Archive for May, 2010

60+ Android Apps

Posted: May 31, 2010 in Android

Android users rejoice! With an ever-growing number of devices, a wide array of mobile carriers, and more free apps than you can shake a USB cable at, Google’s mobile OS has shaped up to be quite the versatile contender.

If you’re looking to scoop up some of the best apps the Android Market  has to offer, you’ve come to the right place. This comprehensive list is your one-stop shop for reviews and recommendations — perfect for kicking back on a nice long weekend with a data card’s worth of new mobile goodies.

We’ve got music, sports, news, and some digital toys that are just plain cool. Check them out, and if we’ve missed anything, be sure to serve up your own suggestions in the comments.

Well it’s Sunday again, and once again while eating my breakfast and telling myself I do not have a hangover I am just a little under the weather. I have been scanning the web and stumbled over icanhashappy. So have a read and give them a visit

These days you can find all sorts of things online, from audio books to flash files, from sound effects to CSS templates. Below we compiled a list with over 100 download sites that serve that purpose.

We will also try to keep the list updated, so if your favorite download site is not here, let us know about it with a comment.

Audio Books

Librivox: One of the most popular audio libraries on the web. The LibriVox volunteers record books that are in the public domain and release them for free.

Podiobooks: Similar to podcast, Podiobooks are serialized audiobooks that are distributed through RSS feeds. You can receive book episodes or download directly from the site.

Oculture (Audio & Podcast): Offers a rich array of educational and cultural media. The site editor scours through the web to find the best cultural and educational media available.

Learn Out Loud: A one-stop destination for video and audio learning resources. You can browse through over 15,000 educational audio books MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. The site also contains various free resources.

BitTorrent

The Pirate Bay: The web’s largest collection of bit torrent trackers. The Pirate Bay banks on its member file sharers to cull the web’s torrent files and make these available to users.

Mininova.org : What started as an alternative to the now defunct Supernova that went offline in 2004, Mininova has become the biggest torrent search engine and directory on the web. The site provides easy-to-use directory and search for all types of torrent files.

Torrent Portal : This P2P and file sharing site works like Google by linking only to .torrent metafiles and captures the caches of those files. It does not store files nor transfer data which are content linked to by .torrent files.

Now Torrents: The site scans torrent websites on the internet to provide the best results to users. Now Torrents provides an advanced real-time search engine for bit-torrents while at the same detecting and removing fake or dead torrent sites.

Torrentz: This Sweden-based torrent meta-search engine also indexes various major torrents sites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. It provides various trackers per torrent that would work when another tracker is not working.

Books and Documents

Scribd: A virtual place where you can publish, discover, discuss, and share original writings and document. With 50 million unique page views per month, Scribd is a great place to learn new things.

Sheet Music Archive: The web’s most popular music web site.  The site contains more than 22,000 classical music pieces and more than 100,000 sheet of music. It offers hundreds of free music downloads and more for subscriptions.

Computer Books.us: The site offers high quality computer related books for free download. These computer books are all legally distributed and their authors have granted permissions for the site to distribute their works.

Docstoc: This is your ultimate resource for free legal and business documents. Docstoc does not only allow you to download documents for free but it also lets you upload and share your own documents.

Tech Books for Free Download: If you’re looking for free books on Java, Perl/Phyton or other computer programming related books, this site might be of help. It offers books covering technology subjects for free download.

Project Gutenberg: The most comprehensive repository of ebooks on the web. Project Gutenberg was built by volunteers and now houses more than 27,000 titles of ebooks in its catalog.

Free eMagazine Download – covers a comprehensive collection of free emagazines for free download.

eBooks

KnowFree: The site offers a virtual place to exchange ebooks freely., video training, and other educational materials . Know Free features a very nice search engine which enables users to search for a particular materias fast.

Spotbit:  Providing a paperless solution to publishing and for selling e-books, Spotbit makes e-book available in a different digital format than what is available on the web lately. Spotbit offers a simple Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology for E-books format.

Ebookshare: Provides link to either an e-books torrent files or direct download to the file itself.  E-books are categorized into broader subject and the site has a nice search engine to aid you in finding the e-book you want.

Ebookee: A free book search engine. Ebookee helps you in finding e-book titles that you are particularly looking for.  The E-books listed on the site are organized in general subject categories.

Wowio: The site lets you access legally available high-quality e-books. Wowio lets you read complete books online for free. If you want to download the PDF versions, Wowio charges a minimal fee.

Internet Archive – With the aim of building an Internet Library, this site features texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in its  collections.

Clipart

Open Clip Art Library: The site is an ongoing project to create an archive of user contributed database of clip art that can used freely. Open Clip Art Library upholds the Creative Commons and encourages users to participate in generating contents.

WP Clipart: Offers more than 29000 public domain clip art images which were designed specifically for use with Word Processors. WP Clipart provides thousands of color graphic clips, illustrations, photographs and black and white line art in lossless, PNG format.

Clker:  The site offers royalty free clip art in SVG, ODG and PNG format which are in public domain. It lets you easily embed these images in openoffice documents.

Clipart.com: The web’s largest collection of royalty-free clipart, vinyl-ready images, photos, web graphics, fonts, illustrations, and sounds. Clipart offers paid subscription to its database containing 10 million+ professional-quality images in various formats including .EPS, .JPG, .PNG, and .WMF.

Download Hubs

Softpedia:  The site contains more than 500,000 sofware programs Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac, Mobile Phones, Games and Drivers. Some of software programs in Softpedia are freeware while some are shareware.

Download.com: Cnet’s most comprehensive library of freeware offers free download.  Download.com contains tons of Windows software ranging from security software, digital photo software, educational software and more.

Open Source Mac:  A handy reference and useful tools that encourages users to utilize free and open-source software..  Open Source Mac offers a simple list of  the best and free software for the Mac OS X.

Free Downloads Center: Hosts a collection of free software, games and other desktop goodies which you can download for free. Free Downloads Center also offers a Give Away of the Day licensed software which you can download during the day only.

Tucows: The web’s original software download site. Tucows contains more than 40,000 software titles which are freeware or shareware.

Phazeddl: Hosts download warez, games, torrents, movies, software, apps, scripts, TV shows, ebooks, templates as well as key-gen of crack softwares.

Freeware

A+Freeware:  The site offers choice applications or “A+Freeware” which become useful only when combined with a valid operating system. A+Freeware lets you get copies of software for free.

Best Freeware Download: A free wares site which allows you to register and save links on the site’s member account areas. Best Freeware Download is categorized into communication desktop and games. Gamers would definitely want to check this site from time to time to check on new freewares to be added.

Free Ware Box: The site offers categorized summary of freeware software. Freeware Box contains open source software, public domain and other types of free software, all available for free download.

Freeware Zoom:  This site offers freeware for free download. Freeware Zoom is updated daily and it contains no adware or spyware.

File Hippo:  The site has considerable number of freeware, demo and shareware programs which are of high quality. File Hippo puts a premium on quality software rather than quantity. Hence the site offers only the best software.

Windows Downloads: Download.com’s Windows-only software download site offers softwre which were tested to be 100%  free of malware.

Major Geeks: Offers only the serious software meant for the serious geeks. It hosts the most comprehensive collection of computer utilities available on the web.

Brothersoft: The site offers more than 100,000 software for free download. Brothersoft does not only offer free software download but also thoroughly evaluate all the software submitted to them.

Flash Files

Ffiles: The web’s richest repository of free Flash Files. Ffiles contains Flash files which you can download freely. It also allows you to upload your own Flash files that you want to share with other users.

Flash Kit:  If you’re a flash developer, Flash Kit is the site for you. It’s the ultimate online resource for Macromedia Flash development.

Flash Den: This site contains everything that you need for your Adobe lash project.  You can buy preloaders, templates and other things you need to finish your project. And most of these Flash components sell for as low as $1.

Fonts

Dafont: If you’re looking for some cool fonts to use for whatever purposes, you could probably pick up one or two font style at this site. Dafont offers freely downloadable fonts. You can browse fonts by author, by style or by popularity.

1001 Free Fonts: This site has a big collection of TrueType fonts which are either freeware or shareware. 1001 Free Fonts offers free fonts for both Windows and Mac platforms.

Download Free Fonts: A simply designed online resource for thousands of free fonts. Download Free Fonts contains free fonts for Windows and Mac. You can use the site’s search box to find the font you are specifically looking for or browse through the font categories.

Show Font: The site lets you download fonts for free. Show Font contains TrueType fonts for both PC and MAC. It also provides font editor and font management tools.

FontStruct: Aside from offering freely downloadable fonts, Fonstruct also has a font editor and font management applications available online. FontStruct lets you build fonts, share it with others and download fonts made by other people as well.

Games

Liberated Games: This is a simple listing site offering free downloads of legally available games. It’s a straight-out listing of these different games including their download links.

NDS-ROMS: This is a heaven sent site for NDS gamers. NDS-ROMs offer free downloads of publicly available ROMs.

Iwin:  The Internet’s largest selection of free game downloads. You can choose to play games in the  popular categories.

Donwload Full Version PC Games: This is a blog site containing 100 best legal, free, and full version of games. The site covers free action games, free action games and 3rd person games.

Abandonia:  If you’re up for some good old DOS-based gaming experience, Abandonia may have those games. Abandonia offers DOS games which have been abandoned for so long.

Best of Games: The site offers various old games and certainly has many of them on the site. Best of all, Best of games offers these games for free download.

Free Games – A search engine for free games that can be played online or downloaded to your machine. It also covers cheat codes.

Movies

ZML: One of the Internet’s most useful download service. ZML offers update subscriptions and lets you find out about current movies by subscribing  to ZML.

Free Documentaries: offer free Streaming Independent Documentary Films, Environment Documentary, Israel, Palestine, War, George Bush, Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11, Globalization, Media, and more.

Moving Image Archive: A comprehensive library of  free movies, films, and videos uploaded by the site users.  Moving images include full-length films, news broadcasts, cartoons and concerts. Not all of the videos are free to download though.

MP3

eMusic: The world’s biggest online retailer of independent music and audio books. eMusic holds more than 40,000 independent labels and almost 5,000 titles of audio books from top publishers.

Jazz on Line: The web’s most comprehensive online resources of digitalized Jazz music. Jazz on Line hosts only songs which are in public domain.

Jimmyr: A search engine for mp3 music and other digital files. Jimmyr crawls through the various mp3 resources available on the web using Google Custom Search Engine.

Music Download: The ultimate source for legally available and freely downloadable digital music on the Internet. It’s from Cnet.com, so you are pretty sure that most of the files are safe to download.

beeMP3: A music search engine useful for finding mp3-audio files available on the web. BeeMP3 currently indexes around 800,000 mp3 files.

Download Any Stuff: A digital file search engine that provides download links to free stuff over the Internet. Download Any Stuff lets you search for MP3 files, softwares, drivers, games, movies, ebooks, even Torrents and more.

Skreemr: Another music search engine that you can use to locate audio files available on the web. Skreemr currently indexes and crawls more than 6 million mp3 files from 100,000 web sites.

iLike: A social music discover site that allows you not only to discover music playlists available on the web but also to share your own playlists to the world. iLike also links to iTunes and Amazon music stores.

eMP3 World: A free mp3 download site. eMP3 World currently holds around 85,000 mp3 download links on its database.

Jamendo/: An online community of free, legal and unlimited digital music content. Jamendo offers only those music which have been licensed under Creative Commons. The site lets you share your own music and create your own widget playlists which you can embed to your site or social networking profiles.

Online Video

Vixy:An online video converter that you can use to convert a Flash video / FLV file or YouTube videos to MPEG4 format. Vixy uses a compressed domain transcoder technology. You can enter a YouTube link to have it converted into MPEG4 online.

Keepvid: The site lets you download streaming videos from YouTube, Putfile, Metacafe and other video streaming sites. After downloading you need to convert it into another format depending on what media player you are using. Or you can use FLV’s own media player instead.

Javimoya: Another good video downloader site. Javimoya supports many video streaming sites including YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace Music, and more.
VideoDownloadx: The site allows you to download videos from YouTube and save these videos to your PC. You also need to download an FLV player to view the videos from your local hard drive or convert the file into other formats that can be read by your media player software.

Download YouTube Videos as mp4 Files: This blog post gives a detailed instruction on how to download videos directly from YouTube in mp4 format. No need to use a third-party site to scrape the video off from YouTube.

Kiss YouTube: Offers an easy and simple way of downloading and saving YouTube video directly to your computer. You can enter the URL of the video on the Kiss You Tube site, or add the word “kiss” on the URL of the YouTube video to download the file. Either way, you will still download the file from the Kiss You Tube site itself.

Download YouTube Videos: This site lets you download YouTube videos faster and easier. You just nee to enter the YouTube URL of the videos that you want to download

keepHD - lets you download HD videos off Youtube. It also lets download the mobile 3GP version for your mobile devices plus the standard MP4 and FLV format.

Photoshop and Design

Deviant Art Photoshop Brushes: A collection of artsy paintshop brushes used by Deviant Art members. You can download the paint brushes or share it to other people.

Adobe Market Place and Exchange: Adobe’s online resource containing tools, services, and innovations relating to Adobe’s various products. The site also let you discover Adobe AIR runtime applications.

Pixel Chick: Offers both free and paid Photoshop brushes that are compatible with CS2 and CS3.

Vecteezy: Serves as an index of free vector graphics that are available for download from the web. Vecteezy’s vector graphics were created by famous designers.

Busheezy: A huge collection of free Photoshop brushes and patterns. Busheezy is updated daily and also accepts submission of Photoshop brushes from online users.

Vector 4 Free: A free vector graphics site for Adobe Illustrator AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, and Corel Draw CDR. All the vector graphics  are free for personal and commercial use.

Get Brushes: A directory of brushes personally handpicked by the site owners. Get Brushes contains various brushes including over abstract and text, gothic, coffee pills and more.

Q Vectors: The site offers free high-quality vector images and graphics. Q Vector also accepts user submissions.

Archive 3D: Host more than 17,000 3D graphics model. Archive 3D models ranges from Beds,Shkaps, Chairs,Tables,Sofa, Sanitary Ware, Decoration, NVAC, Tools, and more.

Vectormix – This site has a good collection of vector graphics submitted by users and arre free to download.

Sound Effects

Soundsnap: A library of more than 100, 000 high-quality sound effect and music loops. Soundsnap offers 5 free downloads per month, after which you need to pay a Pro membership to download more files.

FindSounds: A useful sound and sound effects search engine. FindSounds offers sound directory, keyword search and sonic similarity search functions.

Partners in Rhyme: The site offers royalty free music featured in Films, TV, Video and Websites. Partners in Rhyme also offers free music loops, midi files and audio software.

Stone Washed: An online resource for free sound effects, loops, button sounds and other multimedia files. Stone Washed offers various categories including sound effects, animal sounds, buy out music and more.

Stock Photos

Stock.Xchng: One of the web’s leading stock photography site. Stock.xchng offers a full gallery of high-quality stock photos  available for free download or for sharing on blogs, social networks and other sites.

Free Digital Photos: Contains thousands of royalty free photos available for download and can be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Free Digial Photos does not require registration to download stock photos from their site.

Morgue File: The site provides high-resolution stock photography images for free regardless of whether the photos will be used for corporate or private use. Morgue File is the place to keep post production materials.

123RF –  The site offers a daily dose of free high-quality images aside from the paid stock images that it sells.

System utilities

Open Drivers: A free driver download service. Open Drivers is categorized by device category and driver manufacturer. It also includes step-by-step process to install and uninstall the drivers.

DLL Files: A very useful site for users who keeps on getting the missing DLL prompt from the machine. DLL Files contains a comprehensive databased of dll-files that you could possibly need.

Download 3K: A huge archive of free and free-to-try software programs and games for Windows. Download 3K is categorize into 15 main categories and the site is updated with around 300 software everyday.

Free Codecs: The ultimate resource for all types of codecs available online. Free Codecs offers video codecs, audio codecs, codec packs, codec tools and more.

Open Office: Home of the free open-source office software suite. Open Office contains word processing, spreadsheets, database, presentations, graphics, and more.

Web Design

Open Source Web Design: A collection of web designs submitted by the community members. Open Source Web Design offers free web design for download that can be used for personal blogs to a full-featured content management systems for businesses.

Free CSS Templates:The site offers standards compliant CSS templates for free. Users are free to use the templates for personal or business purposes.

Template World: Offers top quality, creative and unique web site templates created by certified web professionals.

Iconspedia: The site offers free icons download. Iconspedia are arranged in various categories including animals, food and phones.

Free Icons Web: The site contains 15000 high quality icons for free downloads. Free Icons Web contains icons for Windows XP, Vista, Macintosh, and Linux. Icons are for personal use only. Commercial users have to pay a certain amount of royalty.

1000+ Classic Icons for Free Download: Probably the best collection of free icons available online. Icons are in png, icns, ico-formats as well as .EPS vector files.

Spotbit: The site allows you to publish and sell e-books using a fast, easy and free method. Spotbit lets you create your e-books and published it on Spotbit.

Smashing Magazine’s 40 Professional Icon Sets for Free Download: A list of 40 high-quality professional icons for desktops and web design which are all free for download. The icons can be used for private and commercial purposes.

100 Fantastically Free Business Fonts

As any designer whose been freelancing for more than a few months knows, having a small font library is definitely not cool. Reusing the same typeface for logo after logo doesn’t exactly make for an awesome portfolio and buying a bunch of new fonts can be seriously expensive–too rich for the blood of many self-employed creatives. What a bind! Luckily for you, we’ve taken the liberty of putting together this list of 100 free professional fonts for both Mac and PC. Herein you’ll find some great serif and sans-serif fonts that are perfect for use in situations involving small to medium sized business clients (in other words, we didn’t include any fonts that make you want to cringe or that you’d be embarrassed to work with). You might just want to download them all!

1.) Museo 500 Regular OT

2.) Calluna Regular

3.) MEgalopolis Extra

4.) League Gothic

5.) Resonance Bold

6.) Mayberry Pro Semi Bold

7.) Aller Sans

Aller Sans

8.) GEronto Bis

GEronto Bis

9.) Sketch Rockwell

10.) Birra Stout

Birra Stout

11.) Zalamander Caps

Zalamander Caps

12.) Fell Types

Fell Types by Igino Marini

13.) Delicious

Delicious

14.) Geo Sans Light

Geo Sans Light

15.) Raleway

Raleway

16.) Champagne & Limousines

Champagne & Limousines

17.) AUdimat

AUdimat

18.) Caligula Dodgy

Caligula Dodgy

19.) HardlyWorthIt

HardlyWorthIt

20.) Romeral

Romeral

21.) Arsis

Arsis

22.) Berylium

23.) Bergamo Std

24.) HeavyTripp

HeavyTripp

25.) Prociono

Prociono

26.) Vegur

Vegur

27.) Lindau

28.) Diavlo

29.) Stewart Sans

30.) Often

31.) Dubiel

32.) District Thin

33.) Travelogue

34.) Caviar Dreams

35.) Tagesschrift

36.) Vollkorn-Brotschrift

37.) Cicle

38.) Franchise

39.) Goudy Bookletter 1911

40.) Tallys

41.) Powell Antique

42.) Essays 1743

43.) Spinwerad Medium

44.) Anivers

45.) Junction

46.) JUstice

47.) Fertigo Pro

48.) Gentium

49.) Pigiarniq Inuktitut

50.) Union

51.) Droid

52.) Liberation Serif

53.) Georgia

54.) Titillium

55.) Vera Sans Mono

56.) Kaffeesatz

57.) Mank Sans

58.) Tuffy

59.) Luxi Mono

60.) Engel Light Ltd

61.) Lacuna

Lacuna

62.) Day Roman

63.) Advent Pro

Advent Pro

64.) CartoGothic Std

CartoGraphic Std

65.) Basic Light

66.) St Transmission

St Transmission font

67.) Adelle

68.) FF Nuvo Web Medium

69.) Cardo

Cardo font free download

70.) Nuri Light ltd

71.) Kontrapunkt

72.) ARB-187 Moderne Caps AUG-47 CAS

73.) Nevis

74.) Fonce Sans Regular

75.) Sovereign Regular Mac PS

76.) Greyscale Basic

77.) Legendum

78.) Colaborate

79.) Tenderness

80.) Alexandria

81.) Sling

82.) COM4t Fine Regular

83.) Bienetresocial

84.) Menaion Medieval, Regular

Menaion Medieval

85.) PetitLatin

PetitLatin

86.) Quicksand

Quicksand font

87.) Fette Egyptienne

88.) Telegrafico

89.) Aboriginal Serif

90.) Bonveno

Bonveno font

91.) Riven

Riven font for free

92.) Flaminia Type System

93.) SlabTallX

94.) Revive OV

95.) Modeno Font

96.) Librarian Regular

Librarian font for free

97.) surrounding__.

98.) Paramount Bold

Paramount font

99.) Fontin

Fontin font

100.) Apple Garamond

Apple Garamond free font

This article was first posted on freelancereview

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Learning and using new words can be one of the great pleasures of language. While university courses can help you to build your vocabulary, seeking out words, wordplay, and information is essential to becoming a true word nerd. These online tools can help you along, making it simple to learn new words, find out where they came from and just plain play with words.

General

Check out these sites to build vocab, learn about words or make up your own.

  1. Word Finder: Whether you’re doing a crossword puzzle or just trying to remember a word, this tool can help.
  2. Save the Words: Help save an endangered word through this site by adopting one of your own.
  3. Wordnik: This site lets you look up words and find definitions, etymologies, pronunciations and more.
  4. Vocabulary.com: Use the tools on this site to build an impressive vocabulary.
  5. Wordle: Generate word clouds from words that you enter into this site–a great way to display the words you love or make graphics for a site.
  6. Word Spy: This site lists new vocabulary words for you every day, often ones you wouldn’t have heard before.
  7. A Word A Day: Make sure you’re constantly learning new words with this site that lists a new word each day.
  8. Mondo Facto: Here you’ll find tools to solve anagrams, crosswords and Scrabble, as well as a word visualizer, dictionary and word finder.
  9. Morpheme Machine: Combine morphemes to create your own words with this tool.

Word Fun

Have fun with your words using these tools.

  1. Crossword Clue Solver: If you’re struggling with a crossword puzzle, try out this helpful tool.
  2. Wordplays.com: From anagrams to Boggle, this site offers lots of fun ways to use words.
  3. Fun With Words: This site is full of ways to play games with words or read interesting articles about them.
  4. Word Games: Try out this site for hundreds of fun word games.
  5. Crossword Puzzles.com: Here, you’ll find links to more crosswords than you could possibly need.

Etymology

Find out more about where words you use came from with these resources.

  1. World Wide Words: Ask questions and read articles all about word origins on this site.
  2. Online Etymology Dictionary: Look up your favorite words on this site to learn more about where they come from.
  3. The Word Detective: Find monthly publications on this site about etymology, allowing you to ask questions and have fun with words.
  4. Behind the Name: Learn where common and uncommon names alike came from using this site.
  5. Word Origins: This blog posts regularly about word origins and language history.
  6. Word Wizard: Find out more about the origins of English words on this site.

Pronunciation

You can ensure you don’t look silly pronouncing words incorrectly by using these helpful online tools.

  1. Pronounce Extension: Try this extension for Firefox to learn how to pronounce pretty much anything.
  2. HowJSay: This tool will help you pronounce any word you enter in.
  3. Forvo: Want to know how to pronounce words in numerous languages? This amazing tool will help you with everything from Japanese to Polish.
  4. Inogolo: This site will help you ensure you’re pronouncing proper names correctly.
  5. HearNames.com: Make sure you’re pronouncing coworkers’ and classmates’ names correctly with this tool.

Reference

Look up a word you don’t know or find weird words using these tools.

  1. Definr: This cute dictionary tool makes it easy to find definitions both classic and modern.
  2. Visuwords: Try out this online graphical dictionary to get your words delivered in style.
  3. Visual Dictionary: See pictures of the topics you’re looking up with this helpful dictionary.
  4. Open Dictionary: This dictionary embraces an open concept, allowing users to add new words.
  5. Google Dictionary: Google’s dictionary is helpful in showing you how words are being used at this moment, in news stories and posts from around the world.
  6. Visual Thesaurus: Check out this site to get your thesaurus results delivered in a cool, visual fashion.
  7. Specialist Online Dictionary: Find a collection of specialized jargon dictionaries here for things like politics, religion and more.
  8. RhymeZone: Whether you’re writing a poem, a song or just want to know what rhymes, this tool can help.
  9. International House of Logorrhea: Here, you’ll find a collection of weird and rarely used English words.

Slang and Shortened Words

If you want to be hip to new slang or acronyms, try out these tools.

  1. Urban Dictionary: You’ll be able to look up just about any slang term in this dictionary. Be aware; however, not all entries are safe for work.
  2. What Does That Mean?: Find buzzwords, idioms, slang and more on this site.
  3. Online Slang Dictionary: Look up slang terms so you can be hip and in-the-know with this site.
  4. Abbreviations.com: Not sure what the heck that abbreviation means? This tool can help.
  5. Acronym Finder: How many different things can CIA stand for? Try out this site for a complete listing.

Grammar and Writing Help

Get help using words correctly in your writing with these sites.

  1. After the Deadline: Download this Firefox extension to get grammar and spelling help in your browser.
  2. Cliche Finder: Is your writing full of more cliches than you can shake a stick at? This tool can help you to eliminate them.
  3. English Glossary of Grammar Terms: Learn what all those annoying grammar terms actually mean so you can apply them to your writing from this site.
  4. Guide to Grammar and Writing: Try out some of the grammar tips and tools offered on this site to improve your writing.
  5. Confusing Words: This site lists and lets you search through thousands of words in English that can have confusing spellings or meanings.

Foreign Language

These tools are great for learning or understanding another language.

  1. LangLadder: This Firefox extension can help you study a new language every day.
  2. LangID: Not sure what language a sentence is in? This tool can help.
  3. Busuu: Join this site to start learning one of dozens of new languages.
  4. Babbel: Work with native speakers and bring your studies on the road with this site.
  5. Fox Lingo: This site can help you translate words and websites in 3,000 different languages.
  6. Lingro: Try out this cool dictionary to look up any foreign words you don’t know.

A major computer security firm urged Facebook on Tuesday to set up an early-warning system after hundreds of thousands of users were hit by a new wave of fake sex-video attacks.

A major computer security firm urged Facebook on Tuesday to set up an early-warning system after hundreds of thousands of users were hit by a new wave of fake sex-video attacks.

British-based virus fighter Sophos warned users of the world’s biggest social networking site to be on guard against any posting entitled “distracting beach babes”, which contains a movie thumbnail of a bikini-clad woman.

In a press statement, Sophos said the malicious posts appear as if they are coming from users’ friends, but it urged recipients not to click on the thumbnail.

By clicking on it, users are taken to a rogue Facebook application informing them that they do not have the right player software installed, Sophos said.

It tricks users into installing adware, a software package that automatically plays, displays or downloads advertisements to their computer, and the video link is spread further across the network.

Sophos said that “hundreds of thousands” of Facebook users were believed to have received the posts over the past weekend.

It followed a similar scam that spread on Facebook the week before involving a fake posting tagged as the “sexiest video ever”.

“It’s time for Facebook to set up an early warning system on their network, through which they can warn their almost 500 million users about breaking threats as they happen,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“A simple message appearing on all users’ screens warning them of the outbreak would have helped in halting the attack,” he said.

“Unless something is done, it won’t be surprising if there is another widespread attack this coming weekend, affecting thousands more users.”

The social networking site is already under fire for revealing users’ information too freely on the Internet.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that the website “missed the mark” with its complex privacy controls and would reveal simpler features in the coming weeks.

All Teched Up!

Posted: May 25, 2010 in All Teched UP!
Tags:

WolframAlpha is Brutally Honest (PIC)
Google Pac-Man Mightve Cost Us $120,483,800
Seagate’s New Hybrid Drive — SSD Performance at HDD Price
Many Verizon customers suffering “extreme” iPhone interest
Windows Phone 7: Technical Tidbits Exposed
The 5 Best Satirical Twitter Accounts
Speed Tests Show Flash 10.1 Slowing Down Android 2.2
Confirmed: Steve Jobs to present WWDC keynote on June 7th
Poisoned PDFs? Here’s Your Antidote
USA Today Duped by iPad Steering Wheel Hoax
Anonymously Confess Your Cheating Ways

Facebook told to set up Warning System after new Sex Scam
Twitter Bans All Third Party Ad Platforms
Huge Gap Remains Between Mainstream Media and the Social Web

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again How To Geek knows his bits and bites.

Linux only: If you’re diligent about applying patches to your Ubuntu PC, you’ll soon notice an annoying problem—the boot menu keeps growing bigger every time a kernel patch is installed. Here’s how to clean it up.

Over at the How-To Geek site (my home away from Lifehacker), writer Trevor covers the process of cleaning up the grub boot menu in the latest versions of Ubuntu. Before the days of grub2 in Ubuntu 9.10 and above, cleaning up your boot menu was easy, requiring nothing more than editing the menu.lst file, but the new boot manager doesn’t work the same way.

To clean up old kernel entries from your own boot menu, just head into your package manager and remove the old kernel entries. Hit the link to learn about the full process, including how to manually remove any item, including the extra memtest86+ entry in the list.

Clean Up the New Ubuntu Grub2 Boot Menu [How-To Geek]Clean Up Your Messy Ubuntu Boot Menu

This was originally posted on lifehacker

In The Tech News

Posted: May 21, 2010 in All Teched UP!, In The News

Google TV is Here. Whoa.
Google Is Leapfrogging Apple
Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers
MySpace, Facebook, Digg & others just screwed up. Big Time!
More than half of Facebook users ‘could quit the site
Every Facebook Privacy Feature Revealed and Explained!
How to Check if Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked
US Court: RapidShare Not Guilty of Copyright Infringement
Google Wave: the beginner’s guide
Facebook Can Predict Who You’ll Be Dating in the Future
WARNING: Facebook Clickjacking Attack Spreading in News Feed
EFF: Time For Google to Grow Up After Wi-Fi Privacy Mistake
Adobe Faces Tough Fight for Flash Survival
iPads on Track to Outsell the Mac
John Shepherd-Barron, ATM inventor, is dead

Why Your Company Needs to Embrace Social CRM
Creative Uses of Stickers in Advertising Webdesigner Depot
5 Surprising Social Media Business Success Stories
40 Excellent Adobe Illustrator Icon Tutorials Naldz Graphics
Create GitHub-Style Buttons with CSS and jQuery, MooTools, or Dojo
Button Maker
How to Use the New Google Font API Design Shack
25 Excellent Free Twitter Backgrounds
Romn Corts Pure CSS3 Page Flip Effect
10 Mind-Blowing Experimental CSS3 Techniques and Demos – Speckyboy
The Complete Beginners Guide to Barefoot Running Zen Habits
Help me help my friend in DC. Ask MetaFilter
The Pirate Bay Cracked.com
YouTube – NIKE WRITE THE FUTURE – FULL LENGTH VERSION
Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole – WSJ.com
CSS Starbursts with CSS3 transforms and transitions
Simple “Call To Action” Button With CSS & jQuery De
10 jQuery Plugins to Help with Web Page Layouts Tools
12 Applications to Make Your Facebook Page More Engaging
Huge Infographics Design Resources: Overview, Principles, Tips and
Google Starts an Application Store for Chrome browser and Chrome OS
How to Install Android on Your iPhone – PCWorld
xkcd: Infrastructures
8 Killer Steps To Create An Effective Brochure
The Psychologists View of UX Design UX Magazine
Write The Future on Vimeo

In this tutorial author will show you how to create a cool grunge poster in Photohop. We will play in particular with blending modes to mix stock images and with some filters to create nice effects. Also author will show you how to integrate 3d text into your compositions and how to replace existing colors using adjustment layers.


Grunge in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Creating an Impactful Disco Party Poster

This tutorial will show how we can create an impactful disco party poster. There are some new methods in making lighting burst and streak effects. We will also touch a little on using the settings in Brushes Panel, so let’s check it out!

Disco-party in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

How to Make a Worn Vintage Beach Ad in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, author will show you how to create a worn out, low-saturation-colored vintage beach ad in Photoshop. We’ll use some beginner to intermediate level techniques such as the usage of brushes, editing colors, using filters, masking and a whole lot more!

Beach in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Design a Brilliant Product Advertisement

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the steps and techniques involved in creating a brilliant product advertisement. You’ll start with a stock image of an Adidas shoe, extract it from the background, then combine it with various photostocks to create a liquifying product advertisement.

Advertise in 35 Fresh and Excellent  Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to Make a High-Impact Fashion Poster in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to use shapes and other objects to create a unique fashion poster scene. Utilizing Adobe Photoshop shapes is an awesome means for improving your designs and they can easily be used without spending too much time on them.

Model in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Super Easy Typographic Portrait in Photoshop

So in this tutorial author will show you how to create a really cool and super easy typographic portrait in Photoshop. We will use the Displace filter and some Blend Modes to achieve the effect. The whole process is quite simple but it might take you some time to add the texts and elements, but once you do that the rest is very straight forward.

Typeface in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to Create a Somber Composition in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to manipulate stock images and turn them into your puppets to express your desired feelings.

Somer in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to create a fantasy photomanipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will leanr how to make a photo into a surreal land with a castle and a flying horse. Hope you enjoy it!

Girl in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Achieve Brilliant Lighting Effects in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the essential process of achieving brilliant lighting effects in Photoshop. Using default brushes, blending options and a few stock images, you’ll learn step by step a variety of techniques that you can use in your own digital artworks to achieve professional results.

Child-lightning in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

How to Create a Serene Panorama from Multiple Photographs

In this tutorial, we’re going to teach you how to combine multiple stock photos into a single, coherent scenery in Photoshop. We’ll start off with a single panoramic photo, and integrate two others along the way. Also, we’ll look at ways to make the final result look more dynamic and appealing with a few adjustments layers. If you’re looking to improve your photo manipulation skills, this tutorial should prove very useful!

Panorama in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Create a Dark and Surreal Poster Using Your Own Portrait

This tutorial was inspirited by digital artist Rob Shields. Author chose his work titled “Keep me in the dark.” In this illustration it is essential that you use a tablet; especially for the doodles and the white strokes that will give the portrait a more detailed effect.

Portrait in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Very Easy Heroes Eclipse in Photoshop – Screencast

In this tutorial, we learn how to recreate that solar eclipse image in a slightly retro style using nothing but photoshop.

Eclipse in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to Create a Dark and Mysterious TV-Head Scene

In this Photoshop tutorial, author will be showing you how to make a dark and mysterious scene with the subject having a TV for a head. You will see how to seamlessly replace a person’s head with another object—in this case, a television—and how to create a stormy sky using brush strokes. We’ll also deal with creating realistic lights and shadows as well as how to retouch subjects who are against a light source.

Head in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Photoshop Quick Tips: Neon with Layer Styles

How to create the same light effect as used on the Abduzeedo logo. He explains this effect in very simple steps using basically Layer Styles and a few brushes.

Neon-image in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

Super Easy Neon Style in Photoshop

In this tutorial author will show you how to create a nice light effect in Photoshop. He will use Layer Styles and Blend Modes to simulate a neon text effect.

Neon in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Light Effects in Photoshop

In this tutorial author will show you how to create this effect. It’s a sort of monitor/halftone effect mixed with glows and other light effects. We will play with Blend Modes and Blurs. The whole process is quite simple and it won’t take more than 20 minutes to achieve the same result.

Light in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How To Use Curves in Photoshop

The idea behind Curves is all about re–mapping values. A pixel starts out at a certain brightness, and you change it to be brighter or darker.

Curves-lead in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

Create a Fantastic Abstract Fan Poster

In this tutorial, we are going to get creative with layering, lighting, and texture to build fantastic abstract piece. More specifically, we’re going to employ some unusual techniques to make a fan poster for the band Omega Code, but you’ll quickly see many different applications for what is taught here.

Amazing in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Jungle 3D text in Photoshop

This is a funny Photoshop tutorial that explains how to realize a 3D jungle text effect. We will create the text in Xara3d and we will use Photoshop to texturize the letters using animals’ skin. Don’t forget to download the jungle wallpaper!

Jungle in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Reader Tutorial: Arcadia 80’s VHS Style

We love the 80’s especially that look and feel of the old VHS movies that we used to watch so many times. Because of that we have a super cool Photoshop tutorial showing you how to create a VHS image style.

Arcadia in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Design a Colorful Retro Futuristic Poster in Photoshop

The theme of retro futurism combines digitally created graphics and abstract shapes with distressed and aged textures, giving that cool mix of old and new. Let’s take a look at how to create our own bright and colourful retro futuristic poster in Photoshop, using dynamic lines, vibrant gradients and rough textures to build up the design layer after layer.

Design in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to give a retro-look to your photos

In this tutorial we will use Photoshop to give a retro look style to our photos in 7 easy steps. The tutorial will help Photoshop beginners to understand better how to manage colors using Photoshop adjustment layers and filters.

Retro in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to Create a Fun, Red-Haired Boy Character

In this tutorial, we will learn how to make a funny boy character in Adobe Photoshop. After drawing the sketch, we’ll use shapes, layer styles, the brush tool, and other effects to add some dimension to and life to our character.

Red-hair-boy in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

Create a Colorful Space Scene in Photoshop

In this tutorial we’ll create a colorful illustration that includes the Earth, the Moon, a starry sky and some beautiful light effects. Here’s the finished illustration. You’re on the moon, or orbiting it, and you get a glimpse of Earth, our pale blue dot. Whatever those light beams are they’re begging for some spaceship to be placed right among them.

Space-scene-final in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials  from 2010

How to Make a Professional Buddy Icon in Photoshop

In this intermediate-level tutorial, author will show you how to make an awesome icon from scratch using Photoshop. You will need basic knowledge of Photoshop and familiarity with the Pen Tool (P).

Buddy in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to Create a Highly Detailed Hi-Tech Power Button – Basix

With this tutorial Author will create a hi-tech style button that can be used in splash pages, applications or Powerpoint presentations. He will use Illustrator to create complex vectors and Photoshop to develop realistic effects.

Highly-detailed-button in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop  Tutorials from 2010

How To Create a Detailed Apple iPad Icon in Photoshop

The Internet world exploded with the news of the Apple tablet launch last week. Named the iPad, it’s set to bring yet another revolution to the way people access and browse the web. An iPad icon would be a sensible addition to any web designer’s resources toolbox, so let’s fire up Photoshop and create our very own detailed iPad icon graphic.

Ipad in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Create a Cosmic XBOX using Custom Brushes

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create some custom line brushes, and then apply them to a subject to create a cosmic design. The line brushes, combined with some simple techniques in Photoshop, give the image a sense of motion and help bring the design together.

Space in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Design a Tropical iPhone Advertisement

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to design a tropical underwater iPhone advertisement, complete with clownfish, starfish, and bubbles. You’ll learn how to isolate a variety of stock images, using custom brushes, extraction methods, and image manipulations. You’ll also see how to visually compose an image for maximum effect.

Iphone in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Designing Cool Interface for Magazine Portal

We shall go through some basic considerations and plans to take before doing the actual design for a simple and sleek Magazine portal. We will focus on using the Pen tool and Blending Options to make various border effects.

Magazine in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

How to create a distinguishable textured web layout in Photoshop

In this tutorial author will show you how to create a textured web layout, starting from the concept on paper to Photoshop design. HeS will discuss about site structure and will use the 960 grid to organize our contents. Also you will learn how to use layer styles to create an engraved text effect.

Portfolio Texture Extra in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop  Tutorials from 2010

How to Make a Vibrant Portfolio Web Design in Photoshop

In this web design tutorial, we will create a beautiful and colorful portfolio layout using Photoshop. author will show you many techniques for creating different things like bended paper corners, dashed lines, image carousels, 3D bars, and more!

Vibrant in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from 2010

Create a Chalkboard Style WordPress Layout in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a unique and original WordPress style layout that looks like a chalkboard

Chalhboard in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

Create a Clean Blue Portfolio Design in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a clean blue portfolio design in Photoshop and will use Flavours Icon Set, Nevis typeface and Social Network Icon Pack.

Portfolio-Design in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials  from 2010

Create a Professional Web 2.0 Layout

In this Photoshop tutorial we’re going to learn how to create a web 2.0 layout, As we go through the tutorial we’ll deal with so many Photoshop techniques. Seems kind of long? that’s because it’s very detailed.

Professional in 35 Fresh and Excellent Photoshop Tutorials from  2010

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 5:51 am and is filed under PHOTOSHOP, TUTORIAL. You can

In the visual arts, texture is the perceived surface quality of an artwork. It is an element of two-dimensional and three-dimensional design and is broadly distinguished by its perceived visual and physical properties.

Use of texture, along with other elements of design, can convey a variety of messages and emotions. So Free Textures are quite essential for a designer to produce some awesome effects and to present the idea better.

So here are 30 Best Websites To Download Free Textures to make your project more lively.

1) Texture Lover

2) Free photo textures

3) Grunge Textures

4) Free Stock Textures

5) Texturepop

6) Royalty Free Textures

7) Texturama

8 ) 2 Textured

9) urbandirty

//

10) Lost And Taken

11) 3Dxo

12) 3Dup

13) Textures Library

14) Patternwall

15) Texture king

16) Mayang Texture

17) cgtextures

18) Lugher Texture

19) Textures

20) Texturez

21) Dougturner

22) Texture Warehouse

23) Texture Archive

24) MTextur

25) Free-Textures

26) Photoshop Textures

27) Texturenwelt

28) M3corp

29) Imageabstraction

30) Texture Spot