Ultimate Webber

25 Websites To Have Fun With Your Photos

2009-03-13T20:04:00.001+05:30

25 Websites To Have Fun With Your Photos

Getting a little bored how your photos are presented online? How about injecting some fun and humour into it. You don’t really need to be Photoshop literate to edit and add effects into your photos. There’re some really great sites out there that allows you to add effects to your photo by using their existing effect-templates.

The best part is - most of them are free and output is shown immediately on the fly. Here’s a collection of 25 Sites To Have Fun With Your Photoswe’ve come to know. You know they don’t really have to be your photos :-)

We’ll start with 10 of our favorites, followed by the rest. Full list after jump.

Our Top 10 Picks

PhotoFunia

One of the hottest site with tons of creative backgrounds to play around with. Now comes in 9 different languages.

Fun Photo Box

If you don’t get what you want from PhotoFunia, you reallly need to check out this site.

Picartia

Create a photo mosaic of your choice for free online.

Hairmixer

Choose a photo for the left and right side and start mixing their hairs up.

Photo505

We’d say, with Photo505, Photofunia and Fun Photo Box, you’ll be buzy for days.

Yearbook Yourself

Turn your face photo into yearbook alike black & white old school photo. The service is paused and will be back this Summer.

Loonapic

Make funny photos by embedding your face from the photo to the various templates.

Magmypic

Create different fake magazine covers from your photos.

Your own Wired Cover

Powered by Xerox, this service allows you to create your own Wired magazine cover. Customized everything from titles, colors to photos.

Hollywood Hair Makeover

Love those celebrities’ hair? Wear them instantly and see how you look.

More Ways To Have Fun

Write On It

Easily create your fake pictures, captions and fake magazines and other funny jokes for you and your friends.

Dumpr

Create multiple interesting effects from your normal photos.

Anymaking

Allows you to upload any photo and create "old photo", "wanted" and "puzzle" effects out of it.

Montagraph

PiZap

My Heritage

Making use of their face recognition technology, this site offers several fun effects you can play with your photos. Included are Celebrity Morph, Look-alike Meter, Celebrity Collage and Tag Photos.

Letter James

Letter James has nothing to do with photo effects, but instead you allows you to blend texts and words of your choice into their existing templates.

Imagechef

Lots of ways for you to customize your photos and express them wherever you want.

Funny Photos

Similar to Fun Photo Box and Photofunia, just different effects.

Frontpage

Make yourself frontpage in 136 different magazine covers.

Fake Magazine Cover

Personalized money

Get your head into that dollar bill.

Faceinhole

Create HDR

One of the simplest way to create HDR photos online.

Blingee

Add Glitter, Graphics, and Comments to personalize your images, then share with your friends!

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Problems Downloading Templates

2009-03-13T19:57:00.001+05:30

Problems Downloading Templates

If you have problems downloading the templates here, follow these instructions:

Download the XML file of the template that you want.
Open the XML file in a text editor, like WordPad or Notepad++.
Using the editor search function, find the text 'widget id'.
All the widget id texts have lines that look like this: '<b:widget id="'example1'...'
Change all the numbers to double digit numbers. E.g., change 'example1' to 'example11', 'example2' to 'example 22', and so on.
Once you're done changing all the numbers in the widget id lines, save the template.
Then upload the template into your blog from the Layout > Edit HTML > Upload button.
You're done. Hopefully this works.

The idea is by changing the numbers to bigger numbers, you'll avoid having the widget numbers conflicted with the existing widgets with the same number.

We tried it ourselves and it worked! Good luck.

If it doesn't work, see this instructions.

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40 Beautiful Examples of Vintage and Retro in Web Design

2009-03-13T19:53:00.001+05:30

40 Beautiful Examples of Vintage and Retro in Web Design

Retro and vintage web designs have become increasingly popular. Ironically, the more and more the web progresses, the more designers start to revert back to old retro styles. For your design inspiration, here are 40 beautifully-designed websites that revert back in time to retro and vintage styles.

If you liked this collection, please consider also reading 20 Beautiful Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets.

1. Level 2 Design

2. Custom Design

3. Klassiker in Acryl

4. Kritevia

5. Target Scope

6. DeVotchKa

7. Big Rig Design

8. Thunder Fuel

9. Small Stone Recordings

10. The Lippincott

11. Thrush

12. FortySeven Media

13. Cottonseed Oil Comeback Tour

14. Jeffery Sarmiento

15. mediaBOOM

16. Carrozzeria Verga

17. Slabovia

18. The New York Mooon

19. Five Cent Stand

20. Tennesse Vacation

21. Lataka

22. Blue Moon

23. Rocket Club

24. The Blizzards

25. AdaptD

26. Gary Nock

27. Drink ZZZ

28. Ali Felski

29. TangleDecals

30. Jared Cambell

31. Von Dutch

32. Dollar Dreadful

33. Phizz

34. The First Twenty

35. Jamie’s Italian

36. MacTarnahan’s Brewing Company

37. Style 4 You

38. CSS Tinderbox

39. MISTER-AERO

40. Team Mongolmania

About the Author

Matt Cronin is a freelance web and graphic designer as well as developer. He is the author and owner of Spoonfed Design, a design blog with great tips, how-to, inspiration, tutorials, and more. Spoonfed Design is part of the VAEOU Creative Network, a new startup in progress with new services coming soon. Follow Matt Cronin on Twitter.

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40 Useful Adobe Illustrator 3D Tutorials and Techniques

2009-03-13T19:48:00.001+05:30

40 Useful Adobe Illustrator 3D Tutorials and Techniques

Adobe Illustrator is a versatile vector illustration application that’s preferred by many professional artists and designers. Its robust and powerful set of tools coupled with its intuitive interface makes it the go-to app for vector work. Illustrator excels in allowing designers to craft stunning and realistic-looking 3D artwork.

In this collection, you will find 40 useful and informative tutorials and techniques on creating three-dimensional artworks in Adobe Illustrator.

1. Create an Open Book with Illustrator’s 3D Extrude & Bevel Tool

Learn a technique for illustrating a three-dimensional book by reading through this Adobe Illustrator tutorial.

2. Use the power of Illustrator to create cool 3D infographics

Learn a process for creating an infographic piece from conceptualization to finalization using a variety of Illustrator tools and techniques such as the Gradient Mesh Tool.

3. Create a Can of Beans by Mapping Vectors to a 3D Object

Craft a tin can (perfect for product design models) using a host of Illustrator tools and techniques such as the Extrude Tool and Image Mapping techniques.

4. Design Gift Boxes Using Illustrator’s 3D Tools

Discover a method for creating 3D gift boxes in Illustrator which can later be adopted for designing packaging and software boxes mockups.

5. Fun with AI’s 3D tool

Explore the tools, options, and techniques available to you for making 3D objects in Illustrator.

6. Let’s Make a Playful yet Robust 3D Letter Design

Investigate a way for composing a three-dimensional letter art piece by reading through this tutorial on VECTORTUTS.

7. 3D Blue LCD Alarm Clock

Illustrate an LCD alarm clock using an assortment of Illustrator tools such as the Rounded Rectangle Tool, gradients, and the Blend Tool.

8. 3D Objects and Transparencies to Make a Vector Cola Bottle Design

Create a realistic-looking Cola bottle design by skillfully using 3D objects and transparency options in Adobe Illustrator.

9. Creating Omspace 3D cylinder graphic in Illustrator

This tutorial shows you how to create cylindrical shapes using the Extrude & Bevel Tool with Map Art options.

10. Create an Animated 3D Poker Chip and Part II

This two-part series on AiBURN shows you how to render a poker chip in 3D using the 3D Exclude and Bevel Tool in Illustrator.

11. How to Make 3D Vector Vintage Stars

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create 3D vector stars in Illustrator.

12. 2D Spark Plug Diagram from 3D Components in Illustrator

Diagramming is one of Illustrator’s strong suits – learn a method for creating three-dimensional diagrams (i.e. for instructional brochures) in this tutorial.

13. 3D Effects in Illustrator CS

This tutorial series explores your 3D options in Illustrator: Part 1 discusses Extrusion & Bevel basics, Part 2 covers custom bevel creation, Part 3 talks about the Revolve Tool, and Part 4 discusses lighting and transparencies.

14. 3D Charts in Adobe Illustrator CS

Create professional charts in Illustrator that will impress: learn how in this tutorial that utilizes the Pie Graph Tool.

15. Design a Business Report Cover

Design a professional and captivating business report cover that has 3D buildings as a graphics component.

16. Create a Rotatable Globe in Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial gives you a quick walkthrough on creating a 3D globe using some stock vector files and the 3D Revolve Tool.

17. 3D Bowl

See how to construct a realistic 3D fruit bowl in Adobe Illustrator in this tutorial that walks you through the entire process.

18. How to Map Artwork onto 3D Objects with Illustrator

Learn the concepts behind mapping images onto 3D objects in this insightful tutorial.

19. Create a Checkered 3D Chess Figure Scene

Construct a 3D chess scene using gradient meshes and the 3D Revolve Tool.

20. 3D Isometric Vector Icon Tutorial

Create a simple and beautiful 3D icon using a variety of Illustrator tools such as the 3D Rotate Tool.

21. Create a 3D Push Pin and a Paper Note in Illustrator

In this simple tutorial aimed at beginners, you’ll witness a method for composing a 3D push pin and paper note illustration.

22. 3D Graphs

Learn another technique on how to use Illustrator to generate impressive but quick-and-simple 3D graphs.

23. Making of an Abstract Artwork

See the process of an Illustrator artist’s method for composing this abstract and three-dimensional work of art.

24. 3D Chess Board, King, and Pawn

Create three-dimensional chess pieces by reading through this step-by-step Illustrator tutorial.

25. Make a 3d Red Blood Cell Button

This Illustrator tutorial walks you through the process of crafting three-dimensional blood cells.

26. Halloween Pumpkin

Read this tutorial to discover a method for illustrating a realistic-looking Halloween pumpkin.

27. 3D Flower Pot

Learn about a quick-and-simple way of rendering a three-dimensional flower pot; as a finishing touch, use the Symbols Library to add some flowers in the composition.

28. 3D Dice

In this short, 7-step tutorial, you’ll learn how to compose a 3D die using the Map Art option in the Extrude & Bevel Tool.

29. 3D Hammer using Illustrator

Craft a three-dimensional hammer using a variety of Illustrator tools and options by following along this helpful tutorial.

30. Drawing a Vase in Illustrator

Here is a method for creating a set of realistic-looking 3D vases using Adobe Illustrator.

31. Make 3D Yet Flat Looking Shopping Basket Icons

In this creative take on three-dimensional objects, you’ll see a method for creating a 3D/2D hybrid shopping basket icon.

32. 3D Logo Tutorial

Craft a beautiful 3D logo in this simple but informative Adobe Illustrator logo design tutorial.

33. Disco Ball

This short but helpful Adobe Illustrator tutorial, you’ll learn a process of constructing a disco ball.

34. Cool 3D logo

This tutorial shares another method for creating a 3D logo using Illustrator.

35. Gradient Meshes Introduction

To create 3D objects with accurate shading, you’ll need to understand the Gradient Mesh Tool; this tutorial gives you a perceptive look into gradient meshes.

36. Translucent IM Style Illustrator Icon Tutorial

Recreate the MSN icon in Illustrator by following along this Illustrator tutorial that utilizes the Gradient Mesh Tool.

37. 3D Vector Calendar Icon

Create this beautiful 3D Vector Calendar icon in Illustrator by reading through this step-by-step tutorial.

Illustrator and…

Here are a few tutorials that use Illustrator in combination with other tools.

38. Colourful 3D Text Explosion Using Illustrator and Photoshop

Combine Illustrator and Photoshop to create this stunning art piece.

39. Merge 3D with Illustrator and Photoshop

Use Illustrator and Photoshop to merge compose a futuristic art piece.

40. Using Swift as a Powerful 3D Illustration Tool

Use Illustrator and Swift3D (a modeling and animation software) to create 3D illustrations.

100 Free Useful Applications for Mac, Part I

2009-03-13T19:43:00.001+05:30

100 Free Useful Applications for Mac, Part I

Posted: 10 Mar 2009 08:21 AM PDT

If you’ve just got yourself a new Mac and totally clueless what to install, this article is for you. If you are looking for alternatives for some applications you are currently using in your Mac, the following list might come in handy too. This week, we’d like to showcase you a list of useful yet free applications you can install for your Mac. Full list after jump.

Productivity

Anxiety

Provides a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Appointments

Keep record of customers, contact persons and important events related to them.

BackBoard

A Mac app to collect notes and tasks.

Camouflage

Hides all the icons and leaves nothing but the pure wallpaper

Evernote

Easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

EventSync

Allows you to sync your Facebook events with iCal.

HimmelBar

HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications.

iClockr

Simple way to track your time.

MindNode

Simple-to-use mindmapping applications for the Macintosh that help to visually collect, classify and structure ideas as well as organize, study and solve problems.

NameChanger

Designed for the sole purpose of renaming a list of files.

Namely

Fast way to open applications.

Punakea

Allows you to tag your files and bookmarks, freeing you of the strict hierarchy of the Finder’s folder structure.

Quicksilver

A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

SketchBox

Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac Desktop.

Slife

Time and activity analytics application that automatically keeps track of where you spend your time on your computer.

SyncMate

Help you keep all your documents, text messages, contacts, calendar entries and events and other stuff well organized.

http://gettaskmate.com/">TaskMate

Simple Mac to-do list application.

Think

Helps you to concentrate on your current task and activity.

Todos

Todos shows you all your applications in a complete dock.

Tools and Utilities

AppFresh

Helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

Burn

Mac’s application to burn discs, with a lot of advanced options.

Font Explorer X

Font management tool.

Garagebuy

Help you find and purchase items on eBay.

Set Icon

Small application that lets you quickly and easily set a custom icon for one your drives either from an ICNS file or any old image file that Mac OS supports.

TextWrangler

Powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool.

NeoOffice

Full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X.

Emacs

An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more…

Readers

Adobe Reader

Read PDF files with this Adobe Acrobat reader.

NetNewsWire

RSS reader for Mac by NewsGator

NewsFire

A great RSS reader for Mac whom recently made free.

ThunderBird

Powerful email application from Mozilla.

System

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it.

Deeper

Allows you to enable and disable the hidden functions of Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and many Apple’s applications.

EverSave

Allows you to save all of your documents in a specific time interval or by changing the frontmost application.

Growl

Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen.

iStat pro

Highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes.

Loginox

Easily customize your Mac’s login screen.

MacLoc

After clicking on MacLoc, it will appear that you’ve logged out, however upon entering your username and password, all open documents and applications will be right where you left them.

Mactracker

Provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options.

OnyX

Allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window.

Monolingual

A program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space.

PresentYourApps

Lets you hide the Dock and menu bar for every Cocoa application you choose.

SMARTReporter

Application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen.

SuperDocker

Tweak your Mac’s dock.

Chat Clients

Adium

Free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

Colloquy

Advanced IRC, SILC & ICB client.

Gabtastik

Gabtastik lets you keep chat sessions open on your OS X desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.

Messenger

Think of it as Mac’s MSN Messenger.

Skype

Skype for Mac.

Stay tuned for Part II

Be sure to keep an eye on next week’s Part II where we’ll cover more free Mac applications categories of:

Internet & Network Utilities
Audio and Video
Imaging
More tools

We’ve missed out something or you’ve got some Mac applications to suggest? Feel free to contact us.

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42 Free Online Magazines for Designers

2009-03-05T19:01:00.001+05:30

Art and design magazines are designers close companion. Not only it feeds us with latest trends and news in the design industry, it’s also a good source of inspiration, particularly useful for those who hit the design block frequently.

Just in case you weren’t aware, there’s a huge pool of free design magazines on the net; we meant those softcopy magazines you can either browse online or download (.PDF, .SWF) for offline viewing. Not only they have high quality content, each issue released is also free. We thought that’s generous of these folks. Today we want to present you with N Free Magazines for Designers. Even if you are looking for something to kill the spare time, we think these mags will help too. Full list after jump.

More? If you happen to know some good free magazines that we’ve missed. Feel free to leave a comment or contact us. We add it in.

Our Top Picks

GizMag

Weekly web magazine full of neat stuff. Every 3 months a free PDF is published with some of the past subjects, including interviews and artwork.

A List Apart

It’s not really a ‘magazine’ since it don’t come in .PDF or any downloable format. But it’s certainly a must-read for any web designers.

Bak Magazine

Artzmania

Veer Catalog

PDF Mags

Nothing but lots of PDF magazines, for free.

Destructed Magazine

Art- and Designmagzine in .PDF format released quaterly with each issue deals with a unique topic.

Magwerk

Love Pics

Komma

Delve Magazine

Delve was created to explore visual culture through experimentation in design, photography, illustration, and other related visual arts.

Kino Mag

CRU A Magazine

CRU A is a digital magazine about arts and culture.

Root Magazine

More Free Magazines

RevolutionArt Magazine

REVOLUTIONART international magazine is a publication delivered in pdf format as a collective sample of the best of the graphics arts, modeling, music, and world tendences. Deliver every 2 months.

Castle Magazine

Castlemagazine is a pdf online mag which consists of the work of free Illustrators, Artists or other creative nerds.

ANTI

NTI Magazine aims to showcase outstanding visual content as an online magazine and also through future exhibitions all around the world.

Blanket Magazine

Free PDF art + design + photography magazine that is released bi-monthly.

bitFUUL Magazine

Breed Magazine

BREED Magazine covers art, fashion, music and ideas quarterly for free subscription.

Bloodwars Magazine

Wag

True Eye

Royal Magazine

Private journal of The KDU (Keystone Design Union), a Global Fraternal Creative Collective dedicated to creating and managing innovative design centric objects, brands and experiences.

Ruby Mag

Sphere Magazine

Phase Collective

NLF Magazine

Noname Magazine

Multilink Magazine

Kromag

TXTnein

Free pdf magazine made with submissions of graphic designers, photographers and artists over the world

Etel Magazine

We thought this is a good magazine, but too bad the English version is currently not available.

Proteus Mag

Online art and design magazine.

{ths} Beast Magazine

The bible of inspiration.

Bedifferent

CODE Magazine

Daheim Magazine

Design And Life

The minizine gathers information including design, lifestyle, fashion, trend and creative news from all over the world.

File Magazine

Publish images that treat subjects in unexpected ways.

Made in Street

2nddesign Magazine

30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs

2009-03-05T18:59:00.001+05:30

30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs

Textures in a web design have become a popular trend, replacing the sleek, glossy, and shiny effects that we commonly refer to as the "Web 2.0" design trend. Working with textures is difficult, but talented designers worldwide choose this route to add a depth in their designs and to exemplify their creative skills.

In this collection, you’ll find 30 gorgeous web designs that employ textures as a design component. Hopefully, you’ll become inspired to explore this design trend and apply it into your own designs.

1. WallSwaps

2. Agami Creative

3. bridge55

4. The Seen®

5. Design Jobs on the Wall

6. Carbonica

7. Pikaboo

8. Edgepoint Church

9. Jay Hafling

10. MacTarnahan’s Brewing Company

11. Helmy Bern

12. The Brown Corporation

13. Viget Advance

14. The Ernest Hemingway Collection

15. Pain is Good

16. Bart-Jan Verhoef

17. Miles Dowsett

18. iamtodd.com

19. Rockatee Home

20. The Albion Group

21. Jeffrey Sarmiento

22. Slabovia

23. Jamie’s Italian

24. Lanikai Properties

25. Sundance Documentary Film Program

26. St. Gregory’s

27. Coalmarch Productions

28. toby-powell.co.uk

29. Michela Chiucini

30. KAYINTVEEN

Got any to share?

Know if a site that has excellent use of textures? Why don’t you contribute to the discussion in the comments!

Free High Resolution Wood Textures

2009-03-05T18:57:00.001+05:30

Free High Resolution Wood Textures

In this texture pack, you will find 7 large-scale, high resolution (1448 x 972 pixels) textures that are available to you for free for any personal or commercial purpose, distributed under the GNU General Public License. The only thing you may not do is to distribute and sell them without prior permission.

Preview

Clicking on each image will direct you to their Flickr download page where you can get them in various sizes. Alternatively, please feel free to browse the Six Revisions Wood Textures set on Flickr or download the whole set (link at the bottom of this page).

Wood Texture 01 (file name: sr_wood_texture_01.jpg)

Wood Texture 02 (file name: sr_wood_texture_02.jpg)

Wood Texture 03 (file name: sr_wood_texture_03.jpg)

Wood Texture 04 (file name: sr_wood_texture_04.jpg)

Wood Texture 05 (file name: sr_wood_texture_05.jpg)

Wood Texture 06 (file name: sr_wood_texture_06.jpg)

Wood Texture 07 (file name: sr_wood_texture_07.jpg)

Got Suggestions?

If you have suggestions with regards to freebies that you’d like to see, drop a comment and share your thoughts with us.

Download the whole set

sr_wood_textures.zip (ZIP file, 8.5 MB)

60 Excellent Free 3D Model Websites

2009-03-05T18:55:00.001+05:30

60 Excellent Free 3D Model Websites

3D models represent a 3D object using a collection of points in 3D space, connected by various geometric entities. A free 3D model definitely can save your budget and deadline. On average, a modeler saves over 2 hours of modeling time when they could get a free 3D model.

Today, 3D models are used in a wide variety of industries. The movie industry uses them as characters and objects for animated and real-life motion pictures. The video game industry uses them as assets for computer and video games.The architecture industry uses them to demonstrate proposed buildings and landscapes through Software Architectural Models. The medical industry uses detailed models of organs.

We understand how useful a 3D model could be. Thus, we’ve crawled into Internet and search for free 3D models which are available for download. Here are as much as 60 websites to download Free 3D Models. Full list after jump!

Note: Some of these 3D models have limited rights. That means they are not allowed for commercial usage. We urge that you check the rights before using them for business purposes.

More: You might also be interested in 25 (Free) 3D Modeling Applications You Should Not Miss

3D Total

3D Total provides free stuff on 3D model in categories of human characters, household, body parts, vehicles, weapons, alien characters, architecture, medieval, cartoon, star wars, scenes, animals, sci-fi, low-polu and mechaniods.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo, mb
TurboSquid

TurboSquid is the largest library of 3D products in the world. They offers over 300 free 3D models for download.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, oth, obj, lwo, mb
Great Buildings

The models range in detail from very simple formal massing models of just a few blocks, through basic interior/exterior spatial walkthrough models, up to detailed interior/exterior models complete with furnishings and landscaping.

Model formats: 3dmf
Archive3D.net

Free 15000+ 3D models for download without registration required.

Model formats: gms, 3ds
Google 3D Warehouse

The Google 3D Warehouse is a online repository of 3D models. Anyone can search for and download models, but to publish your own, you’ll need to sign in using your Google account.

Model formats: skp
3DModelFree

Free 3D models download.

Model formats: 3ds
3DXtras

Download High Quality 3D Models for 3DSMAX, Maya, Softimage, Lightwave. (3D Cars, 3D People, 3D Furnitures, etc). For use in all your 3D Animation and multimedia works.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, c4d, dwg, obj, mb
DLegend

A collection of 3ds ,max ,prj and obj files for you to use in diffrent applications of 3d programs.

Model formats: 3ds ,max ,prj, obj, mb
Artist-3D

Artist-3d.com is a free exchange directory of royalty free 3d models, 3ds studio max & similar type models. 3D artists and graphic designers can freely submit 3d models or download ones for personal and non-commercial use.

Model formats: 3ds, obj, pz3, pp2, max, mb
NASA 3D Model

3D resources for free 3D models which provided by NASA.

Model formats: 3ds
3dm3

You would certainly find 3DMS something interesting and useful, receive answers to most of yourquestions, to download 3D models which you need in one of the biggest Models Bank on-line.

Model formats: max, 3ds, obj, mb
Amazing3D

You may use these models (meshes) royalty-free in your own work to create 2D images, animations, print graphics or web graphics. You may also include them as part of your software package in a proprietary format with credits and written permission from Amazing 3D Graphics, Inc.

Model formats: Max, 3ds
3D Download Blog

Free download for materials, mdels, textures, shaders.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, mb
Dewantoro Network

The purpose of this blog is, to collect tutorial, free stuff like 3d object, photoshop brush, filters, free software, templates and many more.

Model formats: Max, 3ds
CGI

All 3d models are free for any type of use (c/p). The version one is collection of very useful and handy 3d models in .3ds format.

Model formats: 3ds
DD-Freebies

Model formats: Obj
Exchange 3D

Model formats: blend, max, 3ds,
Corporate Media News

Need a 3D model? Here is a collection of styles, sizes, themes and formats.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, wrl, lwo
WireCase

Download 3D models from a catalog of the highest quality online.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo, blend, obj, fbx
Adobe-Tools

Enchance the new 3d features of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended version! Download free 3d models from Adobe-Tools.

Model formats: Max, 3ds
Mr Furniture

Over 5000 free 3D models for furniture, textures, CAD in .3ds, .max and .dxf.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf
3D Plants

Each month a different model from the 3dplants.com CDs and downloadable products will be offered as a free sample.

Model formats: obj, 3ds, dxf, lwo
ShareCG

Model formats: Max, 3ds, car, wire, jas, c4d, daz, dwg
3Delicious

Only delicious free 3d models.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, gsm, lwo
Archibase

Download Free 3D CAD models.

Model formats: 3ds, dxf, max, dwg
Top 3D Models

Model formats: Max, 3ds, obj
CG-Files

Model formats: Max, 3ds, pz2, pp2, obj
Top3D

Free download for 3D animation and 3D models.

Model formats: Max, c4d, 3ds
Oyonale

The objects are freely usable for your personal or commercial 3D art and animations. The 3D models are available in POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and/or Wavefront OBJ formats.

Model formats: POV-Ray, C4D, Obj
DMI Car 3D Models

Free 3D models for vehicles.

Model formats: lwo, max, 3ds, dxf, obj, gsm
Creative-3D

This collection of 104 royalty free 3D objects is available for download. Perfect for furnishing your interior design spaces and architectural renderings.

Model formats: 3ds
Infinitee-Designs

Free 3D Models for Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max and other 3D programs - Free models for beginners to advanced users of Autodesk Maya 3D animation and special effects software program.

Model formats: 3D Studio Max, XSI, Zbrush, Blender, Softimage, Cinema 4D, Terragen, Bryce & Poser
Telias

Free the models is a site that offers royalty free 3d models in 3ds, bryce, poser, lightwave and md2 format. Also a great collection of textures to use in your favorite modeling and rendering program.
All the content is free for any use.

Model formats: 3ds, poser, md2, lwo
Render Light

Render Light offers our visitors FREE collections of 3D modeling, shaders, textures and materials, tutorials to know the procedures to get high quality render images and animations and more.

Model formats: Max
Sci-Fi 3D

The ultimate 3D Sci-Fi resources.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, fbx, lwo
Altair Models

Download over 1500 high quality 3d model files free of charge. Most models are available in Max, Dxf, 3ds, Obj. 3D formats for Pc, Mac and Unix platforms. In this collection you can find cars, humans, ships, animals and much more.

Model formats: Max, Dxf, 3ds, Obj
Kit 3D

Kit3dmodels, a great collection of 3d furniture, lamps and accesories.

Model formats: Max, dxf
3DAllusions

Free 3D models in diferent formats.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
3d Content Central

3D ContentCentral® is a free service for locating, configuring, downloading, and requesting 3D parts and assemblies, 2D blocks, library features, and macros. Join an active community of 493,038 CAD users who share and download user contributed and supplier-certified 3D parts & assemblies, 2D blocks, library features and macros.

Model formats: cad, 3ds
Klicker

Free 3DS Models for interior and furniture. All models are in 3DS-format and packed in ZIP.

Model formats: 3ds
3d Model Sharing

3DModelSharing.com is a showcase of CAD related media. 3DModelSharing invite you to browse through their library of hundreds of different CAD files.

Model formats: cad
3d Auto Club

Model formats: MAX, 3DS, C4D
Toucan

Free 3D models for fishes, insects and flowers.

Model formats: 3ds
Rocky3d

Rocky3d specializew in providing the finest useful 3D models for your scenes and animations. They have thousands of models (many of which are FREE!) ranging from small but useful objects.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
Trekmeshes

Download Star Terk meshes and 3D objects.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, cob, lwo
Large Geometric Models Archive

The purpose of this site is to provide large models to researchers in computer graphics and related fields.

Model formats: PLY, VRML, dxf, lwo
Digital Animators

A small archive of 3D models that Digital Animators has obtained over the years. Digital Animators has gone ahead and catagorized them by catagory for your visual preferences.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
The 3d Archive

Standardized 3D object database.

Model formats: q3o
Model3D

A source of high quality 3D models and free section contains some models, which you can download gratis, they are free of charge.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, arcon, o2c
Cadalyst

Cadalyst offers worlds largest selection of free 3D models, textures, tutorials, plugins an dupdates for 3D studio and lightwave 3D.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, cad, lwo
Apollo Maximus

Free Poser Downloads include free 3D models, free Poser body morphs, free Poser face morphs, free poses, free 3D clothing library, free Poser python scripts, free Poser light sets, free Poser face room module, free Poser face poses, free Poser character poses, free figure texture maps, free clothing textures, & more.

Model formats: obj
Silver-Wings

Downloadable 3D aircraft model in 3ds, max, lwo and c4d format.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, c4d, lwo
PlanIT 3D

All of the models / meshes available on PlanIT 3D for download may be used royalty-free in your own work if you give proper credit to PlanIT 3D.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
The Singularity

Model formats: 3ds, lwo
Total-3d

Free 3D model download for interior design.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
2001 3D Archive

Model formats: Max, 3ds, cob, lwo, lws
3D Valley

Model formats: Max, 3ds, mb, cob, obj
3D Gurukul

3D Gurukul offers this free stuff for betterment of CG Environment.Great source for 3D Modeling, Games, Designs, Textures, 3D Home, 3D Graphic, 3D Animations.

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo
3D Faws

Model formats: obj, lha
3DXO

Model formats: Max, 3ds, dxf, lwo

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Group Chatting Made Easy with TinyChat

2009-03-05T18:53:00.001+05:30

Group Chatting Made Easy with TinyChat

Tips submitted by: Dan.

One common obstacle on any attempt to create a IM group chat is the incompatibility of chat client used among our peers/friends; majority might be using MSN, but some have only Yahoo IM or Gtalk installed. Although there are workaround for this, but inconsistency and connectivity has always been a problem.

Here’s a web chatroom service that solves the problem - TinyChat. The typical IM chatroom requires you and your friends to share the same IM client, but with Tinychat you just need a browser - IE, Safari, Firefox or even Opera. We played with TinyChat for a while and we thought creating a group chat couldn’t get any simpler.

How TinyChat Works

To start a chatroom, just hit the "Click to Create your Chatroom" button and you are given an URL immediately. The URL serves as an invitation. With the correct URL, people can then join the chatroom you created. Isn’t it simple?

Here are some cool features we also see in TinyChat:

Twitter tweets supported
Chat log saving
Able chat to website
Supports basic emoticons

Visit TinyChat.

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10 Excellent Open Source and Free Alternatives to Photoshop

2009-03-05T18:52:00.001+05:30

10 Excellent Open Source and Free Alternatives to Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a given in any designer’s wish list, and it comes with a host of features that allow for excellent and professional photo editing. The biggest obstacle to any designer who wants Photoshop is the price, which can be prohibitive. Fortunately there are a number of open source (and completely free) programs out there that do much of what Photoshop can, and sometimes more.

In this collection, you will find 10 excellent examples of open source and free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop.

This guest post for Six Revisions was written by Daniel Shain from LaptopLogic.com. At LaptopLogic you can have a look at the best gaming laptops and go through the latest laptop reviews.

1. GIMP

GIMP stands for “GNU image manipulation program”, and it is one of the oldest and most well known alternatives to Photoshop in existence. Although it doesn’t quite have all of them, you’ll find most of the features included in Photoshop somewhere in GIMP. GIMP is cross platform and supported by a large community.

If just having the feature set isn’t enough for you, there is an alternative based on GIMP known as GIMPShop. It’s the same as GIMP, except the layout has been structured as close to Photoshop as possible, so anyone making the transition should still feel right at home.

2. Krita

Krita has been lauded for ease of use and won the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. Part of the Koffice suite for Linux, Krita is slightly less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP, but does contain some unique features.

3. Paint.NET

Paint.NET has grown out of a simple replacement for the well known MSPaint into a fully featured open source image editor with a wide support base. You’ll need Windows to run Paint.NET.

4. ChocoFlop

ChocoFlop is a design application designed exclusively for Mac, optimized for Mac architecture. It’s quick and fairly well featured. This program won’t always be free, but until a stable version is released (it’s currently in beta) they are allowing free use. The program works pretty well as is, and if you’re the type who doesn’t mind an occasional bug it’s certainly worth a look.

5. Cinepaint

Cinepaint is designed primarily for video often used to make animated feature films by major studios, but it is also a great image editor capable of high fidelity 32 bit color. Currently there is no stable version for Windows.

6. Pixia

Pixia was originally designed in Japanese but English versions now exist for this rich editor. Although the original focus was on anime/manga, it is a very capable editor in general. Some of the features are a little counter intuitive, but there are plenty of English tutorials available now if you want to give it a shot. The website seems to have changed recently, so be sure to use our link if you don’t want a Japanese error message. Pixia works for Windows.

7. Pixen

Pixen is designed as a pixel artist’s dream, but has expanded into a smooth and well featured overall editor. It’s definitely best at animation though, if that’s your style. Pixen is Mac (10.4x or later) only.

8. Picnik

Picnik is a web based photo editor that has recently taken off due to a partnership with Flickr. It has all the basic features plus a few advanced ones like layers and special effects. It is cross platform since you only need a browser.

9. Splashup

Another web based application, Splashup has a strong set of features (including those layers) and will remind you somewhat of Photoshop. It integrates easily with photo sharing websites and just like the above, is cross platform.

10. Adobe Photoshop Express

Adobe actually has a free web based photo editor of their own. It has all the basic functionality you’d expect as well as a few advanced features (sadly though, no layers), and interfaces well with a number of photo sharing websites. Again, completely cross platform.

Your favorite open source/free image editor?

There are many excellent open source and free alternative photo editors out there, and if your favorite isn’t on the list - why don’t you tell us about it in the comments?

10 Features That Will Make Twitter Better

2009-03-05T18:50:00.001+05:30

10 Features That Will Make Twitter Better

Twitter’s popularity has skyrocketed in the recent months. Usage statistics states that most people who use Twitter interact with the application via the web rather than a third-party client such as TweetDeck or twitterfeed.

Twitter’s web interface is simple and intuitive but lacks a few features that can make it much better. In this article, you’ll read about 10 excellent user interface features that can enhance the Twitter web experience.

1. Enable grouping of friends and followers

Figure 1 shows tabs that you can use to quickly see tweets in a particular group.

Twitter’s increasing popularity has gotten many people on board and using the web application. With the growing number of active users comes the need for following more people.

The ability to create groups (or categories) of Twitter users that you follow can reduce the noise in your Twitter feed and can help you immediately see updates from particular groups of users.

For example, having a group for "co-workers" or "local tweeters" can help you quickly see what your co-workers are saying or find up-to-the-minute information on local events such as traffic accidents.

2. Auto Complete in Tweets

Figure 2 shows an auto complete dialog box appears when you type the @ symbol.

Auto complete is an interaction design pattern that involves displaying a list of suggestions as the user types in text. Auto complete can speed up the process of sending a tweet directed to a particular user using the @username format.

It will also help in times where you’re having trouble spelling someone’s username.

Another application of the auto complete feature is for suggesting #hashtags (keywords associated with a tweet) to make keyword-tagging of tweets easier.

3. Text links in tweets

With a 140 character limit, it’s often difficult to have links in a tweet without robbing yourself out of precious characters. By allowing users to tweet hyperlinked text, not only will it give them a little bit more room for including additional characters, but will also make Twitter feeds look cleaner.

4. Tweets-threading

Twitter is a great source of information and is a wonderful forum for discussing various topics. Unfortunately, the current user interface doesn’t allow you to easily view a conversation between two or more people.

Figure 3 show how threaded comments could look.

Coupled with the "reply to" feature in the current user interface, threaded tweets can give users the chance to participate in (or follow along with) conversations taking place in several Twitter feeds.

Threaded tweets can also serve as a means for people to find other Twitter users that are interested in similar subjects of conversation.

5. Allow Tweets directed to a group of people ("group tweet")

Figure 4 shows a possible syntax for tweets directed to a group of users using a double @ synax.

With companies and communities joining in on the fun, the ability to tweet to a group of Twitter users offers a convenient way of specifically targeting a set of people. For example, if you wanted to tweet to your co-workers, the syntax could be:

@@friends I'll be a little late for our lunch date, start ordering without me.

The double @ serves to differentiate a tweet directed to a single user from one that’s directed to a group of users.

6. Display meta data through hover tooltips

A tooltip is an effective graphical user interface element that allows users to view more information when they hover or click on a text or object of interest without having to leave the current web page. They enable information-gathering with fewer clicks and fewer pages to visit.

One way tooltips can be helpful is in seeing the bio information of a Twitter user when you hover over their username on your Twitter feed. If you see a username mentioned in an interesting Twitter update, simply hover over the name to see more information about the user that was mentioned.

7. Use the sidebar more effectively to display information

Figure 5 shows a "Recent @Replies" and "Popular #hashtags" section on the side bar.

Twitter can utilize the right sidebar more effectively by showing relevant information and statistics. For example, a "Most Recent Replies" section or a "Most Used #hashtags" section can be very helpful in showcasing the latest activities and the hottest topics.

8. Add a page that displays tweets mentioning your username

Twitter users (me included) like seeing their names mentioned. Currently, only @replies (tweets that begin with @username) can be seen in the @Replies page. A nice optional feature would be to have a page that lists tweets where your username is mentioned or where a particular tweet of yours is re-tweeted (example: "RT @username").

A less self-centered benefit for this feature is the opportunity to find people who are interested in what you have to say, enough that they update their own Twitter feed with a tweet of yours, or to see what types of your tweets are popular amongst people who follow you.

9. Highlight specific users, deemphasize others in feed

Figure 6 shows the first tweet as being highlighted, and the second tweet being deemphasized. The third tweet is how tweets normally look like in the current interface.

Users who follow many people run into the trouble of Twitter feed overload where there’s just too much going on and too many tweets to read. The ability to mark favorite Twitter users, as well as deemphasize users that you don’t care much about (but still want to follow for some reason), can give users better visual queues on what to pay attention to first when perusing one’s Twitter feed.

10. Add a Built-in URL shortener

With Twitter’s current user interface, hyperlinks are counted towards your 140 character count limit even if it gets reduced in length by a URL-shortening service like TinyURL.com after you hit the "Update" button.

One way to allow users to enter more text - without having to go to another website just to shorten URL’s - is to have a built-in URL-shortening feature. This would not only save user’s some time, but also eliminates the need to rely on other websites to perform an action that should really be handled within the system.

Got more ideas?

If you have more ideas on how Twitter’s user interface can be improved, please contribute to the discussion in the comments.

26 Gorgeous Aurora and Colour Spectrum Wallpapers

2009-03-05T18:48:00.001+05:30

26 Gorgeous Aurora and Colour Spectrum Wallpapers

Every once in a while, we put on a showcase of wallpapers on this blog. Reason is because we want to bring up a small reminder - it has been a while since you last change your wallpaper and there are tons of really beautiful ones we’ve collected. Even if you think the current wallpaper is nice enough and there’s really no need for a change, it’s also good that you keep it bookmarked. They can be great inspirational source.

This week we like to continue with a sequel, a combination of colourful spectrum wallpapers with some awesome mixtures of auroras. Here’s 26 Gorgeous Aurora and Colour Spectrum Wallpapers, full list after jump.

Aurora Borealis

This wallpaper pack included wallpapers in only widescreen resolutions: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200.

Aurora

A very simple, abstract / minimalistic wall created in CS3

Aurora Colors

Based on RapidWeaver 4 wallpaper Realmac Magical Desktop

Aurora like vista style

A pack with aurora wallpaper like windows vista style.

Wind - Wallpaper pack

OS X aqua + Vista aurora mix.

The Moment

Space Travel

Space Travel Wallpapers in 2560 × 1600 (HDTV/Widescreen) and 1600 × 1200 (Normalscreen) Resolution.

Nebular

Aurora Aquantic

Created by filipe-ps. Wallpaper pack comes in these following resolutions: 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1440×900, 1280×800, 1600×1200, 1400×1050, 1280×960, 1024×768 pixels.

HoroPack

Replacement for the original Mac OSX Leopard Wallpaper.

Grunge Rainbow Wallpaper

It’s a bunch of colours with a grungy touch. There are four variations, including a standard set of colours, and two solid colours - steel and pink.

Growing Aurora Wallpaper Pack1

There are 8 wallpapers on three differente resolutions: 1920×1200, 1600×1200 and 1280×1024.

Explosion of Light

Blaze of Light

The downloadable archive contains fullscreen, widescreen, as well as iPhone wallpapers.

Auros Wallpaper

Author created this with the mixture of 2 of his favoriute wallpapers iAurora and Exos.

Aurora

Available in 2560×1600, 1920×1200 and 1600×1200 pixels.

2009 Wallpaper

Wallpaper created from a flyer artwork. Need other resolution? just leave a comment in the author’s deviantart page.

Abstract Flower Colors Light

Playing around with the Blend Tool in Illustrator and Photoshop inspired by Andy Gilmore. Tutorial available here.

Spectrum

Starsfield Rainbow wallpaper

Seaview

O Tweak

Next Level

Available in 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×900, 1356×1024.

Lunai Wallpaper Pack

10 wallpapers in total. 5 colors in 1600×1200px and 5 colors in 1680×1050px.

iSwoosh

Cydonia

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20 High-Resolution Denim Textures

2009-03-05T18:44:00.001+05:30

20 High-Resolution Denim Textures

Denim is a wonderful material that can be used in many designs. In this collection, you’ll find 20 free high resolution denim textures. Each one was professionally taken using a DSLR camera in RAW format, then converted to uncompressed JPG for ease of use.

Preview

Below, you’ll see a scaled-down preview of each texture included in this set. Clicking on an image will take you to their respective Flickr page where you can download them in several sizes. Alternatively, you can browse the Six Revisions Denim Textures Flickr set or download the whole set as a ZIP file.

1. Denim Texture 01

2. Denim Texture 02

3. Denim Texture 03

4. Denim Texture 04

5. Denim Texture 05

6. Denim Texture 06

7. Denim Texture 07

8. Denim Texture 08

9. Denim Texture 09

10. Denim Texture 10

11. Denim Texture 11

12. Denim Texture 12

13. Denim Texture 13

14. Denim Texture 14

15. Denim Texture 15

16. Denim Texture 16

17. Denim Texture 17

18. Denim Texture 18

19. Denim Texture 19

20. Denim Texture 20

More information

Feel free to use these textures for any way you want, including commercial purposes. If you really want the technical details, each texture included in this set is released under the GNU General Public License, a free, copyleft license that allows the public to use these works of art. The only thing we ask is that you do not distribute these textures “as-is” without getting expressed written permission to do so or without acknowledging the source.

Download the entire set

sr_denim_textures.zip (ZIP file, 35.7 MB)

About the Author

JC Parmley is a U.S.-based web designer and developer from Indiana. When he’s not designing interfaces and creating .NET apps, you can find him in the Frozen Waste fighting for the Horde (World of Warcraft) or kicking butt in the kitchen.

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20 Beautiful Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets

2009-03-05T18:41:00.001+05:30

20 Beautiful Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets

Vintage designs has gotten very popular over the past years, and it seems the trend keeps on going.

In this round-up, you’ll find 20 vintage Photoshop brushes you can download for free. There are over 300 individual vintage brushes here, so you will have a broad choice of brushes to apply onto your designs.

Each brush set was first tested, and the images you see below are previews of what to expect from each brush pack.

1. Darger-esque (23 brushes)

2. 1920s ladies by 500ml brushes (7 brushes)

3. Vintage Hands (15 brushes)

4. Vintage Models (11 brushes)

5. Retr0 Brushes (30 brushes)

6. Old Maps (11 brushes)

7. Newspaper ads from the 60s (12 brushes)

8. 1940 Cosmopolitan brushes (48 brushes)

9. Vintage Movie Posters (16 brushes)

10. Vintage brushes (12 brushes)

11. Vintage Birds (20 brushes)

12. Vintage polaroid brushes (14 brushes)

13. Vintage grunge brushes (17 brushes)

14. Alice in Wonderland brushes (20 brushes)

15. Old Newspaper (16 brushes)

16. Old Paper Brushes (7 brushes)

17. Vintage Lady (6 brushes)

18. Film and old projectors (5 brushes)

19. Vintage pics (8 brushes)

20. Birdcages (16 brushes)

About the Author

Mirko Humbert is a freelance designer from Switzerland. He shares his thoughts about his passion on his graphic design blog, Designer Daily, and also runs a CSS gallery called CSS Orgy. To connect with Mirko, you can follow him on Twitter.

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High-Resolution Red Rocks Texture Pack

2009-01-03T17:12:00.001+05:30

Textures are fun to work with and can add realism and an organic feel to your design. Here's a set of textures from the Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. Feel free to use them for any purpose (commercial works or otherwise) except for redistribution. Though attribution is not required, it's highly-appreciated.

There are 6 textures included in this texture pack. Each image is large-scale (2,896 x 1,944 pixels) and high-resolution, so it'll give you the ultimate flexibility in usage. You can scale them down to fit your artwork or just take certain areas of a texture that you're interested in.

If you don't like the red color and you just want the rough, grungy textures – desaturate (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate) them in Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) and experiment with different blending options and Layer modes to get the desired effect.

Preview

Clicking on each image will redirect you to its Flickr page where you can download numerous sizes. Alternatively, you can browse the Red Rocks Texture Pack Flickr set that I've set up.

file name: red_rocks_01

file name: red_rocks_02

file name: red_rocks_03

file name: red_rocks_04

file name: red_rocks_05

file name: red_rocks_06

Download

sr_red_rocks.zip (ZIP, 20.8 MB)

Blog Template :Revolution Church Blogger

2009-01-03T17:10:00.001+05:30

Ready to get your hands on the coolest premium Blogger template in the blogosphere? Introducing the Revolution Church premium template for Blogger!

After getting dozens of emails from people offering us money to convert this amazing theme into Blogger, we decided it was time to make it available to purchase for everyone. Well, not only has eBlog Templates ported this over to Blogger, we've added some great features to really turbo-charge and make this the best premium Blogger template yet!

This is the first and only premium Blogger template that is virtually plug and play. No images to host or have to worry about the links breaking after a few months. No mucking with the template code to change colors, add tabs, modify AdSense code, etc. We've designed this template with the ease of usability in mind so Bloggers of all levels can utilize the full power of this premium template. Not only do you get this amazing template but you also get the full installation video series which walks you through configuring every gadget step-by-step.

This Blogger template comes with a ton of advanced features including:

Hosted images on Photobucket. Free use forever!
Favicon support so you can add your own url icon
Compressed CSS to speed up your page load times
SEO-friendly page titles to help you rank higher in Google
Multiple AdSense gadgets already included in prime locations
Automatically highlight author comments
Embedded JavaScript date code showing current day
Fonts and colors support so you can change on the fly
YouTube video gadget to show off your favorite video
Link list gadget to easily setup your header tabs
Recent comments and posts gadgets
Integrated Blogger reactions support (new!)
Built-in Feedburner RSS feed and email gadget
FeedJit live traffic feed gadget
Bonus - FREE 125 x 125 ad gadget!
Bonus - FREE Step-by-step installation video series

I promise that you've never seen such a complete and professional Blogger template like this one. With the amount of time and effort we've put into this, it's easily worth more than the cost. Ready to turn your blog into a masterpiece? Check out the live demo or buy this premium Blogger template now!

Important - Please Read Before Purchasing

This template does NOT work with the older Blogger Classic layout. Please make sure you are NOT using Classic layout before purchasing this template. Most bloggers are now using the newer layout so you most likely don't need to worry. Also, eBlog Templates is not the original designer of this template. It was originally designed by WordPress theme mastermind, Brian Gardner. We have spoken directly with Brian and with his approval, have converted it to Blogger and made it available for sale. If you are a WordPress user, you can download his theme for free without any support (only works on WordPress not Blogger).

So why do I have to pay for this template then?

The cost of this template covers the many days of labor and effort put into converting this amazing design into a premium Blogger template as well as building the step-by-step video series. Your purchase does include the complete instructional "how to install and configure" the Revolution Church Blogger template video series. If you think about it, it's actually a small price to pay for such a functional, advanced, and professional Blogger template. Buy this premium Blogger template now!

Refund Policies

Since this is a digital product there are no refunds after payment has been made. Please make 100% sure you want this template before making the purchase. You also need to be willing to spend 30-60 minutes configuring the template before it looks like the live demo. Our free video installation series will make it easy. We want you to be successful!

Since we can't test every single Blogger gadget (including 3rd party gadgets) we can't promise they will all work with this template. Every blog is different and some of your existing gadgets might not be compatible which means either the gadget will need to be removed or modified accordingly. We do provide community-level support which means posting your questions as comments. The installation videos that accompany this template are designed for skills of all levels.

Affiliate Program

Want to put some extra money in your pocket? Why not join our affiliate program and become part of the eBlog Templates sales team! You will earn 30% for each sale you make (i.e. $20 template = $6 for you!) We use E-junkie which is the industry standard for handling affiliate sales. Join now and start making money selling this premium template today!

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100+ Remarkably Beautiful Twitter Icons And Buttons

2009-01-03T17:08:00.001+05:30

Following one's Twitter tweets are as good as subscribing to it's RSS feeds. Not only it give followers the first-hand update on contents, it's also a perfect medium for communication and networking. Knowing how Twitter can potentially help to increase readership, more and more bloggers/webmasters are promoting their Twitter account through blogs and websites.

If you love a particular blog you've stumble upon, chances are you will want to follow his Twitter account. But let's not make this too difficult for users to find where's that Twitter link. Catchy graphics are always better than plain text and they are easier to spot. If you are keen to increase Twitter followers, here's a compilation of 100+ Remarkably Beautiful Twitter Icons And Buttons you can apply on your site.

Extra: Follow Hongkiat on Twitter

Twitter Social Icons

Set of six social icons (Digg, Twitter, Delicious, RSS, Reddit & Stumbleupon) are free to use on your websites and blogs however you wish! Courtesy of Designreviver.
30 Free Vector Twitter Buttons Download

30 twitter buttons in EPS format.
31 Twiiter Button
A Little Bird Told Me

Inspired by Twitter and other vector designs. By mattknow
Create a Twitter Style Bird Mascot

Tutorial on how to create a Twitter mascot for your blog or website.
FREE Twitter Icons For Your Website/Blog

Flockey's Twitter Icons for websites and blog. Availablei n .PNG, .PSD and .AI file format.
Twitter Icon

Created by PhireDesign.
Twitter Bird Icons & Illustration
Free Twitter Graphics

Here are some free graphics to put on your site for that purpose- just place the image on your site and link to your Twitter profile.
Twitter Birdy Icon

Cute birdy icon created by Kailoon. Available in transparency PNG format.
IconTexto Webdev Social Bookmark
Free Twitter Icon Set

This set contains 4 different poses of the Twitter bird. Both PNG and PSD versions has been included in the .zip file.
Twitter Icons with Attitude
Pracktika Free Icon Set

Designed by DryIcons, released by Smashing Magazine. Available in resolutions 64×64px, 128×128px and 256×256px, in 32-bit transparency PNG.
(max)Icone Blog, Set 3
Web 2.0rigami

Twitter icon, origami style.
Free vector twitter icon

Royalty-free vector icon.
Feed & Twitter Monster Icons

Feed and Twitter icons as monsters.
Twitter icon for a fluid app

Really big Twitter "t" icon.
High Resolution Twitter Bird Icons
The Blue Bird

Little Twitter blue bird we previously used in Twitter wallpapers. Comes in high resolution .EPS and transparency .PNG file.

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10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools

2009-01-03T17:06:00.001+05:30

Web analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing your web content's data in order to glean meaningful information about how your site is being utilized by your users. There are plenty of Web analytics applications out there, and you probably already know the big guns such as Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, and remote-site services such as Alexa and Compete.

We go off the trodden path and explore a few lesser-known Web analytics options. In this article, you'll find 10 excellent and free tools and applications to help you gather and analyze data about your web content.

1. Piwik

Go to Live Demonstration of Piwik.

Piwik is an open-source Web analytics application developed using PHP and MySQL. It has a "plugins" system that allows for utmost extensibility and customization. Install only the plugins you need or go overboard and install them all – the choice is up to you. The plugins system, as you can imagine, also opens up possibilities for you to create your own custom extensions. This thing's lightweight – the download's only 1.9MB.

2. FireStats

Go to Live Demonstration of FireStats.

FireStats is a simple and straight-forward Web analytics application written in PHP/MySQL. It supports numerous platforms and set-ups including C# sites, Django sites, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and several others. Are you a resourceful developer who needs moar cowbell? FireStats has an excellent API that will assist you in creating your own custom apps or publishing platform components (imagine: displaying the top 10 most downloaded files in your WordPress site) based on your FireStats data.

3. Snoop

Snoop is a desktop-based application that runs on the Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista platforms. It sits nicely on your system status bar/system tray, notifying you with audible sounds whenever something happens. Another outstanding Snoop feature is the Name Tags option which allows you to "tag" visitors for easier identification. So when Joe over at the accounting department visits your site, you'll instantly know.

4. Yahoo! Web Analytics

Yahoo! Web analytics is Yahoo!'s alternative to the dominant Google Analytics. It's an enterprise-level, robust web-based third-party solution which makes accessing data easy especially for multiple-user groups. It's got all the things you'd expect from a comprehensive Web analytics tool such as pretty graphs, custom-designed (and printable) reports, and real-time data tracking.

5. BBClone

Go to Live Demonstration of BBClone.

If you're looking for a simple, server-side web application that doesn't rely on third-party services to monitor your data, check out BBClone - a PHP-based server application that gives you a detailed overview of website traffic and visitor data. It supports language localization for 32 languages like English, Chinese, German, and Japanese. It easily integrates with popular publishing platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Textpattern. Since it's logfile-based, it doesn't require you to use a server-side relational database.

6. Woopra

Woopra is a Web analytics application written in Java. It's split into two parts which includes a desktop application for data analysis/exploration and a web service to monitor website statistics. Woopra has a robust user interface, an intuitive management system that allows you to run it on multiple sites and domains, and even a chat feature so that you can gather non-numerical information by talking to your site users. Woopra is currently in beta and requires you to request for a private beta registration.

7. JAWStats

JAWStats is a server-based Web analytics application that runs with the popular AWStats (in fact, if you're on a shared hosting plan - AWStats is probably already installed). JAWStats does two things to extend AWStats - it improves performance by reducing server resource usage and improves the user interface a little bit. With that said, you can't go wrong with just using AWStats either if you're happy with it.

8. 4Q

A large part of Web analytics deals with number-crunching and numerical data. Raw numbers tells only part of the story and it's often helpful to perform analytics by way of interacting with actual users. 4Q developer Avinash Kaushik puts it perfectly when he said: "Web analytics is good at the 'What'. It is not good at the 'Why'".4Q is a simple surveying application focused on improving your traditional numerical Web analytics by supplementing it with actual user feedback. Check out this YouTube video on how easy it is to set up 4Q.

9. MochiBot

MochiBot is a free Web analytics/tracking tool especially designed for Flash assets. With MochiBot, you can see who's sharing your Flash content, how many times people view your content, as well as helping you track where your Flash content is to prevent piracy and content theft. Installing MochiBot is a breeze; you simply copy a few lines of ActionScript code in the .FLA files you want to monitor.

10. Grape Web Statistics

Go to Live Demonstration of Grape Web Statistics.

Grape Web Statistics is a simple, open-source application geared towards web developers. It has a clean and usable interface and has an Extensions API to extend and customize your installation. It uses PHP for the backend and you can run it on any operating system that runs PHP.

Let's talk about it.

What Web analytics software do you use, and why? Do you have any extensive experience in using any of the above application? Share it with all of us in the comments!

CSS Optimization

2009-01-01T01:49:00.001+05:30

After using a CSS optimizer a couple of days ago, I realized that if you write your CSS properly, you should never need a CSS optimizer. Here's why: when a CSS optimizer runs, it groups all the selectors together that share common styles and rules. For example, if you have

margin: 0;  padding: 0;

on 50 different selectors, it's going to group them all together. Which means in most cases, it will repeat that pattern for all the different styles that you've applied throughout the stylesheet. So if you've got list-style: none on 16 different selectors, it's going to relist all those selectors again just to add that one style. Below is an example of the CSS I tried to optimize for my new design, only to have the optimizer add 2kb and say "sorry :)" when it was done.

Here's what it looked like after I optimized:

 body,fieldset,#header #nav li,#bottom-header #nav,#bottom-header #nav li a,#main,#sidebar-one.column .search-form fieldset,#sidebar-one.column .search-form,#sidebar-one.column ul li,#sidebar-one.column ul,#sidebar-one.column ul#switcher li,#sidebar-one.column ul#switcher,#footer #lastfm,#footer #lastfm ol li,#footer #lastfm ol,#footer #archives ul li,#footer #archives ul,#footer #copyright ul li,#footer #copyright ul{margin:0}body,fieldset,#header #nav li,#bottom-header #nav,#bottom-header #nav,#maincontent .date small,#maincontent .date strong,#sidebar-one.column .search-form fieldset,#sidebar-one.column .search-form,#sidebar-one.column .outer,#sidebar-one.column ul li,#sidebar-one.column ul,#sidebar-one.column ul#switcher li,#sidebar-one.column ul#switcher,#comments dd,#footer #lastfm ol li,#footer #lastfm ol,#footer #archives ul li,#footer #archives ul,#footer #copyright ul li,#footer #copyright ul{padding:0}

As you can see, that's a lot of CSS for setting two values, margin:0 and padding:0.

CSS optimization can be good, but only if you write terrible CSS or repeat the same styles over and over again throughout your stylesheet. Now that's not to say you shouldn't minify and/or compress your CSS. That's something that doesn't change the order and values of the CSS, but makes it more compact when delivered to the user's browser.

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15 Useful Tools for WordPress Bloggers

2009-01-01T01:47:00.001+05:30

If you use WordPress as your publishing platform, you'll find a ton of useful tools you can grab off the web that'll help you improve your productivity and make sure your WordPress site is running smoothly.

In this collection, you'll find a few convenient applications, plugins, and browser extensions that will help you accomplish a variety of blogging tasks that range from easier screen captures to making sure your WordPress site is secure.

1. ScribeFire turns Firefox into a fully-featured blog editor.

ScribeFire is a Firefox plugin that gives you an array of useful features and options for writing posts. You can drag and drop content from a variety of sources (which the WordPress Visual Editor currently doesn't fully support), manage and leave notes on your posts, upload files via the built-in FTP, create timestamps, and manage uploaded images. ScribeFire is the tool of choice for bloggers that need moar cowbell than what the WordPress built-in editor affords them.

2. WordPress Helper gives you useful tips and features in Firefox.

Whether you're new to WordPress or an experienced veteran blogger, you'll find WordPress Helper to be a much-welcomed addition to your blogging arsenal. WordPress Helper notifies you of new WordPress versions, gives you the ability to set custom keyboard shortcuts, and places useful help files, accessible by right-clicking on the page on a PC, at your finger tips.

3. Screen grab to WordPress! makes taking screenshots a breeze.

If you include a lot of screenshots in your posts, you should check out the free Firefox add-on, Screen grab to WordPress!. You can save a web page as an image, and then use the tool to automatically upload it to your WordPress site with a click of a button.

4. WordPress Scanner makes securing your blog a hassle-free affair.

With WordPress Scanner, you can sleep easier at night knowing that your blog is safe from known and potential security vulnerabilities. WordPress Scanner is available as a web-based application, or as a WordPress plugin.

5. Broken Link Checker ensures you don't have dead links.

Broken Link Checker is a WordPress plugin that essentially checks your hyperlinks to see if they're still active. It scans your posts and pages to check for broken links and then notifies you via the WordPress Dashboard if there are any broken links found. You can set specific times for when the link-scanning occurs and it's recommended you pick a low-traffic time of the day to do so.

6. Google Syntax Highlighter lets you easily insert code in posts.

If you've ever tried including code snipplets in your WordPress posts through the WordPress Visual Editor, only to find out how it mangles your prettily-formatted code, you'll love Google Syntax Highlighter, a WordPress plugin that handles preformatted code in your WordPress posts and pages. Google Syntax Highlighter makes it much easier to display code on your posts and colors ("highlights") the syntax for better readability. If Google Syntax Highlighter isn't for you, check out WP-Syntax, WP-Chili, or SyntaxHighlighter Plus.

7. Insights boosts your information searches.

Insights is a WordPress plugin that assists you in finding and gathering information and media for your blog posts. Insights gives you the ability to search existing blog posts for specific information and an intuitive interface for searching external websites and services such as Flickr, Youtube, Wikipedia, and Google Blog search – all from within the WordPress interface.

8. Windows Live Writer allows you to blog offline.

There are but a handful of notable Microsoft applications - Windows Live Writer is one of them. Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application that's compatible with WordPress (along with other popular publishing platforms like Blogger and Typepad). You can write posts offline and upload them whenever you're ready to publish.

If you're a Mac user, check out ecto or Thingamablog (a cross-platform desktop app for Linux, Mac, and Windows users).

9. Revision Control is perfect for multiple authors.

If your blog posts involve numerous authors and editors, or if you frequently write long, thorough posts that take hours (or even days) to finish, you might find the WordPress plugin - Revision Control - a useful tool. Revision Control easily manages different versions of a post or a page so you can back up and revert to different versions.

10. Organize Series takes care of posts series.

Sometimes it's useful to write posts in parts that are published at different dates especially if the subject is too big to cover in just one post. Organize Series is a useful WordPress plugin that gives you a ton of options for post series/groups of related posts such as being able to list links to the other parts of the series (in a table of contents-like fashion) and adding a series-specific icon to make it easy to identify the group of posts.

11. WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier speeds up comment moderation.

A major part of blogging involves managing the readers' comments and responding to them in a timely fashion. WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier sits on your system's tray and notifies you whenever a new comment is posted. Depending on how you set it up (it checks new comments at set intervals), you can moderate and respond to comments much quicker - something your readers will appreciate.

12. WordPress Comment Ninja extends comment moderation options.

With the recent release of WordPress 2.7, the WordPress team has significantly improved comment moderation and management. But if the improvements aren't enough for you, check out WordPress Comment Ninja, a free Greasemonkey script that extends your comment moderation and response options. You can, for example, respond to comment via email, or even email the comment verbatim to someone. You'll need Firefox and the Greasemonkey add-on to use WordPress Comment Ninja.

13. AdServe manages your ads in WordPress.

Bloggers will often advertise banners from site sponsors for profit or to help out in server costs. AdServe is a WordPress plugin that gives you the ability to manage directly-sponsored advertisements from within WordPress without having to use third-party scripts or web services. AddServe is highly-configurable and helps you manage your ads even if it's impression-based. It also tracks and displays relevant statistics about your ads including page impressions and click-through ratios.

14. Simple Tags makes tagging posts better.

If you tag your posts regularly, you may want to use Simple Tags, a WordPress plugin that extends post tagging features in WordPress. It helps you organize keywords, gives you hints on relevant keywords based on your post's content (using free web services such as the Yahoo Term Extractions API), and allows you to batch-edit and batch-replace existing tags.

15. Twitme automatically tweets about new posts.

Twitter is fast becoming a staple web application that bloggers use. If you want to automatically notify your Twitter followers about new posts on your WordPress site, check out Twitme, a WordPress plugin that instantly sends a tweet whenever you publish a new post. If Twitme is interesting to you, you should also check out the Twitter for Wordpress, Twitter Tools, Twitpress, and SimpleTwitter plugins to see which one works best for you.

What about you?

There are plenty of WordPress tools out there. If your favorite tool isn't on the list, tell us all about it in the comments. If you frequently use one or more of the above tools, share your experiences with us as well!

How To Setup Google Ad Manager on Your Blog/Website

2009-01-01T01:43:00.001+05:30

If you are generating revenue off your website or blog, chances are you serve banner ads and they are either updated manually by adding the images and URLs into the source codes or with the help of external ad-serving scripts like OpenX or OIO Publishers.

Google has a similar web service, call the Google Ad Manager. In a nutshell, it is a simple (and free) web service that helps you manage banner ads. It also comes with a pretty complete inventory report module. Ad Manager integrates with AdSense, therefore webmasters have the ability to serve AdSense ads if there's no banner for any particular slot. Here's a quick look into advantages of Google Ad Manager:

Ad Targeting ability. You control who get to see the ads. Let it be geographical, browser or language specific.
Efficient ad serving. No script installation is required. Everything (including the creatives) are hosted with Google. Not only it saves you space and bandwidths, you can also be rest-assured that banners will be delivered quickly.
Multi-user supported. You can assign multiple salespersons to handle the sales part, and have everything documented/recorded nicely inside Google Ad Manager.
Simple User Interface. And like any other Google web services, Ad Manager has simple and easy to understand interface.
more..

If you are convinced that Google Ad Manager is potentially helpful in managing advertisements for your website or blog, we want to show you how to get it setup right from the scratch. Full guide after jump.

1. Create Ad Slots

Ad Slots are the reserved space on your site for ad placements. If you want to insert 4 125×125 banners on your sidebr, you are looking at creating 4 ad slots. Here hongkiat.com, we have eight 125×125 image banners. That means we'll need to repeately create 8 different ad slots. Let's go about doing it.

Under Inventory -> Ad Slots, click on New Ad Slots.
Compulsory fields: Give your slot an unique Ad slot name. Select the banner size drop drop down, or create one if you like. Choose if the banner should open a new window (_blank) or open on current window (_top) upon click.
Optional fields: Checked the AdSense checkbox is you want to maximize revenue on the slot with AdSense, but we'll recommend not to, for now. Fill in a meaningful description for the Ad Slot, or you can perhaps skip this if your Ad slot name is self-descriptive enough.
Save it.

Repeat step 1, 2 and 3 to create all the ad slots you'll need. For our case, we will be creating 8 ad slots with different name. Here's how one of them look like.

And once you are done with creating all your ad slots, here's how your Inventory page will look like. Next, we will be creating ad placements.

2. Create Ad Placements

Ad Placements are what hold/group your ad slots together. For hongkiat.com, since we have 8 ad slots of 125×125 banners on the sidebar, we'll need one ad placement to hold them together. Ad placement also make sure each ad gets a fair shot of being on the top position if you set them on rotational. Here's how you create ad placement.

Under Inventory -> Placements, click on New Placement.
Compulsory fields: Give your ad placement a meaningful name. For example, we name ours "HKC-125-RightTop-Zone" because it's going to store all 125×125 banners, positioned at the top right corner of the blog.
Optional fields: If you allow AdSense to bid for ad slots in this placement, check for Targeting, else uncheck. The Internal Description is personal use only, something to let you understand your ad placements better.
Add all ad slots that belongs to this new ad placement you've created, in our case we added all.
Save it.

Here's a sample of how our Ad Placement settings look like.

Once saved your ad placement, you'll be returned to Inventory -> Placements main page and it looks something like this.

Here's a quick summary - You've created the necessary Ad Slots, and group them under a Ad Placement. The next thing we need to do is to add "real" banners into each of these ad slots.

3. Create Orders

Orders

Think of Orders as banner order requests. It stores information about who the advertisers are, the start and end date of the ad campaigns, and more. If an advertise place an order of banner ad on your website, you create a new Order. If you have 8 Ad Slots, expect to create up to 8 different Orders. Make sense? Let's create some Orders.

Under Orders, click on New Order.
Compulsory fields: Give each other an Order name and External ID you can easily regconized. Let the system know when the banner will start and when it'll end by choosing the Start date and End date. Choose unlimited if it's likely to be permanent.
Optional fields: You might also want to fill up the Advertiser, Agency, Contacts, User Assignments and Notes to help you understand the Order better.
Save it.

We'll now create a Line item for this order.

Line Items

Line Items associate with Orders. Every time an Order is entered, you'll need to create a Line Item for it. Line item allows you to determine the nature of the ad, whether it's serving as CPC, CPM or CPD.You also set the cost/price for the ad here.

Everytime you hit the Save button after creating an Order, you'll be directed to create a Line item.

Click New line items.
Give it a Name.
Determine the Delivery Priority. If your order is a direct ad, change to Exclusive from the drop down box so you can use CPD (Cost per Day).
Again, you need to make sure you've correctly entered the Start date and End date.
Under Placement section, associate Line Item with it's respective placement.
Targetting section allows you to control who should see the ad. In another words, under what condition the ad will appear on your website. This setting is optional, by default ad will be visible to all.
Delivery Options section detemine the appearance of the ad. Set Delivery rate and Creative rotation to Even will ensure all your orders get equal impressions.
Save it.

Here's how your line item will look like.

A quick recap before we continue. We've created an Order, with advertiser information, campaign start date and end date. Then we created Line Item for the Order where it stores information like cost type (CPC, CPM, CPD), cost, targetting behavours, etc. The next thing we need to do is to add creative for the ad.

Creatives

Creatives are images of the ads. Every time a Line Item is added, you'll need to add (and approve) at least one creative for it.

After saving a Line item, click on need creatives to add an image for the ad.
Fill up the Name, Ad slot size (banner size), Creative type, Manual Weight (if you need to control the priority of banner rotations)
Save it.

Creative type determines how you serve the banner image. Google Ad Manager is capable of hosting your banners internally (regardlessly of jpg, flash, gif or png) or you can host them elsewhere and insert the image URL. Use rich media if you need manual HTML codes insertion.

Here's a sample of how creative upload page should be filled.

Remember to Approve and activate the creative.

Repeat all steps in Orders, Line Items and Creatives for every individual banners. In our case, we will repeat this 8 times to fill up all our ad slots.

4. Display Banners

Here's our final step before ads start showing on our website - generate the codes and paste them inside our source codes.

Go to Inventory -> Ad Slots, click on Generate Sample HTML.
Add all slots needed to Selected Items section
Click Generate Sample HTML

Scroll to the bottom to find your generated codes. It should look something like this:

  <html>  <head>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN THE head SECTION -->  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://partner.googleadservices.com/gampad/google_service.js  </script>  <script type="text/javascript">  GS_googleAddAdSenseService("ca-pub-8918970543424762");  GS_googleEnableAllServices();  </script>  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A1");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A2");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A3");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A4");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A5");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A6");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A7");  GA_googleAddSlot("ca-pub-8918970543424762", "HKC-125A8");  </script>  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFetchAds();  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR head SECTION -->  </head>  <body>  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A1  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A1  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A1");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A1  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A2  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A2  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A2");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A2  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A3  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A3  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A3");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A3  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A4  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A4  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A4");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A4  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A5  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A5  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A5");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A5  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A6  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A6  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A6");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A6  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A7  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A7  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A7");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A7  -->  <p>Sample Text before slot HKC-125A8  </p>  <!-- PUT THIS TAG IN DESIRED LOCATION OF SLOT HKC-125A8  -->  <script type="text/javascript">  GA_googleFillSlot("HKC-125A8");  </script>  <!-- END OF TAG FOR SLOT HKC-125A8  -->  </body>  </html>

Follow the instructions stated in comments to insert the codes into their respective <head> and <body> sections.

Note: To prevent errors and avoid messing up the live site, it's good that you copy the generated codes, paste it on a blank HTML to test the output. If the ads do not show up, chances are your current time is not yet the start date set in Orders and Line Items.

It's done! You are now managing your website banners with Google Ad Manager. Login again few days later to check on the performance.

For any other questions, drop a comment, I'll try my best to help.

Posted via email from webber's posterous

25 Free Digital Audio Editors You Should Know

2008-12-30T07:04:00.003+05:30

Credit: Background image from DA

A digital audio editor is defined as a computer application for manipulating digital audio. As a multimedia creator, we normally use audio editor for recording audio, edit the duration and timeline, mix multiple sound tracks, apply simple effects for audio enhancement and create conversion between different audio file formats.

There are countless ways that digital audio editor can be used, and fortunately there are plenty of good and free digital audio editors out there to help you with your own implementation. So if you're thinking to purchase a license for Adobe Audition, Cool Edit or Soundforge, hold that thought first. Not to say they aren't cool, but it's always wiser to tryout free applications before going to the pay deal.

Here's our collection of 25 free digital audio editors. Full list after jump!

Audacity

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It allows you to record live audio, converts tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files. You also can cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together with Audacity. Built-in effects are given to remove static, hiss, hum or other constant background noises.
Power Sound Editor

Power Sound Editor Free is a visual audio editing and recording software solution, which supports many advanced and powerful operations with audio data.

You can use Power Sound Editor Free to record your own music, voice, or other audio files, edit it, mix it with other audio or musical parts, add effects like Reverb, Chorus, and Echo, and burn it on a CD, post it on the World Wide Web or e-mail it.
mp3DirectCut

mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.
Music Editor Free

Music Editor Free (MEF) is a multi-award winning music editor software tool. MEF helps you to record and edit music and sounds. It lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.
Wavosaur

Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert. Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing. The program has no installer and doesn't write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design.
Traverso DAW

Traverso DAW is a GPL licensed, cross platform multitrack audio recording and editing suite, with an innovative and easy to master User Interface. It's suited for both the professional and home user, who needs a robust and solid DAW. Adding and removal of effects plugins, moving Audio Clips and creating new Tracks during playback are all perfectly safe, giving you instant feedback on your work!
Ardour

Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. You can produce your own CDs, mix video soundtracks, or just experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-destructive editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a powerful mixer, unlimited tracks/busses/plugins, timecode synchronization, and hardware control from surfaces like the Mackie Control Universal. If you've been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Pyramix, or Sequoia, you might have found it.
Rosegarden

Rosegarden is a well-rounded audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment. Rosegarden is an easy-to-learn, attractive application that runs on Linux, ideal for composers, musicians, music students, and small studio or home recording environments.
Hydrogen

Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for GNU/Linux. It's main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.
WavePad Sound Editor

WavePad Sound Editor lets you make and edit music, voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav editor or mp3 editor but it also supports a number of other file formats including vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more.
Sound Engine

SoundEngine is the best tool for personal use, because it enables you to easily edit a wave data while it has many functions required for a mastering process.
Expstudio Audio Editor

Expstudio Audio Editor is a visual music file editor that has many different options and a multiple functionality to edit your music files like editing text files. With a given audio data it can perform many different operations such as displaying a waveform image of an audio file, filtering, applying various audio effects, format conversion and more.
DJ Audio Editor

DJ Audio Editor is easy-to-use and well-organized audio application which allows you to perform various operations with audio data. You can create and edit audio files professionally, also displaying a waveform image of audio file makes your work faster.
Eisenkraut

Eisenkraut is a cross-platform audio file editor. It requires Java 1.4+ and SuperCollider 3. It supports multi-channel and multi-mono files and floating-point encoding. An OSC scripting interface and experimental sonagramme functionality are provided.
FREE WAVE MP3 Editor

Free Wave MP3 Editor is a sound editor program for Windows. This software lets you make and edit voice and other audio recordings. You can cut, copy and paste parts of recording and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction.
Kangas Sound Editor

Fun Kangaroo-themed program that allows the user to create music and sound effects. It uses a system of frequency ratios for pitch control, rather than conventional music notation and equal temperament. It allows instruments, both musical and percussion, to be created.
Ecawave

Ecawave is a simple graphical audio file editor. The user-interface is based on Qt libraries, while almost all audio functionality is taken directly from ecasound libraries. As ecawave is designed for editing large audio files, all processing is done direct-to-disk. Simple waveform caching is used to speed-up file operations. Ecawave supports all audio file formats and effect algorithms provided by ecasound libraries. This includes JACK, ALSA, OSS, aRts, over 20 file formats, over 30 effect types, LADSPA plugins and multi-operator effect presets.
Audiobook Cutter

Audiobook Cutter splits your MP3 audio books and podcasts in a fast and user friendly way. The split files can easily be used on mobile MP3 players because of their small-size. Their duration allows smooth navigation through the book. The split points are determined automatically based on silence detection.
Jokosher

Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio. With it you can create and record music, podcasts and more, all from an integrated simple environment.
LMMS

LMMS is a free cross-platform alternative to commercial programs like FL Studio, which allow you to produce music with your computer. This includes the creation of melodies and beats, the synthesis and mixing of sounds, and arranging of samples. You can have fun with your MIDI-keyboard and much more; all in a user-friendly and modern interface.
Mp3Splt

Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It's very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks. If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds.
Qtractor

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt4 framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio, and the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) for MIDI, are the main infrastructures to evolve as a fairly-featured Linux desktop audio workstation GUI, specially dedicated to the personal home-studio.
ReZound

ReZound aims to be a stable, open source, and graphical audio file editor primarily for.
Sweep

Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. It supports many music and voice formats including WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and MP3, with multichannel editing and LADSPA effects plugins.
Wavesurfer

WaveSurfer is an Open Source tool for sound visualization and manipulation. It has been designed to suit both novice and advanced users. WaveSurfer has a simple and logical user interface that provides functionality in an intuitive way and which can be adapted to different tasks.

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Tauren Pro- Premium Wordpress Theme

2008-12-30T07:04:00.001+05:30

When it comes to premium WordPress themes these days it's sometimes tough to find a quality design and theme. I usually spend a lot of time scouring the web looking for the best of the best so the themes listed on eBlog Templates are top-notch.

Tauren is one of the ThemeSpinner premium WordPress themes and is one of my favorites from their site. The pricing is reasonable especially the unlimited license which allows you to use on all your blogs.

This theme is WP 2.5+ compatible, widget ready, Adsense ready, gravatar ready, unlimited support, and the PSDs are even included.

Packages

Single Use ($69) - This package includes one license, unlimited theme support, and the design .psds.

Multiple Use ($128) - This package includes license to use on unlimited blogs, unlimited theme support, and the design .psds.

This is one of many nice premium WordPress themes created by ThemeSpinner.com and if you don't like this layout and/or color scheme, you can browse their other premium themes and choose another one.

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Free Instant Blog Logos

2008-12-30T06:59:00.001+05:30

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: eBlog Templates <info@eblogtemplates.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 11:39 PM
Subject: The latest news from eblog templates
To: ultimatewebber@gmail.com

If you've already got a blog and you've been searching for a cool modern logo to make it unique, I've got a great site for you. Logo Instant provides some great free logos in Photoshop format (.psd) which you can easily edit and modify to your liking. Every day they provide a brand new custom Web 2.0 logo

The motto posted on their website is,"You don't have to spend big bucks anymore for designer, because this service is 100% free". That's something most of you can appreciate I'm sure!

For those of you who don't know how to use Adobe Photoshop (or own it for that matter) then you can either download a free photo editor like Paint.net or Gimp (my personal favorite) to modify the logos. You'll have to download, install, and spend a few hours getting ramped up before you'd be able to cusomize the logos. It's not a quick easy thing to do but if you've got the time and are ready to learn a new useful skill, then it's worth doing.

Blogging For Dummies (Amazon Book)

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30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials

2008-12-28T09:39:00.001+05:30

30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials

WordPress is one of the most popular publishing platforms currently out on the market. It's free, highly-customizable, and very easy to install and use. Because of its popularity, you'll find a wide array of resources that discuss WordPress development, administration, as well as plenty of user guides to help you get started quickly.

In this article, we take advantage of the merits of learning by way of watching video tutorials and screencasts. Video tutorials allow you to learn by following along with the instructor in real-time - a format that's very effective for many people.

You can use these video tutorials a couple of ways: to learn about WordPress yourself or to send to your not-so-technology-inclined clients as a reference to help them get started. You'll find the tutorials organized into several topics that include theme development and customization, site administration, beginner's tutorials, and using some WordPress tools.

WordPress theme development

Designing for Wordpress

See Chris Coyier's (of CSS-tricks) process for designing a WordPress site in this three part series. Also check out part 2 and part 3.

Creating a WordPress Template

Here's a tutorial series (also see part 2 and part 3) for creating a WP template using a variety of free tools such as MAMP (for local machine development) and TextWrangler (a text editor).

Hodgepodge of WordPress Tricks

You'll see a variety of useful WordPress theme customization tips and tricks through this video tutorial.

WordPress as a CMS

Learn how to create a WordPress site that's more of a fully-featured content management system (like Drupal or Joomla) rather than a blogging platform using a few tools at your disposal such as the SimplePie WordPress plugin.

Install WordPress Locally

Learn how to run WordPress using a WAMP setup on your local machine for development and testing.

How to Modify WordPress Theme

In this tutorial, you'll learn about some Theme Template tags in WordPress.

Add a Twitter Field to Your Form

Learn how to install and set up the WP Twitip ID plugin to integrate Twitter into your WordPress site.

How to put a Custom Header in your WordPress Blog

Replace the default WordPress header to a custom-made header so that you can quickly get started with your WordPress blog.

Create your first widget

This video tutorial shows you how to create a theme widget for WordPress.

How to make a WordPress plugin

Learn how to create a WordPress plugin that follows the WordPress plugin development guidelines.

Administration

How to setup PrettyURLs on WordPress

Learn everything about permalinks (including how to set it up on your WordPress site) in this video tutorial.

Setting up a member/user directory in WordPress

This video tutorial shows you how to create a member/user directory listing page to display member information.

Lost Password, Update User Info

This helpful tutorial teaches site administrators what to do in case a user loses his or her password.

Enable HTTPS

Learn about HTTPS as it pertains to the security of your WordPress site in this insightful video tutorial.

Best Practices for Upgrading WordPress

Upgrading WordPress is a simple task but there are some steps you should consider before proceeding with a major upgrade (such as backing up your WordPress database). In this tutorial, you'll learn about a good way of safely upgrading your WordPress installation.

Moving your Blog, changing your domain name

If you need to move your WordPress installation to another location on your server or web host you should check out this general tutorial on the steps involved in relocating your existing WordPress site.

Import and Export WordPress Data

Learn everything about exporting and importing your WordPress data by viewing this excellent screencast.

WordPress blog admin settings

Get a run-down of useful WordPress admin settings to help you properly administer your site.

WordPress User Roles Explained

There are several user roles that you can assign to members of your WordPress site - this thorough video tutorial teaches you the difference of each.

Getting started with WordPress

Creating the Database for your Wordpress Installation

One of the first steps involved in the installation of WordPress is the creation of a database. This tutorial shows beginners how to create a database for WordPress using phpMyAdmin, a freely available web application that most shared hosting plans have.

Creating a Sitemap using the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin

Improve search engine results using the Google Sitemap plugin - this tutorial shows you how to install and set up the plugin.

Getting Started

Geared for beginners, this tutorial is a great general introduction to blogging and WordPress.

Wordpress installation and theme tutorial

Get up and running with a WordPress installation, as well as learn the basics behind WordPress themes, by following along this video tutorial.

How to Upload PDFs

WordPress users that want to learn how to upload PDFs to share to their audience might find this short video tutorial useful.

Photo Captions

Captions describe the photos displayed on a post and in this tutorial you'll see a method for adding them to photos of a blog post.

Simple Page Edit in WordPress

This screencast shows beginning users how to edit a page in the WordPress admin section.

How do I create a picture gallery in my blog post?

This tutorial shows you how to put together a picture gallery post in WordPress.

HTML & QuickTags vs. Visual Editor

Learn the difference between editing content through the Visual Editor (the built-in WYSIWYG editor in WordPress) and good old-fashioned HTML.

WordPress tools

Using Windows Live Writer

Set up Windows Live Writer for WordPress so that you can let authors write blog posts offline.

How do I write WordPress blog posts with the ScribeFire Firefox add-on?

Make blogging hassle-free with ScribeFire, a Mozilla Firefox browser add-on that let's you update posts on-the-fly.

25 Stylish Website Footer Designs

2008-12-25T18:47:00.001+05:30

Footers on web pages have evolved from being a simple section where you host your copyright information and additional links, to a multi-functional section where you can find a variety of site features such as twitter updates, a short bio of the author, and secondary navigation.

This collection aims to showcase just some of the ways talented web designers have decided to utilize their website footers to provide that extra bit of improvement in the user's experience.

# bcandullo.com

Edgepoint Church

I primi dieci

Blog Amuki

CSS-Tricks

SimpleBits

Branded07

Blog.SpoonGraphics

PRBLOGGER.COM

Dale Harris

Web Designer Wall

Powazek

Biola Undergrad

We Are not Freelancers

43 Folders

dreamling.ca

YoDiv

Designer&Developer

Jason Santa Maria

Helmy Bern

Personal Babblishing

SamRayner.com

Flyin'Web

David Hellmann

volll

What's the verdict?

What do you think about modern website footers? Good place to stick site features or a terrible idea? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Convert a value to pixels with JavaScript

2008-12-25T18:42:00.001+05:30

I was working on something the other day and needed a quick snippet of JavaScript to convert values to pixels from any string. Below is a quick function:

function px(val) {  return parseInt(val)+"px";  }  }

To use it, just wrap your string with the function and it should convert it to pixels for you:

  var oldValue = '65';  var newValue = px(oldValue);

Let me know how this works for you and if you make any modifications to improve it. Thanks!

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40 Impressive Product Ads You Don’t See in Magazines

2008-12-25T18:41:00.001+05:30

We constantly see a lot of impressive advertisements in the magazines, posters and all but that's just what being printed for us. Chances are, there are lots of great designs out there that have not surfaced. These designs could be done by students for school projects, passionate graphic designers or even failed pitches that did not meet industry requirements. However we thought they are great and deserve some publicity. We respect the fact that these designers are wiling to share their artwork. Some are available in high resolution that might fit as wallpapers, but do check with the respective authors if you are going to download them.

Without further ado, here are 40 Impressive Product Advertisement You Don't See in Magazines. Full list after jump.

If you love creative advertisements, here are some we've previously published:

All colors
by BraveDesign

ADIDAS ad
by Phanox

Adidas Advertisement
by StratocasterUK

Adidas
by exadorv

Adidas
by noeeko

Adidas, The one
by roxymanlol

Eco Bottle Ad
by ishbu

Hugo Boss - Skyline is the limit
by archanN

Shoot For The Stars
by 1NNU3NDO

Hugo Create
by frostenblade

Hugo Dreams
by GraphicStreetRacer

iPhone :: Safari
by Benny04

Sony Ericsson S500i
by vezeta

Sony Ericsson k850i
by aleszev

Sony Ericsson W880i
by eduardoBRA

Martini Brut - King
by he1z

Miracles happen
by mistikraptor

Nokia N81 Ad
by Phanox

Nike
by GrantJohno

Nike Environment Protection
by dr4oz

Nike meteors ad concept
by Koston101

Nintendo Ads
by inxiaonia

Nokia 7380
by cancera3

Nokia 7610
by Aeoll

Nokia 7900 Prism
by queedo

Nokia 8600 Luna Advertisement
by Uribaani

Nokia N96
by hilall2006

Nokia phone v.2
by cortezART

Pepsi Commercial
by mindfuckx

Playstation 3
by mOsk

Puma
by phatdesign

Sony Ericsson S500i
by r0man-de

Samsung Bordeaux Plus

by roxymanlol

Small Wonder - HP
by Espador

Sony Ericsson
by roxymanlol

Sony Ericsson S500i
by eduardoBRA

Sony Ericsson Z320i
by roxymanlol

Tiger Beer : Energy
by archanN

Sony Ericsson W200a
by raisedsighty

Playstation 3
by roxymanlol

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Blog Template : Church Revolution 2

2008-12-25T18:36:00.002+05:30

The Church Revolution 2 theme is a 3-column widget-ready theme created for WordPress. It's part 2 in the Revolution theme series and is quite a beauty. I'm not quite sure why it was named "Church" but I bet there's some story behind how it got named.

This nice premium WordPress theme has some great features like a magazine-style home page with an animated featured posts section (that uses mootools which is a very popular javascript library). It also has several spots to place all your ads like 125 x 125 button ads or a 468 x 60 header banner so it's quite flexible. Very nicely designed and full of great features so I highly recommend it.

Payment Information

All payments are done through E-Junkie.com which provides a digital delivery of your purchase within minutes after your payment has cleared.

Packages

Single Package ($59.95) - This package includes theme download, unlimited theme support, and detailed theme tutorials.

Pro-Plus Package ($149.95) - This package includes all theme downloads, unlimited theme support, and detailed theme tutorials.

This is a great series of premium WordPress themes created by Brian and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a quick way to skin their blog with such professional style.

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Blog Template : Lifestyle Revolution 2

2008-12-25T18:33:00.001+05:30

Lifestyle Revolution 2

The Lifestyle Revolution 2 theme is a 3-column widget-ready theme created for WordPress. It's part 2 in the Revolution theme series and is another high quality theme designed and built by Brian Gardner.

The layout is basically the same as the Church Revolution 2 theme but just uses a different color palette and set of pictures. I see this theme being used more for a travel or vacation blog since it gives more of a tropical vibe. It can of course be used for any sort of blog so don't let me deter you from getting it.

Overall, this nice premium WordPress theme has some great features like a magazine-style home page with an animated featured posts section (that uses mootools which is a very popular javascript library). It also has several spots to place all your ads like 125 x 125 button ads or a 468 x 60 header banner so it's quite flexible. Very nicely designed and full of great features so I highly recommend it. Go check out the live demo!

Payment Information

All payments are done through E-Junkie.com which provides a digital delivery of your purchase within minutes after your payment has cleared.

Packages

Single License ($59.95) - This package includes theme download, unlimited theme support, and detailed theme tutorials.

Pro-Plus Package ($149.95) - This package includes all theme downloads, unlimited theme support, and detailed theme tutorials.

This is a great series of premium WordPress themes created by Brian and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a quick way to skin their blog with such professional style.

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Top 10 Designer Blogs on the Web in 2008

2008-12-25T18:30:00.001+05:30

If you love to check out fancy blogs, then you will love this list of 10 top blog designs from designers! These are the cream of the crop, the creme de la creme, so take notes and enjoy.

10. Jason Santa Maria - jasonsantamaria.com

9. Shaun Inman - shauninman.com

8. Scott Schiller - schillmania.com

7. Kevin Cornell - bearskinrug.co.uk

6. Veerle Pieters - veerle.duoh.com

5. Matt Brett - mattbrett.com

4. Dan Cederholm, SimpleBits - simplebits.com

3. Rogie King, Komodo Media - komodomedia.com

2. Elliot Jay Stocks - elliotjaystocks.com

1. Bryan Veloso - avalonstar.com

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10 Ways to Improve Your Web Page Performance

2008-12-25T18:27:00.001+05:30

There are a million and one ways to boost your website's performance. The methods vary and some are more involved than others. The three main areas that you can work on are: hardware (your web server), server-side scripting optimization (PHP, Python, Java), and front-end performance (the meat of the web page).

This article primarily focuses on front-end performance since it's the easiest to work on and provides you the most bang for your buck.

Why focus on front-end performance?

The front-end (i.e. your HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images) is the most accessible part of your website. If you're on a shared web hosting plan, you might not have root (or root-like) access to the server and therefore can't tweak and adjust server settings. And even if you do have the right permissions, web server and database engineering require specialized knowledge to give you any immediate benefits.

It's also cheap. Most of the front-end optimization discussed can be done at no other cost but your time. Not only is it inexpensive, but it's the best use of your time because front-end performance is responsible for a very large part of a website's response time.

With this in mind, here are a few simple ways to improve the speed of your website.

1. Profile your web pages to find the culprits.

It's helpful to profile your web page to find components that you don't need or components that can be optimized. Profiling a web page usually involves a tool such as Firebug to determine what components (i.e. images, CSS files, HTML documents, and JavaScript files) are being requested by the user, how long the component takes to load, and how big it is. A general rule of thumb is that you should keep your page components as small as possible (under 25KB is a good target).

Firebug's Net tab (shown above) can help you hunt down huge files that bog down your website. In the above example, you can see that it gives you a break down of all the components required to render a web page including: what it is, where it is, how big it is, and how long it took to load.

There are many tools on the web to help you profile your web page - check out this guide for a few more tools that you can use.

2. Save images in the right format to reduce their file size.

If you have a lot of images, it's essential to learn about the optimal format for each image. There are three common web image file formats: JPEG, GIF, and PNG. In general, you should use JPEG for realistic photos with smooth gradients and color tones. You should use GIF or PNG for images that have solid colors (such as charts and logos).

GIF and PNG are similar, but PNG typically produces a lower file size. Read Coding Horror's weigh-in on using PNG's over GIF's.

3. Minify your CSS and JavaScript documents to save a few bytes.

Minification is the process of removing unneeded characters (such as tabs, spaces, source code comments) from the source code to reduce its file size. For example:

This chuck of CSS:

.some-class {  color: #ffffff;  line-height: 20px;  font-size: 9px;  }

can be converted to:

.some-class{color:#fff;line-height:20px;font-size:9px;}

…and it'll work just fine.

And don't worry - you won't have to reformat your code manually. There's a plethora of free tools available at your disposal for minifying your CSS and JavaScript files. For CSS, you can find a bunch of easy-to-use tools from this CSS optimization tools list. For JavaScript, some popular minification options are JSMIN, YUI Compressor, and JavaScript Code Improver. A good minifying application gives you the ability to reverse the minification for when you're in development. Alternatively, you can use an in-browser tool like Firebug to see the formatted version of your code.

4. Combine CSS and JavaScript files to reduce HTTP requests

For every component that's needed to render a web page, an HTTP request is created to the server. So, if you have five CSS files for a web page, you would need at least five separate HTTP GET requests for that particular web page. By combining files, you reduce the HTTP request overhead required to generate a web page.

Check out Niels Leenheer's article on how you can combine CSS and JS files using PHP (which can be adapted to other languages). SitePoint discusses a similar method of bundling your CSS and JavaScript;they were able to shave off 1.6 seconds in response time, thereby reducing the response time by 76% of the original time.

Otherwise, you can combine your CSS and JavaScript files using good, old copy-and-paste'ing (works like a charm).

5. Use CSS sprites to reduce HTTP requests

A CSS Sprite is a combination of smaller images into one big image. To display the correct image, you adjust the background-position CSS attribute. Combining multiple images in this way reduces HTTP requests.

For example, on Digg (shown above), you can see individual icons for user interaction. To reduce server requests, Digg combined several icons in one big image and then used CSS to position them appropriately.

You can do this manually, but there's a web-based tool called CSS Sprite Generator that gives you the option of uploading images to be combined into one CSS sprite, and then outputs the CSS code (the background-position attributes) to render the images.

6. Use server-side compression to reduce file sizes

This can be tricky if you're on a shared web host that doesn't already server-side compression, but to fully optimize the serving of page components they should be compressed. Compressing page objects is similar to zipping up a large file that you send through email: You (web server) zip up a large family picture (the page component) and email it to your friend (the browser) – they in turn unpack your ZIP file to see the picture. Popular compression methods are Deflate and gzip.

If you run your own dedicated server or if you have a VPS - you're in luck - if you don't have compression enabled, installing an application to handle compression is a cinch. Check out this guide on how to install mod_gzip on Apache.

7. Avoid inline CSS and JavaScript

By default, external CSS and JavaScript files are cached by the user's browser. When a user navigates away from the landing page, they will already have your stylesheets and JavaScript files, which in turn saves them the need to download styles and scripts again. If you use a lot of CSS and JavaScript in your HTML document, you won't be taking advantage of the web browser's caching features.

8. Offload site assets and features

Unloading some of your site assets and features to third-party web services greatly reduces the work of your web server. The principle of offloading site assets and features is that you share the burden of serving page components with another server.

You can use Feedburner to handle your RSS feeds, Flickr to serve your images (be aware of the implications of offloading your images though), and the Google AJAX Libraries API to serve popular JavaScript frameworks/libraries like MooTools, jQuery, and Dojo.

For example, on Six Revisions I use Amazon's Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3 for short), to handle the images you see on this page, as well as Feedburner to handle RSS feeds. This allows my own server to handle just the serving of HTML, CSS, and CSS image backgrounds. Not only are these solutions cost-effective, but they drastically reduce the response times of web pages.

9. Use Cuzillion to plan out an optimal web page structure

Cuzillion is a web-based application created by Steve Souders (front-end engineer for Google after leaving Yahoo! as Chief of Performance) that helps you experiment with different configurations of a web page's structure in order to see what the optimal structure is. If you already have a web page design, you can use Cuzillion to simulate your web page's structure and then tweak it to see if you can improve performance by moving things around.

View InsideRIA's video interview of Steve Sounders discussing how Cuzillion works and the Help guide to get you started quickly.

10. Monitor web server performance and create benchmarks regularly.

The web server is the brains of the operation - it's responsible for getting/sending HTTP requests/responses to the right people and serves all of your web page components. If your web server isn't performing well, you won't get the maximum benefit of your optimization efforts.

It's essential that you are constantly checking your web server for performance issues. If you have root-like access and can install stuff on the server, check out ab - an Apache web server benchmarking tool or Httperf from IBM.

If you don't have access to your web server (or have no clue what I'm talking about) you'll want to use a remote tool like Fiddler or HTTPWatch to analyze and monitor HTTP traffic. They will both point out places that are troublesome for you to take a look at.

Benchmarking before and after making major changes will also give you some insight on the effects of your changes. If your web server can't handle the traffic your website generates, it's time for an upgrade or server migration.

Got more?

Like I said, there are a million ways and one to improve web page performance. If you've got a bit more input on the points above or have additional tips you'd like to discuss, please share it with us in the comments.

Blog Template : Arthemia

2008-12-25T18:21:00.001+05:30

Arthemia

Arthemia is a new free WordPress theme which is a great starter theme. It will take some time configuring all the features but any quality theme usually does. I personally haven't downloaded it yet but just from viewing the demo, it seems solid. The author also provides a premium series of Arthemia which top-notch, very functional and colorful for a premium WordPress theme. This free version is nice but if you really want to step up your blog, it's worth buying the premium Arthemia theme.

This is actually v2.0 of the great magazine WordPress theme Arthemia. There are changes in the post list on the front page, some CSS fixes, new thumbnail feature for post list on the front page, archive, and search pages, modified comment list style, and added the WP-PageNavi plugin support. Pages and sub-pages in the top navigation bar are now shown automatically.

This free WordPress theme was created by Michael Jubel Hutagalung.

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40 Excellent Blog Designs

2008-12-25T18:19:00.001+05:30

According to Technorati, there are at least 100 million blogs currently in existence. With that much competition, it's a true challenge to create a unique and stunning blog design.

In this collection, you'll find 40 beautiful blog designs for your inspiration.

Viget Labs Web Design Blog

Web Design Ledger

Jason Santa Maria

Luova

BOOOOOOOM!

That INDIE Dude

Bearskinrug

The Organic Supermarket

Malene Hald

Carsonified

Hyper Island

Bart-Jan Verhoef

mezzoblue

QN5 Blog

The Darling Blog

Luis Alarcón

SimpleBits

Ian James Cox

Boompa

Blog What? Design

Sushi & Robots

31Three

surfgarden

Fubiz

iseen blog

eleven3

Dollarshort

Design Disease

Catalyst Studios

hicksdesign

Web Designer Wall

The Electric Pulp Blog

Veerle's blog 2.0

Narfstuff

Freelenz

i.am.finch

Odds&Ends

Chris Welch

Cognigen

Kimberly Coles Illustration Blog

Missed your favorite blog?

Got a blog that you think should've been included in this collection? Share it with all of us in the comments!

The Ultimate Web Safe Font List Reference

2008-12-25T18:11:00.001+05:30

The Ultimate Web Safe Font List Reference

TypeTester.org is a great way to find the perfect font setting.

If you're like me, you frequently need a quick reference for finding the right web-safe font for a website. I've compiled a list that outlines the various fonts that Windows ships with, along with the Mac equivalent (or just very similar). Special thanks to ampsoft.net.

I've added tags to each font that denotes which fonts come standard with each OS.

Legend:: Windows; Mac; Both

Arial, Helvetica

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Arial Black, Gadget

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Comic Sans MS

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  Courier New, Courier  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Georgia

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Impact, Charcoal

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  Lucida Console, Monaco  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Tahoma, Geneva

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Times New Roman, Times

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Trebuchet MS, Helvetica

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Verdana, Geneva

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

MS Sans Serif, Geneva

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

MS Serif, New York

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

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