hongkiat.com

Freebie: Fluzzy Twitter Icon Set

2009-11-19T12:44:12Z

Meet Fluzzy, yet another high quality free Twitter icon set released exclusively for Hongkiat readers from our friend at Iconshock. You might also want to check out Blitter Twitter Icon set we previously released no long ago.

Fluzzy is free, comes in a set of 6 different icons in two separate sizes – 256×256px and 512×512px. All graphics are in tranparent .PNG 24-bit. We’ve also included the .AI source. For designers who wish to get the most of the icons, you are welcome to do so.

This icon set is free for personal or commercial projects, however you are now allow to re-sell, re-distribute or generate profit out out it.

Download Fluzzy

Download Fluzzy (256×256, 512×512), PNG format
Download Fluzzy source Ilustrator .AI format
Download Fluzzy full set (Icons + source)

Editor’s Note
Are you a designer looking to release your work (Wordpress theme, icon-sets, wallpapers, stock photos, etc)? We can give a hand, both financially and have it featured in Hongkiat.com, drop us a word!

Masters of Paper Art and Paper Sculptures

2009-11-17T15:18:20Z

To most people, making a paper plane could be one of the simplest thing to do. It’s the simplest and easiest form of paper art, for this case a flying art. However, there’s a special minority who takes thing to the next level. They can turn the basic form of origami – which is folding a paper in half – together with a little cutting, folding, bending, shaping, and more paper folding, into an utmost creative artwork you have ever seen.

Credit: Sculpture by Simon Schubert

In this post, we will attempt to show how these minority, creative minded folks turn a very thin slice of wood – paper – into wonders, and bringing paper art to the next level. Without further ado, here’s an impressive showcase of paper art and paper sculptures by some the best paper artistes in the world. Full list after the jump.

Jen Stark

Jen Stark is a contemporary artist whose majority of work involves creating paper sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation. Her work draws inspiration from microscopic patterns in nature, wormholes, and sliced anatomy.

Over and out

Reciprocal

Enchant

Coriolis Effect

Simon Schubert

Cologne, Germany based artis, Simon Schuberts works imagine architectonical settings, common situations and objects, whereas the material he uses are either simple or sophisticated – white paper folded or mixed media arrangements.

Emma Van Leest

Daniel Grein

A trained designer for digital and print media from University of Applied Sciences Schwäbisch Gmünd Germany.

Elodole

Helen Musselwhite

Helen Musselwhite creates highly individual and visually appealing framed paper sculptures.Each piece combines intricate hand cut layers of coloured paper and strong graphic images arranged to make interesting and intriguing scenes in box frames.

Carlos N. Monila

Olafur Eliasson

Jolis Paons

Paper dress sculpture made from pages of telephone book.

Aoyama Hina

"I don’t follow traditional but I am trying to create a mixture of the traditional and modern styles and to produce my own world through this super fine lacy-paper-cuttings technique" Aoyama

Sher Christopher

Sher graduated with a very distinctive sculptural style, working with clay moulds and paper, from the University of Wolverhampton with a BA (Hons) in Three Dimensional Design and a successful end of year show at Covent Garden in 1992.

Yulia Brodskaya

Yulia Brodskaya was born in Russia (Moscow); prior to moving to the UK in 2004 she was interested in diverse creative practices ranging from Textile Painting, Origami and Collage to more traditional Fine Art practices.

Peter Callesen

Born in the year of 1967, Danish artist Peter Callesen takes the most commonly consumed media – A4 papers and turn them into wonders.

Little Erected Ruin

On The Other Side

Looking back

The Short Distance Between Time and Shadow

Ingrid Siliakus

Inspired by master of origami paper artwork Prof. Masahiro Chatani, Ingrid studied his work for years and is now a master of her own.

Jennifer Khoshbin

Khoshbin was exposed to art at an early age. Both her grandfather and uncle are master carpenters; her mother is a ceramic artist; her brother is a film maker and curator; and her sister is a new media artist. It seems meant to be. (via jen11show)

David Brownings

An illustrator from Bristol UK; currently majoring illustration in UWE.

Su Blackwell

Independent Arts and Crafts professional from London, United Kingdom.

Chatsworth, Derbyshure ‘A Guide to’

The Story of Peter Pan: The Pirate Ship

Alice: Through the Looking Glass

The Old House

Bert Simons

One of Bert’s most impressive portfolio would have to be his 3 dimensional pseudo realistic paper portraits and sculptures. They are so realistic that some might find it eerie.

Harry Hamelink (2007)

Mr. Ivo Opstelten

Bert Simons himself

A couple more..

The Lifespan of Paper-Marriage
via ppt-ping

White Shadows
via hellofromthemoon

Serial Cut
Madrid based studio, established in 1999 by Sergio del Puerto.

Origami Koi
via Richi89

50 Beautiful and Professionally Looking Joomla Templates

2009-11-12T14:29:02Z

Joomla is an award winning open source content management system (CMS) that allows you to build websites of different varieties like blogs, personal portfolio site, photo galleries, e-commerce sites, etc. Joomla is easy to customize and thanks to the Joomla community, there are plenty of beautiful templates to choose from so you can have a great looking Joomla powered website and online application.

This following post is dedicated to Joomla users and those who wish to start with Joomla. Here are some beautiful and professionally looking Joomla templates you should know.

Free Joomla Templates

City sky | Demo | Download
The template features 2 parameters that serve to change the background on the one hand and to insert one’s twitter URL on the other, the latter then being highlighted to direct the attention of your readers to your twitter account.

Guild Wars | Demo | Download
Perfect for your online games website, it is perfect for clan forum.

Disco Beat | Demo | Download
Help you distribute your site contents between 4 layout columns – a 2-column central area and two neighboring sidebars (left & right). The main area will be your main site contents holder, while the sidebars will allow you to set apart supporting classified information.

PJ Enchanted | Demo | Download
Available in both native Joomla 1.5 as well as Joomla 1.0.x versions.

Top Gear | Demo | Download
Organized in 4 columns, including a 2-column main area, surrounded by a left and a right sidebar. The top-speed JavaScript based main menu bar will allow for a real quick navigation to the internal pages of your car racing website.

JS Lunar Eclipse | Demo | Download
Easy navigation and plenty of space to make modular websites expand.

Forex Trading | Demo | Download
Dedicated to the foreign exchange market affairs and is targeted at banks or other official institutions operating that trade markets globally.

Violin1 | Demo | Download

JS Optimus | Demo | Download
Clean template that let’s your all important content speak for your site, and not get buried under a distracting template. Built to be SEO optimized and take subtle advantage of Joomla 1.5’s template override features.

Bikini Beach | Demo | Download
This template can be successfully used for various leisure time related websites – from professional travel agency portals promoting their hot offers online, through e-stores offering sunbathing accessories, to personal sites representing trip diaries.

World of Warcraft Flash Joomla Template | Demo | Download
One more perfect Joomla template for game website.

Contaminated | Demo | Download
Black based toxic green for the alternative people out there with breadcrumb supported.

Sabana Plazza | Demo | Download
Lightweight and fast loading (its filesize only about 50 Kb).

Diablo III FLASH | Demo | Download
This is the FLASH version of Diablo III templates for Joomla. This is a standard Joomla template. However, it includes a flash header with great effects.

The DailyPraise | Demo | Download
Makes creating news and magazine site easy.

Digital Systems | Demo | Download
Comes with many standard features and is very easy to integrate with any Joomla installation. It comes with a custom right menu and all module positions are fully collapsible.

Default | Demo | Download

Professional Joomla Templates

Delicious | Demo
Features a 3 column layout, plenty of module positions, a menu with built-in support for VirtueMart 1.1 and a native or blog styled date tag for articles.

Dark Rational | Demo
This template has enough features to satisfy your need for gadgets, but still lightweight enough to be fast and super good looking as well.

Espresso | Demo
Espresso comes packed with themes for some of the top components for Joomla!, including: My Blog, Jomsocial, JomComment, Kunena, Seyret, and exclusive Joomla! content overides.

JA Tube | Demo

Showcase Plazza | Demo
For those of you who want to make your own CSS gallery website.

Blog You | Demo
Gives you complete control over the template styles in our custom TI template manager, from preset styles to your own custom styles, template control has never been easier.

Bliss | Demo

Snappa | Demo
A little grunge and dirty look.

NewsPro Darkness | Demo
Perfect for online newsportals, magazines, blogs, fashion and entertainment sites.

You Tutorials | Demo
Advanced Joomla frontpage styling that takes off the standard Joomla template look and gives your more flexibility and uniqueness.

Sea of Glass | Demo

JA Quartz | Demo

SuperBlog | Demo
Incorporates two very powerful extensions, K2 and the Superblogger Plugin (both from JoomlaWorks).

Creative | Demo
Introduces new styling and layout concepts in the Joomla template world. Menus with shadows, blog date tags with multiple designs and collapsible module positions give this template maximum flexibility. You can enable the blog styled dates to make it work as a blog, the VirtueMart enabled menus to make it an e-commerce website, or keep it simple and use it as a presentation page.

Mediaplate | Demo

PopPraise | Demo
One big trendy guilty pleasure that comes with drop-shadows, gradients, rounded corners, sex appeal, and even a pink color theme option.

eShop Dark | Demo

JA Cooper | Demo

Meridian | Demo

Microblog Plazza | Demo
Microblog Plazza is completed with a TPStatus component, where a user in your website will have his/her own microblogging page in which he/she can write a status update and then receive comments from other users. It’s like a great mix of twitter and facebook.

Zappa | Demo
Make your website gleam with a fun and bright Web 2.0 style template.

JA Opal | Demo

Refraction | Demo
Refraction is a template to inspire and amaze. Utilising transparent overlays over professional and artistic background images produces staggering results, all matched with the perfect colour combination. Its easy to radically change the design with just an image and colour.

EcoLife | Demo
This ground breaking new template has been handcrafted to be Eco-Friendly, feature filled & graphically stunning. This template comes bundled with many extra features & extra stylings for some of the most popular Joomla! components.

Grunge!sta v2 | Demo
Created in antique elegance manner with a touch of Gothic style for those who want to stand out.

Viyo | Demo

Dub | Demo
Packed with Moo + Jquery effects and Modules, Dub offers some of the most advanced effects and scripts on the web. Dub offers multiple themes and 2 layout styles with a host of graphic elements and font colors.

Affinity | Demo
Released from RocketTheme and features extensive third party support for powerful and popular community products, such as JomSocial, K2 and phpBB3. The template’s core feature is Sortable Elements, which allows for the movement of modular rows, individual positions and stacks of modules.

Yougames | Demo

Scene | Demo

ElveSocial | Demo

Infuse | Demo
Infuse is an infusion of artistic flair and functionality. The theme boasts six, individual and unique, style variations, meticulously constructed to perfection. The theme is accompanied by 6 Style Variations, each with 3 different background options, culminating in a total of 18 possible combinations.

Crystal | Demo
Crystal offers lots of different color variations for menu items, allowing you to style every page in a different color.

About author:Dainis is blogger from Latvia. He is webmaster of Psdeluxe.com (Photoshop deluxe) – Design community where you find photoshop tutorials and useful resources for web and graphic designers. Follow Dainis on Twitter

80+ Creative Geek T-Shirts You Can Buy Online

2009-11-10T13:20:44Z

We love tees because they have so many rooms for creativity in terms of design. As designers who always strive to maintain originality and uniqueness, we are sucker for creative stuff, that includes what we put on.

When was the last time we you walked down the street and people start checking out your attire? It doesn’t have to be something branded, a creative and catchy t-shirt will do, really. Here’s a collection of creative t-shirts you can buy and add to your wardrobe this holiday season. Full list after jump.

Interactive Tees

Wi-Fi Detector Shirt

You can display the current wi-fi signal strength to yourself and everyone around you with this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt. The glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the surrounding wi-fi signal strength fluctuates.

T-Qualizer

A fully functioning graphic equalizer in a handy t-shirt format. Party like it’s 2999 with the glowing display on the T-Qualizer that dynamically changes with any ambient sound or music.

8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt

During your normal activities two and a half pixelated hearts will light up on your shirt. But get within hugging distance of your significant other wearing the matching shirt and suddenly the hearts on both of your shirts start to light up until you’re fully powered up.

Electronic Drum Kit

Hit the drums on this shirt with your finger and they play through the built in speaker simple but amazing. With 7 different drum sounds you’re ready for a personal drum solo on your chest.

T-Sketch Light Up Flashing T-Shirt

Whatever you draw or write on the special section of the shirt will be converted into an illuminated message or design.

Transformers Light Up Flashing T-Shirt

Whoever you go with, you will love these t-shirts, they actually light up! The bright logo is sure to attract the right sort of attention and will look stunning at the cinema, at parties, or out clubbing.

Animated Retro Table Tennis Shirt

Amazing animated glowing old skool gaming on your chest. The two automated computer players are very talented and never seem to miss a shot.

Geek Tees

There’s no place like 127.0.0.1

Sometimes you just have to get away. Just close your eyes, click your heels, don this fine t-shirt and all your troubles will flow by the wayside just like those luser files piped into /dev/null.

Turn Me On T-Shirt

The "On button" on monitors from nerdy girl.

Error 405 T-Shirt

HTTP Error 405 – Method not allowed.

Invisible T-Shirt

This is what would happen if you use the Photoshop eraser tool on yourself!

Apple Timeline

It’s easy to forget that Apple is 30 years old. Lets take a minute to remember the 20th Anniversary Mac.

Binary Tree

A binary "tree" which displays a tree data structure.

No One Cares Blog

Tell it like it is: No one cares about your blog. No one reads your blog. Enough about your blog already. Your blog is not special or interesting. Your blog is boring.

HD DVD 4by4 T Shirt

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. Wear it with pride and look stylish-geeky too.

Bathroom Blogger Funny T-Shirt

Confess it! You’re a toilet clogger and a bathroom blogger. It’s so wrong but it feels so right!

G33K HOODED PULLOVER

PHP code made for geeks.

Geek inside

Geeks rule.Support geeks with this awesome shirt.

Internet People

The Internet – where awful people meet.

They Use Photoshop

They may or may not perform medical experiments on eccentric rednecks, but they are here, they are among us, and they use Photoshop.

In Your Base

Pinkos capture your territory. Aren’t they supposed to be all about sharing?

Gaming Lifestyle

Drool marks and blood-shot eyes along with slowly decomposing junk food are hallmarks of a late night gaming session too good to stop, until you pass out that is.

DaVinci Hax

If recently uncovered sketches prove to be authentic, that nefarious DaVinci guy may have been the unwitting inventor of our future doom!

RRoD

If you’re not careful, your 360 may jettison you out an air-lock.

My first time

My first time. It’s all there on a spacious 1.2MB floppy disk.

Social Media Venn Diagram

A Venn diagram showing the psychological forces at work among users of social networking tools

1 Random Thing

1 random thing, because 25 random things is 25 too many.

Extra Lives

Don’t worry, I have extra lives.

Can’t sleep, ghosts will eat

For anyone that grew up in the 80s or anyone that has ever played Pacman. For the retro gamer in all of us.

Super Geek

It’s Super Geek. Give this gift to the special geek in your life.

Having an iPhone has completely changed the way I poop

Alt of Ctrl

Alt of Ctrl shirt shows your wild side in computer keys.

Your skill in Reading

This one is for all the MMORPG freaks out there. Now you can share that rewarding experience with those around you as they read your shirt!

Cancel or Allow

Without mentioning any names, we know that some of you are a little frustrated with the newest version of a certain operating system.

Explosives Man

Haven’t you had enough of those pesky machine gun-building, health-healing, quick-running, disguise-wearing, rocket-launching, flame-throwing hooligans? Exact revenge with your own style of renegade justice: KA-BOOOM!

Insomniac Innovation

Insomniac Innovations, is the perfect tee for anyone who likes to stay up during the weee hours of night all the way into the early morning.

Refill Required

Every laptop battery monitor will let the user know when it is getting low. Your coffee could use a similar system so your coffee cup never ends up empty just when you need it most.

Modern Pirates

Show your support for the piracy scene with this Modern Pirate t-shirt.

The Last Supper Pacman Videogame Shirt

It wasn’ t until PacMan ordered a giant white ball that Mr. Ghost knew something had gone awry. Disastrously awry.

I Don’t Wanna Grow Up

If peter pan had the option, he’d wear this shirt every day.

Twitter Tees

That’s what she Twittered

Display a tweet of what she twittered right on a shirt.

No-One Reads Your Stupid Tweets

The truth hurts, but people need to know it. Even if you’re being (slightly) immature about it.

Drop Tweets Not Bombs

Friends Don’t Let Friends Tweet and Drive

It’s totally safe to tweet and text message while driving.

History never reTweets Shirt

A funny play on lyrics from an old song mashed for twitter lovers.

I’m Not a Blogger I Just Tweet A Lot.

I’ll Suck Your Tweet

Fail Whaling

When Twitter experiences an outage, users see the “fail whale” error message image.

I T Therefore I Am

The philosophy of twitter users.

In space, no one can hear you tweet

Don’t tweet in space.

Typographic Tees

IM In UR Blank

Reclaim the phrase for the humans by captioning yourself. This shirt is full of write-on, wash-off goodness.

Alphabet Hi T-shirt

Hi! is highlighted to attract attention.

Spell Dyslexia T-Shirt

This funny dyslexia shirt is perfect for that friend our family member always claiming to have dyslexia.

Fluorine Uranium Carbon Potassium

Thanks to phosphorous, “P” was taken, leaving “K” for potassium (obviously)…

PHP (pretty hot programmer)

So many memories so little RAM

Sex Drugs Helvetica Bold

Sex drugs helvetica bold, white print on black.

Will Kern for Food

Will kern for food, white print on black.

Tetris Taught Me the Fundamentals of Architecture

Funny Novelty Tees

Durtbag Punchline Shirts

A funny novelty tee where a priest, a rabbi, and a horse walk into a bar.

Durtbagz Zombie Shirts

Give this for super funny holiday gifts to prevent others from accidents. Hitting them just makes them want to eat your brains.

You Can Count On Me

I’m old school reliable, baby. Like an abacus, you can count on me.

Oktoberfest Serving Wench T-shirt

Stop Following Me! (Evolution)

Wear the Evolution 2 design with the caption “Stop Following me!”

Be Rational! Get Real!

Pi and i argument. What would happen if Pi and i got into an argument.

Can’t Touch This Equation

Finally, all that math you learned in high school is getting put to use.

Find X

Perfect t-shirt for anyone getting ready to step into a math test. You can never be wrong with this funny find x tee shirt!

Invisibility Shirt

Your invisibility t-shirt will come as invisibility shirt currently deactivated. Remember turn it on at your own risk!

Tuxedo T-Shirt

This funny tuxedo t-shirt is great for parties, weddings, or other special events. Dress up by dressing down.

Muscle Man T-Shirt with Real Nipple Ring

Biker Chick Coverup

The Biker Chick Cover-Up features a hot and sexy bikini.

Misc Creative Tees

Barcode Colour T-Shirt

Abstract and colourful barcode printed on a black tee.

Apartment Building

Living in the city, we might be merged into the urban environment better when putting on the skin of the city.

Beijing Satellite

Wearing a SQY-T Useful Information t-shirt, you might be more helpful to those who stare at your t-shirt.

Map of Shanghai

Google map of Shanghai. You’ll never get lost again in Shanghai.

Love Is Colorblind Heart

You Complete Me

This shirt helps you show your softer side in the most nerdy way possible. With a galaga t-shirt!

The Hangover Movie Funny T Shirt

Tigers love pepper. They hate cinnamon!

You Rock My Small, Self-Centered Universe

Tell the one you love that they’re almost as important as you are.

Points of View

Realist, idealist, capitalist, communist, conspiracist, sexist, nihilist and opportunist, each with their own witty opinion of the glass half full or half empty.

Milky Way

Exit

Exit from rain on your shirt.

RedDot Boxing Gloves

RedDot Boxing Gloves Tee features the illusion of crimson boxing gloves strewn around the neck.

Bulzeye Headphones V-Neck Tee

This Bulzeye Headphones V-Neck Tee in Vintage White features crystallized headphones on front and Bulzeye logo on back.

Wish You Were Here

The title says everything.

Journey to the City of No Horizon

A surreal concept where there is a city of no horizon with endless flow of river towards bottom and infinite extension of sky towards top.

CutMe

Hands Down

Nice colors and placement for a hand skeleton.

Macro Photography II – 70 Beautiful Photos of Insects

2009-11-08T00:31:44Z

Insect photography is challenging under the best circumstances. Think about it: you’re taking photos of something that is likely smaller than your little finger (and at largest is still probably smaller than your hand), has no reason to cooperate, and likely views you as a predator or is oblivious to your presence entirely. And even if you’re taking photos of dead insects, it still takes a lot of skill (and a good macro lens) to get the right focus and lighting.

The photographers who managed to snap the photos below all deserve some serious respect. They’ve managed to capture the beauty and complexity of some of the most beautiful specimens in the insect world. Look at their coloring, their structure, the way their bodies are segmented, and let them inspire your designs. Whether you simply borrow a color scheme or go for something a bit more obvious, insects can serve as a wonderful source of artistic inspiration, one that is often overlooked.

Here are more photography related entries you might be interested:

Full list after jump.

Insect
by FockLove

Insect
by PauliusC

Insect Series 3
by Grugster

Insect 08
by Josgoh

Insect
by Phaedrus-42

Insect vs Spider
by Afri

Insect
by TheRedGirl

The Insect
by VerzaubertRocken

Leaf Insect Shot 2
by Jakwak

Unidentified Insect
by Gerald Yuvallos

Insect.
by Drvall

Insect On Wood
by Rockinxrebecca

Green Insect
by Abank

Insect
by Fuegomujer

Insect 01
by Josgoh

Insects With Attitude
by MJIphotos

Insect
by Diganta Talukdar

Spotted Cucumber Beetle
by Wolfpix

Metallic Green Insect
by Srini G

Insect Macro
by Publicenergy

Death To A Dragonfly
by Greekchickie

Dragonfly_Z19789
by Ennor

Dragonfly
by CW Ye

Nasty Insect
by Geaannunziata

Green Insect
by Jaszczura

Insect Eye To Eye
by Saddogeyes

Insect 7
by Mewlo

Insect.
by ZWincik

Insect 03
by Harry-Schoemaker

Spiny Leaf Insect
by Duskmoth

Macro – Dead Insect
by Noitu-lover

Cricket Macro
by Martin_Heigan

Insect Macro
by Salendron

Insect 33
by Josgoh

Hylotrupes Bajulus
by Selley

Tiny Red Cricket
by Garion

Insect Macros_021
by Josedeluna

Insect Macro
by Aidiwz

Shy Hopper
by James Jordan

Dead Insect
by Baton101

Insect Photo 3 – Set 3
by Blookz

Insect
by Mega-Ale

Rays Of Dawn
by Ageofloss

Mr. Insect
by MrStuart

He Can Fly
by Viand

Bottle Fly On Red Flower
by Erica_Marshall

Hawker Dragonfly Macro
by Mushi_king

Fly Extreme Macro
by Martin Heigan

Blue Fly in Flight
by David Reece

Blending In
by Kibondo

Bee
by DoeLay

Resting Insect
by Pusakal1402

Third Insect
by Owczak

Dragonfly
by HVargas

Dragonfly.
by Le-Voyageur

Dragonfly
by Jaydehawk

Red Dragonfly
by Sh0ggy

The Hanging Dragonfly
by SubterfugeMalaises

Dragonfly
by Indja-art

Halloween Pennant Dragonfly
by Motleypixel

Cinnabar Moth (Tyria Jacobaeae)
by Nutmeg66

Columbia Silk Moth
by Furryscaly

Male Golden Birdwing Butterfly Bangkok
by Travlinman43

Grey Dagger Caterpillar (Acronicta Psi)
by Nutmeg66

Saddleback Caterpillar
by Cotinis

Cuckoo Wasp (Chrysididae) Pollinating Euphorbia Flowers
by Martin_Heigan

Yellow-faced Bumble Bee – Bombus Vosnesenskii
by Maxi Millipede

Transparent Butterfly
by Thefost

Copper Butterfly
by Reini68

Butterfly In Hand
by DigiDragon

Excellent HTML Newsletter Templates – Best Of

2009-11-04T13:41:33Z

A well designed newsletter/email template can be the difference between success an failure. Whether its to update customers about a product, or to share information, having a well designed template can be a great starting point to guide your readers and give them a clear coherent flow when they read your email. This is crucial, considering how important the first impression is.

Here is round-up of some of the best free HTML newsletter templates on the Internet you can download without paying a penny.

Here are more related entries you might be interested:

Full list after jump.

Top Five: Free Newsletter Templates We Like Best

Campaign Monitor – 30 FREE HTML Newsletter Templates
Here is a neatly sorted collection of 30 well produced templates which have been tested against all major email clients and web mail, for example Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. One of the feature is that it already pre-sorts all the templates into those with left or right sidebars, or single column templates
Carbon Graffiti – 10 Free email marketing templates
Carbon Graffiti is a great design website, and one of the cool resources theyve made available are 10 free email marketing templates. Designs range from very simple basic ones to custom complex templates.
Aweber: – 5 Awesome Functional Newsletter Templates
Aweber has some of the best newsletter templates out there, and some of them go beyond a good design and are pretty darn functional as well. Here are 5 of the best from Aweber.

Download
This is a great email template to use when sending over a note asking someone to download a file. This template also comes in 3 flavors – one for PDFs, one for audio, and one for any other files, as well as 6 colors – so youre able to easily customize your readers download experience.

Welcome
This is a perfect email template to use send when youre welcoming new members to your service.

Blog Newsletter
If you write a blog, this is a great template to share your info and updates in a newsletter to build a stronger relationship with your readers.

Malibu
This email template was specially built to communicate promotional offers in a quick and efficient manner.

Outdoorsy
2-column (right-hand sidebar) email template with an organic feel and navigation links available to use in the header.
MailChimp – 4 basic flexible HTML email templates
Mailchip four basic, flexible templates that you can use to get started. They’ve been tested to render properly in all the major email programs, like Outlook 2007, Lotus Notes, Gmail, and more.
Cakemail – 17 Well Designed Newsletter Templates

More Free Newsletter Templates

Here are some other sites which also offer up free newsletter templates for download.

Interspire – 30 Free Newsletter templates
Stock Layouts – TechTimes theme
This is a beautifully designed theme, although it requires you to register (for free) on the site.
Octeth – 10 Free Email Templates
Hot Email Templates – 28 Free HTML Email Templates
Active Campaign – 11 Free Email Templates
Mach5 – 4 Free Email Templates
Omnistare Tools – 10 Free Email Newsletter Templates
A variety of free templates, but it requires (free) signup.
Benchmark – 3 Simple HTML Email Templates
Delivery Success – 10 Free Newsletter Templates
Templatesbox – 84 Free Newletter Templates

About Author: James Yeang is the writer of a Malaysian tech blog called Friedbeef’s Tech, and can also be found on Twitter.

Breadcrumb Navigation Examined: Best Practices & Examples

2009-11-01T11:17:34Z

Breadcrumb navigation is often overlooked in the design and development process. Some people may see it as unnecessary while others may feel it is too big of a hassle for what its worth. Fact of the matter is, breadcrumb navigation will greatly increase the usability of a website. Breadcrumbs give users an alternative method of navigation, allow them to see where they stand in the hierarchy of a website, and will reduce the number of steps needed to navigate to a higher-level within a website.

Outlined here are the different types of breadcrumb navigation being used today, why they are important, and how they should best be implemented online. Also included here for your reference are over 30 examples of how breadcrumbs are being used online today. Remember, while it is likely that breadcrumb navigation will not make or break a website it will provide an added benefit to your users by increasing the overall usability and functionality of your website.

Breadcrumb Types

Path

Path-based breadcrumbs indicate the steps, or path, a user has taken to arrive at the current page of a website. Furthermore, users will see links to pages they have previously visited to reach the current page. Out of the three types of breadcrumb navigation, Path-based breadcrumb navigation is least popular online. Reason being, Path-based breadcrumb navigation provides the similar functionality to the “Forward” and “Back” buttons on a browser. For most websites Location-based and Attribute-based breadcrumb navigation offers better functionality.

Location

Location-based breadcrumbs indicate to the user where the current page stands in the hierarchy of the website. This type of breadcrumb navigation is most commonly seen on websites with more than two levels of depth or content. Upon moving further into a website users are provide with links to pages, or categories, that act as a “parent” or a level up from the page they are currently viewing. For example, a user may be on the “Speak” page however the “What we do” page is a parent of the “Speak” page while the “Home” page is a parent of the “What we do” page.

Clearleft Ltd

Attribute

Attribute-based breadcrumbs indicate to the user the attributes or categories ascribed to the current page within a website. Often seen on e-commerce websites, products may not only fall under a category but under certain attributes as well. For example, a vehicle may be categorized as an SUV then have the attributes of being the color black and released in the year 2010.

Cars.com

Why Use Breadcrumbs?

Great Usability
Breadcrumbs provide an additional means by which users can easily navigate a website. If a user lands on an internal page on your website from another source breadcrumbs will allow the user to see exactly where they stand within the sites hierarchy. User are also given the opportunity to move up to a higher level of the website at any given time without any hassle.
Easy to Backtrack
Primary navigations are not designed to be followed backwards were breadcrumbs are. Since backtracking is extremely popular online providing a little additional help can go a long way.
Eliminate Additional Clicks
Breadcrumbs allow users to jump from one level of a website to the next without having to use the “forward” or “backward” buttons on the browser. Additionally breadcrumbs eliminate the need for users to continually resort to the main navigation.
Shows Users Hierarchy
The primary navigation of a website will not reflect the hierarchy of every page within the site. Giving users breadcrumbs will allow them to see the hierarchy of a page within a website.
Visually Pleasing
Not only do breadcrumbs provide users with additional usability, they do so without taking up much room or space on the page. Breadcrumbs are easy to implement into the visual design of your website and provide a great benefit to users.
Provides Additional Help
It is entirely possible that some users may not understand how a websites primary navigation works and in some cases users may not even know what they are looking for. Giving users breadcrumbs will allow them to see the overall progress and structure of a website thus allowing them to navigate the website better.
Lower Bounce Rates
Typically breadcrumbs will provide a more detailed navigation than the primary navigation. In doing so, users will be given more options on how to navigate a website. Giving them the opportunity to easily back track a few levels within the website will lower your bounce rate.
Builds Interest
When a user lands on an internal page of a website odds are they are already on a page of interest. Breadcrumbs may provide links to additional pages and information of which the user is also interested in without making them start from square one.

Breadcrumb Best Practices

Use Breadcrumbs at the Top of a Page
The most common and instinctual placement for breadcrumbs is within the top of a page. This allows users to find the breadcrumbs in an uncomplicated manner and make use of them accordingly.
Use Breadcrumbs Consistently
If you do decide to use breadcrumbs make sure that you use them across your entire website. Giving users breadcrumbs on some pages and not others will only confuse and frustrate them. (One prime example of this is Amazon as they remove breadcrumbs from the individual product pages.)
Breadcrumbs Should Degrade Gracefully
Breadcrumbs should always start with the home page and degrade to the currently page. In doing so your breadcrumbs need to go from the highest level to the lowest level one step at a time.
Stylize Breadcrumbs Appropriately
You want your breadcrumbs to be seen however you do not want them to be the focal point. You also want to make it apparent that your breadcrumbs are not part of the main content to a page, only additional support to it. Find a happy medium where your breadcrumbs are noticeable however not overbearing.
Categorize Pages Clearly
If you have pages that fall under two or more categories you may not want to use breadcrumbs on your website. Trying to place a page under two or more categories will likely only produce unclear breadcrumbs and puzzle the user. Make sure your website has an organized hierarchy and is displayed accordingly through your breadcrumbs.
Clearly Separate Each Level
Make sure users are able to distinguish the difference between each breadcrumb level. The most common separator between levels is the ‘greater than’ character (>). Other good separators include right double angle quotations (»), slashes (/), and arrows (→). If using a plain text character, only use one. (» is more appealing and effective than >>)
Single Out the Current Page
Use a different style on the last item of a breadcrumb list to establish that it is the currently page being viewed. You can accomplish this by making the item bold, changing its color, or emphasizing it.
Do Not Make the Current Page a Link
There is no need to make the last item of a breadcrumb list a link because it is the current page being viewed. Creating a link here will only confuse users, especially when they click on it and are not taken to a new page.
Do Not Use Breadcrumbs as a Page Heading
Using the last item of a breadcrumb list as the heading of a current page is ineffective. If you choose to use breadcrumbs do so with the addition of a page heading as well.
Breadcrumbs Do Not Replace Primary Navigation
Breadcrumbs are only to be used as support to the primary navigation, never to replace the primary navigation altogether. You should always provide users with a primary navigation from which they can navigate a website before using breadcrumb navigation.

Great Examples of Breadcrumbs

Littman Bros. Lighting

Guardian.co.uk

AREA 17

Wufoo

Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee

The Glasgow Collective

About Author – Shay Howe is a professional web and user interface designer currently living in Chicago, IL. He writes about web design in his own blog over at letscounthedays and would love to hear from you on Twitter. Please feel free tell him hello!

100+ Clean, Simple and Minimalist Website Designs

2009-10-29T12:31:24Z

Minimalism has been a popular website design style for years. It has so many benefits; minimalist sites load faster, take fewer server resources, and are often faster to develop than more graphically complicated designs. Plus, they give a professional, clean impression to visitors.

Many people still view minimalist designs as boring. But there’s a real art to effective minimal website designs, something not all designers can effectively master. When you limit the number of graphic elements you use and put the focus on negative space and typography, a good eye for spacing and proportion becomes crucial.

Below are more than 100 excellent examples of clean, simple and minimalist website designs. They run the gamut from simple brochure-style sites to ecommerce and portfolio sites. What they all have in common is a design aesthetic where less is more.

Rainfall Daffinson
A white background with red accents.

Ben Hulse Design
Dark gray background with white and gray lettering.

Amy Levy PR
White background with gray and red lettering.

Brand Spanking New
A black and white color scheme with gray, orange, and pale blue accents.

Frieze Magazine
A minimalist grid design.

Indie Labs
A dark gray, white and sky blue grid-based design.

Rikcat Industries
An entirely black and white design.

The Morning News
A minimalist magazine-style site.

Mark Boulton Design
A mostly black and white site with colored accents.

Jonnotie
A gray and maroon design.

Finch
A mostly black, white and gray design.

Maqina
A single column portfolio site.

Chama Inc.
A simple black and white design with an emphasis on typography.

Jon Tan
Another simple black and white design with orange accents and great typography.

Mark Wieman
Gray and White with mustard-yellow accents.

Cameron.io
A simple dove gray and white design with red accents.

Postmachina
Black background with gray and white text.

Concentric Studio
A simple design with a lot of white space.

DS.Emotion
A simple design that makes good use of drop shadows and red accents.

Kyle Sollenberger Design
Uses a soft color palette and slightly oversized text.

David Sutoyo
A soft gray, white and dark blue design.

Brad Young Photography
A dark background with soft gray and blue typography.

The DECK
A black and white design with strong typographical elements.

Hot Meteor
A simple design with retro elements.

The Portfolio of Matt Bango
Another simple design with blue accents and an emphasis on typography.

Vesess
Another black and white design with gray and red accents.

Design Intellection
A grid-based design with excellent typography.

Surfstation
A soft color palette and a two-column design with lots of white space.

The Old Fashioned
A black and white grid-based design.

CRW / Corporate Risk Watch
Uses a textured background and some hand-drawn elements.

Being Wicked
A mostly black and white design with oversized typography.

Eduardo de La Rocque
A dark gray and white, single column design.

Pixelumbrella
A rarely-seen minimalist grunge design.

NineZero
A narrow, single-column design with a lot of white space.

SimpleBits
A simple design with a textured header and a focus on typography.

Poccuo
A grid-based design with blue, gray and black text.

Davroc Interiors
A design composed entirely of shades of bluish-gray.

Sascha Eggenberger
Hand-drawn elements in black and white with blue accents set this design apart.

Nathan Carnes
A subtle color scheme and textures with black and gray typography.

Nathan Borror
Makes use of colored and geometric accents while still retaining plenty of white space and a simple design.

Beseku
A black and white design with an emphasis on typography.

NZ Venues
A subtle dark gray and white design with small, multi-colored accents.

Chris Garrett Media Ltd
A dark design with subtle gradients in the typography and blue accents.

DesigningTheNews.com
A black and gray design with a focus on typography.

3by9
A multi-colored minimal design with colorful accents and lots of white space.

Typographica
A black, white, and gray design that places emphasis on the images it displays and uses a grid-based design.

Theme
A magazine/grid-style design with orange accents.

Monty Lounge Industries
A blue and gray design with an emphasis on typography.

Berit Somme
A black, white and gray design that places the emphasis on the portfolio pieces.

el Candor
A black and white grid-based portfolio site.

Design by Silnt
A grid-based design in shades of gray.

Pixelcraft
A cream-colored background and black typography keep things simple.

Klipp og Lim
A grid-based design with a portfolio slideshow in the header.

Ole Martin Kristiansen
A dark background with subtly-colored typography.

SiteInspire
A gray site with bright red accents.

MediaFlex
A dark background with white typography that leaves the emphasis on the images.

Vudumedia
A black, gray and white grid-based design.

AREA 17
A black, white and gray design with some dark blue typography.

just.dot
A grayish-brown background and a grid-based design.

LegiStyles
A dark background with an emphasis on typography and tomato-red accents.

Visualbox
A subtly-patterned dark-gray background with bold white and gray typography.

Flush
A dark gray, slightly-grungy design.

Designme
A dark background with gray and white typography.

Designjunction.in
A dark background with lighter typography.

deCode
A dark, textured background with hand-drawn elements and a bit of a retro vibe.

72 Rivington Street
A bold, black and white grid design.

Analogue Motion
A grid-based design with a subtle color palette and typography.

Astheria
A subtle blue, gray and white design with plenty of negative space.

Cade Martin Photography
A white and gray design with the emphasis on the typography.

Daniel Howells
A subtle design that focuses on the typography.

Eightface.com
A black and white design with red highlights.

Fever
A gray background with gray and red text.

Fell Swoop
A white background with black and red typography and tons of negative space.

FRKT
A black and white design with subtle textures.

Jamie Gregory
A grid-based deisgn that focuses on typography.

Joni Korpi
A gray and black design with an emphasis on typography.

Matt Hinchliffe
A black and white design with light blue accents.

Martin Hipp
White background and green accents.

Stefan Persson
A grid-based design with orange accents.

Strange/Beautiful
A gray and white grid-based design.

Voce antica
A white and gray two-column design.

Inkcover Blog
A black and white design with oversized typography.

Allday.cc
A very simple black and white design with minimalist navigation.

Final Eyes
A black, white and gray single-column design.

80/20
A gray color scheme with green accents.

Craig Wilson
A very simple black and white design with hand-drawn elements.

Pomade
An extremely minimalist design with black text and red accents.

SOFA
A grid-based design that emphasizes typography.

The Typographic Desk Reference (TDR)
A minimalist sales page that utilizes modal windows.

I love Typography
A simple design with olive green typography accents.

Artypapers
A white background and subtle gray and pink color scheme.

Sisson Studio
A brown and tan grid-based design with a white background.

We Love Typography
A grid-based design with a white background.

Gordymac
A blue and gray design with plenty of white space.

National College of Art & Design: Postgraduate Study
A gray design with circular images and white text.

Minimalissimo
Black and gray typography with plenty of white space.

Wide Angled
A grid-based site that puts the emphasis on the images it features.

Hair Ott
A gray, black and white design with a Flash slideshow in the header.

Tim Parkin
A grid-based design with a white background.

Selldorf Architects
A simple black and white design.

LUXUX
A grid-based portfolio site.

Fluid
A grid-based design with a white background and simple typography.

Saturday
A simple design with a Flash slideshow.

The May Blog
A simple gray and green color scheme on a white background./p>

quadrifolia
A very bold green and white design.

Dhyr.Hagen
A bold gray and white design.

Nonesuch Records
A simple black and white design with an emphasis on imagery.

About Author – Cameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 7 years of experience. She writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing. She’s also the author of Internet Famous: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Online Celebrity.

Freebie: Blitter Twitter Icon Set

2009-11-18T12:05:52Z

We love freebies, and we love them more if they are high quality freebie. We occasionally search the Internet high and low to dig out these hidden gems to make designers’ life easier and better. This week, with the help from our friend Iconshock, we are releasing a free high quality Twitter icon set, named Blitter.

Blitter Twitter icon set comes in two sets of sizes, respectively 215×215 pixels and 512×512 pixels in transparent .PNG 24-bit format. We’ve also included the Adobe Illustrator .AI source file just in case you want a bigger version of any icon. Feel free to use, edit for any type of individual and commercial projects. However you should not re-sell or take advantage of the freebie to generate any revenue of any format.

Help us spread a word if you like what you’ve downloaded.

Download:

Download Blitter (256×256, 512×512), PNG format
Download Blitter source Ilustrator .AI format
Download Blitter full set (Icons + source)

The Designer – Iconshock

"As one of the new projects, we are going to give a free Icon set monthly especially design for all the readers of Hongkiat, because we really like to be part of this amazing blog, and show you where the love comes from. Enjoy it! – Iconshock"

Iconshock is renown in the icon design industry for being the only one to release the massive sum of 5000 new icons each week. We have also built a huge and active community around icon design with more than 60,000 members, plus a blog and a forum where the public can reunite to discuss about design and programming issues, and also download design related resources.

Despite all of us being under 40, throughout these 5 years our company has built a valuable experience and knowhow in the market. We have a solid structure and we are 100% proudly Colombian. We offer almost thirty different icon styles, organized in more than 40 categories building up an astonishing collection of more than 750,000 individual icons.

20 Best Wordpress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability

2009-10-23T18:08:04Z

WordPress has pretty decent typography features in the core installation. But there are plenty of areas ripe for improvement. That’s where the plugins below come in.

Credit: Image background by fabianohikaru

Whether you just want more control over how the basic text on your site shows up or you want to do something a bit more advanced, there’s surely a plugin available to help. There are plugins to better handle things like hyphens and long URLS, plugins to replace text with images (whether in headlines or to avoid censorship), and plugins to let you add print-centric elements, like drop caps and pull quotes, to your posts.

Be sure to check out our previous post on Dynamic Image Replacement for more useful WordPress typography plugins and here are some Wordpress related plugins we’ve previously published:

Full list after jump.

Wordpress Plugins For Better Readability

TTFTitles

The TTFTitles plugin is another dynamic text replacement plugin that lets you replace your headers with images using any TrueType font you choose. It’s mostly a rework of the Image Headlines plugin. It has been tested with WP 1.5.2 up through 2.7.
DRF2WP EN

DRF2WP EN is a font replacement plugin that allows you to replace any font on your WP site with a dynamically generated image that uses any TrueType or OpenType font you want. The source code remains in-tact, which means your site won’t take a hit with search engines. The plugin works with WP 2.5 up to 2.8.4.
Drop Caps

The Drop Caps plugin lets you add a customized drop cap to each of your posts and pages (or even comments and other excerpts), similar to what’s commonly done in print publications. It can also be used to create other types of initials. The plugin has been tested with WP 2.3 up through 2.7.1.
WP Typography

The WP Typography plugin adds a number of typography features to your blog. It includes hyphenation, spacing control, forced internal wrapping of long URLs, intelligent character placement, smart handling of quotes and other characters, and CSS hooks for styling ampersands, acronyms, and other special characters. It works with WP 2.7 up through 2.8.4.
Simple Pull Quote

The Simple Pull Quote plugin lets you insert pull quotes into your blog posts to emphasize certain sentences or phrases using custom fields. Pull quotes can be styled by editing the included CSS file. It works with WP 2.7 or 2.8.
jQuery Font Resizer

jQuery Font Resizer is a plugin that improves the usability and accessibility of your blog. It adds three links to each page to allow visitors to resize the type on that particular page. It’s a great option to make your site more user-friendly to visitors who want a larger or smaller type than standard. It’s known to work with WP version 2.0.2 up through 2.7.
WP-Syntax

WP-Syntax is another syntax highlighter that uses GeSHi. It gives you the option to highlight with or without line numbers and maintains formatting when you copy snippets. WP-Syntax is compatible with WP 2.0 up through 2.8.
Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

The Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress lets the original Google Syntax Highlighter that was developed by Alex Gorbatchev work within WP. It’s a completely client-side highlighter, supports multiple languages (including Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, Delphi, CSS, C++ and more), and is very lightweight. It’s known to be compatible with version 2.0.0 through 2.2.2.
WP-Syntax Colorizer

WP-Syntax Colorizer is a simple plugin for colorizing code snippets within your blog posts when run alongside WP-Syntax. WP-Syntax Colorizer has been tested with WP 2.0 up through 2.5.
CodeColorer

CodeColorer adds syntax highlighting to code snippets placed on your blog. It’s a great plugin to use if you frequently post code snippets, such as on a web design or development blog. It works with version 2.7 up through 2.8.4.
TextImage

The TextImage plugin replaces all the text in a post with a PNG image. It’s a good plugin to use if you wnat to block search engines from seeing your content or otherwise fly under the radar. It also gets around most automated filtering that certain countries use to censor internet content. It’s been tested with WP 2.1 up through 2.7.1.
Censortive

Censortive helps you get around automated censorship by replacing certain words with images of the word instead of text. You define which words you want to be replaced and Censortive does the rest. It’s a great plugin for getting around a lot of censorship without blocking your content from search engines. It’s been tested with WP 2.0.2 up through 2.3.
Title Style

Title Style gives you additional formatting options for your post titles. It can be used to wrap lowercase words or words like “the”, “a”, or “of” in em, span, or other elements. It’s compatible with WP 2.0.0 up through 2.8.4.
PS Disable Auto Formatting

PS Disable Auto Formatting prevents WordPress from applying its own auto formatting functions to your posts and pages. It prevents WP from stripping out tags when you’re editing in the HTML editor and has a positive impact on the way the visual editor formats your posts, too. It’s known to be compatible with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.
Post Typographer

Post Typographer plugin adds a number of typography improvements to your posts automatically. It changes dashes with spaces around them to em-dashes, transforms hyphens without spaces to n-dashes, and turns spaces after particular words into non-breaking spaces, among other features. It’s been tested with WP 2.5 up through 2.8.3.
Author Intro for Post

Author Intro for Post plugin adds an author intro to the beginning of each post based on the author’s name and bio information. It’s been tested with WP versions 2.0.2 through 2.7.
WP-Footnotes

WP-Footnotes makes it simple to add footnotes to your posts. Usage is incredibly easy and only requires you to use double-parentheses around your footnote. It does the rest. It’s compatible with WP versions 2.0 through 2.6.

Plugins for Admins

Here are a couple of admin plugins that can help you improve your site’s typography by giving you more editing options in the backend of your site.

WP Super Edit

WP Super Edit adds a host of WYSIWYG options to the standard WP visual editor. It adds two full rows of additional features to your visual editor toolbar, including options for applying specific styles and for adding and formatting tables. It’s known to work with version 2.8 and 2.8.1.
Real WYSIWYG Plugin

The Real WYSIWYG Plugin adds a WYSIWYG editor that actually shows you the page layout of your post within the visual editor. It makes it easier to see how your line breaks, images, and other elements will actually fit on your page.
Text Control

Text Control gives you additional options for formatting posts on your WP site according to a variety of different syntaxes and encoding options, including Textile 1, Textile 2, and Markdown. It’s compatible with WP 1.5 and higher.

30 Stunning Apple Concept Designs

2009-10-22T16:47:40Z

A great wave of excitement is sweeping across all Apple fans as they await for the official launch of the latest amazing Apple product by year end. Yes, it is the eagerly anticipated Apple Tablet, which was reported to be commercially available this coming November. Some of us may have seen the prototype online, and few will disagree that it is yet another beautiful creation by Apple.

In terms of the design and the aesthetic value of IT wares, there is little dispute that Apple create some of the finest and most creative design for their products that few or no other competitors can match. Over the years, product concept designs by hardcore Apple fans began to surface as Apple started to stand out among its competitors. Although these designs are not going to be marketed as actual products, it reflects the deepest wishes of die-hard Apple fans.

Here is a fine compilation of some of the best, coolest and most creative Apple concept designs created by fans. Don’t you just wish these are available in the market?

Desktops and Laptops

Mac Mini (Slim)

Mac Mini is super-slim concept design of the actual Apple Mac Mini. It has all the features of the original machine but is a lot slimmer. Connect the Mac Mini to a Apple LED displays and you will have a powerful Multimedia computer in-front of you. By Isamu Sanada.

Apple iView

iView is concept Mac design with curved display that is made for best orientation with the curvature of a human eye. It has a dual-sided display and 2 web-cams on both sides of the display. By Nuno Teixeira.

Apple Tribook

The tribook has exactly what the name and the picture suggest, it has three screens. One is the regular laptop-style screen and the other two can be folded to save the space when they are not in use. It is possible that the fordable screens use the Apple’s patented transparent screen technology, that way when they are folded – it can still be used a simple Macbook too. By Adam Benton.

Transparent iMac

A truly futuristic iMac concept design with a transparent display. Equipped with a transparent 30-inch display and a wireless keyboard with light-sensitive illuminated keys, this Concept design can also be set to various levels of translucency and can fade during sleep modes. By Adam Benton.

MacBook Mini

MacBook mini is a smart concept design goes one further to make MacBooks smaller. It features a foldable trackpad which saves up the space when you are not using the keyboard. One other mockup of the MacBook mini by the same designer is a sliding trackpad, which sounds like a better idea than the foldable one. By Isamu Sanada.

Mac Air

Now this is something purely innovative. An Apple Tablet concept that doubles as a desktop, just awesome. It Sports a 5.2-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen TFT display and can be hooked to a wireless Keyboard, a mouse, a super drive and a Time Machine to turn it into a fully functional wireless Desktop. By Isamu Sanada.

Mac Mini

Concept is to discard the drawbacks which a iMac mini user would nark about the owned machine. And the mark about the Mac Mini is the I/O ports. This concept design makes the ports reachable easily and the V-shape design makes sure that it will remain cool while you are using it. That’s because the hot air will pass through the legs instead respiring from back lying on the top. By Sait Alanyali.

Mac Tab

MacTab can be used as a standalone tablet as well as a laptop with a physical keyboard. It boasts a very thin wireless keyboard that can be easily removed from the tablet and put back to cover the screen when transporting it. The hinges on the back side can be used to support the tablet while in ’standing’ position and it can be used for placing the keyboard too. By Yann Le Corroler.

Tablets

Mac Tablet

This Mac Tablet concept has an optical drive and a slider-style Physical keyboard. It comes sports a physical keyboard which can hide inside the device itself. By Isamu Sanada.

Macbook Touch

Yet another concept design by Isamu Sanada. The MacBook Touch is actually an iPhone concept design with a bigger screen and I/O ports. By Isamu Sanada.

Foldable Macbook Touch

This concept has a foldable design that makes it a Tablet-cum-Macbook. It features Flexible OLED technology which makes the foldable, full-size display possible. When in notebook mode, one half of the screen is converted to a touch screen keyboard and trackpad. By Tommaso Gecchelin.

MacBook Mini

This MacBook Mini is a tablet Concept that Apple is always asked to develop into a product that would be a perfect design. This concise tablet can be used to view pictures, listen to music and watch movies in High Resolution. Moreover, surfing the internet will delineate the great fun.

Apple Netbook Concept

This concept is a belief rather than a imaginary concept and the rumours all around gab about this product being the new Apple Tablet. By Adam Benton.

Mac Pad

MacTab is a concept Apple tablet design that is equipped with a QWERTY physical keyboard. The keyboard can be easily closed, thanks to the slider mechanism. By Maverick18x.

Apple TouchBook

This concept may be a reality soon as the rumours are that the two companies, Apple and Verizon, are looking forward to develop a wireless iPhone. The device is expected to be thinner, lighter and much affordable than the iPhone. The product may be launched by the end of this year and it will be the best to view pictures, listen music and watch HD videos.

iPhones

iPhone Elite

When Apple was to launch iPhone, a reporter asked Steve Ballmer what he though about it – He laughed and said, “A Phone without a Keyboard?”. If only he could see this concept design of iPhone. iPhone Elite has a dual slider mechanism. It has a bigger camera and a full QWERT physical keyboard too. By Mat Brady.

iPhone 4G

Mix iPhone with iPod Touch and through in some Macbook Air too. You get a slim iPhone 4G like this one. It has a front camera for video-conferencing and retains curves of a Macbook Air. By Rodolphe Desmare.

iPhone Video

This Photoshop creation is a concept about iPhone Video. This one won’t be much diverse from the iPhone, but some extra buttons on its left and some additional effects for the sleek screen and home button make this look better than the iPhone. By Chromatix.

iEye

The iEye is a concept mobile phone which boasts a shutter button onto the camera making it over iPhone constraints. The phone curbs a glut of features that take in 720p HD video, 5.1-megapixel stills, 12GB of flash memory, and a large-capacity lithium-ion battery hardwired inside. Moreover a 30 pin connector boosts its aptitude in connectivity for easy file transfers. By Adam Benton.

iPhone Nano

What can be a copulate when a iPhone and Nano are parents? The iPhone Nano. It’s a pretty good concept which can be abstracted from the image below. It’s a concept mated from a iPhone 3G and Nano G4. By FreshAndContent.

iPhone Pro

A unibody iPhone with pretty slick looks and flatter body. The iPhone 3.0 or iPhone Pro comes in two versions, aluminium and glass.

iPods

iPod Chimera

This concept is by far one of the best and most sophisticated iPod concept. Apart from the sleek and slim looks, it also has earpieces that are able to play wirelessly. Made up of entirely Titanium, iPod chimera has a scratch/smear resistant display that is able to play 720p HD videos.

iPod Nano 4G

Not much creative but a good idea about a iPod Nano 4G. This concept is splendid with some more sleek curves and great combination of colours. Indubitably, the design will come with many more features and as the image suggests, an accelerometer as well. By Chromatix.

iPod Shuffle

This concept is a portrayal of an iPod Shuffle wrist wrap dangling and would be found on all the joggers and runaway models on the roads, strapped on their arms. An iPod shuffle with a Mp3 bracelet and a wireless ear piece that might look prettier on arms of girls. By Isamu Sanada.

hiPod Concept

hiPod is a wrist watch style iPod that has a foldable display that becomes a digital watch when closed. It has the regular iPod dial-navigation and comes with a pair of wireless earpieces. By Isamu Sanada.

Miscellaneous Apple Concept Gadgets

Apple iRing

With this concept iRing design, you are able to control your iPod via bluetooth. You can control playback and volume on any of your Apple media devices using the touch-sensitive strip. It sports an OLED status display which can be use to toggle between ‘pause’ and ‘play’. By Victor Soto.

iVault

iVault concept entices you to own it in an affordable price of about $499 and will store hundreds of thousands of songs, videos and pictures. You are able to sync it with your Laptop/Desktop wirelessly just like Apple’s Time Capsule.

iCal Watch

The concept is a marvel of its own . It syns with iCal via Bluetooth so that you won’t miss and appointment or a meeting. Moreover the watch has a touch screen making it a snap to use.

iSticks

The set of iStick speakers are compatible with all Apple products and when compared to Harman Kardon speakers, it seems better to opt for and much reliable with iSub in a combo arrangement.

iLight

The iLight concept has a touch-sensitive panel which can be used to control the torch. Single tap to turn on, another to turn off, flick fingers forward and backward to control the luminosity, and double tap to lock the touch-panel. By Miyoshimasato.

Five Vital Black & White Photography Tips

2009-10-21T14:32:25Z

Monochrome photographs are timeless, especially black and white photographs. They enhance emotional substance and have a disposition of making photos look more artistic.

Credit: Jana by LudovicMazet

They can be used on many different scenes as it’s not required to think about all the colors that should look good together and match the amount of light available. And for those who love to play with color, black and white photography doesn’t necessarily need to be boring as there are so many different shades to choose from.

Gray scale is a spectrum of black and white which evolves into shades and different depths of gray. So when we speak of gray scale we speak of how we measure tones of gray. Here are five tips you might need to know when it comes to Black & White Photography.

1. Use RAW

If you have the opportunity to use RAW, do it! It will open up many new possibilities and give you more control of the image’s appearance.

The negative aspect of RAW files is that it needs to be processed later. If you use RAW files, your computer, rather than your camera will process the records and generate a picture file from it. You can for instance use Adobe Photoshop to process the images.

If you don’t have that function on your camera, then don’t worry, carry on reading and you’ll see that there are plenty of other ways to get great black and white photographs.

2. Pattern and Texture

Rich textures and detailed sceneries will help your photograph become comprehensible and exciting.

Patterns are lucky in black and white photographs as colors aren’t taking the attention from them. So if you want to take a shoot where you’d like to emphasize on the patterns, then choose black and white tones instead of color.

3. Contrast

With the help of light you can get great contrast. Contrast will bring the tonal differences in your photography as you can’t use color. With side lighting, for instance, you’ll get longer shadows.

Contrast is important because when there is a distinct contrast, with dark shades and bright light, you’ll be able to see things you didn’t see before.

4. ISO

In photography, an ISO number is an indication of the sensitivity of the image sensor, where a higher number indicates higher sensitivity. The higher the ISO is the more are the possibilities to take pictures in low light, without the usage of flash.

For black and white photography, use the lowest ISO. When you use high ISO the noise will become more obvious. Noise in photography is like the “grain” in film, where the film doesn’t become as smooth as you’d wish. The higher your ISO is, the more unpleasant dots will show in your photo. Therefore shady and dim days are actually great for black and white photographs.

5. Subjects

Black and white photography can basically look good in most occasions and circumstances.

Monochrome photographs are good at bringing a sensitive experience and story into a shoot, they tend to bring depth and give us the chance to explore an object or person more strictly due to the graphic elements that it conveys (especially thanks to a good contrast). Therefore it’s also well-matched for abstract photos.
When taking pictures of large spaces, like landscapes or foliages; make sure that the same tone isn’t flowing through all the elements in your photography as this will give it a rather boring and dead look. Most black and white images are supposed to be dramatic and leave a striking impact on the viewer.
One way of doing this is by finding a movement, like an unsteady wave in a sea or a moving sky. Something that isn’t really all that dramatic in real life can become much more intense when a glimpse of it is caught on camera.
One single subject is the most popular choice for black and white photography. This goes mostly for portraits, here you can really emphasize on the affect that the gray scale will bring to the person’s expression.

About Author – Juan Shaban runs a design blog dudye.com. Follow Juan on Twitter.

70 Free Useful Portable Applications You Should Know

2009-10-21T14:33:25Z

Portable applications in general are software and programs you can run independently from a removable drives (like flash/pen drive) without going through the hassle of installing them. They are widely used and have been a favorite approach for professionals of different various industries.

With portable applications, you can leave your laptop behind; plug in the thumb drive in any client machine, run the application without worrying about leaving anything behind. In this post, we attempt to show a collection of useful and free applications you can run independently from thumb drives, sorting by profession by general. You’ll be surprise how many applications you can actually run without installation. Full list after jump.

Portable Apps For Bloggers

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox, portable version allows you leave no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your favorite browser along with all your favorite bookmarks and extensions with you wherever you go.
Opera

Full featured web browser, rapidly gaining popularity. Fully portable, keeping all data in its local folder.
Google Chrome
Portable Safari

Portable Safari is packaged so you can carry around on any portable device, USB thumb drive, iPod, portable hard drive, memory card, other portable device (or also on your internal hard disk), taking your preferences with you.
Windows Live Writer Portable

Windows Live Writer Portable has all your blog settings, ping server settings and FTP settings to redo.
Zoundry Raven

Zoundry Raven™ is the next generation WYSIWYG blog editor that makes posting to your blogs easier and faster.
FileZilla

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP and SFTP client. It includes a site manager and supports uploads/downloads queue, keepalive, timeout detection, SOCKS 4/5 and HTTP 1.1 proxy etc.
FeedReader

Feedreader is a FREE RSS news aggregation solution that provides robust, state-of-the-art features in an intuitive, user-friendly environment.
GreatNews

GreatNews displays full pages of news articles across rss feeds, optimized for fast reading.
Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a small and fast PDF viewer.
StickyTweets

A lightweight Twitter client built in C/C++ with Win32. No additional frameworks required.
Fruitfultime Bookmark Manager

Bookmark websites from any web browser with a global hotkey and bookmark documents, pictures, and other files with drag and drop ease.
Web Design Toy

Web Design Toy provides a deceptively simple split-window layout. Whatever HTML is typed in the editor window is instantly shown in web-page form in the display window.
Lingoes Portable 2.6.2

Lingoes Portable is green portable version of Lingoes released by Lingoes Project.

Portable Apps For Designers

GIMP Portable

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Artweaver

Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools.
MobaPhoto

MobaPhoto is a nice freeware for managing your digital photos. MobaPhoto allows you to resize, crop, correct red-eyes of all your pictures very easily in "batch-mode".
Active Pixels

Activepixels is a neat full-featured photo editor. Interesting auto enhance options (including shadow/hilight recovery), many filters, correction and denoise settings.
Photoscape

Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.
PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it.
Fotografix

An image editor that can be used for image enhancement and graphic design.
Anim8or

Anim8or is a 3D modeling and character animation program.
XBlender

Blender is an integrated 3D creation software suite.
It lets users create high quality 3D graphics, movies and replay real-time, interactive 3D content.
X-Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector editor that supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface.
Inkscape

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor.
Diagram Designer

Simple vector graphics editor for creating flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows.
FastStone Photo Resizer

FastStone Photo Resizer enables users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode.
JPEGCrops

JPEGCrops is a Windows program, created for preparation of a batch of images for printing. It provides lossless cropping with fixed aspects using jpegtran.
Riot

Riot allows you to save images for web/email/other media with the best compression ratio and quality.
SmillaEnlarger

SmillaEnlarger is a small graphical tool ( based on Qt ) to resize, especially magnify bitmaps in high quality.
PNG Optimizer

Png Optimizer creates PNG screenshots and make them easily available.
IcoFX

IcoFX is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing.
Greenfish Icon Editor Pro

Greenfish Icon Editor Pro is a professional, yet easy to use tool for designing and retouching icons, cursors, animations and static images, and assembling icon libraries.
WinSnap

WinSnap includes easy capture of non-rectangular windows with customized and transparent backgrounds, simple and automatic canvas transformations, coloring effects, and the addition of eye-candy drop shadows.
PicPick Tools

PicPick features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc.
SiteShoter

SiteShoter is a free tool that can be used to take a screenshot of any webpage.
Greenshot

Greenshot is a revolutionary screenshot tool optimized for productivity.
FastStone Image Viewer

FastStone Image Viewer has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments.
IrfanView

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for beginners and powerful for professionals.
Cornice Portable

Cornice Portable is an image viewer that has thumbnail previews, full screen modes, rotation, slideshow modes and more.
Osiva

Osiva is a free image viewing program that opens and scale images fast — get images into view and out of the way
RealWorld Paint.COM

RealWorld Paint.COM can display images using any zoom factor and always shows 100% accurate preview of the drawn shape. Tooltips are displayed throughout the user interface to explain meaning of controls.
AMP Font Viewer

AMP Font Viewer is an easy to use but powerful font manager, which allows getting a quick overview of both installed and non installed fonts.
FotoSketcher

FotoSketcher is a 100% free program which can help you convert your digital photos into art, automatically.
Dia Portable

Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams and has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams.
Oiko CSS-Editor

Oiko is a visual CSS editor. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows to separate the representation definitions of such structured documents as HTML, XHTML, XML from their content, which is an effective principle in the design of web sites.

Portable Apps for Business Purposes

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org Portable is a complete office suite — including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database
Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.
SoftMaker Office 2006

An Office Suite which contains components that compatible with Windows Office applications like Word, Excel, etc.
PNotes

PNotes is fast and light-weight. It has flexible settings – both for the program in whole and for individual note.
AbiWord

AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.
Jarte

Jarte is a WordPad based, FREE word processor whose unique interface will make you feel like you are piloting a swift, nimble yacht by comparison.
Portable Office Exec
ToDoList

A simple and effective way to keep track of your current programming tasks.
Task Coach

Task Coach Portable lets you bring your to-do list and task manager with you so you always stay on top of things.
Date Reminder

Date Reminder reminds you of recurring or nonrecurring events, like birthdays, bills to pay, appointments etc.
Sunbird

Sunbird Portable is a standalone calendaring and task management application built on the same technology as the Firefox web browser.
Koma-Mail

Koma-Mail is an email client which is comfortable and has very handy functions. It does not need an installation, so that you can run Koma-Mail from your flash drive but, of course, also on your desktop.
Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird is the safe, fast email client that’s easy to use. It has lots of great features including quick message search, customizable views, support for IMAP/POP, RSS support and more.
Qm – The Quick Mailer

Qm – The Quick Mailer is a tiny program for sending quick e-mail messages without having to load your main email client program.
WinMerge

WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.
KeyDb

Keydb is a password manager. With it you create and store strong random passwords required by many websites.
7-Zip

For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Express Burn

Express Burn lets you create and record audio or data CDs with any CDRW drive.
Recover Files

Recover Files is an award winning program that can undelete / recover deleted files after they have been deleted.
Team Talk

TeamTalk allows you to talk to friends and colleagues using the internet as audio carrier. With TeamTalk any number of people can participate in a conversation and is only limited by the bandwidth you have available.
Blowfish Advanced CS

One powerful file encryption and security tool for the Windows platform.
TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a software application used for real-time on-the-fly encryption.
Tomahawk PDF+

Tomahawk PDF+ is one of the most advanced word processing/pdf creation software packages available for the Windows platform.
GnuCash Portable

GnuCash Portable is the open source financial management software packaged as a portable app, so you can take your financial data with you.

50+ Be-Bewitched Halloween Wallpapers

2009-10-15T09:00:44Z

Halloween, which falls on the 31th of October is a holiday that normally associated with symbols like “Jack o’ Lanterns“, skeleton, pumpkins and activities like bonfire, costume party, "trick-or-treats", etc. As you have probably known, Halloween this year is already around the corner.

Every festive season, we’ll look out for related wallpapers to spice and refresh our desktop. We did that for Christmas, we did the same thing for Chinese New Year and this time around – Halloween is no exception. If you are already into the Halloween mode, why not decorate your desktop with some awesome Halloween wallpapers. Here’s a collection of 50+ Be-Bewitched Halloween Wallpapers for your desktop.

Fun, Playful and Cartoon-y Wallpapers

Scarecrow
via kards.qip.ru
Available in 800×600, 1024×768

Trick-or-treat!
via American Greetings
A ghoulish trick-or-treater is being followed by some batty characters in this Halloween wallpaper. Available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1600×1200.

The Gathering Storm (Halloween Night)
via vladstudio

New Halloween Wallpaper
via cruciald
Availabe in 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1600×900, 1440×900 and 1920×1200.

Pumpkin Time
via goor
Available in 1024×768.

Halloweenies
via vicber
Available 1024×768

Halloween Night
via silwenka
Available in 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960 and 1600×1200.

Halloween Ghosts
via vladstudio

Ghostly Escape
via American Greetings
A young girl is running out of her shoes trying to get away from a bunch of scary ghosts in a haunted cemetery. Available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200.

Csscreme Halloween wallpapers
Cartoony halloween wallpapers from csscreme. Also available in wide screen and iPhone resolutions.

A Cheshire Kitten
via vladstudio

Halloween Wallpapers
via cricketbow

Halloween Ghost Pictures
via wallcoo
Available in 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200.

Scary and Horrifying Wallpapers

Guildwars Halloween
via hdwallpapers
1920 x 1200

Pirate Skeleton
via halloween-corner

Macabre & Horror Wallpaper
via MuckyPup3000

The Pumpkins Gala!

Halloween
via alldesktop
Available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×1024, 1600×1200

Halloween Pumpkin
via Noko
Available in 900×720.

Wall-o-jack
via mumblyjoe
Available in 1280×960.

Think Halloween
via Zefhar
A nice mock-up of Apple’s logo. Available in 1280×960.

Pumpkins 2
via Trablex
A new version of the original pumpkins with a little bit of backlight enjoy! Available in 1280×1024.

Jack-o-lanterns
via American Greetings
A troika of jack-o-lanterns glimmering in the moonlight. Available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200.

Yet another Jack-o-lantern
via wallcoo
Available in 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200.

Have a Happy Halloween Wallpaper
via gosquared
Available in high resolution 2560×1600. Also available in iPhone 320×480 format.

Happy Halloween
via garnettrules21
A little collage of the great pumpkin designs from pumpkinway.com.

Halloween Pumpkins
via Lethorgius
Available in high resolution 1440×900, 1690×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600.

Halloween In The Midnight Forest
via vladstudio

Halloween
via xCrispy
1280 x 1024.

MISC

Halloween (wallcoo)
via Zedoras
Available in 1024×768

Halloween
via Madydiu
Available in 1280×1024.

Halloween Wallpapers
via wonderwallpapers
Available in 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×960 and 1600×1200.

Halloween Animated Wallpaper
via wonderwallpapers
Animated spooky castle wallpaper. 1024 X 768.

More Interesting Halloween Stuff

130 Halloween Pumpkin Carvings for Your Inspiration
via walyou
The Ultimate Pumpkin collection that consists of 130 Halloween Pumpkin Carvings for Your Inspiration which hopefully give you some cool and creative ideas for Halloween 2009.

Sinister Fonts
Lots of free horror fonts and wallpapers.

Pumpkin Ways
Pumpkin in lots of different emotions.

Vladstudio Halloween wallpaper set 1.0
We mentioned some of these great wallpapers above, but here’s where you can download all of them one shot.

Horrifying Photoshop Tutorials for Halloween Season
via naldzgraphics
45 Horrifying Photoshop Tutorials for Halloween that you can read and get amazing techniques for your own freaky image designs

Halloween Wallpapers from Wallcoo
More halloween wallpapers.

Black and White Photography: 100 Pieces of Exquisite Portrait

2009-10-13T09:54:25Z

A good portrait reveals something about its subject beyond the immediate appearance of the photograph. It includes layers of meaning and depth that portray the person as a whole, not just the superficial initial impression. Great portraits give us an idea of who the person really is, beyond what they’re trying to outwardly depict.

Portraits done in black and white add an additional layer of complexity to their subject. The choice to appear void of color says something about the person, though what it says varies greatly between people. Below are 100 stunning black and white portraits to give you inspiration in your designs. The range of subjects and what their portraits say about them run across the entire spectrum of the human experience, and you’re sure to find something that resonates.

More photography entries we’ve previously published:

Complete showcase after jump.

Funeral
by ultramaryna

The Queen
by zemotion

black and white . bricks
by beautifullydestructed

I’ll tell you a story…
by alejka

Laughing with
by iNeedChemicalX

Bitter Sweet Symphony
by iNeedChemicalX

Black Desire
by UnaObsesion

FANatic new
by Nigrita

On my mind
by liquidsunnyday

Smoke on the moon
by azarova

The running man
by Mattrobbyattack

Lyrical
by moodychick

06
by bezglowa

I’m free
by dashka-takes-photos

Sarmata
by polska

Aye Aye C’ptain
by TFraser

Secret garden II
by electricbird

Ethiopia-Dassanetch
by marjanvanthielen

Close your eyes
by Kvikken

Dilan
by kentsiz

The last smoke…
by rocker-sanjog

In the cold light of morning
by DisposableMe

Black & White Portrait
by Lars Willem Veldkampf

Landon BP Black & White Portrait
by Steven Hart

Fisherman
by womanish

The Girl and the Baby
by OneOnOne Photography

Nathan
johnny nikon

Antonino
by sam cartelli

Nikkormat
by Studio d’Xavier

Old man with a cigarette
by LouisWu

Dancing in Bare Feet
by dfg photography

Turkish Market Seller
by keith

Jinny in Black and White
by TXphotoblog

Oh my friends you haven’t changed
by Ornelia Olivieri

liviachicca
by Ornelia Olivieri

TRP: Me and My Camera
by Studio d’Xavier

6/100 Duff
by Studio d’Xavier

Portrait of a Punk Girl
by Havovubu

Damian
by Burgunda

Passin’ the Time
by Joel Bedford

8037
by Dmitry Medvedev

Day 30
by Murraynewphotos

Untitled Girl Portrait
by tuturuuu

Untitled Portrait
by MOSH S.K

Gau
by USELESSNANO

Crying Girl
by LouisWu

I hate my obvious freckles
by nikki psych ward

Market stall worker
by StephenQi

Gioty
by paranenormalus

Stare
by violin-sonata

AH
by Krstnn Hrmnsn

“The Pigeon Man”
by Elliotphotos

Che Boris 2
by FrankZimper

Black and White
by mariemadeame

Binki
by Pichead

Black Swan
by zemotion

Black
by BittersweetDisease

Eye black and white
by Ashleigh07Art

Black and White
by KarinePaula

Another Amber
by Jibby!

Sophie in black and white
by Palindroom

Julia
by photomek

Hush now
by iNeedChemicalX

Black Lava
by CRISTYNNA-NECROPOLIS

New Hope Childrens Home
by nick barta

Black white portrait
by lafaette

Black and White
by Fragoline

Black and white
by lkopuz

White 2
by Coffeestain

Hearts turn black and white
by iNeedChemicalX

Menja lady, Sheka forest, Ethiopia
by ngari.norway

Freedom In Black And White 1
by kreestal

Untitled Portrait of a Girl
by Lisa Askew

Wisdom
by pastaboy sleeps

Warmth
by pastaboy sleeps

Et l’anarchie de julien
by salusmarc

Black Cherry
by waga27

GPS 8 Rose Black and White
by Rubarb

Black and White II
by Orzz

Summer BW
by larafairie

Movie Star Black and White
by Adam25Toronto

Girl in a white dress
by LesiaV

White + Black
by maliciousfaerie

JOE!
by Martin Quiroz Photography

Black and white
by infernalphotography

Deitra 04
by Jason Stair

Warm Place II
by SynthTwins

Beth – Silhouette
by larafairie

Zoe
by c1po

Jana
by LudovicMazet

Manu
by LudovicMazet

Sells Hamsters
by Roman Abramovich

Black and White
by lucaspagnuoli

Black
by johnwaters

Black and white
by zakharova

Paint it black and white
by krecique

Black Hole Sun
by berzerker-sk

Black Sun
by fatallook

The peter pan
by muszka

Black Math
by rabatz

Open Source E-Commerce Shopping Carts – Best Of

2009-10-09T04:14:28Z

The moment you decide to run an online store selling your favorite stuff, you are immediately thrown with dozens of questions and obstacles. For starters, you’ll need to decide between clean inventory/excess stock, then comes the resource for products. Ultimately, when it comes to open an e-commerce site, the biggest decision is – Which platform should I use?

The software you’ve decided upon will be the foundation of your entire e-commerce site and will not likely be changed in the future, therefore it’s utmost important that you know all of the best one before you choose and regret later. In this post, we want to bring to your attention some of the best (free) open-source shopping carts available on the Internet. Do check them out, test of the demo, play around with it to know if the functionality suits your business before deciding on one.

Full list after jump.

OsCommerce (PHP/MySQL)

OsCommerce Online Merchant is an open source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.

Zen Cart (PHP/MySQL)

Zen Cart truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.

PrestaShop (PHP/MySQL)

PrestaShop is a professional e-Commerce shopping cart software that you can download and use for free. Having a very powerful back-end, store admins can manage the inventory, orders, customers & payments easily. System never limits you as it supports unlimited categories, sub-categories & image pictures.

CubeCart (PHP/MySQL)

CubeCart is written to run on servers that have PHP & MySQL support. With CubeCart you can quickly setup a powerful online store which can be used to sell digital or tangible products to new and existing customers all over the world.

Magento Commerce (PHP/MySQL)

Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce platform built on open-source technology that provides online merchants with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their eCommerce store. Magento’s intuitive administration interface features powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools to give merchants the power to create sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Magento also comes with a much more powerful Enterprise version.

Digistore (PHP/MySQL)

Digistore Ecommerce 4.0 is a fully featured open source ecommerce solution based on the popular osCommerce engine. Boasting improvements both to the administration and the end user experience – Digistore has quickly become a popular choice for people wishing to market products online.

Opencart (PHP/MySQL)

A robust e-commerce solution for Internet merchants with the ability to create their own online business and participate in e-commerce at a minimal cost. OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.

Spree Commerce (Ruby on Rails/MySQL)

Spree capitalizes on the dynamic nature of the Ruby progamming language to provide the most flexible commerce platform available. Spree has been designed from the ground up to be as open and extensible as possible. You no longer have to be frustrated with the limited set of choices provided by most platforms.

CREloaded (PHP/MySQL)

CRE Loaded is much more than your average shopping cart. It’s the industry’s first downloadable e-commerce system that makes your store fully compliant with all Payment Card Industry (PCI) security rules. Organize, manage and ship your products from your online store. Accept credit card transactions safely.

Zeuscart (PHP/MySQL)

The Zeuscart shopping cart is based on PHP application and it is used as scripting language which facilitates developer in making dynamically driven websites. It is very facile to learn and understand. To be precise, application of PHP is most popular because of its functionality which can be changed as per ones requirements.

Agoracart (Perl/MySQL)

Offers a very wide range of features that allow you to setup an online storefront or shop ranging from a simple template based store for novices to the integration of complex web design concepts created by your web designer.

Afcommerce (PHP/MySQL)

AFCommerce is a full and complete online store with both a store front and administration area directly Out-Of-The-Box, which can be easily installed, configured, and maintained over a web-based interface. AFCommerce now includes our Ecommerce Website Building Software, AFBuilder, included completely Free.

RapidShop (PHP/without MySQL)

Very fast and easy to use, without MySQL (and can without PHP), direct from MS Excel. For 1000-2000 item of products. RapidShop is integrated with PayPal, EGold and any payment system. You can link your shopping cart to any credit card merchant account or payment gateway. Search Engine Optimized.

For Designers and Photographers

These following shopping carts are light, simple and utmost useful for those who wish to sell stock photos, video and print graphics online.

Cmsaccount Photo Store Script (PHP/MySQL)
Photo store software for selling your photos, images, artwork, audio, videos, vector illustrations and prints online.
Ktools Photostore (PHP/MySQL)
PhotoStore allows you to setup a complete photo selling website on your server or hosting space in just minutes. Perfect for professional photographers looking to sell their images or prints to their customers online.
Xpoze (PHP/MySQL)
Complete and easy to use solution for selling images and other media files such as videos, vectors or 3D graphics. As everyone tends for something unique Xpoze have worked had to provide you with the best flexibility to customize the look and the features you want to use without much fuss and programming knowledge.

Shopping Carts That Integrates With Others

Joomla

VirtueMart (PHP/MySQL)
The complete e-Commerce shopping cart solution for Joomla! – used by thousands of store owners. It can be run in Store- and Catalog-Mode. With its powerful Administration Tool you can handle an unlimited Number of Categories, Products, Orders, Discounts, Shopper Groups and Customers. VirtueMart works for both Joomla and Mambo.
RokQuickCart (PHP/MySQL)
RokQuickCart is a simple shopping cart for Joomla. It takes a simple, yet elegant, shopping cart script and integrates directly into Joomla. It allows you to showcase products, inclusive of images, descriptions and additional options, and purchase these items, with support for shipping and tax calculation.
Seber Cart (PHP/MySQL)
Small, fast and easy to use shopping cart for Joomla.
SimpleCaddy (PHP/MySQL)
Integrate a simple shopping cart into your content. No need to set up a complete system like VirtueMart if you are only selling a few items or you don’t want to setup a complete shop.

Wordpress

ShopperPress (PHP/MySQL)
ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart plugin for wordpress, suitable for selling any types of products, services, and digital downloads online. ShopperPress has built in support for multiple payment gateways allowing you to accept product payments online.
Fat Free Cart (PHP/MySQL)
With FatFreeCart Plugin you do not have to generate or paste any code in CSS or HTML of WordPress theme. The plugin is designed to work within your WordPress post editor.
WordPress e-Commerce (PHP/MySQL)
WordPress e-Commerce is a WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that is truly an industrial strength elegant easy to use and fully featured shopping cart solution suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

Premium Carts Worth Knowing

Last but not least, we throw in some shooping cart that comes with a price tag. For those who have budgets for their online business, these following shopping carts are worth knowing too.

CS-Cart (PHP/MySQL)
CS-Cart is an "out of the box" ecommerce software solution with easy-to-use functionality that allows to start selling online immediately. Its feature set fits into businesses of any size, from a small single-product shop to a fully-featured online storefront. Designed for ease of use along with flexibility, CS-Cart is equipped with the latest ecommerce innovations (like one-page checkout, AJAX-based web interface, block manager and others) built into a highly configurable and modifiable sales and promotion engine.
Bosscart (PHP/MySQL)
Boss Cart is an eCommerce shopping basket application, specifically developed to meet the needs of small to medium sized retailers. Boss Cart has been created using the latest technology and runs on Windows, Linux and all other Web platforms. Boss Cart has been tested with over 20,000 items to ensure maximum speed and efficiency.
Avactis (PHP/MySQL)
Avactis shopping cart is a software package that allows you to open an online store on the Internet. It comprises two parts – a client side and an administrator side. The client side is your website as seen by visitors. The Avactis’s client side allows the visitors to your site to browse products in the online store, select products and put them into the shopping cart, as in a conventional supermarket, and then pay for the selected products using a credit card or other payment options.
Lite Commerce (PHP/MySQL)
LiteCommerce is a lightweight high-tech ecommerce solution devoted to make an internet store launching process as easy as surfing the Web. LiteCommerce is more than just a shopping cart. It is a multipurpose ecommerce store platform. Numerous built-in features will make your online store and your business successful: inventory management, credit card processing, SEO tools, special offers, discount coupons and others.
X-cart (PHP/MySQL)
X-Cart shopping cart software is based on PHP Smarty templates, this makes it very flexible and easy to modify. The data is stored in MySQL database. X-Cart is a turnkey package. Installation is handled by web-based step-by-step wizard to make the system running immediately after receiving it. X-Cart is search engine friendly. A merchant can specify meta tags and define custom URLs for product and category pages that results in higher search engine rankings.
Instantestore (Hosting not required)
InstanteStore provides a variety of SEO, marketing, and promotional tools that you can make use of to bring in traffic and customers. These features will help you reach your potential customer market and get them buying at your store.
Interspire (PHP/MySQL)
From complete SEO optimization to single page checkout, track-able coupon codes and business intelligence reports – no other shopping cart software increases your online sales like Interspire Shopping Cart. Guaranteed, or your money back. We offer both a PHP-based shopping cart and also a hosted, fully-managed ecommerce solution called BigCommerce.
Sunshop (PHP/MySQL)
SunShop shopping cart is search engine friendly shopping cart system. A complete ecommerce solution packed with and extensive feature list. SunShop offers all of the standard features you would find in any off the shelf shopping cart software plus much more. What makes SunShop shopping cart stand above the rest is the ease of use.
Squirrel Cart (PHP/MySQL)
Squirrelcart PHP Shopping Cart software is a fully customizable, robust php shopping cart, designed with the advanced developer and web novice in mind. If you are a web novice, you will appreciate its ease of use, and the fact that Squirrelcart will generate the HTML for all of your store’s pages based on the built in templates provided. If you have a strong knowledge of HTML, you will appreciate the ability to make Squirrelcart look and work the way YOU want it to.
Shopfactory (PHP/MySQL)
ShopFactory 8 all-in-one shopping cart software allows anyone to quickly create and manage their own professional Internet shop — despite being one of the most powerful and feature rich eCommerce solutions on the market. Now you can update your own website and products to sell securely online without professional help.
3dcart (Hosting not required)
Shopping Carts from 3dCart are complete e-commerce storefront solutions for your new or existing web site. Easily build, edit, and maintain your online shop, and collect orders without any programming or HTML knowledge!
Viart (PHP/MySQL)
The Viart range of software provides the tools you need to make full use of the Internet in your business. Now anyone can set up a secure online store without the need for any programming knowledge. The Viart suite of products is designed by Viart in-house team of e-commerce software developers. Together team has over thirty years of experience in this arena.
Pinnacle Cart (PHP/MySQL)
Pinnacle Cart is an extremely powerful php shopping cart and website builder application. Designed from marketing perspective, this eCommerce application is feature-packed, robust, scalable and easy to use. Pinnacle Cart is the clear choice for serious merchants focused on rapidly and cost effectively deploying, managing and growing a successful web-based business.

70+ Insightful Retro And Historic Artwork Around The World

2009-10-07T13:43:51Z

When one speaks of retro art, images of art styles derived from advertising and propaganda posters from 1930s to 1960s usually flood the mind. The simple graphics made from oil paints reflect the less advanced technology of that time. This period is also a time of significant turbulence in our modern history, when major events such as the rise of communism and World Wars were taking ground. It is then not surprising that many posters serve as propaganda tools for the ruling governments. These propaganda images eventually contributed to the development of different retro art styles.

Many of the following retro art pieces that you will see are actual posters produced during those time. We’ve searched a couple of sources to compile a great list of retro art styles comprising not only of propaganda art pieces, but also a few other kind such as advertising posters. In addition, we have separated these pieces into two main categories, Western and Chinese retro art. Full list after jump.

The West: Retro Posters from the West

Here we have Soviet posters during the rise of communism as well as propaganda posters during World War II. There are also some miscellaneous ones like film and product ads, along with some retro-inspired art.

This is the Enemy

Guns of Russia

We’ve Beaten Them Before

Eyes of the Home Skies

Unwilling Volunteers

We Can Do It

Here They Come!

The Soviet Regime

The Power of Propaganda: Wartime Posters

Syd Mead Concept Design for US Steel

Say Yes! to Analog Design

Soviet Flag Over the Reichstag

Retro Never Dies

Reach Out and Touch Someone

Jantzen Swimsuit 1949

Le Facteur ATC

Kultura

Gorbachev

Glory To Our Army

I Wake Up Screaming 1941

Lenin

You Behave!

People and Army are One!

We Will Not Allow This to Happen Again!

Smoke Cigarettes

Great Stalin is A Flag of the USSR’s Friendship

Everything for the Victory – Women of USSR for the Front

Motherland is Calling!

To Defend USSR

Liberated woman – Build Up Socialism!

Fortunello

Beatles Badge

Hotdog

1953 Advertising Calendar for Hotpoint Appliances

Birds!

1924 Lenin Poster

Lenin

1940 Stalin

The East: The Chinese Art of Propaganda

As a result of over 5,000 years of China’s history and culture, Chinese art has always been uniquely different from the West. Here you will see how traditonal Chinese art evolved into retro art that still maintains its distinct culture while incorporating Western art elements to spread communism.

Propaganda

Mao is Always Right

Revolutionary Committees are Good

The Working Class is the Main Force in the Campaign

Win Honor for Our Great Leader Chairman Mao

Sharpening the Knife

Down with the Capitalist

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army

Learn from the Spirit of Daqing

We’ll Definitely Beat the World Record

Communism

Chairman Mao

Develop New Mountain Areas

An Eye for an Eye

Our Victory is Certain

Down with American and Soviet

The Chinese People are Not Easily Humiliated

The Revolutionary Movement

Smash the Old World; Establish the New World

Great Victory

Gutian Conference

Endless Production

Brilliant Light of the Red Sun

Chairman Hua

Chairman Mao

Double Happiness

Learn Science From Young

I Love the Blue Sky of Motherland

Military Spirit

Film Poster: Home

Film Poster: Beyond the Sea

Art Comes From Life’s Struggles

United As One People

These propaganda artworks were collected from Life.com, Flickr, Crestock, kaladarshan, Chinese Poster Online and other websites.

100 Captivating Examples of Urban Decay Photography

2009-10-06T13:56:55Z

One of the things that makes a great designer is the ability to see beauty in unlikely places. And images of urban decay can really put that ability to the test.

Whether it’s images of abandoned buildings or simply a disregarded alley or nook, there is beauty to be found in the derelict and forgotten areas of the world’s cities. The images below give only a small taste of what’s out there, ready to inspire your next design project.

Urban Decay in Tacoma
by anthonyh2006

Urban Decay at a Marin School
by CourtneyAllison

Urban Decay: Nature Juxtaposed with Industry
by Irit

Day 10 — Urban Decay (or Regrowth?)
by brianjmatis

Urban Decay2
by grigjr

Urban Decay — Sofas and Chairs
by byonder

Urban Decay 11 — Courtyard
by grigjr

Urban Decay – 01 — Graffiti
by scotto

Urban Decay — Aerosol Cans
by ridethespiral1

Urban Decay — Red Chair
by secdoover

UrbanDecay
by entengruetze

Urban Decay — English Academy
by ghostrider-in-ze-sky