Here’s a nifty, simple trick to speed up Photoshop: Go into your preferences and set cache levels to 1 and then set image previews to “Never Save”! Hat tip to Dan Rubin!
(via designworklife)
DaisyDisk
DaisyDisk scans your disks and presents their content as interactive maps where you can easily spot unusually large files and remove them to get more free space. The map gives you an overview of your data, so you always know what your hard disks are filled with.
Going to give this a try. They totally got me with the infographics.
(via daringfireball)
HelloFax
HelloFax is a site that let’s you send faxes, sign documents and fill out forms, all online, in a few easy steps. No cumbersome printing-scanning-emailing necessary. My studiomate Cameron tried it today, and he was happy enough to euphorically tweet about their service. I will twitter-echo that right after I upload this post. I just gave it a try and it’s amazingly easy! What a time-saver. (Only bummer, it doesn’t seem to work in Safari)
iPad Dry Erase Board
Do you design iPad apps? Then you’ll love DesignCommission’s iPad Dry Erase Board.
Method & Craft
Are you a designer? Are you familiar with Method & Craft? If not, I would suggest you check out their site.
Method & Craft is run by a crazy talented bunch of designers (one of them is my studiomate) and features Articles, Interviews, Videos, and Notes. The Method & Craft articles focus on process and workflow of designers. Their interviews let designers discuss their approach & perspective in their own words. And their videos show the designer at work, sharing application-specific techniques. Needless to say, those are my favorites!
I just thoroughly enjoyed this video covering Vintage Effects in Illustrator:
(kind of via chris glass)
Desktime
Sam Rosen of the Post Family visited the studio yesterday and told me about his brand new site called Desktime!
Desktime is a beautifully designed site that helps you rent out extra desks or find a desk to work for a day, week or month. Think of it as the AirBnB for the workspace. I am obviously a huge fan of the co-working concept (hence Studiomates).
I am thrilled to see more sites like this (remember my Loosecubes post?) pop up that make the dream of the mobile office a reality. As I mentioned they just launched. I can’t wait to see this grow!
WhatFont Bookmarklet
Do you ever visit a website and wonder what font they’re using? Yes? You’ll love this: WhatFont launched a bookmarklet that tells you what font is being used on text you hover over. This is crazy amazing! (Yup, I am *that* excited) Thank you WhatFont!
(via JasonSantaMaria)
Active Inbox
Wow, Active Inbox might indeed be a huge help in managing my overwhelming flow of incoming mail. ActiveInbox is a free, easy-to-use Chrome & Firefox plugin that safely improves Gmail & Google Apps.
(via @brainpicker)
The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto
What a fantastic initiative: The Photoshop Etiquette Manifesto for Web Designers is a list of helpful and *subtle* suggestions to organize Photoshop Documents, making the transfer of them less painful. Are you a Layer Mayor?
If you teach Web Design, make sure to share this resource with your students!
(via SmashingMagazine)
Merlin Mann on Inbox Zero
It was about time I watched this Inbox Zero talk again by Merlin Man. Yes, it is from 2007. Here’s some more info on the Inbox Zero concept.
Solo – bringing beauty to Project Management
Solo is a new, stunningly designed project management app. The UI is a serious work of beauty. (Hello there, grids!) This app almost makes me want to take on clients again. Hat tip!
(thank you Jerome)
dropmark
Introducing Dropmark from oak on Vimeo.
My studiomate Skylar is the brilliant mind behind dropmark. It let’s you drop files right from your computer, or the web, to create organized collections. Watch the above video and join me in being completely blown away.
Dropmark let’s you invite friends or co-workers to collaborate and edit your Dropmarks in real-time. They are private and secure, unless you choose to share them (each collection has a handy short URL).
Access your Dropmarks via the web and RSS, or get nerdy with their API—it’s your data after all, use it however you want. It’s not about “social media” (they won’t ask you to “follow” anyone), it’s about organizing and sharing your ideas in the easiest way possible.
Major, major hat tip off to Skylar! dropmark is nothing short of revolutionary!
PayPal Fee Calculator
This PayPal Fee Calculator is my Google find of the day. It is a free web-based tool that allows people to calculate what their PayPal fees would be to receive a certain amount or to reverse calculate their fees to determine what amount a person would have to send them for them to receive a certain amount after fees. Created by Ryan Olbe, a 28-year-old freelance web developer from central Florida. Thank you, Ryan!
Save as WWF
The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don’t need printing out – then simply save them as WWF.
Sounds pretty awesome: Just save it as WWF. What a smart move, WWF!
(thanks Jens!)
Little Big Details
LittleBigDetails is a simple tumblr blog showcasing a collection of UI details. I love geeking out over UI details. Definitely will be checking back.
(Thank you Floris)
Wirify
Wirify let’s you turn any web page into a wireframe with the click of a button. Brilliant! Watch the demo video below;
(via curiositycounts.com)
Basics of Business
David Airey’s Be brilliant at the basics post really made me look. It’s good to remind ourselves of the basic rules of business every now and then.
The business tips in David’s post were excerpted from the mini-book Brilliant At The Basics of Business 100, by author, designer, and teacher Nicholas Bate of Oxford-based Strategic Edge.
Read the full 100 business tips in this free PDF (70kb).
The Noun Project
The Noun Project’s mission is to share, celebrate, and enhance the world’s visual language. The goal is to collect and organize all the symbols that form our language into one easy-to-use online library that can be accessed by anyone. All the symbols on their site are completely free to download, and can be used for design projects, architecture presentations, art pieces – just about anything. The folks behind The Noun Project think a visual language that can be understood by all cultures and people is a pretty amazing thing. I fully agree.
Watch a video about their project over on Kickstarter.
(thank you Edward)
Awesome Highlighter
In one of my earlier posts today, I mentioned the new highlighting functionality that the NYTimes added to their articles. In the comments Justin pointed me the AwesomeHighlighter.com. It lets you highlight text on web pages and then gives you a small link to the highlighted page so you can easily share it.
Try it with this link where I highlighted my Holiday Gift Guide Call Out.
What a useful tool when collaborating with others. Thank you Justin!
Office Music Democratizer
There have been many attempts at trying to make office music a democracy, but most involve a complex system that people ignore, or people taking turns running the jukebox. LastFM and Pandora are great solutions (they learn from what you like/hate), but they both lack an easy and public way for everyone to have their say. BreakfastNY.com came up with a sleek solution: The Office Music Democratizer. Love it, Hate it, just hit the pretty button on the wall. Needless to say I would love this for studiomates.
What are you worth?
Interesting post by Whitney Hess: “What are you worth?”
What you’re worth is a question only you can answer. It’s loosely a combination of your ability, experience, and instinct. I don’t believe any of these three can be objectively measured, therefore it’s your responsibility to make a subjective assessment and assign a dollar amount to it.
Some people charge by the hour, but I won’t. If my worth requires more time to shine through, the client should not be penalized. But if my worth gets me to the answer faster, why should I be penalized?
Fancy Custom Dock Icons
Two readers asked me about Jessica Hische’s fancy custom doc icons that they spotted in an earlier post today. She created them herself, you can download them here and watch the video below explaining how to change your dock icons.
How to Change your Dock Icons from Jessica Hische on Vimeo.
Jessica is one talented lady. We miss her here in studiomates land.
Please note: When sh says “left click” in the video she really mean “right click”.)
proofHQ
poofHQ is an online proofing tool that allows you to manage feedback and approval of design work.
proofHQ recently extended the functionality to allow proofing of audio visual files, which is a huge step forwards and makes it one of a kind in the market. This means that any agencies or freelancers creating short website movies or interactive ads can now get feedback online from their clients with comments displayed at the relevant time within the file.
I am currently on a one-year-client-work-sabbatical, otherwise I would give proofHQ a try. Watch the demo below:
ProofHQ Demo from ProofHQ on Vimeo.
Dropbox Toolkit & Guide
AppStorm posted an extensive Dropbox Toolkit & Guide. I’ll definitely have to look into some of the options, especially the syncing of my iTunes Library.
(via @rufusd)
