It seems like every other day Google releases something new, or you learn something about the #1 search engine that you didn’t know about before. Today, I hope to have something for you in the latter category. It seems like every other day Google releases something new, or you learn something about the #1 search engine that you didn’t know about before. Today, I hope to have something for you in the latter category. Google offers fill-in-the-blank searching (also known as wildcards), in it’s search engine. You can ask simple questions in your search and use an asterisk to indicate the “answer” you’re looking for. For example, in the screenshot below, I’m searching for the name of the CEO of Apple. 
As you can see, I worded my question simply and used the asterisk in the proper location. 
In the screenshot above, you can see that I got the answer to my question. The feature works quite well, though it may take a time or two to figure out the best way to ask the question. Sometimes simply re-wording the question can bring about completely different answers.
Category: Internet
OSX system sound song – watch, listen & download!
This little gem is made up entirely of OSX system sounds — a creative project by a designer living in New York City. You can download the GarageBand file used to create this tune from here.
Cool site for package designers
Package design is a niche in our industry that gets little attention, even though it’s probably one of the coolest things to design and looks great in a portfolio. There are few resources dedicated to it, so when I came across The Dieline, I knew I wanted to share it with you. The site offers inspirational samples and articles about great package design, as well as design studio spotlights.
Don’t design a dead-end Web site – it’s all about the content
When I look at a lot of Web sites these days, two things jumps out at me. First, many sites look absolutely stunning. Beautiful mastheads, delicious AJAX everywhere, blinky, swooshing Flash and Web 2.0-style graphics adorn tons of Web sites. Competing with these gorgeous Web sites requires not only great graphic design skills, but you’ve got to be a coding genius as well. The second thing that I notice right away is that many of these sites contain little if any useful, informative content. Opinion blogs are everywhere, virtually anyone who can type has a blog, but finding great content is just getting harder and harder. It almost appears that many of these sites’ purpose is simply to show off the fact that they know how to code. Now I’m not trying to stand on my high-horse and look down on anyone’s efforts… (more…)
Stuff on the Web
Who owns what? With all the Yahoo! takeover talk going around, I went about to find out just how many things would get screwed up if Microsoft ended up buying Yahoo!. Amy Webb has a nifty PDF chart to break down who owns what toys in the Web sandbox. Who is your Internet neighbor? 
For those on shared hosting plans such as HostMonster Dreamhost or iPower, myIPneighbors IP search is a great way to find out if your Web site is packed into a crowded host with hundreds of other sites, and just who those neighboring sites are. DIY digital photography Digital camera lovers, here’s a little DIY fun for the weekend. It’s a video tutorial of how to make an image stabilizer to reduce camera shake. All you need is some string, a bolt and a washer (or some other small weight). Electric Photoshop Add some electrifying energy beams to your subject with this great Photoshop tutorial at Luxa.org. Free online Faxing Every once in a great while you may find yourself needing to send a quick Fax, you remember those, right? If you don’t have a fax machine, you’ll have to run down to the nearest copy shop and pay for it… or, you can just use FaxZero. FaxZero will allow you to send a paper fax from your PDF or text document to any fax number in the U.S. or Canada for free (of course, they add an advertisement on the cover sheet).
Create your Web site Favicon easily
Love them or hate them, Favicons are a visual business card for your Web site in other people’s bookmark bar. Creating them requires the use of an image editor and an application that can save files as a Windows icon (.ico file). Virtually anyone can find an image editor to design their own favicon, but saving them as an .ico file isn’t always so easy to find. 
I decided to skip the part about finding an app to save The Graphic Mac favicon as an .ico file and instead used GenFavicon, a simple Web site who’s only purpose is to generate Favicons for you simply. You link to, or upload the graphic you wish to use as a Favicon, crop it with the handy cropping tool, choose which size you wish to output the file as (most browsers use a 16×16 pixel icon in the location bar), then wait a few seconds for your Favicon to become available. It’s that simple. You can download your file as either an .ico Favicon or a .gif file.
The entire Macworld Keynote in 60 seconds
We all love Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at MacWorld. It’s the highlight of the week, and is usually filled with ooohs and ahhhhs. At least, it was in the past. The last few years have been iPod/iPhone heavy and quite frankly I just don’t have 90 minutes to watch the thing. So when I came across this video at Maholo, I was extatic that I could catch the entire 90-minute speech in 60 seconds. Here it is:
Use Textorizor to combine text & graphics for a stunning image effects
Sometimes the image you’re using in your latest design layout just isn’t interesting enough and using Photoshop filters just isn’t cutting it. Enter Textorizor, a creative way to combine text and your image to create a unique look for your next design piece. While Textorizor is actually just code that needs to be compiled, there is a simple Web interface available for the non-code-geeks among us. There are actually two versions of Textorizor available, the sample above uses Textorizor 2. As you can see, the original image (inset) is used along with user input text to create the appearance of a text image. You could re-create the effect of Textorizor 2 in Photoshop using blend modes, but this just seems so much easier! And Textorizor 1 would just require a lot more mork.
Top ten Web design mistakes… year after year
Jakob Nielsen’s survey results of the Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 is an old article, but proves to me to be an interesting read. While it may seem pretty straight forward, these were the same mistakes that are mentioned year after year. And yet designers continue to make them. The oldies continue to be goodies – or rather, baddies – in the list of design stupidities that irked users the most in 2005. Each of the following is discussed in various amounts of detail at the site:
- Legibility Problems
- Non-Standard Links
- Flash
- Content That’s Not Written for the Web
- Bad Search
- Browser Incompatibility
- Cumbersome Forms
- No Contact Information
- Frozen Layouts
- Inadequate Photo Enlargement
I believe the problem is that there are too many people who got a cheap PC and a copy of (Insert cheap consumer-based Web design program name here – GoLive and Dreamweaver don’t count) and now believe they’re “designers.” But the problem also lays squarely on the head of true designers who over-design their sites. We’re so worried about “how it looks” that we forget that someone else (who usually doesn’t care how it looks) is actually trying to read it! I don’t 100% agree with each statement in the top 10, but all are completely valid and you SHOULD pay attention to them because it can make or break your site.