Hongkiat

If you are born around the 80’s, chances are this video game had been your favorite pass time, or maybe it still is. It’s been 23 years since world-renowned video game Street Fighter was released by Capcom. The series silently set the standards in fighting games genre and eventually became one of the highly successful franchise that continues to this day. Not many video game franchises have both the deep history and significance of Street Fighter today.

With so many interesting characters SF have, we picked those very famous ones. These Illustrations below are created by artists, professionals and fans around the world. You’ll see artworks portraying the Street Fighter cast in a wide array of styles and designs, from powerful to passive, sexy to silly, extremely detailed to sketchy. Enjoy!

Ryu

Born in Japan, Ryu is one of the most beloved and favorite character in the SF series. He typically dressed in a traditional white gi, red fingerless gloves, a black belt and a red headband. Ryu is also famous for creating the memorable scar on Sagat’s chest, resulting from an advanced version of Shouryuuken during the first World Warrior tournament.

RYU: The Rising Dragon (via Mgnz)

Marvel VS Capcom 2: Ryu (via Udoncrew)

Evil Ryu (via Fightersgeneration.com)

Ryu vs Sagat (via Braders1986)

Ken

Ken, the 2nd most popular character in the series also wears a traditional gi in red color. Like Ryu, Ken’s objective is to test his skills against many different fighters and make every effort become the best.

SF4 Ken (via SFgalleries)

Ken vs Vega (via O-beto-O)

Chun Li

Chun Li is the first female playable character to show in a 1-on-1 fighting game. While not as physically powerful as the other characters, she was by far the quickest. She usually dressed in a blue qipao, a traditional Chinese dress. Her hair is styled-up in "horns" adorned with brocades and ribbons.

Chunli Style (via Artgerm)

Chun Li (via Mike Thompson)

Chun Li (via Ddd111)

Chun-Li (via Erina)

Guile

Guile is a Major in the United States Air Force. Guile leaves his family and country to join the World Warrior tournament to take revenge on the death of his beloved friend Charlie, who was killed by M. Bison.

Guile Rendition (via Michael Ryan Kime)

Guile Wall (via M16)

Street Fighter Tribute 1 (via Mgnz)

Blanka

Blanka’s beastly look is a product of Shadoloo genetic experimentation. Blanka is also famous for his shocking orange hair. He was trapped in the Brazilian jungles as a young child and was raised by animals.

Wild Blanka (via Castello)

Dhalsim

Dhalsim, who is a pacifist, was born in Kerala, India. This yoga master is known for his bald head painted with red stripes, the string of skulls around his neck.

Character Select- Dhalsim (via Udoncrew)

Dhalsim vs Necro (via DXS Infinite)

Dhalsim Wall (via Manywallpapers)

Dhalsim: Yoga Blowfish (via Zatransis)

E-Honda

E. Honda is a sumo wrestler who typically seen a blue mawashi with red paint art in his face. Although he never earned the highest rank in sumo (Yokozuna), he got the second highest (Ozeki).

Little Honda (via Dennisbell)

E Honda C2 (via Fightersgeneration)

E Honda C2 (via Creativeuncut)

Sagat

Sagat is frighteningly tall, a natural gift he uses to his advantage with his long-reaching assaults. His natural size earned him to become a powerful and ferocious fighter. He is totally bald and wear’s an eyepatch to cover his damaged eye. This giant has hands and feet larger than most of his opponents.

Sagat SF (via Umagafan84)

Cammy

Cammy White or Cammy wore a green thong leotard and was a member of a British special forces team known as Delta Red.

Sexy Cammy (via Markovah)

Yummy Cammy (via Artgerm)

Cammy (via Omar-dogan)

Zangief

Zangief is a national hero in Russian with a nickname, “Red Cyclone” He became acquainted with Gorbachev towards the end of Alpha 2. After meeting Gorbachev, Zangief is sent to train in the Siberian wastes, wrestling bears.

Zan Da Maaan (via Mon3m)

Zangief vs Blanka (via Kuroitora)

Zangief Street Fighter Fan art (via Giaci78)

Zangief SF (via Leeyiankun)

Zangief fan art (via Jy-kim)

Vega

Vega is an interesting character, not only for his fascination with beauty, but also for his unique fighting style using a claw he wields. He’s one of the few SF characters to continuously carry a weapon. He learned bull fighting and ninjutsu, and became a cage fighter.

Vega – Detalles (via Varges)

PF Vega (via Udon Crew)

Vega vs Cammy (via Jujika)

Balrog

Balrog is an African American boxer who was banned from boxing for permanently injuring his opponents and accidentally killing one. Balrog join the Shadaloo criminal organization, and worked his way up from the bottom, eventually becoming M. Bison’s close disciple.

Balrog (via Syclown)

M. Bison

M. Bison is usually dressed in a red military uniform, large silver shoulder plates, and a grey cape. Master Bison’s ambition is to gain power over the world’s governments through his secret crime syndicate, Shadaloo.

M. Bison Zbrush (via Rv_el)

Sakura

Sakura is a Japanese schoolgirl who has a strong interest on Ryu. She has managed to copy and learn some of Ryu’s techniques. This cute student usually fights in her school’s uniform, a short-skirted sailor fuku.

Sakura Sunshine (via Artgerm)

Cute Sakura (via Markovah)

PF Sakura (via Udon Crew)

SF Legends Sakura Issue 1B (via Udon Crew)

Akuma

Akuma’s fighting style integrates the trademark moves of Ryu and Ken. He is famous for his death technique called, Shun Goku Satsu or "The Raging Demon". Akuma has red hair, wears a black gi, and wears prayer beads around his neck.

Evil Akuma (via Nefar007)

Akuma Shungokusatsu (via Hekoo)

Akuma Sign (via Comicvine)

Akuma vs Dan (via Omar-dogan)

More Street Fighter Artworks

Street Fighter cover (via Diablo2003)

Street Fighter II 2 Cover (via Udoncrew)

Street Fighter (via Benlo)

Street Fighter Tribute Cover (via Udoncrew)

SF Alvinlee Tribute (via Fiboy)

Street Fighter Art Book (via Imaginism)

Street Fighter Tribute Book (via Imaginism)

Street Fighter Cover 2 (via Udon Crew)

Street Fighter no.3 COVER (via Alvin Lee)

Chibi Street Fighter Group (via Shauno)

Street Fighter Street Jam (via Udon Crew)

Attractive, visually appealing cover is probably one of the foremost step for a PS3 game company to persuade gamer for another good sale. Thus, the company must be putting a lot of effort in working their designers to create the most attractive and promising cover for their product.

That’s why we grab a chance of a post to showcase 63 purely attractive PS3 game covers for you to get inspired, and who knows, you might grab yourself a copy!

Aliens vs Predator

Nicely designed game cover with appealing color scheme and absolutely different typefaces to distinguish 2 unique species.

Alone in the Dark

Character portrait is very nice that it evokes you a will to discover the story inside the game.

Alpha Protocol

A futuristic design with awesome graphic and typography effects that make this game cover stand out from others.

Armored Core for Answer

Probably one of the most persuading cover in the Armored Core series that expects you to have the coolest 3D machinery combat experience.

Assassin’s Creed II

Well designed mysterious assassin, that’s all enough for you to pick the game up and check out its back cover for more info.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman series did exceptionally well to attract customer on its design for movie poster, so is its game cover.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Besides the attractive design, the cover designer placed nickname above each character to effectively indicate that the game would be more fun with its multiplayer mode.

BioShock

Named ‘Big Daddy’ (the big machinelike creature in the cover), this genetically enhanced human has done a really good job in attracting the gamer.

BioShock 2

The sequel of the series that showcases another type of eye cathy ‘Big Daddy’.

Borderlands

Very creative use of splatter effect, the overall design also shows how annoying would the game be.

Dante’s Inferno

Nicely blended design that catches your eyes with horrible elements.

Darksiders

Strong color scheme, strong house and strong rider, there’s no reason for this game cover to be less attractive.

Dead to Rights: Retribution

Good combination of splatter and grunge effect that expresses violent gameplay, appealing to fierce gamer.

DiRT

Grunge and splatter effect were used to increase overall messiness that grabs a lot of attention.

DiRT 2

Sequel of the series, this cover applied more ‘dirty’ elements on the design to make itself looks far more different from other, mostly neat designs.

Eat Lead

Massive use of gun elements makes the cover really appealing to wargamer, I thought it’s the sequel for the return of Serious Sam before.

Fairytale Fights

I’ve never seen Fairytale as this bloody before…and this cover really tempts me to check out what’s going on in the game.

Fallout 3

Good use of old photo effects which suits this game’s conspiracal topic, looks tasty for wargamer.

Final Fantasy XIII

Instead of using beautiful background design, Square Enix made Final Fantasy XIII’s cover to be so minimal that gamer can see how impressive the rendered game character is.

Second version of cover that shows you how detail the character rendering that you can expect from the actual game.

Front Mission Evolved

Another Square Enix’s cover design that attracts you with its cool in-game machinery model.

God of War 3

Probably one of the most eye cathy cover design, but it might be tricky for someone who’s new to the series to know that it’s the 3rd installation of the series.

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue

Elegant cover design makes this series of Gran Turismo looks really gorgeous, worth a buy.

Guitar Hero: World Tour

Good job on the character design to show how crazy would the game be, rocker!

Heavy Rain

Mix of emotional character and mysterious origami makes the cover itself nice enough for gamer to check out its content.

inFamous

Infamous people with special ability doing extraordinary things are always a heating topic for gamer.

Killzone 2

Wargamer never resisted to check out this kind of cover with fierce game title and character illustrated.

LittleBigPlanet

You can’t hardly ignore to stare on this cover with one of the cutest illustrated creature in this planet!

Lost Planet 2

Impressively designed logo, characters and monster get this cover a lot of impression.

MAG

Guns, missiles, war scenes, that’re all what you need to attract wargamer.

Medal of Honor

Medal of Honor focuses solely on portraying 1 character with monochrome color scheme, which acutally makes it looks unique from other war related titles.

ModNation Racers

Another game with cute and charming characters, greatest hit for kids and girls.

Naughty Bear

You must be wondering what makes this extremely cute bear so naughty!

Another version of cover that looks bloody, yikes.

Need for Speed: Prostreet

Prostreet series’ car has always done well on grabbing gamer’s attention in its every platform’s cover.

Nier

A very realistic cover design that features promising graphics from the game.

Prototype

Despite the mutated arm, covered face is really the effective yet overused element to attract gamer.

Quantum Theory

Quantum Theory looks fantastic to play with its beautifully crafted character and weapon.

Red Dead Redemption

A game cover presented in totally different way of illustration which suits American gamer’s taste very much.

Reflex: MX vs ATV

Nice application of modern design skill on this game’s cover, which makes it absolutely different with common motocar racing game’s cover design.

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil series never failed to create terrible atmosphere from its cover design.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition

Gold edition’s cover which features 2 of the most welcomed character in the series, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine.

Resistance: Fall of Man

The unique concept of putting a mutated human skull in the cover makes it uncommonly attractive.

Ridge Racer 7

Another gorgeous cover design for a car game that focuses more on racing car.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

The cover highlighted the battle between the holy being and evil creature, which is the kind of story that never failed to entertain gamer.

SAW

This terrible mask can probably catches your attention…and a cold breath.

Silent Hill: Home Coming

Absolutely the most horrible-looking cover among all PS3 games that summarizes the game would deliver you horror, horror and more horror.

Skate 3

An inspiring and cool cover design for skating title which always want you to act cool in the game.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Very beautiful and promising characters for a fantastic role playing game.

Tekken 6

This sequel’s cover shows that the character is far more realistic than its prequels.

The Club

Very nice use of splatter effect that converts common looking faces into very different pieces.

TimeShift

Visually impressive game title and character.

Trinity Universe

All charming characters from 3 titles gather in 1 game with extra features, looks like a must have collection for those series’ fans.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Remarkable design of character and cover that promises you amazing storyline and gameplay.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Sequel of the series which its cover design looks as irritating as the prequel.

Second version of the cover which features another irritating game scene.

Unreal Tournament III

Deadliest Unreal engine hardly disappoint gamer.

Viking: Battle for Asgard

Nicely portrayed character in a rare setting, looks nice to check it out.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Just look like it would be another thrilling adventure with guns and bullets.

WET

Girl is the rare appearance as a main character in shooting game, so this is probably the outstanding piece from shooting titles.

White Knight Chronicles

I would say it’s one of the most beautiful white knight I’ve ever seen, and it’s really good to put it in the game cover for aggresive attraction.

Another version of cover that showcases the better portrait of the white knight.

Reflection

So you arrived to the end of this showcase, did you get your favorite cover? Or do you have a nice PS3 game cover to share with us?

Besides, what do you think a game cover should get to attract gamer efficiently? We’re exciting to hear from your sharing!

We’ve got some freebies for you! This week we are giving away 5 copies of ClassiPress premium Wordpress themes to Hongkiat readers, courtesy of Appthemes.

ClassiPress is a premium theme that turns the entire Wordpress blog into a classified site. It takes care of the technology so you can focus on the listings ans sales. If you are looking to create a classified website, this is something you probably don’t want to miss.

Here are some examples created with ClassiPress, or check out the entire collection at AppThemes.

• http://taiwandeal.com/
• http://runninghorses.net/
• http://tutorlink.co.nz/

We are giving away 3 Personal Editions, 1 Professional Edition and 1 Ultimate edition of ClassiPress – 5 copies in total. Click here to find out the differences of each edition.

How to win

If you are interested in winning yourself a copy, drop a comment below. It’s that simple. Contest will start today, ends 2nd August 2010. Good luck.

I’m sure each and everyone of us were pretty excited when we first got our DSLR. I mean, who’s not right. And the next thing most of us will do is – start abusing the shutter and snapping non-stop. That’s just how we learn.

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Photography is a beautiful form of art with no hard rules. It’s all about creativity and individual style. And that’s what makes it so interesting. There are lots of tips and tricks to be learnt, and certainly lots of experiences to be gain before one becomes an expert. If you are new to photography, here are five ways to create cool photos to impress your friends.

1. Long Shutter Photography

Long shutter photographs are always amazing. While playing with the shutter speed, you can come up with super amazing photographs beyond your expectations. And the specialty of long shutter photographs are that they present the world around you in a unique way like you’re never seen before. To get a feel of what exactly it is, have a look at the following examples.

examples

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So, you got a rough idea on what exactly is long shutter photography. Now, how to take them?

Technique

To take amazing long shutter photographs, you have to first learn and completely understand what exactly Shutter Speed is. Shutter speed for a camera is for the time the light sensitive film is exposed to the light outside. Getting back to shutter speed, camera metering instruments measure them in a range of reciprocal of time. Eg: 1/30, 1/500, 1/1500 sec. etc.

These are the time for which your shutter will be open while taking a particular photograph. Higher the shutter speed, you’ll have to handle the camera well to avoid any jerk as a slight jerk in this setting can ruin your photograph. For this, use of a tripod is recommended. Some cameras have bulb mode that enables you to let your shutter open as long as you keep the button pressed.

2. custom bokeh shapes

According to Wikipedia, the definition of bokeh is:

"In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”

Bokeh is a word derived from Japanese, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality”. The Japanese term bokeh is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility.

Without a doubt, bokeh is one of the most interesting and sort after thing in digital photography. And it’s indeed evident from the following photographs.

Examples (Bokeh)

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Technique

By default, bokeh shapes are only circular in shape (owing to the fact that the shape of your lens is circular). But can we also make custom bokeh shapes? Well, yes that’s possible and for that you need the following:

1. Camera lens (preferbly large aperture),
2. Cardboard sheet
3. Some duct tape.

To start with, draw any shape which you want in the middle of the cardboard sheet and cut that portion out. Next, wrap the remaining cardboard sheet around your camera lens carefully and with little practice.

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Start shooting something and you’ll noticed your bokeh will have the shape just like the one on the cardboard. Here are some beautiful custom bokeh to inspire you.

Examples (Custom Bokeh)

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Further Reading

• How to Make a Custom Bokeh – wikihow
• DIY Your Own Bokeh – diyphotography
• Make Your Own Bokeh Shape – shutterskills

3. High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography

HDR stand for High Dynamic Range photography. Normally, even our natural vision is incapable of seeing all the dynamic ranges in any photographs. So, HDR is more of a post processing trick rather than a photography trick. Nevertheless, following photographs show what we’re talking about.

Examples

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Exiting, isn’t it? Watching these amazing HDR, you must be thinking would you be able to take such photographs ever? And the answer is, you’ll be able to do that in the next five minutes. But for that, you have to first understand the exposure bracketing language that your camera understands.

Technique

Most cameras understand the exposure of images in bracketing measures which normally range from (-2) to (+2) stop (both being the extreme ends of exposure respectively). In simpler terms, a photograph shot at (-2) exposure bracketing will be under-exposed and the one shot at (+2) exposure bracketing will be over exposed.

Ok. Now you have the idea what exactly does exposure bracketing means. Bring out your camera and click three shots of the same subject in three exposure brackets viz:

• First shot at (-2) stops.
• Second shot at (0) stops.
• Third shot at (+2) stops.

As I already told you, HDR is more of a post processing trick than being a photography trick, you’ll need a software to merge and level the three photographs you just took. If you have Photoshop with you, it will work fine. If not, there is a special and dedicated software for HDR image processing and is called PhotoMatrix. You can just download the software and merge the above three photographs you took. A little bit of channel tuning and color correction, and you’ll have your first HDR photograph ready.

Further Reading

• HDR Photography Tutorial – raven-photography
• HDR/Photomatix tutorial – abduzeedo
• Create HDR Images in Photoshop – yanik photoschool

More HDR photos:

• HDR Photography: Tutorials, Tips and Stunning Examples – hongkiat

4. Burst Zoom Photography

Burst zoom is a very interesting trick in digital photography. Everyone knows what is a zoom (there are two of them, optical and digital) and any kind of zoom just does one thing, makes distance objects appear nearer to you so that you can catch more of the subject in focus than the surroundings. But burst zoom is a very interesting trick that may take quite some time to practice and master. To get an idea, check out the photos below.

Examples

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Technique

With these amazing examples, it is evident that not always a sharp and crystal clear image is required and sometimes adding a good amount of blur and burst makes the photograph stand out from the rest. Getting back to the burst zoom technique, to be able to take burst zoom photographs you have to follow the following steps:

1. Set your camera to slow shutter speed and a wide aperture.
2. Try to shoot in manual mode.
3. Get ready for the action

Now, the execution part comes in. As you’ve already set your camera up in manual mode with slow shutter, you’ll get plenty of time to execute the burst zoom. To do that, as soon as you press the button to take photograph, zoom your lens quickly to the subject and get back. This should be done in a split second otherwise you won’t get the desired effect. If you’ve done everything right, you’ll be very happy to see the results.

5. High Speed Photography

Who doesn’t like action? But when it comes to capturing the action in your camera, you need to know certain tricks of trade or you’ll end up with only blurry and out of focus photographs. As a matter of fact, the high speed photography also requires a good amount of knowledge about shutter speed, camera aperture and ISO settings so that you are able to get the desired shots. Here are some examples.

Examples

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Technique

High speed photography can be categorized in different categories like:

• Macro photography
• Sports photography
• Action photography

But all these have one thing in common, the high shutter speed involved. As I’ve already explained you above what exactly shutter speed is, you’ll not face much trouble figuring this one out. To get started with high speed photography you just have to:

1. Choose your action subject (or set the stage up if you’re going for macro high speed photography)
2. Set your camera to a high shutter speed
3. Set a higher ISO (not too high otherwise you’ll end up with grainy pics)

Well, that’s with the settings and now you’re good to go to capture the action. Just go out in the wild and capture everything that appears to be moving. After some amount of practice, you could be a high speed photography expert.

More high speed photography photos:

• High Speed Photography : Frozen in Time – hongkiat
• 40 Stunning Examples of High Speed Photography – smashingapp

The approach of the word geek has changed significantly over time, and there are no longer a definitive definition. Words like dork, nerd, dweeb, spod, and gimp have the same connotations as geek, but a lot of people chose to give different meanings amongst these terms. Being address as a geek tends to be an insult in the past tense, in fact in 1876, the meaning of geek is "fool", which is indeed blunt and as if it is not bad enough the definition evolved to "a performer engaging in bizarre acts like biting the head off a live chicken." but that was 134 years ago. The term geek today has become more complimentary, geek is the trend just like fashion due to many technical people had become very successful in their chosen field.

Today, we collected bunch cool stuffs worthy for a true gadget geek. Whether you’re a Starwars fanatic, Apple fanboy, social media addict or just a retro gaming activist, our nerdy list of product will give you some truly geek-themed design. If you need more geeky items in your arsenal to parade your geek pride, then get some of the cool products below.

Mus2

Lebedev’s Mus 2 is a cordless computer mouse that looks like a cursor. Despite of its cursor shape, it fits very well in your hand and it is very easy to use. Also, this optical mouse has 800 dpi optical sensor resolution , a frame speed that could reach 2300fps. (via Art Lebedev)

Tetris Table

Jared Kohn created a this table inspired by the game Tetris. This colorful Tetris table looks cool on our backyard garden. (via Jared Kohn)

R2 D2 Trashcan

Here’s a detailed model of R2-D2 that acts as your garbage can. The can is avaliable in full-size which stands at 24 inches tall or Desktop model which is smaller. (via Thinkgeek)

Interactive Drum T-Shirt

A drum kit built right into your T-shirt! Tap the drums on this shirt and they actually play through the embedded speaker. This electronic and innovative shirts not only help you appear to be a wannabe rock star, it also help you become somewhat geekier than rock. (via Think Geek)

Social Media Pillows

According to Craftsquatch’s shop on Etsy, the pillows are 100% handmade and you need to allow 7-10 days for your item to be shipped because they’re made to order. (via Craftsquatch)

The Wearable Keyboard

This unusual wearable gadget is built into a pair of fashionable designer jeans by Erik De Nijs. It has a built-in keyboard, mouse, and computer speakers that play audio. (via Erik De Nijs)

USB Webcam Rocket Launcher

While you’re chatting with your buddies on MSN, this Webcam USB Rocket Launcher allows you to do more than just share videos and pictures. With this cool gadget you can wage war on your chat buddy by taking control of his rocket launcher. But beware because he’ll be in control of yours. (via)

Super Mario Bros Wall Decals

This is an official Nintendo licensed product. The graphics are so life like, it’s like actually watching Super Mario Bros. game on pause. (via Blik company)

The Darth Vader Toaster

Yes, the Sith Lord makes evil toast with an image of Darth Vader. This is the only toaster that takes toast launching to a whole new…the dark side. (via Starwars)

WoW Beer Stein

Handcrafted in the Old-World style with fine-grain stoneware by the world-renowned stein artisans of Ceramarte. Their limited-production steins feature panoramic, bas-relief sculpting of exclusive artwork by top World of Warcraft visionaries. (via 3 Point Entertainment, LLC)

The Tetris Couch

These stylish couch is basically a set of many small couches of different dimensions. Stefano Grasselli make sure is vary in their sizes and shape along with different colors to match the interiors of your living room. (via Stefano Grasselli)

Pacman Sofa

The Pacman Sofa sets is covered in a stain resistant coated fabric and comes in different of colors.

Key Bag

This funky bag was created using 393 randomly arranged old computer keyboards keys. (via Joao Sabino)

Space Invaders Cutting Board

LiveJournal user Capt. Sideburns has posted the results of his experiments in creating a Space Invaders cutting board. No silly colors, he just use the plain graphic in walnut blocks put together into maple to make a pixel art butcher block. (via Capt. Sideburns)

The “PacM” chair

Jose Jorge Hinojosa Primo has come up with an awesome chair that send shivers to all of us that once played the popular maze game. The “PacM,” as the designer calls his chair presents a unique, nostalgic and very stylish furniture. This cool chair is only an artist’s rendering but it would be ideal for a game room. (via Jose Jorge Hinojosa Primo)

Lego Minifig Foosball Table

One of the coolest foosball I ever seen. This LEGO Foosball Table features custom mini-figs and an genuine “faux” oak woodgrain finish. (Mt.Dew Monkey)

Text Talk Vinyl Shower Curtain

This shower curtain from Bed Bath & Beyond is a fun addition to your bathroom. Almost all emoticons are clad on the Text Talk curtain, including many I’ve never even used.(via Bed Bath & Beyond)

Victorinox Secure Pro USB drive

The un-hackable Victorinox Secure features AES256 technology, together with Victorinox patented unique MKI’s Schnuffi Platform Single Chip Technology. Victorinox actually offered a £100,000 prize to a group of expert hackers to crack the drive during the company’s launch event and they were unable to do so. The Secure Pro is currently available with storage capacities between 8GB and 32GB (via Victorinox)

iCade: iPad Arcade Cabinet

iCad from Thinkgeek, is more than just a docking station for your iPad. You can play your favorite arcade games in this retro styled, handcrafted wooden tabletop arcade cabinet. (via Thinkgeek)

Yoda Plush Backpack

Star Wars fanatics will surely love this backpack. This legitimately licensed Yoda backpack rests comfortably at your back while storing your school work or anything you want to take on the go. (via Thinkgeek)

IP Address Door Mat

Only nerds would recognize that this figures is nothing but IP address, and for geeks ideal home is one’s own machine and one’s own IP address. (via Nicole and Tyler)

Superman Hanger

This stylish Superman Hanger is designed by Roman Ficek and available at ComuniStar – a Slovakian company that manufacture unique modern interior and furniture accessories. (via Roman Ficek)

Iceblox Ice Cube Puzzle Tray

Serving drinks with Tetris shaped ice-cubes is absolutely going to get your visitors to notice the drinks and they will surely for more of them. (via Thinkgeek)

iPhone App Magnets

Can’t get enough of those small apps icons on your iPhone? Attach those cute icons on your fridge or your bulletin board with this cool set of magnetic iPhone app icons. (via Jailbreaktoys)

Lego Star Wars Alarm Clock

This super geeky clock is made of 21 Lego pieces and features Japanese Quartz movement and a crescendo alarm that gets louder and louder until you turn it off. (via Thinkgeek)

8-Bit Hanger

I like the retro style of this 8-bit pointer. This this low-res hook will able to hold some of your other stuffs like bag, shirt, caps, earphones, etc. (via Meninos)

Sudoku Toilet Paper

Honestly, I don’t know how to play Sudoku but I think Sudoku fans will like this. Pull down the roll and start filling in the sudoku puzzles. (via Ozgadgets)

Yoda and Darth Vader Lightsaber Chopsticks Set

Check out Chopsabers, a Lightsabers merge with Japanese culture. May the Force be with you at every meal! (via Starwars)

Layers Frame Horizontal

Picture in 10 x 15 cm will fit in this cool picture frame. (via Meninos)

Reddit Alien Soap

Reddit has partnered with soapmaker, Soapier to make the Reddit Alien Soap. Its 10 ozs of high quality vegetable glycerin soap and comes in 2 different fragrances, orange and bacon! Digg users can try it too :) (via Soapier)

Save Key Bank

This geeky piggybank has a slot in top for coins and a base that pops off easily if you’re out of change. The bad thing is, at $9.75 it just about costs more than the amount of coins it can hold.

Halo Helmet

For you Halo fans out there, this helmet is modeled after “authentic” Spartan Mjolnir Mark VI head gear. This Halo Helmet is made out of “high impact” polystyrene, similar to the assembly of a motorcycle helmet. (via Kotaku)

Star Wars Death Star Planetarium

This Death Star Planetarium will convert your room into a personal planetarium. It will project the stunning beauty of milky way galaxy on the ceiling of your room. (via Starwars)

Game-inspired energy drinks

I want one of these cool-looking cans along with the other game-related drink. Not to drink it but to collect and display it on my room. (via GkWorld)

Let’s be open-minded, finger painting is no longer just child’s play. There are numerous online artists including some friends of mine who are designers love to use their iPhone and iPad to draw pictures.

Thanks to some apps like Brushes, these artistes can upload their masterpieces directly online to social networking sites like Deviant Art, Facebook or Flickr. They also created some awesome videos teaching you how you can do that too.

Below are 20 Piece de Resistance (which means masterpieces) that are painted only with iPad.

By Benjamin Rabe

By Patricio Villarroel

By Suzi

By Mike Miller

By Suzi

By Suzi

By RubensLP

By Mike Miler

By Fabric Lenny

By David Newman

By Kevin Barba

By Lawrence Barrow

By Fabric Lenny

By Jake.Icjaker

By Jake.Icjaker

By John Nofsinger

By flynryon

By Michael Heald

By Michael Heald

By Luis Peso

More

• iPad artwork, 10 best – Benjamin Rabe
• iPhone & Pod Paintings, iPad Paintings – mikedia
• iPxx works – Patricio Villarroel
• 2010 Work – Suzi
• iPhone drawings – Fabric Lenny

Landmarks are often structures such as cathedrals, museums, skyscrapers, hotels, homes, libraries, bridges and ruins. Natural phenomena in physical features such as mountains rock formations, rivers and waterfalls, can also be chosen as landmarks if they have special historical, architectural, or cultural significance. Historical landmarks are not just tourist attractions, they serves as a commemoration of a remarkably important national event. This allows us and for generations to come, to remember great cultures and events of the past that is worthy to record in its own history.

To photographers, these landmarks are like invitations; a challenge to bring the best of out them in photos. Below are some of the best and well-selected photos of different historical landmarks from around the world. Landmarks that I’ve included here are so famous that almost everybody knew how they look like, but no everyone has seen this side of the landmark. So here it is, 45 photos of famous landmarks around the world taken in awe-inspiring perspectives, sorting by country names. Enjoy.

Australia

Ayers Rock
Australia (via Floydian)

Sydney Opera House
Sydney, Australia (via Gun Sydney)

Cambodia

Angkor Wat
Siem Reap, Cambodia (via Hahli9)

China

Great Wall
China (via Jmdiocos)

Brazil

Christ on the Corcovado
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (via Kalamu)

Canada

Niagara Falls
Canada, USA borders (via Flipkeat)

Egypt

Sphinx Egypt
Giza, Egypt (via Matt Champlin)

Great Pyramid of Giza
El Gizeh, Egypt (via Matt Champlin)

England

Bank of England
London, England (via Acuity)

St Paul Cathedral
London, England (via Spendavis)

Stonehenge
Salisbury Plain, England (via Thpeter)

Buckingham Palace
London, England (via Robert Beardwell)

Big Ben
London, England (via Paweldomaradzki)

France

Arc de Triomphe
Paris, France (via Allard One)

Eiffel Tower
Paris, France (via Dje514)

Notre Dame
Paris, France (via Jpgmn)

Germany

The Brandenburg Gate
Berlin, Germany (via Gdphotography)

Neuschwanstein
Fuessen, Germany (via Wohli)

Greece

Acropolis of Greece
Athens, Greece (via Darrell Godliman)

India

Taj-Mahal
India (via Gilad)

Sahib Golden Temple
Amritsar, India (via Angad)

Italy

Colosseum
Rome, Italy (via Joanot)

Leaning Tower of Pisa
Pisa, Italy (via Crimsonlipstain)

Sistine Chapel
Rome, Italy (via R.o.b.e.r.t.o.)

Japan

The Great Buddha
Kamakura, Japan (via Theraider)

Jordan

Petra
Jordan (via Mikeb79)

Mexico

Chichen Itza
Yucatan State, Mexico (via Mananetwork)

Peru

Machu Picchu
Cuzco, Peru (via Szeke)

Russia

Kremlin
Moscow, Russia (via InObrAS)

St. Basil’s Cathedral
Moscow, Russia (via Soleterranean)

Saudi Arabia

Masjid AL Haram
Makkah, Saudi Arabia (via Twip)

Scottland

Balmoral Castle
Aberdeenshire, Scotland (via John Rogers)

Spain

Alhambra
Granada, Spain (via Photoskimo)

Casa Mila
Barcelona, Spain (via R.Duran)

Turkey

Blue Mosque
Istanbul, Turkey (via Dleiva)

Hagia Sophia
Istanbul, Turkey (via Lady Gigi)

United States of America

Capitol Hill
Washington, DC, USA (via Gursesl)

The White House
Washington, D.C, USA (via xlivingdeadgirl)

Statue Of Liberty
New York, USA (via PortraitOfaLife)

Bryce Canyon
Arizona, USA (via MLGn00beater)

Empire State Building
New York, USA (via Arnold Pouteau)

Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco, USA (via Kaoni701)

Central Park
New York, USA (via Kw~ny)

Venezuela

Angel Falls
Bolivar State, Venezuela (via Michael Anderson)

Zimbabwe

Victoria Falls
Zambia, Zimbabwe (via Botswanaodyssey)

A Call for more

The showcase here are probably just scratching the surface of what’s best out there. But this collection is limited by my researches based on what I know and what I’ve heard of. So this is a call for more – If you think there are some notable landmarks worth mentioning that I’ve missed out, please drop a comment below. Thanks!

More

Here are more similar articles that you might be interested in:

• The Beauty of India: 50 Amazing Photos – Smashing Magazine
• 40 Most Beautiful Mosques In The World – Noupe
• Beautiful Photographs of Paris – Hongkiat
• Memorable & Beautiful: 60 Photos of Greece – Hongkiat

Contributed by: Sandesh Sethi

If you design and develop Wordpress theme, chances are you’ll have a local (localhost) copy in your machine for testing & debugging and preview purposes. Here’s a common mistake some of us may make – we tend to forget our admin password.

If you’ve forgotten your password for an online self-host Wordpress blog, it’s easy as clicking on the “Lost your password” to recover. But in a localhost environment, configurations may vary from machine to machine. Most of the time “Lost your password” will not work as email system is either not supported or not properly setup.

In this article, I’m going to show a simple workaround to login to your localhost Wordpress Dashboard even if you’ve forgot your password, or even the login.

The problem

So you’ve forgotten your password, or username, or both. Wordpress suggest you use the "Lost your password" function to help recover but email system wasn’t properly setup in your localhost? Here’s how to get you back into the Dashboard quickly.

The Solution

Go into PhpMyAdmin. The URL should be http://localhost/phpmyadmin, but it might vary depending on configurations. Look for the database name on the left sidebar. In our case it’s called “wordpress“.

Click “wordpress“ to see its tables. Look for *_users, in our case it’s called wp1_users. Click it and you’ll notice a page change on the right frame. user_login column shows you all usernames you currently have. If you are looking for usernames, your problem is solved. But if you are looking to recover lost password, there is one more thing you’ll need to do.

Click on the pen icon to edit the data for the specific user. Look for “user_pass” field. Select "MD5" for the Function dropdown, and change it’s value to a new password, in our case the new password is call “admin“. Click GO once you are done.

That’s it! You’ve just changed the password for username admin to “admin“.

This tip is contributed by Sandesh Sethi, founder of Vobliq.com – a blog about designing, blogging and money making. Want to contribute a tip? Click here.

Eco-friendly is in! With all the global warming issues threatening the world today, ‘going green‘ becomes the keyword as everyone around us scurry to do their part to save our planet. It shouldn’t be surprising to us to see that the world is moving towards the direction of environmental friendliness as we see more and more green products in our everyday lives, all for the sake of preserving nature.

Whether you are designing a website for ‘green’ causes or for any other purposes, the ‘green’ theme is sure to catch the attention of any web surfers. Besides, by promoting ‘green’ in your sites, you may very well be contributing by raising the public’s awareness on the importance of conserving Mother Earth!

Here are some useful resources that you might find helpful in your creation of awesome green websites.

Tutorials & PSDs

How to Create a 3D Leaf from a Texture Photograph. In this beginners level tutorial, you will learn how to create a vibrant 3D leaf compilation from a single 2D photograph. (by Psdtuts)

Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop. In this tutorial we’ll create a rather cool-looking grass-text effect using a photo of grass, the Pen Tool and a bit of patience. (by Psdtuts)

How to Create a Delicious Green Apple Illustration. How to draw a shiny green apple with various painting techniques. (by Psdtuts)

Earth Day – Green Planet. Creating a green planet from scratch. (by Alexandra Fomicheva)

Apple .PSD (by Flahorn)

Keep Our Planet Green. This poster was initially created for a poster competition. Suicidekills was generous enough to upload a PSD version to show you how it’s done. (by Suicidekills)

Splashy Leaf Wallpaper In Photoshop. How to create a nice looking wallpaper that consist of nice water drops and beautiful leaves. (by Abduzeedo)

Photos & Textures

Grass Texture Stock 4 (by Sed-rah-Stock)

Free Hedge plant Texture (by pillowfight)

Green Grass Texture 01 (by Goodtextures)

Leaf texture green (by Anilestock)

Texture 003 (by Juuichimei)

Texture 5 (by Bmjewell-stock)

Texture Leaves (by Kuschelirmel-stock)

Grass Texture 2 (by Texture Online)

Leaves Texture 4

Full of Water Leaves (by All-free-download)

Green leaves, close-up background

Icons

Ecology Icon Set 3. Comes together with 1 EPS and 3 PNG (650 dpi) format. (by AllonzoInc)

Aire Windows Icons. 88 ICOs + 1 PSD file (by Gakuseisean)

Green Icon Set (by Arglos)

Go Green! Web Icon Set (by Speckyboy)

Milky, a free vector icon set – Part 1 (by Min Tran)

Brushes

Floral Brushes (by Bittbox)

Grass Brushes (by QBrushes)

Marihuana Brushes (by myszka01)

Tree Brush Pack (by Horhew)

Grass brushes (by Katikut)

Pretty Flowers Brushes Set (by Webdesigner Lab)

Leaves Brushes (by Obsidian Dawn)

Leaf Brushes (by Mao)

Flora Brushes 1 (by Pia)

The Grasslands (by midnightstouch)

Dill Brushes (by hawksmont)

Floral Design Vector Graphic (by Webdesignhot)

We’ve previously showcased some really cool paper sculpturing artwork; today we are going to show you another type of paper-related artwork. It is something we are all familiar with – Origami. Origami is an art of paper folding, and paper cranes are probably what we’ll thought of when it comes to origami.

Origami originates from Japan, and in Japanese, Ori means paper, and kami(gami) means folding. There are various types of Origami, respectively action, modular, wet-folding and pureland. Today, we are going to show you some of the best examples of these paper made wonders.

Here’s a showcase of 70 beautiful and creative origami created by fans all over the world. Full list after jump.

Grulla. Designed by Roman Diaz and Daniel Naranjo. Folded from 37*37cm MC treated tissue. (via Kekremsi)

Origami Jedi. Folded by Phillip West from a single uncut square. Modified from Satoshi Kamiya’s Wizard. (via PhillipWest)

Origami Tarantula. A really impressive model designed by Robert Lang, folded from a square of a tissue-foil paper. (via Rodrigo Zen)

Divine Dragon. Masterpieces of origami dragons, famous Bahamut – Divine Dragon by Satoshi Kamiya. Folded by Brian Chan. (via Chosetec)

Yoda Origami. Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata. Folded by Phillip West from Lokta sandpaper paper back coated to tissue paper. (via PhillipWest)

Ancient Dragon. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya. Wet folded from mulberry tissue 136×136cm. (via Mabona Origami)

Life Size Onitsuka Tiger. Created for Asics lounge in Berlin. This huge origami sculpture dimensions are: 270×110x60cm. (via Mabona Origami)

Praying Mantis (female). Designed and folded by Sipho Mabona. Wet folded form one uncut square of shikibu kizukishki kozo (handmade) colored with calligraphic ink. (via Mabona Origami)

Gryphon. Interesting and complex example of gryphon origami. Folded from two types of paper, which makes this a very furnace origami. (via Guspath)

Werewolf. Another great example of origami by Guspath. Folded from 50cm square golden foil paper. (via Guspath)

Little Bird. Sweet yellow bird. Designed by Kamiya Satoshi, folded by Sin cynic. (via Sin cynic)

Dedalus. Red statue of Daedalus. Designed and folded by Origamirizzo. (via Origamirizzo)

Mammoth. This model was folded from diagrams. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya. (via Finwych)

Ringed Tailed Lemur. Folded from MC treated black tissue. Designed and folded by Origami Roman. (via Origami Roman)

Vampire Bat. Vampire bat by Dao Cuong Quyet. Folded from 60cm square paper. (via Baldorigami)

Phoenix. Phoenix origami at the exhibition in Toronto Airport. Created by Chow Hin Chung, folded by Alex Yue (via Sftrajan)

Fox . Folded from CP in tanteidan magazine 119. (via KingOri)

Chimpance. Designed and folded by Tanaka Masashi, folded from CP. (via Alexori)

Water Buffalo. Designed by Nguyen Hung Cuong, folded by Sin cynic. (via Sin cynic)

Minotaur. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya, folded by Imperfekshun from 64×64 cm tissue foil. (via Imperfekshun)

Whale. Designed by Satoshi Kamiya, folded by Eric Madrigal from brown 40×40 cm paper with acrylic paints. (via Eric Madrigal)

Hermit Crab Origami. Folded by Brian Chan from a square of laminated Japanese mulberry paper. (via Chosetec)

Owl. Designed by Katsuta Kyohei. Origami size is 50×50 cm. (via Vetal Origami)

Reindeer. Designed by Katsuta Kyohei. Folded from brown paper. (via Vetal Origami)

Pig Nose. WilChua was refolding his pig and got a great result. (via WilChua)

Dollar Toilet Bowl. Folded from one 1 dollar bill. (via Orudorumagi11)

Iron Man. Designed by Brian Chan. Folded from an uncut square.

Angel fish. Few small angel fish origami folded from colored paper. (via Claudia M&M)

Origami Yoda. Yoda stands at 11.5cm tall and was folded from an A3 square- approximately 30×30cm. Designed and folded by Antzpantz. (via Antzpantz)

Bull. From Mythological Creatures and the Chinese Zodiac in Origami. (via Himanshu)

Origami Roses. Gorgeous very realistic, colored origami flower bouquet. (via Amandakay82)

Elephant . Origami Elephant folded from brown paper. Designed by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Origami highback chairs. Some of the elements for your work place – origami highback chairs. (via Jonmatthew Photography)

Origami Car. Small cute origami car folded from colored paper. Designed and folded by Midoriissa. (via Midoriissa)

Rat. Small rat origami folded from newspaper. Designed and folded by Eric Joisel. (via JuLi-Design)

Seated Cat. Seated Cat folded from brown paper. Designed and folded by David Brill. (via Himanshu)

Origami horse. Horse origami from the Origami Now exhibition at the Peabody/Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. (via Philocrites)

Rose and leaf folded. Kawasaki Rose and leaf folded by J.V. Page of Origami Mitra. (via Bkwebb)

Origami Lion. Origami Lion from Satoshi Kamiya’s exhibition at the 40th British Origami Society Convention. Folded by Satoshi Kamiya. (via Gaharoni)

High-Heel Shoes. Red stylish high-heel shoes. Designed and folded by Anthony. (via Antzpantz)

Frog. Origami Frog designed by Michael LaFosse. Folded from from cotton rags by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Penguins. All origami penguins are folded from one A4 paper. (via bh3o81)

Bottlenose Dolphin. Origami Bottlenose Dolphin designed by Syahmir from uncut square paper. (via Syahmir)

Squirrel. Origami in the Origami Exhibition in Mumbai, India. Folded by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

Anciente Dragon. Designed by Kamiya Satoshi, folded by Hugoakitaya from papel manteiga. (via Hugoakitaya)

Banana. Designed and folded by Andrew Hudson from yellow paper. (via Origami Weekly)

Honeycomb. Created by John McKeever, folded from a hexagon of elephant hide. (via Melisande)

Peacock. Created by Jun Maekawa, folded from 15cm tissue foil. (via Origami_8)

Jucumari. Origami folded from a square of Lamali/Banana paper. Folded by Origoku. (via Origoku)

Phoenix . Origami folded from a 16″ piece of tissue foil. (via J0nB0n)

Origami Swan . Designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki. Folded by Himanshu. (via Himanshu)

The Dance . Designed and folded by H.T.Quyet from 1 uncut right triangle – half of a square size 34×34 cm. (via ORI_Q)

Shumakov Origami Kitten . Kitten origami design is created by Katrin and Yuri Shumakov. Origami size approximately 5 cm. (via Himanshu)

Shin Tanaka. Origami designed and folded by Usagirondo. (via Usagirondo)

Shrimp . Designed and folded by Yagorigamania from 60 x 60 cm tissue paper. (via Yagorigamania)

Shachihoko . Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata, folded from tissue foil made with white glue. (via Kekremsi)

Phalacrognathus muelleri. Designed and folded by Sipho Mabona. Wet folded form one uncut square of origamido paper. (via Mabona Origami)

Oriland Kitten. Cute kitten origami original design by Oriland. (via Mammaoca2008)

Origami Gundam . Complex creative Gundam origami, designed and folded by origami RXMAN. (via Origami RXMAN)

Miss Souris . Cute creative origami mouse, folded from bright colored paper. (via 5500km)

Lion . Designed and folded by H.T.Quyet, folded from 1 uncut square of double crumpled paper. (via ORI_Q)

Kabuto Mushi Origami . Folded by Brian Chan from an uncut square of origamido paper. (via Chosetec)

House. Prototype for a comisson by a advertising company. (via Mabona Origami)

Football . Created from a 19.5 inch square of chestnut lokta backed with rayon paper. (via Oriholic Jared)

Flying Katydid . Origami is designed and folded by Sipho Mabona, folded from aprox. 16 inch of shikibu gampi-shi then wet shaped with water. (via Mabona Origami)

Scorpion. Designed and folded by Nicolas Gajardo Henriquez for latinamerican origami congress in Bogota. (via [~Nic))

Donkey . Cute donkey origami folded from black paper. (via 5.i.u)

Bull Moose. Origami is designed by Robert Lang and folded by Phillip West. (via PhillipWest)

Lamb . Folded from hand-decorated elephant hide paper. (via Joseph Wu Origami)

St George and the Dragon . Origami scene designed and folded by Dave Brill. (via Happyfolding)

Llopio’s Moment of Truth . Origami scene – Llopio’s Moment of Truth. Designed and folded by Neal Elias. (via Happyfolding)

Have you ever seen a word and read the same word upside down? This is one form of an ambigram. An ambigram (from Latin: ambi both + gram = letter) is a word or words that can be read in more than one direction, where the word reads the same when upside down or turn over to form an entirely new word. The term “ambigram” was first used to mean “ambiguous anagram” by Judith E. Bagai, a former editor of The Enigma, the official organ of The National Puzzlers’ League.

There are many types of ambigrams such as rotational ambigrams, reflective types, 3-dimensional, etc. but the most basic and popular ones are the flipscript or rotational ambigram in which word or words when flipped both horizontal or vertical way, still spells the same word as before. Today, ambigrams are used in graphic design, commercial logos, book covers, tattoo artworks and music albums. These typographical artworks are used by graphic designers because of their symmetry and the optical illusions it present. Ambigrams became much more popular when it was prominently featured in Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, Angels & Demons. With patience and creativity, you can turn any word into an ambigram.

Below are my collection of 40 really cool and creatively designed ambigrams. Without further ado, let start twisting our neck and try to view them in upside down :)

“Illuminati” Edited from the original version by John Langdon.

“The Stone Rose” via mirving123

“Steampunk” Rotational ambigram version 2 by NastyBasty

“Labyrinth” Created for the Nagfa Ambigams Challenge. By Krzychu

“Marley” via mirving123

“One Blood One Love” or "One Love One Blood" the other way. By revcruz

“Azathoth” By NastyBasty

“Love/Hate” via nichck

“Shark Attack” By wowtattoos

“Baltimore” Via mirving123

“Right/Wrong” Amibigram with some graffiti element. By NastyBasty

“Lawrence” Created by revcruz for The 50 Ambigram Project.

“Samantha/Marcianne” Created to be inked as a tattoo by wowtattoos.

“Dirty/Clean”Via npgraphicdesign

“Harry Potter” An entry for the Flickr Ambigram Challenge by NastyBasty

“Charlie Chang” 180° rotational ambigram of the name CHARLIE CHANG by Burn

“Shub-Niggurath” via unterart

“Phat Beats” By Burn

“Pepsi” via mirving123

“KRANE” Created for Crane DPC by PAC1972.

“Anj” Another ambigram created by revcruz for The 50 Ambigram Project.

“Child’s Play” via Imriaylde

“Manila” via ambigram.com

“City of Brotherly Love” Created by John Langdon.

“San Francisco” via ambigram.com

“Woodstock” Another ‘quick & dirty’ lunchtime ambigram via unterart

“Cafe” via unterart

“Nyarlathotep” via unterart

“1984″ via unterart

“Sins” Created by only-adrian

“Ambigram” Created by arpad

“Air” Robert Langdons ambigram Air, from the book Angels and Deamons

“Reverse engineering” By Scott Kim

“A love of love” Created by Johan Skylling.

“Peta” Rotationally symmetrical ambigram of Peta’s name.

“Paris” via npgraphicdesign

“Ektopia” Papper & Penna’s Ekoptia Rotational Ambigram

“Chopin” Created by Daniel Dostal

Brands we are familiar with..

“Sun Microsystem”

“Hyundai Motor”

Ambigram in domain names

• doxob.com
• ap.xozzox.de
• http://ap.xozzox.de//:dtty
• http://graner.net/nicolas/selcoiu/tau.jauejb//:dtty
• 66.gg

References

• Ambigram generators – Flipscript
• Another ambigram generator – Wowtattoos
• Ambigrams, information and tutorials – Ambigram.net
• Various words in Ambigrams – Flipscript
• Ambigram magazine – Ambigram.com
• John Langdon’s ambigrams, logo and art – Johnlangdon.net

Two weeks ago, James created a nice post here on bokeh photography here in hongkiat and I got to be honest it is great and inspiring but it just can’t quench my thirst for more. So I went ahead and look for more.

It is really amazing how these out of focus helps in telling your eyes the area of the photo you should focus on. Now without further ado, let’s take a look at more beautiful bokeh photos. Here’s another round of showcase of bokeh photography – we present you another 70 beautiful examples of Bokeh Photography.

Bokeh II (By Alfredo11)

I’ll have some sancerre wine and an order of bokeh, please. (By Peanut Lauren)

Berry Bokeh (By Aspidistra)

Bokeh! (By Rachywhoo)

Bokeh (By When-seven)

Candy Cane and Bokeh (By Believer)

Fountain bokeh (By Liyen)

Rusting Bokeh (By KF)

Love With A Side Of Bokeh (By Pnkparis1233)

The Ace of Spades (By Aspidistra)

Rainy Bokeh (By Sunny)

Funyuns + Chucks + Bokeh = Geektastic (By Jueno)

Candy bokeh (By Tanakawho)

Cup-o-bokeh (By Fuzzirella)

Corkscrew in the bokeh (By Liyen)

That Bokeh in her Fingertips… (By Uvair)

Bokeh Sushi (By Japhy Riddle)

The Bokeh Whisperer (By Katbphotos)

Bokeh Watcher (By Jueno)

Autumn Leaf Bokeh (By Pisces Romance)

The bokehs are mine! (By Desiree Delgado)

Bucketful of Bokeh (By Shoosh)

Domo and The Bokeh (By Soldierofsolace)

Bokeh (By Ra3y-AD)

Merry Christmas Bokeh (By Clairecollyer)

Cup of Bokeh (By Pinkcherry06)

Velvet bokeh (By Savatey)

Bokeh Trampoline (By Nestr)

Web Bokeh (By Inertia09)

A bokeh play (By WorthyG)

Bokeh (By Light from Emirates)

Bokeh eye (By Ftourini)

Photographobia (By Tiago Ribeiro)

OMG! I missed the sledge of 2008 because of my mission! (By Moaan)

The Fingers of Summer (By Ryan Brenizer)

Bokeh-vision (By Aspidistra)

Day One Hundred Twelve (By Dustin Siaz)

2000/1713 (By June1777)

Kara Carlson (By Sara Kiesling)

Garden fireworks (By Mark-E)

Liquid Gold (By Sandy515)

Hollywood Starz (By Astig)

Suki’s Scarf (By Kaoni701)

2×1 Bokeh – Splash (By Faisal)

We’re so awesome, even our kisses are explosive! (By The half blood prince)

Sensitive space (By Futureancient)

Golden days (By Moaan)

Day 7: hidden lens cap (By LSG)

Have a Happy Bokeh-licious Week of Finals (By Monjori)

Welcome to Cafe Bokeh (By KKTP)

Happy Bokeh Wednesday my Friends! (By JannaPham)

Ellen in the Sky with Bokeh! (By Viviandang)

50 Special (By Ielle)

I wish I was special (By Irene Gr)

… ed è come perdere la testa per il vento! (By Tgphotographer into the wild)

Let’s Watch Together (By Andw)

Bubble Blizzard Bokeh (By hinthint)

Memories of Winter (By Glenn Waters)

40::365 Urchin & Bokeh (By Machel Spence)

Consolation prize (By Andy)

The color green holds positive connotations for most people and green logos are super popular at the moment. Green is a symbol for environmentalism and our love affair with green stretches back to ancient Egypt where the color was symbolic of resurrection and immortality (the god Osiris was supposedly green skinned). Today, environmentally friendly companies, web 2.0 companies, organic food shops, juice bars, salad bars and fruit companies all love a good green logo. Green logos are in vogue and these companies are driving the trend.

Below are 30 examples of creative green logos. The examples include an organic coffee company logo, environmentally free LED lights and ‘clean integration’. The designers below have also successfully applied green to consulting, physiotherapy and even programming (see Code Fish and The Coding Frog below). These logos are fresh, upbeat and, hopefully, inspirational.

Suggest read: 18 Beautiful Web Designs That Emphasize Green.

30 Beautiful Green Logo Designs

Green Labs

Code Fish

Marshalls pet store

The Coding Frog

Green Apple Transfers

Living Heirloom

Arch Partners

Versus

Sertifi

RPJ Consulting

Chumu visual communication

BFM(Bibliotheque Forum Meyrin)

Leetenda Urbana

Clean Integration

Evotweet

Eternaleds

Pure Oils

Eight

See Creative

Bio Cento

John Milander Architects

Meadville Land Service

Helping Hands For Pets

Hutan Consulting

Eco Bikes

Realty Connection Inc

Toronto Bodyworks

Thymes

Swing Studios

Forma Humana

Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS). You can build a whole website using Drupal. You can create your own design (theme) for your website or you can download templates which are made for Drupal from the internet.

There are hundreds of Drupal themes which you can find on the internet but not all of them are good looking. So, this time I have collected the 50 best looking Drupal 6 themes I have found. The newest version of Drupal is 7 but at the moment the most popular version of Drupal is still is 6 and that’s why in this article I have collected only themes for Drupal 6. All of my collected themes are free to use, so feel free to download any of themes you like the most. Enjoy!

Beach

Good looking Drupal theme. It has a nice underwater feeling. [Demo] [Download]

Notechoas

Interesting piece of art. Background has a big role in this theme. [Demo] [Download]

RootCandy

This is very cool and great looking theme for Drupal’s administration section. Everything looks clean and shiny and those icons look awesome. [Demo] [Download]

Monochrome

Very stylish theme for a blog. It has a cool looking left sidebar for entry dates and also very good looking navigation menu. Love the rounded corners. [Demo] [Download]

Magwood

Simple but beautiful Drupal theme with a nice header for your blog or portfolio. [Demo] [Download]

Emporium

Love the style of this theme. This theme is not complicated but it has a great, simple design. [Demo] [Download]

Frankincense

Great Drupal template for your blog. It’s not complicated and also isn’t very simple. [Demo] [Download]

Chasmogamous

Very friendly website design. Good looking sky for the header and grass for the content. [Demo] [Download]

Blogsmith

Another great template for a blog. Bright green color in the background looks awesome. [Demo] [Download]

Scruffy

Great Drupal theme for a blog. This header looks brilliant. [Demo] [Download]

Grassland

This theme looks nice. There’s a positive atmosphere inside this theme. [Demo] [Download]

Coolweb

Great theme for a corporate website! [Demo] [Download]

Cleanfolio

Beautiful theme for a small and simple website. [Demo] [Download]

Abstract

Beautiful theme for a blog or portfolio website! [Demo] [Download]

Fusion Theme

Clean and simple theme which looks great! [Demo] [Download]

A3 Atlantis

Very interesting theme. Could be good for a corporate website. [Demo] [Download]

Orange

Very well made and great looking theme for a social networking site! [Demo] [Download]

Arclite Theme

Clean and simple theme which could be great for a blog. [Demo] [Download]

Fields 2009 template

Good looking theme for a corporate website. [Demo] [Download]

NonZeroRed DTB

Just a simple and good looking theme. Could be implemented for many types of websites. [Demo] [Download]

Elements Theme

Interesting Drupal theme. Could look good for a portfolio website. [Demo] [Download]

A Cold Day

Nice looking theme which has three color versions available. [Demo] [Download]

Ebizon RedFire

If you want just a clean and simple website then this is a theme you are looking for. [Demo] [Download]

Acquia Marina

Cool theme for many types of websites. [Demo] [Download]

24. Alek 2.0

Simple Drupal theme for a simple website. [Demo] [Download]

Twittish

If you would like that your website would look like Twitter then you have found the best solution for you! [Demo] [Download]

AD Redoable

Simple theme which would look great for a portfolio website. [Demo] [Download]

Austin Zen Sub Theme

If you want just a simple website without any flashy, shiny elements then this simple theme is for you. Zen theme is one of the best themes to use for a basis making your own theme. [Demo] [Download]

Retromania

Retro style theme for your classy website. [Demo] [Download]

Absynthe

Very cozy theme which uses mostly warm colors. [Demo] [Download]

Deco

Elegant theme for your blog. [Demo] [Download]

Zbench

Simple theme which looks very elegant. [Demo] [Download]

Motion

Not very complicated theme with a beautiful background. [Demo] [Download]

Mystique

Drupal theme with a great navigation menu. It also has nice bright green speech bubbles for headings on the right sidebar. [Demo] [Download]

Pixel

Great theme if you like dark colors. This theme has an abstract background. [Demo] [Download]

Wilderness

Cool theme for those who love nature. Simple but beautiful design. [Demo] [Download]

Pinkflower

Very stylish theme which uses pink and bright blue color mostly. Flower on the right side also looks great. [Demo] [Download]

Naturescharm

This template looks great because of its cool looking header and bright yellow color. [Demo] [Download]

BlogBuzz

Stunning Drupal theme! Everything is so clean, very well made. Could be a great theme for your portfolio web site or a blog. [Demo] [Download]

Magazeen

Great looking theme! Just clean and shiny. [Demo] [Download]

Gardening

Beautiful cartoon-style Drupal theme. Great piece of art! [Demo] [Download]

Acquia Prosper

Clean, good looking theme for an e-commerce website. [Demo] [Download]

Mosaic

Drupal 6 theme with brilliant style. Check out the search box – nice! [Demo] [Download]

Numerology

Very elegant design. Header image looks brilliant! Background for navigation menu is in bright green color which looks good. [Demo] [Download]

Abrasive

This is very interesting design. If you want a design for your blog which looks different to others then this could be your choice. [Demo] [Download]

BrewedCoffee

If you are a coffee lover then this theme would be suitable for you. [Demo] [Download]

Oxidation

Like the style of this design. It’s very simple but the header with its yellow color and shiny elements looks great. [Demo] [Download]

Interlude

Very simple and beautiful design which doesn’t need anything else to be added. [Demo] [Download]

Excess

Brilliant design! Love the stripes for the header and also the green speech bubbles for the logo and headings are a very cool design element. [Demo] [Download]

Greeny Grass

Great theme with beautiful style. Grass which divides header and content looks good. [Demo] [Download]

The word ‘bokeh’ derives from the Japanese for ‘blur’ or ‘haze’, and in photography describes the effect found in out-of-focus regions of images. Different lens designs, aperture shapes and sizes, and various depths of field have profound effects on the type and extent of bokeh produced in a photograph. Bokeh happens in the areas of an image beyond the depth of focus; by playing with focus and lens, photographers can create some stunning images.

This post brings together 25 examples of incredible bokeh photography, and concludes with a summary of great tutorials where you can learn bokeh techniques for yourself.

Bokeh Day. This image is an excellent example of bokeh, with the metallic effect on the bubbles and receding blur of lights offering a sense of depth and dimension. (via DW212)

Bokeh Butterfly. Bokeh photography can transport the viewer to an almost alien world of scale and color, such as this beautifully composed image of a butterfly. (via Aussiegall)

Cactus Needle Bokeh. This macro image of the miniscule hairs on a cactus uses an extremely narrow field of focus to achieve the sensual bokeh effect. (via Kevin Dooley)

Forget-me-not’s. Kevin Law’s bokeh image is another to take nature as its subject matter, with the pretty forget-me-nots’ summer blossoms set against the blurred greens of an English meadow. (via Kevin Law)

A Cup of Bokeh, Please. This superb shot juxtaposes a sharp focused mug against blurred lights for a touch of bubbling bokeh. (via Shermeee)

Sweet Disposition. Photographer Josh Liba likes to take portraits of this character called Yushi in various settings. In this case, she finds herself in a field of corn stubble at sunset, with a delightful combination of color and soft focus. (via Josh Liba)

The Smell of Bokeh. Niffty’s beautifully rendered photo captures the play of golden light on plants, cobwebs and sparkling dewdrops. (via Niffty)

When Bokeh and Alcohol Mix. A close-up shot of Christmas tree lights, using a quarter-second exposure, resulted in this colorful spiral. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Christmas. Another Christmas-themed bokeh shot that verges into the realms of abstraction, with lights reduced to discs of sublime color. (via Kevin Dooley)

Bokeh Spiral. Many of the spirals found in nature are based on the logarithmic principles of the Golden Section, such as the receding body of a plant as seen in this bokeh image. (via Eriwst)

Happy Bokeh Wednesday!. It took a lot of patience to achieve this image, but finally the photographer managed to capture the fine detail of a falling leaf’s desiccated flesh against the blurred autumnal colours of the background. (via Jesse Kruger)

Bokeh Snow Tree. Pink Sherbet’s atmospheric shot captures a blizzard blowing through the branches of a tree in Massachusetts, with the blurred snowflakes offering a sense of depth and movement. (via Pink Sherbet)

Typical Elbe Bokeh?. This maritime image uses bokeh effects to create a sense of scale and distance with the form of a freight-laden ship pleasingly blurring into the background. (via Eriwst)

Bokeh Mu’a. The feathered light in DucDigital’s bokeh photo has an ethereal, dream-like quality. (via DucDigital)

2009 Illuminate Yaletown. Bokeh photographs often feature greater blurring on lights that are further from the camera, sometimes producing startling geometric effects, such as this shot by Zen-Shooter. (via Zen-Shooter)

Lonely Night of Bokeh. The combination of blur, water, tonality and colouration in this image creates a melancholy yet alluring atmosphere. (via Studio494)

Bokeh!. This image was captured when the photographer visited Shivamogga, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The corrugated iron roof, rivulets of water and glistening, blurred vegetation are characteristic of the subcontinent’s monsoon season. (via Mynameisharsha)

Bokeh Burger. Robert S. Donovan’s tasty bokeh shot has a sizzling burger set against a barbecue’s blurry burning embers. (via Robert S. Donovan)

Sheltering Angel. A hermit crab shelters inside its shell, with the masterfully handled bokeh effect on glistening pebbles creating a sense of sunlit depth. (via Lel4nd)

Bokehlicious NY Streets. DeaPeaJay expertly handles the balance between the tree in the foreground with the lights of New York behind, achieving just the right level of focus and blur. (via DeaPeaJay)

Sunset Bokeh. Light on water has long been a favorite subject matter for photographers, and a touch of bokeh produces a particularly sedate aesthetic. (via Tanakawho)

Summer in Bokeh. This portrait captures children under sprinkler showers in the summer sun, with a pleasing bokeh effect on the joyful face in the background. (via Wendy Piersall)

Double Sweet Bokeh. This fresh photo has a bokeh blur on the polka dot background and a strawberry in the foreground, with the central fruit’s flesh picked out in stunning detail.

Bokeh Billiard. Lel4nd’s bokeh shot makes great use of depth, colour and light to capture a cool pool hall aesthetic. (via Lel4nd)

Bokeh Photography Tutorials

There are plenty of tutorials available on the internet where photographers can learn bokeh skills and apply them to their work. The effects can be produced using professional camera equipment, pocket cameras or digitally in applications such as Photoshop. Below is a brief summary of the best tutorials, covering the key areas of bokeh photography.

• DSLR Bokeh Tutorial – Roberts Donovan sets out in simple steps the techniques of bokeh photography with digital SLR cameras. This informative lesson acknowledges that bokeh skills are very simple to pick up, and equally as difficult to master.
• Pocket Camera Bokeh Tutorial – Following on from the previous tutorial, this lesson explains how to apply bokeh techniques to pocket digital cameras. Once again, simple steps layout the principles of achieving bokeh effects, paying particular attention to overcoming the automatic functions of point-and-shoot cameras.
• DIY – Create Your Own Bokeh – This is a really neat tutorial explaining how to create effects using specially cut apertures attached to lens, effectively equipping you with a DIY bokeh kit. Once you’ve mastered the techniques, the possibilities open up for endless experimentation with camera settings and different shapes and sizes of custom-cut apertures.
• Awesome Digital Bokeh Effect in Photoshop – In this tutorial, Fabio Sasso explains in nine easy-to-follow steps the process of digitally creating bokeh-style effects in Photoshop. The lesson is principally aimed at producing wallpapers, but once the technique is learned it can be applied to other types of image creation.
• Colourful Bokeh Effect in Pixelmator – As in the previous tutorial, this lesson shows how to create attractive bokeh-themed wallpapers, but using Pixelmator instead of Photoshop. The process is simpler in Pixelmator, so you can quickly grasp the skills to make bokeh effects and apply them to a range of digital contexts.

Flash lovers and haters, we’d like to seek your opinion on Flash – Flash content and it’s future. Comment in and win yourself a 1-year subscription to BannerSnack – high quality flash banner maker, or simply just to voice your opinion.

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The video above is a comic strip created in Flash (with BannerSnack) about a debate on Flash between a designer and a programmer.

To view this animated banner you need to have Flash Player 9 or newer installed and JavaScript enabled. BannerSnack is a banner creator that allows you to create cool flash banners without coding.

If you are a designer, developer or rich media content creator, you’ve probably heard or participate in discussions and debate about the latest argument on the technology of web publishing – Flash vs HTML5. Things become more intense when Apple make public announcement that they are not going to include Flash in any of their product after claiming Flash is buggy and unstable. Adobe of course, has stood firm on their ground and fight back.

Try Googling for "Flash vs HTML5" you should be able to find yourself some really interesting read. And here are just to name a few:

• HTML5 Vs. Flash. What You Haven’t Heard
• HTML5 Vs Flash: The Video Benchmark Deathmach
• Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web

What do you think?

Can these two co-exist or is HTML5 going to totally replace Flash? What’s the future for Flash? We’d like to know about your love and hate for Flash (Flash content and Flash banners).

Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

Contest

This post-come-contest is collaboration with BannerSnack, an online service that helps you create Flash banners on the fly without any software. We’ll pick 3 of the best commentators and send you a 1 year free subscription of BannerSnack.

Contest starts today and ends 2nd July, 2010. Good luck.

Apple sold more than 1 million copies of iPads in the first 3 months. This gadget is definitely more than just a larger version of iPhone or iPod touch. With 4x the screen of an iPhone, the iPad’s display is ideal for reading and for presentations.

In today’s post, we’d like to highlight some really useful iPad applications that might replace the things you do daily with your laptop or netbook. With a piece of iPad and these applications, you probably don’t need to carry a laptop around. Here are 30 useful iPad applications for Business and Presentation you might find handy on your next project pitch or business trip.

Full list after jump.

Presentations

Keynote
Keynote is the most powerful presentation app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love on the Mac, but completely reworked from the ground up for iPad.

Corkulous
Corkulous is incredible idea board for iPad to collect, organize, and share your ideas that feel completely natural.

Power Presenter
This application is used for Presentation. If you save the powerpoint as PDF file, this app will help you do the presentation on projector. It will automatically detect the projector and send the signal to theprojector using the VGA cable.

Sadun’s Whiteboard
Transform your iPad into a presentation screen with Whiteboard. Whiteboard lets you connect to a TV or projection system using an Apple VGA or composite/component video-out cable and draw directly to an external screen using standard whiteboard markers and erasers.

Graph, Charts, Diagram & Statistic

Analytics HD
The premier app for Google Analytics, Analytics App, now debuts on the iPad as Analytics HD! See charts and reports like you’ve never seen them before, and share them in a meeting with full screen charts!

OmniGraffle
Need to create a quick diagram, process chart, page layout, website wireframe, or graphic design? With OmniGraffle, your iPad touch screen is your canvas (or graph paper, or whiteboard, or cocktail napkin.

OmniGraphSketcher
Use OmniGraphSketcher for iPad to make elegant and precise graphs in seconds, whether you have specific data to report or a concept to explain.

Idea Boards
A simple easy way to put your ideas somewhere. Idea Boards right now offers 4 unique drawing surfaces.

Numbers
Numbers is the most innovative spreadsheet app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love for the Mac, completely reworked from the ground up for iPad. Tap the bright Multi-Touch display to create compelling, great-looking spreadsheets in minutes.

Easy Chart HD
Simple, Easy chart creator for iPad – EasyChart.

Instaviz
INSTAVIZ is diagram sketching for your iPhone. Sketch some rough shapes and lines and Instaviz magically turns them into beautifully laid-out diagrams.

Roambi – Visualizer
Roambi’s cutting edge mobile dashboards let you touch, turn, analyze and share your company’s latest information on any iPhone or iPad – keeping you connected to your business, anytime and anywhere.

Planning

Priority Matrix
Priority Matrix is an incredibly convenient and powerful "to do list" tool that uses proven time management methods. You can visually and intuitively manage to do items, lists, ideas, project, plans, and activities.

iThoughtsHD (Free/Paid App)
iThoughtsHD is a mind mapping tool for the iPad. Mindmapping enables you to visually organise your thoughts, ideas and information.

Page & Documents

Pages
Pages is the most beautiful word processing app ever designed for a mobile device. It’s the application you know and love for the Mac, completely reworked from the ground up for iPad.

Dropbox
Dropbox is the easiest way to sync and share your files online and across computers.

FTP On The Go PRO
An FTP client for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. View and edit HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/ASP, or other files on your server with its built in editor to change your website from anywhere. View images and documents (JPG, PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, etc) too.

SugarSync
All of your data at your fingertips…anytime, anywhere, from your iPad. With SugarSync, instantly access cloud-synced files, photos and music from all your computers. View files and photos, stream music, and share files (and even complete folders) with friends and colleagues – no tethering required.

Dragon Dictation
Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard.

The Wall Street Journal (Free)
Experience The Wall Street Journal’s award winning coverage, blending the best of print and online. Touch the stories that matter to you most, get latest news updates and market data throughout the day, and save your favorite articles and sections for later.

PrintCentral
Print direct to most WiFi printers, or to ALL printers and ANY document type via your Mac/PC, even over 3G. View, store & print email, attachments, documents, files, photos, contacts, web pages and copied items from other Apps, on your iPad.

Meetings

MightyMeeting
With MightyMeeting you can store your presentations in the cloud and access them anytime and anyplace from your iPhone or iPad. You can share these presentations via email, blog, Twitter, or Facebook. Most importantly, you can start or join online web meetings directly from your iPad or iPhone.

WebEx
Attend WebEx meetings on your iPad, wherever you are! Use this application to get the full meeting experience with simultaneous data and audio. Don’t just listen in to a meeting. Join in.

GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is the easiest and most convenient way to attend online meetings – and now you can take it to go! Download the free app and join a meeting on your iPad in seconds just by tapping the link in your invitation email. View slide presentations, design mockups, spreadsheets, reports – whatever meeting presenters choose to share on-screen.

iMeetingPad
iMeetingPad replaces the standard notepad you used to bring to meetings before the iPad era dawned. Does your notepad connect to the projector? Can your notepad bring the applause or laugh track? Can it wake dozing colleagues with a cock crow? iMeetingPad can!

Skype
Call your Skype contacts wherever you may be – either on 3G or WiFi. It’s completely free to call people on Skype over Wifi and free on 3G until the end of 2010.

Sketching & Designs

SketchyPad
This app will make designers, programmers, interface designers life much easier. Easy-to-use interface and a lot of various stencils will help you to mockup any web sites and apps interfaces.

iMockups
Mockups provides designers and developers with the ability to quickly draft wireframes for their websites and iPhone/iPad apps. Created exclusively for the iPad, iMockups combines a beautiful interface with intuitive functionality, taking full advantage of the breakthrough touchscreen device.

Doodle Buddy
Doodle Buddy for iPad is the most fun you can have with your finger—-heck, it’s the most fun you can have with two, three or four fingers! Finger paint with thousands of colors and drop in playful stamps.

Layers – Pro Edition
Want to doodle, draw on photos, or paint a masterpiece on your new iPad? Look no further! Layers packs in everything you need to be creative on the go. The pro edition of Layers provides more brushes, more layers, and more advanced layer operations than the standard edition.

We’ve reached part three of the SEO guide series. So far we’ve looked at:

• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, Part I – Keyword research and your general approach to an SEO strategy and,
• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, Part II – How you should think about developing your site and creating content.

Now it’s time to look at link building, which as much as anything will determine where your pages rank for different queries.

We’ll also take a look at analytics so you can understand how your SEO efforts have been working and gain insights into how to improve them. Unless you’re measuring results you’re basically throwing things into the wind and hoping they land where you want. Analytics will let us know which way the wind is blowing and point us to jet streams to so our SEO lands where we want.

Let’s start talking about links and what makes one link more valuable than another.

4. Link Building

Links more than anything will determine where your pages rank. If you build a search friendly site and generate incoming links to your pages you’e going to get search traffic. The two main questions with links are where do you get them and which are the best links to get. Let’s tackle the latter question first.

Which are the best links to get?

Google popularized the idea of links as a ranking factor. Links are at the heart of Google’s PageRank algorithm. At it’s core the idea was that a link counts as a vote or recommendation by one page for another. Over time this has evolved quite a bit, but I think it’s still useful to think about links as votes or recommendations.

Consider the following scenario – You have 2 neighbors. One is the local plumber and the other is Albert Einstein. If you ask each a general question who’s answer do you think you’d be more likely to trust? Odds are you’re going to trust Einstein’s answer because you know he’s a pretty smart guy and probably knows the answer to a lot of things. Einstein likely has more general authority in your eyes than the plumber as a go to guy for answers.

Let’s say instead of a general question you have a very specific question about the pipes running through your kitchen. Now who’s answer are you going to trust? Probably the plumber. Einstein knows a lot, but chances are the plumber knows more about plumbing. The plumber has more topical authority when it comes to answers about plumbing.

Where do you get them?

Now think about the above analogy in terms of links. Some sites and pages have a lot of general authority. Think cnn.com, whitehouse.gov. wikipedia.org. A link from these sites likely carries a lot of general authority. People trust these sites and more importantly search engines trust these sites. What do they specifically know about web design though?

How about sites like smashingmagazine.com, the tutsplus family of sites, or hongkiat.com? These sites have topical authority around web design and web development. You would probably trust advice from them on the topic of design and development over the whitehouse.gov site.

I’ll ask again which links have more value for your site?

Page Rank

PageRank (PR) is Google’s idea of measuring authority, more specifically general authority. The PR of a web page is based on the PR of the pages linking to that page. However PageRank isn’t the end all and be all of search ranking. First the PR you and I see is not the true PR of a web page. We see what’s called toolbar PR (TBPR). Google updates it 3 or 4 times a year so most of the time it’s out of date. It’s also on a different scale than true PageRank and Google’s been known to edit the PR of certain sites for various reasons.

PageRank is still important and it’s still part of what goes into determining where a web page will rank, but know that if you’re chasing PR you’re going about things the wrong way. PR is only one factor among hundreds and it’s also a Google specific metric. It has nothing to do with how well your pages rank at any other search engine. At best it’s a quick and dirty measure of the authority Google sees in a page or site.

So what are the best links to get? Well it depends. It depends on the topic of your site and it depends on the competition around that topic. Links from the Wikipedia and CNN are always going to be good, however the link from the authority in your niche is probably even better.

As a general rule the harder it is to acquire a link the better, because that difficultly reduces the chances of your competition getting the same link and that difficulty likely enhances the authority a search engine sees in the link and consequently your page and site.

As a site note: Page Rank is named after Google co-founder Larry Page. Many people mistakenly believe it’s named after page as in web page and think page rank is the same as where your page ranks in search results. Nope. Page is for Larry Page.

Anchor Text, Nofollow, and Link Diversity

There are three more ideas we should discuss when talking about the quality of links:

1. The anchor text of the links in question,
2. Links with the nofollow attribute applies, and
3. The diversity of where those links come from.

Anchor Text
You probably know that anchor text is the clickable text that becomes the links. Those words and even the words around the link itself give an indication of what the page is voting for. If the anchor text linking to you says “web design” it will likely help you rank better for the keyphrase “web design” than if the anchor text said “click here.” Keywords in anchor text are a good signal for ranking.

Nofollow
nofollow is essentially a way to link to a web page while at the same time letting search engines know you’re not voting or recommending that page. Links with nofollow applied are not supposed to pass any link juice or link value. They shouldn’t therefore have any benefit in regards to SEO. However any link is still an avenue into your site.

If CNN told me they would link to my home page, but the link would have nofollow applied, I’d still be very happy to have that link. Many eyeballs would see it and hopefully many of them would click through to my site.

Link Diversity
Earlier I mentioned the concept of a link as a vote. In an election how many votes does one person get. Corruption aside it’s one vote per person. With web pages and websites there is likely a diminishing return when we’re talking about links back to your site. Consider two cases.

1. 1,000 links pointing into your site all from a single website
2. 100 links pointing into your site, 5 each from 20 different sites

The latter is probably going to have a greater impact. In the first case there’s no diversity in the links. In the second case there are more sites “voting” for you. Ideally links into your site or page should come from a variety of sources.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Link Diversity from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Quick Summary of Link Building

1. Build trust and authority in your site by acquiring links from general and topical trusted and authority sites.
2. Build trust and authority in a single page on your site by acquiring links from general and topical trusted and authority web pages.
3. Try to get links with variations of your main keyphrase in the anchor text.
4. Seek links from a diverse set of sites and pages.
5. Sometimes it’s simply a numbers game. More links or better more link juice, PR, or whatever you want to call it, is better. Quality though, is usually preferred to quantity.

Internal links (links from one page of your site to another) count as links, but what others say about you means more than what you say about yourself. External links (links from other domains) are better than internal links, but internal links do count. Make sure to link between pages of your site. Internal links are also one place you can guarantee control over the anchor text of the link.

In general the easier a link is to get the less value it likely has. Even if it does have great value your competition will be able to get that same link as easily as you thereby diluting the effect of the link.

Where to Get Links From

Now that we’ve discussed what makes for a better link how and where should we get links? Any page that will link back to one of your pages is a link. Most will help to some degree, but given the above discussion of link quality some links are going to help more.

I’ll point you to a few sources with specific ideas on how and where to get links from and keep the discussion here to a few general thoughts.

Low Quality Links

These
are usually easy to get. Forums, directories, blog comments are a few examples. These links are links and they should pass on raw link juice and value. However, because these links are generally low quality you probably don’t want to spend too much time trying to get them without having other reasons for getting those links.

For example I participate regularly in several forums and each contains links in my forum signature back to my site. I never post though just to get another signature link. I post in order to interact with the communities of those forums. That interaction has directly led to friends and clients and yes even some SEO benefit. Again the goal of post is not the link. That’s simply a nice side benefit.

The same thing applies to blog comments. The value in those comments is that you get to be in front of an audience that may very well be interested in you and your site. If you spend time leaving interesting or entertaining comments on a few blogs on similar topics to your blog you’ll find some of that audience will follow you back to your site and the blog owner may also do the same. If you simply leave a quick and useless comment you’re missing out. The link itself is probably not going to help much. It’s the quality of the comment that matters most. Any SEO benefit is a nice side bonus.

High Quality Links
They are harder to get and will ultimately give you more benefit. It makes more sense to actively work to get these links. Trusted, authority sites probably aren’t going to link to you just because you ask. You’re generally going to need to give them a reason to link to you.

That starts with your own content. The better your content the more likely someone will want to link to it. It’s always going to be easier to get people to link to quality than garbage.

Give to get. You want me to link to you? Why not link to me first? When you help others it makes them want to help you back. Think about how you can help the site you’re hoping will link back to you. One way you can do this is by guest blogging.

Many design and development blogs are actively seeking guest posts. You should get back a short bio which can include a link or two. Also if you have content that further explains some things you’re writing about you can add a link in the text. As long as the link points to page that is relevant to the guest post most bloggers will be fine with you adding it. Just don’t overdo it.

Remember first and foremost the goal is to write the best post you can for that other site.

Build relationships. Network with other designers. We’re all more likely to help friends than we are to help strangers. We’re also more likely to be familiar with the content of people and sites we know making it easier to link to that content.

In the end the best way to generate quality links is to have content worth linking to. Instead of spending all your time chasing after links with dubious benefit spend more time creating content others will find useful. You still need to give your content a push. If you build it they will come only works in the movies.

Resources

The following should generate lots of ideas for where and how you can build links into your site.

• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity
• 30 Ways to Get Links Naturally & Stop Link Building
• 45 Link Building Tips To Help You Promote Your Blog
• Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics For 2009
• 6 Ways to Build Links with Your Graphic Design Skills

5. Analytics

All of the previous discussion on SEO is great, but how do you know if any of it is working? The answer is in analytics. You need to measure what’s happening in order to know if your efforts are successful and leading to a positive return on your investment.

SEO is not a set it and forget it proposition. It’s an iterative process. You try some things, measure how effective they are and learn what you can for the next round of iteration.

There’s no excuse not to have analytics set up on your site. There are many companies that offer solutions at varying costs. Google Analytics, while far from perfect, is free, easy to set up, and most importantly offers some good statistics to help you understand what’s happening with your site.

At the simplest level you can pay attention to how much traffic you’re receiving from search engines and other sources. Ideally your traffic will continue to grow, but if it doesn’t or if you notice you’ve suddenly lost a lot of traffic you can begin to look deeper to understand why.

A few easy things you can do.

• See what keywords are currently bringing traffic and expand. For example if your site currently brings traffic for “san diego real estate,” “san francisco real estate,” and “los angeles real estate” it’s a good indication you can compete for real estate in other California cities and even the more general “california real estate.”
• Track keyword rankings or at least what page in the results your page ranks
• Discover which content on your site does best. Which content is getting the most views, which content is attracting the most links, which content are people landing on most often. Can you create more content on the same or similar content?
• Find out which sites are sending the best traffic. Say you write guest posts for 5 different sites. Which site or site led to the most traffic? Did the traffic from one site stick around on your site longer? Did one lead to more people subscribing to your blog? Knowing which sites provide the best traffic lets you know where better to focus your efforts.
• Learn who visits your site. What browser and operating system do they use? Where are they located? The more you know about the people who spend time with your site, the better you can craft new content to keep them coming back and bring more people like them to the site.
• Identify what you do and don’t do well. Are you getting a lot of search traffic, but little referral traffic? Are people spending time on one page, but not clicking to others? Are people visiting lots of pages, but not spending time on any of them? How sticky is your site?

There are many things you can do with analytics, but before you can do any of them you need to have analytics set up. You need to understand what is happening on your site, what is and isn’t working, in order to know how to improve your site in the next iteration.

Summary

Way back at the start of this short series of posts I mentioned that SEO is a complex subject. We’ve really only touched upon the surface of search engine optimization in this series. No single post or series of posts could hope to explain all the nuances of search, especially when search engines work so hard to protect their algorithms and often change very quickly.

The aim of this series has been to help give you a foundation so you’re better prepared to separate good information from bad in your further research. While these posts won’t make you an SEO expert there are a few takeaways I hope you’ll carry with you.

• Search Engine Optimization is only one part of marketing. You don’t want to ignore all the other ways to market your site. Search traffic can be very good traffic, but it’s far from the only traffic you can get. Be realistic and make your SEO efforts a part, albeit an important part, of your overall marketing efforts.
• The latest and greatest SEO tips are often worthless. If you knew a secret that could bring you millions of visitors from search engines would you tell everyone and give away your competitive advantage? Probably not. Neither does anyone else. That’s not to say all SEO advice is bad. Far from it. But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone promises you easy fixes like changing a single word on your site so all your pages will rank #1 be very skeptical.
• It’s important to understand how people use words, their intent in using those words, and how they are likely to search for you, your information, your products, or your services. The obvious keywords are not always best and success is often in getting small amounts of traffic to many pages across your site instead of focusing all your efforts on a single page or two.
• When building a site or writing content for a site, always think about real people first. When you make sites usable and accessible you also help search spiders crawl and index your site. When you write content naturally real people will respond better. It’s a good idea to understand what search engines like to see in sites and pages and make decisions accordingly, but always keep the real people using your site at the forefront.
• Links play a very large part in how well pages and sites rank in search engines. Not all links are created equal. Some are better than others. Generally the harder it is to get a link, the more likely that single link will benefit you. Low quality links are easy to get and so everyone gets them. High quality links are what separates you from the competition in most cases. Great content and creativity is the backbone for getting others to link to you.
• When you’re confused about a particular piece of SEO advice it sometimes helps to think like an engineer working at a search engine. Search is often a cat and mouse game between SEOs and search engineers. Search engines place value on a meta tag, people begin to abuse the tag, search engineers place less weight and then no weight on meta tags. If you imagine you’re a search engineer fighting spam you can sometimes tell what is and isn’t likely to work now or work in the future.

Resources

The following are some of my favorite blogs in the SEO community. If you follow the links in their posts you can easily build a pretty large list of SEO feeds in a short amount of time. SEO by the Sea has an extensive blogroll in the right sidebar to make building that list even quicker. I’ve also tried to link to a variety of sources throughout this series of posts.

• SEO Book
• SEOmoz
• Search Engine Land
• Huomah
• SEO by the Sea

Finally here are some free general SEO guides guides, checklists, and useful articles. They should cover much of what we’ve talked about in this series, albeit in slightly greater detail. I hope they help in your SEO learning.

• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
• SEO Fast Start
• Search Engine Ranking Factors
• Local Search Engine Ranking Factors
• SEO Checklist (supersized), hold the B.S.
• Free Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Videos

Have you read the previous 2?

This SEO guide for beginners comes in a series of 3 articles, if you ‘ve missed the previous Part I and Part II, here are the direct links to them:

• Part I
• Part II

One aspect of The American Dream is owning one’s own business. People fantasize about becoming their own boss rather than working for The Man while making their own hours and doing something they love. But just because you love design doesn’t mean you’d be a good business owner. On the flip side, just because you have an MFA and not an MBA doesn’t mean you can’t open up your own design company.

Here are elements to consider when weighing the possibility of starting your own small business. Full article after jump.

Education

So you went to school and got a degree, a certificate or at least a lot of training in design. And you’ve become really good at what you do and have a portfolio of fantastic promotional pieces for a variety of mediums. But as a large number of people responded on graphic artist David Airey’s blog, school doesn’t necessarily prepare designers for real life. Respondents stated that future designers could use a lot more – heck, any! – business training, including:

• More varied coursework in subjects such as calculus, economics, history and public speaking.
• Legal issues such as drawing up contracts.
• How to start a design firm or just survive in a big or small one.
• Marketing to gain clients.
• Customer service to gain and keep clients.

If you’re a current design student, then look into business courses, perhaps getting a minor or double major. But if you’re out of school:

• Explore what your local community college offers in the way of business courses.
• Contact your chamber of commerce for upcoming seminars that might include business advice or at least offer a networking opportunity.

Human Resources

When you’re a boss – even a self-employed one – you still have to take care of people, whether it’s one or 10 folks. FreelanceFolder noted that successful business owners wear many hats, including that of accountant, HR manager, customer service rep, sales manager, social media marketer and even janitor. Most brand-new business owners won’t have the capital to hire a person for each of those positions, but there are work-arounds.

Hire a freelancer: Lots of bookkeepers work a few hours each at numerous businesses to handle payroll, file taxes and keep track of benefits.

Outsource human resources: Advertisements for outsourced HR are popping up more and more. Indeed, you can save money twofold: by paying a person or firm by the hour and not even close to full time as well as by not having to pay them benefits.

Marketing

The bright side in this down economy is industrious businesspeople have found ways to promote themselves by spending a lot less than in years past. Gone are the days when you needed to hit every expensive media outlet with your advertisement. With social media thriving, making your company known is actually free! And despite claims that computers have made people less social face to face, good ol’ fashioned networking still has a place, too.

Social networking: Facebook and Twitter profiles take moments to build. That’s not to say you shouldn’t spend any time on them, but it’s not a daunting task. For Facebook, make sure you include all your company’s contact information, including links to your website and Twitter page. Upload photos of your products, location and employees to give a sense of personality. Status updates and tweets can include contests, sales, events and general news.

Don’t get too formal – this is "social", after all – but be professional. And always check your grammar and spelling before you hit the return button – trust me.

Networking: A personal referral can do a lot more than a Yellow Pages ad. With people watching their money more closely these days, they’re looking for recommendations. And the more people you know, the more likely your name will come up. I chatted with a designer recently who said she went to a lot of events, in the industry and not, and always kept business cards on hand. She’d introduce herself to people and hand out her card – not necessarily schmoozing but definitely being friendly. People then recommended her to others whether they’d actually used her graphic design services or not – her name simply stayed with them. In addition to attending events, patronize your local services.

Chat up your neighborhood barista, shop along your retail boulevards and strike up a conversation with your postal worker. Buying local doesn’t have to be a fleeting trend – it’s a way to keep the circle of business alive and thriving.

Location

It’s a scary world out there, but one thing that’s come out of the crashing economy and thousands of layoffs is a newfound entrepreneurial spirit. With major companies cutting employees left and right, starting your own business might be less intimidating than going to work for another boss.

For most Japanese mothers, lunch is not just simple food preparation and packing meals for their love ones, they spend their time arranging the meal in aesthetically pleasing way. These lunch boxes are known as “Bento.” Bento is a Japanese word for a meal served in a box. In history, bento is a packed Japanese lunch box, same idea to, the Korean dosirak, Filipino baon, or the Indian tiffin lunch. Today, they are a vibrant art form admired around the world.

If you’re interested on creating one for yourself or for your love ones, there are plenty of garnishes and interesting side dishes for your bento. A basic Bento is only divided into 2 parts: half of the lunch box is filled with rice, the other half is filled with a range of complementary foods, such as eggs, vegetables, meat or fish. Below you’ll see some of well-designed Bento that goes beyond the basic Bento preparation.

Harvest Bento. A well-designed bento that looks like the Sun Maid Raisin girl. (via: Sakurako Kitsa)

I Wanna Rock & Roll All Nite. This was made by Susan Yuen. She chose Gene Simmons of the popular band, KISS (via: Susanyuen)

Lovely Bento. Yaoi is one of Ramachan’s favorite manga. Yaoi is a Japanese word, which is in fact itís an acronym. It comes from “Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi”, which means “no climax, no point, no meaning”. (via: Ramachan)

Camping Bento. Perfect lunchbox for adventurous people specially going camping bento. (via: Lillergy)

Meta Knight bento. This Meta Knight bento was made of a rice ball with plastic wrap, and Anna put some seasoned seaweed inside. Meta Knight is dark blue with a gray mask, so I put ground black sesame seeds around the bottom half on the side of rice ball for the blue part. (via: AnnaTheRed)

Sony Playstation. A bento made by a gamer. (via: Markpascua)

Star Wars Bento. A star wars-inspired bento showing the planet Tatooine’s twin suns, Tatoo I and Tatoo II. (via: Vingt Deux)

Spidery Monster Bento. MisterMan, as the creator call it, gets a salmon salad sandwich on whole wheat thin with lettuce and cheddar. Guarding it is fanged tomato spider with baby carrot legs. (via: Sherimiya)

Starbucks Bento. Starbucks’ marketing department can borrow this idea for their future print advertisement. (via: Ricoco)

Kanda Bento. Here’s another anime-based bento design. This is the face of Yuu Kanda, one of the best D.Gray-man character. (via: S-in-C)

Ouendan Monkey Magic Bento. This is from the Monkey Magic segment of the sequel to the Nintendo DS game Osu. (via: Kickintheheadcomic)

Lost Bento. A Bento made by an avid viewer of popular TV series, LOST. (via: Aibento)

Nekobus Bento. Anna truly made an art out of frozen meatballs, broccoli, egg, cheese, snowpeas, asparagus and seaweeds. (via: AnnaTheRed)

Geisha Bento. In all the Bento design listed here, this one is really unique. It’s like a sculpture placed inside a bento box. (via: Sakurako Kitsa)

Konata Bento. This is Konata from Lucky Star Anime Series. (via: KandiKawaii)

Koi Pond Bento. Cathryn explains that he stones surrounding the pool are soy-braised button, bunashimeji (beech), and tiny enoki mushrooms. The Koi are kamaboko with red bell pepper and nori details. (via: Cathryn3)

Bioshock Big Daddy. Here’s another game-based Bento. Meet Bioshack Big Daddy and the little Sister. (via: Kickintheheadcomic)

Mokona Bento. Mokona is the pen name of the lead artist of the all-female manga-creating team Clamp. Mokona here is made of a giant rice ball (via: Nikoleart)

Power Puff Girls. Fans of power puff girls will surely love this. (via: Luckysundae)

House of Bento. This house looks yummy from the outside. I wonder what’s the inside. (via: Lillergy)

Goju Ryu Suparinpei Bento. The Karate girl is made of mozzarella, smoked ham and nori. The backgraound is made of mushrooms, green onions, mozzarella, pepperoni and turkey. (via: )

Frog Bento. Awesome tree frog sculpture. (via: Sakurako Kitsa)

The Oz-Man Cometh. Another excellent artwork by Susan Yuen. (via: Susan Yuen)

Bento of Super Smash Bros.. Featuring Pikachu and Mr. Game & Watch! (via: Kickintheheadcomic)

Spongebob Bento. Spongebob is made of a whole grain bread with mortadella and cheese. (via: Lovebones)

Death Note Bento. Death Note is another popular Japanese manga/anime series. (via: Kickintheheadcomic)

Phoenix Suns Bento. Kawaiikiki made a bento about her favorite NBA team, the Phoenix Suns. (via: Kawaiikiki)

Spring Picnic Bento. This is an entry bento design by Laura for the Spring Contest sponsored by Bento & Co. (via: Laura Bento)

Wallace and Gromit Bento. Wallace and Gromit is one of the creator’s favorite British animated films. Susan use rice stuffed with barbeque chicken to create Wallace and kamaboko for his eyes and teeth. (via: Susan Yuen)

Sea Bento. Ironically, there’s no seafood in this bento. (via: Liloaznangel)

Patapon Bento. Patapon is a rhythm game for PSP. You push the buttons to make the Patapons march, attack and defend from enemy. (via: Kickintheheadcomic)

Xmas Bento. Kids will surely love this even though it’s not Christmas season yet. (via: Nonochan)