Whether you’re a kid or an adult, toys are awesome. They are even cooler (to some) if they are made by hand. Here are 9 creative custom wooden toys that you may not see at your local toy store. diego morales
Alongkorn Sanguansook
smallstuffstudio
Emmanuel Gilloz
Lena Voinova
Teodoru Badiu
Incubus project
a href="http://www.behance.net/
If you’re a book lover, you may have noticed that the vast majority of book-related websites out there leave a bit to be desired when it comes to design and information architecture. In fact, some author and publisher websites make me feel like my eyes might bleed!
But there are some gems out there, and we’ve collected some of the best. If you know of any other fantastic book-related websites, whether they’re for authors, individual books, publishing companies, or blogs, let us know in the (...)
Do designers dream in Pantone with visions of rainbows in their heads? Color is a vital part of any graphic designer’s life – after all, they’re the ones paid to come up with pleasing color combinations that will sell a product. That’s why you often see a bold use of color for logos (think Pepsi’s use of primary-color red and blue) as well as websites (such as Graphic Design Blog’s paint-spattered header). While color definitely garners attention, there are times that black and white or a sepia (...)
Today we’re excited to present Rapid Prototyping with SketchFlow, a tutorial by respected user experience professional Shane Morris.
Shane starts off by touching on the history of prototyping tools, and the complex challenges that they once posed for designers who found themselves having to curtail creativity to cater to what the tools themselves were capable of.
Fast forward a few years and the recent rise in demand for, and increased capability of prototyping tools has resulted in a new (...)
Just last week at SMX West, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his short-term goal for Bing is to gain a point here or a tenth there — to chip away and slowly increase its share of the search market. The latest numbers from Experian Hitwise show that Bing is doing exactly that. Hitwise shows Bing gaining [...]
*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. (...)
At the powerhouse Abu Dhabi Media Summit here at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, two of the biggest third-party search deals are being negotiated behind the scenes, we have learned. It just so happens that all the players involved were here for the last day or so: Google (NSDQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, News Corp (NYSE: NWS) contingent of Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Jon Miller, and AOL (NYSE: AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong.
The public posturing of News Corp-vs-Google and (...)
My favorite way to create torn paper edges in Photoshop is to use a nice set of Photoshop brushes. The right set of Photoshop brushes can produce a realistic-looking effect in a short amount of time. I’ve released Torn Paper Brushes on this site before; and love them, but often find that set to have too many peaks and valleys. That is why today, I am releasing a set of 10 Torn Paper Photoshop Brushes with a flatter edge. The flat edge will allow you to add just a hint of torn edges to your (...)
I'm not claiming to be deeply informed about the app marketplace, which Google stirred up today (and, to my mind, the market could use a few more spoons). But I do use apps. At least, I use enough of them to feel like a nearly typical member of the species (as compared to a few of my peers, who are so deeply involved in AppWorld that they have - just maybe - lost a bit of perspective.)
So, here's my beef with AppWorld. In short, it reminds me of computing back in about 1987. Yeah, 24 (...)
Online legal tool platform Legal River launched Attorney River today to connect attorneys to other attorneys. Attorneys can use the service to post requests for other attorneys. Once a lawyer posts a request, for example for outsourcing work or looking for a specialist in a different state, Attorney River alerts all lawyers with matching profiles and allows them to respond through the service.
Attorneys can register and post issues to the site for free, but to respond to a post, attorneys (...)
The Logo Design series is up and running! We're thinking ahead and we want to find new ways to sort these listings. Today, it's all about animals. I gotta say that this is probably the listing with most matches ever...
There are so many that we had to break it and we had do it in 2 parts. I don't know why designer love so much to place animals in their designs... this is the biggest trend EVER. As usual, we'll search for logos in these galleries: Logopond, Logo Faves, Logo Moose, Logo (...)
Hey everyone! Things are full speed ahead in getting ready to head out to Photoshop World March 24-26 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando! I’m pretty excited to be amongst some wonderful instructors to teach the latest and greatest in Photoshop and the web. One of the things that i’m -really- psyched for is the pre-con that I am doing with Matt Kloskowski “HDR Crash Course”. There are still 3 seats left, so I figured it was a good time to let you guys know a little bit about (...)
Over the last six months, doubleTwist, the iTunes alternative that lets you manage your music, videos, and photos, has really been stepping up its game. In October the company integrated an Amazon-powered MP3 store, allowing users to download and sync their music directly with any of hundreds of compatible devices, much as they would with the iTunes/iPod combo. And today it’s adding a new feature that makes it an even more viable iTunes competitor: support for podcasts.
Co-founder Monique (...)
The biggest mistake I see SEO's make: They focus on keywords first and foremost, ignoring opportunities that exist right in their own analytics data.
This is my presentation from SMX West 2010, where I talk about analytics strategies for SEO. It'll help you get out of the keyword abyss.
I added text so that it makes sense, instead of looking like a random set of images and babbling.
You can download the PDF version here:
How to: Get SEO analytics beyond the stone age
PS: Sorry for some (...)
The future of media will be information consumed on superphones while on the go, said Rob Glaser, chairman of RealNetworks, today in his first public speech since stepping down from his CEO position. In the speech, given in Seattle at a Mobile Broadband Breakfast event, he forecast that by 2013 the installed base of smart and superphones (see chart for Glaser’s definition of each) will exceed the installed base of PCs, and those web-surfing devices will be mobile. In this world he sees five (...)
ComScore has just released its February search engine rankings data. And while there’s nothing new in terms of who is on top, who gained and who lost, what’s surprising about it is that among all the online properties where searches are conducted other than the five major search engines, Facebook gained a significant amount of searches in February.
Yes, it seems that more search activities are happening on Facebook lately. Facebook’s total search queries may not be that significant (...)
OK, I can see myself waste some time with this. Google Reader Play is a casual, push style way to feed yourself distracting/ enlightening/ inspiring snippets, imagery and videos. You can star a specific page, Like it or share it, but just jumping from page to page using the bottom navigation works too.
Note Reader Play is personalized. Google writes, “We use the technology behind Recommended Items in Reader to populate Reader Play with the most interesting content on the web. While you (...)
Recently, I sat down with David Meerman Scott, the author of the bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly and the new book World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. I'm the author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, we have the same publisher, and we're virtually neighbors.
Click to read the rest of (...)
The Yahoo! Search engineering teams are rolling out updates to crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms. Similar to previous updates, you may notice some ranking changes and page shuffling during the process, which we expect to complete over the next few days.
To share your thoughts on this latest update, please visit the Site Explorer Suggestion Board.
Dan Rampton
Program Manager, Yahoo! (...)
Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world, according to the annual Forbes list of billionaires.
Read the rest of this story »
See Also:10 Ways Microsoft Is Juicing Bing's Search TrafficBill Gates On The iPad: Hey, Apple – You’re Doing it WrongJon Stewart Grills Bill Gates About Twitter
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The role and purpose of icons is user interaction is very important these days. Icons can enhance the user experience and user friendly icons are really appreciative but they should be unique and easy to understand. There are so many icon websites available on the web but what we are presenting here is only high quality and web2.0 free icon packs collected from various websites ,designers galleries and blogs.
In this icons series we have divided the icon packs in to three main (...)
With Oscar buzz behind us it’s time to look forward to movies that will make up next year’s awards. If you want to throw your hat in the ring, the folks at Britanick released “Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer” to help you out.
The short is a what’s what and shot by shot guide to making the melodramatic yet humorous yet adventurous yet poignant next best thing.
Take a few minutes and enjoy. Then grab your camera and show us what you got.
Related posts:Touching All Screens: How to Produce (...)
Weebly, a very easy-to-use, popular & web-based website-builder service has just opened its theme gallery to all designers.
And, to celebrate this, they launched a design contest with $13,000 in prizes which the entries will be judged by well-known designers: Michael Cronan (acknowledged with the naming and identities of Tivo and Verio and naming the Amazon Kindle) Scott Thomas (former design director of Obama for America) Jason Putorti (former lead designer of Mint.com) Andrew (...)
MySpace today launched MySpace Games that creates a more social gaming environment with new tools and functionality for users and developers.
MySpace Games offers improved application engagement and analytics tools for developers on the MySpace Platform.
MySpace provides a platform that supports independent game developers, while giving support for premium games from major development houses resulting in more gaming choices for users and developers a like.
MySpace Platform developers are (...)
View kennymeyers.com at Design Shack
Posted by jennita
Note: This post will make you smile, possibly even laugh. It won't however teach you much about SEO. You've been warned.
Last week I attended SMX West in Santa Clara, California and took a couple flip video cameras along. I thought it would be fun to do "man on the street" interviews, somewhat along the lines of Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" episodes on The Tonight Show. Another great idea I had was to employ the help of Dana Lookadoo from Yo! Yo! SEO to help with the (...)
The significance of longtail keywords can be exemplified by thinking about the following two people:
Bill is a cafeteria worker who spends his spare time fishing and has heard that his favorite TV shows will look even better on on this new-fangled technology called “HDTV”. He might as well upgrade from his 20” to something a little larger while he's at it his friends tell him (though they don't know much more about it than he does). He sits at his computer and enters (...)
Today, I saw what I thought was an interesting thread over on reddit:
If we could transmit a single, 140 character message back to the year 2000, what should it be?
But I misread it as:
If you could send a single 140 character message back 2000 years, what should it be.
And I think my misread is way more interesting. So much so, that I’m making a $200 twitter contest out of it.
Now we’ll need room for link, so lets make it 122 characters. The Contest
Assume for a second that the (...)
As I have mentioned in our last interview, here at Admix Web we are doing an interview series, where we will conduct informal weekly interviews of fellow designers and developers. It is our contention that these interviews will not only give us great insight into the people behind the designs, but they will also [...]
The iPhone is the most popular product of the past two years. By now everyone knows what the iPhone is, and most of you have one or have come in close contact with one. The iPhone has changed the mobile industry and slated itself as a trend setter. The phone itself isn’t the biggest selling feature – it’s the apps. Allowing consumers to purchase apps really sets apart the iPhone from anything else. The App store has exploded with amazing clever little tools. Developers are pushing the (...)
While flipping through InStyle's latest issue, I was completely and utterly taken by Christina Hendricks & Geoffrey Arend celebrity wedding (Married October 2009). I mean, talk about the cat's meow of going vintage for your wedding. Absolutely gorgeous and done to perfection! The entire wedding party was dressed full vintage.
I simply loved the variety of style, design, and color. With that being said, it all still coordinates nicely. Notice how the female wedding party (above (...)
Issue: #358
Affects: IE6, IE7, IE8
Rendering content in the browser is obviously the main goal of day to day web surfing and web application usage.
There's form interaction, games, Facebook, Mashups & Twitter updates just to name a few.
However when you get a bunch of info/data you care about you likely want to do something with it. Typically you'll want to print, save or export your content so that you have a hard copy or backup.
However exporting is only an option if the web (...)
Congrats and kudos to the team at Thing Labs, our portfolio company that is the creator of Brizzly, on launching today a few exciting new products.
First is the Brizzly Guide, which expands on the trend explanations already shown in Brizzly by giving each topic its own Guide page. Guide pages are permanent sources for up-to-date information on topics people are talking about. You can access these pages even after a topic is no longer showing in Brizzly’s top 10 and you don’t need to be a (...)
Big is good. Despite the common assumption that small companies are the best when it comes to customer and client service, many businesses look the other way when selecting a service provider or contractor. Rather than selecting based on individual attention and customer care, they look for other signals of approval – the ability to work with large clients, a proven track record, and the structure to support large assignments and long-term contracts.
Image Source
For a small boutique (...)
There are two ways you can go when designing a 404 page for your website – you could go the sensible route and make it usable and try to help the reader find exactly what they were looking for or, you could design a 404 page that not only defines the character of the web site or the designer, but also makes it a pleasure and surprise. Its amazing the effect a sprinkle of humor and some creativity can have on someone and it will certainly make your site that little bit more memorable.
Below, (...)
This post has been a long time coming. Whether on Twitter or in the blogosphere, the question often arises, and I have been asked numerous times for my opinion on the ExpressionEngine vs. WordPress debate, and why one would choose one content management system (CMS) over the other.
My usual answer is that they cannot be compared. While WordPress had made huge strides in usability, for anything other than a blog it is an apple.
ExpressionEngine, with the release of version 2.0, makes (...)
Rosenfeld Media, publisher of short, practical books on user experience design, is giving away its entire collection of books (retail value of $216) to a lucky Six Revisions fan via this Twitter-based giveaway.
Each book will be provided to the winner in both paperback and digital eBook versions. Topics range from how to design web forms to prototyping to performing remote user research.
You can view their entire book collection on their Products page.
How to Enter this Twitter (...)
HTML5 structure - div, section & article. Explains the meaning of these new HTML5 elements and how to use them properly.
Shaun Inman’s development blog for his upcoming resolution-switching masterpiece for the iPhone.
With more than 3 billion search queries a month, a search engine like Yahoo might be tempted to take a close look at, and analyze the data it receives in its search logs. That data might tell it what people tend to search for at different times of the day, and different days of [...]
Any freelancer would know that the art of building a client base can be very tricky. It is a skill that takes a while to master. Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about building up your clientele on top of continuing to win new clients and securing repeat business. In fact, I’ve got it down to a science. Three key steps are all it takes.
Image from: caranxcaranx
If you are a freelancer who’s just starting out, and even if you’ve been freelancing for a while now but just can’t seem (...)
Ekaterin Zagustina, also known as Katja Faith, is an artist from Belgorod, Russia. In her artwork style she utilizes a combination of digital illustration and photography. On every painting she creates a beautiful surreal/fantasy world full of emotions. She definitely is one of my favorite artists.
img src="htt
Don't worry, two of them place the blame on someone other than you!
By Obaid ul Rehman
Traditional art has always been the source of inspiration for many artists and designers. With its conventional look and feel, it appeals your visitors and let them amaze on your creativity and artistic skills. In this post, we have piled up an inspiring list of some great Traditional art and paintings for you.
There are several instances when you administer WordPress blogs where you will need to perform a 3 1 redirect. It is one of the most important corrective actions you can take when moving content. No other methods are as friendly to search engines but it must be done correctly. This article will explain how....
Microsoft BPOS - $10 Per User Per Month* *Includes a 12-month subscription. Minimum 5 seats (...)
If you visit MSN.com today, you may notice a new look and feel for the site. The beta design is now the new official look for MSN. Like it or not, this is the new look for now. Greg Sterling...
Last night at Campfire One, Google announced the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace, a destination where developers can sell apps for integration with Google Apps. According to Ryan Boyd with the Google Apps Marketplace team, there are three steps for a Google Apps Marketplace app:
1) Have or create a cloud application and host it on the platform of your choice
2) Integrate your cloud app with Google Apps using available APIs
3) Create a manifest file describing your application and (...)
Once Again, we’ve got something special for our community. InstantShift again came up with cool freebies giveaway as promised. This is our way of saying thanks to our readers for being part of the instantShift community and helping us make it to where we are right now. We at InstantShift love to give away things regularly, all year long. This time I’m pleased to announce our latest giveaway where you all have a chance to win 5 free sets of 1,000 Standard Business Cards each from NextDayFlyers (...)
When you start a website, no matter if you have chosen a top business hosting package or a cheap website hosting package, you will find various website analysis tools in your web hosting admin panel. Website analysis tools, such as Awstats, are typically included in both business hosting and cheap website hosting packages and these tools are indeed good. However, if you want options when it comes to website analytics tools, here are some suggestions. JAWStats
If you like Awstats, you (...)
With this tutorial we will create a hi-tech style button that can be used in splash pages, applications or Powerpoint presentations. We will use Illustrator to create complex vectors and Photoshop to develop realistic effects.
Step 1
Using Illustrator we create a rectangle with the size shown. With the Rectangle tool we click on the work area and a window will appear that will allow us to determinate the exact sizes for the object. I recommend to set Illustrator preferences using pixels (...)
WordPress is most widely known as a popular blogging platform, but it is actually a full-featured content management system. This means that you can use it to power a wide range of different websites. For marketing purposes, you may want to use it for a so-called “squeeze page.”
Approaching this specific application is the appropriately named Squeeze Theme. This is a WordPress template that was designed specifically to build your lists by “squeezing the email addresses out of your visitors.” (...)
It was early 2006. I had been blogging for over a year and felt I had achieved something.
My blog had recently surpassed 1,000 RSS subscribers (what is RSS), making it at the time the most popular website I had ever built. The income was solid – up to $2,000 a month at best – and it was growing. I loved what I was doing.
My plan, based on all the Internet marketing advice I studied from the experts to “create a product”, was to start by releasing an ebook to test the waters as my first (...)
People who are new to the business of search engine optimization quickly learn that they need to obtain links to the pages on their website. This can be a daunting task for a newcomer. It sounds simple until you go to do it. How are you supposed to go about it? Where do you start? What kinds of links should you be trying to get? This is where many people go wrong.
By Guest Writer Thad Olszewski
Let me share some quality insight with you that you are probably having a hard time finding (...)
Blue ERP is a state of the art web based sales management system which helps businesses run their operations efficiently and cost effectively, fully integrating all aspects of the sales processing cycle.
jQAPI is an alternative jQuery documentation site. It seems to be up to date (let’s hope this one will continue to update) and it offers a really easy way to navigate through the items (keyboard navigation is supported). An offline version of the documentation is also available for download.
Related posts:jQuery plugin: Virtual Pagination 2.0Slide Box – a jQuery pluginDrop down menu with CSS and (...)
To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides.
One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been found, the hard work takes care of itself. Then hard work is not hard work at all.
– Mark Sullivan
I read these lines some time ago while surfing on the web, but since then they have been a great source of inspiration for me.
Hi! My name is (...)
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Before I reveal the reason why the majority of blogs fail and what makes the select few succeed, I want to explain why I believe institutional blogs are so important. Why your organisation should blog
An organisational blog has huge potential. Just some of the benefits include: Search engine (...)
CSS Frameworks allow you to rapidly improve and speed up your development time when used correctly, and provide a powerful way to style our websites and applications with flexibility and effectiveness.
So How Do We Choose the Right One?
The first step you need to take is to make sure you decide upon a framework that has an established and accurate representation of detailed documentation. This is vital to the steps you’ll take in implementing and utilizing your framework the way it was (...)
A CSS3 only solution for what is a typical JavaScript thing. Clever use of :target pseudo class.
These people are way cooler than I could ever be. At least I have something to aspire to.
Get your favorite site designs featured on About.com: What is your favorite Web design?
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Wordless Wednesday - Reader's Favorite Designs: Alcoholics Anonymous of Midland, Michigan originally appeared on About
Alex Mather’s new ebook ‘10 Steps to Powerful Online Self Promotion for Creatives‘ has just been released and it’s definitely worth checking out. I’m not here to ‘sell’ the book to you but seeing though it’s one of the most common question areas that I get asked about, I thought it was worth sharing. Click here to check out the book & judge for yourself* An overview of what’s included in the book: How to establish a unique selling point, and become an outstanding, credible brand. How to (...)
Taking public transit wouldn't just decrease our carbon footprint — it'd also end all that fiddling with the phone while driving, an insanely dangerous problem.
img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wi
Geocoding - finding the geographical location of a given address - is one of the most popular features of the Google Maps API. Both the JavaScript Maps APIs and the Maps API for Flash include classes that enable applications to perform geocoding, and there is also a RESTful web service that offers the option of making geocoding requests from server side applications with output in both XML and JSON.
The Google Maps JavaScript API v3 introduced a new format for geocoding responses that (...)
