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links for 2008-09-04

  • If you run a consumer business, chances are pretty good a few of your customers are posting their opinions about it on the dozen or so Web sites that review local businesses across the country. These sites attract tens of thousands of daily posts and position themselves as online destinations for consumers to offer or get an unvarnished take on a business—to be both the critics and lobbyists. The largest of these sites, in terms of July monthly unique visitors, include YellowPages.com (T)(roughly 18 million uniques), YELP (roughly 17.8 million), Yahoo! Local (YHOO) (roughly 13.2 million), and Citysearch (roughly 10 million), according to Web analytics firm Compete.com. “These sites are going to become more important,” says Matt Booth of Kelsey Group, a research firm that specializes in local search. “And there are going to be an increasing number of them.”
  • Throughout the past weeks and months, a common question that arises with clients and readers of Elite By Design is all about how to get started with WordPress. With thousands of new blogs springing up every day, it can be quite daunting for a new user to be thrust into a new interface and blogging platform. That is why today I am taking WordPress back to the basics with 25+ essential articles for every WordPress beginner.
  • Brushes and custom shapes can make a design come alive either with a little grunge effect or a sunburst or a silhouette. There are literally thousands of brushes and shapes to choose from so here is a list that contains over 600 brushes and shapes to help you make a killer site.
  • Often in the development of a site I come across the need to display the size of a document next to the link targeting it. I also like to display the type of file the link targets, for example, when linking to pdfs, mp3s or Word documents. These indications distinguish the ‘attachment’ link from a normal web link, whilst also giving the user some inkling of the time they will need to wait to view the resulting content. So I was pretty excited when Simon bounded in from work and enthusiastically demonstrated json-head, a Google App Engine application he built on the train home. Every file on the web, be it a web page, a text file or whatever has HTTP headers associated with it. This is meta information about the file that is sent before the actual contents of the file itself. Included in this meta information is the size of the document. You can call json-head with JavaScript (JSONP).
  • Making a photograph of a person look amazing adds an extra dimension of professionalism to your design. These photoshop body enhancement tutorials will help you transform your people pictures to stunning models in next to no time. Most techniques involve similar use of the photoshop tools.
  • Round out your mad-science lab or witch’s larder with just a few dollars and a little imagination – This is a process, rather than a specific How-To. Use a similar process on your own to mix and match different items to make your own jars. Wander through the dollar store and look at the various items in a whole new way!
  • Every Designer has his favorite tools and add-ons that definitely comes in handy when needed. What is more useful than simple, time-saving and handy tools you can use in the development process? Here is a roundup of 15 tools, services and add-ons that is worth your time. Let us know your experience with the tools listed here or and others that you use to keep you going. I would like to create a gallery here on Noupe to showcase the best Tools, Services and Add-ons that will definitely save time and effort for designers and developers.
  • Over the last months we have seen a strong trend towards more individual web designs. These designs use realistic motifs from our regular life, such as hand-drawn elements, script fonts, pins, paper clips, organic textures and scrapbooks. That’s not a big surprise as they manage to serve the function which faceless shiny glassy 3D-buttons completely fail to deliver: convey the individuality and personality. “Personal” designs appear more familiar and more friendly. Used properly, such elements can give a human touch to design and communicate the content in a truly distinctive manner. However, apart from visual design elements one can also get creative with the layout of the site – its structure and the way the information is presented and communicated. To provide you with some ideas of how exactly it can be done, we have been collecting examples of creative design layouts.
  • Oh_No_Full_Length.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)
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