Product Reviews (Archive)

Page 1 of 3 (22 total articles)
  • June 4, 2008 in Product Reviews

    The Best Online Vector Illustration Resources

    It's not often that you find a web designer who's an amazing illustrator. It's generally the job of the web designer to take a lot of graphic details and form them into a cohesive unit. Still, web designers are often expected to do it all--it's just the nature of the job. That's why it's important to have a good list of resources for vector artwork to pull from when you need it. Well placed vector artwork can liven up a design and give it just the spark it needs to set it apart from the competition. Here are a few of the top sites for searching and downloading vector art.

  • May 19, 2008 in Product Reviews

    Review: 5 Free HTML Editors that Get the Job Done

    A couple months ago a subscriber commented on one of my articles asking me for a resource list of Free HTML editors. I had made mention of Adobe Dreamweaver in the article and he politely reminded me that not everyone has the money to drop on Adobe's products. I decided he had a good point and determined to find the best free HTML editors out there. The task turned out to be quite a wild ride but one well worth it. Here are five solid HTML editors that get the job done.

  • March 5, 2008 in Product Reviews

    Getting Stuff Printed Online: 4 Resources I've Actually Used

    As much as we hate to admit it, web designers still have to get stuff printed from time to time. We can't do without our business cards and bumper stickers, our t-shirts and table tents. But when we're forced to go groveling to the printing industry, we can at least make sure we use an automated online printer. That's still stickin' it to the man a little bit, right? I've used a handful of these online printers over the past few years and I think my experiences could be a great benefit to a web designer looking for a place to print. So here they are--four online printing resources I've actually used.

  • February 13, 2008 in Product Reviews

    School Pictures on the Web | How the Internet Will Change School Picture Day Forever

    Since the beginning, the web has continually presented us with tools and ideas that dramatically simplify age-old processes. QuickSchoolPix.com is another such idea that tackles the chaos of school picture day. I normally avoid mentioning personal design projects on Bits O' NewMedia but the example QuickSchoolPix.com provides goes much deeper than vain design credit. It's the core concept that makes it noteworthy.

  • January 16, 2008 in Product Reviews

    Turn the Web Into a Shareable Notepad with Diigo

    Back in July I wrote an article called "The 'MyStickies' Firefox Extension is an Excellent Collaboration Tool". MyStickies allows you to paste virtual sticky notes on websites and then share them with others. It's a simple concept but in the proceeding months I ditched Basecamp (no offense Jason Fried--I love your stuff) and began using MyStickies exclusively to collaborate on web projects. MyStickies doesn't do everything Basecamp does. But what it does, it does well. MyStickies was easily my favorite Firefox extension, that is, until I found Diigo "Social Annotation".

  • January 7, 2008 in Product Reviews

    Web Browser Review: Flock 1.0 "The Social Browser"

    I've been a fan of the Flock browser for quite awhile now. But when version 1.0 was release on November 5th, I put off the upgrade. I've never been good about paying attention to upgrade dialog boxes. Last week I finally dove in. I have to say that my expectations have been exceeded. In case you've never used Flock, it's a fairly new browser based on Mozilla's browser technology...

  • December 7, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Keyword Nortometer: A Free Online Optimization Tool With a New Perspective

    The Keyword Nortometer is a free online search engine optimization tool developed by Just Search. It takes the traditional keyword suggestion tool and gives it an exciting new twist. Instead of just suggesting possible variations on a keyword, the Nortometer retrieves words and phrases commonly used in top search results for a keyword. For example, when I type in "web design blog" the Nortometer will go to the top search engine results for that phrase and return other keywords and phrases appearing frequently in those websites. I've already found this information to be critical in understanding the relationship between phrases and the target audience. I had a few "ah ha" moments as I tested it out.

  • November 9, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Div Counter: A Fun Little Web App That's Unnecessary

    I ran across this cool little web 2.0 web app the other day called Div Counter. Sounds interesting, huh? Basically, it allows you to enter the URL of a web page which it then analyzes and spits out a chart showing the number various opening and closing HTML tags. Just for fun, I tried it on a couple of my sites. Naturally, they all had a perfect balance of opening and closing tags which made me beam with pride. Then suddenly it dawned on me that Div counter is the perfect example of a web 2.0 app just for the sake of a web 2.0 app. The reason my sites have perfect tag balance is that my HTML editor turns tags red when I forget to close them. Duh! In the end the only real application I see for the Div Counter is a quick and dirty way to point a self-righteous finger at the competition for not balancing their tags well. Still, it's oddly alluring. Here's the analysis for Bits O' NewMedia.

  • October 30, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Someone Else to Whistle While You Work

    If you're like me, listening to music while you work helps spark creativity and makes the work day seem more enjoyable and laid back. On that topic, I just wanted to make a couple of quick web site recommendations.

  • September 18, 2007 in Product Reviews

    Large File Tranfser Part 2: Paid Solutions

    After the previous post about transferring large files, a reader brought to my attention the fact that there are paid services like LeapFile out there that basically do exactly what I am describing. If you are a web designer that likes to leave the hosting up to the client, then these solutions will be great for you. On the other hand, if you resell hosting, which I assume a lot of you do, then you are already paying for storage and bandwith so it makes more sense to have your own solution.

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