancers and professional ones is often how smart they are at marketing.

As a freelancer, you also need to realize that marketing isn’t all about working hard, it is about working smart. The main thing you… read more

Meet the First Round of BlackBerry 10 Apps

NOVA 3

The trailer for Nova 3 just went up, and is getting widespread attention. Gameloft said it was… read more

RIM Releases BlackBerry 10 to Developers

The long wait is over — sort of. Research in Motion just reached a major milestone in finally getting its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 platform off the ground: The company has officially given developers the essential tools for creating BB10 apps, including prototype hardware running the new software.

The BlackBerry 10 “DevAlpha”… read more

6 Tips for Organizing Your Small Business Finances

Nellie Akalp is the CEO of CorpNet.com, an online legal document filing service, where she helps entrepreneurs incorporate or form an LLC for their new businesses. Connect with Nellie on Twitter or visit her free resource center.

Spring is in full bloom and for many that means dusting off the… read more

Time Sink: Where Exactly Are You Spending Your Time?

Time management is incredibly important for many people. We all have busy lives and the more we can get out of our time working, the more time we have for other things. With there being only twenty-four hours in a day it really comes down to being as efficient as… read more

Top 10 Alternatives to Pinterest

There is certainly no denying the ever-growing popularity of Pinterest. With over 2.5 million users participating in the beta, Pinterest provides a new and unique way to discover and share the web. This growing popularity has, of course, spawned numerous sites that utilize a variety of Pinterest elements.

If Pinterest… read more

Digg Tech Team Heads to The Washington Post [REPORT]

News aggregation site Digg‘s technology team may soon become part of The Washington Post’s media empire, according to reports.

The newspaper giant is “in the process of buying” Digg’s tech team, according to AllThingsD. The team will work with the people who created the WaPo’s Social Reader app. Digg, meanwhile, will… read more

Best of Tuts+ in April 2012

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

We’ve Been in Kuala… read more

5 Ways to Strengthen Client Relations

All too often, freelancers look at their clients as one-off opportunities. They do a job, complete a project, and when payment exchanged, they wave good-bye and never look back. But regular contact with former clients should be an integral part of your freelance business.

Call it public relations or… read more

30 Ecommerce Sites Using HTML5

Searching online it’s easy to find great examples of websites using HTML5, but less easy to discover such sites by category. Commercial sites using the fifth revision to its full potential have been showing up all over the world, so we decided to research and collate some of the better… read more

Frommer’s Interactive Travel Guides Available for iPhone and iPad

Frommer’s, the market leader in travel guides, and Inkling, the publisher behind interactive digital textbooks, have launched Monday what they call “the first-ever truly interactive travel guides for iPhone and iPad.”

They’re Frommer’s traditional “Day by Day” guidebooks combined with all the things the Internet and mobile publishing now allows us… read more

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial: Create a Semi-Realistic Oil Barrel Illustration

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a semi-realistic oil barrel illustration. First, we’ll use several rectangles along with some professional pixel perfect vector shape building techniques to create the starting shapes. Next, we’ll break some of the starting shapes apart as needed using a… read more

Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.130)

This is our weekly column were we share our favorite design related articles, resources and cool tidbits from the past week. Enjoy :)
If you would like to receive our daily updates and keep up to date with the latest and greatest articles and resources from the… read more

Designers Assemble for the Avengers

Wherever you are in the world, this summer, get ready for the much anticipated movie Marvel’s the Avengers. For this occasion, I highlighted some designers that really stunned me and turn their world upside down to create pretty interesting concepts and pieces. I hope you will enjoy these series by… read more

Professional PSD: How to Properly Prepare a Design for Development

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The fields of front-end web development and web design are becoming more entwined with one another as interface design becomes more interactively demanding. With new devices and interfaces that rely heavily on interaction married to aesthetic, design for the web is certainly no longer limited to things… read more

Five Easy Tips for Better Indoor Architectural Photography

There is an art to photographing indoor spaces and truly capturing the essence of their architectural design. Not only does it take a skilled photographer, but also one that has a solid grasp on the elemental aspects of the space they are photographing. The point of architectural photography is, after all, photographing… read more

Share Files Elegantly with WeTransfer

If you’ve been using the web over the past decade you’ll remember how difficult it used to be to send large files to people online. Either your file’s size wasn’t supported by the service you chose or the upload would time out, leaving you in the lurch. Since then, our… read more

Recently in Web Development (April ’12 Edition)

Web development is an industry that’s in a state of constant flux with technologies and jargon changing and mutating in an endless cycle. Not to mention the sheer deluge of information one has to process everyday. In this series, published monthly, we’ll seek to rectify this by bringing you all… read more

50 Extremely Useful PSD Files From Dribbble

Another beautiful collection of free and useful PSD files for you is presented here. As a designer, you know that PSD file is the best and easiest way to learn and then fulfill your work expectations. Here we have put together 50 useful PSD files from Dribble that definitely is… read more

Should You Hire Employees or Contractors for Your Freelance Business?

Freelance business owners often struggle with the question of whether to hire a contractor or an employee. Many claim that contractors are the way to go, hands down; still others have only hire employees and claim they would never do anything different. So, what should you do when… read more

Should You Create a Free Sample for New Clients?

The magazine I work for is looking to hire a part-time graphic designer to help the production department with creating print ads. The team has interviewed a few good candidates already, but nothing has stuck.

In fact, there was one woman who the team really liked. She showed us some… read more

How to Create a Line Art Vintage Vector Scooter in Illustrator

In today’s tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a vintage vector scooter illustration. I’ll show you how to create simplified line art without overcomplicating the image. You’ll learn how to create a quick texture as a finishing touch from resources you have available to you within Adobe… read more

Building an E-mail Request Invite Form with jQuery

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Using jQuery we can build some incredible web-based applications. The animations and manipulation of DOM elements using jQuery are much more intuitive than coding regular JavaScript. Because the syntax is so minimalist it’s possible to scale a very complex idea within a few hours time.

In this… read more

GrowlVoice: Use Google Voice From Your Menubar

With features like voicemail transcription, a master number for all your phones, free text messaging, and custom greetings based on who’s calling, Google Voice has become a wildly popular service for cell phone users. I’ve been using Google Voice for years, and for the most part I’ve found it to… read more

A Comprehensive Guide to the New Facebook Timeline for Pages

Just as businesses were mastering Facebook Pages, Facebook pulled out the rug from underneath them and changed the game plan.

On March 30th, Facebook launched the new Timeline for Pages and no business was immune to the changes.

The new platform is a stark difference from the previous, and learning the ropes… read more

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: May 2012

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd…. read more

10 Creative Large Typography Sites Where Size Matters

I was talking to a friend earlier today who works for a large design firm and he admitted to me that he’d never make it as a freelancer.  His reason was based solely off the amount of time it took him to find the perfect font for everything.  That lead… read more

Ignore the design, please

“Hey, I want to show you something I built. Ignore the design please, it is not finished yet.”

From school science fair projects to real world product prototypes, if I had a nickel every time I heard that sentence I would be a lot richer by now. The truth… read more

21 Beautiful Examples of Typography in Web Design

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Here at WDL we love typography and we never get tired of gathering good typography inspiration for our readers. From free fonts to type usage in signs and typography videos, we like to give you as many resources as we can on everything surrounding type. Today… read more

How to Create a Simple Hover-Over Banner

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Traditionally, to make a button or banner change when you hover over it, developers and designers have loaded two separate images — not the most efficient method. The most obvious drawback is that the image would be loaded only when the user hovers their mouse over the… read more

How to Avoid Common Scams to Steal Your Camera Gear and Rip You Off

For most of us, base jumping Go Pro photographers excepted, photography is a pretty safe hobby or profession. However sometimes we forget that the pride and joy hanging around our neck, is in fact, an expensive, hi-tech piece of equipment that may have cost several thousand dollars. The aim of… read more