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Sveriges snyggaste webb efter möjligtvis Svt ska såklart bli ännu snyggare. Kör hårt Björn!
Dagens Nyheter planerar nu för en omgörning av sajten som ska vara klar under första halvåret 2011. Ett antal byråer har blivit kontaktade och fler är på gång.
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Perhaps you’ve noticed that a couple days ago we flipped the switch to enable the shiny new commenting system here on TechCrunch powered by Disqus. So far, the feedback has been very, very positive — and we’re pleased with how well it’s performing. But Disqus is just one step of what we need to do.
As many of you are well aware, the commenting situation on TechCrunch has been completely out of control for a long, long time. That seems to be one unfortunate side effect of when a site gets large enough (see: YouTube and Digg for other great examples). But we also realize that things don’t have to be that way. Some popular sites have very good comments (see: Hacker News and Quora for good examples of that). We’d like our comment section to be useful too. So we’re going to try to do something about that.
As I said, Disqus is the first step. The service offers a very nice set of tools for on-the-fly moderation. We’ve also worked with them to do things such as make it very obvious when an actual TechCrunch writer is responding to a comment (I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that something like a quarter of commenters claiming to be us — or at least me — were impostors over the past few months) — you’ll see our names in bright green when it’s actually us.
But as we’ve learned over the past several months, comment moderation is a big job. So we’re going to hire someone to help us with it. On the face of it, this may not sound too attractive, but the job we’re creating is about a lot more than just moderation. It’s also about responding and engaging with our readers in an actual conversation rather than shouting matches about nothing.
And it’s not just about our comments — in fact, that may end up being the smaller aspect. It’s also about interacting with our community on all the various networks where we have a large presence — Twitter, Facebook, etc. On Twitter, for example, we have nearly 1.5 million followers now. Sadly, right now, all we do is mainly shout links at them. It would be great to interact more there as well.
We’ve already gotten a number of resumes for this position when we quietly announced it several weeks ago, but we wanted to open it up one more time as we’re finally looking to hire this person soon.
Some quick requirements: you need to be based in San Francisco and willing to work out of our office in the SoMa district. But believe me, you’ll want to. We’re a fun bunch. Prior experience is obviously a plus, but not necessarily needed.
If you’re interested, please email: tcsocialczar [at] gmail.com
Maybe it’s too lofty of a goal to think that our comment section can be something like the one found on Hacker News, but it’s a good goal to have. As all of you know, the fact of the matter right now is that the vast majority of our comments are pretty worthless. It’s so bad that I use an extension to turn them off most of the time. But at the same time, we have an incredible readership at TechCrunch that spans the tech universe — and beyond. Whether you’re Mark Cuban or an unknown-but-devoted reader, if you have something worthwhile to say, you deserve to be heard.
One final thing: Just to be clear, we welcome dissenting opinions. What we don’t welcome is bile or nonsensical comments that add nothing. It’s going to be a work in progress, but we are working on it.
[photo: flickr/EraPhernalia Vintage]
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The interest in the online sharing platform FriendFeed decreased considerably after Facebook acquired the company, but the service is by no means dead. Here is an interesting infographic with statistics about FriendFeed. It shows for example that Swedish is one of the top ten languages on the service.
Via We Are Social.
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oj, användbart!
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To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details.
In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We’ve carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project.
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]
Android GUI PSD
This Android GUI PSD is based on elements of the Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with its Android application mock-ups. Most of the elements and phone illustrations are done in vector paths and so are easily resizable. Android Sans was used for the text.
RIM Blackberry PSD
A complete PSD file with layer styles, this has 135 layers of Photoshop goodness.
Android Sketch Stencil Version 1.0
A Sketch-style Android OmniGraffle template. The purpose of the sketch style wireframe is to prevent the audience from thinking about visual design and encourage them to focus instead on functionality and behavior.
All elements of Maemo 5 GUI in PSD
This downloadable PSD file contains GUI template elements for the Maemo platform. These are indispensable for prototyping GUI applications running on Maemo devices.
iPhone 4 GUI PSD (Retina Display)
GUI PSD kit for creatives who design for the retina display (640×960). The file is huge, both in file size (62.7MB) and dimension (4074×2986). You’ll need to work at 25% – 50% even on the largest screens to roughly grab elements before zooming into 100% for the actual work.
iPad GUI Kit in PSD
This version offers a canvas size true to the iPad at 768×1024. In addition, most of the graphical elements are provided in vector format, allowing you a lot of room to scale up for high-resolution presentations. This version is layered in Photoshop, making it easy for you to go nuts with your mock-ups and client presentations.
Android 1.6 Wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle
Download this beautiful wireframe stencil add-on for OmniGraffle 5.x. Use this toolkit to wireframe Android-based apps and websites on the 1.6 Donut SDK.
Google Android GUI PSD
Here are the GUI elements of Android, built using vectors to scale.
iPad GUI PSD Kit
This pack includes full size graphics, as well as 256, 128 and 64 pixel icon sizes. The pack includes four sizes of the iPad graphic in PSD, PNG and Mac ICNS formats.
Google Android PSD
A stencil set for Google Android prototyping.
Fireworks template for Android
In this Fireworks template, Android UI elements have been redrawn as vector images. In the folders, the elements have been mostly labeled according to the Android vocabulary.
Sexy Vector Cell Phone
This phone can be scaled to any size. Easily add your own image to the screen with the included object mask. All objects are layered, grouped and labeled for easy customization.
iPad Stencil for Omnigraffle
Contains backgrounds, title bars, buttons, selectors and other iPhone UI elements. The text is fully editable in lists, title bars, buttons and scroll wheels.
iPhone GUI Elements
Some beautiful iPhone elements. All graphics are layered Photoshop files.
iPad and iPhone Design
Design your application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with this exhaustive set of stencils. All stencils were created by hand with native OmniGraffle shapes, and groups and can be scaled, resized and exported to other vector formats in Graffle.
Design Stencil for iPhone and iPad
A stencil for designing OS applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The stencil for now is targeted at developers familiar with the default characteristics of the views and controls provided by UIKit.
Apple iPad fully editable PSD
A fully editable Apple iPad in PSD format. Every element you see is editable via vector masks, and everything is scaleable.
Palm Pre GUI PSD
This set contains a PSD to help designers pitch and develop polished concepts using Photoshop.
iPhone UI Vector Elements
Most visuals for applications start out as vector mock-ups in Adobe Illustrator. So, here are some cool iPhone UI vector elements. And there are even a few good Photoshop resources and even a nice OmniGraffle iPhone UI file or two in there.
iPad Vector GUI Elements: tabs buttons menus icons
This set contains almost all of the iPad UI elements, including buttons, tabs, menus, keyboard and balloons. Useful for designers and developers, it includes scalable and totally editable vector versions (AI).
Free Full-Layered Facebook GUI PSD Kit
The idea behind this kit is to speed up the prototyping of Facebook application UIs and Facebook fan pages, sparing you from drawing all the comps and letting you customize all the text, buttons and data as you need. The kit is free to use in all projects, without any restrictions.
Facebook GUI Free PSD Resource
A Facebook graphic user interface (FBGUI) resource kit for Photoshop to make your work easier.
Facebook Applications
A sizable collection of elements for creating wireframes for Facebook applications.
Omnigraffle Twitter Widget Stencil
This set includes a selection of useful Twitter widgets and badges.
Best Practice UX Forms Stencil v1.1
A comprehensive release of stencil that follows best practices for UX form design, providing three different ways to lay out forms, each with its own benefits. This version also provides different button layouts, a progress indicator, a Captcha code input field, labels and more.
Form Elements UI Kit
Form elements stencil from the Design Stencil kit in the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.
Wireframe Shapes
Here is a set of shapes for making wireframes in OmniGraffle version 5.x ( forMac OS X). It consists of most of the basic elements you’ll need to create user interface specifications.
Wireframe kit for UI Designers
A set of various wireframes, such as product details, list of items, front page, mobile phone.
MBTI sketching paper for ideation
MBTI sketching paper for ideation sessions. It helps you think inside the box of four personality traits. Describe a design challenge and the problem to solve on every piece of paper. There’s also space for annotations.
A4 sketching paper
This sketching paper can be used after generating ideas for functionality. Design preliminary screens based on the ideas you come up with.
Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit)
This DIY magnet template is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils, and it includes three sheets of elements that might be useful for whiteboard prototyping. Simply download and print the PDFs onto magnet sheets, optionally laminate them if you intend to use with dry-erase markers, and then cut them out.
Paper wireframe templates
The finished product include seven variations, as well as PSDs.
Wireframe template
A useful print-and-sketch template available for downloading.
iPad Idea Sheet
A total of three sheets: one full size (landscape), one at 70% reduction (vertical) and one at 50% reduction (landscape). The 80 tiny dots make it easy to split the screen horizontally and vertically.
Scenario, Taskflow and Grid Sketch Sheets
A set of beautiful printable sheets for ideas and sketching
Free Photoshop browser template
Need a clean browser screenshot for a design presentation? Look no further. These free professional Photoshop browser templates come in 1024×768 and 800×600 pixel sizes and all kinds of flavors.
Interactive Sketching Notation 0.1
The idea behind this notation is to visualize user interface states as well as user actions in a clear and rapid manner.
MobileMe Full iPhone GUI
For use with WinterBoard, this is a beta release, so there may be unthemed elements.
Android Wireframe Templates (PDF)
Advertising Stencil Kit
A set of very useful advertising stencils.
Dragnet website wireframes kit v 0.9
Dragnet website wireframes kit v0.9 is a common library for Adobe Fireworks and contains over 25 objects that are useful for rapid prototyping of websites. It is completely free to download and use. The kit contains common Web design elements, such as scrollbars, buttons, menus and alerts.
User Interface Design Framework
This pretty and comprehensive design framework contains a GUI library of hundreds of vector elements for interface design. This minimal UI icon set has 260 vector icons and a library of 200 styles for Illustrator.
Browser Form Elements PSD
Included here is a set for Firefox 3 for Mac and another for IE7 on Vista.
Sketching and Wireframing Kit
Here is a free set of elements for sketching and wireframing. It consists of form elements, icons, indicators, feedback messages, tooltips, navigation elements, image placeholders, embedded videos, sliders and common ad banners.
Photoshop Form Element Templates
This set includes all common form fields and mouse and link pointers, optimized for ease of use.
Web Browser Elements
This excellent and useful kit contains pull-down menus, input fields, radio buttons, check boxes, buttons, text fields and scroll bars, all in an easily editable PSD file.
UI Design Kit
This Web UI template kit is made completely with shape objects, which in some cases convert to SmartObjects, so they’re totally scalable.
Wireframe Symbols
This download contains a symbols library and a full Adobe Illustrator file, with all of the elements spread out on the art board. To install this library, just drag and drop the Wireframe Symbols.ai file into your Illustrator Symbols directory. Once you are in Illustrator, go to your Symbols palette, and load the library.
Web UI Element Pack
This pack, in PSD format, contains 19 elements including loading bar, default and clicked-state buttons, button toggle, icons for “Close,” “Next” and “Previous,” paging icon and slider.
Wireframe Kit for Google Drawings
OmniGraffle Stencil for Ext JS v3.0
This updated version of Ext JS Omnigraffle stencil contains many improvements and additions, namely the recreation of most Ext JS elements as Graffletopia shapes or groups, especially helpful for resizing titles, tables cells and so on.
Flex 3 Stencil
Includes all Flex components from the Flex 3 Style Guide: panels, data grid, buttons, fields, links, toggle, menu, scrolls, accordion, tabs, list, data picker, tooltips and errors.
Aqua GUI
A series of elements inspired by the GUI Design Palette 1.2 and the Mac OS X interface stencils, based on Aqua, and mainly intended to make simple window designs.
Flex Darkskin PSD UI
A beautiful set of 16 PSD files.
Web Wireframe Kit
Here is a simple way to plan a layout and a cost-effective, time-saving wireframe kit for Web designers.
UI Buttons and Icons
This set contains 165 high-quality UI icons and buttons in five different colors. Available in AI, JPEG and SVG formats.
Quommunication Stencil Kit
This beautiful set contains design elements for wireframing, RSS feeds, colors, advertising units, browser windows and grids.
Mac OS X Interface 2
A Leopard-y interface stencil kit that makes extensive use of tables for maximum flexibility while maintaining pixel precision.
OmniGraffle UX Template
The OmniGraffle Pro (v. 5) template for interface design. Includes shared layers for basic UX document needs (e.g. title page, wireframes, storyboards).
Template for Blueprint CSS Comps
This template allows you to create visual design comps to be implemented using a CSS layout framework. The Adobe Illustrator document features a 24-column grid for CSS frameworks such as Blueprint.
Apple Elements for OmniGraffle
Stencils of Apple hardware and miscellaneous networking components. Excellent for creating physical diagrams.
DeviantART ID PSD Kit
These 15 professionally designed, fully customizable templates include MINI and Original ID templates.
Browser Screens and Website Elements
Here is a useful set of vector assets you can use to mock up client projects, present your work or get a quick visual while laying out a website.
960 Grid Template for OmniGraffle
Control of different browsers for designers (download link)
A PSD library of controls in browser interfaces of Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari.
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© Aquil Akhter for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: free, Freebies, psd, wireframing
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Shared by Anton
oj, användbart!
|
To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details.
In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We’ve carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project.
[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #1 is Professional Web Design, 242 pages for just $9,90.]
Android GUI PSD
This Android GUI PSD is based on elements of the Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with its Android application mock-ups. Most of the elements and phone illustrations are done in vector paths and so are easily resizable. Android Sans was used for the text.
RIM Blackberry PSD
A complete PSD file with layer styles, this has 135 layers of Photoshop goodness.
Android Sketch Stencil Version 1.0
A Sketch-style Android OmniGraffle template. The purpose of the sketch style wireframe is to prevent the audience from thinking about visual design and encourage them to focus instead on functionality and behavior.
All elements of Maemo 5 GUI in PSD
This downloadable PSD file contains GUI template elements for the Maemo platform. These are indispensable for prototyping GUI applications running on Maemo devices.
iPhone 4 GUI PSD (Retina Display)
GUI PSD kit for creatives who design for the retina display (640×960). The file is huge, both in file size (62.7MB) and dimension (4074×2986). You’ll need to work at 25% – 50% even on the largest screens to roughly grab elements before zooming into 100% for the actual work.
iPad GUI Kit in PSD
This version offers a canvas size true to the iPad at 768×1024. In addition, most of the graphical elements are provided in vector format, allowing you a lot of room to scale up for high-resolution presentations. This version is layered in Photoshop, making it easy for you to go nuts with your mock-ups and client presentations.
Android 1.6 Wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle
Download this beautiful wireframe stencil add-on for OmniGraffle 5.x. Use this toolkit to wireframe Android-based apps and websites on the 1.6 Donut SDK.
Google Android GUI PSD
Here are the GUI elements of Android, built using vectors to scale.
iPad GUI PSD Kit
This pack includes full size graphics, as well as 256, 128 and 64 pixel icon sizes. The pack includes four sizes of the iPad graphic in PSD, PNG and Mac ICNS formats.
Google Android PSD
A stencil set for Google Android prototyping.
Fireworks template for Android
In this Fireworks template, Android UI elements have been redrawn as vector images. In the folders, the elements have been mostly labeled according to the Android vocabulary.
Sexy Vector Cell Phone
This phone can be scaled to any size. Easily add your own image to the screen with the included object mask. All objects are layered, grouped and labeled for easy customization.
iPad Stencil for Omnigraffle
Contains backgrounds, title bars, buttons, selectors and other iPhone UI elements. The text is fully editable in lists, title bars, buttons and scroll wheels.
iPhone GUI Elements
Some beautiful iPhone elements. All graphics are layered Photoshop files.
iPad and iPhone Design
Design your application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with this exhaustive set of stencils. All stencils were created by hand with native OmniGraffle shapes, and groups and can be scaled, resized and exported to other vector formats in Graffle.
Design Stencil for iPhone and iPad
A stencil for designing OS applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The stencil for now is targeted at developers familiar with the default characteristics of the views and controls provided by UIKit.
Apple iPad fully editable PSD
A fully editable Apple iPad in PSD format. Every element you see is editable via vector masks, and everything is scaleable.
Palm Pre GUI PSD
This set contains a PSD to help designers pitch and develop polished concepts using Photoshop.
iPhone UI Vector Elements
Most visuals for applications start out as vector mock-ups in Adobe Illustrator. So, here are some cool iPhone UI vector elements. And there are even a few good Photoshop resources and even a nice OmniGraffle iPhone UI file or two in there.
iPad Vector GUI Elements: tabs buttons menus icons
This set contains almost all of the iPad UI elements, including buttons, tabs, menus, keyboard and balloons. Useful for designers and developers, it includes scalable and totally editable vector versions (AI).
Free Full-Layered Facebook GUI PSD Kit
The idea behind this kit is to speed up the prototyping of Facebook application UIs and Facebook fan pages, sparing you from drawing all the comps and letting you customize all the text, buttons and data as you need. The kit is free to use in all projects, without any restrictions.
Facebook GUI Free PSD Resource
A Facebook graphic user interface (FBGUI) resource kit for Photoshop to make your work easier.
Facebook Applications
A sizable collection of elements for creating wireframes for Facebook applications.
Omnigraffle Twitter Widget Stencil
This set includes a selection of useful Twitter widgets and badges.
Best Practice UX Forms Stencil v1.1
A comprehensive release of stencil that follows best practices for UX form design, providing three different ways to lay out forms, each with its own benefits. This version also provides different button layouts, a progress indicator, a Captcha code input field, labels and more.
Form Elements UI Kit
Form elements stencil from the Design Stencil kit in the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library.
Wireframe Shapes
Here is a set of shapes for making wireframes in OmniGraffle version 5.x ( forMac OS X). It consists of most of the basic elements you’ll need to create user interface specifications.
Wireframe kit for UI Designers
A set of various wireframes, such as product details, list of items, front page, mobile phone.
MBTI sketching paper for ideation
MBTI sketching paper for ideation sessions. It helps you think inside the box of four personality traits. Describe a design challenge and the problem to solve on every piece of paper. There’s also space for annotations.
A4 sketching paper
This sketching paper can be used after generating ideas for functionality. Design preliminary screens based on the ideas you come up with.
Wireframe Magnets (DIY Kit)
This DIY magnet template is based on the Konigi wireframe stencils, and it includes three sheets of elements that might be useful for whiteboard prototyping. Simply download and print the PDFs onto magnet sheets, optionally laminate them if you intend to use with dry-erase markers, and then cut them out.
Paper wireframe templates
The finished product include seven variations, as well as PSDs.
Wireframe template
A useful print-and-sketch template available for downloading.
iPad Idea Sheet
A total of three sheets: one full size (landscape), one at 70% reduction (vertical) and one at 50% reduction (landscape). The 80 tiny dots make it easy to split the screen horizontally and vertically.
Scenario, Taskflow and Grid Sketch Sheets
A set of beautiful printable sheets for ideas and sketching
Free Photoshop browser template
Need a clean browser screenshot for a design presentation? Look no further. These free professional Photoshop browser templates come in 1024×768 and 800×600 pixel sizes and all kinds of flavors.
Interactive Sketching Notation 0.1
The idea behind this notation is to visualize user interface states as well as user actions in a clear and rapid manner.
MobileMe Full iPhone GUI
For use with WinterBoard, this is a beta release, so there may be unthemed elements.
Android Wireframe Templates (PDF)
Advertising Stencil Kit
A set of very useful advertising stencils.
Dragnet website wireframes kit v 0.9
Dragnet website wireframes kit v0.9 is a common library for Adobe Fireworks and contains over 25 objects that are useful for rapid prototyping of websites. It is completely free to download and use. The kit contains common Web design elements, such as scrollbars, buttons, menus and alerts.
User Interface Design Framework
This pretty and comprehensive design framework contains a GUI library of hundreds of vector elements for interface design. This minimal UI icon set has 260 vector icons and a library of 200 styles for Illustrator.
Browser Form Elements PSD
Included here is a set for Firefox 3 for Mac and another for IE7 on Vista.
Sketching and Wireframing Kit
Here is a free set of elements for sketching and wireframing. It consists of form elements, icons, indicators, feedback messages, tooltips, navigation elements, image placeholders, embedded videos, sliders and common ad banners.
Photoshop Form Element Templates
This set includes all common form fields and mouse and link pointers, optimized for ease of use.
Web Browser Elements
This excellent and useful kit contains pull-down menus, input fields, radio buttons, check boxes, buttons, text fields and scroll bars, all in an easily editable PSD file.
UI Design Kit
This Web UI template kit is made completely with shape objects, which in some cases convert to SmartObjects, so they’re totally scalable.
Wireframe Symbols
This download contains a symbols library and a full Adobe Illustrator file, with all of the elements spread out on the art board. To install this library, just drag and drop the Wireframe Symbols.ai file into your Illustrator Symbols directory. Once you are in Illustrator, go to your Symbols palette, and load the library.
Web UI Element Pack
This pack, in PSD format, contains 19 elements including loading bar, default and clicked-state buttons, button toggle, icons for “Close,” “Next” and “Previous,” paging icon and slider.
Wireframe Kit for Google Drawings
OmniGraffle Stencil for Ext JS v3.0
This updated version of Ext JS Omnigraffle stencil contains many improvements and additions, namely the recreation of most Ext JS elements as Graffletopia shapes or groups, especially helpful for resizing titles, tables cells and so on.
Flex 3 Stencil
Includes all Flex components from the Flex 3 Style Guide: panels, data grid, buttons, fields, links, toggle, menu, scrolls, accordion, tabs, list, data picker, tooltips and errors.
Aqua GUI
A series of elements inspired by the GUI Design Palette 1.2 and the Mac OS X interface stencils, based on Aqua, and mainly intended to make simple window designs.
Flex Darkskin PSD UI
A beautiful set of 16 PSD files.
Web Wireframe Kit
Here is a simple way to plan a layout and a cost-effective, time-saving wireframe kit for Web designers.
UI Buttons and Icons
This set contains 165 high-quality UI icons and buttons in five different colors. Available in AI, JPEG and SVG formats.
Quommunication Stencil Kit
This beautiful set contains design elements for wireframing, RSS feeds, colors, advertising units, browser windows and grids.
Mac OS X Interface 2
A Leopard-y interface stencil kit that makes extensive use of tables for maximum flexibility while maintaining pixel precision.
OmniGraffle UX Template
The OmniGraffle Pro (v. 5) template for interface design. Includes shared layers for basic UX document needs (e.g. title page, wireframes, storyboards).
Template for Blueprint CSS Comps
This template allows you to create visual design comps to be implemented using a CSS layout framework. The Adobe Illustrator document features a 24-column grid for CSS frameworks such as Blueprint.
Apple Elements for OmniGraffle
Stencils of Apple hardware and miscellaneous networking components. Excellent for creating physical diagrams.
DeviantART ID PSD Kit
These 15 professionally designed, fully customizable templates include MINI and Original ID templates.
Browser Screens and Website Elements
Here is a useful set of vector assets you can use to mock up client projects, present your work or get a quick visual while laying out a website.
960 Grid Template for OmniGraffle
Control of different browsers for designers (download link)
A PSD library of controls in browser interfaces of Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari.
Would you like to see more similar posts on Smashing Magazine?online survey
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© Aquil Akhter for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: free, Freebies, psd, wireframing
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Allt sedan vi började anställa medarbetare på Improove har jag tänkt så här: Vi behöver bemanna oss med ungefär lika delar ingenjörer som gränssnittsutvecklare. D.v.s. för att bygga webbproduktioner med hög användarupplevelse och stor affärsnytta krävs både ett ingenjörsmässigt systematiskt problemlösande och en gränssnittsmagikers fingerstoppskänsla för användbarhet. Det är den avancerade logiken i kombination med användarupplevelsen som skapar kraftfulla applikationer.
Vad jag märkt genom åren är att det kan vara förbluffande svårt att kombinera detta. Ingenjörer jobbar helst utifrån en noga definierad teknisk specifikation medan gränssnittsutvecklarna jobbar lite på volley från maggropen. Detta leder inte sällan till missförstånd på slutresultatets bekostnad. Ingenjörens passion är att systematiskt lösa tekniska problem och inte ägna sig åt att hålla reda på typsnitt och pixeljusteringar. Samtidigt kan det vara svårt för gränssnittsutvecklaren att förstå de tekniska förutsättningarna som styr dagens avancerade webbapplikationer. Även med goda intentioner.
Det enda sättet att få bukt med detta är att tvinga båda resurserna att jobba under samma tak. D.v.s. en ingenjör måste ha intresse av webbens/mobilens presentationslager även om man inte är expert på området. På samma sätt som en gränssnittsutvecklare behöver övergripande tekniska kunskper i de tekniska system man jobbar med. Genom att anställa ungefär 60% ingenjörer och 40% frontendutvecklare försöker vi göra vad vi kan för att kombinera det bästa av två världar. Och hittills fungerar det ganska bra. Så pass att jag, efter ett och ett halvt år, verkligen känner att vi kan lita på detta upplägg. Genom att jobba på detta sätt öppnas flera dörrar till att tänka kreativt och ända veta att vi kan genomföra tekniska avancerade uppdrag. Bäst fungerar det inom e-handel där det gäller att hålla tungan rätt i munnen när man gör systemintegrationerna samtidigt som en väl utförd användarupplevelse maximerar köp hos användarna.
Kanske kommer vi på sikt att behöva rucka i detta upplägg men för närvarande är det den bästa av modeller jag kan tänka mig.
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From time to time we take our microphone (aka smartphone), meet up with interesting people from the Swedish web sphere and ask them a lot of questions to get new insights and broaden our horizon. In May we interviewed Alexander Ljung, the Swedish CEO of Berlin-based music startup SoundCloud. Now, a few days ago, we met Sorosh Tavakoli, the CEO and founder of Videoplaza, an expanding web company with roots in Stockholm but active on markets across Europe that is specialized in helping media companies to monetize videos on the Internet. And as you probably know, web video is exploding.
Hi Sorosh. What’s the most fascinating aspect of working with online video?
It’s the shift from what we call “Old TV” to the “New TV”. The Old TV meant that there was one broadcast and the same commercials for everybody. The New TV is delivered via Internet infrastructure, dynamic and very personalized, which means that the serving and targeting of advertisements works in a totally different way. You can show different ads to different people. How this is changing the media industry is very exciting and we are happy to be at the core of this development.
What exactly are you guys at Videoplaza doing?
We have developed an ad server solution for online video. Media companies like TV channels or newspapers can use our technology to embed different types of ads in their streaming videos. While we take care of all the technical process and make sure that there is always compatibility with the platforms being used to distribute the content, the media companies can focus on what they are best at: Produce and get the content and manage the advertising sales.
What is the biggest challenge for the the New TV?
The variety of platforms is a challenge. Web video is accessed in so many different ways, starting from regular computers and notebooks, media PC’s, Tablets like the iPad, mobile phones, via Internet-connected TV’s, gaming consoles like Xbox or Playstation as well as through dedicated streaming video boxes (soon there will be even “Google TV” and, if rumours are true, a new Apple TV platform). Instead of simply making sure that the traditional TV broadcast can be monetized properly with the help of ads like in the “good old days”, there is now a huge amount of platforms with different specifications that needs to be taken into consideration.
Tell us the background story of Videoplaza.
During my studies at the Royal Institute of Technology and the Stockholm School of Economics I did a research project at MMS, a company that does audience measurement of TV programmes in Sweden. The outcome of the project was a report about how people consume moving images, including all the digital methods of watching videos. Through MMS I had the chance to present this to the major TV stations in Sweden, and I learnt the fact that monetization of online video will be a huge challenge, a challenge that needs to be tackled in order to be able to develop legal alternatives to torrent and other illegal download sites. From that moment my brain was working. I wanted to help the media industry to find a way to bring content online and to earn money with it. Together with Alfred Ruth and Dante Buhay, the three of us thought about possible ideas, presented them to our contacts in the industry, and eventually found a solution that one big Swedish TV firm was willing to try! Voilà: In January 2008 we had our first client, started to develop the product and launched it two months later.
Like many other companies from Sweden Videoplaza started early to expand to Europe…
Yes, that was a pragmatical decision: Sweden is small. After half a year we had signed up most of the major Swedish TV/media companies as clients. In order to continue growing we had to look outside of Sweden. We started with the other Nordic countries. UK and France followed, and our next market entry will be in Germany. Most of the future growth will come from markets outside of Sweden. Our team has become pretty European as well and in fact we have a “No Swedish policy” for all communication.
What are your favourite apps or services (besides everything that is related to online video).
I like to check-in with foursquare. Actually me and my wife have a little competition there. But otherwise I have to admit that I’m not this kind of person anymore that in front of the computer for hours experimenting with new apps just for the fun of it. I’m always more focused on the business side rather than on the feature side. How can a service generate revenue, what’s the business model, how will it scale? In the end, if a web company can’t make money, it’s gonna die.
And the final (and for us at Twingly) very important question: Do you read blogs?
Yes, but only a few. I like paidContent.org and NewTeeVee. You can guess why…
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Shared by Anton
coolt som tusan
After striking deals with Lionsgate, MGM and Sony Pictures in the US and UK movie service Blinkbox, YouTube launched a free new movie service with an initial catalog of 400 full-length movies available on-demand.
Simply entitled “Films”, the new section has its own YouTube URL and offers mainstream releases, classics and also Bollywood hits. At the time of writing, the front page offers a couple of Jackie Chan films, Ridley Scott’s Life In A Day YouTube project and a number of independent films.
YouTube head of video partnerships, Donagh O’Malley spoke to The Guardian:
“This is one of many efforts to ensure that people can find all the different kinds of video they want to see, from bedroom vlogs and citizen journalism reports to full-length films and TV shows.
We hope film lovers enjoy the range of titles in this free library, whether catching up on a mainstream hit or delving into the vast archive of classic films from decades past.”
YouTube’s deal with Blinkbox sees around 165 of it’s films, normally priced at £1.99 and upwards, available for free. These films will have advertising incorporated into the films, I noticed a trailer for a 3D film on one of the videos I viewed.
I imagine there will be a number of films that will excite some readers, but on the most part the selection is very limited at present.
Original title and link for this post: YouTube Launches Dedicated Full-Length Movie Section
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