5 Best and Free Online Image Editing Tools

This is a nice roundup of image editing tools that are web-based and run from within your browser. These tools can do everything from resizing images to adding special effects, all free of charge and with no downloads. My favorites of these five are Adobe Photoshop Express and Sumo Paint.

15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design ? Smashing Magazine

As someone who has dabbled in e-Commerce site design, this article really hit home. Well worth checking out.

30 Free System Tools for a Better Mac

We occasionally get a little too caught up in shiny new apps for the Mac and fail to pay attention to the all-important Mac utilities that keep our Macs running smooth. This is great list, and they are all free.

Unfortunately, looks aren’t everything when it comes to a mainstream desktop OS that can be used by the masses. In its favor, Linux systems can easily surf the Internet, do e-mail, play video and music files and do office applications as well as the big boys. It is constantly being improved by talented developers – and let’s not forget its biggest benefit… it is free. If you can get a new computer with Linux pre-installed on it, I daresay that most would not even notice that they were using an alternative OS. All of your hardware will work out of the box and the overall experience should be good.

However, my experiences with Linux are not always so positive. I have downloaded and installed just about every major (and some not so major) Linux distributions. Every single time, I have run into a snag of some sort that required consulting forums, help sites or blogs in order to solve. Wireless internet drivers have been the single largest offender in my experience. I can not think of more than 1 or 2 times out of 30 Linux installs where the wireless worked properly without tinkering. Other problems include lack of video card support, laptop touchpads not working at all and internal LAN cards not being recognized and installed. Of course, some of these things can happen on Windows PCs as well, but drivers are readily available for most hardware on Windows PCs. The same is not true on Linux. Most vendors still don’t support Linux at all and others do so only in beta form. Users are forced to rely on open-source alternatives and these are slower to come out and not as easy to find and install.

In general, I love Linux and, as a geek, the solving of the problems is part of the fun. Unfortunately, my mom (and most moms), would not share my enthusiasm for hacking the X.org file or tweaking the GRUB list just to get things working straight. Certainly, individual experiences will vary widely. I can only speak from my own experience and until Linux distributions can match the ease of use that Windows and Mac users enjoy, I feel that it’s just not ready for primetime. It is oh so close, but just not yet.

I just had to go check it out and was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of sound files available for download, absolutely free of charge under Creative Commons licenses. According the Freesound Project website:

“The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to:

• browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and more
• up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
• interact with fellow sound-artists!”

Be sure to visit the site and add it to your list of resources, for you never know when you will need that sound of the sonar pinging or the UFO flyover.

Grooveshark is a music streaming site that allows you to search its database of millions of songs for ?that? song. Upon navigating to the site, you are greeted by a Search box and here is where you can enter the song title or artist that you are interested in. Results come back almost instantly and with one more mouse click, you can be listening to the song that has been running non-stop in your head since you saw that commercial on TV. The site allows you to setup a music queue of tracks that you want to hear along with showing you what others are listening too who also like your song. There are tons of other features so go check it out and clear your head.

Great, attractive fonts are awesome. A well chosen font can make a huge difference in how your message is expressed. Unfortunately, big name fonts can be expensive, very expensive. For a small business owner who dabbles in graphic design, these fonts just are not an option. To that end, we are always on the lookout for free fonts that satisfy our needs for quality and attractiveness. Over the last few months, I have come across a number of free fonts that were highlighted on different design blogs and each one seemed to come from the same site, DaFont.com.

So, when faced with a recent logo design project that called from some new fonts, I knew that I needed to go check this site out further. Upon visiting, you are immediately greeted by the latest fonts that have been added to the font database. The font names are displayed in their actual fonts, allowing you to immediately gauge your interest. If you have a specific type of font that you are looking for, you can simply choose from a nice variety of categories which will then take you to all the fonts that fit that description. These include Comic, Retro, Arabic, Sci-Fi, Calligraphy and Eroded, among many others.

Once you have found a font that you think you like, you can enter in some sample text and see what your phrase looks like in that particular font. This is really handy when you want to see what your business name or tagline looks like in that fancy new font. As far as I can tell, most, if not all of the fonts are available for free at least for non-commercial use. They have versions of the fonts available for both the Mac and the PC so go there and continue to feed your font addiction!

In preparation for its release, Microsoft has been making “Beta” (unfinished) versions available. In January, Beta version 7000 was made available on the internet for anyone to download and use. In May version 7100 Release Candidate 1 (i.e., nearly complete) was made available, incorporating a number of changes and fixes from the 7000 release. Why was Microsoft doing this? At least two reasons come to mind: (1) Involve as many people as possible in testing the new OS and reporting back likes/dislikes and problems (so called “bugs”). (2) To build as much positive buzz and interest as possible in the coming final version.

I downloaded and installed version 7000 in January and installed it on both a laptop and desktop. When version 7100 was released I also installed it on both machines – doing an upgrade on the laptop while doing a fresh install on the desktop. I have also now installed it on a second laptop for regular use. Below are my opinions and observations about Microsoft Windows 7.

LIKES:

• Seems to be quicker both to install and to use than Vista.
• Some of the “weird” changes in the way users access things in Vista have been removed or changed for greater ease of use.
• I think many users will think Windows 7 is closer to Windows XP than Vista in look and feel.
• If a driver or program is compatible with Vista it seems nearly certain to work with Windows 7 as well.
• Requires less RAM memory and (perhaps) less hard drive space to install and run.

DISLIKES / PROBLEMS

• On my desktop, Windows 7 would freeze when trying to awake from sleep after the machine ran overnight and went into energy saving mode. This required powering off and then back on the computer each time it happened.  I temporarily have “fixed” this by disabling Standby Mode in my Power settings in the Control Panel.
• Occasionally the computer will take a “time out” as it attempts to open a new window – the windows will open partially but icons for the items inside will never appear. Inevitably, it is time to reboot the system. Whether this is a bug to be fixed in the final version, a memory allocation problem, or a video driver problem, I don’t know.

Going to Microsoft’s main website and clicking on the Windows tab will show that they are currently offering pre-order pricing specials at about 50% off the retail price when released in October. We can order an XP or Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for $49.99, a good deal! I don’t recall that Microsoft has offered such “deals” when preparing to release Windows 2000, XP or Vista.

To read more about what others think about Windows 7, I recommend a series of articles appearing on PC Magazine’s website (click here) telling how to install the current, free Release Candidate 1 version, the new features in Windows 7, and why Vista and XP users would want to upgrade.

My preliminary verdict: I like it! I prefer the RC1 over Vista and it is already a very stable and up to date operating system, subject to the couple problems I mentioned above. If you want to try Windows 7, now is the time to do it FREE by downloading the Release Candidate version and installing it. Microsoft has announced that the RC1 (7100) version will continue to work until March 1, 2010, giving you plenty of time to use it before having to buy a copy of the final version.