BitBox has just released another free TrueType font called Fusty Saddle (fusty means "Old fashioned in attitude or style). It's a rustic, western-style font similar in style to the old Adobe favorite, Mesquite.

Fusty Saddle makes for a great display font, to be used in headlines only. The only problem I have with the font is that there are no punctuation characters such as period, comma, quote or exclamation point. These characters are still important in headlines. That being said, it's still a beautiful font.

You can download Fusty Saddle here.

Smashing Magazine held a texture photo contest last month and has recently released the results. A variety of interesting, exotic or creative textures from all around the globe. Wood, stone, metal, nature, ice, sand, fabric, paper, glass, fire, food and plastic textures. A large number of daily routine things observed from a completely new perspective.

All the images can be used for both private and commercial projects free of charge and with no restrictions.

The images are all large, high resolution, and the compressed image files range between 1 and 15MB, for a total well over 700MB in size. Most all of them are suitable as backgrounds on brochures, pocket folders, posters and more - they aren't just small seamless textures. Each image is an individual download, so you can grab just the ones you want.

You can start downloading the images here.

With the release of Adobe AIR, the flood of AIR apps are beginning to roll in. If you don't know, Adobe AIR is a development environment which allows developers to use Flash, Flex and Ajax to create rich Internet applications which are platform independent. You can download Adobe AIR here.

One AIR app that caught my eye is Shrink O'Matic, which allows you to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs.

Simply drag and drop images and they'll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats.

CopyCraft Printers has a host of PDF, Vector and PNG templates available for download. Included in the list are templates for:

• Calendars
• 3D Displays
• Business Cards
• Brochures
• CD/DVD & Video Tape Boxes
• CD/DVD Booklets
• Door Hangers
• Postcards
• Presentation Folders
• Menus
• Table Tents

While it's not often that you find yourself using "pre-built" sized design items, they may serve as a good starting point for quicky jobs.

If you've read this site for any amount of time, you know I love Photoshop brushes, especially grunge-style brushes. Today I came across two sets of grunge brushes by Aramisdream, and they're spectacular.

Download set one here.
Download set two here.

Uncompress the downloaded files and move the .abr files to your Photoshop/Presets/Brushes folder. Then load them into your brushes panel in Photoshop to use. They're all large, high-quality brushes and make perfect background textures for various projects.

Abduzeedo has put together a list of 1000+ Free Photoshop Brushes complete with download links in a variety of styles, including grunge, abstract, modern and vector. You can take a look at the preview images and download them here.

The Yahoo Developer's Network has made available a free package of graphics stencils (templates) in Vector, PDF, PNG and OmniGaffle formats. Included in the package are templates for:

• Calendars
• Charts & Tables
• Control Elements
• Form Elements
• Menus & Buttons
• Mobile Phone Graphics
• OS Window Elements
• And more

You can download the package here.

There's no freebie like a vector freebie, I always say. Dezignus' site is full of them, including this beautiful floral border design, as well as Simpsons characters, stars, flourishes, icons, and other border elements.

Be sure to also check out the links to Photoshop brushes, tutorials and inspirational material while you're there.

For bloggers and designers who've spent many hours writing copy for a Web site, one of the most annoying things that can happen is to have somebody copy and paste their work word-for-word and paste it on their own site - many times with not so much as a credit link. You own the copyright, but who has time to scour the Internet for content thieves? Copyscape has the answer.

If you're a Web designer, you really should have WebDesignerWall bookmarked in your browser or RSS reader, it's a great resource.

Recently, they posted a rather lengthy SEO guide for designers to consider when working on their next project.

The article covers topics such as how search engines work, top SEO mistakes you can make (and probably have), general Do's and Dont's, and resources to further your SEO education.

SitePoint is currently offering The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques, a 278 page e-book in unrestricted PDF format, available for download.

The book is filled with real-world Photoshop solutions for your next Web design project. The book is stuffed with full color illustrations for those who like to "see it" rather than "read it."

SitePoint, and the sponsor 99designs, is making the book available for download for the next 23 days only, so hurry over and grab your copy. You will have to provide a valid e-mail address to receive the links to the PDFs. There are two versions available, a low res version at 25.5MB and a high res version at over 60MB.

If you find yourself needing to show a client what their artwork will look like on a T-Shirt, Vector4Free has something for you that will make the presentation a little easier.

T-Shirt Models features is a free vector files containing 4 T-Shirt Models and 2 T-Shirt Shapes, front and back, for girls and boys.

It isn't often, but every once in a while you find yourself having to convert a color from CMYK to RGB. Most likely, this is a client giving you their CMYK colors to use in a Web layout, or similar situation.

While this process is rarely successful because you lose color info when doing so, this color conversion tool will help you get the most accurate color conversion possible.

That's a question I see a lot in Web forums all over the place. People constantly asking if XYZ site is down for everyone, or just them. As a Webmaster, seeing an error message when trying to load your site strikes fear and anxiety into your heart.

Thankfully, DownForEveryoneOrJustMe has the solution to put your heart at ease — or at least tell you that you've got a problem to deal with.

You simply type the Web address you wish to check into the entry box:

Then it'll tell you if the site is truly down or not:

I've used this a few times over the last few months and found it very handy.

Please Digg this if you find it useful.

A few years ago, I posted a long list of free online file sharing services. If you haven't used a sharing service to transport large files from one computer/location to another, you're missing out. It's a whole lot cheaper, and most times, faster than burning CDs or lugging around an external hard drive. It's also a little more secure than just tossing your document onto a "who knows how reliable" USB keydrive.

Rather than post an exhaustive list of services, I decided this time to focus on 20 of the better services I've come across. I have tried every one on this list and found the experience satisfactory to excellent.