Archive for November, 2011
11 Great Websites To Plan And Organize Your Group Events Easier Than Ever
There are many websites out there for planning and organizing events or meetings for groups, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing 11 Great Websites To Plan And Organize Your Group Events Easier Than Ever. Read each entry in the list and see which one suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more websites for group events planning and meeting organizers that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Mobaganda
Mobaganda is a simple way to plan parties, meetings, get-togethers, conference calls, etc. and track who is coming, and who is not.
Congregar
Congregar makes it easy to pick the best date for your event, by asking participants to indicate their availability from the options you offer.
Hangouts
Hangout is a dead simple tool to manage your meetings invites by sending/receiving emails and alerts.
Fasterplan
Fasterplan is a collaborative tool that helps you and your friends or colleagues to organize any kind of event.
MeetMe
Business partners and friends want to meet with you. Show them when you’re busy and available and let them submit meeting requests to get on your calendar. MeetMe is your central hub for scheduling.
WhenShallWe
If you are trying to organise an event with people with little free time it can take a bit of hassle on the part of the organiser to pick a date that the most number of people can make. This website aims to make it easier. You give it some details about the event and who is invited. The website can then email them an invite and then the invitees bring up a (simple) webpage and tell it when they can make and when they can’t.
Divvyus
Divvyus is the place to create shared lists of tasks for others to claim and do. Simply send it to your friends and co-workers and they can easily claim tasks.
Needtomeet
Needtomeet.com is a simple tool that helps you effortlessly find a time to meet. It’s unique calendar interface allows you to select meeting times in an intuitive and user-friendly manner and to see at a glance which times work best for your group.
Permatime
Imagine you want to announce an event with participants across different time zones. Simply set the time, in your time zone, and permatime.com will generate a link for it. If you share this link with others, they will see that time in their own local time zone (and any other zones they choose).
Meet-O-Matic
This is a basic public Meetomatic service for selecting dates or AM/PM slots. You can simply use it to set up and arrange meetings.
WhichDateWorks
WhichDateWorks.com makes it easier to make plans with friends and families. This is a simple, hassle-free planning solution for all the events in your life.
50 Fresh And Free PSD Files For Your Next Design
Adobe Photoshop has a prominent place among all the most advanced tools used in graphic designing and many designers cannot even think about creating a design without using Photoshop. With Photoshop installed on the computer, designers can save time by using high quality PSD files. Such PSD files also come in handy when you get a rush job from a client and needs to complete it in accordance with the project needs and the individual tastes of the client.
This is the reason almost all graphic designers keep a good collection of PSD files on hand that they can use in their future projects. Here we have an excellent assortment of 50 high-quality PSD files that you can download and use for free. Enjoy!
Important: Though all the psd’s presented below are free but be sure to read their terms and condition prior to using them for commercial purpose.
Media Player UI: Free PSD Template
Notetool iPhone App UI Kit Psd
iPhone 4s Psd Vector Mockup Template
Psd Modern Vintage Stickers Badges
Retro Web Ribbons Vintage Psd Pack
SyncMate Expert (All-In-One Sync Tool) For Mac Giveaway
Eltima Software is running a contest, where 5 licenses of SyncMate Expert Edition are givingaway. Well, you guys know what is SyncMate? Let’s say it once again for n00bs.
With SyncMate you can sync data between your Mac and various devices and accounts within one app. You don’t need to install many apps to achieve that – just one SyncMate.
SyncMate will sync data in your Mac with:
1. Mobile phones (Android, Windows Mobile and Nokia S40 devices).
2. Other computers (PC or one more Mac, doesn’t matter, they will be synced with your Mac)
3. iOS devices (iPhones, iPods Touch, iPads).
4. Online accounts (Dropbox, Google accounts; SyncMate also offers online storage for backing up your personal data).
5. Any mounted storage devices (Mac partition, portable USB storage, any locally connected disk, FireWire hard drive disks, devices connected via USB, etc.).
6. iPod Nano and Sony PSP.
SyncMate lets you sync Address Book, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, Safari and Firefox Bookmarks, Entourage and Mail Notes, ToDo’s, Mail, Time, Stickies and separate folders (sync options depend on the device you are syncing).
SyncMate also offers AutoSync option which lets you set various parameters of automatic sync for any of supported device.
With Expert Edition you can create, send, delete, search and export text messages from Android, Win Mobile or Nokia on your Mac.
You will find detailed list of sync options available here for each device.
SyncMate is compatible with mac OS X 10.5 and higher.
This contest will run from November 28, 2011 to December 4, 2011 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before December 15, 2011 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win Expert Edition of SyncMate from Eltima Software, All you have to do is:
1. Just leave a comment.
2. Use valid email ID in the email box.
3. Make sure that you are following @SyncMate and @SmashingApps on twitter and subscribe our rss feed to track this contest and for future updates.
4. And that’s it!
So, what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!
Five Tools For Webmasters That Are Worth Checking Out
There are many tools out there for webmasters, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing Five Tools For Webmasters That Are Worth Checking Out. Read each entry in the list and see which one suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share webmaster’s tools that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Smartling
If you want to make your website or app multilingual, Smartling is a cloud-based software platform for translation management for your needs.
SnatchCode
SnatchCode is a one click website backup solution. They help webmaster’s get rid of complicated backup solutions by replacing with their robust service.
Duda Mobile
DudaMobile is a web-based platform to create a mobile website that automatically syncs with your regular website.
Toolspot
Toolspot is the collection of free webmasters tools for research and development.
W3Clove
W3Clove is a site-wide markup validation tool. It allows you to check the validity of the markup of several pages from your website, and gives you a summary of the most common errors and warnings, with a single click.
34 Stunning Infographics To Understand The World Of Social Media
Infographics is a new way of showing information through graphical representation. We recently posted some interesting posts on infographics that you can also find on the net. Infographics not only show the information in a neat and clean manner but also is very easy to understand. Through inforgraphics, a large amount of information can be presented in a well summarized format.
At the moment, we are going to demonstrate you how infographics can increase your understanding of the interlinking world of social media and it’s impact on the global internet users.
You are welcome if you want to share more social media related infographic that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Are Facebook Users More Trusting?
Social Media and College Admissions
Real Estate Professionals & Social Media Infographic
Visualizing 6 Years of Facebook
Building a Company With Social Media
Airlines: The Future of Loyalty is Social
Twitter Perceptions of Google Buzz Over Time
How The World Spends Its Time Online
10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication
The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions
Social Web Reputation Management Cycles
The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits
Facebook, Social Media Juggernaut
Inside the Political Twittersphere
Twitter’s Meteoric Rise Compared to Facebook
Social Media : Facts and Figures for B2B Sales
The Revised Social Media Effect
6 Web Apps To Manage Team Collaboration More Effectively
There are many collaboration web apps out there for business users, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing 6 Web Apps To Manage Team Collaboration More Effectively. Read each entry in the list and see which one suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more collaboration web apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Binfire
Binfire’s collaboration tools are dedicated to creating multiple communication, sharing and interactivity opportunities between users to enhance productivity. They keep you up to date and in the loop.
Webplanner
Webplanner is an online collaborative project management tool. Brainstorm goals, obstacles, and tasks with our easy-to-use planning wizard. Next, work out scheduling with your team in a click-and-drag Gantt chart.
Otipo
Otipo is a web-based application which provides a new and fun way for scheduling shifts. With Otipo, all the required information is in one place, and all the team members can access it from anywhere, anytime. It’s time to say goodbye to the pen and paper and let Otipo schedule like a pro.
Cohuman
Cohuman is ideal for any group of people that needs to communicate more dynamically and effectively than email or traditional collaboration tools will allow. Startups, Distributed Teams, Small Businesses, Deal Teams, Departments in larger organizations… in short Cohuman is for any group that requires a solution designed to coordinate people and manage projects more intelligently.
Scrumrf
Manage your projects in an agile way, create user stories, sprints, assign tasks to your team members. Scrumrf has only the necessary functionalities to manage your projects, sprints, tasks, and people involved. You can also collab with your team members in your daily work, know who is doing what, comment tasks, sprints, user stories.
ideapi
ideapi allows you to create briefs, proposals and documents quickly, share them easily with your team and/or clients, work together to create better content and share ideas.
Congratulations To The Winners Of Die-Cut Business Cards From UPrinting
Thanks to all of the participants of contest in which Die-Cut Business Cards From UPrinting were givingaway. We ran the MySQL random query and selected these comments to give them Die-Cut Business Cards From UPrinting.
Winners of Die-Cut Business Cards From UPrinting
- Dan
- Bill Gravelle
- Gareth
- Elle
- Amaiko
UPrinting.com, a leading socially responsible online printing, marketing and technology firm, has established itself as a major player in the industry with its distinct vision and clear approach to helping small businesses grow. It serves thousands of on-demand business printing and graphic printing orders online daily, using high-quality press printing and a robust yet simple and easy-to-use online ordering system, resulting in high-end printing services and reliable color printing at discount printing costs.
Business Cards Specifications For Giveaway:
- 500 pcs Die Cut Business Card Printing for 5 winners
- 2 x 3.5″ Rounded Corners or 2×2″ Rounded Corners or 1.75×3.5″ Rounded Corners or 2×3.5″ Leaf or 2×3.5 Rounded one corner or 2×3.5″ Half Circle Side or 2×3.5″ Oval or 2.5″ Circle
- 14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated
- 6 Business Days Turnaround *Free shipping
- Restriction: Limited to *US residents 18 years old and above only.
UPrinting.com also offers convenient marketing support such as print design services, custom online printing quotes and direct mailing to help the small or medium-sized business grow.
Thanks to UPrinting.com for sponsoring this wonderful contest at Smashing Apps.
If you want to conduct any contest at Smashing Apps just contact us and send us all the details.
Nine Excellent Yet Free To Use Apps For Mac OSX
There are many Mac OSX apps out there for for mac users, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing Nine Excellent Yet Free To Use Apps For Mac OSX. Read each entry in the list and see which one suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more Mac OSX apps that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Remind Me Later
Remind Me Later adds events to iCal in two clicks. Type “Buy groceries at 4pm tomorrow”, and it will add “Buy groceries” to iCal at 4pm tomorrow.
Ex-Libris
‘ExLibris’ keeps track of books you own, for it is a simple, yet efficient database for your library.
iText Express
iText Express is a cute, intuitive, and refined text editor with word processing completely rewritten in Cocoa, and is suitable for Intel Macs. iText Express provides the simplest way to make gorgeous manuscripts on your Mac.
SimplePastie
SimplePastie allows you to paste your clipboard to various sites pasteboards including, pastie.org and gist.github.com using a global hotkey.
ExpoBoard Lite
ExpoBoard is the convenient way to collect and select best photos, images, notes, text fragments. ExpoBoard gives you cork board collection. Drag and Drop your images, texts to the cork board same way you put stickers on real board on the wall. You can drag images and texts from the Finder, Safari, paste them from clipboard. Move stickers and images freely, resize them, group your images and notes visually.
DashExpander
DashExpander is a Snippet Abbreviation expander. It saves you from typing countless keys for frequently used pieces of text. Abbreviation Expansion supports placeholders which can be edited before pasting, without disrupting your work.
ClipDoubler Free
ClipDoubler Free is designed as an easy to use application that gives you up to 10 clipboards. Double click, and you can have all the clipboards your heart desires. Quit and you’re back to one. Simple as that. ClipDoubler Free supports text, pictures, sounds, movies, and many other resources. ClipDoubler Free can both open and save Clipping files, and it can create internet shortcuts as well. You can put the contents of text and graphic files onto a clipboard with a simple drag and drop. ClipDoubler Free gives you the ability to edit the contents of any clipboard, and convenient menu shortcuts are built in to perform common editing tasks.
Opus Domini Lite
Personal Planner and management application, includes Daily Tasks, Master Tasks, Compass, Goals, Mission, Multiple Planning Views, Meeting Planner, Repeating Tasks and more.
ChronoSlider (Lite)
ChronoSlider Lite is a nice tiny tool to help you manage alarms and timers with a single mouse click on a unique user interface. You can set an alarm or timer by sliding your mouse across the screen and click once to confirm.
40 Useful Photoshop Free Plugins And Filters
Traditionally plugins are an amateurish photographer’s best friend who used to take photographs, fired up Photoshop, and applied some preset filters in order to have a realistically professional image. Skilled photographers have been acknowledged to bring plugins into play as a base and after that tweak and include effects to accomplish there own special proficient touch.
Plugins are essentially an essential tool that does not get the attention they are worthy of. The Photoshop community is chock-full of several free resources, tutorials, instructions and techniques, .psd files and even Actions.
In this post of some free Photoshop plugins and filters, you will discover a handful plugins that are (more or less) as old as time itself but they will work flawlessly on all versions of Photoshop and the effect they create are just as valuable now as they were then.
virtualPhotographer lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images with just one click. Adjust film grain, color, B/W, soft focus, high contrast and many other effects to achieve the same professional-looking images that used to take hours of photo editing. Get great results in seconds.
BleachBypass Professional is an advanced Photoshop-compatible plug-in designed to digitally simulate the traditional film “bleach bypass” technique.
Filter Forge Freepack 2 – Photo Effects
Freepacks are free Photoshop plugins based on the Filter Forge technology. Each freepack is centered around a different theme. Freepacks are distributed free of charge and don’t have any time limitations. All filters included in the freepacks are also available from the Filter Library, so users of commercial Filter Forge can benefit from them as well.
This little plugin will help you remove wires and other unwanted objects from your images. There are, of course, other tools to achieve this goal, e.g. the good old clone stamp or the healing brush, besides a number of dedicated plugins and applications.
This filter creates a wide range of well known craquelure (krakloor) effects. The filter is useful in designing various abstract patterns, decorative surfaces and construction materials. Two independent craquelure layers can be controlled to achieve an amazing variety of texture effects, from etched metal and silk plaster to melted glass and water ripples.
SuperPNG is a free Adobe Photoshop plug-in for using PNG (“ping”) files. It has more comprehensive support for the format than Photoshop’s included plug-in and provides control over alpha channel handling.
j2k is a free Photoshop and After Effects plug-in set for reading and writing the JPEG 2000 file format, the successor to JPEG. Also known as JP2, JPEG 2000 uses wavelet compression as opposed to the DCT compression used in standard JPEG. The end result is better image quality in a smaller file. JP2 also includes mandatory metadata such as information about an image’s color space.
The plugin Curves proposes eight predetermined, interesting curves. Interface shows several miniatures of curves; select one and observe impact on the image.
Absolute Color is based on a hue wheel subdivised into 6 sectors of 60 degrees. Choose a sector to restrict the tints of the image to this one.
Color MegaMix modifies the colors of any image. It is based on two rows of colors: 8 source colors and 8 target colors. According to these data, the plugin reconstructs completely the color space.
This plugin’s main purpose is to bring out detail. This is accomplished by increasing the contrast between a pixel’s value and the mean value of the adjacent pixels in a local area of the photo. You can control the amount of the increase of contrast, the size of the local area and the amount of blending with the original photo.
Fotomatic 1.4 : A collection of 8 plug-in filters for use with Adobe Photoshop or compatible host applications. They offer a series of effects based on traditional photography equipment and techniques. They are not meant to be complex or exact matches, merely a quick and easy method to achieve results that are similar to what can be produced via conventional non-digital formats.
HotPixel is an Adobe Photoshop© compatible filter/plugin designed to remove “hot pixel” noise from digital images.
Digitally simulate traditional film cross-processing techniques, creating skewed color effects that range from the subtle to the extreme.
RPM Fog is a plugin for Photoshop (and compatible hosts such as Paint Shop Pro) that digitally adds blended graduated fog filter effects to your photographs.
Quickly and easily simulate the old 2-color Technicolor process in Photoshop to produce an old-style film image.
Produce outstanding images that really pop. Create flattering soft-focus, high-key and infra-red simulation effects… and do it all for FREE! This plug-in softens and enriches photographs in a way that brings them to life.
Ready-made library of 21 pattern templates and 61 color palettes for any 32-bit Photoshop compatible program. Ulead ArtTexture.Plugin is ideal for use with PhotoImpact!
Mosaic makes your photos look as if they were created out of a mosaic tile. Photo-realistic depth and variable tile size and color options give this effect an infinite number of looks.
Dreamy Photo gives images a soft romantic feel. This is a superb effect for enhancing stock photography, digital camera photos and any image you want to add a warm feel to.
Water Ripples is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. The highly realistic water ripples effect designer has numerous options as well as an impressive 3D quality. The random settings generator produces unlimited variations of rippled surfaces.
Lattice Composer is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. It effectively designs grids and nettings. It produces a variety of weave patterns, fabric textures, body art tattoos and skeleton simulations. The 3D text effects are extraordinary.
Jama 3D is a freeware Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in filter. It’s the simplest way to create corrugated and cellular like patterns from 2D images. You can easily make various bricks and herring bone textures. Sequenced filtering produces bizarre unreal deformations of the original picture, crumpled paper effect, etc.
Plug-In Switch 1.3 : With hundreds of plug-in filters now available for expanding your host applications, it becomes essential to have an easy way of organising all the installed files.
AlphaWorks – Transparency Effects
AlphaWorks quickly removes black or white values and making the region transparent. There are 6 different options, depending on the type of image you are working on (colour photo, mono photo, lineart).
Quite often some parts of a photo require a saturation adjustment while others do not. If we increase the saturation globally, the most saturated parts get oversaturated and if we decrease it, the less saturated parts get undersaturated. We need a Saturation Mask based on the individual pixel saturation in order to adjust it just where it is needed. So this plugn, Selective Saturation, lets the user define a Saturation Zone by setting it’s center and range with two sliders
Color MegaMix modifies the colors of any image. It is based on two rows of colors: 8 source colors and 8 target colors. According to these data, the plugin reconstructs completely the color space.
Icon Plugin for Photoshop enhances Adobe Photoshop with an ability to export and import Windows icons (.ico).
Face Control plug-in allows you to change facial expressions of people in the digital photos. It is very easy-to-use freeware program. Human, animal, alien, or any other faces are welcomed.
This filter allows you to open a mask, texture, grunge, or paint layer and blend it with your image in any of 30 blend modes. You can even use it to simulate layers by blending it with the original or a modified version of the image you are editing.
Now you can, with the Camouflage™ plug-in! Use the Camouflage plug-in to make army, fashion and animal camo. You can even make patterns not found anywhere else.
Stereogram Lab Filter is a stereogram maker plug-in, which allows to generate Hidden Image Stereograms right in your Photoshop, which is quite convenient. This filter is free and you can use it both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, however, distributing the filter itself is not allowed.
Smart Refinement Filter is an Adobe Photoshop® plug-in for photographic images enhancement. This plug-in allows: sharpness and depth-of-field (DOF) enhancement, and noise (dust) reduction.
The plugin Fur 2, disperse a simple figure (line or circle, configurable dimensions/thickness) over the whole image.
Kaleidoscope 2.1 is a plugin which proceeds to multiple symmetries to obtain beautiful patterns.
This plug-in helps creating amazing wavy effects. And you will be surprised with the random results what you get.
The NightVision plug-in can make any image like the ones from night vision goggles. By using the effects in this plug-in, you can make images look like they are from a black & white security camera or CCTV system. It’s also possible to make them look like infra-red photos. Or you can just use the interlace to make an image look like a TV picture. You can even use it to enhance real night images!
This photoshop plugin changes circle shapes into squares.
Noise Shampoo is an edge-preserving smoothing filter. It can help to reduce noise on some pictures.
Unlike the traditional threshold command of Photoshop, the plugin Fine Threshold allows to get quickly, anti-aliased and sharp shapes.
7 Excellent HTML5 Tools And Resources
There are many tools and resources out there for designers and developers, but getting by free and good ones is not that easy. That is why I am sharing 7 Excellent HTML5 Tools And Resources. Read each entry in the list and see which one suits your needs best.
You are welcome if you want to share more html5 tools and resources that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.
Heartcode CanvasLoader Creator
The Heartcode CanvasLoader Creator is a free online tool which you can use to generate scripted preloaders (spinners or throbblers) for your HTML projects. The Creator is using the CanvasLoader UI Library.
Html5 File Upload with Progress
Html5 finally solves an age old problem of being able to upload files while also showing the upload progress.
Making a Beautiful HTML5 Portfolio
In this tutorial, you will be making a beautiful HTML5 portfolio powered by jQuery and the Quicksand plugin. You can use it to showcase your latest work and it is fully customizable, so potentially you could expand it to do much more.
Create a Stylish Contact Form with HTML5 & CSS3
Here is a step by step process to create your own stylish contact form completely out of HTML5 and CSS3.
Periodic Table of the HTML5 Elements
The table here shows the 106 elements currently in the HTML5 working draft and two proposed elements.
Interactive Typography Effects with HTML5
This tutorial outlines what is really just the tip of the iceberg that is interactive design. It will go over the development of dynamic, and generative banners to give your website that little extra wow.
JavaScript Mobile Framework for HTML5 Web Apps
DHTMLX Touch is a free open source JavaScript library for building HTML5-based mobile web apps. It’s not just a set of UI widgets, but a complete framework that allows you to create eye-catching, robust web applications that run on iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms.
